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#SaveArash: Jailed Iranian Activist Arash Sadeghi is Fighting for Human Rights — And His Life · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle

Arash Sadeghi and Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, together before his arrest. Photo shared widely on social media.
Iranian activist Arash Sadeghi was hospitalized on January 3, after refusing to eat for 71 days.
The human rights defender was sentenced to 15 years in prison in March 2016 on charges of “propaganda against the state,” “spreading lies in cyberspace,” and “insulting the founder of the Islamic Republic.”
Sadeghi went on hunger strike to protest the arrest of his wife, Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, who was arrested in October 2016 and sentenced to six years in prison for “insulting the sacred” and writing “propaganda against the state”, in several Facebook posts and a story she wrote in a notebook that was confiscated after authorities raided the couple's home last March.
Iraee informed the International Campaign for Human Rights last week that her husband was hospitalized to receive medical treatment for intestinal blockage and bleeding, among other health problems after ending his hunger strike, but was returned to prison on January 7 despite doctors’ recommendations.
The critical status of Sadeghi's health led the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, Asma Jahangir, to issue a public plea to Iranian authorities to ensure proper medical attention for Sadeghi:
I call on Iranian authorities to ensure that Mr. Arash Sadeghi has access, as a matter of utmost priority, to specialized health care in a hospital outside prison, in compliance with international human rights standards and medical ethics in particular the principles of informed consent
Known as a bold tactic that political prisoners employ in order to draw greater attention to their cause, prisoners may use the hunger strike as a last resort, when they've been left with few other ways to demonstrate their position and make their voices heard. But the actual experience of refusing food for days, weeks, or (in Arash's case) months is something that is difficult to comprehend among people who have not experienced it for themselves.
The infographic below, created by Global Voices’ partner Visualizing Palestine, is intended to help readers and supporters understand the physical realities of a hunger strike, within the contemporary historical context in which most of us have come to understand this act.
As of last week, Arash Sadeghi has been added to the graphic, notably extending the record for lived experience during a hunger strike.
On January 3, the public prosecutor additionally gave notice that Iraee's furlough was overturned and she was ordered to return to jail. She has so far refused.
The campaign to save civil rights defender Arash Sadeghi has reached a critical point in which supporters believe that any amount of public attention and scrutiny on his case could have impact on Iranian authorities and help to save his life.

author: Ellery Roberts Biddle


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Trinidad & Tobago’s First Female Murder for 2017 Is a Schoolgirl, Deepening Fears About Gender-Based Violence · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

A screenshot taken from a CNC3 news report about the death of Rachael Ramkissoon, a student who was on her way to school at Northeastern College in Trinidad when she was murdered.
After a year chock-full of distressing stories about violence against women in the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago's 16th murder victim for 2017 is a schoolgirl, who was found — still in her uniform — in a town in north-east Trinidad.
After she was found on January 13, police were in the process of informing the girl's family, but the news was all over social media in a flash. Facebook user Skye Hernandez was very upset:
Feeling gutted about the death of a schoolgirl and the photo of her lying in her uniform so beautifully among the green leaves. It is too much.
Trinidadian entertainer Nikki Crosby wondered, in a public Facebook post, why people were focusing on recent charges surrounding television personalities rather than the ongoing gender violence in the country:
Where I living boi? A school girl was found bound and murdered in her school uniform and we more concerned about Ian and Alexander #Smh #Yesanotherwomandead #Iliveinparadise
The slain schoolgirl was later revealed to be 16-year-old Rachael Ramkissoon. Her family said the youngster was late to catch her school bus that morning because she had been up late the night before studying for an exam. Police believe that Ramkissoon had therefore opted for private transportation — ostensibly from someone she knew, as her peers say she would have never got into a car with a stranger — to get her to school that morning. Her body was found lying in some bushes; there are conflicting reports about the nature of her injuries.
Ramkissoon's death, coming so close on the heels of the murder of another young woman, Shannon Banfield, raised the ire of social media users, many of whom had participated in the protests and think tanks that were organised after Banfield's body was found in early December 2016. A hashtag, #RIPRachel (albeit with the incorrect spelling of her name) was started on Facebook, and a few people began the hashtag #RachaelRamkissoon on Twitter. Journalist and Facebook user Laura Dowrich-Phillips mused:
The solution to crime is a multipronged one that requires short-term and long-term strategies. The responsibility lies with all of us, not just the authorities. Start at home. We need to fix what is producing these sick minds.
Her colleague, Franka Philip, concurred:
There are a lot of sick people living among us. There is something nasty beneath our laughing, partying exterior and we have to find it and deal with it. #RIPRachel
A recurring theme in the online discussions about curbing gender-based violence revolve around the need for Caribbean men to be socialised to respect women. Facebook user Gilberte O'Sullivan tried to remember whether aggression against women was always such a burning issue:
As a schoolgirl, i don't remember stories about young women and children being murdered. Someone correct me. What is really going on in this place?
In the context of spiralling rates of violent crime, this was a question that criminologist Renee Cummings wanted the police service to answer:
I don't know what worries me more, the unending spate of violent crime fed by an abysmal detection rate or the lack of ideas by law enforcement and government that keeps evidence based responses to violence suppression in a deficit? How could a country exist without a national plan for homicide reduction and violence prevention? What then is the purpose of the National Security Council, Office of the [Attorney General], Ministry of National Security, [Trinidad and Tobago Police Service]?
No reassuring answers seem forthcoming, however, causing Facebook user Khafra Rudder to quip:
[Trinidad & Tobago] Needs A Bush Bath!
A bush bath has special, healing herbs steeped in the bath water. It is widely believed to said to ward off “maljo” (evil eye), bad luck and other dark forces.
One Facebook user accused her fellow Trinidadians for having the nine days’ wonder syndrome, claiming that the online outcry over Shannon Banfield's death was far greater than for Rachael Ramkissoon.
For other female social media users, both murders were cause for them to be concerned about their own safety. In a status update reminiscent of the #LifeinLeggings movement, which provided a safe, virtual space for women all across the region to share their stories of sexual harassment and gender violence, Deidre Jesse Rahaman — who used to attend the same school as Ramkissoon — recounted a harrowing experience of her own:
Circa 2004, I sat in my North Eastern College uniform after school in a maxi bound for Arima. My best friend wasn't present at school that day so I was traveling on my own.
A male stranger sat next to me and I noticed he was ridiculously fidgety, to the point that I assumed he had some kind of medical condition. I pressed myself against the window and and tried not to look his way out of respect. Only when we were almost at Valencia Junction did I look down and notice that the man had unzipped my school skirt on the left side and was touching my underpants with his finger. It took a few seconds for me to process what was happening. And then I panicked.
I began shouting, almost in tears, about the ‘hardback nastyman’ that was sitting next to me in the maxi, full of passengers, to draw attention to what was happening. He immediately pressed the bell, paid the driver and jumped out in Valencia like nothing had happened.
Of course I was in shambles.
Sooooo many people (adult and children) have experiences like this. Please protect us. Somebody.
#RIPRachel
Women's anxiety may be higher than usual at this time. The country is in the throes of “Carnival fever” — the passionate, party-filled prelude to the country's annual two-day street parade — and a large percentage of women participate in this beloved national festival. Last year's Carnival festivities were marred by the discovery of a dead female masquerader on Ash Wednesday morning. No one has yet been charged for that murder.
Renee Cummings, quoting “Full Extreme” — a hugely popular soca hit by the group Ultimate Rejects, which is a strong contender for this year's Road March (a prestigious title which recognises the song that is played the most on Carnival Monday and Tuesday) — again took issue with the low performance of the police service. The song perfectly captures the “Carnival mentality” that Trinidad and Tobago is often accused of having, basically saying that Trinbagonians would still be fixated on having a good time, even while Rome burned. Cummings said:
Were I the commissioner of police, in a country where the clearance rate for homicide is less than 10% […] I would not be able to sleep. […] Anywhere, in the world, a 10% clearance rate for homicide means you have failed misereably [sic] as a law enforcement agency. The national average, in the U.S., for homicide, is a 65% clearance rate, the lowest in about 50 years. It has created a crisis among law enforcement leaders, in the U.S., who are looking, at break neck speed, at new ways of thinking to generate new ideas to reduce homicide. But you know what, in true Trini parlance, our law enforcement leaders ‘they jammin still’ and you know why, the guiding philosophy of service delivery (law enforcement/national security is a service paid for with taxpayer dollars), for many years, in this country, has been ‘jus hold dem and wuk dem.’ Could it be that the ultimate rejects have been dictating the pace long before 2017?
An autopsy has determined that Rachael Ramkissoon was strangled. The police are continuing their investigations.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Writing to ‘Dismantle the Silence’ Surrounding Sexual Exploitation of Poor Young Women in Jamaica · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

