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Dismantling Patriarchy at the Roots – One Video, One Conversation at a Time · Global Voices
VideoVolunteers

Indian Kids on the street wtih a cycle. Often traditional gender roles are imposed on them (not in this case). Image from Flickr by Harini Calamur. BY-NC-ND 2.0
This post originally appeared on Video Volunteers, an award-winning international community media organization based in India. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
In India, discriminatory attitudes towards men and women have existed for generations and continue to be an enormous problem in the society. Traditional patriarchal role models relegate women to secondary status within the household and workplace, which affects women's health, upbringing, independence and status in the family, from an early age. In a Youth Survey conducted by Women Endangered this year, nearly 87% participants commented that India is still a patriarchal society. Mass awareness and debates on the subject are required to eliminate bias and stereotypes and make a change.
The recently concluded #DismantlePatriarchy Campaign by Video Volunteers asked people to share their stories and suggestions via email or Twitter to ‘change the game’ around patriarchy. The campaign welcomed stories of women and men in India, who shared, using the hashtag #KhelBadal, how they negotiate and challenge patriarchy in everyday life — at home, at work, at school, in cultural and public spaces.
The last time women came out in such large numbers on the streets of India was to protest the Delhi bus rape of Jyoti Singh in December 2012. But what about the millions of small ways in which patriarchy and gender discrimination insinuate themselves into their daily lives? Conversations on these matters only happen around violent incidents and we rarely confront the nuances of everyday, routine patriarchal norms.
Video Volunteers have trained 63 gender correspondents across 16 states — from Rajasthan to Bihar, from Odisha to Haryana — to make films that capture the nuances of routine, normalised gender discrimination and to run gender discussion clubs where lively, introspective conversations are happening.
These are a few examples of the conversations that are taking place and the change these discussion clubs are bringing on the ground:
Video Volunteers generated online discussions with its staff and online followers in various ways, including a Twitter chat on November 29, 2016. This was done to help bridge the digital divide and enable urban and rural women to exchange experiences and learn from each other:
Sangeeta has shared her story of #KhelBadal Now it's your turn Reply or write back at khelbadal@videovolunteers.org pic.twitter.com/oh8XVaCCzB
— @videovolunteers (@videovolunteers) November 26, 2016
in order to #khelbadal, I try to show ppl in my life how being a woman impacts everyday decisions I have to make. #seeingisbelieving
— Tania Devaiah (@TaniaDevaiah) November 29, 2016
I rebelled & refuse to cook for ppl because I couldn't care less for their validation of my femininity. Ironic cos I love to cook #khelbadal
— Tania Devaiah (@TaniaDevaiah) November 29, 2016
Why are the aspirations of young girls treated so differently from those of young boys? Why are girls prepared for housework from an early age, but boys are allowed to spend their childhood playing and studying? This video from Uttar Pradesh highlights this divide clearly:
While 11-year-old Khushboo starts her day at 5 am, her 8-year-old brother leads a comparatively carefree existence. Every day she cooks, cleans and takes care of her younger siblings before going to school, and has a host of tasks in the evening which leaves her with no spare time to play. But the boy’s day is divided only into school time and play time. Khushboo’s aspirations of becoming a qualified doctor are exactly the same as that of her brother. But are we giving her even close to a fighting chance?
Unless we are able to transform our private spaces to more gender equal ones, we can never end sexism and discrimination in public arenas.
There is a general perception that certain jobs at home and work are divided according to gender. So when 16-year-old Rohit started sharing household chores with his mother and sister, people made fun of him and ridiculed him for doing ‘unmanly work’. But this plucky young boy is prepared to give answers: ‘I give appropriate responses to them so they don’t say anything anymore’. He cooks, cleans, washes clothes and helps his two younger siblings with their studies.
Rohit shows that to change our perception is simple, but to be consistent in the change is the hard thing. It’s time we follow his example and question ourselves to find how we are perpetuating and normalising patriarchal roles in our daily lives.
The field of art is as gendered as any other. While men refrain from being dancers whereas women are encouraged, musicians also have such biases, whereby certain instruments are considered more suitable for men.
Mithu Tikadar is unusual in her choice of instrument: the tabla. Traditionally seen as the domain of male practitioners, Mithu constantly encounters discrimination in her field. The worst was when her aunt told a young Mithu that she was a disgrace to all women. Undaunted, Mithu decided to take up tabla as a subject for her secondary school exams and build a career out of it.
Since then, Mithu has come a long way. Today, she’s economically self-sufficient and is the only Dalit [a member of the lowest caste] woman to have cleared the nationwide test on musical instruments, which makes her eligible to teach in colleges. But her struggle with patriarchal norms continues.
After the brutal gangrape of Jyothi Singh in Delhi, pink auto-risckhsaws were introduced in Ranchi in 2013 as a means of ensuring safer public transport for women. Scepticism about women’s ability to drive was no deterrent to Shanti Lakra, who was abandoned by her husband and lives with her children. She went for training, and is now one of the 35 women auto-rickshaw drivers to ferry women across the city in her pink vehicle.
Even though people around her expressed scepticism about her ability to drive or even the usefulness of a housewife learning to drive, Shanti pushed on.
Today, her determination has borne fruit. She is putting her daughters through school and hopes to see them become successful, self-reliant women. The auto-rickshaws have not only ensured safer public transport for women, but also dismantled gender stereotypes by pushing individuals like her into what was essentially a male-dominated profession.

author: VideoVolunteers


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Russia, China, and the Push for ‘Digital Sovereignty’ · Global Voices
Jack Margolin

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Source: Kremlin.ru, CC 2.0
On the last weekend in October, officials and high-profile media figures from Russia and China met in Guangzhou for the first ever China-Russia Internet Media Forum. Speakers congratulated each other on improved cooperation over traditional and digital media, and their collective effort to combat attempts by “Western mainstream media” to control the informational space. Aleksey Volin, Russia’s deputy minister of telecommunications and mass communications, delivered a speech at the conference detailing the countries’ overlapping cybersecurity concerns. He focused on network security and the development of “invulnerable information-communications systems.” “It is necessary to ensure the stability and invulnerability of the national segment of the internet from external action,” he argued.
Since the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2009, Russian and Chinese officials have frequently discussed joint cybersecurity initiatives. A relatively substantial degree of collaboration was formalized in the context of heightened Russo-Chinese cooperation in 2014 and 2015, with both countries signing an agreement that included cybersecurity cooperation provisions in May of last year. In the words of the agreement’s signatories, its purpose was to limit the use of informational technology designed “to interfere in the internal affairs of states; undermine sovereignty, political, economic and social stability; [and] disturb public order.”
This emphasis on digital sovereignty remains a central tenet of both countries’ cyber policies, even as cooperation on the issue has ebbed and flowed. The non-aggression elements of the 2015 agreement floundered in the implementation stage, in part due to ambiguous language, but largely as a result of continued Chinese cyber espionage. This activity rose to unprecedented levels in 2016, with Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Labs reporting 194 Chinese cyberattacks in the first 7 months of the year alone—compared to just 72 in 2015. These attacks targeted government agencies, the defense and aerospace industries, as well as nuclear technology companies. And they’re probably underreported: a Kaspersky Labs spokesperson told Bloomberg that only around 10% of their corporate clients exchange data related to hacks with their security network.
Source: Flickr, Open Democracy
Despite the attacks, Russia and China have continued their cybersecurity cooperation, at least publicly. In April, the first Russian-Chinese Forum on Internet Security was held in Moscow, and Mr. Volin’s China-Russia Internet Media Forum came a few months later. What's more, according to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Oleg Syromolotov, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and intelligence services hold consultations with Chinese officials on cybersecurity issues twice a year. Still, these exchanges do not amount to substantive agreements.
Железняк: Необходимо обеспечить цифровой суверенитет России https://t.co/wrBmOciGvo
— Единая Россия (@er_novosti) May 11, 2016
Zheleznyak [deputy secretary of the general council of Putin’s United Russia party]: It's necessary to support Russia's the digital sovereignty.
Digital sovereignty resembles, in many ways, the Kremlin’s conception of “sovereign democracy,” a term used to justify Russia’s right to eschew certain democratic principles in the name of “stability” and sovereignty in their own affairs. Similarly, cyber-sovereignty challenges the dominant American, internationalist approach to norms of digital governance. The Russian and Chinese view of internet regulation places much more authority in the hands of states, and views cyber activity as occurring within the jurisdictions of these states, rather than within a stateless data environment.
Rather than an alliance, Russia and China have a marriage of convenience that reflects a shared priority: regime stability. On the Russian side, this amounts in part to envy of China’s near-comprehensive control of national cyberspace. This has been particularly clear in Russian interest in the monitoring of internet traffic. In an interview with Gazeta.ru, Andrei Kolesnikov, director of the Coordination Center for Top-Level Domain RU, noted that efforts at monitoring, such as deep packet inspection (DPI), which are well established in Chinese internet infrastructure, have received a great deal of attention in Russia. He also suggests that more targeted measures, such as man-in-the-middle attacks (MitM), which China has employed effectively to bypass encryption efforts, may be receiving similar attention among officials in the Russian government. Given Russian hostility to consumer encryption, these tools are likely to be particularly attractive to the state.
Others in the Russian IT sector note that while Russia’s control of the internet may be increasing, the creation of a system similar to China’s “Great Firewall” would be extremely costly, and hindered by political and financial concerns. Aleksei Os’kin, director of technical support at the Moscow offices of ESET, an international cybersecurity firm, has observed increased surveillance and censorship, but not strictly in the Chinese model. While he has said that “our country is moving is moving in the same direction as China,” he has also pointed out that Russia “does not copy the Chinese version of the firewall.” Doing so would be too costly and technically difficult: “to block the addresses of a web site is one thing, but to filter and analyze the data being transmitted is another thing entirely.”
Video: The Safe Internet League, a group instrumental in organizing Russian-Chinese dialogue on cybersecurity, explains how to report sites that propagate terrorism and separatism.
Cyber Anti-Americanism
The strategic partnership between the two states is more than a knowledge exchange. It is a push against norms developed at the beginning of this century that designated the internet as a realm of free expression. Indeed, Russo-Chinese cooperation on cybersecurity seems to be forged on the basis of opposition to American principles of internet governance.
Digital sovereignty seeks to make technology beholden to states, rather than vice versa. Proliferating sentiments of anti-Americanism and suspicion of collusion between Western companies and governments has only fueled the drive for digital sovereignty. In May of this year, Sergei Zheleznyak declared the use of domestic software as a critical step in securing Russia’s digital sovereignty. Public figures in Russia, particularly in the IT sector, including Igor Ashmanov, an outspoken tech entrepreneur and husband of Natalya Kasperskaya (former CEO of Kaspersky Labs), have similarly emphasized the concept.
This is not to say that Russia fears the level of internet penetration in its territory, or the proliferation of digital technology. It does however mean that Russia seeks a partner in establishing national, and perhaps in the future, international legal bases to ensure that the internet is a tool of the state rather than of its discontents. As Evgeny Morozov notes in his book The Net Delusion, “Most authoritarian governments have already accepted the growth of the Internet culture as inevitable; they have little choice but to find ways to shape it in accord with their own narratives – or risk having their narratives shaped by others.” Medvedev echoed this sentiment in his 2015 interview with Chinese publications People’s Daily, saying
Политика и политики должны опережать технический прогресс и находить своевременные решения прежде, чем технологии породят новую реальность.
Politics and politicians must stay ahead of technological progress and find timely solutions before technology has created a new reality.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Jack Margolin


