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A Peruvian Amazon Community Is Putting Up a Fight Against the Expansion of Oil Palm · Global Voices
Juan Arellano

This post is a version of an article originally published on Juan Arellano's Globalizado blog.
Screenshot of the video UCHUNYA – Where will we live? Subtitle reading: ‘In future the Amazon will be [empty as] an airfield.’
Santa Clara de Uchunya is a small community in the Peruvian Amazon, located on the banks of the Aguaytía river in the Ucayali region. Its members, who are of Shipibo origin, are taking legal action against the Plantaciones de Pucallpa (Plantations of Pucallpa) company's appropriation and deforestation of about 5,000 hectares of land that the community considers part of its ancestral territory.
An analysis of satellite images taken in August 2014 revealed about 12,200 hectares of primary forest in two areas of the Department of Ucayali near the Aguaytía river had been razed. According to the MAAP (Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project), the deforestation is caused by the expansion of two large-scale plantations of oil palms. Subsequently, a report by the environmental website Mongabay linked these plantations with Czech businessman Dennis Melka, through the Grupo Palmas del Perú (Palms Group of Peru), Plantaciones de Ucayali (Plantations of Ucayali), and Plantaciones de Pucallpa (Plantations of Pucallpa) companies.
Melka is best known as the CEO of United Cacao, a company based in the Cayman Islands accused of cutting down more than 2,000 hectares of virgin forest in the Loreto region of the Amazon in northeastern Peru. He is also the founder, chairman, president and chief executive of United Oils, headquartered in the Cayman Islands, and owns a palm oil refinery in Singapore.
This year, investigative journalism initiative Convoca published a special report on the activities of Melka in Peru, both in Loreto and in Ucayali. They discovered that the manager of the regional directorate of agriculture in Ucayali and the former president of the regional government of Ucayali are being investigated by the first prosecutor specializing in environmental matters of Ucayali over alleged environmental crimes, offenses against public resources and accountability of a public official for the sale of land to a Melka company.
Melka companies also began to acquire land from the communities in adjacent areas. Once in their possession, they began to cut down the native forest with heavy machinery. The report by Convoca gathered testimonies from those affected, who denounced the Plantations of Ucayali officials for usurping land. Ramiro Tapullima, of the Bajo Rayal area, testified before the prosecutor:
Arrasaron toda mi chacra de arroz y yuca de más o menos dos hectáreas. No pude detenerlos debido a que eran personal armado, vigilantes con armas de fuego que nos amenazaban
They destroyed all my rice and cassava farm of about two hectares. I could not stop them because they were armed personnel, security guards with guns threatening us.
Carmela Castro Najarro, from the same village, said:
Me manifestaron que saliera de mi chacra porque ellos iban a trabajarla. La empresa me amenazó con palabras soeces con que me pasaría cualquier cosa, motivo por el cual tuve que salir.
They told me to leave my farm because they were going to work on it. The company threatened me with vulgar words that anything could happen to me, this is why I had to leave.
However, Conveagro-Ucayali officials point out that the areas supposedly deforested have always been dedicated to agriculture.
Other communities haven't fought like Santa Clara de Uchunya. The residents of the Shambo Porvenir community for their part said that, in response to the lack of support from the regional government to pursue alternative crops to coca, they accepted the offer from Plantations of Pucallpa to work the oil palms.
However, what is happening in the community of Santa Clara de Uchunya is different from the situation in Shambo Porvenir. The disputed sale of 4,759 hectares of land, as reported by Convoca, between the Regional Directorate of Agriculture in Ucayali and Plantations of Pucallpa in December 2012 did not have the authorization of the Regional Council of Ucayali, and did not take into consideration that these lands already had owners, among them being the community of Santa Clara de Uchunya.
Last year, research by the government found that 6,824.39 hectares of forest had been destroyed, leaving only 0.3% of forest cover. All this deforested area is within the area that the community identifies as its ancestral territory.
Screenshot from the video UCHUNYA – ¿Y dónde vamos a vivir? (UCHUNYA – And Where Will We Live?). Santa Clara de Uchunya features in the center of the map, while to the left the community's ancestral territory is outlined in white. Pink represents the loss of forest cover.
The blog of the Justicia Viva (‘Live Justice’) organization analyzed the case and concluded that several fundamental rights have been violated, which is why the community has taken the issue to court:
Se ha vulnerado una serie de derechos reconocidos en la Constitución Política y el Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos, que pasan por la propiedad comunal, la consulta previa y el medio ambiente adecuado y equilibrado, entre otros del mismo rango. Este contexto permite a la comunidad nativa de Santa Clara de Uchunya a exigir en sede judicial –y a través de un proceso constitucional, concretamente el de amparo– el cese inmediato de los actos violatorios de sus derechos fundamentales y la vuelta de las cosas al estado anterior a que estas ocurrieran: al momento antes que la ambición tomase el disfraz de palma aceitera y se plantase en lugar del bosque, que hoy ya no está.
A number of rights recognized in the Constitution and by the International Law of Human Rights have been violated, in terms of communal property, prior consultation and what's suitable and balanced for the environment, among others of the same type. This context allows the native community of Santa Clara de Uchunya to demand in court–and through a constitutional process, namely that of protection–immediate cessation of the acts that violate their fundamental rights and a return to how things were before these incidents occurred: the moment before the greed took the guise of an oil palm and was planted instead of the forest, which today no longer exist.
The community of Santa Clara de Uchunya has not stood idly by; in addition to legal action, it has campaigned to increase public awareness. To help in this regard, it has produced a video that “based on community testimonies, shows the impacts which the community are suffering as a result of this appropriation of their traditional lands and the fight to defend their territorial and cultural rights.”
Los esfuerzos de la comunidad para lograr el reconocimiento de sus derechos territoriales abarcan más de 30 años y ahora han llegado a un punto crítico. El caso legal de Santa Clara de Uchunya es emblemático, puesto que su resultado tendrá consecuencias trascendentales para el futuro de la Amazonía peruana y sus pueblos indígenas.
The efforts of the community to achieve recognition of their territorial rights encompass more than 30 years and they have now reached a critical point. The legal case of Santa Clara de Uchunya is emblematic, because its outcome will have far-reaching consequences for the future of the Peruvian Amazon and its indigenous peoples.
In April 2016, representatives of Santa Clara de Uchunya community, together with other indigenous leaders from Indonesia, Colombia and Liberia, were in several European countries to demand that “the European Union take measures and reinforce its legislation against the violation of human rights and against the appropriation of land related to the global supply of palm oil.” They also went to the London Stock Exchange (LSE) to request that the United Cacao company, owned by Dennis Melka, stop trading on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), the branch of the LSE on which United Cacao is listed.
It should be noted that although the strategy of Melka and his companies’ lawyers is to remain silent, as they did when Convoca journalists requested interviews, or initiate libel suits against media that discuss the subject, like what happened to the French portal News Confectionary and the German NGO Rettet den Regentad's Salva la Selva (Save the Forest), in this case United Cacao responded. The company said it operates according to the Peruvian laws, since the environmental impact study of the project was initially accepted in 2013 by the competent authorities and that they are awaiting final approval sometime this year.
In the midst of this negative situation, encouraging news came in the form of an injunction by the 9th Constitutional Court of Lima to halt deforestation in Tamshiyacu, Loreto, by the company Cacao Peru North SAC, of the United Cacao. It remains to be seen if the same will happen soon for Santa Clara de Uchunya.


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The Threat That Was Cyclone Roanu, and the ‘Success’ That Was Bangladesh’s Response · Global Voices
Rezwan

Satellite image of Cyclone Roanu as on May 21, 2016. Image credit NASA Earth Observatory.
Bangladesh has come a long way in disaster preparedness since 1970, when about 500,000 people were killed in the Bhola cyclone. The country has built more than 2,500 cyclone shelters on elevated platforms, which serve the dual role of schools or community centers during normal weather. Early warning systems have been developed, and many volunteers have been trained to help evacuate people to the shelters.
However, preparedness is a constant battle, given the country has been battered by tropical disasters every few years. Tropical Cyclone Roanu was the latest test for Bangladesh.
On 14 May, a low pressure area formed over the Bay of Bengal and consolidated into a tropical depression as it entered Sri Lanka over the east coast. Since then, nearly half a million people have been displaced and 82 people have died in Sri Lanka due to excessive rain and landslides caused by the depression, which became Tropical Cyclone Roanu on 19 May. The Maldives named the cyclone; “roanu” means “coir rope” in Maldivian (Dhivehi).
Roanu also brought torrential rainfall to the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. It drifted on northeastward to finally make landfall in the southeast of Bangladesh.
Cyclone Roanu to hit coasts https://t.co/ce5nNbhy5u#CycloneROANU #Cyclones pic.twitter.com/IB7MsT36b0
— DhakaTribune (@DhakaTribune) May 20, 2016
Bangladesh was better prepared this time. About 2 million people were evacuated before Roanu brought strong winds and rain to Bangladesh's populous coastal communities, killing at least 24 people and displacing about half a million people.
The death toll has been low, if you compare it to Cyclone Sidr in 2007 which claimed 3,447 lives and caused millions of dollars of damage. This time, the disaster management ministry, fire brigade and meteorological department worked together to keep the impact of Roanu to a minimum. However, many houses and roads may be damaged, leaving families without shelter for the oncoming monsoon season.
#Bangladesh evacuates 500,000 before Cyclone #Roanu, avoids major loss of life https://t.co/7VQ9jiori7
— Sajeeb Wazed (@sajeebwazed) May 24, 2016
Already 6 killed & millions displaced as Cyclone Roanu hits Bangladesh. Death toll rising. #PrayForBangladesh pic.twitter.com/46fBpdVxBp
— Dr. Imran H Sarker (@ImranHSarker) May 21, 2016
More on impact of cyclone #Roanu in Banshkhali hardest hit sub-district from @UNDP_BD team who were on the ground pic.twitter.com/5vCmVX7JoT
— UNDP Bangladesh (@UNDP_BD) May 22, 2016
Some people shared mobile phone videos of the storm on social media, such as this footage from YouTube:
Expat Bangladeshi Naser Imran Hossain described on Facebook how things have changed in his native country:
The greatest wealth that a nation has is it's people, be it ignorant, bigoted, religiously and socially intolerant people- they are the rulers of the land, they are the torchbearers, they are the ones that are best suited to thrive and survive. Even 10 years ago, a cyclone such as Roanu would kill hundreds, devastate thousands of lives- look how situation has change, how the death toll has dwindled, how information technology with improved clarity and awareness has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, giving them a second opportunity to start, anew from the ashes.
However, not everyone had the same thought. Educator Kaberi Gayen warned against downplaying the loss of life from Roanu:
রোয়ানু নেই নেই করেও ২৬ জনের জীবন নিয়ে নিয়েছে।
এটি ঘোষিত হতে পারতো জাতীয় দুর্যোগ। কিন্তু মৃত্যু আমাদের গা-সওয়া হয়ে গেছে।
Although it seems like an achievement, 26 lives have been lost due to Roanu. This could be declared a national disaster. But it seems we are accustomed to a large number of deaths.
The process of improving disaster preparedness in Bangladesh isn't over, but it's headed in the right direction, argued Khurshid Alam on the United Nations Development Programme's blog:
Bangladesh’s exposure to cyclones will not lessen – in fact, with climate change we may see the coast battered more often, harder, and in unpredictable ways. In the past decade, Bangladesh has transitioned from disaster management to disaster risk reduction by – among other things – changing the public mindset and government policy, expanding early warning systems and volunteerism, and engaging communities in identifying and addressing local risk.
[…]
We must all ask ourselves: how can we help in ways that don’t just alleviate suffering, but support communities to become more resilient for the future? Our work in disaster risk reduction in Bangladesh offers some of the best examples of how our efforts can prevent or reduce crises, not just manage them.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Rezwan