Author Nicole Dennis-Benn at her book party at Jamaican bookstore ‘Bookophilia’ in Kingston, January 2017. Photo by Emma Lewis, used with permission.
“A story waiting to be told” is how Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James describes “Here Comes the Sun,” the debut novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn — who, like James, is a Jamaican novelist living in the United States. The novel has garnered positive reviews, including in the New York Times.
Dennis-Benn's recent visit to the island of her birth coincided with an ongoing, stormy discussion in the Jamaican media — particularly social media — and in the public domain about sexual abuse. In Jamaica, exploitation of young women in difficult economic circumstances is fairly common, and the perpetrators are often older men who hold positions of privilege in society.
The debate was sparked by the case of a pastor in the Moravian church, who has been charged with having sex with a 15-year-old girl. As the resulting scandal, revelations and often bitter discussions continue, church leaders have resigned and allegations of child abuse against other church key church figures are being investigated. Dennis-Benn's book honestly confronts many of these issues. Global Voices asked the author about the evolution of her work and how she tackles these difficult issues in her novel.
Global Voices (GV): Tell us a little bit about your journey as a novelist. Did leaving Jamaica help you to develop your writing? When and how did you feel empowered to write?
Nicole Dennis-Benn (NDB): When I left Jamaica at 17 years old for college in the United States, I wrote to cope with my homesickness. I realized then that it was more than a coping mechanism, [it was] my passion — a passion I wouldn’t have gotten to explore had I stayed in Jamaica. As Jamaicans, we were raised to honor traditional professions such as medicine, law, business and politics, but not the arts. I was the first in my family to attend college and thus felt it was imperative that I not let my family down by doing something of no value to them. I was determined to be a doctor then, taking pre-med courses at Cornell University, because in the eyes of every working-class household, medicine is among the top professions […] to pull us out of our socio-economic bracket. Years later, I got the courage to pursue a Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College after graduating with a Master’s in Public Health and working in the field as a researcher at Columbia University. I was still timid about fully immersing myself in writing and even calling myself a writer, though I was writing constantly. Most of that diffidence came from what I had internalized growing up. However, I am glad that I took the leap, because I would not have been happy with a flashy career doing something I don’t want to do for the sake of status.
Moreover, had I stayed in Jamaica as a working-class Jamaican, I would not have had the time or the opportunity to nurture my passion in writing, which would’ve been deemed a luxury. Also, I would not have been able to step outside the mental rut of survival to critically analyze the culture and write from an honest perspective. Therefore, it took leaving the country and processing the reasons why I felt the need to leave in the first place, which contributed to my desire to write.
GV: Do you think this will be uncomfortable reading for some Jamaicans? It is so close to reality for many Jamaican women.
NDB: So far, the book has been well received by Jamaicans. I think more than anything else, they appreciate the honesty and the fact that it tackles universal themes they can identify with, regardless of their personal experiences or beliefs. For example, themes such as love, loss, identity, acceptance, and displacement are all themes people can connect to. Many Jamaican women have reached out to me thanking me for writing a book like ‘Here Comes the Sun’. For one, we live in a culture of shame and secrecy; and for the first time, Jamaican women see their stories of sexual assault and questions of self-worth being tackled on the page without it demonizing them or portraying them as caricatures. It is important to them to see themselves reflected on the page by a writer who is one of them. Again, this reminds me of why I write. As Marcus Garvey says, ‘Only us can free us’, and if we don’t begin to have open dialogues about what ails us as women in our culture and society in general, then we will never heal.
GV: You mentioned that you struggled with your portrayal of the character of Margot and her sexuality. Can you closely relate to her in some ways, as a lesbian from Jamaica?
NDB: Yes, I relate to Margot a lot. Not only because of her sexuality, which was hard for her to accept given the cultural norms; but because like Margot, I too desperately wanted upward mobility in a country I love dearly, but had no idea how to achieve it. Unlike me, Margot had the guts to make unpopular decisions to get what she rightfully deserves — which is equal opportunity in a country where wealth is unequally divided; made available to people of a certain hue, class, and last name. Margot broke that barrier, and that is why I proclaim her as my heroine.
Also, with wealth comes acceptance too. In ‘Here Comes the Sun’, Margot makes [that] clear when she expresses her desire to live in Lagoons with her lover, Verdene Moore, which promises to shield them, given that Lagoons is a wealthy gated community in Montego Bay. For in Jamaica, class and socio-economic status are determining factors in whether or not one can live freely and happily as an out gay or lesbian.
At the book party for her novel
‘Here Comes the Sun’, Nicole Dennis-Benn signs a copy of her book for Professor Carolyn Cooper. Photo by Emma Lewis, used with permission.
GV: “Here Comes The Sun” is a bright, optimistic song, and the cover design reflects this, too. Do you feel optimistic about Jamaica?
NDB: The title of the book certainly has nothing to do with The Beatles’ song! In my novel, the sun is symbolic — an irony, in that we were raised to fear the sun as darker skin Jamaicans. In my book, it is that very same sun that becomes an illuminating factor, revealing the realities and ugliness of desperation inherent in poverty. Like I said, we cannot begin to be optimistic about change as a people or as a society if we are not willing to face this ugliness. We have to face it, and have honest dialogues about it, in order to move forward.
GV: Who or what inspired you to write? Do you have any literary influences — especially any Caribbean writers?
NDB: I was very much inspired by Edwidge Danticat and Paule Marshall, both Caribbean authors who aren’t afraid to delve into the complexity of Caribbean women on the page. I found that growing up, I was exposed to white and male authors. I never saw writers writing who looked like me both in gender and complexion, and dare I say, class. Danticat and Marshall represented that hope I desperately needed as a young aspiring storyteller who wanted to write about the people and place I love dearly in an authentic way.
GV: Your visit to Jamaica this time coincides with an ongoing — and very vigorous — public debate on the island about violence against women and girls. Do you have a message for Jamaican women? Do you feel now might be the right time for dialogue and healing?
NDB: Now is certainly the right time for dialogue, which is a prelude to healing. Though it might seem uncanny that ‘Here Comes the Sun’ touches on the very issue being lamented currently about the sexualization of our young girls, I initially wrote the book to dismantle the silence. My female protagonists in ‘Here Comes the Sun’ have all suffered sexual abuse, Delores inevitably saying to her own daughter, Thandi — who had been through the same thing — what many Jamaican mothers would say, ‘Is nuff woman it ‘appen to. Jus’ move on.’ This is how the secret thrives. Growing up in Jamaica, I’ve always been aware of this, my own innocence destroyed by my elders’ warnings about being vigilant as a young girl in society. God forbid if anything happens, it sets the young girl up to believe it was her fault. Many girls and women suffer the aftermath of sexual assault in silence, believing it was their fault. I want to use my art to give them a voice.
Also, another elephant in the room, which we need to address as a country, is poverty. Yes, we are going to have defeated, impoverished women thinking their only value is between their legs. For what else do they have to offer without proper education and opportunities for upward mobility? We are also going to have mothers who use their daughters as currency; mothers who cannot afford to feed their children or send them to school, and thus resort to using their girl-children to pay their way forward. Again, this is a result of a deficit in better opportunities. I’m not condoning this, but it is a reality that we must address as a nation without demonizing the women desperate enough to do such things and/or have knowledge of it happening behind their back and not question it. My character Delores sold her daughter, Margot, into prostitution for the very same reason that the poor mother […] in the recent news about the Moravian Church sex scandal — who knew her under-age daughters were bringing home groceries from sleeping with that Moravian pastor — did. When I sat down to write ‘Here Comes the Sun’, my goal was to humanize this woman and the hundreds more like her in our society, especially for policy makers who have the power to change this reality; to give free education and opportunities to women and children in our society to advance.

author: Emma Lewis


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A Nepali Transgender Model Is Set to Break Boundaries on the Catwalk at Lakme Fashion Week · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

Anjali Lama. Image from Flickr by Norad. CC BY-NC-ND
Anjali Lama is blazing a trail in the fashion industry. She is slated to become the first transgender model from Nepal to walk the runways of the prestigious Lakme Fashion Week, which will take place in Mumbai in February.
Former Miss Nepal Shristi Shrestha wrote on Facebook about the news:
Proud moment for all of us! Anjali Lama, I believe that this is a great beginning for you in the fashion industry. To be selected among hundreds of girls is quite an achievement on its own, and you have done it! The path surely must not have been easy but I'm sure that this path will lead you to a bright and beautiful future that you truly deserve. Our first transgender model ❤ Sending you love and luck from Nepal ?
Lama was born male and given the name Navin Waiba (‘Navin’ means new in Nepali). She grew up far away from the glitz and glamour of the fashion industry in a village in Nepal’s Nuwakot district, not having the faintest inkling about what modelling was because of living in such a rural area.
She said she always had the feeling that she was a girl on the inside, and liked to do make-up and look pretty from an early age. It was only when she landed in Kathmandu for higher education that she came in contact with the Blue Diamond Society, an organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, and found the real person inside her — a 20-year wait.
She then got into modelling, and now she's on track to make history.
Fashion can turn around even the most rigid minds says @anjalilama00 https://t.co/zpBXGaNbAq @LakmeFashionWk #AnjaliLama pic.twitter.com/bS0vd6LIoa
— Debarati S Sen (@debaratisen) December 30, 2016
Say hello to Anjali Lama – the 1st transgender model who’ll walk the ramp for LFW-2017! https://t.co/XihaLdMDDV pic.twitter.com/vEr31tSBAK
— Govind Ghimire (@tghimire084) January 1, 2017
On Facebook, Rochelle Pinto praised the fashion world for welcoming Lama:
10 points for inclusiveness. Contrary to what you may think, fashion remains one of the most supportive spaces, happily accepting the world's weirdos, rebels and rejects.
In 2007, Nepal’s Supreme Court entitled citizens to select their gender identity based on their own feelings. Nepal’s Election Commission allows voters to identify as male or female or register themselves as a third gender. Recently, Nepal issued a special passport under the transgender category (listed as “O” for “Other”) to LGBT activist Monica Shahi.
In spite of so much progress, Nepali society still views members of the LGBT community with suspicious eyes. Lama’s family and friends, for example, didn’t support her at the beginning. However, her hard work has paid off and now she is experiencing more and more acceptance.
Lama wrote on her Facebook page:
For me, it was never a question of whether or not I was transgender. It was a question of what I'd be able to handle transitioning and having to do it in the public eye. One of the issues that was hard for me to overcome was the fear of that.
For now, the news of Lama walking in Lakme Fashion Week has gone viral, particularly in Indian media.
नेपाली मोडलिङ क्षेत्रमा फरक पहिचान बनाएकी तेस्रोलिंगी मोडल अञ्जली लामा यतिबेला भारतीय मिडियामा भाइरल बनेकी छन्। https://t.co/oVB1nHtJDi
— NepalJapanDotCom (@mynepaljapan) January 9, 2017
Transgender model Anjali Lama who carved a niche in the Nepalese modelling has gone viral in Indian media.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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All-Woman Brewery Brings Craft Beer to Kyrgyzstan · Global Voices
Eurasianet