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A Macedonian Tradition Continues: Nude Twitter Calendar Helps Promote HIV/AIDS Prevention · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Twitter Calendar for 2016. Photographs by Zvonko Plavevski and Dimitar Petrovski, published under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
The new charity nude calendar, featuring artistic photos of Macedonian Twitter users, was launched in Skopje on December 1, 2016 as part of a festival raising awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention.
The calendar was the result of the enthusiasm of unpaid volunteers — eight women and two men — who posed for the two photographers, Zvonko Plavevski (@Giotto_mkd) and Dimitar Petrovski (@Dmee82).
Plavevski made a public call using the familiar hashtag #ТвитерКалендар (Twitter Calendar) a few months ago, and then organized the photo shoots and printing with the help of friends who contributed labor and covered the necessary expenses.
The festival, which promoted lowering risks from sexually transmitted deceases, took place on World AIDS Day:
Шизици, денес е 1-ви декември, Светски ден за борба против СИДА. Тестирајте се, заштите се, не дискриминирајте.
И секако, РТ за поддршка! pic.twitter.com/iE4jxFW9FZ
— Шизици уживајте (@bez_rizici) December 1, 2016
Cool dudes, today is December 1, the World Day to combat AIDS. Test yourself, protect yourself, don't discriminate. And of course, retweet for support!
The event was well attended, and included dignitaries from the international community (residing in Skopje) — such as the ambassador for the Netherlands — who are active users of social networks:
Good initiative: #твитеркалендар2017 in #Macedonia for #WorldAIDSDay pic.twitter.com/FWh5pH6o6w
— Wouter Plomp (@wouterplomp) December 1, 2016
The first Twitter Calendar was published in 2013 on the initiative of @IlinaBookbooks, and promoted breast cancer awareness. The 2014 edition, with photos by @ref, promoted sex education. After a pause for 2015, Plavevski reignited the tradition, and the 2016 edition of the calendar was born.
In spite of government efforts to remould Macedonia as a conservative, patriarchal society, and its prudish nagging about the calendars of yesteryear, it seems that the predominant reaction on social media was quite positive and encouraging.
For photographer Plavevski, the making of the calendar is primarily a stimulating challenge — professionally and artistically. His colleague Petrovski who had participated in the making of the first edition, also expressed his enthusiasm:
Значи секој месец би сликал #твитеркалендар :)
— Dimitar Petrovski (@Dmee82) December 2, 2016
I would like to make #TwitterCalendar photographs on a monthly basis :)
Boychenn, the model for the July 2013 photograph, attended the launch and then tweeted that she would consider posing for the #TwitterCalendar next year:
#твитеркалендар и заштити се од ХИВ pic.twitter.com/Bj9dpbR7vN
— Natasha (@Boychenn) December 1, 2016
#TwiterCalendar and protect yourself from HIV.
As with all previous incarnations of the Twitter Calendar, the photos in the 2016 edition are published under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

author: Filip Stojanovski


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Dancehall Directory? A New Yellow Pages Cover Stirs Controversy in Jamaica · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

Artist Lennox Coke's controversial dancehall image adorning the cover of the Jamaican Yellow Pages directory. Image courtesy Joel Nomdarkham, used with permission.
Whenever a new telephone directory comes out, it is usually no big deal. In fact, it often finds practical uses — such as propping up a chair leg — since it is now much easier to look up the Jamaica Yellow Pages online.
This year, however, Jamaica's phone directory (which often portrays some aspect of Jamaican culture on its cover) has ruffled feathers. The Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society (JCHS), a fundamentalist Christian lobby group, has forced the publishers of the 2017 directory for the major metropolitan area of Kingston and St. Andrew, Global Directories Ltd., to come up with a completely new, alternative cover.
Why? Because the original cover, created by a local artist, is a depiction of dancehall culture, showing a typical street dance scene with men and women gyrating, a deejay, and other aspects of dancehall “bling”.
After the lobby group's protest, Global Directories quickly apologized and the company's chief executive officer (CEO), Ian Neita, explained the publisher's position in an interview with the Jamaica Gleaner: “A church may be listed in the book [and] once they advertise in the book, in a kind of way, they become a co-sponsor. If it were a private magazine that we were putting forward in the public space, I think it would be a little bit different…” He noted that the “power” of the local religious lobby could not be ignored, acknowledging that Jamaican society is “fundamentally based on Christian principles” and that his company therefore “took the high road” by giving people a choice when it came to the cover. The alternative shows a man on a motorbike with a mobile sound system on the back.
The alternative directory cover that is also in circulation. Photo courtesy Joel Nomdarkham, used with permission.
Neita also made the point that while the company was sensitive to the lobby group's concerns, its decision to provide an alternative cover was in no way an admission that the dancehall scene was was inappropriate, “because that is a matter of interpretation”.
Donovan Watkis, who describes himself as “the grandson of a Jamaican Pentecostal Rev.”, observed caustically in a blog post:
It is a continuation of society's main moral point of reference, that historically has marginalized certain groups of people, most notably ‘dancehallers’ and labeled their every cultural activity as lewd and out of order. Everything from hairstyle to language and even painted works of art in the dancehall culture is seen as obscene…It is such an unfortunate bully attitude for the privileged self-governing members of the noble second estate to be judging and exercising powers well beyond their spiritual powers regarding an embossed image of Jamaican culture in performance on the cover of a telephone directory.
He added that this may also be a rejection of the black physique as an expression of dancehall culture:
I do believe part of the problem that exists between the church and the progressive society is the continuous assumptions made when the black body is in performance and at excellent play at the highest levels. In September I wrote an article about people having a problem with Usain Bolt’s black body which caused much uproar from high ranking governing officials about his personal life despite his great achievements for the country. These are some of the same folks who had a problem with the erection of the Emancipation Park statues on Knutsford Boulevard in Kingston.
Glenroy Murray of Equality for All Foundation added another aspect to the argument in a Letter to the Editor, suggesting that it was a class issue:
To those privileged Jamaicans, I ask, ‘How do you benefit from a society with a large population of poor people and then turn around tell them that their culture is not good enough to be seen?’ ‘Ghetto people’ are the consumers of your imported goods, the drivers of your economy and the people who borrow your money to achieve life goals. They are the ‘vibrant people’ that our tourism advertisements speak about, not so much you. So how is it then that pictures of you may be represented in media, but not pictures of dancehall culture?
Radio producer Patrick Lawson shared similar views on his blog:
The JCHS might have bitten off more than they could chew with attacking Dancehall. Dancehall has always had a mixed reputation in Jamaica, it’s the in your face and cuss yuh out cousin of Reggae and a voice founded in the Downtown which the Uptown disliked but can’t help but feel drawn to.
When the JCHS attacked the Yellow Pages for their representation of this aspect of our culture, they didn’t just attack a genre of music… they attacked an identity, a way of life, a fighting force of the downtrodden and everybody knows Dancehall takes no prisoners in a clash. Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society, you came to the wrong sound clash. Pack up and go home. Ring di alarm, another church is dying.
Marketing consultant Joel Nomdarkham tweeted the covers to be used for the residential and island wide directories, covering two other Jamaican music genres — ska and reggae. Artist Lennox Coke created the Dancehall cover, Raymond Jackson painted the Ska scene, and the team of Karla Gauntlett and Esther Beckford worked on the Reggae illustration:
The other two directory covers embracing our SKA & REGGAE Culture. Take a look. pic.twitter.com/H1VoKBg8Ml
— JoelNomdarkham (@JoelNomdarkham) November 30, 2016
Entertainment lawyer and music business consultant Lloyd Stanbury observed with irony on Facebook:
While Jamaicans debate, dissect, stereotype and overlook the global economic impact of the musical genre called Dancehall, foreign based artists such as Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Drake, Weeknd, and Major Lazer are laughing all the way to the bank by presenting Dancehall music to the world.
Many Jamaicans were not happy, noting that perhaps religious groups should focus on bigger priorities, such as the soaring crime rate:
All of a sudden we hear some groups upset…where were u when the 2 year old was killed or when the mother & her 5 month old last week?
— Giovanni R. Dennis (@GiovanniRDennis) December 1, 2016
Press Association of Jamaica head Dionne Jackson Miller responded:
@GiovanniRDennis why conflate the 2? This idea that church grps don't speak out on social issues is not true.
— Dionne JacksonMiller (@djmillerJA) December 1, 2016
Liberal clergyman Sean Major-Campbell commented on Facebook:
Would it have made a difference for those offended if the dancers were depicted in winter gear?
Frankly speaking, I am tired of persons from the church arena scratching where no one is itching; answering questions no one is asking; and fighting for causes that make no sense to the the well-being of people's lives.
It is such a pity that Global Directories gave in to such nonsense!
As often happens, however, the Jamaican public's concept of “the church” is blurry and confused. Human rights activist Jaevion Nelson opined:
I sincerely wish the media would stop calling Love March Movement and Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society church lobbies. They aren't.
— Jaevion Nelson (@jaevionn) December 2, 2016
Nelson added:
They are hate groups that continue to interfere with policy and decision-making because we let them. They do not represent the church.
— Jaevion Nelson (@jaevionn) December 2, 2016
One dancehall production company observed humorously:
It didnt take long for the internet to give the Jamaican church exactly what they wanted from JA #Yellowpages @cliffnationwide pic.twitter.com/1hTHExsUWq
— IRISHANDCHIN.COM (@IrishandChin) December 2, 2016
One young Jamaican tweeted:
Dear @FLOWJamaica, criticism you've received notwithstanding, please note I, a customer, am very, very pleased with the directory cover.
— Small Spoon (@azzleprock) November 29, 2016
Winsome Chambers summed up the general feeling of online commentators:
I'm here for Yellow Pages. Showcase our dancehall of course! Cover rocks!
— winsome chambers (@wincee5) December 1, 2016
And one Jamaican doctor put everything in perspective:
Hold up. Forget the dancehall cover. People in JA still using #YellowPages. Really? With internet/google/FB/IG/twitter? Really?
— Matthew Clarke (@MatthewClarkeMD) December 2, 2016

