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Africa’s Green Energy Challenge: Mega Projects, Off-Grid or Somewhere in Between? · Global Voices
Ensia

A young student studies by solar light in Zambia. Photo by Patrick Bentley/SolarAid Photos CC 2.0.
This post by Peyton Fleming was originally published on Ensia.com, a magazine that highlights international environmental solutions in action, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
A 310-megawatt wind farm sprouting up in a remote, barren landscape near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya has the clean energy world buzzing — and for good reason.
Africa’s largest wind farm, with 365 towering turbines, is creating more than 500 stable jobs in an impoverished area where goat herding is often the only work available. It will boost Kenya’s electric grid capacity by about 15 percent, at a far lower cost than the imported oil the local utility now uses. And when it begins producing juice next year, it will signal to investors and companies that big clean energy projects like this are viable in sub-Saharan Africa.
“The impact we’re having makes me feel quite proud, frankly,” says Phylip Leferink, general manager of Lake Turkana Wind Power, who was all smiles when I met with him because the 142nd turbine had just been installed.
Megaprojects like these are deeply important for solving sub-Saharan Africa’s colossal energy access challenges at the pace governments there want. But they are not the complete answer. They are often expensive, take years to build and can’t reach everyone. In fact, the US$700 million Turkana project has been in the works for nearly a decade and the exact timeline for finishing the key 270-mile (435-kilometer) transmission line is still in question. Moreover, all of the electricity is going to southern Kenya; none will end up in the power-starved north, where high-polluting kerosene and charcoal are used for cooking meals and getting light.
So what is the best path to get electricity — preferably, modern green electricity — to the more than 1 million people in northern Kenya and 620 million people in all of sub-Saharan Africa living in the dark?
I recently spent 12 days traveling in Ghana and Kenya trying to find the answer. I was most interested in understanding the extent to which large, grid-scale renewable projects like the Turkana project can meet the region’s vast demand for power and whether more attention should be focused on off-grid renewables and other decentralized green energy efforts, which are smaller and not linked to the electric grid. The extent to which the countries can grow their economies with renewable energy — instead of costlier fossil fuels, a huge contributor to climate change — was another key question.
One thing is clear, according to government leaders and non-governmental organization experts: Plummeting costs for off-grid renewables — over 80 percent since 2010 for solar photovoltaics — are a game changer. Look no further than the remarkable rise of M-KOPA Solar, a Kenyan company that has seized on Africa’s mobile phone/mobile money phenomena (more than 90 percent of Kenyans use mobile phones and more than 70 percent are mobile money customers) to bring off-grid household solar to 425,000 customers across East Africa.
A recent study from the public-private collective Power for All, which aims to accelerate rural clean energy globally, shows these off-grid technologies can be installed in half the time and at one-tenth the cost of large utility-scale projects. Yet despite this vast potential, off-grid power is being impeded by a lack of access to capital, particularly from the World Bank and multilateral development banks, which have long been predisposed to funding big-ticket projects.
“I have no doubt, this is a millions-of-homes proposition,” M-KOPA founder and managing director Jesse Moore told a packed crowd of 500 at the recent International Off-Grid Renewable Energy Conference in Nairobi hosted by the International Renewable Energy Agency. “But we’re still very much a sideshow.”
Kenya is widely seen as a leader in Africa in pursuing renewables — both grid and off-grid projects — to tackle the energy access challenge. Three years ago, fewer than 30 percent of Kenyans were getting electricity from the country’s meager 2,000-MW power grid, which was powered primarily by fossil fuels. (The US region of New England’s population is less than one-third of Kenya’s, yet its grid is about 31,000 MW.) To attract power plant developers, the government adopted policies like risk-protection guarantees, standardized power purchase agreements and feed-in tariffs — all of which help ensure satisfactory payments for power that is produced. The government is especially eager to tap the country’s bountiful clean energy resources such as geothermal. A 280-MW geothermal power plant came on line in December in the Great Rift Valley, where the continent is gradually tearing apart and so providing easy access to hot water and steam below the surface, and several more geothermal projects are in the works. A new 55-MW solar plant was also announced in late September.
An M-KOPA sales rep talks about the company’s solar product with villagers in the Bandani neighborhood in Kisumu in western Kenya. Photo by Peyton Fleming and used with permission.
Government officials are pleased with the progress. “In just three years, we’ve doubled connected customers to the grid,” Kenya’s top energy secretary, Charles Keter, told the off-grid renewable energy conference audience. But he concedes Kenya will never achieve its universal energy access goal by 2020 without off-grid renewables. “In areas far from the grid, such as northern Kenya, we have to find other solutions in the near future.”
Companies like M-KOPA, Off-Grid Electric and Mobisol are already stepping in — all using pay-as-you-go business models to deliver off-grid solar services to millions of rural customers.
With a US$30 deposit and daily 50-cent payments, all via the ubiquitous M-PESA mobile money transfer system, M-KOPA’s customers get a solar panel, a couple of lights, a cellphone charger and a solar-powered radio. After a year of payments, customers own the system. Customers also develop a credit history enabling them to finance larger solar equipment that can run bigger appliances such as televisions and, M-KOPA hopes soon, small refrigerators.
As I walked with two sales representatives through Bandani, a poor neighborhood of mud huts, dirt roads and charcoal stoves in Kisumu in western Kenya, half a dozen people ask for M-KOPA brochures. Several others were already using the service. One of those customers, Consonlata Andhiambo Odero, lives in Bandani with four children in a tiny shack and runs a shop selling charcoal, eggs and bread. Discouraged by the constant power outages, she bought an M-KOPA system a month ago. Now she has two lamps for her shop and pollution-free light so her kids can read at night. “I’m very much excited,” she says with a big smile.
In just five years, M-KOPA has hired about 1,000 workers who are pitching and servicing customers in three East African countries. The company’s model is also being expanded to West Africa. But despite the company’s growth, a number of Africans can’t even afford the up-front costs. “The [US$30] deposit, that’s the biggest block,” said Edwin Amollo, a field sales manager for the company in Kisumu.
About 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to the west, Ghana is adopting many of Kenya’s strategies in expanding energy access. It lags a few years behind, especially when it comes to renewable energy. But the country is working to catch up.
Consonlata Andhiambo Odero, who lives in western Kenya and is seen here with an M-KOPA sales rep, is all smiles as she shows off new M-KOPA solar panels that are powering solar-powered lamps so her kids can read at night. Photo by Peyton Fleming and used with permission.
Ghana’s government is expanding its electric grid with new power plants, using feed-in tariffs, competitive bidding and power purchase agreements to attract outside developers and investors. The biggest ones so far have been natural gas plants, which are being fueled by the country’s first offshore natural gas field developed last year. Solar projects are also being added to the grid, but they’re smaller — including a 20-MW solar photovoltaic project that went on line in April and a second 20-MW project awarded to a South African firm in September. Several more renewable energy projects are in the works up north, including a US$4.5 million solar installation for an agriculture venture in Yagaba Basin.
Meanwhile, off-grid solar provider PEG-Ghana launched two years ago using M-KOPA’s business model: It targets regions where people have no electricity or are dissatisfied with constant power outages — known locally as dumsors — and where mobile money is in common use.
“The reason we invested [in Ghana] was nobody was tackling West Africa at all,” said Lauren Cochran, director of private investments at the Blue Haven Initiative, a Massachusetts-based investor that helped PEG-Ghana raise US$7.5 million this year to expand its business in West Africa.
Forsaking northern Ghana — “It’s too poor,” says PEG-Ghana country manager Simone Vaccari — the company has set up 29 service centers in southern Ghana that have signed up 14,500 customers to date. Sales are growing 20 percent a month, and PEG-Ghana plans to expand to the Ivory Coast soon. “We’re in a good space,” says Vaccari, who hopes to have 100,000 customers across West Africa by 2018.
Expanding commercially viable clean energy mini-grids — small-scale, off-grid networks that supply power for individual villages or businesses — is a clear priority in Kenya and Ghana, both at the government and private sector levels.
Officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Ghana office say there’s a lot of interest and potential with grid and off-grid solar, and they credit the government for setting renewable energy goals and enacting policies to encourage foreign investment. But it remains to be seen if the country can replicate Kenya’s success with renewables.
There is another huge hole that Kenya, Ghana and other sub-Saharan Africa countries must fill to achieve their ambitious energy access and clean energy goals. While household solar systems like M-KOPA’s show promise, what about businesses, manufacturers and entire villages looking for bigger renewable systems instead of relying on a spotty or nonexistent power grid? (Due to Kenya’s unreliable grid, more than half of the country’s businesses operate their own diesel-powered generators.) And what about food suppliers who lack refrigeration due to power outages and no electricity at all?
Expanding commercially viable clean energy mini-grids — small-scale, off-grid networks that supply power for individual villages or businesses — is a clear priority in Kenya and Ghana, both at the government and private-sector levels. And, again, Kenya’s efforts are further along. This summer, the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, announced plans to install 23 solar mini-grids with 9.6 MW of capacity in remote northern Kenya.
Companies such as CrossBoundary Energy are building solar mini-grids for shopping malls, safari lodges and remote hospitals. “In Kenya, 70 percent of electricity consumption is businesses,” says managing partner Matt Tilleard, who is also expanding the business to Rwanda. “That’s our niche.”
In Ghana, Black Star Energy is building solar mini-grids serving seven small communities in the country’s Ashanti region. The company’s first solar-powered mini-grid, in a cocoa farming area, launched last fall. CEO Nicole Poindexter says a key advantage of these systems is that they can run refrigerators, which are critical for solving regional food security challenges. Lack of refrigeration is a big reason why Africa loses enough food annually to feed 300 million people, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
For all of their early promise, off-grid renewable solutions are still in their infancy. “We have miles and miles to go. Companies like M-KOPA are doing amazing things, but their market share is still de minimus,” says Christine Eibs Singer, director of global advocacy at Power for All.
So what will it take for off-grid renewable solutions to seriously start filling the region’s energy access gap? It’s less a technology issue than a money issue.
Broadly speaking, Africa is not attracting nearly the investment dollars it needs for energy projects of all sorts. Current energy-sector investments in Africa are about US$8 billion a year; that’s less than one-sixth the US$55 billion a year that is needed to achieve universal energy access by 2030, according to a 2015 African Progress Report.
And, of the limited money that exists, very little is going to off-grid renewables, such as household solar and mini grids. From 2011 to 2014, only 11 percent of World Bank energy access funding and 1 percent of African Development Bank funding went to decentralized renewables, according to a recent Power for All report.
This funding gap was a clear sore point for participants at the Nairobi off-grid renewables conference.
“If 5 percent of that money went to our sector, you’d see millions more customers getting power far more quickly,” says Graham Smith, senior director of new markets at Off-Grid Electric, a solar start-up with over 100,000 East African customers that is relying mostly on private investment funds and venture capital to expand its business.
Power for All’s Singer says aligning government policies and key financing institutions behind more balanced grid and off-grid renewable strategies will be critical in bringing green power to Africans more quickly and at less cost.
“For overall economic growth in these countries, you’re going to need new large-scale power, but you can’t see that as the only solution,” she said. “There needs to be more deliberate and conscious integration of both centralized and decentralized solutions.”
Peyton Fleming is a senior director at the nonprofit sustainability group Ceres. For details, visit www.ceres.org.
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author: Ensia