Photo by Ruslan Tokochev taken for Eurasianet. Reused with permission.
The following is a partner post from EurasiaNet.org. Republished with permission.
Tucked away in an unlikely spot, wedged between a domino club popular with Turks and a Soviet-built apartment block, is a treat for beer-lovers in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital.
Save the Ales, a microbrewery set up by a Kyrgyz-Kazakh pair, Aida Musulmankulova and Arzu Kurbanova, may be small and spartan. But what it is doing to Bishkek’s drinking culture is little short of revolutionary. While bland imported lagers and watery local brews have long been the norm, Save the Ales is turning out its own homemade craft brews, borrowing from a trend that has established deep roots in the United States and elsewhere.
“Wherever we have traveled, we have always tried good beer,” said Musulmankulova.
Around three years ago, she and her partner, Kurbanova, decided to take the plunge.
Photo by Ruslan Tokochev taken for Eurasianet. Reused with permission.
“We decided to brew it [ourselves]. We learned everything from the Internet. It wasn’t as difficult as we thought.”
Craft beers tend to be more experimental than classic European-style lagers and pilsners, and are brewed in kegs rather than casks, as is the case with traditional British real ale. And it is not cheap either. Save the Ales charges an eye-watering $2.80 per glass, a sum way out of reach for most people outside the bar’s target market of upwardly mobile Bishkek urban types and expats.
Musulmankulova and Kurbanova say they are spending the profits on developing their fledgling business and reinvesting.
Photo by Ruslan Tokochev taken for Eurasianet. Reused with permission.
The bar has been a stop-and-start affair. Save the Ales first opened in May, quickly gaining a strong following, but it had to shut for almost a month in late September due to an electrical fault. The dedicated aficionados of the pair’s high-strength India Pale Ale, stout and fruit-flavored beers finally got their bar back in October.
A noticeable emphasis is placed on providing the real deal at Save the Ales. Bishkek has no shortage of novelty theme pubs that are low on character and often focus their efforts to lure in customers on big TV screens and loud music.
Photo by Ruslan Tokochev taken for Eurasianet. Reused with permission.
In established markets, craft beer is a big business. According to the US Brewers Association, the sector’s retail dollar value in the United States was estimated at $22.3 billion for 2015, representing just over one-fifth of the country’s beer market.
Beer is increasingly popular in Kyrgyzstan, but drinkers are prone to quote the old Russian saying “beer without vodka is money [thrown] to the wind.” The market share for craft beers is statistically insignificant, but the mission of Save the Ales, where the beer is brewed on-site, for now is to slowly cultivate more refined tastes and habits. Unlike almost all Bishkek beer bars, Save the Ales served no food until recently, although it did finally relent by providing lite bites.
Kurbanova and Musulmankulova say that over half their sales are to expats, although the share of young, urban middle-class barflies is growing. And the contingent of baikes — a term denoting “elder brother” in Kyrgyz, but also synonymous with portly middle-aged men — is creeping up too.
“I remember one time this guy walked into the pub,” said Sumsarbek Mamyraliev, who owns a production studio and is a friend of the owners. “He said, ‘Get me a beer. Where is the shashlik? Where is the chechel [smoked cheese]? Where are the owners? How do your husbands let you brew beer? This will never work!”
When the new client tried the beer, however, “his attitude changed completely,” Mamyraliev recalled.
“He was this patriarch with a gold chain. He said: ‘You girls have put all the men in Kyrgyzstan to shame. If you ever have any problems with anyone, just call me.’”
Photo by Ruslan Tokochev. Used with permission.
Musulmankulova and Kurbanova for their part have nothing against hiring a male staffer, especially since brewing can sometimes be physically taxing.
“But friends told us we should keep on as we started out,” Kurbanova told EurasiaNet.org. “So when we advertised on Facebook for a helper, we asked for a ‘pomoshnitsa’ (a female assistant), which caused a stir.”
Mamyraliev argues the success of the tiny brewery pub points to an emerging start-up culture in Kyrgyzstan, which has Central Asia’s most vibrant civil society. According to the World Bank’s Doing Business index, Kyrgyzstan remains the easiest country in the region in which to register a new business.
Photo by Ruslan Tokochev. Used with permission.
Alan Laing, a British customer who works in international development, agrees the pub is “a hidden gem”.
“It’s unlike any other bar in Bishkek,” he said, referencing various theme pubs in the city. “[Save the Ales] could be a bar in Brooklyn or Shoreditch (in London) before they became uber-trendy. It is simple, unfussy and all about the beer.”
Kurbanova attributes their beer’s popularity to a maximalist approach to brewing. They spare no expense in bringing in ingredients from Germany and the United States, in contrast to the cost-cutting attitude typical to other breweries.
That has led to invitations to serve beer at arts festivals and music nights, which the pair have accepted, as well as offers from admiring competitors to purchase their beer or even buy out the business completely. So far, they have resisted all such overtures.
“They come to us and say, we want to see your beer in our restaurant,” Kurbanova told EurasiaNet.org. “We tell them: join the queue.”
Photo by Ruslan Tokochev. Used with permission.

author: Eurasianet


text:
Discarded Plastic Bottles Become Blooming Plant Barricades at an Indian Railway Station · Global Voices
Rezwan

Screenshot from The Better India's video report, available via YouTube.
Back in 2002, India banned the use of plastic bags to protect the environment and maintain the free flow of sewers. Although enforcement remains a problem, it was a positive step forward. However, with the focus on plastic bags, other growing plastic menaces like discarded bottles and wraps are largely ignored.
In Kochi, India, a railway station master and his team are doing something about it — turning plastic bottles casually discarded on railways tracks by passengers into plant holders.
RT RailMinIndia “RT AnilMatt00: Great innovation by RailMinIndia at Aluva Railway Station in kerala – waste bottle… pic.twitter.com/5XUdcZcmVm“
— KnowUrGov.com (@namo_updates) September 24, 2015
Plastic bottles, disposable cups, empty water sachets and thin sheets are constantly being dumped in vacant spots and public spaces across India. According to the Central Pollution Control Board, 40% (6,137 tonnes) of the total plastic waste (9,205 tonnes) per day is uncollected and littered in the Indian capital alone. The country is sitting on a pile of 5.6 million tonnes of plastic waste every year. And it requires a lot of effort from all quarters to reverse this.
The Aluva Railway station in Kochi is making an example of how people can do something about the problem.
According to the above video, the idea was put into practice by stationmaster C Balakrishnan and his team members Mr. Mohan and Ms. Indu. These bottles aren’t just decorative. They also function as barricades to stop people from carelessly track-hopping. Neha Venkatesh wrote on Facebook:
The most critical impact of this simple intervention blew me away: often, people used to cross railway tracks and that had led to an unprecented increase in rail accidents; these plants don't leave much space for people to cross through, thereby encouraging them to use the foot over bridge to cross over to another platform.
Perhaps this creative recycling will prompt other innovative ways to deal with India's growing plastic waste.

author: Rezwan


text:
In Mexico, Psychiatric Patients Are Ready for Innovation, But Health Centers Are Not · Global Voices
Mercedes Matz

Entrance to the psychiatric hospital Villa Ocaranza. Photograph by Pedro Zamacona. Published with permission.
Below is an edited and updated version of a piece originally published in the online magazine Yaconi.
What happens when we think of a psychiatric hospital? We probably imagine white walls, rooms guarded from the outside with safety locks, buildings covered with small, mesh-lined windows and poorly treated residents in straitjackets with their arms bound, just like in horror films — or in real-life mental asylums of Mexico.
In order to stamp out harmful environments like this, Mexico implemented a new method of patient care in 2000, one that envisioned the creation of a different type of treatment center and emphasized that patients have the right to receive quality, comprehensive medical and psychiatric care, as well as preventative care, hospitalization and adequate rehabilitation. In theory, the Hidalgo Model for Mental Health Care strives for patients to feel as though they were at home and helps them to work on doing certain activities by themselves, like brushing their teeth or learning crafts. The Villa Ocaranza Psychiatric Hospital, located in Hidalgo, Mexico, was the first to implement it, with the promise of bringing a better quality of life to its patients.
Ten years later, between 2011 and 2012, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) visited 41 psychiatric hospitals throughout the country to see patients’ living conditions in each of the facilities. What they found was deplorable: the unjustified use of electric shocks, isolation, poor nutrition, insufficient personnel, and torture of patients. The Villa Ocaranza hospital was one of the locations singled out for violations of patients’ rights, including the failure of staff to treat them humanely and with dignity. One employee even committed aggravated statutory rape against a patient, as described in the Special Report submitted by the CNDH in 2013.
At the end of 2014, I wrote a piece for the news site Yaconic, which depicted the uncertainty that day and night accompanied the then 109 patients of the hospital, who carried with them a heartbreaking past and a future that was even more uncertain. We're now republishing an edited and updated version on Global Voices, two years later but still very relevant.
The entrance of what had once been a ranch during the presidency of Porfirio Diaz and the Mexican Revolution (at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th) opens up to a courtyard that looks like it belongs in a school, with painted rooms in the style of little villas.
In the absence of the patients—men and women around 50 years old on average—the bedroom doors give the impression that they shelter the dreams and nightmares of preschool children. The colored cartoon drawings cover and decorate the entrance, as though put there by a 5-year-old.
Outside is the learning center, where residents knit, color, cut paper into shapes or make little balls of papier-mâché that they stick together with great concentration. At one of these tables, a man holds a pencil perfectly above a blank page; he has taken university-level classes, but this did not stop the schizophrenia from devouring him, something that, according to Dr. Karina Sánchez, manager of the learning center, says, “can occur due to genetics or the environment one lives in.”
At another table, they cut purple, orange and black tissue paper, preparing the decorations for the traditional Day of the Dead festival. They do this not only as a social activity, but also as something to help them situate themselves in time, says the doctor.
The 109 inhabitants of the Villa Ocaranza Hospital in Tolcayuca, Hidalgo, are full-time residents. Many of them have been admitted as children (even though this is a bad idea); others arrived alone or were abandoned. But all of them make up the last group of patients to be institutionalized in this hospital, who for better or worse will die here and hold vigils for those who precede them. And so, the hospital doesn't want to take in any more residents, though it is accepting patients. “It's not the best for the patient's health to stay hospitalized for years,” notes the psychologist.
The residents arrived without an identity or documents to prove the existence of a life before Ocaranza; they're not part of the system. They are consumed by psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia or disabilities such as severe mental retardation, although there are also patients here who require geriatric care.
Despite the complaints in 2011 and the report in 2013, things don't seem to be looking up for Villa Ocaranza. Human rights violations haven't been stopped. On the contrary, they've come to affect the employees themselves. In early 2016, local media such as the Quadrantín agency reported that at least 30 employees, including psychologists, nurses and administrative workers, were sexually harassed at work by the director of the institution, who was dismissed months later.
The inspirational promises that the Hidalgo Model carried with it have been diminished by a series of related violations and inconsistencies. Sadly, this is not an isolated case. It is only one example of the situation that patients face in psychiatric hospitals all over Mexico. However, the transgressions committed in Villa Ocaranza exemplify the seriousness of the situation, since they were committed even after a supposed change in procedure.
With the Mexican National Human Rights Commission report, the failures of the hospitals across Mexico were made public, such as the case of a patient at the Oaxaca State Psychiatric Hospital who was put into isolation for 90 days, a banned disciplinary sanction, but one that tends to be given to patients who show violent behavior.
Statistics say that in Mexico, around 14,000 people are diagnosed with a mental illness; anxiety, low frustration tolerance, depression and schizophrenia are the most common among them, according to Mexican newspaper La Jornada.
The Villa Ocaranza Psychiatric Hospital was inaugurated the same year as the introduction of the Miguel Hidalgo Model of Mental Health Care into the country, in 2000. But this was more than a grand opening: it was a renovation of the facility, since the hospital already had a history that was no less dark than the future it would have.
In the 1960s, it was one of the hospitals that received patients from the famous Hospital General de La Castañeda, located in Mexico City, and known as “a nightmare of psychiatry,” due to the horrors that lived inside its walls: screams, torture and therapies that only fed into the patients’ trauma.
Currently, the architecture of Villa Ocaranza has seven colorful villas where the patients live, but more than 40 years ago, it was a single large building under the name of Dr. Fernando Ocaranza Psychiatric Hospital. “The nurses could not cope, and neither could the doctors nor the psychologists. In the 60s, having an elementary school diploma, a month-long first aid course certificate and the need to work were enough to become part of the nursing staff,” recalls Dr. Sánchez.
Only wreckage remains of the old building, silent save for the sudden calls of birds, with mountains of children's shoes with their shoelaces untied, the curtains torn up and a cushion in the corner, everything covered with a shroud of dust built up over years. There is also a bleak room here full of white coffins. The caskets sit one on top of the other, waiting to be occupied by the patients who are sure to die in the villas next door. Villa Ocaranza and the old building are neighbors, very similar looking, and still very connected.
In an environment where the media so often offers up good news and then picks it apart, it is not hard to begin to doubt the logic and rationality of a system that puts in place laws that in theory look good, but in reality don't make an impact. Meanwhile, the residents of Villa Ocaranza ask about their families: Where are they? When will they come to visit?