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A Flurry of Poaching Cases Casts a Cloud Over Nepal’s Tiger Conservation Efforts · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

Bengal Tiger – Panthera tigris. Image from Flickr by Shaunak Modi. CC BY 2.0
More than a dozen tigers killed in a year – that’s grave news for a country which was hailed for its record third “zero poaching year” for rhinos.
Most of them were poached in and around the Bardia National Park, reported the daily Annapurna Post. Not long ago, the country was celebrating the fact that not a single tiger was killed during the one-year period between February 2013 and February 2014.
Since the poachers take the animal carcass with them, cases of poaching are difficult to track. The whole body of a tiger – from toe nails, skin and bones to the meat – is put up for sale on the international market by the poachers. Only when the petty traders are caught with tiger skins and bones in their possession do the authorities learn that the animals were killed by the gangs behind the illegal trade.
Last year, police caught poachers with tiger skins and bones at different places in the country. Thanks to the concern of authorities, a poacher who was on a run for years after killing Nepal’s first GPS (Global Positioning System)-collared tiger Namo Buddha was arrested. However, the frequent sighting of nomadic Banjara people in western Nepal is a reason for worry for conservationists and security agencies as they have in the past been involved in poaching and illegal trade of tiger parts.
Though tiger poaching remains a serious problem, the latest census showed that tigers increased in numbers by 63% from the previous census. The last census put the number of tigers at 198.
Tiger populations world-wide are increasing for the first time in 100 years thanks to the rise of tigers in India, Russia, Nepal and Bhutan.
— ZWF MIAMI (@ZWFMiami) May 13, 2016
The Government of Nepal along with conservation organisations like World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) wants to double the tiger numbers by 2022. That goal isn't such a distant dream if the trend of rising tiger numbers continues, but poaching needs to be curbed.
In 2010, governments of India, Russia, Nepal and Bhutan pledged to double the number of wild tigers by 2022. #wild pic.twitter.com/J2z0ecZzfh
— Matador Student News (@matanewscast) April 14, 2016
While tiger numbers are increasing, it’s rare to see a tiger in the wild in Nepal. When people do, it's noteworthy — for better or worse.
Journalist Ujjwal Acharya tweeted when his team came across a tiger in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park.
Feeling lucky to see a #tiger during jungle safari in Chitwan National Park on January 1, 2016. Gave us long stare! pic.twitter.com/OA0gn6z28K
— Ujjwal Acharya (@UjjwalAcharya) January 3, 2016
In February, news of a Dutch tourist named Gerard Van Laar being saved by a local guide from a tiger that didn’t let him come down from a tree went viral in the mainstream and social media. Van Laar survived by clinging to a tree for two hours as the tiger waited for him below.
#Nepal – Dutch tourist who survived #tiger attack says he is lucky to be alive https://t.co/hWutqCi8kE pic.twitter.com/DUOon9HO8L
— WildTiger (@WildTigerNews) February 16, 2016
The magnificent animals not only fascinate ordinary people, but high-profile celebrities as well. Recently, when the UK's Prince Harry visited Bardia National Park in Nepal, he acted like a tiger, crouching and walking which was captured by a camera trap that help monitor the animals.
Inspecting a camera trap used to monitor tigers. Bardia is home to 50 tigers – up from 18 in 2009 #HarryinNepal pic.twitter.com/BFLmBIL84q
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 21, 2016
Academy Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio is no exception. He donated US $3 million towards tiger conservation when he visited Bardia National Park.
Nepal’s ‘greatest areas of progress in tiger conservation’ excites Leonardo DiCaprio https://t.co/pIkMnAXCu0 pic.twitter.com/UetkXH1uaD
— southasia.com.au (@southasia15) April 12, 2016
To fight poaching, conservation organisations have come together to organise awareness-raising activities along the border with India in western Nepal. Besides the efforts of celebrities, conservationists and communities who have been crucial in conserving the striped cats, a recent report of forest cover increasing by over five per cent in Nepal is another silver lining in the cloud.
Good news: Nepal's forest cover has increased! https://t.co/sk7Tui6tmc #doubletigers pic.twitter.com/ZQBc0kRlyZ
— WWF Tigers (@WWF_tigers) May 18, 2016
The coordination between the concerned government authorities, conservation organisations and communities will be crucial if tiger numbers are to be doubled by 2022. And conserving them will in turn be crucial for the ecosystem, which will have an impact on humanity's own survival.
बाघ संरक्षण भयो भने, जंगल संरक्षण हुन्छ, जंगल संरक्षण भए बाघ संरक्षण हुन्छ त्यसैले बाघ र जंगलको संरक्षण गरेर पृथ्वीमा मानिसको संरक्षण गरौँ !
— Aananda (@andpkrl) July 29, 2014
If the tiger is conserved, the forest will be conserved, the conserved forest will conserve the tiger. So, conserve humans on this planet by conserving the tiger and the forest.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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Bloggers Boggled Over Why Child Marriage Is Still on the Books in Trinidad & Tobago · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The discussion surrounding child marriage in Trinidad and Tobago continues after the head of the country's Inter-Religious Organisation (IRO) said last week that the state should not amend the Marriage Act because “age did not determine maturity”. Child marriage is still legal in the twin island republic — even though the age of sexual consent was raised last year from 16 to 18 years old — and is still practiced by some Hindus and Muslims.
“14 million Child Marriages [globally]…but you've got to play the cards you're dealt.” Photo of stone games in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by Thinking Development, which supports the work of www.girlsnotbrides.org in trying to put an end to Child Marriage. Image used under a CC BY 2.0 license.
Many bloggers still couldn't wrap their heads around the contradiction. The blog Square Peg (Round Hole) said:
As a thinking and empathetic citizen of this country, I’m obviously horrified that – in the year of our Lord, 2016 – we need to debate whether it should be legal for children to be married. […]
If the IRO is to have any hope of salvaging itself before the sensible citizens of this nation logic it into oblivion, it needs to completely abandon this archaic and alarming stance immediately.
Identifying herself as “a daughter of Sanatan Dharma” (the major Hindu organisation in Trinidad and Tobago), the blog keepinganemptycup concurred:
I stand firm in the face of the atrocity that is child marriage and rebuke it without regret. This is not just an issue of age and maturity, but once again, of power.
The policing of women and girls’ bodies by Hindu men has been a plague to this system of belief for hundreds of years. Despite the worship of female deities who are warriors, nurturers and the like, there exists a patriarchal supposition that women and girls must be strictly policed; we are the responsibility of fathers, then husbands, then sons. A single woman on her own is a being to be despised, shunned, hated, feared or conquered. Thus, marriage is seen as the institution that can keep a woman ‘in line’. The fact of child marriages stems from poverty and misconceptions of the ‘evil’ that is female sexuality.
The blogger dismissed the rationale of the practice being okay because it was part of the religion's traditions, saying “it is about time Hindu women stand up and say a resounding NO to the actions and policies of this patriarchal system, and this absurd, abusive and archaic law”:
This Sanatan Dharma has survived thousands of years because it has evolved […] This is why it is difficult for me to truly understand how ‘big, hard-back men’, versed in the laws of Dharma, understanding of the progress of the world, can sit from their thrones of ignorance and declare that child marriages are ‘okay’, because ‘we doing it long time…we forefathers used to do it’. Many of our forefathers used to drink puncheon and beat up their wives too, does that mean alcoholism and domestic violence are okay and should be continued?
It just goes to show how much it worries these men that women and girls are no longer filling the roles this patriarchal system has been pinning onto them.
Blogger Darren J. Glenn also weighed in:
So: I am to understand that in the year 2016 in a secular, democratic republic, the legality, stipulations and recognition of marriage lays squarely in the hands of the religious communities. The state manages matrimony after the fact, but communities of faith act as the primary authorities with regard to setting police and procedure.
Is this really what we’re doing?! Beyond being simply ridiculous domestic policy, I hold this practice to be dangerous. My outrage at this fact is rooted in the fact that we want to be a modern state seen as a bearer of human rights, yet we uphold policies where oppression could easily be hidden. […]
My question to them is: what gives them the right to speak on public policy? Who cares what they have to say? Why does the fundamentally moral and theological conversation taking place among the interfaith community in TT have such marked implications for our legislative sphere?
With the current administration still in consultations over the repeal of the law, it remains to be seen just how much of a voice religious organisations will have in both state and gender affairs.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Health Crisis Provokes Protests in Medellín, Colombia · Global Voices
Juan Arellano