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Late-Season Snow Brings Joy to Bhutan · Global Voices
Rezwan

Homes in Paro, Bhutan were wrapped in white after the first snowfall in 2017. Image by Puran Gunung via Facebook. Used with permission.
Many Bhutanese were taken by surprise on March 11 when they woke up and saw that most parts of the country were covered in thick blankets of snow.
Light snowfall is common during late December and January in the mountainous northern districts of Bhutan, especially above 3,000 meters, but elsewhere in the country it's a rarer sight. Given that spring is around the corner and Bhutan hadn't experienced any of the white stuff since Losar New Year at the end of February, the snow was unexpected for many.
For places like the Bhutanese capital Thimphu, it was their first snowfall after many years. Other cities like Paro received one of the heaviest snowfalls of the past decade. The Bhutanese king declared that all schools and government offices will be closed to celebrate the snow.
Soon Facebook and Twitter feeds were flooded with snapshots of the whitened landscape.
First Merryful & blissful snow fall in the Fire FemaleBird Year2017 in Thimphu, #capitalofbhutan #snowfall Contact: https://t.co/sh7iAhseZa pic.twitter.com/l193NGEAM0
— Robin Gurung (@BhutanTourclub) March 11, 2017
The capital city of Bhutan receives heaviest snow for over a decade. pic.twitter.com/O72j4MpP6a
— Dawa Yoezer (@dawa_yoezer88) March 11, 2017
Thimphu under thick blanket of snow ⛄⛄❄☁❄⛄⛄ pic.twitter.com/70qf0VtAa4
— dema dorji (@OrjiDema) March 11, 2017
Beautiful Tashicho dzong in the blanket of snow.https://t.co/HPRKE1ogzP #bhutan #thimphu #2017snowfall #happinessisaplace #tripplanner pic.twitter.com/IR1VZTTS2h
— World Tour Plan (@SUNITASUBBA7) March 12, 2017
Snow covers mountain in #Thimphu #capital of #bhutan on Saturday. #bhutantravel #bhutantrip #bhutanholiday #bhutantour #visitbhutan pic.twitter.com/zYSY1qpi4F
— Bhutan Pelyab (@bhutantourplan) March 12, 2017
Facebook user Bhutan Rododen Den couldn't contain his excitement over the weather event in the land of Gross National Happiness (GNH):
Remarkable Day of GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS in Capital Of Bhutan !
“In Capital of Bhutan, Today, Snow was falling, so much like stars ,filling the dark trees, that one could easily imagine, its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness , the snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. And the strange spring snow fell only in that golden moment of dawn today, the turning of the page between night and day. My fellow Friends, Consider as normal phenomenon In GNH Country, with no abnormal craziness, excitement, but enjoy, respect, and rest your day with full HAPPINESS”.
However, not all was happy news. The snowfall also created much havoc in travel. There were some accidents and highways like the east-west highway and the Paro-Haa highway remained closed due to heavy snow.
Breaking: Due to heavy snow and poor visibility RSTA advises people not to travel on Phuentsholing-Thimphu and East- West highway.
— The Bhutanese (@thebhutanese) March 11, 2017
Snow-filled Paro International Airport. Image by Puran Gunung via Facebook. Used with permission.
Paro Airport, the sole international airport of the Kingdom of Bhutan, is considered one of the world's most challenging airports with surrounding peaks as high as 5,500 meters (18,000 feet). Power connections were disrupted for many hours in many cities and all flights were cancelled as the Paro International Airport remained closed.
Snow fall at Paro airport. 11/03/2017#paroairport #paro pic.twitter.com/kYd0lpidCK
— Bhutan Delight Tours (@BhutanDelight) March 12, 2017
Despite the hassles the snow caused, people from all walks of life had fun with the snow, including making snow sculptures.
only in #bhutan #thimphu#snow police making snowman at the main roundabout. wonderful pic.twitter.com/wWvpwZzrGF
— Francoiseབཀྲིས་དབངམོ (@pchilimzam) March 11, 2017
Enjoying snow fall at haa.. Thanks Bhutan for this wonderful gift.. pic.twitter.com/qEKR5ivKJE
— bhumika bhati (@bhumikabhati1) March 12, 2017
In Bhutan, they aren't snow men, but snow Buddhas and stupas. Image by Puran Gunung via Facebook. Used with permission.
In recent years the Himalayan range has been receiving less snowfall, more rains and hotter summers due to global warming. Environmentalists are worried about the melting glaciers in the Himalayas.
The weather in Bhutan is predicted to clear up starting Tuesday.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Rezwan


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Remembering Soviet Pop: the USSR’s Vocal-Instrumental Ensembles · Global Voices
Ryan Wauson

Members of the Hello Song! vocal-instrumental ensemble. Source: YouTube
“Vesyolye Rebiata” (The Jolly Fellows), “Krasnye Maki” (The Red Poppies), and “Siniaia Ptitsa” (Blue Bird)—these are just a few of the bands that dominated Soviet mainstream music from the 1960s to the 1980s. While the West twisted, discoed, and boogied, the people of the Soviet Union were treated to a bland but charming, state-censored version of Western music: the so-called vocal-instrumental ensembles (VIAs).
During the post-war era, Western pop poured across Soviet borders via European radio airwaves and record smuggling. Despite expensive jamming efforts, the government was unable to prevent unsanctioned, bourgeois music from garnering a widespread audience inside the USSR. The Soviet leadership was alarmed by the music’s popularity not only because of its promotion of “decadent” Western values, but also because its popularity seemed to undermine Soviet culture’s supposed superiority.
VIAs provided a sanctioned alternative to the state’s more overtly propagandistic efforts to cultivate and win over a new generation of Soviet youth. In the absence of broadly disseminated alternatives, VIAs were hugely popular, selling millions of albums and becoming the de facto soundtrack to late socialism.
Paradoxically, the sonic and visual aesthetics of the Soviet Union’s most popular ensembles such as “Poyuschie gitary” (“The Singing Guitars”), “Samotsvety” (“The Gems”), and “Pesniary” had more in common with their Western counterparts than with the previous generation of Soviet music. As Artemy Troitsky described in his book Back in the USSR :
The words ‘rock’ and ‘beat’ were unwelcome, and so these groups…were officially christened VIA…VIA was a disciplined (or, to be frank, a castrated) version of beat music. A VIA band usually had around 10 musicians in its lineup…and a repertoire including Shadows-style instrumental numbers, limp Russian-language covers of melodies from English and American hits and routine Russian pop tunes with soft electric sound.
Behind the scenes, every VIA had an “artistic director” (read: censor) that made sure the groups’ sound and appearance were to the state's tastes. VIAs were forbidden from dancing or moving around much onstage, had a strict dress code that consisted mostly of suits, national costumes, and military uniforms, and had to follow Soviet ideology—however weak that may have been by the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras.
Thanks to YouTube and a few online archives, it's still possible to listen to VIAs, which now sound less bland and more kitsch, providing a window into the musical sensibilities that state censors were able to cultivate: sites like sssrviapesni.info, via-era.narod.ru, and zaycev-nett.ru feature extensive lists of VIAs along with some of their most popular songs.
VIAs have not retained their popularity among post-Soviet audiences, however. On VKontakte, for example, membership to groups devoted to Soviet VIAs range from a few hundred to around one thousand, paling in comparison to those devoted to contemporaneous Western groups and that other VIA.
And yet, older generations continue to show their passion for the groups of their youth. The founder of via-era.narod.ru, Valery Kolpakov (b. 1957), says he was a fan of VIAs in his youth and became acquainted with a number of musicians, including Aleksey Puzyrev from The Jolly Fellows and Albert Asadullin of The Singing Guitars while working at a discotheque in Moscow. In 2005, he decided to create the site from the remnants of another VIA fan forum and to this day continues to edit the page and write articles for it.
While many VIAs collapsed along with the Soviet Union, their popularity has persisted, particularly among the Soviet generation that grew up with the artists: the YouTube comments sections for VIA songs are filled with reminiscences about posters’ teenage years and first loves. Like their Western equivalents, these ensembles still regularly perform for large, nostalgic audiences.
Twenty-five years after the fall of the Soviet Union, VIAs remain a cultural cornerstone for Russia and other CIS states. As Kristen Roth-Ey contended in her work Moscow Prime Time, “Soviet rock was derivative, but that does not mean it was inauthentic in the eyes of the people who made it and used it.” And now, thanks to the Internet, the music and stories of VIA artists are still being discussed and preserved by those who were sincerely affected by them.