author: Mercedes Matz


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Mapping the Smells of Kyiv · Global Voices
Aliide Naylor

Image: Kate McLean
On Christmas Day in Britain, people sat down with their families and friends to eat dinner, open gifts, and muster a little holiday spirit. Over the break, artist and designer Kate McLean traveled to Kyiv, planning some innocent sightseeing in Ukraine's scenic capital. She didn't know it at the time, but Kyiv would be expecting her.
Known for “mapping smells” across the past five years in places all over the world, from Milan to Glasgow to Rhode Island, McLean has acquired some celebrity. When her flight to Ukraine suffered a massive 24-hour delay, she turned to Twitter to vent her frustration.
“Ukrainian International Airlines had a problem with their flaps, and I lost the plot and tweeted something to that effect, and a data journalist in Kyiv texted me,” McClean said.
Her tweet caught the eye of Andriy Gazin, a self-described “data hipster” and “procrastiworker” living in Kyiv. He reached out to McLean, asking if she was visiting Ukraine. “Is it a work visit, and would you mind giving us a talk or some sort of presentation?” McLean said Gazin asked her.
“When Kate posted on Twitter that she's coming to Kyiv, I realized that this is a good chance to meet her and talk about smellwalking and smellmaps,” Gazin said via email. “It was pretty spontaneous decision, but I asked subscribers of my Facebook page about dataviz [data visualization] … and up to ten people agreed to participate.”
So, on Dec. 25, the small group “with notepads taken from various conferences and pieces of paper folded up, and a group of people who came from all sorts of backgrounds,” set off to record the scents of Kyiv in the winter. The results, it turns out, are glorious.
The smellwalkers’ route through Kyiv. Image: Kate McLean
McLean is now in the process of creating a detailed map of where Kyiv’s wafting winter aromas lurk.
The “smellwalkers” recorded the city's scents, including smells like “the islands of summer,” “wet animal fur,” and “rusty metal.” McLean, as a newcomer to Kyiv, found herself acutely aware of smells that may have bypassed accustomed locals. “The charcoal that the food stalls were using right at the top of St. Michael’s church … [was] really, really distinctive,” McLean said.
“Most people were grilling or barbecuing meat — so there were strong smells of that coming out — but what they were using as fuel was very different … these were big, dirty drum braziers with real charcoal in them,” she says. While noting the difficulties in “pinning down” the fluidity of smell, there were some scents she says that are very specific to Kyiv.
“One was very much the wood smoke — that came in a variety of forms. It came from the charcoal and it came almost as a background smell. The other is very specific in terms of the salo — it’s not something that I’ve ever witnessed anywhere else in the world, ever,” she said.
Kyiv's holy sites also presented unique scents that McLean said the locals had trouble noticing. “It’s the labdanum (rockrose resin) inside the churches that’s used as the incense, which is called laddanik there. I noticed that, but it didn’t feature in the smell walk — nobody actually noted it down … there was just enough of that incense, candle, type smell that was floating out from its woodwork doors for me to notice,” she said.
Image: Kate McLean
While the trek across Kyiv was a novel introduction to the city for McLean, the locals in her group experienced it as a new and intriguing perspective on something familiar. “I worked for ten years in the pharmaceutical industry,” said Anastasiya Fesenko. “The smell walk was, for me, like a new window into a country … that I love,” she said. “Inspiration is everywhere — herbs, flowers, fresh air, and trees … I was mostly impressed with how many smells are around me.”
Gazin noticed how mapping the smells of the city may open up new possibilities for conceptualizing Kyiv. “I suppose, the first thing you realize during the smellwalk is that you have never actually experienced the city through smells. I mean, of course you notice different smells everyday, like coffee, gas, a bakery, perfumes, etc. But you never tried to combine all … to describe a specific place or the city in general,” he said, noting the growing variety of ways data scientists have been mapping spaces, including the work of startups like what3words, which breaks down spaces into three-by-three-meter blocks, into three-word “postcodes.”
Image: Kate McLean
“What I didn't realize is that we can really describe different parts of Kyiv through a number of smells,” Gazin said.
Kyiv's most potent fusion of smells appears to be Zhytniy Rinok. According to Gazin, this place resembles “a museum of different smells: raw meat and fish, and milk and honey, spices and fruits, but also household items like wallpapers, and clothes.”
Image: Kate McLean
Citing one of her teammate's findings, McLean wrote, “You’ve actually got all of the seasons that are in here – you’ve got winter, summer, spring, autumn all prevalent in that one market place,” she said. “Summer was strawberries, autumn was pomegranates … as we entered the market place there was glintwein (winter), and then spring was somebody selling fresh herbs in the corner that (a) were very green, and (b) were very very fresh — a leafy volatile scent came from them. So these guys all did visualizations at the end of it.”
Image: Kate McLean
Naturally, however, the seasons of the year affect the way in which smells are both received and transmitted “hugely,” McLean said. “It was one of the things we talked about at the start. Smells actually need heat in order to be able to volatilize. So the warmer it is, the more smell molecules there are in the air … the human sense of smell also closes down in the cold weather. So we’ve got a double whammy: there are fewer smells and we’re less able to detect them.”
The map could prove to be a valuable asset — and not just for people who can't be in Kyiv to breathe the air. One women in McLean's group is almost without a sense of smell, Gazin says. “She only came on this walk to experience the city through what other people can smell,” he said.

author: Aliide Naylor


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Oscar López Rivera, Puerto Rico’s Longest-Serving Political Prisoner, Has Sentence Commuted by President Obama · Global Voices
Ángel Carrión

Oscar López Rivera. Image circulated widely via social media.
Oscar López Rivera's sentence has been commuted by US President Barack Obama. He is Puerto Rico's longest-held political prisoner.
The news first broke on social media on the afternoon of January 17, although the pro-independence weekly Claridad had announced that a source confirmed that Obama was considering the release. Among the details that have been revealed so far, is the fact that López Rivera's release is not immediate. His prison sentence will extend until May 17, 2017. The release is without conditions.
López Rivera has said the first thing he will do as soon as he gets out of prison is visit family in Chicago, but that he plans on settling in the town of San Sebastián del Pepino, his birthplace in the northwest of Puerto Rico.
López Rivera was convicted of “seditious conspiracy” 35 years and seven months ago due to his links to the Armed Forces of National Liberation (in Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, or FALN), which was a group that fought for Puerto Rico's independence from the US during the 1970s and 1980s through armed struggle. López Rivera has always held that he is innocent of killing anyone or of committing any violent acts. Indeed, no evidence has ever linked López Rivera to any of the violence committed by the FALN.
Global Voices has been covering the movement calling to release López Rivera from prison for several years now. As more information becomes known, Global Voices will follow up on this breaking news story. Stay tuned for further details.