author: Emma Lewis


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Innovative Japanese Mapping Project Returns With Interactive Map of 1941 Pearl Harbor Attack · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Screencap of the 1941 Project online mapping tool. Solid and dotted lines indicate flight paths of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
One of Japanese mapping researcher Hidenori Watanave‘s newest interactive mapping projects documents the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The project, called The 1941 Project, puts eyewitness accounts of the attack from around the island of Oahu on an interactive map, which can be explored at 1941.mapping.jp.
「パールハーバー・アーカイブ」の現状。これから，爆撃のようすを捉えた写真を追加していきます。 pic.twitter.com/FAb7HYahO1
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 14, 2016
Here's what the Pearl Harbor Archive looks like at the moment. Next, I'll be adding photos of the attack itself.
December 2016, marks the 75th anniversary of the attack. Watanave has several mapping tools devoted to preserving and mapping eyewitness testimony from the war, including an interactive map of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, and the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.  Watanave is also the creator of a similar innovative mapping project that tracks the last moments of the victims of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
For the Pearl Harbor project, Watanave mapped eyewitness testimony of the attack documented in Katrina Luksovsky's book, “Ford Island December 7, 1941: A collection of eyewitness accounts from the residents closest to Battleship Row”.
居住地のすぐ近くで爆弾や魚雷が炸裂し，軍艦がどんどん沈んでいく。とても恐ろしい体験だったことだろう。 https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/hGIPKs8q6L
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 15, 2016
Bombs and torpedos exploded right next to living quarters (on Ford Island), and warships were sunk, one by one. It must have been a terrifying experience.
The interactive map also includes public domain images found in Wikimedia Commons and the World War II database.
撃沈された戦艦アリゾナ。パールハーバー・アーカイブより。すべての白黒写真は，ディープネットワークを用いた白黒写真の自動色付けで着彩しています。 https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/GjZ0WO0izd
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 17, 2016
The sunken battleship USS Arizona, from the ‘Pearl Harbor Archive’. All black and white images have been colorized automatically using deep neural networks.
The 1941 Project mapping project, however, goes beyond Ford Island and Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor. Watanave used a new online tool developed by Japan's Waseda University, which uses neural networks to colorize images and bring to life black and white photos that were taken all over Oahu at the time of the attack.
Here, Watanave has discovered and re-colorized an image of a beached submarine that took part in the attack.
オアフ島の砂浜に座礁した特殊潜航艇「甲標的」。カラー化すると，美しい海の色と，兵器の色合いとの対比が強調されます。 https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/jfwE237xCi
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 16, 2016
Midgit attack submarine beached on the Oahu coast. One colorized, the images contrast the beauty of the sea and sand with the color of the weaponry.
As part of the project, Watanave has included and re-colorized many striking photos of the attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. They can all be found on the online interactive map Watanave has created.
真珠湾，フォード・アイランドに向かう帝國海軍機。ニューラルネットワークによる自動色付け。パールハーバー・アーカイブより。 https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/lBnd3Y6Mpf
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 30, 2016
A Japanese Imperial Navy Zero fighter flies toward Ford Island (and Battleship Row) in Pearl Harbor. Neural networks were used to colorize images. From ‘Pearl Harbor Archive’.
炎上する戦艦カリフォルニア（白黒写真を自動色付け）。パールハーバー・アーカイブより。 https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/xH7YFpSbns
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 21, 2016
Smoke billows from the battleship USS California. (Black and white image auto-colorized). From the ‘Pearl Harbor Archive’.
真珠湾攻撃の自動色付け写真。消火する女性たち。撮影場所が不明なので，マッピングできずにいる。 pic.twitter.com/tGJvFhIfRr
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 18, 2016
Colorized photo of the attack. Women fighting a fire. It's unclear where this photo was taken, and so was unable to map it.
真珠湾攻撃時，練兵場のアメリカ海軍兵たち。背後では炎上している軍艦から猛烈な煙が上がっている。表情は，それほど慌てているようにはみえない。ニューラルネットワークによる自動色付け。パールハーバー・アーカイブより。 https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/sxUmGfuZso
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 30, 2016
American sailors on a parade ground at the time of the attack. Smoke billows in the background from battleships set ablaze. Judging by their expression, (the sailors) are stunned by what is happening.
サルベージ作業中の戦艦アリゾナ．自動色付けしたもの．パールハーバー・アーカイブより． https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/UDuyH6PJUO
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 25, 2016
Salvage operations on the USS Arizona. Image automatically colorized. ‘Pearl Harbor Archive’.
Salvage work continuing on the sunken battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, 25 Feb 1942. From Pearl Harbor Archive https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/Be9RWAH6DB
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 21, 2016
The photos capture and document how residents all over Oahu experienced the attack on December 7, 1941.
The wreckage of a drug store smolders at Waikiki after attack by Japanese planes, Dec. 7 1941. (AP Photo) https://t.co/gHMf6Iv7HV pic.twitter.com/RJC3aNICAc
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 21, 2016
Since there are so many photos online, Watanave has just scratched the surface of mapping and documenting eyewitness accounts of the attack.
この写真は「Pearl Harbor 1941」で検索するとみつかる．右下に「LIFE」と入っているものの，出典は不明．どなたかご存知でしょうか．右側はニューラルネットワークによる自動色付けを施したもの． pic.twitter.com/m9SvKzhHaB
— Hidenori Watanave (@hwtnv) November 25, 2016
I found this photo by searching for ‘Pearl Harbor 1941′ in the LIFE Magazine archives. The photo is unattributed… does anyone know who took it? On the right is the image re-colorized using neural networks.
Apart from the project's website, researcher Hidenori Watanave's Twitter feed also includes many images taken from the project.

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Will Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Make Plov, Not War in 2017? · Global Voices
Akhal-Tech Collective

Samarkand plov. Photo by Flickr user Robert Wilson.
United by an oily dish of rice, meat and carrots but divided by questions of access to water, partially delimited state borders and title to the rich heritage of two of the Old Silk Road's most famous cities; such is the complex relationship between Central Asia's Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Tajikistan's “oshi palav” and Uzbekistan's “palov” (versions of the dish commonly called plov in Central Asia and pilau in Afghanistan) were both inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO earlier this month, in the same week that the two countries decided to re-establish an air link last used nearly a quarter of a century ago.
A coincidence? Completely.
И о важном. Люблю готовить плов. https://t.co/WUt2WOeWie
— Fyodor Samsonov (@FyodorSamsonov) December 2, 2016
And now for something important. I love to cook plov.
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan both applied to UNESCO to have plov, or pilau, recognised as tangible cultural heritage last year. But they probably did so in the spirit of competition rather than camaraderie, given that their separate applications to UNESCO arrived within weeks of one another.
The fact that UNESCO chose to honour them as joint holders of the dish's cultural heritage is appropriate, however, given that real steps have been made in recent times to repair a bilateral relationship that has been poisonous throughout independence.
So, if the two peoples can be brought together by a bowlful of rice and a few chunks of lamb, where is the beef?
Perhaps the most important thorn in the neighbours’ bilateral relationship is a potential hydroelectric dam called Rogun that may one day be the tallest dam in the world and may one day carry the name of strongman Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon.
As regionally-focussed website Eurasianet noted earlier this year, getting the dam built is very important to water-rich, electricity poor Tajikistan:
The government has sold Rogun on the basis of rash and extravagant promises of a prosperous and comfortable future. The intention is for Rogun to double electricity production, putting an end to power shortages and leaving large volumes left over for export to Pakistan and Afghanistan. In an address to parliament in 2009, President Emomali Rahmon promised that Tajikistan would attain energy independence within four years. Technically, Tajikistan is energy independent already insofar as it doesn’t import power, but that is only at the cost of enforcing rolling brownouts throughout the winter that plunge everybody beyond the country’s major cities into hours of darkness on a daily basis.
All of that made the continued objections to construction made by militarily powerful Uzbekistan under it's late president Islam Karimov particularly painful:
Another elephant in the room is the constant objection to the project posed by Uzbekistan. Tashkent has expressed concerns that the dam could be ruptured by an earthquake and worries that filling the dam will deprive its agriculture sector of irrigation water — both potentially calamitous outcomes.
At his most belligerent, Karimov, who was buried in September after a suspected stroke aged 78, even hinted his country might go to war over access to water in the region.
Tajikistan also fancies itself the true heir of Samarkand and Bukhara, two jewells along the Old Silk Road Eurasian trading routes that continue to bring thousands of tourists into Uzbekistan annually, despite the country being a police state with a very difficult foreigner registration regime.
To be fair, Tajik — an Iranian language like Farsi — is still widely spoken in both cities, and Tajikistan is arguably the ex-Soviet stan that got the worst deal in terms of territory, only becoming an official Soviet republic in 1929 after half a decade as an autonomus territory inside the Uzbek SSR.
Moreover, if quotes attributed to Rakhmon and republished by the blog Neweurasia are to be believed the issue was raised in a fiesty manner with Karimov in the past:
Rakhmon: One time – professor Muhammadzhon Shukurov was there, he can confirm this – I was in Samarkand with [Karimov]. I asked a man standing nearby, ‘What is your nationality?’ He looked at Karimov with fear and said, ‘I’m from Samarkand.’ That’s the position Tajiks find themselves in over there.
I’ve argued many times [with Karimov]. We even fought twice. The first time, Nazarbaev had to drag us apart; the second time it was Kuchma (the current president of Kazakhstan and the former president of the Ukraine – Ed.). I said to him, ‘We’ll take Samarkand and Bukhara anyway!’
Flickr image of barbed wire. Tico_24.
Although both states have worse border relations with Kyrgyzstan than each other (conflicts along the Tajik-Kyrgyz and Uzbek-Kyrgyz border are more frequent than conflicts along the Uzbek-Tajik border) a small part of the Uzbek-Tajik border remains undemarcated.
Moreover, the Uzbek side is heavily mined, supposedly to counteract drug-trafficking from Tajikistan, which is a key node in the Eurasian heroin trade originating in Afghanistan.
Another feature of the bad neigbourly relationship is their respective moves away from the cross-border infrastructure inherited from Soviet times. Uzbekistan recently opened for instance a $2 billion railway built by China that allows its trains to make journeys close to the country's border with Tajikistan without having to cross over it. Tajikistan is hoping China will build a road that allows its truckers to drive to Russia via Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, bypassing Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan's president-to-be, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Russian government image, licensed to reuse.
The relationship could be about to change for the better however, and the reason is the imminent election of Shavkat Mirziyoyev as Uzbekistan's new president.
As his prime minister for over 13 years, Mirziyoyev is cut from the same cloth as Karimov when it comes to presiding over a ruthless regime, but may have some fresh ideas in the realm of diplomacy.
Undoubtedly, Mirziyoyev is the reason that the two countries are preparing to re-establish flights, and there are also encouraging signs that he may be prepared to allow construction of the Rogun dam to go ahead without too much fuss.
With Mirziyoyev set for a five-year term after an election today in which he faces no meaningful competition, there are therefore several reasons for Tajiks to cook up some plov in celebration.