Image shared by the collective Somos14más1 on Twitter.
Demonstrators gathered in front of hospitals and health centers in the Colombian city of Medellín last week, on May 19, trying to pressure the authorities into addressing persistent and pervasive shortcomings in the local healthcare system.
De nuevo plantones para visibilizar #CrisisDeLaSalud ,hospitales no tienen como atender pacientes sin recursos. pic.twitter.com/QQhWgxG6St
— LUIS MARTINEZ (@DIRECTORAESA) May 19, 2016
More protests to bring attention to the health crisis, hospitals have no way of attending to patients without resources
Problems with healthcare in Medellín are unfortunately nothing terribly new. Five years ago, one blog traced today's most pressing healthcare issues back to the government of Álvaro Uribe:
Después de las desastrosas medidas tomadas durante el gobierno anterior, la salud se transformó en un negocio, por lo cual nos encontramos con que las entidades encargadas de la salud en Colombia sólo piensan en un beneficio económico, olvidándose que su trabajo principal es salvar vidas no recibir y provocar tutelas.
After the disastrous measures taken during the previous government, healthcare transformed into a business, such that the entities in charge of healthcare in Colombia only think of economic gains, forgetting that their main work is to save lives, not receive and induce admissions.
The blog PROESA highlighted two of the fundamental problems with the health system:
•  Reduced flow of funds, which in turn brings difficulties for the timely provision of services.
•  Insufficient transparency and accountability on the part of entities within the [healthcare] sector.
Many of the demonstrators last week shared on social media their reasons for attending the protest. Catalina Valencia, for example, said she turned out to support people's right to health:
Éxito #Somos14+1 #30MinutosPorLaSalud #CrisisDelaSalud pic.twitter.com/XVbRY6QBeC
— Catalina Valencia (@catavave) May 19, 2016
Image: Without health, prosperity for all is a LIE!
Tweet: Success We Are 14+1. 30 Minutes For Healthcare. Healthcare Crisis
While patients have suffered the brunt of the crisis, healthcare facilities in Medellín and throughout the Antioquia region have faced challenges of their own—particularly the large and mounting debts owed by hospitals and clinics to the Entidades Promotoras de Salud (the Healthcare Promoting Entities) and the state, which has contributed to the deterioration of local response capacities.
Conoce las consecuencias por la falta del pago oportuno a las instituciones @Somos14mas1 pic.twitter.com/1jim7kpree
— Clínica Las Vegas (@ClLasVegas) May 19, 2016
Image:
Consequences of the lack of timely payments:
Crashes in the emergency network.
Closure of services and hospital beds.
Failure to pay suppliers and employees.
Difficulty relying on medicines and supplies that allow service delivery to patients.
Sit-in: Healthcare continues mourning
Thursday, May 19
From 8:00 am
Tweet: We know the consequences of failing to make timely payments to institutions.
The organizing force behind these healthcare demonstrations was the collective Somos 14 más 1 (“We Are 14 Plus 1”), and it helped promote the event on Twitter, using the hashtags #CrisisDeLaSalud (“#HealthcareCrisis”) and #30MinutosPorLaSalud (“#30MinutesForHealthcare”).
#30MinutosPorLaSalud Las EPS nos adeudan 1.7 billones de pesos ¿Dónde están los recursos de la salud? pic.twitter.com/n2pX5giVUz
— Somos14mas1 (@Somos14mas1) May 19, 2016
#30MinutesForHealthcare The [Healthcare Promoting Entities] owes us 1.7 billion pesos. Where are the resources for health?

author: Juan Arellano


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China’s Independent Journalists Face High Risks — And Are in High Demand · Global Voices
inmediahk.net

Some independent journalists in China call themselves grassroots historians and publish their writing on social media platforms. They also participate in historical gatherings such as the Shenzhen History Carnival in 2014, seen here. Photo from Jiang Xue's Weibo.
This article was written by Ip Iam Chong and originally published in Chinese on citizen media platform inmediahk.net on May 6 2016. The edited version below was translated by Kristen Chan and is published on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
An experienced Chinese journalist recently told me that nearly all major news stories that captured public attention in the past three years were written by independent journalists who have no legal status in China.
As propaganda authorities have become increasingly unreasonable and numerous journalists have received jail time for doing journalistic work, more and more professional journalists have either abandoned or transformed their careers.  While some have moved into management positions at major online news portals, others have left media outlets and started writing and distributing independent investigative reports by making use of social media.
Media regulation in China
Media outlets in mainland China are all state-affiliated, falling under the control of provincial governments, party committees or propaganda departments at different administrative levels. There are no privately operated media outlets.
For instance, the Southern Media Group, which has operated a number of outstanding newspapers including Nanfang Daily, Southern Weekend and Southern Metropolis Daily for liberal voices, is under the supervision of the Guangdong Province party committee. Officials from the propaganda department can step in and take control over a newspaper's editorial at any time.
Although the people in the latter group are journalists by training and by trade, they are do not fit China's legal framework for what constitutes a journalist. Indeed, it is illegal for a person to identify as a journalist if he or she does not hold a press card. All journalists must hold a press identity card issued by registered media outlets, otherwise it is illegal for them to call themselves journalists. The press card must be renewed annually by the journalist's work unit or it will expire.
At a recent conference, I met a number of independent journalists from mainland China. They identified themselves using terms like “writer”, “grassroots historian”, “interviewer” and other monikers avoid using the term “journalist” to describe their work.
One type among this group is similar to those independent journalists working in Hong Kong. They choose and research topics according to their own liking. Rather than pursuing “hot topics”, they typically follow the convention of reportage literature, by researching historical events such as grassroots stories from the anti-Rightist Campaign and Cultural Revolution, or the history and culture of a particular place that has been neglected by the general public. Apart from reports, they also write commentaries.
They commonly distribute their writings through WeChat's public pages. The social media platform offers an option similar to Facebook's public page where other users can subscribe to the content on a particular page and interact with the writer/administrator. WeChat even has a “reward system” that encourages readers to pay a small contribution to the writer. For example, Jiang Xue, a journalist with 20 years of experience in the field, has rebuilt her career as an independent interviewer by using WeChat public platform last year. Most of her interviewees are from grassroots groups.
Another common path for independent journalists in China is to work as an informal media outlet sub-contractor. These journalists have close connections with editors or management staff from more established media outlets that cannot initiate their own investigative reports because of internal censorship. However, they do have budgets to buy content like individual interviews, photos and features from outside writers and pay famous bloggers to use their platforms. Hence this group of independent journalists can make a living by selling their reports to conventional media outlets or portal sites.
According to existing regulations, portal sites cannot conduct original news reports and hence cannot have their own reporter teams. Yet, they have paid columns or paid special features for independent writers to fill in the content. For example, reports from the WeChat public platform “Qianjieyihao” or “No.1 on front street” are frequently quoted by news portals such as Ifeng, QQ and even Xinhua. The platform, which describes itself as “the Eden of a group of oppressed social reporters,” publishes posts produced by teams, some of whom may be affiliated with state media.
There are no reliable figures on how many journalists work in this mode in China, but it is clear that they are walking on a tightrope which carries immense risk, but can also yield opportunities.
Independent journalists have no institutional protection. The censorship system within media outlets is a form of control, but it also protects journalists from touching sensitive issues that can get them into trouble. The bureaucratic structure makes certain that responsibility is shared at all levels — editors and management staff work to ensure that news coverage will not break local laws or offend state or party officials. This minimizes the part that the journalists have to take on their shoulders.
Outside the umbrella of the media institution, independent journalists face many more risks. After the introduction of China's Rumor and Libel Regulation in September 2013 , which criminalized rumors and defamatory content that has been reposted 500 times or more, reporting on sensitive stories became much more dangerous for them.
The growth of the independent journalism sector depends on individual courage, but it has also benefited from developing media and communication ecologies. More and more, breaking news circulates first via social media. Similar to other parts of the world, the conventional media sector is withering in the face of competition from online media — this may be even more pronounced in China, where censorship practices have made state-affiliated media increasingly rigid in recent years.
And in contrast to conventional media outlets, where sensitive content often never makes it to the printed page, sensitive online content is deleted after publication. A popular post that touches on sensitive topics can reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of readers within a few hours on WeChat before the web censor steps in.
In the face of rapid growth of capital investment in the Internet and technology sector in China, content is king and news content is also essential to the development of online platforms. As independent journalists are more flexible and courageous in picking up social topics, including sensitive ones, they are welcomed by Internet portals. Thus their work is high-risk — and in high demand.