author: Ryan Wauson


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Syrian Civil Society in Douma Navigates a Tough Crackdown · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

Image shared by a number of Syrian activists on social media. The play-on-words shows, on the right, the logo of Rising for Freedom in Arabic and, on the left, ‘they forced us out of our freedom’ showing a man with a ‘Jaysh Al Islam’ flag chasing a media activist. Rising for Freedom was founded in 2012. Source: Moustafa Jacoub, Facebook.
Earlier this month, five well-known civil society organizations in the city of Douma and the region of Eastern Ghouta came under pressure from Jaysh Al-Islam, the largest rebel faction in the area. Global Voices first covered these events on March 10.
The crackdown followed an article published in the magazine “Rising for Freedom” (RFM) (طلعنا عالحرية), a local newspaper with a strong following among the Assad regime's opponents, both inside Syria and in refugee camps in neighboring countries.
Titled “Carry Me, Dad,” the article offended critics, who demanded reprisals for what they say is a blasphemous text. When protesters gathered outside RFM's offices, law enforcement officers warned the staff that they shouldn't expect police protection, in light of the fact that the magazine “doesn't stop people from protesting in the streets.” The reporters were advised to abandon their building.
Consequently, the magazine announced that it is suspending all activities inside Syria until further notice. Shortly afterwards, senior editors Mimona Al-Ammar and Oussama Nassar resigned, in an effort to de-escalate the situation.
But tensions only mounted, as the authorities soon pressured several other civil society groups to cease all activities, despite the fact that these organizations had no ties to RFM. The hammer came down on another four groups: Violations Documentation Center, The Day After: Supporting a Democratic Transition in Syria, Local Development and Small-Projects Support, and the Hurras Network for Child Protection.
A flyer in Ghouta incites hatred against writers for “Rising for Freedom” magazine. It reads: “The writers of Raise for Freedom magazine in Eastern Ghouta explicitly promote heresy on their own land. Together to dislodge these people, [we must] send them to trial, and shut down their offices.” Credit: Yassin Al Haj Saleh
Since the crackdown, many activists have appealed on social media to Jaysh Al-Islam, asking that activists and journalists be permitted to resume their operations.
At the time of this writing, it seemed that most of the affected civic groups will be allowed to go back to work:
Our offices in Douma (with @SyNVM @Childprotectsyr @freedomraise ) reopens today after 5 days of closure.#Syria #civilsociety pic.twitter.com/DiwzlONE54
— VDC-Syria (@VDC_Syria) 13 March 2017
Despite these promising indications, however, a source told Global Voices that RFM is still encountering obstacles to getting back to work, and individuals from all the organizations are reportedly facing continued harassment.
In a Facebook video shared on March 10, Ibrahim Al-Assil, the president of the Syrian Nonviolence Movement, tried to explain “what happened and what is happening in Douma.” Al-Assil also told viewers why this crackdown is significant, and reviewed what they can do to combat the pressure on free speech and civil society.
Al-Assil started by recounting what is happening in Douma: When the employees at the various civil society organizations left their offices, which are located in the same building, “they saw protesters with knives and guns preparing to enter the building. Shortly after, the protesters finally entered the building, breaking things, ripping off panels and signs, and writing threats on the walls and doors.”
But it didn't stop there:
On the same day, the president of Al-Da’we Al-Islah Al-Ijtima’i [Invitation to Public Reform] sued the magazine and the Network of the Childhood Guardians on the basis of kufr [disbelief in God].
Al-Assil pointed out that the way the authorities dealt with the situation was reckless, to say the least:
What does it mean? Why? Who? How? The Hurras Network for Child Protection has no relation to Rising for Freedom Magazine — not on the managerial level, not on the funding level, not on the work level, none absolutely. [It's] a completely different organization. In the same day, the editors of the magazine felt that the accusation was too great and felt they should take a courageous step. They apologized, removed the article, stopped circulation of the edition, and pulled back the already printed editions where they were circulated in Syria. They declared the article to be the opinion of the author and said they would never commit such an error again.
He also wished to focus on the Hurras Network for Child Protection, because 18,000 children depend on their services.
The Hurras Network in 2016 alone offered educational services and personal support to 18,000 children in Douma. Currently, all of them, all these services offered by the organizations in the form of media, education, community, economical, juristic, legal etc. — it's all come to a halt. And the affected are the people of Douma, Ghouta, and Syrians in general. The affected are not the organizations themselves, who had missions. It’s their missions that are affected — the ones they have been working to accomplish, in spite of all the hardships they face.
Al-Assil also highlighted the harassment being faced by individual activists, such as having their faces and names printed on papers and falsely accused of “spreading disbelief”:
It’s starting to take an even more dangerous turn with the distribution in Douma of embarrassing pamphlets that have names and pictures of people like Mimona Al-Ammar, Oussama Nassar and Thaer Hijazi. […] Rising for Freedom magazine is five years old in Douma. It was born with the Syrian Revolution, and one of the first to come out of the revolution and some of the best that it has accomplished from a media perspective. […] Oussama and Mimona are some of the most amazing people to be found anywhere in any revolution around the world. Oussama began his activism in 2002 from the issue of the youth of Darraya. He was arrested in 2003. He and Mimona were arrested on the first day of the Syrian Revolution. […] [Oussama] is one of those people who only after we lose do we start appreciating them and crying over them and saying ‘how has our revolution gone’. Mimona Al-Ammar is the symbol of the Syrian woman. A symbol of courage, a symbol of sacrifice, a symbol of persistence, a symbol of charity. This small family that refused to leave and moved from Daraya to Douma to continue its work to serve the community and offer services to children. They contributed to many different works and many different protests. You don’t know them? Go write their name and see what they were up to.
He ended the video with a call for mobilization, joining many calling on Jaysh Al-Islam to allow the civil organizations to resume their work. We can now say that they were partly successful, but the fate of Rising for Freedom magazine remains uncertain.

author: Elia J. Ayoub


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Disney’s New ‘Gay Moment’ Outrages Religious Conservatives in Malaysia and Singapore · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Walt Disney World, Florida. Photo: Flickr / CC 2.0
Religious groups and state censors in Singapore and Malaysia are unhappy about the live-action remake of the Disney film “Beauty and the Beast.”
In Singapore, Christian leaders have advised their faithful to “protect” their children from the film's supposed “pro-LGBT agenda,” following reports of a “gay moment” in the movie. In Malaysia, film censors initially approved the film for public viewing, albeit with with a “minor cut.”
Beauty and the Beast is a love story between a young woman and man cursed to live as a monster in a castle. The film's producers have told the media that the remake features a gay character.
Singapore's National Council of Churches has expressed outrage that the new movie “rejects” the “wholesomeness” of the 1991 animated Disney film, denouncing the gay character, played by actor Josh Gad, as “totally unnecessary.” The council has issued a formal statement warning the public about Walt Disney's supposed intent to “normalize the homosexual lifestyle”:
Some Christian leaders here are deeply concerned about the LGBT representation in this new Disney movie. They see this as an attempt to influence young children and socialize them at an early age into thinking that the homosexual lifestyle is normal.
The Roman Catholic Church of Singapore also released a brief statement urging parents to be discerning when watching the movie:
With extensive media reports of the purported ‘gay moment’ in this movie, we believe that parents must discern and reflect with their children on whether the lifestyle portrayed is consonant with the teaching of Christ. They must explain the implications and the consequences of such a lifestyle for themselves and society.
In Singapore, homosexual acts between men are criminalized.
Malaysia also outlaws sodomy, and the country's Censorship Board indefinitely postponed all screenings of Beauty and the Beast, following lingering concerns even about the edited version. The Walt Disney company says it's conducting an “internal review” to learn more about the film's situation in Malaysia.
The government's apparent vigilance against the pernicious influence of Hollywood has disappointed many Disney fans in Malaysia, where the culture minister echoed their concerns about unfair censorship.
On social media, Malaysians vented their frustrations about the film's de facto ban, while others challenged the Censorship Board to explain why it keeps Beauty and the Beast from cinemas, while welcoming on the silver and small screens all manner of violent entertainment:
No words for the situation occuring for Beauty and the Beast.
Just utterly disappointed that Malaysia could be THAT sensitive.
— Nadzrin Nadzer (@NadzrinIqbal) March 13, 2017
“beauty and the beast banned in malaysia because of the gay scene between the clock and the candle.”
i love my country
— y v o n n e (@yvnnexy) March 13, 2017
Malaysia has so many things to improve on but we choose to look at the petty stupid stuff like banning Beauty and the Beast. How disgusting.
— Priyanka Laxmi (@priyankalaxmii) March 13, 2017
Malaysia, the land of possibilities.
Beauty and the Beast banned while WWE airing on the tv. Apparently our country promote war, not love.
— FranFeyn (@ravingcowmaniac) March 13, 2017