author: Akhal-Tech Collective


text:
A Bangladeshi Railway Employee Saves a Man, Finally Gets Recognition · Global Voices
Rezwan

Screenshot from YouTube video
In Bangladesh, CCTV footage of a railway employee rescuing a young man who laid himself down on a railway track just as a train was approaching has gone viral. The rescuer demonstrated quick thinking and presence of mind, saving the young man from a certain death.
The 58-year-old employee, Billal Hossain Mazumder, works as a railway gateman near the Chashara station at the Dhaka-Narayanganj railway line. On the morning of November 21, 2016, Billal was waving a flag, trying to keep pedestrians away from the track as a train bound to Dhaka was passing by. Suddenly, a 26-year-old pedestrian, Mamun Hossain, lay down on the track in front of the moving train. Mazumder kept waiving his flag and in a snap decision, jumped in front of the train to pull Hossain away from the track. A split second delay could have been fatal for them both. It was later learnt that Hossain, who hailed from from Masdail village in Chashara, had decided to commit suicide after having a quarrel with his mother.
Railway accidents are common in Bangladesh, since about 40% of some 2,500 rail crossings are unmanned, and people do not follow the rules and signs. In the past six years, 152 people were killed in fatal railway accidents.
The heroic rescue was captured on a CCTV camera and shared on Bangladesh Railway's Facebook page. The video soon went viral across different social media platforms.
Journalist Ashif Entaz Rabi suggested that — especially in light of his selfless act — Mazumder was perhaps not as valued as he should be at his job:
বিল্লাল রেলের একজন সাধারণ গেটম্যান। তার কাজ ট্রেন এলে লাল কাপড় উড়ানো।
সেই ১৯৮৪ সাল থেকে তিনি রেলের গেটম্যান। তখন বেতন পেতেন ২৪ শত টাকা। বত্রিশ বছরে বেতন অনেক বেড়েছে। এখন তিনি বেতন পান ৭ হাজার টাকা। এই টাকায় কী করে একটি লোকের পরিবার চলে, আমি ঠিক জানি না।
ও আরেকটি কথা, গত ৩২ বছরেও বিল্লালের চাকরি স্থায়ী হয়নি।
Billal is a casual gateman of Bangladesh Railway. His job is to wave a red flag when the train comes.
He is on the job since 1984 and started with a salary of BDT 2,400  (USD 94, according to 1984's exchange rate) per month. After 32 years, he got a salary of BDT 7,000  (USD 90, according to 2016's exchange rate) per month. How he can sustain his family with this meagre amount, I don't know.
Oh, and his post has not been made permanent in the past 32 years.
On Facebook, Tareq Alam wished that more people would be like Mazumder:
পথেঘাটে বিপদগ্রস্ত মানুষের সাহায্যে এগিয়ে না এসে তাকে সম্পূর্ণরূপে উপেক্ষা করে যাওয়া অথবা দাঁড়িয়ে দাঁড়িয়ে ছবি বা সেলফি তোলার এক নির্মম রেওয়াজ শুরু হয়েছে আজকাল। এমন একটি হতাশাজনক বাস্তবতার ভেতর ব্যতিক্রম অথচ সেটাই সঙ্গত ও স্বাভাবিকÑ এমন কিছু উদাহরণ সৃষ্টি হলে তা সমাজে গভীর প্রভাব রাখতে সক্ষম হয়।
Nowadays it has become a norm that passersby do not come forward and help people in danger on the streets, they take pictures or selfies instead. In this sad reality, if we see good examples of helping others like this, which should be the norm, it makes a great impact on the society.
Salahuddin Ahammad also paid his tributes:
কিছু কিছু সাহসী ও আন্তরিক মানুষের জন্য পৃথিবীকে অনেক সুন্দর মনে হয়। মানবিক এই কাজের জন্য গেট্ম্যান বিল্লালের প্রতি শ্রদ্ধা ও সম্মান।
The world seems better and nicer because of the acts of a few brave and earnest people. My respect to Gateman Billal for his act of humanity.
Abu Benin called for more sensitivity to be shown towards the suicidal man:
এইরূপ অবস্থা থেকে বাঁচাতে পারলে নিকট আত্নীয় যদি পাশে থাকে তাহলে তারা অথবা আইনশৃঙ্খলা বাহিনী, দমকল বাহিনী, যারাই হোক লোকটিকে সাথে সাথে সমবেদনা জানায়, বুকের সাথে জড়িয়ে নেয়, মাথায় হাত বুলিয়ে তাকে আশ্বাস দেয়, ভালবাসা দিয়ে স্বাভাবিক করার চেষ্টা করে, কারণ একজন মানুষ সুস্থ মস্তিস্কে কখনো আত্নহত্যার সিদ্ধান্ত নেয় না।
কিন্তু নারায়নগঞ্জের এই ঘটনায় দেখলাম, লোকটিকে রেল লাইনের বাইরে আনার সাথে সাথে পাশ থেকে জনৈক পুলিশ দৌঁড়িয়ে গিয়ে তাকে লাঠিপেটা শুরু করলো। যেই লোক নিজের জীবন শেষ করে ফেলতে চায়, তাকে লাঠিপেটা করে শায়েস্তা করতে চায় এই পুলিশ!
If a person is saved by miracle, the persons nearby — such as acquaintances, people from the law enforcement or rescue services — should embrace him, console him, try to keep everything coming with love. Because a person does not take the decision to kill himself if he was not in trouble.
But we have seen in this video footage that as soon he was saved, a policeman rushed to him and started to beat him. The man tried to kill himself and he wants to teach him a lesson by beating him?
Bangladesh honours humble rail hero after daring rescue https://t.co/Qkfh3Yuge5
— asiankudos (@asiankudos) December 4, 2016
The country's railway ministry publicly recognised Mazumder's act and rewarded him with some clothes and BDT 100,000 in cash (USD 1,275). The railway minister assured Billal that they will try to make his job permanent, or at least ensure that one of his children will be given with a job at the railway, according to their qualifications.

author: Rezwan


text:
A Decades-Long ‘Conversation’ Between Yugoslav and Polish Rockers · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

The Gdańsk shipyard, a springboard for democratic changes in then-Communist Poland of the 1980s. A 2016 photo by Filip Stojanovski, CC BY.
Even though cultural ties between countries that formed ex-Yugoslavia and Poland are not too frequent, there's one form of communication that has been an exception. Over the last four decades, rock music had formed a peculiar bridge bringing the people of these countries closer together.
Republishing music in online video format enables us to take a peek into these developments.
The conversation started in the early 1980s, with the songs of Zagreb-based, multi-ethnic band Azra, which commented directly on the unfolding political situation in Poland at the time.
Their songs “Poljska u mome srcu” (“Poland in my heart”) and “Proljeće je 13. u decembru” (“Spring comes on December 13″) directly addressed the initial successes of the Solidarity movement, and  the regime's attempts to suppress it. The simple, yet powerful lyrics in Croatian/Serbian made the first song one of their most popular tunes:
Gdanjsk osamdesete / kada je jesen rekla ne
Gdanjsk osamdesete / držali smo palčeve
rudari, studenti, brodogradilište / svi mi
Gdanjsk osamdesete / uzavrele tvornice
dva puta se ne šalju / tenkovi na radnike
nisu se usudili / pobjedili smo svi mi
Poljska u mome srcu…
Gdańsk 1980 when the Autumn said no
Gdańsk 1980 we all crossed our fingers
miners, students, the shipyard — all of us
Gdańsk 1980 — the boiling factories
one can't send tanks against workers twice
they didn't dare — we all won, all of us
Poland in my heart…
Azra was one of the key bands of the Yugoslav New Wave, which built upon the  pop and rock base by combining new foreign influences like punk, ska and reggae, with native musical elements and addressing new themes — from urban existential angst to social issues and sometimes, political criticism. It was part of a well established popular music scene, which featured mainstream rock and a number of sub-genres.
Unlike other European socialist countries, non-aligned Yugoslavia was not part of the Eastern Bloc. In the cultural sense, it was much more open to Western than Eastern influences. Due to language barriers, its music industry mostly focused on internal consumption, not export. However, some Polish musicians acknowledged the work of their Yugoslav counterparts, producing covers of their songs. Over the years, this interest blossomed in the form of the tribute album “Yugoton”, released in 2001.
This project lead to the formation of the supergroup Yugopolis, whose members were already successful as solo artists or as part of other groups, and which published two additional albums in 2007 and 2012, as well as several compilations.
One of their most popular songs is “Ostatnia nocka” (“Last night”). Made with Maciej Maleńczuk, it is almost a direct rendition of “Verujem, ne verujem” (“I believe, I don't believe”) by Belgrade-based mainstream rock band Bajaga i Instruktori:
The 1988 song's lyrics can be interpreted as a reference to the need for political changes towards greater freedom.
Gluvo je doba, svi su zaspali
osеćam strašan nedostatak buke
hocu da vrištim, a ne mogu sam
ljudi su danas osetljivi na zvuke
Jer je noć, noć, noć, noć
totalni je mrak
nista se više ne vidi u tami
ovo svetlo je usamljeni zrak
osecam ipak k'o da nismo sami
ti i ja
Verujem / ne verujem
Ustani, nije vreme spavanja
dođi da čujes pobedničke trube
umij se vodom sa ovog izvora
napolju ljudi pevaju kroz zube
It's the dead of night, everybody's sleeping
I feel a terrible lack of noise
I wanna scream, but I can't do it alone
people today are sensitive to sounds
Because it's night, night, night, night
total darkness
you can't see anything in the blackness
this light is a lonely ray
still, I feel as if we are not alone
you and me
I belive / I don't believe
Get up, it's no time to sleep
come hear the victorious trumpets
wash your face with the water from this spring
outside the people sing through their [clenched] teeth
This particular song seems to resonate across Central and Eastern Europe — in September 2016, Russian band The Peace Dukes released a version in their language:
Another Yugopolis YouTube hit reinterprets another Azra classic — their first single, “Balkan” (“The Balkans”) — which is so popular that fans provided full translation in English online.
Unlike the self-deprecating Yu-original, the lyrics of the Polish version, “Sługi za szlugi” (“Servants to servants”), comments on the ongoing war of Russia against Ukraine, and the submission to authoritarian tendencies (“…a brave people afraid of its government…”):
With the breakup of Yugoslavia, Azra ceased to exist. Its front man, Branimir “Johnny” Štulić, emigrated to the Netherlands, refusing to return to any of the countries of the war-torn area.