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Now’s Not a Good Time to Wear a Hammer and Sickle T-Shirt in Indonesia · Global Voices
Juke Carolina

A store owner in Indonesia selling a t-shirt which features the album cover of German band Kreator was arrested for promoting the banned hammer and sickle communist symbol. Source: Wikipedia
The police and military in Indonesia are stepping up the campaign against communism by arresting people suspected of promoting the outlawed ideology.
Earlier this month, two activists in Mollucas were jailed for wearing t-shirts that bear the logo “Partai Kopi Indonesia” (Indonesian Coffee Party). According to the police, the symbol resembles the acronym of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), even if the t-shirt refers to coffee lovers.
Jailed activists accused of spreading communism for wearing “Pecinta Kopi Indonesia” (PKI) t-shirt https://t.co/uSsdB7g61Q
— Coconuts Jakarta (@CoconutsJakarta) May 16, 2016
Meanwhile, the owner of a memorabilia shop and his employees were also arrested for selling t-shirts of German heavy metal band Kreator that feature the hammer and sickle logo.
@kreator Ups! Only happen in Indonesia. pic.twitter.com/QifJ3gTzwg
— widiaji (@widiaji) May 9, 2016
In February this year, the Belok Kiri Fest (Turn Left Fest), which was organized to discuss leftist ideas, was canceled after the police revoked its permit.
In Indonesia, communism and Marxism are considered subversive ideologies and a threat to national security. Any manifestation of support for communism, Marxism or Leninism can be viewed as treason under the amended Indonesian Criminal Law. The law could even criminalize the work of a scholar who writes about communism.
Military officials believe there is a treasonous plot to revive communist groups in the country, but some analysts think the army is only trying to undermine efforts to probe the anti-communist hysteria in 1965 which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of suspected communists and their sympathizers across Indonesia.
The military is accused of orchestrating the mass killings, which led to the rise to power of General Suharto. For its part, the military claims it only retaliated against attacks instigated by communists.
Suharto banned the PKI and prevented the public from investigating the role of the army in the 1965 killings. Suharto ruled for 32 years until his resignation in 1998.
When President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) won in 2014, human rights groups urged him to give justice to the victims of the 1965 killings.
Reacting to the string of recent arrests, Jokowi asked law enforcement to stop any effort to revive the communist party, but he also urged them to respect human rights and freedom of expression.
The country's cabinet, meanwhile, seems to be divided on the issue. While the defense chief rallies active and retired army officials to help in blocking the revival of communism in Indonesia, the coordinating minister for justice and human rights sees nothing wrong with exploring leftist ideas as long as it's for scholarly research.
For Muslim scholar  Akhmad Sahal, there is a better way to defeat communism instead of arresting suspected communists:
Cara terbaik MENOLAK komunisme itu dgn mendalami pemikiran kiri. Yg kita hidupkan bukan PKI, tp sikap imiah-kritis. Krn parno = picik.
— akhmad sahal (@sahaL_AS) May 16, 2016
The best way to DEFEAT communism is by analyzing leftist thoughts. Reviving not the communist party, but critical and scientific mindsets. Because paranoid=closed-minded.
Because of this tweet, he was accused by some netizens of defending communism and betraying his Islamic faith. Sahal then clarified his stance:
(1) Saya ga pernah setuju komunisme. Yg kubela itu hak utk jd cerdas dgn baca, termasuk aliran kiri. Biar gak parno. https://t.co/U7kK5KKvh7
— akhmad sahal (@sahaL_AS) May 15, 2016
I disagree with communism, what I stand for is the right to be smart and to read, including those of leftist ideas. To stop being paranoid.
In Indonesia, it is common to hear officials equating communism and the LGBT community with terrorism. These are often described as concepts that disturb the country's unity and sovereignty. Some Twitter users are against this simplistic mindset:
Marxisme tak akan mati karena gertak FPI. Marxisme akan mati ketika ia jadi dogma. Spt kitab suci.
— goenawan mohamad (@gm_gm) May 19, 2016
Marxism won't die because of the threat from [hardline religious group] Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). Marxism will die once it becomes a dogma. Just like the holy books.
Takut pd komunisme, takut pd liberalisme, takut pd lgbt, takut pd aseng dan asing: watak para inferior yg tak takut pd kebodohannya sendiri
— fadil putra (@fadillahputra) May 18, 2016
Fear of communism, fear of liberalism, fear of LGBT, fear of Chinese and foreign powers: personalities of those with inferiority complexes. Fearing their own stupidity.
@LBH_Jakarta ada upaya penciptaan musuh palsu lewat upaya isu penghidupan komunisme maupun ketakutan trhdap LGBT #StopKekangDemokrasi
— TIFA Foundation (@TifaFoundation) May 12, 2016
There's an effort to fabricate false enemies by reviving the communism issue or LGBT. #stopshacklingthedemocracy
Seperti biasa lah kalo liat berita, liat polanya…
kemaren LGBT, trus miras, sekarang Komunisme, besok apaan? tebakan gw sih pornografi
— The Game Master (@SoundOfYogi) May 9, 2016
As usual, it's a news pattern. Before it was LGBT, then alcohol, now communism. What comes next? My guess is pornography.

author: Juke Carolina


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Crimea’s Government Cancels That ‘Putin Is a D*******’ Event · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Putin meets with his Economic Council. May 25, 2016. Photo: Kremlin Press Service. Edited by Kevin Rothrock.
In the late hours of Wednesday, May 25, a curious event announcement appeared on the website of the Crimean Republic's Ministry of Industrial Policy. The information was displayed only briefly (it's already been removed), but it was still available long enough for Internet users in Russia to notice. The event was supposed to take place this Friday, May 27, and it was to be called “Putin Is a Dickhead.” The recorded location of the event was also listed as “Putin Is a Dickhead.” The format of the event was supposed to be an “official photo session.”
The event was likely a prank on Crimea's new Russian state officials.
“Putin Is a Dickhead” features on the Crimean government's official agenda. (This event was soon unpublished.)
Given Russia's strict laws prohibiting news agencies from publishing obscenities, some websites trying to report the story of Crimea's curious Industrial Policy event had to resort to censoring screenshots of the ministry's Web page.
TJournal, for instance, refused to publish the word for “dickhead” (“хуйло”—an epithet often awarded to Putin by his critics in Ukraine), though the website's users uploaded their own, uncensored screenshots immediately in comments on the story.
Russian Internet users also ensured that 10 different snapshots of the Industrial Policy Ministry's events’ page were uploaded to the Internet Archive's “Wayback Machine.”
In March 2014, following a Russian military operation to seize Crimea from Ukraine, Moscow annexed the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as federal subjects of the Russian Federation. The two entities are now federal districts in Russia, though the vast majority of the world has refused to recognize the Kremlin's sovereignty over the territory.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Russian Media and Internet Users Debate the Ethics of Reporting on Teenage Suicide · Global Voices
Sasha Shapiro

The investigation of mysterious groups on VKontakte full of images of whales and butterflies that Novaya Gazeta claims drive teenagers to take their own lives has met with public criticism. Image from VKontakte.
Whales. Butterflies. Rina. f57. These words, images, and names have been circulating on the Russian media and social networking sites this past week after independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an article exposing groups on VKontakte that allegedly promote suicide. Since May 16, the Russian Internet has been buzzing with what media website Slon.ru called the “most important newspaper text of 2016.” But not everyone is thrilled with the investigation, with users questioning its ethics, its conclusions, and its methods.
On May 16, Novaya Gazeta reported on an investigation into 130 alleged teenage suicides that occurred between November 2015 and April 2016 in Russia. All of the victims, Novaya reporters said, were members of the same groups on Russian social network VKontakte, dedicated to themes of suicide or self-harm, and often posting shocking content.
Novaya Gazeta's investigation, titled “Groups of Death,” warned parents to read the findings “so that they could save their children from risk” and so that they could learn to identify the slightest details of looming tragedy and teach it to other parents. Some RuNet users found the reporters’ stance biased and their tone as bordering on the cusp of hysteria.
Secret, private groups on social media that entice teenagers to take their own lives. Sounds like the plot of a bizarre horror movie. And yet hundreds of these groups are allegedly active and thriving on VKontakte. “Who are these people?” asked Novaya Gazeta. “Spiritual freaks, maniacs, Satanists, fascists?”
As the investigation, now picked up by other news outlets and Internet users, continues, the administrators of these groups emerge as seemingly regular members of society. Philip Lees, the main administrator of the most popular group “f57” , is a 21-year-old sound engineer living in the greater Moscow area. At this point in the investigation, he is hailed as the main orchestrator of content allegedly meant to incite suicide, including videos of his own (obviously fake) suicide, images of self-mutilation, and poems lamenting the bitter cruelty of being alone in the world.
Тебя бросил парень?
Устала от учёбы?
Часто сидишь в Вк?
Никто не пишет?
Загляни в Темная сторона меня, там кое-что есть для тебя
Boyfriend broke up with you?
Tired of studying?
Always hanging out on VKonakte?
No one writing to you?
Take a look at My dark side [page], maybe there is something for you there
On the surface, this looks like a disturbed individual (or individuals) trying to lure a bunch of teenagers into a weird Internet cult. But what precisely about these groups caused so many teenagers to join and then, allegedly, take their own lives? That's where Rina Palenkova comes in.
Rina is a 16-year-old girl from Russia's Far East who took her own life in November 2015. The community administrators circulated her last selfie before her death captioned “Meow. Goodbye,” as well as her postmortem pictures and screenshots of her text messages. As a cult of personality started around Rina, teenagers across the country began stalking her VKontakte page, reposting her statuses, music, pictures. “Rina, you are the best,” users scrawled on her wall. “It's such a shame that I never knew you. You're my hero, I love you, you have the most incredible eyes, like you just appeared to us out of an anime.”
In addition to encouraging the cult of personality, administrators circulated pictures of whales and butterflies, allegedly claiming that these symbols represented anguish and loneliness. Whales are the only animals known to die by suicide by beaching themselves when they are “in despair.” Many butterflies only live for a day. Other groups promoting suicidal ideas began popping up with names like “Flying Whales,” “Sea of Whales,” and “Cosmic Whales.” The content of all these groups was essentially the same: gruesome pictures of self-mutilation, discussions of taking one's own life, poems, and videos.
After Novaya Gazeta's article broke, the media was in an obvious uproar. Lenta.ru launched its own parallel investigation and was able to speak directly to Philip Lees. According to him, the groups had been created with a view to provide psychological support. He admitted that he communicated directly with some members, listening to their troubles and counseling them. “I told them that life doesn't end here,” he said. “There is a way out, but it is not suicide. But I seem to have failed because people died.”
Lenta.ru interviewed others associated with the groups, who claimed that Lees had a major role in the game “Insiders” which teenagers in these groups would play. The objectives of the game were to post pictures of their self-harm and in return users would allegedly get tips on completing suicide. The game was a race against the clock—a timer counted down the days until the day that they were “to kill themselves.” The administrators claimed that this game was a way of identifying teens at risk and then actively communicating with them to talk them out of suicide.
Other media outlets responded with their own thoughts on these investigations, often accusing Novaya Gazeta of exaggerating the facts, creating an atmosphere of panic, and making generalizations about Russian social network users. In an op-ed for Slon.ru journalist Oleg Kashin argued that Novaya Gazeta had stepped into a foreign territory of which it had no understanding. “The author's error is that she doesn't understand the intricacies of the communication on Vkontakte,” Kashin wrote.
Nevertheless, Russia's state censor agency Roskomnadzor is already investigating the matter. In the past week, dozens of suicide-related sites have been blocked on VKontakte and reports of related content have tripled. St. Petersburg investigators opened a criminal case against the sites’ administrators on grounds of incitement to suicide in adolescents.
In the haze of hysteria, the voices of teenagers themselves were obscured. However, one teenager's thoughts became known after she wrote a response to the Novaya Gazeta article on Facebook. The post was shared over one thousand times and featured in media reports. In her response, the young woman attempts to clarify the definition of self-harm, explain the symbols of whales and butterflies, and advises parents on how to deal with a child who might be contemplating suicide.
“Self harm is not necessarily a symptom of suicidal behavior,” she writes. “Whales and butterflies are not symbols of suicide.” She introduces a group called The Butterfly Project that suggests that teens draw butterflies on their wrists instead of engaging in self-harm.
According to the teenager, the biggest problem with teen suicides is not the groups on social media that induce the behavior. It is the ever pervasive misunderstandings between adolescents and adults. And as panic and hysteria surrounding evil social media sites spiral out of control, with Roskomnadzor stepping in to block and monitor VKontakte groups, the gap of understanding between these at-risk teenagers and their surrounding world grows.
“Whales, unicorns, butterflies, crocodiles, cockroaches, and orangutans. Tomorrow there will be different symbols, you won’t be able to recognize them all,” she writes. “You will not catch up to us if you are fixated on specific details.”
Про контроль. Да, вот сейчас хочется нас обнять, утащить и оградить. А дальше то? Не смотря на распространённость мнения, что «все зло от интернета», это можно получить откуда угодно – хоть со стены подъезде или надписи «Выхода нет» на двери метро. Пока вы будете блокировать и контролировать одно, мы найдем свободу в другом, и пытаться рыть этот ров можно бесконечно – мы умеем летать.
In regards to control. Yes, right now you may want to hug us, hide us away, protect us. But what's next? Despite the popular belief that ‘all evil originates on the Internet,’ we can get these thoughts from everywhere and anywhere. Just look at the subway walls or the door signs that say “No exit”. While you block and control sites on the Internet, we will find freedom in something else and to try to capture us in this way is pointless—we can fly.
The ethical debates around Novaya Gazeta's investigation came to a head on May 20, after Lenta.ru published an interview with the administrator of the VKontakte community “Morye Kitov” (Sea of Whales). The anonymous young man told Lenta.ru that he spoke to Natalia Sokolova, an editor at Novaya Gazeta TV. Sokolova implied the newspaper's reporters were cooperating with the police on its investigation and pressured their interviewees into giving them exclusive information.
Dmitry Muratov, the chief editor of Novaya Gazeta, later suspended his deputy chief editor, Sergey Sokolov, following the revelations that Sokolov instructed his staff to blackmail suspects in the investigation.
Sokolov has already issued a public apology for his actions, saying he made the error under the stress of continued reports about minors dying by suicide. “I’m sorry for the extreme form of my indiscretion,” he said in a statement published by Novaya Gazeta.