author: Mong Palatino


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Donald Trump Was Right: Iranians Do Play With Fire · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Tehran-based photographer Fatemeh Behboudi captures Chaharshanbeh Suri celebrations on the streets of Tehran on March 16, 2016. See more on her Instagram page.
The ancient Iranian festival of fire, known as Chaharshanbe Suri, proves that Donald Trump was absolutely right — albeit unwittingly — when he accused Iran of “playing with fire” last month.
In early February, U.S. President Trump fired off a handful of incendiary tweets about Iran, following his executive order to ban Iranian citizens (among others) from traveling to the United States.
Iran is playing with fire – they don't appreciate how “kind” President Obama was to them. Not me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017
Trump was criticizing former President Barack Obama's policy of rapprochement with Iran, which reached a deal on nuclear weapons and removed several sanctions against Iran.
In late January, Iran test-fired a missile that traveled 600 miles, apparently with the aim of gauging President Trump's commitment to the promises in the Iranian nuclear deal, which provided some room for Iran to conduct missile tests.
Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017
Online, Trump's use of the phrase “playing with fire” amused many familiar with Chaharshanbe Suri, the “Persian Festival of Fire,” which Iranians traditionally celebrate on the eve of the last Wednesday before the Iranian New Year.
Trump is wrong about Iran playing with fire, Chaharshanbe Suri isn't until March. ? ??
— Alkaline Trejo (@alkalinetrejo) February 3, 2017
@realDonaldTrump hey mothafucker do you know chaharshanbe suri?
We don't play , we jump it.
— × گنگستر بنگ گستر × (@EmiroSharif) February 3, 2017
For once in your life you tweeted the truth! We DO play with fire! It's called Chaharshanbe Suri & it's a beautiful ancient tradition. ? ?? https://t.co/Np6WmClBG4
— تینا (@tinahassannia) February 4, 2017
The Iranian calendar starts at the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, on March 21. The New Year's celebration, however, gets underway the evening before the last Wednesday of the year, when people build bonfires and jump over the flames, while setting off fireworks.
As revelers hop over the fire, they say:
زردی من از تو ک سرخي تو از من
Take away my yellow, give me your red.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


text:
Poly, the Platform That Wants to Teach You Every Language in the World · Global Voices
Derek Lackaff

Image courtesy Wikitongues.
A version of this post was originally published at r12n.
Wikitongues founders and directors Daniel Bogre Udell and Frederico Andrade have embraced an ambitious mission to document — and teach — every language in the world. And by “every language,” they really mean every language, including those estimated 3,000+ languages that are unwritten, the world’s 300+ sign languages, and even constructed languages (conlangs) like Esperanto and Lojban.
Skepticism about such grand claims is natural, but it’s worth reviewing the project’s work over the past several years, work that may yet warrant such optimism. I recently spoke with them about the development of their language documentation and learning platform called Poly.
Wikitongues is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that emerged from Bogre Udell and Andrade’s shared interest in languages and technology. Bogre Udell, who is also a Global Voices contributor, was raised in a monolingual English household, but his interest in languages was sparked by living in a minority language community. He spent time in Spain, first in Aragon and later in Catalonia. Learning Catalan greatly affected his perspective on languages, and on the world: “I started engaging with Spain in a very different way from most foreigners, and I was engaging in Europe in a way that most Europeans don’t.” Andrade was raised in a bilingual English-Portuguese household, and later picked up several other languages. The founders shared a profound respect for the value of linguistic diversity, and were frustrated that the issue does not loom larger in the public sphere.
“Children are taught how many countries there are, and [are] taught the regions of their own country,” Bogre Udell notes. “No one’s taught that there are 7,000 languages. We still see in the media today that linguistic discrimination is still pretty commonplace.” This shared passion for language — paired with their backgrounds in technology and design — provides the theoretical drive and practical foundation for Wikitongues.
Some of Wikitongues’ video participants. Image courtesy Wikitounges.
In fall 2012, Bogre Udell began video-recording short oral histories of his neighbors in Brooklyn, asking his subjects to speak in their native languages. New York is perhaps the most linguistically diverse city in the world, with more than 700 languages spoken there. Bogre Udell quickly acquired a diverse range of videos which he began posting to a YouTube channel: “In just a few weeks we were able to record something like 40 different languages.” Somewhat to his surprise, he found the channel quickly attracted a global audience.
The following spring, Bogre Udell’s friend (and fellow Parsons School of Design alumnus) Andrade joined the effort, and they continued recording videos in New York, and also traveled to collect recordings from communities throughout the US. As the project gained attention and popularity, offers to collaborate began coming in from all over the world. Wikitongues eventually incorporated as a nonprofit, and has coordinated a careful effort to document language via short videos, with a primary focus placed on endangered languages. As of this writing, the Wikitongues YouTube channel boasts 347 videos of languages from every human-inhabited region of the world.
The latest video, for example, features speakers of Mirandese, a minority (but co-official) language of Portugal with a few thousand speakers.
Documentation is a critical step in the revitalization process of a language, but the path from documentation to producing new speakers is seldom direct. In the late summer of 2014, the Wikitongues founders came across an article describing the work of Marie Wilcox. Wilcox, born in 1933, is the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni, one of many endangered indigenous languages of present-day California. For over a decade, Wilcox had worked with her daughter Jennifer Malone and others to document her language, beginning by jotting words in notebooks and on the backs of envelopes. Bogre Udell and Andrade were deeply moved by her dedication to her work.
Through their encounters with people such as Wilcox, the pair also realized that few speakers of endangered languages would be willing or able to participate in a similar dictionary-creation project. “This super-laborious process, over the course of years and years and years,” as Andrade puts it, was simply out of reach for most people.
For Wikitongues to make the step from being a language documentation initiative to a language revitalization initiative, they would need to help speakers like Wilcox, and the speakers in their videos, connect more intentionally with language learners. “We brainstormed a little bit and tried to figure out what would be a useful, lightweight, trivial interaction that could really amount to some good progress” towards goals of both documentation and revitalization, Andrade explains. They envisioned a solution that was accessible, user-friendly, and would be of use to people who hoped to document their language and pass it on to new speakers. Work on Wikitongues’ solution to this challenge, Poly, began in late 2014.
With support from a successful Kickstarter campaign last year, Poly has been under rapid development, and recently delivered on a promise to release a functional version of the app on International Mother Tongue Day. Poly is oriented towards the creation of “books,” which can comprise vocabulary, phrases, and expressions between an arbitrary language pair. If you have been itching to create a Lakota-French (or Dothraki-Klingon) phrasebook, a few clicks on Poly can provide an appropriate development environment. In the demo below, Andrade can be seen creating an English-Brazilian Portuguese phrasebook.
The interface is simple, responsive, and easy to use. While Poly is open for use by any type of teacher or learner and for any language, Andrade and Bogre Udell hope that it will serve as a useful tool for people like Marie Wilcox, allowing for a straightforward documentation process that can be directly oriented towards learning.
Poly has been an open source project since its inception, “just because private repos [on Github] cost money,” Andrade jokes. Poly is built on a foundation of open-source technologies: the frontend is React, the backend is Rails and PostgreSQL. While Andrade suggests that being open source is somewhat symbolic at this early stage, Poly has already attracted “hundreds of thousands of dollars of development time” from a growing community of developers. “Because we are a nonprofit and a very, very strongly mission-driven one,” Andrade explains, “we’ve been able to gather the support of a lot of developers.” He describes shepherding a collaborative development process as “magical.”
Wikitongues has also developed an open approach to the data they are curating. With guidance from Wikitongues co-director (and “open source, open standards, open data and localized content” advocate) Alolita Sharma, the organization is working towards making all of their content available under open licenses such as Creative Commons, including video content, video metadata, and Poly’s language data.
There are challenges in dealing with data produced by members of many different communities — some endangered language communities are wary of exploitation, and many have differing conceptions of their languages as cultural or intellectual property. “The problem with some of the big open source projects or free knowledge movements is there’s a certain kind of dogmatism about what the licensing needs to be,” Bogre Udell says. While Wikitongues’ goal is openness, it recognizes that a bespoke data licensing approach may be necessary in some cases. The organization is actively working to navigate this complex ethical, legal, and cultural space. “If we can demonstrate that certain communities have been successful within our [open data] model, we can reach out to other people who are reluctant and say: ‘look, these are the benefits,’” explains Andrade.
The open source ethos of the project goes beyond code and data. Bogre Udell notes that the scale of what Wikitonges is trying to accomplish — to work with every language community in the world — requires a certain openness. According to Andrade, “One of our deepest philosophies as an organization is that we work with communities. We don’t go and record videos to ‘bring back.’” In all of their hundreds of videos, Wikitongues hopes to convey that there is a real person speaking who is willing to discuss their experience in their language.
Image courtesy Wikitongues.
Initiatives like Wikitongues are vital in the race to revitalize endangered languages. As I’ve previously noted, developing digital language resources for a language can help ensure the next generation has access to it, and it is clear that most of the hard work is going to occur outside (or at best, alongside) the commercial technological mainstream. In conversations with major tech companies, Bogre Udell found limited enthusiasm for engaging with languages of fewer speakers. “They want to make sure that they reach the 400 or so largest languages,” he notes. “We had a conversation with someone at Google.org and they were very explicit that languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers were not of interest.” With Poly, Wikitongues continues on its journey to develop an open global community focused on languages.
“As a language documentation effort, we are the only one that’s trying to work with every language in the world,” Bogre Udell notes. “Nobody else has that interest.” This orientation and mission directly inform the development of Poly. “We want to create tools that are that are useful to the public,” he argues. “We want to be more useful to the speakers of the language than the linguists, because the speakers are the ones who need it.”