text:
Chapecoense Club Tragedy Brings Back Memories of Plane Crash with Peruvian Football Team, Alianza Lima · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Alianza Lima Football Club fans. Image on Flickr by user Ver en vivo En Directo (CC BY-SA 2.0).
From now on, November 28, 2016 will be a sad day for football and for sports as a whole. On that day, the plane carrying players from the Brazilian football club Chapecoense, journalists and nine crew members, crashed during the night near José María Córdova Airport in Medellin, Colombia.
The crash resulted in 71 fatalities and six survivors.
The West Greens — as Chapecoense is known — were heading to Medellín for a match against local team Atlético Nacional for the first leg of South American Cup final, scheduled to be held on Wednesday, November 30. It would have been the culmination of a journey that started on 2009 in Serie D (or Braziliian football's fourth division), went on through the third and second division, until finally, in 2014, the team made its way into the Brasileirão, Brazilian Championship Serie A.
The news made people remember other accidents suffered by sport clubs. Peruvian team Alianza Lima is sadly featured in the tragic list after it lost a whole generation almost 29 years ago, on December 8, 1987, when the Fokker aircraft beloging to Peru's Navy that was taking them back to Lima, plunged into the sea just a few kilometers away from landing at Lima's Jorge Chávez International Airport. The team was returning from the city of Pucallpa where it had beaten local team, Deportivo Pucallpa, for the national tournament:
Fue un martes 8 de diciembre de 1987, cuando el fútbol peruano, y en especial, la familia del club Alianza Lima, uno de los equipos de fútbol más popular del Perú, sufrió la más terrible tragedia de su historia: el accidente aéreo en el que perecieron 43 personas, entre ellas, todos los jugadores de aquel plantel. [El] Accidente […] sería recordado simplemente como “La tragedia del Fokker F-27.
[…]
El capitán encargado de pilotar la aeronave era el Teniente Primero Edilberto Villar Medina, [fue el] único sobreviviente de la tragedia.
It was on a Tuesday, December 8, 1987, when Peruvian football, and especially the Alianza Lima Club family — one of the most popular Peruvian teams — suffered the most terrible tragedy of its history: the air crash that killed 43 people, among them all the team players. [The] accident […] would be remembered simply as ‘The tragedy of Fokker F-27′.
[…]
The officer in charge of steering the plane was First Lieutenant Edilberto Villar Medina, [he was the] only survivor of the tragedy.
The website Peru30 gives an explanation of what had possibly caused the crash:
¿Por qué razón el piltoto [sic] no aterrizó luego de que la gente del aeropuerto le confirmó que los trenes de aterrizaje habían descendido? Según parece, el piloto temió que la razón de que no se encendían las luces de confirmación de descenso de los trenes fuera que estos pese a haber bajado no estuvieran asegurados […] lo que podría producir que las llantas cedan al momento de aterrizar causando que el avión choque contra el suelo con consecuencias gravísimas. El piltoto no quizo [sic] correr ese riesgo motivando el pedido de un nuevo vuelo rasante para que le confirmen si los trenes estaban asegurados.
Why didn't the pilot land after the airport staff confirmed that the landing gear was down? Apparently, the pilot suspected the reason the landing gear confirmation lights didn't turn on was that the wheels were down but not secured […], which could cause the wheels to collapse at landing; thus, the plane could crash against the floor with very serious consequences. The pilot didn't want to take any chances, so he requested another low flight in order to have confirmation that the gear was secured.
A series of conspiracies and half-truths surrounded the tragedy. In 2014, the movie F-27 was released — on one hand, it tells the story of the plane crash; on the other, it makes reference to the aura of mystery stemming from the secrecy with which the case was handled.
In December 1987, a team touched glory. The tragedy a whole country grieved deserves to be told.
Meanwhile, the blog Sin Sentido remembered some of the theories around the accident:
[…] el secretismo que la Marina, dueña de la aeronave, impuso en las labores de búsqueda y rescate de las víctimas provocó que en torno al accidente se tejieran toda suerte de conjeturas e hipótesis, ya que nunca hubo una explicación oficial del episodio. […] las hipótesis adquirieran la condición de mitos y leyendas urbanas que persisten hasta el día de hoy.
“Yo lo tengo claro: el avión traía droga y los marinos se bajaron el avión. Tengo indicios […]”.
“Se dijo que el doctor Orestes Rodríguez (médico del equipo) tenía un orificio de bala en la nuca al igual que varios jugadores. Seguro el avión traía coca y lo estaban esperando, por eso cuando quiso dar la vuelta lo derribaron; eso fue lo que sucedió” […]
[…] the secrecy of the Peruvian Navy, owner of the aircraft, imposed on the search and victim rescue efforts, fed all sorts of conjecture and hypothesis around the accident, as there was never an official version of the incident. […] The hypothesis became myths and urban legends that last until today.
To me, it's clear: the plane was carrying drugs, and the Navy took the plane down. I have clues […].
It was said doctor Orestes Rodríguez (team physician) had a gunshot wound in the back of his neck, as well as some of the players. Most likely, the plane was transporting cocaine and someone was waiting for it; that's why, when the plane turned around, it was shot down; that's what happened […].
Nothing like that was ever confirmed.
What was indeed confirmed is that, once again, tragedies bring even rivals together. In 1987, Alianza Lima was able to proceed in the tournament thanks to Chilean football club Colo Colo, which transferred four of its players to the Peruvian club to rearm its team, as one of those transferred players, goalkeeper José Letelier, remembered after the sad news about Chapecoense club broke:
[…] fuimos parte de un grupo de Alianza en un momento muy complicado […] un momento bastante duro, entrar a un camarín donde no conocías a nadie y que estaba muy golpeado por lo ocurrido. Esa vez murió todo el equipo, dirigentes, periodistas, llegamos a un camarín muerto, nadie se dirigía la palabra, fue como invadir la privacidad del lugar, no fue fácil.
[…] we were part of an Alianza group at a very difficult time […] a very tough moment, to get into a locker room where you didn't know anybody and where everybody was shocked by the latest events. Back then, a whole team died; managers, journalists…we arrived to a dead locker room…no one talked to each other; it was like invading a place's privacy; it wasn't easy.
The crash that affected Chapecoense Club reminded some Twitter users of the 1987 accident with Alianza Lima Club, a few days away from the 29th anniversary of the Fokker F-27 tragedy:
¡Buenos días Tromes! Nuestra portada impresa de hoy
“Tragedia como Fokker de Alianza” :'( ►https://t.co/5S0Yypbjpf pic.twitter.com/T6ZQmK6NMI
— Diario Trome (@tromepe) 30 de noviembre de 2016
Good morning, Tromes! (from the newspaper's name, a reference to its readers) Today's front page: ‘Tragedy just like Alianza's Fokker’.
La tragedia de #Chapecoense nos recuerda lo ocurrido en 1987 con el fokker de #AlianzaLima ? https://t.co/brbTdA6y6Q por @brunoalonso3
— Katia Ortiz (@ktrina_22) 30 de noviembre de 2016
Chapecoense tragedy reminds us what happened in 1987 with Alianza Lima Fokker.
Esto es tan trágico como lo ocurrido con el Fokker donde también falleció un equipo de alianza, Dios se los llevo muy temprano ???
— Rosali Jhiret ?✌ (@Porcezagamania) 29 de noviembre de 2016
This is just as tragic as what happened to the Fokker plane where an Alianza team also passed away. God took them very early.
Such regrettable events generate the deepest sympathies that transcend sport team loyalties. May they rest in peace.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


text:
Filipino Activists Hold Solidarity Fast in Support of Political Prisoners · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Solidarity pledge badge. Source: Facebook.
In support of the campaign calling for the release of political prisoners in the Philippines, activists launched a solidarity fast — a protest that was staged in conjunction with the political prisoners themselves, and with their relatives. The fast began on December 3, 2016 and will last until Human Rights Day, on December 10.
As of October 31, 2016, there are 401 political prisoners in the country, many of them rural-based activists who are accused of being rebels. According to their lawyers, the prisoners were detained on trumped-up charges such as murder, arson and kidnapping. Their supporters insist, however, that they are ordinary activists who fought for land reform, human rights and good governance.
About 400 political prisoners and their supporters across the country are currently holding solidarity fast. Source: Facebook
Political prisoners from Compostela Valley Provincial Rehabilitation Center, located in the southern part of the Philippines, are also holding a solidarity fast. Source: Facebook
Their relatives issued this statement to call for their immediate release:
Political prisoners are victims of the government’s injustice. They are persons caring for the marginalized sectors of the society but they were jailed for trumped up charges. They are not criminals. Our loved ones have already lost too many years, suffering in prison. Some of them have already died while in detention.
Some relatives of political prisoners are joining the solidarity fast. The word ‘palayain’ which can be seen in the placards, means freedom in Tagalog. Source: Facebook
The issue is linked to the armed communist rebellion — a conflict among the government, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People's Army (NPA) and the National Democratic Front (NDF) — a situation that has been in existence since 1969. The government claims the prisoners were rebels who must answer for their crimes, while the prisoners refuse to be tagged as criminals.
When a new government was elected into power six months ago, one of the items on its agenda was to resume peace talks with the rebels. It also acknowledged the release of political prisoners as a positive step towards promoting reconciliation, healing and justice in the country.
Although the government has already worked for the release of more than a dozen peace negotiators, activists are also demanding the freedom of more than 401 political prisoners, especially those who are already old and suffering from serious ailments.
The government has agreed to the demand in principle, but activists are worried about the slow process and the inconsistent pronouncements of some government officials. For example, it was suggested in the past that a faster resolution to the issue could be achieved through the issuance of an amnesty proclamation, but this was subsequently given less priority due to some legal concerns.
Cartoon about the situation of political prisoners by Leonilo Doloricon. Source: Facebook
To raise greater public awareness about the issue and pressure the government into releasing political prisoners before the end of the year, activists have organized various activities and protest actions in time for the Human Rights Day celebration.
The solidarity fasting center was set up near the Mendiola gate of the presidential palace. Source: Facebook
Netizens have also been supporting the cause on Twitter:
who are the political prisoners? they are.
we are (outside bars).#FreeAllPoliticalPrisoners#AmnestyNow pic.twitter.com/G4PtdJHsCa
— Jamjam? Pinpin! (@jamcaholic) December 5, 2016
Young activists have also initiated a #fastingchallenge campaign on social media, encouraging the public to join the solidarity fast by posting photos of a favorite food item which they will pledge not to eat until Human Rights Day.
I blame the administration that jailed our political prisoners for my rice-less sinigang dinner! #FREEALLPOLITICALPRISONERS pic.twitter.com/lea2IpTpdM
— Dani Nacpil (@daniellenacpil) December 5, 2016
Meanwhile, more groups are set to join the solidarity fasting in the next few days as they seek to compel the government to end the continued detention of 400 political prisoners in the country.