author: Sasha Shapiro


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Classism in Mexican Cinema: Entertainment or a Serious Issue? · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

Covers of well-known Mexican films. Image by Juan Tadeo.
Mexican films that exploit classism and social inequality are some of the biggest hits at the box office. The latest example of this phenomenon is the recent release ¿Qué culpa tiene el niño? (“Why Blame the Kid?”).
As previously reported on Global Voices, economic disparity and poverty have cultivated rising class tensions in Mexico, leading to widespread perceptions that more affluent groups and individuals treat the rest of the population arrogantly. Visible extravagances and consumer excess only makes the country's inequality more obvious.
It's by no means trivial that the film “The Noble Family” was a record-breaking success at the box office when it was released in 2013. The movie is about a fictitious family at the top of Mexico's socioeconomic ladder and the complications the family faces as it tries to live like the rest of the country. Specifically, the family members have to work poorly paid jobs. One character finds a job in a bank, another drives a public bus, and a third works as a waitress, where she's forced to wear a skin-tight miniskirt on the job.
In May 2016, approximately 1,100 movie theaters in Mexico screened the debut of “Why Blame the Kid?” by the director Gustavo Loza. According to the newspaper Milenio, the movie attracted a bigger audience that weekend than “The Angry Birds Movie” and the multi-million dollar Hollywood super production, “Captain America: Civil War.” The winning formula is the same as always: poke fun at classism in Mexico. Movie critic Alejandro Alemán says it boils down to a single gag:
El humor en esta cinta versa sobre un solo gag. La diferencia social entre Maru y Renato así como el choque de clase que presupone la reunión de ambas familias. Mientras Maru es hija de un importante diputado (Jesús Ochoa haciendo su personaje de siempre) que vive en una cuasi mansión, Renato vive en una unidad habitacional con su mamá (Mara Escalante, haciendo de su personaje una revisión de otro similar que hace en la televisión); mientras Maru tiene un trabajo respetable en Santa Fe, Renato tendrá que meterse de repartidor de pizzas; mientras la familia de Maru bebe champaña, la familia de Renato bebe tepache.
The humor in this film is all about one gag: the social differences between Maru and Renato and the cultural clash presupposed by the union of their families. While Maru is the daughter of an important government official (Jesús Ochoa playing his classic role) living in a quasi-mansion, Renato lives in a housing unit with his mom (Mara Escalante playing a character very similar to one she plays on TV). While Maru has a respectable job in Santa Fe, Renato has to work as a pizza delivery boy. While Maru's family drinks champagne, Renato's family drinks tepache.
(Note: Santa Fe is an area in Mexico City that has gone through a gentrification process in the last decade due to the construction of office buildings and high-end commercial spaces. On the other hand, tepache is a drink made from fermented pineapple, which is becoming less popular. It is normally reserved for people with limited economic resources.)
The Mexican public's morbid fascination with romantic relationships between people from different social strata was central to the 2002 film “Amarte duele” (“Loving You Hurts”) and innumerable other Mexican movies, dating back at least to 1959, Alemán points out.
Social media users like Rufián warned viewers about classist tropes in “Why Blame the Kid”:
Ps la de Qué culpa tiene el niño sí logra estar divertida. A pesar del clasismo y hasta cierta misoginia elegante.
— Rufián (@rufianmelancoli) May 14, 2016
Well, “Why Blame the Kid” turns out to be fun. Despite the classism and, to a certain extent, backhanded misogyny.
— Rufián (@rufianmelancoli) May 14, 2016
Francisco Blas, meanwhile, noted that the reason we go to the cinema is to have fun:
¿Que culpa tiene el niño?, quizá si sea un remake clasista pero divertida y cómica al final a eso vamos al cine no?, a divertirnos.
— Francisco Blas Ⓜ (@iQueBlas) May 15, 2016
Why Blame the Kid? Maybe it is a classist remake but it's entertaining and funny and that's why we go to the cinema, right? To have fun.
— Francisco Blas Ⓜ (@iQueBlas) May 15, 2016
It's worth mentioning that the popular Mexican film industry receives little recognition outside of the country, thus only a few high-quality films ever make it across the border. You can count stand-out Mexican films on one hand. Perhaps the most important of which is “Amores Perros” (2000), directed by the now award-winning and internationally recognized Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Also, the work of Luis Estrada shouldn't go unmentioned, with its well-timed critique of corruption and power of the political class both in “Herod's Law” (1999) and “The Perfect Dictatorship” (2014), among others. But that's about it. The bulk of commercial Mexican cinema has been dominated by romantic comedies adorned with the deeply rooted classism that characterizes (and seemingly appeals to) a large majority of Mexican society.
Satire has always spiced up critiques about undesirable behaviors that we should try to overcome. In Mexico, classism is used as sales hook that brings people to the cinema and makes them laugh for a while. Nevertheless, sometime soon, this same classism needs to be addressed seriously as a problem that doesn't make everyone laugh but instead has caused pitiful episodes of discrimination, abuse of power, and assaults against public servants in the last few months, as Global Voices has reported previously.

author: J. Tadeo


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‘I Do Not Want Any Children to Develop Cancer Like Me’, a Fukushima Resident Says · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

“Fukushima watertanks.” Image from IAEA Imagebank official Flickr account. License: CC BY-SA 2.0
Independent filmmaker Ian Thomas Ash has uploaded to YouTube a four-part interview with a young woman from Fukushima Prefecture who has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Now 20, the interviewee was 15 years old when, following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex lost power and the ability to cool fuel in the reactors. The lack of cooling caused a series of hydrogen explosions that severely damaged four of the six reactors at the Daiichi complex.
As a result of the explosions and subsequent fires, nuclear contamination was spread over a large part of Japan's northeast. The young woman interviewed in the documentary, who wishes to remain unidentified, is one of 166 Fukushima residents who were 18 or younger at the time of the nuclear disaster who have been diagnosed with or suspected of having thyroid cancer (as of February 2016).
While some attribute the rise in cases of thyroid cancer to more rigorous screening, Ash notes that 74.5% of young people aged 18-21 as of April 1, 2014 who were living in Fukushima at the time of the nuclear accident have not yet taken part in the official thyroid ultrasound examination.
“This young woman’s reason for speaking out is to motivate the families of children who have not yet received the thyroid ultrasound examination to have their children tested,” Ash says in his introduction to the interview.
The interview has been uploaded to YouTube in four parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
The woman says according to her doctors, her cancer was caught at the right moment. Had she waited any longer, they told her, the cancer could have spread. As a result of the illness, she had part of her thyroid removed.
She will begin working in a nursery school this year, and is pained to think of any other children going through what she has endured:
I would hate if any children I taught developed cancer. To tell the truth, I do not want any children to develop cancer like me.
Ash, based in Tokyo, makes short documentaries about life in Japan after the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Netizen Report: Chilean Copyright Bill Could Eliminate Public Domain for Video, Music · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