author: Derek Lackaff


text:
You a Bad Politician in Mexico? You Could Get a Tomato in the Face · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

Photo: Flickr / Alan Levine. CC 2.0
An activist and former public servant in Mexico is leading an unorthodox campaign to rub politicians’ faces in the public's dissatisfaction. Arne aus den Ruthen Haag is promoting a movement called #JitomatazoMx, rallying people on social media to collect tomatoes — or jitomates as they're known in Mexico City — as ammunition to throw at corrupt government officials.
The tomato drive even has its own Twitter account, the bio for which states:
Cuando hay abusos de la clase política y no hay mecanismos legales de defensa, el jitomatazo es la vía para expresar nuestro repudio.
When there is corruption in the political class and no legal defense mechanisms in play, the jitomatazo is a way for us to express our disapproval.
And make no mistake: #JitomatazoMx is very literally about collecting tomatoes to throw at state officials.
Cuenta regresiva. Esta semana empezaremos a operar como grupo de protesta ciudadano.#PolíticosSinPrivilegios pic.twitter.com/YfjdfHxb7p
— #Jitomatazo (@JitomatazoMX) January 9, 2017
Countdown. This week we will begin to operate as a citizen protest group. #PoliticsWithoutPrivileges
The first public servant to get the Jitomatazo treatment was legislator Cesar Camacho of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which in the past enjoyed a 70-year reign over Mexican government, and recently returned to power under President Enrique Peña.
Camacho's critics say he accepted a highly questionable “Christmas bonus” last December, as the country continues to face an economic slowdown and hikes in energy prices.
Based on an online poll, #JitomatazoMx's next target will be 83-year-old actress Carmen Salinas — another PRI lawmaker who won her seat despite a lack of education and political experience.
¿A quién propones visitar para el siguiente #Jitomatazo?
— #Jitomatazo (@JitomatazoMX) January 19, 2017
Who do you propose we visit for the next #Jitomatazo?
In response to the rising popularity of Jitomatazo, political scientist Luis Rodolfo started a Twitter poll to weigh his followers’ attitudes about this form of protest:
¿Estas a favor o en contra del #jitomatazo? ???
— Luis Rodolfo (@luisrodolfo) January 20, 2017
Are you in favor or against #jitomatazo? ???
Camacho, meanwhile, has pressed criminal charges against Arne aus den Ruthen Haag, accusing him of organizing “legal misconduct.”
Others on Twitter say they agree with Camacho, objecting to tomato throwing as potentially violent:
@DarioJimenezL Sobre el tema del “jitomatazo” estoy en contra de cualquier tipo de acto violento, debe privar la reconciliación social.
— Rudy Kawas (@rudykawas) January 25, 2017
@DarioJimenezL On the subject of “jitomatazo,” I am against any kind of violent act that rejects a chance for social reconciliation.
Estoy en contra del jitomatazo, es violencia, no la hagamos menos, luego puede salir un voluntarioso con un arma, no demos pie.
— CARLOS ANTONIO MZ (@CarlosAntonioMZ) January 30, 2017
I am against the “jitomatazo” as it is a violent act that does not diminish the problem and can encourage weapon use, so we should not encourage it.
Last year, Arne aus den Ruthen Haag called on members of the public to use the live-streaming app Periscope to livestream evidence of any illegal, abusive, or violent behavior by fellow citizens. A few months after, he left public office and devoted himself fully to activism.

author: J. Tadeo


text:
A Syrian Activist’s Japanese-Language Message to the People of Japan · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

Screencap from “A Message from Syria to the Japanese people,” by Lina Shamy.
As forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad besieged Eastern Aleppo in the latter half of 2016, many Syrian media activists based there took to social media to counter the narratives being pushed by media outlets that support Assad and the Russian intervention on his behalf.
One of those activists was 26-year-old Lina Shamy. Using Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms, Shamy explains what is happening in Syria in a variety of languages. In her latest video, Shamy uses Japanese, which she learned as a university student, and addresses a specific audience: the people of Japan.
In the video, she starts by thanking “the Japanese people and their government who gave a lot of support to Syrians through the United Nations” as well as for “welcoming 150 Syrian citizens as students which is a great opportunity for Syrians to pursue their academic ambitions in life”.
She continues:
Syria is witnessing a revolutionary call for freedom and dignity for its entire people. The dictatorship regime is continuing to kill whoever has participated in this revolution from the Syrian people with brute force. Besides that, the dictatorship regime called foreign militias and armies from other countries to intervene in order to help with suppressing this revolution of freedom and dignity.
She then asked the people of Japan to resist normalization with the Assad regime:
Please do not support the Assad administration to set up facilities of water and electricity because most of the money that is supported is not being used to fix or build lifeline facilities by the Assad government. They are using it to bring fuel to the tanks that are killing the Syrian people. In addition to this, even though they're using part of the money to repair the facilities in Damascus city where Assad and his regime are based, the Syrian people do not know that the money is coming from Japan or where it is being directed.
While this may seem like an odd request, it's important to note that on March 14, the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria revealed that “Syria's air force deliberately bombed water sources in December, a war crime that cut off water for 5.5 million people in and around the capital Damascus.”
Pro-Kremlin and pro-Assad media outlets have published stories accusing “rebels” of poisoning these water sources, but the UN said “it had found no evidence of deliberate contamination of the water supply or demolition by armed groups, as the Syrian government maintained at the time.”
Speaking to Global Voices, Shamy said that she made the video to try to influence public opinion in Japan:
Whenever I meet someone from any country I ask them what do people in general think about what's happening in Syria? How does your government see or deal with the Syrian government? What do they tell their people? How do they justify their relationship with Assad? I'm curious because I know how important the role that is played by international community, people and governments in supporting or not supporting the Assad regime.
She said she learned Japanese through a cultural center at the University of Aleppo:
There was a Japanese center in my university. Once, there was a festival at the center to introduce people to Japan and Japanese culture and I really liked it. I soon found out that there were classes at the center to learn Japanese and that a new class was about to start within days. I was excited and I started. I finished level one and was very happy with the experience, so I continued for two years until I reached level 5.
Her relationship with Japan didn't end there:
I have some Japanese friends since I was studying the language and I also have some Syrian friends who study and live in Japan.
The language and the culture was something different and unique I enjoyed every moment of my Japanese classes. It's a difficult language, especially the kanji [logographic Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese writing system], but it is also very satisfying and entertaining to finally become able to draw and realize what these figures mean.
As for why she did this video, it all started with meeting journalist working “for one of the most famous channels in Japan and East Asia”:
We talked and I realized that the image they get has many things missing. Sometimes they fell for the propaganda that Assad was promoting, that Assad is fighting terrorism. I felt that if I'm able to do something about it, that it's my responsibility to do so.
Her video was viewed around 30,000 times on Facebook and 10,000 times on YouTube. But interestingly, there was a noticeable difference in public reactions between the two platforms.
While those on Facebook were mostly positive with messages of support in Arabic, English and Japanese, she was mostly down-voted on YouTube with, at the time of writing, over 100 “up votes” and almost 800 “down votes.” The comments on the video on YouTube were mostly pro-Assad or pro-Russia. Others there were bigoted remarks about her headscarf or anti-Semitic statements warning of the dangers of multiculturalism.
But Shamy preferred to focus on the reaction of Japanese people to her video which she told Global Voices were mixed but mostly supportive:
The engagement was very good, though not everyone agrees with me. A lot simply had no idea but said that this motivated them to question what they were hearing in formal media and to go and look for themselves
Japan traditionally accepts a very low number of asylum seekers. In 2015, for example, Japan received a record 7,586 applications for refugee status, with only 27 applications granted.
As Shamy mentioned in her video, however, in May 2016 the Japanese government said it would accept 150 Syrians over five years, treating them not as refugees but as exchange students. In contrast, fellow Group of 7 (G7) member Germany received 442,000 individual first-time asylum applications in 2015 and plans to resettle 14,300 in 2017. Canada has accepted little over 40,000 refugees from Syria as of January 2017.
The move to modestly increase the acceptance of asylum seekers, along with newly implemented private sponsorship rules based on a Canadian model where community groups can band together to bring refugees into the country, comes as Japan recently forcibly repatriated 43 asylum seekers.
It's hard to define exactly why Japan resists settling refugees and asylum seekers. There are some reports the Japanese government does not regard requests for asylum as genuine, and are instead made by people wishing to work in Japan for better pay than they get in their homeland.
While it is often argued Japan regards itself as ethnically homogeneous and closed to outsiders, there are increasing calls to open Japan up to immigration in order to deal with a shrinking population. While Japan is a major donor to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), both the United States and Germany, G7 countries that both accept large numbers of refugees, donate more.
There is also the possibility many Japanese citizens are simply unaware of their government's policies towards asylum seekers. YouTube vlogger That Japanese Man Yuta recently conducted on-the-street interviews, all subtitled in English, with a cross-section of Japanese people, asking them the question: do they want refugees in Japan?
There was surprise that Japan accepted just 27 refugees in 2015, while allowing an additional 79 to remain in the country for humanitarian reasons. The interviews provide insights into how average Japanese people regard refugees, and also debunks some of the misconceptions about Japan's history of accepting refugees–Japan admitted more than 11,000 refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia between 1975 and 2005.
Shamy's Japanese-language video was not her first foray into social media. Originally from Idlib, she distinguished herself not only for tirelessly updating her followers on the latest developments via her Twitter account, but also for being one of the few female voices that non-Syrians and Syrians alike heard from within besieged Eastern Aleppo during the last siege.
Interview about the evacuation of #Aleppo today morning with TRT worldhttps://t.co/92p3f3bJRf
— Lina shamy (@Linashamy) 19 December 2016
Last thing we did at home before leaving
“Great Syrian Revolution” “ppl wants the fall of the regime” “The revolution of abandoned people” pic.twitter.com/pZXsR66ewy
— Lina shamy (@Linashamy) 22 December 2016
In a viral tweet released on December 12, 2016, just nine days before she and her husband Yussuf were forced to leave Aleppo, and fearing a massacre, Shamy called on the world to act:
To everyone who can hear me!#SaveAleppo#SaveHumanity pic.twitter.com/cbExEMKqEY
— Lina shamy (@Linashamy) December 12, 2016
She continued her activism even after leaving Aleppo:
AirRaids never stopped in Syria,Today several Raids in the north: Aleppo rural, Idleb & Idleb rural
Also in the south especially #WadiBarada
— Lina shamy (@Linashamy) 12 January 2017
Shamy, who is now back in Idlib, wrote a moving piece for the New York Times on January 20 entitled “I Went to Aleppo to Study. I Left With a Convoy of Refugees.” She also authored a powerful photo-essay for the Huffington Post entitled “These Are The Moments Of Aleppo’s Demise That I Will Never Forget” in which she narrates life in Aleppo since 2008 when, at the age of 18, she moved there to study architecture at the University of Aleppo.