author: Ángel Carrión


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Thai Junta Didn’t See the Irony of Installing Dinosaurs in Front of the Government House · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Dinosaur models in front of Government House in Bangkok, Thailand. Screenshot from the video of Matichon TV uploaded on YouTube
Thailand celebrates its annual Children’s Day every January by offering various educational and fun activities to the country's youth.
Government agencies across often invite children on this day to visit public offices to learn about the bureaucracy and receive gifts from the state. The army, for instance, has gained notoriety for allowing children to play with real guns and tanks inside military camps every year on Children’s Day.
This year, the Government House, where the prime minister and some cabinet members hold office, opened its gates to children and encouraged them to play with 20 dinosaur models installed inside its compound.
Government House is open to the public on Saturday for Children’s Day. Highlight is the dinosaurs. Map:https://t.co/pECSAetSbX #Bangkok pic.twitter.com/hItkNp5xKD
— Richard Barrow (@RichardBarrow) January 13, 2017
The dinosaurs installed by the Department of Mineral Resources are models of species whose fossils have been unearthed in Thailand: Phuwiangosaurus sirindornae, Siamotyrannus isanensis and Kinnareemimus dinosaurs.
For some observers of Thai politics, they couldn’t resist commenting on the symbolism of placing dinosaur models in front of a government building whose present occupant represents an institution which grabbed power in 2014 and has since then failed to restore civilian democracy in the country.
@Saksith you wonder what planet the Junta live on if they don't see any irony in there being dinosaurs at government house…
— Tony Hedges (@TonyHedges) January 7, 2016
So many dinosaurs are at government house…a few are even seen outside. https://t.co/fnCJun6NDu
— Piriyathep K (@PKinbangkok) January 8, 2016
The army has launched more than a dozen coup attempts since the 1930s. It took over the government in 2014 and drafted a new constitution containing provisions which guaranteed a stronger role of the military in the bureaucracy even if elections were to be held in the future.
Facebook user Anuthin Wongsunkakon also noticed:
Ironically, this year they fill the front lawn with jurassic creatures and that is exactly what we all become.
Kong Rithdee, the life editor of the Bangkok Post newspaper, sees black comedy in the unveiling of the dinosaurs:
It's not some kind of black comedy, is it? Dinosaurs in Government House, as if we haven't had enough? A Jurassic superimposition on the Jurassic, the exhibition featuring 20 prehistoric reptile species unearthed in Thailand is called “An Adventure with the Dinosaurs”, which sounds like the daily adventure we've had every day anyway. Some of the dinosaurs can move (naturally). The paleontological irony is endless, and so is the unintended analogy.
Prachatai, an independent news website and partner of Global Voices, described the dinosaurs as a symbol of Thai democracy. Indeed, for many people, the belief that democracy can be realized through a military dictatorship represents an outmoded concept of politics.
In the meantime, we hope that Thai kids enjoyed their interaction with the dinosaurs — inside the Government House and outside.

author: Mong Palatino


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Bahrain Intensifies Media Crackdown Ahead of Protest Anniversary · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

Photo from clashes in Bahrain on 5 February 2015 between police and protesters. Photograph by Sayed Hashim. Copyright: Demotix
Bahrain is intensifying its crackdown on media freedom ahead of the 14 February uprising anniversary, when anti-government protesters, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, took to the streets and called for political reform and equality for the country's majority Shia population.
On 16 January, the government banned the online edition of the country’s only independent newspaper al-Wasat, from “using electronic media tools“. This implies that the paper is not only banned from publishing on its website but also from having any online presence through its different social media channels. The paper has 229K followers on Twitter and more than 354K on Facebook. The newspaper also has a YouTube channel, and an Instagram account.
Al-Wasat co-founder Karim Al-Fakhrawi died in the custody of the National Security Agency in April 2011 after he was subjected to torture. The news daily has faced similar bans in the past. In 2010 it was banned from broadcasting audio reports and interviews on its website, while last year it was forced to close its video section until August of the same year.
The Ministry of Information tweeted that it has banned the daily for “repeatedly publishing and broadcasting material that causes a rift in society and a spirit of division that harms national unity and public order.” It is not clear what material the ministry is referring to, but activists speculate that the ban may have been in response to the paper’s coverage (both online and offline) of the 15 January execution of three men convicted of the murder of three policemen in a bombing attack in 2014.
Rights groups described the men's trial as unfair, after they were forced to confess under torture. As the Bahrain Center for Human Rights reports:
AlWasat is the only newspaper in Bahrain that led its 16 January print edition with frontpage headlines of the 15 January execution. The AlWasat article featured photos of the executed victims, along with views of the independent local and international NGOs, and reporting on the popular reaction on the streets.
In the island kingdom of 1.2 million people, there are more than 4,000 political prisoners according to 2015 estimates from human rights groups.
In another incident, the trial of Nazeeha Saeed, a correspondent for Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya and France24, began on 16 January after Bahrain's Ministry of Information filed a complaint against her for “practicing journalism without a license”. Saeed, who was subjected to torture while in police custody in 2011, applied to renew her license for the current period, but the ministry rejected her application.
Under the Bahraini Press Law (Law 47/2002), correspondents of foreign media must obtain a license to be renewed every year, in order to be able to conduct their work. If they fail to do so, they face a maximum fine of 1,000 Bahraini Dinars (about 2,600 USD). Under Article 89 of the law, the Ministry has the power to revoke a foreign correspondent's license for publishing news that “involve[s] exaggeration, fabrication, deception or distortion.” Last year, the Ministry refused to renew the license of several foreign correspondents including Agence France-Presse photojournalist Mohammed Al-Shaikh, Associated Press photojournalist Hasan Jamali, AP reporter Reem Khalifa, and Reuters cameraman Aamer Mohammed.
Violent clashes erupted between protesters and the police, following last Sunday's execution. With just a few weeks left to the anniversary of the 14 February uprising, the situation remains intense in Bahrain. Authorities appear willing to silence any remaining independent media and critical voices they deem threatening to the ruling regime.

author: Afef Abrougui


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Bhutan’s Authorities Ban Film for ‘Misusing’ Religious Masks on Screen · Global Voices
Rezwan

Masked dancers perform in the annual religious Bhutanese festival called Tshechu on the 10th day of the month of the lunar Tibetan calendar. Image from Flickr by Arian Zweckers. CC BY 2.0
The recent banning of a film accused of demeaning religious symbols has stirred up a lot of debate in Bhutan.
The Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority (BICMA) declared that Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait,  a feature film by Tibetan Buddhist lama and writer Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, cannot be screened in the country, following a review by the National Films Review Board and the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs.
The media authority communicated the decision in a letter sent on January 10, 2016 to the production company behind the film, Tsong Tsong Ma Productions, saying the ban was “due to the various religious masks used by the characters in the film, which is not in keeping with our own tradition and culture”.
The film takes place in Bhutan, and is about a group of people who spend several days in the woods together in anonymity, thanks to the masks they wear. It was filmed in Bhutan with more than 400 actors, mostly village people from the eastern part of the country.
The official religion of Bhutan is Buddhism, and it influences many aspects of the small country's culture. Masks feature in some customs. At the moment, Bhutan finds itself having to work to preserve its traditional culture and heritage amidst influence of foreign cultures as the country embraces rapid development.
Many Bhutanese, however, are unclear what exactly was objectionable about the masks. The film has already been screened in a number of international film festivals like the Locarno Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and the Singapore International Film Festival, and received a special mention by an international jury for placing second at the Toronto International Film Festival in September last year. It was scheduled to be premiered in Bhutan in December 2016.
For Bhutanese ART & CREATIVITY #freehemahema .. Regulators – please don't mix love of ones culture with infringement on creative freedom. pic.twitter.com/EQdOVuULzS
— tshering dorji (@tsheringdorjee) January 15, 2017
When art gets trumped by legislation, there is a problem! #FreeHemaHema https://t.co/SS0lZIVE1K
— Yogesh Dahal (@yogeshdahal) January 15, 2017
The film's official Facebook page addressed the ban:
This narrowed minded decision is not just a ban against the film but a decision against the freedom of expression and creativity in Bhutan. It has sent out a loud and clear message to all aspiring Bhutanese artists that in Bhutan there are boundaries to one's dreams and to one's creativity. […]
This decision undermines artistic expression and creative freedom. It reflects the inability of decision makers and media regulator to see the bigger picture. While regulation is a necessary evil to avoid misinformation, deliberate manipulation of facts, and insensitive distortion of cultural values, among others, it should not be arbitrarily imposed to stifle and subdue the budding creative industry.
People are questioning whether the film truly violated cultural or religious symbols as accused when they were used purely for the purposes of art. For example, Tashi TD commented:
The film does not undermine the sacred symbol and use of masks. Rather the masks are used as a powerful symbol and medium to convey the fundamental message about identity, anonymity and freedom.
Younten Jamtsho said:
Modern people needs to be reached with modern means. If BICMA based their judement on their guidlines, then it is high time that they review it to set more space for creative arts and expressions.
Sonam Wangmo Dukpa-Jhalani reviewed the film and its use of masks for Bhutanese lifestyle magazine Yeewong:
The lead actor of Hema Hema, Tshering Dorji, a charismatic and natural actor […], has the hefty task of conveying his feelings with a mask on. It is not the easiest thing to do, but he does so successfully – we feel his desire, we sense his fear, we experience his aggression and remorse. […]
Some of the scenes in the movie are rendered like visual poetry, and some like a mystic, operatic performance.
And some like Sonam Wongmo wondered whether this is cultural policing:
Ironic that while more Bhutanese celebrate Xmas, Halloween, have weddings where they follow western traditions (wearing gowns etc) throw baby showers, in essence observe traditions that are not ours, BICMA is worried that a film about Bhutan is not keeping with “tradition”?
As it goes with the nature of bans, it has made me (and I am sure the rest of the Bhutanese) even more curious, and for HEMA Hema, a ban is a boost.