“All Rights Reserved.” Drawing by Frits Ahlefeldt, released to public domain.
In the coming week, Chile’s Senate will vote on a proposed policy that could eliminate Internet users’ abilities to share videos and music online. The policy would amend Chile’s existing law on audiovisual artworks by forcing their creators to place all works under copyright and seek compensation (i.e. money) in exchange for their use.
The amendment stipulates that all contributors to an audiovisual performance whom the law regards as authors would be entitled to payment whenever their work is used online, even if they never asked for payment and don't want it. This would apply for the duration of the copyright, and would apply both to local and foreign works.
According to Luis Villarroel of Innovarte, a Chilean NGO dedicated to promoting balanced approaches to intellectual property, the legislation is being promoted by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers and by Chilean collecting societies. He and others have been quick to point out that the new licensing fees would all be administered by the collecting societies themselves.
It is difficult to imagine how regulators would implement such a policy in the digital realm, as websites like YouTube and Vimeo are not built to accommodate such specific requirements within a particular country’s borders. One can imagine that platforms that are entirely Creative Commons-based, such as Free Music Archive, could be rendered obsolete altogether.
If the law passes the Senate and is approved by the executive branch, Chilean creators of audiovisual works will no longer have the option of putting their works in the public domain or using open licensing alternatives, such as Creative Commons. While it’s not clear specifically how the policy would impact online platforms and communities, like YouTube and Vimeo, the law would unquestionably limit the flow of free and shared creative content on the Web.
Journalist Khadija Ismayilova was released from prison on May 25 after spending 537 days in jail when the Supreme Court reduced her sentence following an appeal. Ismayilova was detained in December 2014 on charges that are believed to be linked to her reporting on government corruption and the family of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Ismayilova promised to continue her work as a journalist in a message she posted on Facebook.
Facebook and Instagram were blocked in Vietnam following protests over an environmental disaster. Demonstrators used social media widely during the protests, both to organize and share photos from rallies.
Last week, the Nigerian Senate withdrew the proposed Frivolous Petitions bill, also called the “anti-social media bill”, and suspended all further consideration of the legislation. The bill would have made false and abusive statements sent through text message, WhatsApp or other social media platforms punishable up to two years in prison. It was heavily criticized for damage it was expected to do to the freedom of expression online. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters said, “Even though the bill has a tacit implication of discouraging frivolous and malicious petitions, its passage into law in this current form will do more harm than good.”
The Malaysian government has proposed amendments to the Communications and Multimedia Act of 1998 that would grant the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission more power to silence criticism online, by allowing it to take down online content without oversight. The amendments would also require the registration of political blogs and websites, and increase penalties for offenses related to “undesirable content”. Authorities in Malaysia have been active in trying to censor online content in the past year, shutting down news websites, blogs and newspapers for publishing information on government corruption involving Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Responding to requests by telecommunications companies for the National Communications Authority to restrict subscribers from using the Internet for calls, Ghana’s minister of communications said the government has no plans to ban WhatsApp, Skype or Viber.
New research confirms at least 43 websites are being blocked in Venezuela, the majority of which are related to currency black markets. However, 19 percent of the blocked sites are media-related, 12 percent are blogs critical of the ruling party and 9 percent are related to gambling. Information on the government’s Web-blocking practices, including which websites are being blocked, is considered a “state secret”.
Foreign technology companies, including Apple, are being subjected to security reviews by Chinese authorities associated with the Cyberspace Administration of China. Though it’s unclear what the authorities are demanding exactly as part of the review process, executives and employees at the companies have been summoned to answer questions about their products, specifically their encryption and data storage capacities. While many countries require similar reviews for products that will be used by the military, these reviews are being applied more broadly to technologies popular among consumers in China.

author: Netizen Report Team


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Russian Officials Make Plans for an Autonomous, State-Controlled Internet · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

A new draft bill lays the groundwork for an autonomous RuNet. Image from Wikipedia, CC-BY.
Russian officials at the Communications Ministry are preparing the groundwork for a Russian Internet that would be fully controlled by the state. A new draft bill, tentatively titled “On the Autonomous Internet System,” would enable government agencies to have exclusive rights for contracting the national domain administrator and Internet providers to keep the RuNet running, among other things.
Vedomosti reports that the bill, which is in its preliminary stages and as yet hasn't been seen by the Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov, essentially introduces a new legal notion by referring to “regulating the Russian part of the Internet network.” The bill mandates that the state would control all of the RuNet's critical infrastructure, including the national .ru and .рф domains, traffic exchange points, as well as autonomous systems and networks belonging to various corporations and individuals.
The bill also provides for the creation of a state information system that ensures for the network's overall stability, and combines an autonomous domain name system (DNS) with IP-address assignment and traffic monitoring capabilities. This echoes earlier statements by Russian officials who claimed Russia was in need of its own reserve systems should its Internet segment be “cut off” from the rest of the world.
Additionally, Vedomosti's sources familiar with the draft bill claim that owners of any networks that exchange traffic with other Internet segments internationally, will have to install some means of transborder traffic control, essentially broadening the reach of Russia's state surveillance system, SORM.
The .ru and .рф domain names are currently managed by the Coordination Center for the National Internet Network Domain, a non-profit organization that issues accreditation to domain registrars and regulates the registration rules. Traffic exchange points in Russia are owned by a number of companies, but the largest of them, MSK-IX, is controlled by the state telecommunications operator Rostelekom.
Although the bill is in its early stages and might see significant edits, should it become law, all of the RuNet's critical infrastructure would fall under complete control of the Russian state, potentially narrowing the space for anonymity and dissent on the RuNet.

author: Tanya Lokot


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Why Afghanistan’s Hazara Won’t Stop Marching · Global Voices
Samea Shanori

A Hazara girl standing in front of a march in a TUTAP demonstration. Shared via Republic of Silence Facebook page.
Last week thousands of ethnic Hazaras held demonstrations in various parts of the world to protest against a proposal to change the planned route for a new electricity transmission line Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TUTAP).
The route switch suggested by the government is just one of a number of injustices that have served as a basis for the minority to mobilize in recent times.
The electricity line was originally planned to go through the Bamiyan province, which is heavily populated by Hazaras.
However, the government subsequently decided that the line would go through Salang province instead.
TUTAP is funded by the Asian Development Bank to give Afghans access to electricity, and link  up the other ten electricity grids that already exist in Afghanistan.
Criticisms regarding the government’s decision to change the route of the project from Bamiyan to Salang have been on the rise, deepening splits riven along ethnic lines.
Demonstrations opposing the government's decision  rapidly spread from Bamiyan through Kabul, Canberra, London, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Berlin, Qum, and Istanbul among other major cities across the world.
Many traditional Hazara leaders, including former vice president Karim Khalili have supported the protesters.
Afghan Hazaras’ massive demonstration in Kabul on May 16, 2016 protesting TUTAP's route change. Shared by the Republic of Silence via its official Facebook page.
The Kabul demonstration was among the biggest in the post-Taliban era while the level of participation in these protests on the part of women both inside and outside Afghanistan was unprecedented.
Keyhan Farahmand highlighted this theme by tweeting an image from the May 17 protest in Canberra, Australia.
Women's participation in Canberra's protests over #TUTAP project. No #discrimination Fair distribution pic.twitter.com/4sm4zyiYNY
— Keyhan Farahmand (@daifoladi) May 17, 2016
On social media, the protests were powered by the #EnlighteningMovement hashtag among others playing on the theme of electricity.
One of the best scene from today's demonstration; #Kabul #EnlighteningMovement
Photo credit to: Tahmina pic.twitter.com/yA4NDbKgQH
— Iqbal Gharji (@IqbalGharji) May 16, 2016
Women with colorful umbrella participate in #GreatMonday march here in the capital Kabul. #EnlighteningMovement pic.twitter.com/8oa8dnloK1
— EnlighteningMovement (@LM_Great_Monday) May 16, 2016
Amid the discontent Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani has appointed a commission to review the TUTAP project’s contracts, and has stalled the project's implementation.
Many Hazara protesters have said they believe corruption is the main cause of the re-route.
Ghani has also said his administration will ensure Bamiyan receives electricity from TUTAP, even if the main transmission line does not traverse province.
He blamed the former Karzai administration for the decision to re-route the project, a claim that an ex-aide of Karzai's flatly rejected.
But while the episode has highlighted the infighting and bickering typical to Afghan politics, it has also testified to the increasing capacities of Afghan civil society to mobilise inside and outside the country and make its voice heard peacefully.
#Kabul: Such a peaceful #MillionMarch over rerouting of #TUTAP strengthens democratic values. Kudos! #TUTAPviaBamyan pic.twitter.com/yuR0VXmIu3
— Saleem Javed (@mSaleemJaved) May 16, 2016
#Kabul youth cleaning streets after yesterday's demonstration. #TUTAPviaBamyan pic.twitter.com/57eI6IEv2K
— Saeid Madadiسعیدمددی (@MadadiSaeid) May 17, 2016
Hampered by the withdrawal of the bulk of US military forces that has emboldened a multi-pronged militant insurgency, the administration of Ashraf Ghani has nevertheless made a number of missteps that have turned the public against it.
When making a speech at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London May 13, Ghani was heckled by an Afghan Hazara protester and called a liar for not fulfilling his promises regarding the TUTAP project.
As the protestor was escorted from the room, another was on hand to continue the heckling, before he was shockingly manhandled and removed from the scene by the president's guards.
Videos of the incident received a lot of play on Afghan social networks, sparking even more anger among Afghans, especially Hazaras.
Hazaras, who may number anywhere between 10 and 20% of Afghanistan's total population (no official census has ever been conducted) endured more persecution than any other ethnic group during the reign of the Taliban from 1996 to 2001.
In the post-Taliban era the group has found its voice but remains frustrated and marginalised in a domestic political environment dominated by Pashtuns, primarily, and Tajiks.
In November 2015, thousands of people, mostly Hazaras, marched on Kabul to protest the beheading of seven Hazara hostages in southern Afghanistan carried out by militants apparently loyal to the ISIS extremist organisation.
Unfortunately, the Afghan government did little to bring the perpetrators to justice, further feeding the sense of injustice that manifested itself once again on May 16 in Kabul.
The Ghani administration's desperate response to the most recent protest — erecting a wall of steel containers in central Kabul to block the march — was symbolic of the relationship between a government and its people that has been hovering around breaking point for some time now.
But as public anger grows, so does the risk that future protests will prove more difficult to contain.
The Berlin's wall of Kabul by @ashrafghani to blocked roads to protesters #TUTAP #EnlighteningMovement pic.twitter.com/fzXzK9Tg76
— Hedayat Osyan (@amirosyan) May 16, 2016

author: Samea Shanori


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How a Single Blog Post Changed the Life of a Somali Single Mother of Eight · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