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British Cruise Ship Destroys Pristine Coral Reefs in West Papua · Global Voices
Juke Carolina

Raja Ampat is part of the Coral Triangle. Source: Flickr / Lakshmi Sawitri (CC BY 2.0)
A British cruise ship ran aground in the shallow waters of West Papua, destroying 13,500 square meters of coral reefs in Raja Ampat, a marine sanctuary in the Coral Triangle that is considered one of the richest biodiversity habitats in the world. West Papua is a province of Indonesia.
It was initially reported that Caledonian Sky, a 4,200-ton cruise ship belonging to Noble Caledonia, hit 1,600 square meters of coral beds in Raja Ampat. But a subsequent investigation by Conservation International Indonesia (CI), Raja Ampat district government and Papua State University revealed that the damage could be 8.5 times bigger than initially thought.
Most of the damaged reefs were at the Dampier Strait Marine Conservation, an area inhabited by hard corals. Raja Ampat, which means “four kings” in the local language, is believed to have a bigger number of hard corals than those found in the whole of the Caribbean.
Clumsy Cruise Kills Coral – British owned cruise ship damages 1,600sq metres of #coral in Raja Ampat, #Indonesia ? https://t.co/O0vOv76iaB pic.twitter.com/cJTjWCGYLm
— Conservation Guide (@ConserveGuide) March 10, 2017
Hey #noblecaledonia what you doing about your large ship that just crashed into pristine reef in Raja Ampat? pic.twitter.com/VdEi5VC4LA
— Karen Emma Dobson (@Dobsokar) March 13, 2017
A report published on birdsheadseascape.com said that the vastness of Dampier Strait makes it difficult to conduct a proper oversight of the area against destructive activities like unsustainable fishing practices.
The local government has set up a joint committee composed of various ministries to make the cruise ship owner accountable for the damage it caused in the waters of Raja Ampat.
Environmentalists, marine scientists, and local residents also expressed their indignation about the destruction of the pristine coral reefs.
On Facebook, Kate Patricia Sparksman wrote that it would probably take several decades to rehabilitate the damaged reefs:
We visited and dived there a couple of years ago and it is still the most amazing place I have been to. The reefs in Raja Ampat are known as some of the best and most pristine in the world and are part of the coral triangle which is responsible for repopulating coal reefs worldwide. This damaged area could take hundreds of years to re-grow. Noble Caledonia need to take responsibility for this and help rebuild this reef!
An online petition was launched urging the cruise operator to do more aside from making a financial payment to the local community:
Rather than negotiate a financial settlement, we ask Noble Caledonia to provide physical and financial support to repair the reef. Noble Caledonia — long a champion of the environment — is asked to provide full support for an international reef specialist and his/her team to undertake a reef restoration project in collaboration with the local communities and Marine Park managers, including tracking growth over time.
Raja Ampat in West Papua. Source: Flickr / Max Mossler / (CC BY 2.0)

author: Juke Carolina


text:
Going to University in Paraguay Can Be a Life-or-Death Decision (Part Two) · Global Voices
Kurtural

In his struggle to access a university education, Christian Quiñónez was in two serious accidents on his way out of the Paraguayan Chaco. Photograph by Nicolás Sáenz, taken with permission from the website Kurtural.
The series Cows That Fly, Schools That Crumble, published by Paraguayan economic and cultural news site Kurtural, explores the ways in which Paraguay's education system fails students. The latest installment, written by Patricia Benítez, is republished on Global Voices in two parts. The first details the circumstances around public and private education in Paraguay and the historic events in Puerto Casado. The second continues below.
Five years ago, Christian Quiñónez, who risked his life on more than one occasion in order to attend university, survived a car accident on his way to the capital. At the time, he was pursuing a business administration degree at the Autonomous University of Asunción. It was a distance-learning program, but it required him to take exams in person. For this reason, every two months, Christian had to travel the more than 600 kilometers to Asunción. On one of these trips, the truck he was travelling in flipped over and fell into a roadside ditch.
According to the police report, the accident was caused by the extremely poor state of the road. Christian escaped unharmed, but Marisela Ramírez and the driver, Freddy Fernández — the son of Justo Fernández, the then governor of the Alto Paraguay department — were both killed. Two other passengers survived but were seriously injured: Fernando Fernández, the governor's other son, and Gleisy Ruiz. All of them were university students.
The launch of a boat to Vallemí with favorable weather conditions. It is not always so pleasant. Photograph by Nicolás Sáenz, taken from the website Kurtural, used with permission.
The company Carlos Casado SA began to decline in the 1980s when tannin stopped being profitable, but it didn't completely shut down until between 1996 and 2000. Christian doesn't remember any of this; at the time he was only a boy, barely older than his son Jonás.
After almost a century of exploitation of quebracho forests and the incursion of cattle farming, the firm left the country. Before doing so, they sold nearly 500,000 hectares of land and everything on them — ex-factory structures and facilities, animals and people — to the Sun Myung Moon company, a self-proclaimed South Korean messiah. Moon has already passed away, but in 2000 when the sale was made final, he headed up the Unification Church, known also as the Moon sect. Thus, the land, the city, its inhabitants and the indigenous community passed into the hands of a new owner.
In 2005, a large part of the population of Puerto Casado marched 250 kilometers to Asunción to claim rights to their lands. In 2012, the National Institute of Rural and Land Development declared Casado a “colony by law,” after an attempt to expropriate the land was reversed through a complex judicial process. Through this decision, the population could no longer be evicted from some 35,000 hectares, including the urban center. However, the fight to legitimize their right to live there is not over.
During the Chaco War (1932-1935), when Paraguay and Bolivia were at war, Puerto Casado was the loading and unloading zone for the Paraguayan combatants who also used the area's factory and train workshops. More than 80 years later, Christian and Éver Pereira leave from this same place to study. Only Luis Pereira stopped going to classes. Éver said:
Él siempre quiso ser militar. Yo le insistí nomás para que estudie algo. Pero luego de lo que sucedió desistió totalmente.
He always wanted to be a soldier. I pushed for him to just study anything. But after what happened, he quit all together.
However, both Éver and Christian aren't going to give up this fight. Not now. Not in the middle of their journey, they say, not even after getting to know the fury of the river. Migrating to Vallemí, perhaps to Concepción or another area to avoid the risk of the daily boat trip is not an alternative that either one of them will consider. They are stopped by their jobs, their families, their connection and commitment to a community that has other shortcomings, like its lack of hospitals and navegable roads. Christian said:
Si me voy a estudiar a otro lado, fácilmente me voy a acostumbrar al ambiente y ya no voy a querer volver a Casado. Y si no hay profesionales dentro de la comunidad nunca va a haber una universidad.
If I leave and study somewhere else, I'll easily get used to that environment and I won't want to come back to Casado. And if there aren't professionals in the community, there will never be a university.
He not only thinks of his own future, but also the future of his children James and Jonás. “The authorities in the capital need to start looking over here. From those big buildings they definitely can't see that the Chaco doesn't have anything. Those buildings are blocking their view. They need to go a little farther up and look towards our region,” he said.
He is referring to to the shiny buildings that make up the landscape of the “new economic center in Asunción” as it is called in the capital, where skyscrapers grow at the pace of the real estate boom. This is a parallel universe for Christian, one in which “you get on a bus with air conditioning and you travel peacefully, you even have time to think why someone else is driving,” he said with a smile that stands in contrast to the tough life in the Paraguayan Chaco. Where he lives, the year is divided into a rainy season and a season of drought. When the earth isn't dry and cracked, it's the isolation caused by the lack of roads that drowns you.
Seven years ago, travelling from Asunción to Puerto Casado on rainy days took 36 hours, maybe 48. You had to go by bus until the port in Concepción, little more than 400 kilometers from the capital. Later, you had to take the Aquidabán, a boat that left port once a week for Vallemí. The new route that connects Concepción with Vallemí allows people to take a daily bus from the capital and arrive to their destination in nine hours, or vise versa. Christian, for example, makes the trip every time Jonás and James need to go to the pediatrician. Thus he reflected:
Envidio las oportunidades que se tienen al otro lado del río. Para nosotros, ese es otro mundo.
I envy the opportunities they have on the the other side of the river. For us, this is another world.