author: Mong Palatino


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Gambia Shocks the World With Peaceful Presidential Polls, Opposition Wins · Global Voices
Demba Kandeh

After ruling for over 22 years, Yahya Jammeh has accepted defeat. Public Domain photo by the White House uploaded online by Wikipedia user Alifazal.
The tiny West African state of The Gambia has sent shock waves around the world with a historic presidential election that resulted in the defeat of the region's longest serving president. President Yahya Jammeh, who has ruled The Gambia for more than 22 years, has conceded defeat and promised a smooth transfer of power. In a televised national address, Jammeh congratulated president-elect Adama Barrow for his “clear victory” and wished him well. Jammeh, a self-proclaimed devout Muslim, said he will never question Allah's (God) decision. In the past, he had also said that he will rule The Gambia for one billion years “if Allah willed” and that God — not the constitution — sets presidential term limits.
The election results — and consequent concession of Jammeh — came as a pleasant surprise to many Gambians and the rest of the world. Following the announcement of the final results, Gambians both at home and abroad have been reacting to the opposition's victory and sharing Jammeh's concession video, which includes a portion of his phone call to the president-elect:
Muhammad Sanu Jallow sounded emotional in a tweet that echoed the views of many:
I couldn't hold back the tears. I'm almost 30, and I've known only 1 President this whole time. Good time to be alive. #GambiaDecides
— Muhammad Sanu Jallow (@msjallow) December 2, 2016
Ansu, a Gambian social media user, challenged the notion that elections cannot remove dictators from power. He tweeted:
Who says election cannot remove a dictator? Ask #Gambia for a blueprint! #AdamaBarrow just defeated Africa's most brutal dictator #JammehOut
— Ansu (@nfansu) December 2, 2016
Another Twitter user added:
I can't help but keep thinking about our fallen heroes and the ones serving time across the US/ #Gambia Thank you for your sacrifice #Africa pic.twitter.com/79kdowAgAM
— YesWe Can (@YesWeCan_Gambia) December 2, 2016
Tha Scribbler Bah posted a Gambian voter identity card, describing it as “The weapon that all politicians should be afraid of, it's small but does more harm to a politician than a bullet. Be mindful of it!”.
Beyond celebrations in the streets of Banjul, a social media user tweeted:
Africa's SMALLEST country #Gambia, has given the continent its BIGGEST step forward in democracy this year#GambiaHasDecided#GambiaDecides
— Zuwa Matondo (@ZuwaMatondo) December 2, 2016
President Jammeh lost to Adama Barrow, who contested as an independent candidate backed by a coalition of as many as seven political parties. He is expected to lead a transitional coalition government for a three-year period, within which time frame they will implement a load of reforms, related to the democratisation process. Barrow, a real estate developer, was an unknown figure in Gambian politics until very recently. He won the election with 45.5% of the vote to Jammeh’s 36.7%, while a third candidate, Mamma Kandeh, managed to attract about 17.8% of the vote.

author: Demba Kandeh


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Macedonian Election Campaign Started with Attempt of Identity Theft on Opposition Party · Global Voices
Marko Angelov

“The Vote Wins!” a banner from an anti-fascist opposition rally in Skopje, Macedonia on October 11, 2016. Photo by Vančo Džambaski, CC BY-NC-SA.
The early parliamentary elections in Macedonia are scheduled for December 11, 2016. The official campaigns, underway since November 21, have already provided a rich crop of controversial developments, not to mention the whiff of a wind of change.
Political parties participating in the elections were obliged to submit lists of candidates to the State Election Comission (SEC) by before the start of the campaign. The main contenders are coalitions led by the incumbent right-wing VMRO-DPMNE, and the center-left SDSM (Social Democratic Union of Macedonia). A total of 11 political parties and coalitions are participating in the race, across six electoral districts (ED).
Unlike all other elections in recent memory, the SEC instituted a change that was unimaginable during previous rounds. For the first time, it rejected the candidacy of a party called the Social Democratic Party of Macedonia (SDPM), which in name and branding had been mimicking the main opposition party. The SDPM appears in public only during elections; otherwise it lies dormant without any activities. The party also submitted lists of candidates with names which are suspiciously similar to the names of leading opposition candidates, which immediately attracted public attention:
Ова е доказ дека ВМРО граѓаните ги смета за говеда. pic.twitter.com/amMUUozBWd
— Сплинтер (@sinisa_goliOtok) November 12, 2016
Tweet: This is proof that VMRO treats citizens as cattle.
Image: Table with names of main candidates of the opposition SDSM and the cryptic SDPM per electoral districts.
ED 1: Stevo Pendarovski vs Stevo Prodanovski
ED 2: Oliver Spasovski vs Oliver Spasoski
ED 3: Ljupčo Nikolovski vs Ljupčo Nikolovski
ED 4: Zoran Zaev vs Zoran Zatkov
ED 5: Radmila Šekerinska vs Rada Šukarova
The surogate candidates avoided talking to journalists, who nevertheless found out that they are all affiliated with the ruling VMRO-DPMNE. SDPM party head Branko Janevski, a state administration official, had a history of similar activities:
ДПМНЕ тврди дека има УБЕДЛИВО повисок рејтинг од СДСМ – но ПОВТОРНО ќе се служи со ситни трикови против СДСМ: https://t.co/pmUitqe8hy
— Katerina Naumoska (@bebishte) November 12, 2016
[VMRO-]DPMNE claims it has SIGNIFICANTLY higher rating than SDSM – but AGAIN they use petty tricks against SDSM.
Some Twitter users used the hashtag #СДПМ — derived from the Cyrillic acronym of the “double” party — to discuss the ramifications. One of them refered to copyright infringement of products by Adidas and SONY, while parodying the ruling party's claims that they attract foreign investors:
Во програмата на #СДПМ стои дека ќе донесат странски инвестиции од познатите светски брендови „Adidbass“ и „SQMY“
— Slobodan Jakoski (@FlavrSavr) November 12, 2016
The SDPM program claims they would bring foreign investments by world famous brands lke Adidbass and SQMY.
Jokes nonwithstanding, nobody considered this affair a laughing matter. In 2008 the opposition SDSM tried to sue Janevski, because the misleading names of their “doubles” on the ballots garnered enough votes to cost them three seats in the parliament. The courts rejected the suit, enabling full impunity for this form of electoral fraud.
This time, the SEC refused to accept them — not because of identity theft, but due to technicalities — such as improperly filled forms and mismatching signatures.
This attempt to confuse voters is not a unique Macedonian specialty. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that during a recent local election in Romania, three candidates with the same name ran for the post of mayor of the town of Draguseni. In the United Kingdom (UK) in 1994, the Liberal Democrats lost 10,000 votes to the Literal Democrats.
In 2013, the ruling coalition dominated by anti-communist VMRO-DMNE, erected a new monument to Communist leader Tito in the center of Skopje. This secured them one Titoist vote within the Skopje City Council. Photo by GV, CC BY.
Back in Macedonia, another hot topic at the start of the election campaign was the controversial choices made by the ruling party, VMRO-DPMNE, which is a member of the right-wing European People's Party. For instance, the declared anti-communist party continued its allince with the staunch communist Union of Tito's Left Forces, which still professes loyalty to the long-gone Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito.
#Macedonia's communist & pro-Ex-Yugoslav party named Tito's Left Forces is in coalition with ruling right wing nationalist VMRO. Enough said.
— Vladimir Petreski (@VPetreski) November 12, 2016
The party, which at government level always forms a coalition with the largest ethnic Albanian party in the country, also put up Johan Tarčulovski, who was convicted for war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians during the 2001 conflict.
Convicted war criminal is part of the upcoming elections #Macedonia #Fail
— Сеир. Дот. Мк. (@seirdotmk) November 12, 2016
The international war crimes tribunal in the Hague sentenced Tarčulovski to 12 years in prison. After serving his sentence, the regime of Nikola Gruevski welcomed him back to Macedonia as a hero. Through their control of the state, they provided him with various forms of income, including a job within the state administration for his folk-singer wife. Placing him on the ballot was interpreted as a signal that the party's campaign will include arousing the ethnic and religious tensions among both Macedonians and Albanians.
According to Article 407-a of the Macedonian Criminal Code, “negation, minimizing, approval or justification” of war crimes or genocide is punishable by prison sentences from one to five years. This article has not been enforced so far, providing impunity for perpetrators.