A single blog post changed the life of this Somali mother of 8. Photo by Somali Faces (Donia and Mohammed). Used with permission.
On May 1, Somali Faces covered a story about a poor Somali mother who is an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) and has eight small children, none of whom were attending school.
She was facing abuse for belonging to a minority Somali clan and because of her dark skin. She was contemplating suicide.
Sometimes I’m treated like a foreigner in my own country, like I don’t belong here. I’m a single mother of 8 and none of my children are at school. I clean houses whilst carrying the child I’m carrying now. The rest of my children look for any type of work that they can find. I know it’s a hard life and it’s not easy but what makes it so much harder and at times unbearable is how people treat me and my children. I sometimes feel like I’m in an ocean of people whose hearts are made of stone. Many discriminate against me because of my very dark skin colour. I tell them, that’s how God created me and I can’t change it. Either they reject me because I’m from a minority clan or because of my skin colour. Sometimes, I contemplate whether death is better for us than living in a wretched life.
Readers were moved by her story, and began a fundraiser for her. A total of $4,000 was raised in 21 hours.
After the donations, Somali Faces reported:
Your donations changed her family’s life. Because of you, she will have her own shop, her house will be repaired and she told us that with the money she will be making, she can easily pay for her children’s education. You couldn’t conceal her smile and happiness, at times; she had difficulty getting the words out. Never in a million years did she imagine that she would receive this amount of money. A week ago, she was discriminated against, hopeless and penniless and now, she has a continuous source of income for her family. We thank each every one of you for your unrelenting generosity and efforts to change this mother’s life. Somali Faces made sure that every dollar you sent was spent towards her family and we were involved every step when it came to the materials and how the money will be managed. We would like to thank Tadamun Social Society (TAAS) for their tremendous help. We will be monitoring her progress and will provide you with a video update 3 to 6 months from now on how her and her beautiful children are doing.
Somali Faces is an online project that shares everyday stories of ordinary Somali people from around the world. The idea was the brainchild of the creative duo of Donia Jamal Adam, a storyteller, human rights advocate and campaigner; and Mohammed Ibrahim Shire, an author and history enthusiast.

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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How Beauty Trends Have Changed in Japan Over the Past 100 Years · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Screenshot from Watchcut Video YouTube profile.
Watchcut has added Japan to its ongoing video series “100 Years of Beauty,” providing a fascinating look at how beauty trends for women have changed in Japan over the last century.
The series uses a time lapse to track changes in makeup and hairstyles for women across a number of cultures over the past 100 years. Besides Japan, countries covered by the series include Iran, Korea and the Philippines, among many others.
Junko & Marina Taylor provided the research for the video, and many of their notes are documented on Pinterest.
They've also provided a video explaining the “research behind the looks”:
The full 100 Years of Beauty series can be explored here.


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In Afghanistan, Social Media Gives Rise to Hate Speech · Global Voices
Rustam Ali Seerat

Ethno-linguistic map of Afghanistan. Wikipedia image.
On May 16 Kabul witnessed a peaceful protest of unprecedented size when a mostly Hazara crowd of thousands converged on the Afghan capital to vent their disappointment at the government's decision to re-route a multi-million dollar transmission line, bypassing central Afghanistan, an area heavily populated by the ethnic group.
Supporters of the protest credited it as an example of the strengthening of Afghan civil society as a long-oppressed community mobilised to demand justice from the inept central government without the demonstration descending into violence at any point.
Among detractors, however, there were the timeless conspiracy theories that the Hazara were merely acting as puppets of Iran, with whom the group has religious and cultural ties, as well as even more ugly examples of the ethnic stereotyping that has found a comfortable home on Afghan sections of social media platforms.
The prominence of stereotyping and name-calling on Afghan social media allows an insight into fragile interethnic relations in a country that has experienced more war than peace in recent decades.
One indignant Facebooker opposed to the Hazara protests wrote:
هزاره موش خور قلفک چپات نن دمره شو چی د یوپشتون ولسمشر توحین کوی ستاسی نسل کی م .،.، وکړم
Today the mouse eater and flat-nosed Hazara is capable of insulting the Pashtun president…
Posted by Mekheen Sib on Saturday, May 14, 2016
Stereotypes such as the Hazara-e-Mushkhur (mice eating Hazaras), the Kham Kala (immature-brained) Uzbeks, the two-faced, tale-telling Tajiks and the Ghul (brawny but brainless) Pashtuns — also commonly conflated with terrorists — abound on Facebook.
Such incidents of hate speech are rarely reported, and, perhaps because posts are often written in Farsi or Pashto, Facebook's moderators seldom intervene.
یک افغان/پشتون انتحاری دیگر که میخواست خود مرداری کند، دستگیر شد.
Another Pashtun suicide bomber, who wanted to blow-up himself, is arrested.
Posted by Afghanistan Is My Mother on Sunday, November 16, 2014
A conventional definition of a stereotype might be the Oxford Dictionary's “widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.”
But the racist clichés that dog Afghan politics are hardly simple, carrying centuries of historical baggage.
In the digital age, their perpetuation threatens to seriously undermine national cohesion and cross-group solidarity.
Stereotyping is a product of power-relations, political developments and urban life.
Prior to the Soviet invasion, the fact that the Uzbeks, for instance, lacked political power, allowed other ethnic groups to humiliate them and depict them as idiots.
The country's largest ethnic group meanwhile, the Pashtuns, are most often associated by other ethnic groups with the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, and latterly, with militant suicide bombings.
Occasionally, the deep-rootedness of these stereotypes is fodder for social media satire, as this Facebook post shows:
پشتونهای با غیرت سقاویها هزارههای جوالی و ازبیک های کله خام صبح تان بخیر! جان مان تان جور است؟ خوب هستین؟
امروز عرض تان آهنگی زیبا و شنیدنی امیر جان صبوری را پیشکش نمودم، امیدوارم لذت و طراوت بخش باشد
امروز آتش بس موقت اعلام می نمایم! هر چی گفتنی دارین به مدیر تان عرض کنید!
Zealous Pashtuns, water-carrying Tajiks, porter Hazaras and raw-brained Uzbeks, good morning!
Posted by مسعود خائن on Friday, February 7, 2014
All too often however, the insults are real, and reflect the everyday tensions of urban life in Kabul, where different ethnic groups live side by side and much of the population has internet access.
Ironically, most of the stereotypes are uttered and written in a single language — Farsi — the supposed lingua Franca of Afghanistan and the one in which educated Afghans overwhelmingly converse.
At least two factors suggest that ethnic stereotyping, including in its most hateful forms, is around for the long haul in Afghanistan.
One is the habituation of stereotyping within Afghan culture and a lack of political will to prevent it.
Simply put, rather than being seen as taboo, hate speech is widely accepted as a legitimate tactic in the struggle for dominance among groups at national level.
The second is a lack of mechanisms to resist the power of stereotypes that have gathered traction and popularity with the explosion of social media in urban areas of the country.
While much ethnic stereotyping takes place under fake Facebook accounts, there are also increasing numbers of people happy to associate their names with ethnic slurs.
For the moment, politicians seem more interested in exploiting ethnic rifts in both virtual and non-virtual spaces than healing them, but there is much they can do to help.
Making public statements discouraging ethnic stereotyping and assisting Facebook and Twitter in filtering some of the most socially destructive examples of the practice would be as much in the government's interest as the that of the general population.

author: Rustam Ali Seerat


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Pakistani University Tells Its Students ‘No More Hanky Panky’ · Global Voices
Anushe Noor