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Many Feared Dead After High-Rise Mall in Tehran Collapses Following Fire · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Screenshot of the collapse via Press TV.
Iranians are grappling with shock after the country's once tallest high-rise building collapsed on Thursday morning after being engulfed by fire.
Nearly 200 of Tehran's firefighters from 10 different fire stations had responded to the blaze at Plasco, a high-rise shopping centre, around 8 am. There are fears that people were killed in the collapse, but authorities have yet to confirm. Around 50 to 100 people are believed to have been trapped in the rubble.
Plasco was constructed in 1962, and has become a point of contention in the city as its safety hazards have been long known. The building had caught fire before.
Social media has been abuzz with the news and images of this devastating incident, using the hashtag #پلاسکو in Persian, and #plasco in English. 50 have been reported dead at the time of publishing this post. *Update 20 January 2017:*  Authorities have since confirmed that 30 people were killed.
President Hassan Rouhani tweeted about the government's response:
حادثه ساختمان #پلاسکو تهران مایه تأسف و تأثر گردید. دستور به وزیر کشور: رسیدگی فوری به مجروحان، جبران خسارات آسیب دیدگان و بررسی دلایل حادثه
— حسن روحانی (@Rouhani_ir) 19 de enero de 2017
The Plasko building incident was very tragic and unfortunate. The Interior Minister has ordered immediate care to the wounded, with plans to compensate the victims and investigate the cause of the accident.
One widely shared tweet featured a dramatic photo of firefighters seemingly emotional at the scene accompanied by lines from a poem:
با صدای بی صدا
مثل یک کوه بلند
مثل یک خواب کوتاه
یه مرد بود یه مرد pic.twitter.com/DAEPb3LGHA
— نَفَهم (@na_fahm) January 19, 2017
With voiceless sounds, like a tall mountain, like a short sleep, he was a man, a man.
And on Telegram, a popular post on online news site Khabar Online reported that spectators had gathered at the scene in such large numbers that it was making rescue of the victims difficult.
A widely shared Telegram post, with over 38,000 viewers on the fire explains that people have gather in such large numbers as spectators that helping the rescue the victims of the collapse has become difficult. Screenshot from Telegram.
Other posts on social media illustrated how a vast number of Iranians were passive spectators to the catastrophe. While some were reluctant to help, it appeared many were getting in the way of rescue efforts by gathering to capture the event on camera.
Iran cartoon mocking onlookers during today's fire at the historic Plasco building in Tehran, and its eventual collapse. #پلاسكو pic.twitter.com/pOGIiDVa3y
— Hanif Zarrabi-K. (@hanifzk) January 19, 2017
Woman pleads w/passive onlookers of Plasco collapse to help w/search & rescue: “U fought in the (Iraq) war! Don't go home! Plz help!” #Iran pic.twitter.com/CkH4FRTMW1
— Hanif Zarrabi-K. (@hanifzk) January 19, 2017
Positive actions from Iranians, however, came in the form of large crowds donating blood for the victims of the collapse.
سازمان انتقال خون
شهروندان خون خود را برای کمک به مصدومان اهدا می‌کنند#پلاسكو pic.twitter.com/SCvUeHmvzP
— وقایع اتفاقیه (@VaghayeDaily) January 19, 2017
Organisation for Blood Donations:
Citizens are donating blood to help the victims of the collapse #plasco
Photos circulating on social media showed the stark before and after of the Plasco building:
خاطرات خريد لباس هاي خاص و ماهي هاي زيبات همشون فروريخت??#Pelasco #پلاسکو o pic.twitter.com/m5wp7pzw88
— mansour_azizii (@mansour57906203) 19 de enero de 2017
Memories of buying special clothes and fish, now it has all collapsed
Photo of what remains of the landmark #Plasco tower in downtown #Tehran by Mahdi Afrakhteh pic.twitter.com/v9uWD0paGO
— Golnar Motevalli (@golnarM) January 19, 2017

author: Mahsa Alimardani


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The Bosnian Politician Caught Lying About an Invitation to Trump’s Inauguration · Global Voices
Tijana Cvjetićanin

Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska. Photo by Demokratska stranka (Democratic Party from Serbia), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY.
The reports on the upcoming inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump have mostly been dominated by news of the struggle to find artists willing to perform at the ceremony, of enlisted performers dropping out, of predictions that more people might attend the “Women’s protest march” than the inauguration itself, and of the unusually large number of Congress members boycotting the events.
In a small country halfway around the world, however, the Trump inauguration has been receiving media attention of an entirely different kind, as one of its highest-level politicians has been bending over backwards to prove that he was invited to the official inauguration ceremony.
On January 17, Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska (RS), one of the two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), became the target of sanctions by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for obstructing the “Dayton Accords”, the peace agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war and established the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Dodik, who is known for his secessionist politics, apparently crossed the line in September 2016, when he organized a referendum against the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH.
In his response to the sanctions, Dodik repeated the claims he had made a month before: that the outgoing US administration was retaliating against him for, among other reasons, being invited to the official inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump.
“Their politics were defeated at the November elections and I am still politically active,” Dodik said. “That’s why they retaliated against me. They probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been invited to the inauguration by my friends who are close to the incoming administration. And that was the hit they launched to prevent me from going, because they simply couldn’t stand to see me there.”
This theory, bizarre enough on its own, is even more farcical considering the fact that Dodik never received such an invitation, in spite of the dramatic story he built around these claims.
The claims were first disputed by BiH’s Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak, who stated that no such invitation had arrived through official channels. Crnadak suggested that Dodik had probably secured an invitation to one of many inaugural side events as a result of his lobbying activities in the US.
Dodik responded that he was “…also invited to the Inaugural Ball, where Donald Trump will be present,” and that he would be seated in the seventh row. “Unless the outgoing administration denies me a visa, I’ll be at the inauguration,” he said.
Soon after the media in BiH and the region reported the story, Dodik stated that he had received a call from Hoyt Brian Yee, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, who allegedly tried to pressure him into “abandoning his party’s policy.” Dodik said Yee called him because he knew Dodik was about to apply for a US visa, and that Yee requested among other things, that Dodik respond to the subpoena issued by the State Prosecutor’s office regarding the referendum.
Kuku nam Dodik ne može u Ameriku, a veli zva’ ga je Tramp. Sad ako ne podje Tramp će mu dobro zamjerit.
— makse_kralju (@makse_kralju) December 26, 2016
Oh woe, our Dodik can't go to America, and he says Trump invited him. If he doesn't go Trump’s really gonna hold it against him.
Dodik responded to Yee’s request with bravado, calling the US “most responsible for the crisis in BiH” and issuing calls for them to “leave the country and stop meddling here.” A day later Dodik announced that he had been denied a diplomatic visa, and interpreted this as a sign that Maureen Cormack, US ambassador to BiH, was waging a personal vendetta against him—provoked, apparently, by having seen his name on the official guest list for Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
According to Dodik: “The problem emerged when the official list for the inaugural ceremony, the part listing the invitees and the seating arrangements—you know, who gets which row and seat—when the old administration got that notice, they flipped out. Also, the certificates for that, with my name on it, and the tickets to that Presidential ball. Suddenly, it was like—how is it possible that this administration keeps portraying Dodik as the bad guy, and all of the sudden he is invited to this important ceremony, which many in the current administration can’t even imagine being invited to?”
The falsity of Dodik’s claims, however, were indirectly confirmed by his own actions. After all the huffing and puffing over being denied a diplomatic visa, he applied for a regular visitor’s visa to the US and also showed up for questioning at Prosecutor’s Office, thereby breaking his earlier “vow” that he would never come to Sarajevo again.
All the while, however, Dodik never backed down from his original story. On December 26, 2016, public broadcaster RTRS ran an excerpt from a television interview with Dodik scheduled for airing on December 29. In the segment, entitled “Dodik shows the invitation to Trump’s inauguration” Dodik displays a letter he claims had been sent by his “friends on Trump’s transition team, who haven’t forgotten about Milorad Dodik, or Republika Srpska.”
“They decided,” Dodik says in the television interview, “as is within their right, to invite me to the act of inauguration, taking place on January 20th. And, in the evening—it’s noted precisely, this is the invitation, you can film it—in the evening, a Presidential ball will be held, attended by the President, who usually shakes hands and even takes photos with everyone present. I received this on December 2nd and I didn’t want it to attract too much media attention. But that happened anyway and it came from Washington, as far as I know.”
Stičem utisak da će Tramp odložiti inauguraciju ako Dodik ne dođe.
— Boban Karović (@BobanKarovic) December 29, 2016
I get the impression that Trump would postpone his inauguration if Dodik doesn't come.
The letter Dodik showed in the interview, however, was not an invitation to the inauguration, but rather a letter from one of his personal acquaintances inviting him to an event called the Faith, Freedom and Future Inaugural Reception, organized by Family Research Council (FRC), a non-profit focused mainly on anti-abortion advocacy.
Dodik’s claim that Trump would be present at the event was also false, as at the time no information had yet been released as to which inaugural events Trump would attend. When the Presidential Inaugural Committee finally released the list of official events, the “Faith, Freedom and Future Ball” was not among them.
“Letter of proof” shown by Republika Srpska's public broadcaster.
Some days later Obrad Kesić, head of RS Office For Cooperation, Trade And Investment in Washington, one of the offices Dodik set up abroad to act as embassy surrogates for Republika Srpska, doubled down on the story. Kesić stated that the US Embassy was behaving “strangely”, and said that in addition to Dodik, Trump’s team had invited “20 other statesmen” to the inauguration, in a departure from the usual practice of not having foreign leaders at the inauguration. Kesić’s claim was quickly refuted by the US Embassy, which confirmed that there be no changes to traditional practice.
Ocekujem uskoro vijest: ” Dodik kao najjaci Trampov partner jedini ima VIP mjesto na inauguraciji! “#Tramp u Dodikovoj sjeni
— Aleksandar Kostic (@kostic1991) December 29, 2016
Expecting the news to read: “Dodik, as Trump's strongest partner, is the only one with a VIP seat at the innauguration.”
#Trump in Dodik's shadow.
There are also strong indications that the invitation letter Dodik showed on television did not come from “a member of Trump’s transition team,” as Dodik had claimed. Although the signature on the letter wasn’t visible,  the sender’s offer to return “the kind hospitality you extended to me and Liz” pointed in the direction of Bob McEwen, a former US Congressman who met with Dodik in Banja Luka earlier in 2016. McEwen, whose congressional term ended in 1993, is executive director of the Council for National Policy, one of the several groups on the US ultra-conservative religious right sponsoring the “Faith, Freedom and Future Ball.”
Screenshot from www.faithfreedomfutureball.com
McEwen is a registered lobbyist, which the BiH media has identified as the source of another possible connection with Dodik. There are, however, no direct links between McEwen and Trump. It seems that their closest contact was at Trump’s June 2016 meeting with 500 Evangelical leaders. McEwen does, nevertheless, have previous links with Balkans politics. He is listed by the Podesta lobbying group as one of their contacts for Albania’s public relations in 2013, and among his résumé highlights is his co-hosting of a conference of Balkan Prime Ministers in 2005, “for the purpose of facilitating dialogue and reconciliation in that troubled region of the world.”
McEwen’s résumé also mentions his role as US observer of Poland’s Parliamentary election in 1989, in events “that encouraged the collapse of Soviet dominated governments throughout Eastern Europe”. It also mentions that he gave one of the “closing arguments before the vote to authorize military action by the United States in Desert Storm”, and was sponsor of the “National Strategy Act” praised by Dick Cheney. None of these activities are in line with Dodik’s proclaimed opposition to US interventionism, which, understandably, peaked after he became the target of US sanctions.
Even if McEwen was not the sender the letter Dodik proudly showed off on television, the groups behind the “Faith, Freedom and Future Ball” certainly represent positions that Dodik claims to oppose. FRC’s executive vice president, Jerry Boykin, for instance, was Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence during George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” years. Ironically, the Executive Order 13304, which was the legal basis for sanctions against Dodik, was signed by Bush himself during that period (2003).
Taken all together, these factors add a thick layer of hypocrisy to Dodik’s “tale of the official invite”, in which Dodik’s Washington DC friends are portrayed as the anti-interventionist antithesis of the outgoing US administration, and Milorad Dodik himself as a remarkable “statesman” over whom the two sides supposedly clashed.
The author of this post is a member of the team of the Istinomjer (Truth-o-meter), which published her extensive fact-checking of this case.