author: Marko Angelov


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Russia Ratchets Up Pressure on Google · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Source: Neon Tommy, Flickr. CC 2.0
According to instructions issued by Roskomnadzor, the agency that regulates Russian media, starting on January 1 foreign companies that aggregate news will have three months register proper legal entities with the state, the newspaper Izvestiya reported on Monday. Companies that do not comply with the order by the end of March may be blocked or subject to financial penalties.
Roskomnadzor's instructions appear to target Google. Beginning in 2017, aggregators whose daily traffic exceeds one million visitors per day will be placed on a special Roskomnadzor register as part of a law passed in June that also forces aggregators to determine the veracity of important news published on other websites before republishing it. Google and Bing, Microsoft's search engine, are the only foreign aggregators whose traffic crosses this threshold, and experts say Microsoft will not need to change its registration to remain in compliance with the law.
Google's advertising business is registered in Russia but its business involving information services is not. Google will have to either change its existing registration or create and register a new company, which experts say will be possible to do by March. “Microsoft Rus,” the name of Microsoft's LLC in Russia, is registered differently, according to Sergei Kopylov, the head of Coordination Center for TLD RU, the national registry of top level domains in Russia, meaning the company will not have to reregister or register a new company.
Although being blocked is the maximum penalty Google could face, Sergei Nosov, a lawyer at the law firm NSN Alliance, has said that the company could also be subject to financial penalties.

author: Isaac Webb


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Russian Media Regulator Backpedals on Google Pressure · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Source: Minkomsvyaz.ru
Hours after Russian news outlets began reporting that state media regulatory agency Roskomnadzor had issued instructions forcing Google to re-register in Russia or face sanctions, an agency representative backpedaled, telling roem.ru that Izvestiya, the newspaper that broke the news, had misreported the story.
Izvestiya quoted Vadim Ampelonsky in their initial report as saying that Google, which falls into a newly-created category of news aggregators that will be subject to increased scrutiny when a new law enters into force at the beginning of the year, would have to register as a company that does business involving information services (currently, only its advertising business is registered) by the end of March 2017 or risk being blocked or fined. “If the proprietor [of a company] is foreign, it will have three months to register as a legal entity in Russia,” the newspaper quoted Ampelonsky as saying.
Later in the day, however, Ampelonsky told roem.ru that Roskomnadzor had not yet tabulated any news aggregators’ daily traffic or discussed the issue with Google.
Мы озвучили общие подходы. Как и к кому они будут применены станет ясно только после вступления закона в силу. Мы не оценивали пока аудитории новостных агрегаторов, а с Google вообще не общались на тему агрегаторов.
We have voiced a general approach. How and to whom [these instructions] will be applied will become clear only after the law comes into force. We have not yet evaluated the audiences of news aggregators, and haven't discussed the aggregator issue at all with Google.
The agency's instructions—and backtracking—come months after the Russian State Duma passed a law that will place news aggregators whose daily traffic exceeds 1 million users on a state register and force them to verify the truth of articles that are republished on their websites. Google and Bing are the only foreign news aggregators that will be subject to the new rules, as they are the only two such companies whose traffic exceeds 1 million daily users.


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Vietnamese Court Upholds Jail Sentence for Land Rights Activist · Global Voices
Don Le

Land rights activist Cấn Thị Thêu before her arrest. Image: Facebook/Trịnh Bá Phương
This article by Đôn Lê is from Loa, an independent news website and podcast that broadcasts stories about Vietnam, and is republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
A prominent Vietnamese land rights activist, 54-year-old Cấn Thị Thêu, has had her sentence upheld in her appeal trial on November 30, 2016.
The Hanoi People’s Court declined to reduce her 20-month jail term, while scores of her supporters who were barred from attending the “public” trial protested outside the courthouse.
Thêu was arrested and charged with “causing public disorder” in June and sentenced to prison in September for participating in public demonstrations following one of Vietnam’s largest environmental disasters.
Thêu’s lawyers, Hà Huy Sơn, in a post on his Facebook, called the verdict “legally, ethically baseless and unjust.”
Another lawyer, attorney Võ An Dôn, said she was punished for her criticism of the government and for her vocal support for detained human rights lawyer Nguyễn Văn Đài.
Supporters of the defendant protest outside Hà Nội People’s Court. Signs say “Freedom and justice for Cấn Thị Thêu”. Image: Facebook/Nguyễn Thuý Hạnh
Local police attempted to prevent Thêu's two sons, Trịnh Bá Phương and Trịnh Bá Tư, from leaving their home to attend their mother's trial. Phương used Facebook Live to broadcast the scene of police stopping taxi drivers from taking them to the courthouse.
The brothers eventually arrived the courthouse, but they never made it inside. Phương and Tư joined about 50 supporters outside leading chants calling for Thêu’s release and against government land grabs before they were taken by police.
Videos on social media showed police surrounding demonstrators and pushing them onto police buses which took them to local police headquarters.
Trịnh Bá Tư in a selfie posted on Facebook after his release, outside of police quarters in Phúc Tân Ward. Image: Facebook/Trịnh Bá Tư
In a Facebook post on Wednesday evening, Tư says he was “handcuffed and illegally detained for seven hours”:
When I was hauled away this morning, three of the Hà Nội policemen beat me.
This is Thêu’s second imprisonment. The farmer from Dương Nội, a village west of Hanoi, became a fearless protester against land grabs after her family's land was taken by authorities in 2007. She was previously arrested alongside her husband in April 2014 for filming and documenting large government land seizures. She continued her activism undeterred after she was released from that sentence in July 2015, and has been a leading figure among land rights petitioners and civil rights advocates.
Cấn Thị Thêu's sons hold signs saying “Free my mother” at a candlelight vigil at Thái Hà Parish in Hà Nội, three days before her appeal trial. Image: Facebook/Nguyễn Thịnh
Her case has garnered international attention, with political leaders and rights groups calling for her immediate release.
“The only real justice that the Appeal Court could have provided for Cấn Thị Thêu was to dismiss these bogus charges and immediately release her,” said Phil Robertson, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch:
The Vietnamese government should urgently amend the land law and its grievance processes to protect farmers’ rights, not to punish them for voicing their opinions and demanding action on their claims.

author: Don Le


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A Major Leak Exposes How Chinese Loan Sharks Make Female Debtors Take Nude Selfies · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

A hand written loan slip. The interest rate of lending 2000 yuan is 100% for two month. One of the leaked photo circulated online.
It is an open secret that some online finance service platforms are asking female debtors to give them nude photos in exchange for a loan, or to extend the deadline of debt payment. Now, with the leaking of female debtors’ nude photos and videos online — thanks to the circulation of a 10-gigabytes file on the Chinese internet — the alarm has been sounded.
The zipped file contains photos and sex tapes of at least 161 women, the majority of which are college students between 17 to 23 years of age. Along with the visual materials are chat records and identity information — including relatives’ names and personal particulars.
The leaked documents come from Jiedaibao, a social network-based, online finance service platform, which facilitates one-on-one loans. Debtors must use their real identity in their profile, while the lenders can remain anonymous. The finance company has issued a statement denouncing any involvement with the leak, and is reportedly cooperating fully with the police in the investigation.
In order to get a loan, the young women were asked to take nude selfies holding their identity card; some were even asked to masturbate in front of the camera. In addition to this, other documents were shown — include student identity cards, and screenshots of university student user platforms.
The lenders told the young women that if they could not pay back the money on time, they would release the photos and videos. According to the chat records, they also suggested that other ways for debt to be repaid was by having sex with strangers (which the lenders would organize) or participating in online nude chats.
The leaked documents contain some 26 debt records which indicate that the amount of the loans ranges from RMB 1,000-23,000 (approximately USD 145-3,340). The loan periods vary from five weeks to nine months, and the weekly interest rate can be as much as 15%.
The majority of Chinese netizens had no desire to try and understand why the young women agreed to accept such unreasonable loan terms; instead, their comments were scornful. On Twitter, one Beijing reporter tried to persuade others not to blame the victims:
10G裸条视频这种事，我觉得怪女大学生没啥意义，他们就是傻，就是单纯，就是被利益诱惑了，然后怎么着？不觉得这种情况的大学生很多么？不觉得这种特点的社会人也很多么？没办法。关键就是打击犯罪，堵塞传播。当然这些女大学生也为自己的不当行为付出了代价，同时也成为了生动的教育典型。
Regarding the 10G naked loan videos, it is meaningless to blame the female college students. They are either foolish and naive or they are seduced by short-term gain. But how we are to deal with the situation? There are so many college students like them and so many people in the society share their traits. The key is to crack the crime and stop the distribution. Of course, these girls have paid the price for their inappropriate behavior and have become a classic case for education.
His post, however, invited more disdain from the comments thread:
等等..为了换手机买服装化妆品甚至整容就肯拍小视频借钱,再后面去裸聊赚钱,这样的姑娘叫傻白甜?你们究竟是怎么定义单纯的?明明是又贪又蠢.不自尊自爱的无论男女,都不值得同情.
Wait. They took the sex tapes just to change their mobile phone, buy clothes and cosmetics. Then they have naked chat to make more money. This is just silly? How do you define simple and naive? They are obviously greedy and stupid, have no self-esteem and self-respect. Whether they are male or female, they don’t deserve any sympathy.
感觉这样的女生不值得同情，给点钱，就随便排自己的裸照给别人的人，以后难道就是老老实实的娘家妇女了吗？
That kind of girl does not deserve sympathy. Give some money and give away nude photos. Will they be good women in the future?
欠债还钱难道不应该？光看被骗可怜，花钱的时候不是很开心吗？
Shouldn’t they pay for their debt? They deserve pity because they are cheated? Are they happy when spending the money?
Very few people criticize the loan culture; Weibo user “Monkey king 8994” is one of the few:
应该严惩利用放高利贷实施犯罪活动的罪犯！！现在网上放贷的几乎多半是属于另有图谋的犯罪嫌疑人在寻找“猎物”。一旦借到他们的钱，恶梦就开始了。
Should punish the loan sharks. They are the criminals. Now, most online lenders are criminals looking for their prey. Once they borrow from them, the nightmare begins.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Fake News, Peaceful Voting and Other Things on Ghanaians’ Minds Ahead of Elections · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Ghanaian opposition presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addo paying homage to Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI, King of the Ga people. Creative Commons image by Kabil75.
Ghana goes to the polls for presidential and parliamentary elections on December 7. There are seven presidential candidates; however, the main contest is between incumbent President John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Ado of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
As the day approaches, we have looked at some of the more compelling comments shared on Twitter using the hashtag #GhanaDecides.
Jerome tweeted to encourage fellow citizens to vote:
We can do all the talking but you know what speaks loudest. #OVOV #GhanaDecides pic.twitter.com/Nvj7TuSAea
— j | #GhanaDecides (@readJerome) 30 de noviembre de 2016
Etoile Oye, an economist, advised social media users:
Friendly reminder that clever retorts on social media, passion, facts & figures won't be counted. Your vote will. Go & vote! #GhanaDecides
— Etoile Oye (@etwayl7) December 5, 2016
Kasim shared this image showing the difference in living standards between politicians and voters in Ghana:
#Vote4JM #VotePeacefully #GhanaDecides #GhanaElections pic.twitter.com/A7veAWkSz7
— QASIM (@kasim707) December 5, 2016
Nii Darku said:
In times of fake news stories flying all over social media. The credibility of Media Houses in #Ghana will be top on demand.#GhanaDecides
— Nii Darku (@NiiDarku) December 5, 2016
Some Twitter users analysed the context and offered their opinions of who will take the hotly contested presidential seat.
Nic Cheeseman, an associate professor in African Politics at Oxford University and the founder of Democracy in Africa, summed up the situation:
In Ghana, where the NDC government is struggling to retain power amidst economic troubles. An opposition win coming on Wed? #ghanadecides
— Dr Nic Cheeseman (@Fromagehomme) December 5, 2016
While Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa at London School of Economics noted an interesting phenomenon in Ghanaian electoral politics:
“No party in #Ghana has held power for more than two consecutive four-year terms.” Can NPP triumph? https://t.co/N2dvAT7jez #GhanaDecides pic.twitter.com/N4G0Us6iVG
— Africa@LSE (@AfricaAtLSE) December 5, 2016
On the issue of who will win, blogger Nana Ashanti thought the ruling party, which she does not support, will carry the day. She explained:
At a risk of being lynched and/or insulted, I will say that in my opinion the current NDC will retain power come Dec. 7th. Hear me out:
All my predictions have been wrong this year but if I know Ghanaians well, I can say we rarely mean what we say. I am not a fan of the current NDC government. At all. And I have been critical of them for as long as I can remember. With that said, they do appeal to the silent majority. The so called forgotten, who live in the Upper regions of Ghana. They have been loyal to the ruling party through thick and thin. These folks are the “Louisiana Purchase”. The flyover regions, literally and figuratively.
They are very content people and love their lives the way it is. They do not worry their heads about inflation, the high unemployment rate, corruption, exchange rate, infrastructure or economic development. The real hand-to-mouth people. Time and time again, this silent majority has proven to be the ones to break the tie or decide who the next government is going to be.
HOW WILL THEY SWING THIS YEAR?
These are the folks who wake up early to join long and winding queues to vote for the NDC , whether their palms have been greased or not. They do not spend copious amount of data chanting party slogans on social media.
Edudzi Nyomi took time to blog about the problem of fake news on social media. He gave the following example:
It’s election season in Ghana too and the made up stories continually flood our digital timelines and news feeds. Just yesterday I saw a story on an NDC man who was arrested with heavy ammunition in the Ashanti Region in November 2016. The article said the police officers were tipped off by “NPP Agents”. Hearing this story around this time of the year would make you tensed up, but here’s the problem;
The picture of the guns in the story above – which were no ordinary guns – was the exact picture I had on my phone back in December 2015. A gang of robbers in Kumasi were arrested last year with those weapons. I googled the story and found other news outlets reporting the same story with the same picture. What was the 2015 picture doing as a cover picture for some other story almost a year after, then? The whole story seemed murky and placed emphasis on the NPP “defending their land and their king”.
Ghana's Inspector General of Police John Kudalor hinted in May 2016 that Ghanaian authorities might consider shutting down social media platforms during the elections to “maintain peace”. He argued that the intention to shut down social media platforms is based on the fact that some people abuse the space during voting. However, Ghanaian President John Mahama declared on the August 14 that “the government has no intention to shut down social media on election day.”
Finally, Chief Austin Arinze Obiefuna, the executive director of Afro Global Alliance Ghana, hoped for free and fair elections as it has always been a tradition in Ghana:
Dec 7 #GhanaDecides continue your already earned beacon of hope for Africa & have a free & fair election to reflect the wish of the people.
— Austin A. Obiefuna (@AObiefuna) December 5, 2016