author: Kurtural


text:
Guatemala Mourns Dozens of Girls at a Children’s Shelter Left to Die in a Fire · Global Voices
Elizabeth Rivera

Relatives cry outside the Safe Home on March 8, 2017. Photo by Carlos Sebastián for Nómada. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Dozens of girls died tragically in a fire on March 8 at a state-run home for children on the outskirts of Guatemala City. The night before, the girls were locked in their dormitories after a failed escape attempt. The next morning, mattresses were set on fire in protest against the lockdown, but the flames spread and consumed the entire wing of the building, killing at least 41 children and adolescents.
According to the online news site Sin Embargo, “For years, minors have alleged that they were victims of physical, psychological, and sexual mistreatment during their stay at the shelter.”
Ironically, the deadly fire occurred on International Women’s Day, as feminists around the world protested violence against women, and the Ni Una Menos (Not One Less) swept Latin America.
Eyewitnesses told Sin Embargo that the foiled escape attempt on March 7 was hardly the first time anyone at the shelter tried to flee. The most recent attempt set off a chain of events leading to the tragedy.
According to a blog post shared on Medium by Community Press KM169, conditions in the shelter were abhorrent, and many of the minors living there were regularly trying to break out:
Al menos unas cincuenta niñas y niños intentaron huir el 7 de marzo del infierno mal llamado Hogar seguro Virgen de la Asunción. Estaban desesperadas de los golpes, del encierro, de las violaciones sexuales, abortos forzados, administración de fármacos y de las torturas permanentes, de todo tipo. Muchas de ellas estaban embarazadas. Esto no es nuevo pues había denuncias desde el 2016.
Huyeron pero pronto atraparon a la mayoría y el presidente mismo Jimmy Morales ordenó que se enviaran más de 250 policías incluyendo antimotines, que se quedaron ahí toda la noche para tener todo “bajo control“.
At least 50 girls and boys attempted to flee on March 7 from the inaptly named hellhole “Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home.” They were driven to desperation by the beatings, the confinement, the sexual violence, the forced abortions and medicines, and all types of torture. Many of them were pregnant. This is not new: it’s been reported since 2016.
The residents fled, but most were quickly captured again. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales sent more than 250 police officers, including riot police, to stay overnight at the shelter and keep everything “under control.”
On March 8, “the girls rebelled and set fire to their mattresses so they would be allowed out of their rooms. They were not allowed out, and they were burned to death,” according to local news site Nómada.
Community Press KM169 shares the following further details about the deadly day:
El fuego empezó a arder en la madrugada, los monitores o encargados y los cientos de policías no hicieron nada más que amedrentar y amenazar a los jóvenes albergados en otros módulos que querían ayudar. A los cuerpos de socorro se les negó el acceso como lo denunció un oficial bomberos, y los familiares en las afueras pedían desesperadamente entrar y los antimotines impidieron el paso. Nadie pudo hacer nada
The fire began in the early morning, and the monitors, those in charge, and the hundreds of police did nothing more than frighten and threaten the youths in other units who wanted to help. They denied entry to emergency response personnel, according to a firefighter official, and relatives outside who sought to enter were blocked by riot police. No one could do anything.
A survivor told reporters:
Pedimos auxilio y una de las agentes dijo: que sufran esas desgraciadas, que así como habíamos sido buenas para fugarnos, que fuéramos buenas para aguantar el dolor.
We asked for help and one of the agents said, “Let these wretches suffer; if we'd been ready to flee, we could endure the pain.”
At a press conference the day after the blaze, the authorities presented their version of events. President Morales was conspicuously absent, away “attending to urgent matters of state.” A government spokesperson claimed that the girls placed under lockdown were being punished for extortion and conceal weapons. “We exhausted all dialogue with the girls,” the spokesperson explained, suggesting that their true grievances weren't torture but bad cafeteria food. “There was no negligence.”
Nonetheless, President Morales later admitted that the state had failed to “pay enough attention” to the situation at Virgin of the Assumption, and warned that a similar tragedy could strike again, if officials make the same mistake in the future.
The children living at the Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home are there under court order. The website Nómada says many of them belonged to gangs and committed felonies, while others were simply abandoned in the street. These minors were exploited for robbery, prostitution, and even murder. Some disabled children were handed over to the state after their parents decided they couldn't meet  their special needs.
“There were more than 800 babies, children, and teenagers living in a place with a 500-person capacity,” Nomada reported.
Writing for the La Barra Espaciadora, Cristina Burneo Salazar argued:
[…] la narrativa construida para este caso es una narrativa de reclusos, no de niños en estado de indefensión. “Se escaparon, los recapturaron”. Si están en un centro de reclusión no se pueden escapar, pero se habla como si se tratara de cárceles.
[…] the narrative developed for this case is a narrative of prisoners, not of defenseless children. “They escaped, they were recaptured.” If they are in a confinement center, they cannot escape, but they talk as though they are dealing with prisons.
Twelve hours after the fire, mourners in Guatemala City's Constitution Plaza lit 770 candles, representing the number of women killed annually in the country. During the lighting ceremony alone, three more girls wounded in the fire succumbed to their burns and died.
The deaths at the Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home have become a national tragedy in Guatemala, where activists have mobilized vigils, artwork, protests, and social media to maintain the public's attention and overcome the paralyzing indignation now felt widely across Guatemala.
Women light candles on March 8, 2017, in Guatemala City. Photo by Carlos Sebastián for Nómada. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Here are some protest-inspired tweets:
Justicia #GuateDeLuto#FueElEstado#GuatemalaEstaDeLutopic.twitter.com/Mfm2cmNr38
— Barrancópolis (@barrancopolis1) March 10, 2017
Justice. Guatemala Is Mourning. It was the State.
#Guatemala#GuatemalaEstaDeLutopic.twitter.com/YiEOStETW0
— MariaT.Solanot (@maria_tsolanot) March 14, 2017
Guatemala. Guatemala Is Mourning.
#NiñasDeGuatemala#GuatemalaEstaDeLuto#JusticiaYapic.twitter.com/wsqfkBlEhl
— Desinformémonos (@Desinformemonos) March 14, 2017
Girls of Guatemala. Guatemala Is Mourning. Justice.
On the picture: Guatemala, Justice Now! This country kills us, silences us, rapes us, blame us.
Researcher Coral Herrera Gómez wrote on Facebook:
La monstruosa indiferencia: Lo de las niñas de Guatemala no se me quita de la cabeza, sigue doliéndome en el corazón. Las violan, las maltratan y cuando protestan las queman vivas. Las asesinó el machismo, el clasismo y el racismo, y cada día que pasa las mata la indiferencia. […]
The monstrous indifference: I can’t get the girls of Guatemala out of my head. It continues to cause me heartache. They rape them, they mistreat them, and when they protest, they burn them alive. They were killed by machismo, classism, and racism, and every day they’re killed by indifference. […]

author: Elizabeth Rivera


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Life Inside a Leprosy Colony in Myanmar · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