author: Tijana Cvjetićanin


text:
They’re Partying This Friday to Make America Great Again, In Russia · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Photo: Maria Katasonova / Instagram
The Obama era ends on Friday. With just hours to go until Donald Trump takes over as U.S. president, the billionaire’s supporters across America are likely in a celebratory mood, anxiously awaiting the demise of left-wing tyranny, or whatever else it was that prompted millions of people to vote for the Republican candidate last November.
There’s a party scheduled in Moscow, too, but you’ve got to be on the list to attend.
Invitations went out over social media this week, informing journalists about inauguration festivities organized by the “White Star” art collective, which includes several prominent figures in Russia’s pro-Kremlin youth movement.
According to the organizers, reporters from several major news outlets have already been accredited to attend the event, including journalists from CNN, BBC, ABC, The Guardian, The Times, Newsweek, The Associated Press, and others.
In addition to a live feed from Washington, where Trump will take the oath of office on Friday, the audience in Moscow can expect at least two “presentations”: one about the “political philosophy” of the “triptych” (the art collective’s belief that Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Marine Le Pen will usher in a new world order), and another by Kirill Benediktov, a science-fiction writer with ties to the LaRouche movement. Benediktov recently wrote a book about Trump, titled “Black Swan,” where he reviews some of Trump’s past entrepreneurial escapades in Russia.
The most photogenic person expected at the Trump inauguration party is without a doubt Maria Katasonova, a beautiful 23-year-old woman who works as an aide to State Duma deputy Yevgeny Fyodorov, the founder of an ultra-right political movement that claims the Russian Federation exists as a colony of the United States.
Katasonova has appeared in interviews and photographs reprinted by news outlets all over the world, thanks to her tireless and colorful advocacy for Donald Trump. She got another publicity boost last month, when she was photographed at a Kremlin press conference holding up her art collective’s iconic “triptych” portrait of Putin, Le Pen, and Trump, side by side.
Триптих. #MLP2017 #Marine2017 #LePen #MarineLePen #France #Trump2016 #Trump #Putin #USA #Russia
A photo posted by Мария Катасонова (@katasonovamaria) on
Last fall, Katasonova even ran for a seat in the State Duma, losing miserably to the incumbent.
Thanks to Trump’s surprising defeat of Hillary Clinton, however, Katasonova has retained some prominence in Moscow’s pro-Kremlin youth sideshow, whose government-connected activists periodically stage events to remind reporters about their existence. Friday and its parade of “triptych” philosophers promises to be the latest reminder.

author: Kevin Rothrock


text:
What Eyewitnesses Say Happened When Israeli Police Tried to Demolish Umm el-Hiran, a Bedouin Arab Village · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

Bedouin man standing by a destroyed home in Umm el-Hiran village. Wednesday January 18, 2016. Source: Global Voices
Eyewitnesses say a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset was shot in the face, while he and a dozen other Arab-Israeli politicians, activists and villagers were protesting in Umm El-Hiran, in the Negev Desert of southern Israel, against a planned Israeli government demolition to replace the Arab Bedouin village with a Jewish town.
Activists on the scene say minutes after their cars arrived in the village at six in the morning on January 18, 2017, police forces “came rushing in towards us from all sides, guns ablaze, in full riot gear, and started yelling and pushing people around.”
After the incident, Israeli media and the police claimed that the Member of the Israeli Knesset Odeh was injured by a Palestinian stone-thrower, but activists, and Odeh himself, assert that he was hit by a black sponge-tipped Israeli bullet.
After Odeh was shot, eyewitnesses say police tear-gassed the other protesters and the bulldozers started moving in. While this was happening, at a little distance down a hill, a Bedouin school teacher's car rammed into a crowd of Israeli police officers. Eyewitnesses on the scene say his car was shot at before it accelerated and hit the crowd. Israeli police dispute this account.
Israeli forces carried out demolitions for eight hours after the incident.
Umm El-Hiran is one of the 40 “unrecognised” Bedouin Arab villages in the Negev region, which is home to tens of thousands and the Israeli government has slated for demolition. The issue of Bedouin villages in Israel is complicated because, despite resembling Israeli settlement practices in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, these villages are legally recognised as part of Israeli territory. Most of these communities set up villages after being displaced from their ancestral villages during the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic, which saw the establishment of Israel and the expulsion of approximately 700,000 Palestinians.
Earlier this month, Israeli bulldozers destroyed al-Araqib, a southern Negev village that has been demolished more than 100 times since 2010.
These demolitions are happening in the context of Israel's “Prawer-Begin” plan, officially known as the “Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev”, and affecting approximately 40,000 Arab Bedouins who are citizens of Israel. As Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, points out:
Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel, inhabitants of the Naqab (Negev) desert since the seventh century, are the most vulnerable community in Israel. For over 60 years, the indigenous Arab Bedouin have faced a State policy of displacement, home demolitions and dispossession of their ancestral land. Today, 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens live in 35 villages that, which either predate the establishment of the State in 1948, or were created by Israeli military order in the early 1950s. The State of Israel considers the villages “unrecognized” and the inhabitants “trespassers on State land,” so it denies these citizens access to State infrastructure like water, electricity, sewage, education, health care and roads. The State deliberately withholds basic services from these villages to “encourage” the Arab Bedouin citizens to give up their ancestral land.
The 972Mag team has a special coverage of the Prawer-Begin plan.
Global Voices received eyewitnesses accounts of events from two trusted sources on the scene. We are withholding the identity of our sources for their safety. The first source explains:
I arrived in Umm El-Hiran early on Wednesday morning together with two dozen Palestinian and Jewish activists who had travelled to the village from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva to stand in solidarity with the residents of Umm El-Hiran facing imminent demolition. That morning I had left Jerusalem at 4am and driven to UaH with fellow activists from All That’s Left, a Jewish anti-occupation collective. We arrived at approximately 5.30 am.
We had been following the events in Umm El-Hiran and maintained close contact with its residents via Rabbi Arik Ashermann, former director of Rabbis for Human Rights and who now runs an organisation called Haqel which is behind the The Four Villages Campaign. On the evening of the 17th, we organised our trip as we knew the demolition order had been issued for the next day. However, residents were still negotiating with the authorities well into the night of 17th/18th so when we went to bed we did not know whether we would need to go at all because we thought they might still come to an agreement.
Last time, the presence of Israeli members of parliament and Jewish activists had prevented the police from carrying out the demolition order. That was the basic idea – to use our privilege and our bodies to resist non-violently. That time the police arrived early in the morning on the day of the demolition but soon left again without touching anyone or anything. It was a calm interaction. None of us were the least prepared for the horror and the meaningless deaths we were to experience in Umm El-Hiran that day.
Our source continues:
When we arrived, Member of Knesset (MK) Ayman Odeh and his team as well as some four or five Palestinian students from Beersheva University were already there. Minutes after we had parked the cars and walked into the village with some of the residents, when we were on a little square about 100m below the mosque, we saw police vans arriving over the hills. Just minutes later, police forces came rushing in towards us from all sides, guns ablaze, in full riot gear, and started yelling and pushing people around.
This is when Ayman Odeh started identifying himself as a member of parliament and called on the forces to stop the attack which was completely unsolicited and unexpected. I was standing a couple of meters away from him when he was struck in the head by a rubber-coated bullet and blood started spreading all over his face. Other police forces started spraying pepper spray directly in the faces and even throats of people standing by, who started coughing, screaming etc. I saw my friends getting beaten and kicked by police as they tried to run to safety. This is when a little further up the hill the drive over [the car ramming] must have happened. All of a sudden we heard heavy shooting very close by but it was dark and the police kept throwing sound grenades so it was impossible to understand what was going on. Panic broke out among the people in the square and we tried to turn around and move out of the way but wherever we turned there were police forces blocking our way.
Together with four other people, I got separated from the rest of the group and the police was pushing us further and further up the hill. By 6.30am it was all over. More and more police reinforcements had come in, all of the streets leading to the village were lined with police cars, according to my estimate there must have been at least 200 members of police forces including troops on horses. As we left, there were snipers on the roofs and all around us on the hills.The bulldozers came much later.
Umm El-Hiran on the morning of Wednesday January 18, 2017. Photo taken by Global Voices.
You must imagine that Umm El-Hiran is located in a valley and on the planes of the surrounding hills. From about 7am to 2.30pm the police completely shut down the village. They round up residents outside the mosque and let them wait there the entire time. There was also a group of women and children who were separated from the men and were waiting on one of the surrounding hills. There was a group of young and some adult men who left in a group of 40-50 people and joined us on the side of the hill where we were waiting by that point. We were standing on the main road, from which the road leads down to the village and from which you can oversee the whole village.
It must have been between 8 and 9am when journalists and MKs from the Joint List started to arrive. Haneen Zoabi and Ahmed Tibi were among those who tried to break through police lines later that morning and demanded to be let into the village as the police started moving in trucks and demolition equipment. That is when scuffles broke out between the police and the MKs and other people around them. In response some Shabab from the village started picking up stones and throwing them at the police. It is important that this was the first time that day someone threw a rock or something like a clash happened. The police reacted by beating and pushing people, chasing after them and everyone standing near on horses which was terrifying.
After the confrontation at around 6am no one of the press or other civilians were let in. The only journalist who was there when it all happened was Keren from ActiveStills. All other journalists not only arrived much later but they were way too far away, watching from the hilltop where by that point I, too, was standing. So they just adopted the police report. Also the police had jammed phone networks and it was almost impossible to get phone service that day.
The police reports as quoted in JPost and other media were blatantly lying from the beginning. The police denied that they were using this kind of rubber-coated bullet and instead claimed Ayman Odeh had been hit by a rock. I know for a fact that this is not true as we were standing just meters away. In fact, a friend, who was standing right next to Odeh, snatched the rubber-coated steel bullet that hurt the MK, hid it in his backpack, photographed it and later handed it over to another MK Dov Hanina from the Joint List to avoid confiscation. It was a huge fucking steel bullet, easily 8-10cm long. My friend has forwarded these photos to AP and other press outlets. You can also ask Odeh’s aide, Anan Maalouf for more details.
Umm El-Hiran on the morning of Wednesday January 18, 2017. Photo taken by Global Voices.
The driver of the car, a Bedouin school teacher named Abu Qi'an, and an Israeli police officer were killed during the demonstration.
Two versions of the car-ramming incident have surfaced. The first, put forward by the Israeli government, claims that “Abu Qi'an drove his vehicle and struck and killed at least one officer.” Police also claimed, without offering any evidence, that Abu Qi’an had “connections” to ISIS.
The second version of events, put forward by activists and witnesses, and corroborated by drone footage shot at the scene, says that Abu Qi’an’s “car veered toward the officers only after he was shot and lost control of the vehicle.” Speaking to The Times of Israel, a 26-year-old activist at the Center for Jewish Non-Violence, Uriel Eisner, said that police fired at Abu Qi’an's vehicle before it accelerated toward officers. Meanwhile, Israel's Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked blamed the death of the police officer on the Arab members of the Israeli Knesset and left-wing NGOs that were present.
Regarding the alleged car-ramming attack, our second source explains:
Accordingly, the driver, a school teacher from the village, tried to move his car. Like all other residents he knew the demolition was imminent. The police came in with full force and ready for a fight. According to those witnesses, the police opened fire as soon as they saw the car moving, as a result of which the driver either panicked or completely lost control. Keep in mind that this was happening on a slope so it could be that he lost control and the car rolled down into the village as a result. This version is also plausible if you watch the helicopter video released by the police that same day.
So while at present I cannot preclude the possibility of this being an attack, I have serious doubts about the version told by the police, who immediately labelled it a car ramming attack caused by Daesh (ISIS). It would make sense to me that in view of car ramming attacks in the past months, the police on the ground might have overreacted and started shooting at the driver as soon as they saw the car moving or even before.
There is no history of violent confrontation in Umm El-Hiran. In fact, the residents had been in negotiations with authorities until just hours before the violent onslaught.
The police forces came prepared for a violent confrontation and with a combat mindset, they came in full combat gear and with their weapons drawn. Their faces looked manic with fear or hate, “drugged up”, as one woman put it. In my opinion, they alone are responsible for escalating the situation on the ground that morning. They recklessly endangered civilians and themselves and are responsible for the death of the Bedouin man and the policeman killed that morning.
We and all other non-resident were not let back into the village until the police had destroyed a couple of houses and police units had withdrawn. As residents held a meeting and started mourning, police drones were flying overhead. When we finally left at about 3.30pm, residents had already started gathering some of the rubble.
Beyond some more existential questions, here are some thing I wondered about when standing on that hill watching the demolitions for about eight hours.
Why did the police already come in with their weapons drawn, looking to carry out violence against anyone present? Who gave the orders for such a violent onslaught? What were policemen told before descending on the village? What does this have to do with Netanyahu’s personal orders to “Enflame the Negev”?
Why did the press immediately report this as an attack? Who benefits from this version of events?