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Russian Blogger Launches Campaign to Annul Anti-Extremism Law He Was Convicted of Violating · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Source: VKontakte
Anton Nossik, a leading blogger who was fined 500,000 rubles ($8,000) in October for a LiveJournal post in which he called on Russia to “wipe Syria from the face of the earth,” has launched a campaign to remove from the Russian Criminal Code the law he was convicted of violating.
The law, Article 282, is a catch-all statute that prohibits “Actions aimed at the incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as abasement of dignity of a person or a group of persons on the basis of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, attitude to religion, as well as affiliation to any social group, if these acts have been committed in public or with the use of mass media,” and has been widely condemned for being overly harsh and infringing on fundamental rights: an individual can be found guilty even if her action does not lead to any violence and, since the introduction of the so-called Yarovaya Law earlier this year, sentenced to up to five years in prison.
After being fined, Nossik submitted his proposal to “Russian Public Initiative” (ROI), a website designed to filter proposals from the private citizens through to the federal government. Nearly two months later, he received a response from ROI saying that his proposal had been approved and that a petition would be posted on the website beginning on November 30. Russian citizens over 18 years old who register through a government portal will be able to vote for or against the petition until November 30, 2017. The proposal needs 100,000 supporting votes in order to be sent to the federal government for discussion.
The petition reads:
Статья 282 УК РФ о «действиях, направленных на возбуждение ненависти либо вражды» сформулирована таким образом, что допускает огромное количество злоупотреблений, произвольных трактовок, и создаёт почву для уголовных дел за «преступления мысли». Не существует ни одного документа и ни одного судебного решения, в котором было бы внятно прописано, какие высказывания подлежат квалификации как «экстремистские», а какие подпадают под конституционную норму защиты свободы слова. В последние годы мы видим постоянный рост числа случаев, когда эта статья использовалась для преследования инакомыслящих, подавления свободы печатного слова, просто сведения личных счетов между региональными силовиками и критикующими их общественными деятелями. Также известно немало случаев, когда совершенно случайных людей преследовали по этой статье просто «для галочки», для выполнения плана определённых силовиков по «борьбе с экстремизмом». За 21 год её существования статья многократно переписывалась, и каждый раз — в сторону ужесточения наказания. Но внятного определения «экстремизма» в ней как не было, так и не появилось.
Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code, “actions aimed at the incitement of hatred or enmity” is formulated in such a way that it allows for a huge amount of abuse, arbitrary interpretation, and lays the groundwork for the prosecution of “thought crimes.” There is not a single document and not a single court decision that spells out which statements qualify as “extremism” and which are constitutionally protected as freedom of speech. In recent years, we have seen a constant increase in the number of times this article has been used to prosecute dissidents, to suppress freedom of the press, including of personal accounts that criticize regional security officials and their public activity. There have also been a number of times that completely random people have been prosecuted under this article simply “for show,” as part of the security services’ “fight against extremism.” In the 21 years of its existence, this article has been rewritten numerous times, and every time it becomes more severe. Still, however, it does not contain a clear definition of “extremism.”
“The time has come to act together,” Nossik wrote on his LiveJournal account on Saturday. “Links, shares, retweets, likes, maximal reposts of information about the fact that the initiative is up for a vote, could and are needed to support it…Creative visual agitation is also welcome. So please, draw banners [and] pictures for Instagram, any kind of beauty to be spread…”
Russian courts have increasingly used Article 282, often known as an “anti-extremism law,” to silence opposition: in 2015 alone 414 people were convicted under the law, up from 137 in 2011. In addition to international opposition, some Russian lawmakers have criticized the law as being overly broad, allowing courts to convict individuals for political rather than legal reasons. Earlier this year, Mikhail Degtyarev, Alexei Didenko and Ivan Sukharev, politicians from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, introduced a bill that would annul Article 282 into the State Duma. The bill called for its nullification because it opens the door to the prosecution of “any citizen because of his different ideological views.” The bill has not been adopted and Article 282 remains on the books.
On Tuesday, Nossik posted a Q&A for his readers on his LiveJournal page outlining reasons to vote for the petition. Article 282, he said, is a law “whose benefits have not been observed, but whose abuses are huge in number. The elasticity of Article 282 makes it possible to prosecute art curators and VKontakte users who post anti-racist caricatures equally.”
В российском законодательстве предусмотрено больше дюжины разных статей для уголовного и административного преследования за экстремистскую , позволяющих привлекать к ответственности правонарушителей за конкретные совершённые ими , а также за членство в экстремистских и террористических организациях. Особенность -й статьи состоит в том, что она приравнивает к делам высказанные вслух мысли, мнения, и даже простое выражение согласия с чужими словами. Таким образом, практика по -й статье, в сущности,  реальной борьбе с преступлениями на почве расовой и религиозной нетерпимости, отвлекая правоохранительный ресурс на деяния, не представляющие никакой общественной опасности.
How would authorities fight extremism, racism, and xenophobia if the law is annulled? There are more than a dozen Russian criminal and administrative laws on extremist activity that allow violators to be held responsible for specific acts and for participation in extremist and terrorist organizations. Article 282 equates actions with the expression of thoughts, opinions, and even agreement with others’ words. So in practice, Article 282 interferes with the real fight with criminality motivated by racial and religious intolerance, diverting law enforcement resources to activity that does not present any danger to society.
-й статье привлекают к уголовной ответственности всего несколько сотен человек в год. Практика уголовного преследования за преступления мысли чрезвычайно соблазнительна для карательных органов. Назначать «злодеев» с помощью Гугла и Яндекса проще, чем ловить настоящих преступников на улице, вести агентурную работу в экстремистском подполье, собирать улики. Поэтому практика по -й растёт в последние годы как раковая опухоль, в то время как профилактики реальных преступлений на почве нетерпимости мы вообще не видим. С учётом тенденции роста дел по -й за последнее пятилетие, уже в  году счёт обвиняемым пойдёт уже на тысячи, а процент оправданных по этой статье к сегодняшнему дню равен нулю.
Is this really real problem? Only a couple hundred people are found guilty of violating Article 282 per year. Criminally prosecuting thought crimes is extremely tempting to security organs. Identifying “villains” using Google and Yandex is easier than catching real criminals on the street, doing undercover work in the extremist underground, and gathering clues. And so prosecutions under Article 282 have grown like a cancerous tumor in recent years, while at the same time we have not see the prevention of any real crimes. Given the increased tendency to prosecute under Article 282 over the past five years, in 2017 we could see the number of accused rise into the thousands, while the percent of justified prosecutions according this law approaches zero.