University of Sargodha, Lahore Campus. Photo by Jibran Sammi / MSc IT
Earlier this month, students at the University of Sargodha, Lahore Campus, were shocked to receive a bizarre notice from the school's administration: the co-education campus issued a restriction on male and female students’ interactions as “couples.” Since its opening in 2002, the university has had both male and female students.
The notification, which cites complaints by parents about “inappropriate interactions,” was signed by the school's secretary of the discipline committee, Dr. Arbab Khalid Cheema. Before long, a copy of the notification was shared widely on social media. The text stated:
In view of our cultural and religious bindings and complaints by parents, inappropriate interaction between male and female students is strictly prohibited within the University premises.
Students are not allowed to sit anywhere in the University premises as a couple. However, they may sit in a group of 3 or more.
In response, students have complained that the university is trying to enforce cultural and religious norms. In a widely-shared Facebook post, Waseem Altaf wrote:
While co-education is no more an issue with schools of higher learning in the enlightened world,our so-called educationists in a significant number of universities are perturbed by male-female interaction at the campus-lest they commit a sin.
Rather than focusing on improving the quality of syallabi, capacity building of the faculty, library and lab facilities,they are more concerned with “piety and character” of the student body.
Before long, Internet users added to the debate the university's student dress code, which sets out the following requirements:
The clothing worn will be clean, neat, modest and reflective of the culture in which we are operating. The dress restriction is not to impose any rigidity regimentation but it is in accordance with the spirit of discipline which is the cardinal aspect of the life at the University of Sargodha, Lahore Campus
The school's dress code stipulates different clothes for men and women, putting an extra burden on women to avoid things like “excessive” makeup and jewelry, as well as clothes bearing obscene remarks. Failure to observe the dress code can result in fines and even expulsion.
In 2008, students from University of Sargodha's main campus participated in a 16-days demonstration to end violence against women. Photo: CWGL / Flickr.
Several Twitter users accused the university of “moral policing”:
Moral Policing reaches new heights
Male & female students barred from sitting together in Uni of Sargodha, Lahore. pic.twitter.com/TttlMFm7vt
— _-_ (@DefectoPM) May 15, 2016
Not that I ever would, but remind me to never go to the University of Sargodha.
— Baneen (@baneenz) May 15, 2016
Human rights activist Arshad Mahmood asked what the university administration considers to be “inappropriate interactions”:
After University of #Swat now University of #Sargodha. By the way, what is inappropriate interaction? https://t.co/GCfDO2bepC
— Arshad Mahmood (@amahmood72) May 15, 2016
Some time ago, a similar case was reported in Pakistan at the University of Swat, Kyber Pakhtunkwa, where administrators considered prohibiting male and female students from walking in tandem and sitting together, both inside and outside. Students caught violating the ban would face fines of PKR 5,000 ($47). The school's vice chancellor rejected the idea, however, and suspended the chief proctor as a disciplinary measure.
The dress code and crackdown on campus sexual behavior coincide with the rising international status of several Pakistani universities. Co-education universities are commonplace in Pakistan and make the top ten institutes, according to the Higher Education Commission. For students and families that are uncomfortable with men and women learning together, there are still many samesex universities available.
Critics say the focus on keeping men and women at a distance in universities is a useless distraction from the more important, substantive challenges of improving and further building the country's system of higher education.

author: Anushe Noor


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Publicly Humiliated, Sacked and Then Reinstated: The Tale of a Minority Headmaster in Bangladesh · Global Voices
Palash Ranjan Sanyal

Bangladeshis posted pictures of themselves holding their ears in solidarity with the publicly humiliated headmaster. Image from Facebook
Bangladeshis have taken a stand against moral policing after a Hindu headmaster was made by an elected member of parliament to do squats while holding his ears on the false accusations of making disparaging statements about Islam.
Shyamal Kanti Bhakta, a principal in Narayanganj District near the capital city Dhaka, was initially suspended by his school as well following the public shaming. After a committee formed by the country's education minister found no evidence of the allegations against him of speaking against Islam, he was reinstated to his position.
The incident, which took place on 13 May, was captured on mobile phone video. The footage along with photos showed being shamed in front of a cheering crowd that included the local Member of Parliament AKM Salim Osman.
What led to the humiliating scene were accusations against the educator that he had punished a student in his class on 8 May and made a derogatory comment against Islam. However, Shyamal Kanti Bhakta denied making any negative remarks and said members of the school's managing committee held a grudge against him for not going along with their directives.
Subsequently, the boy's family lodged a complaint with the school managing committee, alleging corporal punishment, but they did not mention anything about a derogatory comment against Islam. The school managing committee then suspended the teacher.
Teacher #ShamolKantiVakto #Bangladesh humiliated by giving punishment sit-ups holding the ear, has #suspended! pic.twitter.com/2EtI94wY62
— swapan (@swapansg) May 17, 2016
The footage of his public shaming went viral on social media, sparking outrage. The reactions of Member of Parliament Osman, who belongs to the Jatiya Party (part of the ruling coalition) from the Narayanganj-5 constituency also added fuel to the fire. He claimed that the punishment was the only way to save the teacher from the wrath of the mob for his remarks regarding Islam. He also commented to the media defiantly:
I don’t feel any necessity to apologise to the headmaster who was punished as a nonbeliever, not as Hindu.
The population of Bangladesh is overwhelmingly Muslim, but Hindus represent about 9% of the country's religious make-up.
Osman's own party, however, called his behavior as “embarrassing” and having “tainted the party's image”. The country's education minister also condemned the incident and formed a probe committee to investigate the incident.
Teacher’s humiliation is a punishable offence: #Bangladesh Law Ministerhttps://t.co/LTMHjBwEDE pic.twitter.com/NkAAQnbVLJ
— The Daily Star (@dailystarnews) May 17, 2016
Bangladeshis on social media expressed their disgust as well. Corporal punishment in schools was banned a few years ago and generally is widely criticised. Applying it to not only an adult, but a teacher as well has been regarded as unbearably humiliating.
To show their support, people took photos of themselves in the same position that Shyamal Kanti Bhakta was made to adopt by the politician and posted them online. The trend eventually evolved into the #SorrySir campaign, attracting prominent online influencers and going viral.
Collage of images from Facebook
Kunta Pal wrote on Facebook:
#sorrySir# That we live in a society where politicians are more powerful than the head Principle in the very school campus.
#sorrySir# For those students who cheer up in the misery of their teacher who gave more than a decade giving knowledge to them.
#sorrySir# Because religion will mostly come up anywhere to end up a discussion.
And Barnali Mandal commented on Facebook with a photo of her holding her ears:
যথাযথ সন্মান ও আত্মমর্যাদা নিয়ে বেঁচে থাকুক প্রতিটি মানুষ। সকল শিক্ষকদের প্রতি শ্রদ্ধা। #SorrySir
Let each human being live with proper honour and self respect. #SorrySir
People also protested in the streets and burned an effigy of the member of parliament.
Protestors in #Bangladesh burn effigy of lawmaker involved in abuse of Hindu teacher https://t.co/6SmXELeHSN pic.twitter.com/TfYa43clQV
— Liberty South Asia (@libertysasia) May 23, 2016
On 18 May a High Court in Dhaka asked why Member of Parliament Osman and others should not face legal action for the headmaster's humiliation.
After feeling the pressure, Osman recently expressed his regret for the incident.
I'm ashamed of my behaviour with Shyamal Kanti Bhakta on May 13 last.
It wasn't all rosy, however. Shyamal Kanti Bhakta has received threats online. Also, in a rally on 20 May, radical Islamist platform Hefazat-e-Islam demanded his punishment, saying he hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims.
Allegations of hurting religious sentiments have become a weapon for extremists in recent years in Bangladesh. Actual violence isn't uncommon, either. A series of planned attacks devastated several Buddhist monasteries and houses in Ramu in 2012, and assaults on other religious minorities are alarmingly becoming frequent.
The claims against Shyamal Kanti Bhakta have been found to be false: https://t.co/t81HtlOywf #SorrySir #Narayanganj #Bangladesh
— Rashed Chowdhury (@rashedchowdhury) May 26, 2016
Meanwhile, the government has been cracking down on accusations of blasphemy, although blasphemy is not criminalised in Bangladesh. In April 2016 a court in southwestern Bagerhat jailed two Hindu teachers for blasphemous comments against Islam, invoking a colonial-era law that makes insulting any religion a crime.
Several secular bloggers have been murdered in Bangladesh over the last few years, and authorities haven't taken any significant measures to deter the trend. After Niloy Neel was assasinated in August 2015, a police chief warned bloggers about their speech. He said, “Free-thinkers and bloggers should not cross the limit of tolerance while expressing their views on religion”. Who needs a blasphemy law when there are so many who are eager to impose it in practice?

author: Palash Ranjan Sanyal


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Some Moroccans Are Tired of Getting the Hollywood Treatment · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

The Aït Benhaddou in Morocco has appeared in many Hollywood movies. Photo by Jerzy Strzelecki. CC BY 3.0
This article by Jake Warga originally appeared on PRI.org on May 22, 2016, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Morocco is a very large movie set — from sands to cities. It's served as a stand-in for Arabia in “Lawrence of Arabia,” Abu Dhabi in “Sex in the City 2,” Egypt for “Evil Mummy” and for fantasy locations in “Game of Thrones.”
But rarely is Morocco — Morocco in films.
Narrimane Faquir, a Moroccan filmmaker, was the local casting director for the 2014 film, “American Sniper” (in that one, Morocco stands in for Iraq). “On 100 movies, maybe three movies represent Morocco,” she says.
Sure, she argues, it’s good for the local economy.
“When we worked on the ‘Black Hawk Down,’ they had 12 cameras, it was a crew of 500 people. It helps in the way that technicians have work, they can feed their families.”
But Faquir is not alone in worrying that her country might be seen in a negative light.
Othman Naciri, a Moroccan filmmaker, is also not happy with the Hollywood treatment. He thinks American movie studios know little about his country. They just say “OK, Morocco, where is it? North Africa? Sand, desert? OK, that’s perfect. It’s cheaper for us to shoot there than the Arizona desert and it’s safer to shoot there than the real Iraq so that’s the best compromise.”
Nor is Naciri happy about how locals are cast or portrayed in American films.
“The Moroccan people are cast as typical Arab profile: terrorist, bad guys, according to the American point of view. You know, we are not so far from the Western point of view of the 50s — with the good, the bad and the ugly!”
Amal Idrissi, a law professor in Morocco, recognized some locations while watching “American Sniper.” It upsets her seeing her country as a war-torn location, that the film “makes Morocco look like any other Middle Eastern country that is at war, while for me as a Moroccan I can distinguish the doors, I can recognize the minarets, I can recognize the architecture and clearly see that that is not a Middle Eastern country at war.”
Moroccan filmmakers are trying to challenge the terrorist cliché by exporting their own image of the country, and the people.
“Morocco now produces like 25 feature films per year, which is absolutely not bad,” Naciri says. In fact, Moroccan films have recently made it to the Cannes Film Festival.
In his next movie, Naciri is taking up the delicate, oft-debated subject of Moroccan history. “[I’m] now preparing my second feature film about women’s emancipation in Morocco during the '50s,” he says. “This is really important to look at our history.”
It would be hard to end a story about films in Morocco without some mention of the 1942 film “Casablanca,” a movie that really put Morocco on the cinema map.
A film that was shot entirely on location … in Burbank, California.

author: PRI/PRX's The World