author: Elia J. Ayoub


text:
China’s Top Judge Warns Against the ‘Threat’ of Judicial Independence · Global Voices
Jack Hu

A court in China. Xinhua photo.
The term “rule of law”, referring to the idea that no one in a society is above the law, has become a popular phrase used by top Chinese leaders in their public speeches. But any emerging hope for justice in China has been dampened by the ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers, the practice of airing “confessions” of those accused of crimes on TV, and most recently remarks made by the country’s Chief of Justice Zhou Qiang.
At a Supreme People's Court meeting on January 14, Qiang warned the courts against the idea of judicial independence. He said:
要坚决抵制西方“宪政民主”、“三权分立”、“司法独立”等错误思潮影响，旗帜鲜明，敢于亮剑，坚决同否定中国共产党领导、诋毁中国特色社会主义法治道路和司法制度的错误言行作斗争，决不能落入西方错误思想和司法独立的“陷阱”，坚定不移走中国特色社会主义法治道路。
[China's courts] must firmly resist the western idea of “constitutional democracy”, “separation of powers” and “judicial independence”. These are erroneous western notions that threaten the leadership of the ruling Communist Party and defame the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law. We have to raise our flag and show our sword to struggle against such thoughts. We must not fall into the trap of western thoughts and judicial independence. We must stay firm on the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law.
Zhou's speech, widely reported by state-run media outlets, quickly provoked public outrage and a barrage of criticism from academics, intellectuals and a vast number of microbloggers on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Many accused the chief of justice of failing to uphold to Chinese Communist Party’s pledge of maintaining the rule of law.
The outcry attracted the attention of China's censorship authorities, and soon the headline of the article reporting his speech, “Must dare to show the sword to judicial independence and other erroneous western notions”, became unsearchable on Chinese social media. The newspaper People's Daily withdrew the article, and the Supreme People's Court published a series of posts on its website and via major media outlets to explain Zhou's position in more moderate language. But people are continuing to speak out against the ideological position.
Xiang Songzuo, a prestigious economist, pointed out that the current outflow of capital in China was related to the lack of commitment to the rule of law:
据一些机构数据，中国可投资金融资产亿元以上的人约9万，千万以上大约134万，超过65%的人急于将资产配置国外，60%的选择是美国。最大担忧是制度不确定性风险。执政者应高度重视这个现象。现在公然否定宪政民主司法独立，法治国家成一句空话，没有独立的司法保障，生命财产安全得不到妥善保障，人们如何安居乐业？
According to some data, in China, there are about 90,000 rich people who can invest above 100 million yuan, and about 1.34 million rich people who can invest above 10 million yuan. 65% of them are eager to shift their assets abroad, and 60% choose the US as the destination. Their biggest concern is the risk of uncertainty in the system. The administration should pay more attention to this phenomenon. Now [the chief of justice] has denounced constitutional democracy and judicial independence. The pledge to follow the rule of law has been turned into an empty promise. How can people live and work in peace when their lives and properties can’t be protected by an independent judicial system?
Xiang's comment was echoed by many who are considering leaving the country. Weibo user “Wrong path” said:
我认为这是本年度最佳移民广告。
The speech should be the best migration service advertisement of the year.
Another comment read:
看来中国现在的政改只是对破房子缝缝补补而已，不会有什么大的进步，跟世界先进政治文明背道而驰，倒行逆施。绝望了，13亿人都逃离吧！
It seems China’s political reform just cobbles things together and can’t achieve substantial progress, running contrary to the world's advanced political civilization. So desperate that all 1.3 billion people should flee the country.
As the chief of justice stressed that the Chinese path is distinct from that of the rest of the world, a Weibo user mocked:
这是一个骨骼精奇、卓而不群的国度：法官反对司法独立，媒体反对新闻自由，清官反对财产公示，人民反对一人一票。
This is a such a distinctive country with special characteristics where judges oppose judicial independence, media oppose free press, upright officials oppose property disclosure, people oppose one person, one vote.
Those in more outspoken circles were more straightforward in expressing their discontent. According the Radio Free Asia, a number of Chinese human right lawyers have launched a joint signature campaign calling for Zhou Qiang's resignation.
One of the initiators of the petition, Lin Liguo, accused Zhou of destroying China's international image. He stressed that without judicial independence, the result is the abusive use of law in serving political interests as reflected in the crackdown on human right lawyer since July 2015.
In the past few years, under the Chinese Communist Party's call to rule of law, Zhou Qiang has reviewed and overturned some significant unjust cases, including the wrongful execution of Nie Shubin 21 years ago; given judges more independence; and restricted local officials’ influence over court rulings, though ultimately courts at all levels are not independent and should answer to the party leadership.
Some, including famous historian Zhang Lifan, have hence interpreted Zhou's sudden change of attitude as a self-protective move to keep him away from a power struggle happening within the party before the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
Against this backdrop, political news commentator Wu Zuolai explained on Twitter how judicial independence can be interpreted as a threat to the party:
司法独立想起来也是可怕，譬如，大量的人起诉习中央或习本人，周强如果是独立的，他就可以动用法律，把习中央或习本人给颠了。所以，周强必须装孙子，宣布司法不能独立，必须听中央的话，当孙子。司法双轨制，政治罪，国保、党组织解决，其它问题法律或贿法解决。所以警方扩大政治犯，以便法外执行。
— 吴祚来 (@wuzuolai) January 16, 2017
Judicial independence is quite a threat. For example, if many people decide to sue Xi Jinping's government, and if Zhou Qiang is independent, he could subvert the central government or Xi with law. That's why Zhou needs to be submissive and declares to the public that there is no judicial independence — that he has to obey the central government. Under the dual track system, the party and the national security police use political prosecution to solve their problems, while other problems are solved by the rule of law or by corrupting the law.
Regardless of Zhou Qiang's intention, as the top representative of the Chinese judicial system, his speech is a declaration that the future of judicial reform in China is very gloomy.

author: Jack Hu