St. Joseph Cotto Legnos Leprosy Colony in southern Shan state. Photo by Pyay Kyaw/The Irrawaddy
This article by Pyay Kyaw is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, and is republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Located seven miles from Loilen town in southern Shan State, St. Joseph Cotto Legnos Leprosy Colony—known locally as Hohkai Leprosy Shelter—was established by an Italian priest over 70 years ago and is now home to 90 people with leprosy from all over Myanmar.
The patients—ranging from 13 years old to over 80—often suffer from limb deformities caused by the disease and are cared for by priests.
Those at the shelter tend to farmland and rear livestock, but their produce is shunned at local markets due to stigma around the disease.
The majority of patients no longer plan to return to their families, but entrust their fate to God.
One such patient, named Maya, said she will end her days at the shelter. She recalled being forced to live at her town’s cemetery because of the disease and sneaking back to see her family at night time.
The shelter receives no government funding despite the help it offers people with disease and relies on donations from other countries.
For leprosy patients who do not wish to live within the shelter, priests have established a colony of five villages that house up to 300 people.
In 2003, the government announced it had achieved an early leprosy elimination target by reducing the incidence of the disease to less than one in every 10,000 people.
Although the number of new cases in Myanmar has declined over the last 10 years, there were 2,877 cases in 2014 and 2,571 cases in 2015, according to Rangoon General Hospital.
Below are some photos which depict the daily routine of those who live at the leprosy shelter:
Every morning at 6am, patients—many of whom are quite frail—say prayers at the center's chapel. Photo and caption by Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy
The stronger patients cook for their weaker peers. Photo and caption by Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy
Those at the shelter tend to farmland and rear livestock, but their produce is shunned at local markets due to stigma around the disease. Photo and caption by Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy
Farming at the shelter. Photo by Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy
Those who are able to work in the farms or forests return to the center in the evening and rest. Photo and caption by Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy
Taking a bath at the shelter. Photo by Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy
Evening routine at the shelter. Photo by Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy

author: The Irrawaddy


text:
Netizen Report: Azerbaijani Bloggers Targeted with Legal Threats, Spearphishing · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Political demonstration in Azerbaijan, 2013. Photo by Jahangir Yusif, used with permission.
Azerbaijani video blogger Mehman Huseynov was sentenced to two years in prison on charges of slander over videos he shared on his Facebook page. His page, where he covers a range of topics including working conditions and the wealth of government officials, has more than 300,000 followers.
Arresting, silencing, and intimidating journalists, bloggers, and activists is par for the course in Azerbaijan these days, but Huseynov is the first blogger or journalist to be officially sentenced for slander by a court in Azerbaijan. Prior cases of journalists or bloggers being sentenced typically involved charges like narcotics possession (often bogus), hooliganism, abuse of power, and tax evasion.
Targeted surveillance of human rights advocates also appears to be increasingly common. New reports and technical research confirm that multiple advocates in the country have fallen victim to spearphishing surveillance technologies, which create fake accounts or take over real accounts in order to impersonate other human rights defenders in the country.
According to Amnesty International and other researchers, several activists have reported finding someone had impersonated their emails and Facebook accounts in order to identify and compromise others they communicate with. Dissidents in the country have experienced similar attacks in the past, and Azerbaijan is among the countries that sought to acquire targeted surveillance software from the company Hacking Team — but many fear this is a sign the political circumstances for human rights defenders in the country are likely to get worse.
The number of websites blocked and delisted (i.e. removed from search engine results) more than doubled in France in 2016 compared with past years. Under a law passed shortly after the 2015 attacks in Paris, 834 websites were blocked and 1,929 were delisted in the last year, an increase likely tied to the counter-terrorism regulation that enables authorities to order the blocking of sites without the approval of a judge. There is no list of which websites have been blocked or delisted, making it difficult to assess how authorities are implementing the rules, and whether or not any sites have been blocked without legitimate cause. The NGO coalition European Digital Rights and the website Islamic News, which was blocked shortly after the law was enacted, have both criticized the policy.
Yet again, Chinese scientists have spoken out against the country’s web filtering system, the Great Firewall, arguing that the system damages research. Luo Fuhe, vice-chair of the national advisory body the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, recently submitted a proposal urging the government to improve loading speeds for overseas websites. As in the past, shortly after local media began to pick up coverage of the proposal, reports started to be taken down by national censors.
In Pakistan’s National Assembly, multiple officials, including Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, have called for bans on social media platforms that allow blasphemy. This is not unprecedented by any means — YouTube has been temporarily blocked multiple times, and was banned from late 2012 to early 2016 due in large part to content deemed offensive to religious sentiment. Increasingly, individuals and organized groups use accusations of blasphemy are used as repressive tactics to silence others. Two major TV networks have been embroiled in legal blasphemy cases in the last two years.
Representatives also have linked these arguments with concerns about social media users criticizing government officials online. Local news outlet Dawn summarized a statement from the Interior Minister indicating that “no country could allow religious sentiments to be hurt or top state functionaries to be subjected to ridicule under the pretext of freedom of expression.”
Facebook announced new prohibitions against the use of its data by developers for the purposes of mass surveillance. Last fall, the ACLU found that Facebook, Instagram and Twitter sold user data to Geofeedia, a company advertising social media surveillance tools to police in the US to monitor protesters and activists of color. With Facebook’s latest response, all three platforms now have a clearly stated policy that bans the use of their data, which can be obtained through their platform APIs, for surveillance purposes.
South African social media users pushed back strongly against reported plans to regulate social media to counter false narratives and the spread of fake news. Rallying around the hashtag #HandsOffSocialMedia, South Africans have accused the government of seeking to control expression and discourse in the country.
The Philippine government announced plans to give media accreditation to bloggers and social media publishers. Accreditation will grant bloggers easier and faster access to media passes for government events, but would restrict the use of “offensive, inflammatory, or provocative” language. The proposal would also require that they publish press releases and statements from the Presidential Communications Operations Office. Several prominent independent media workers expressed concern about these requirements at a recent town hall meeting, including journalism professor Danilo Arao, who later wrote that the policy would reduce accredited bloggers to “mere mouthpieces” of the Presidential Communications office.
Russian media regulator added the messaging app Threema to its Registry of Information Dissemination Organizers, the first time it has included a foreign app to the list. The list was introduced after a federal law was passed requiring all websites to store Russian users’ metadata and make it available to authorities. Threema claims it offers users full anonymity, though it has not released its full code to the public for vetting that this is the case.
On March 15, 2012, web developer and human rights activist Bassel Khartabil was imprisoned by the Syrian government in Damascus. Since October 2015, his whereabouts have been unknown. Creative Commons and the FreeBassel campaign are proposing a set of actions that friends and followers can take to express their support for his release.
Ellery Roberts Biddle, Arzu Geybullayeva, Leila Nachawati Rego and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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St. Petersburg Investigators Agree to Review Ballot Stuffing Allegations · Global Voices
Aliide Naylor

Photo: Yegor Tratnikov / Facebook
It doesn't happen often in Russia, but police have agreed to investigate a case of potential voter fraud from last September's elections. Yegor Tratnikov, a candidate who lost his race for a single-mandate seat in St. Petersburg's legislative assembly, says a voting precinct conspired against him, to deliver the election to his rival, Alexander Yegorov.
Tratnikov is a member of the far-right, inaptly named Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), founded by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an infamous nationalist politician who just this Wednesday threatened opponents with mass executions, if he wins the presidency next year. Despite LDPR's tough rhetoric, the party is only nominally oppositionist, and generally supports Vladimir Putin's initiatives.
Tratnikov says he has video surveillance footage proving that St. Petersburg voting precinct number five permitted illegal ballot stuffing, according to the news site Fontanka.ru.
“The members of this [election] commission entered into a criminal conspiracy with each other. Voters, acting on the commission members’ behalf, repeatedly filled out ballots […] and personally dropped them in the ballot box to falsify the [election's] results,” Tratnikov said.
Turnout for St. Petersburg's 2016 legislative assembly elections dipped more than 700,000 votes, when compared to the last race in 2011, to just 32 percent of eligible voters. Turnout was also down nationwide, in both local and federal parliamentary elections.
Last September, on Election Day, reporters from Reuters monitored voting at several polling stations across the country, witnessing what they say were multiple cases of ballot-stuffing and inflated turnout figures. Russian election officials later invalidated the voting results at nine different polling stations, based on reports of voting irregularities.
Both Tratnikov, an LDPR member, and Yegorov, a deputy from Just Russia, belong to establishment political parties with representation in the State Duma. “Non-systemic” opposition parties, like Parnas and Yabloko, have failed to break minimum thresholds for parliamentary seats in the past several elections. Members of Parnas have also been hacked, harassed, and party co-chair Boris Nemtsov was even assassinated in February 2015.
In Russia's 2011 parliamentary vote, election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe identified “frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulation, including several serious indications of ballot box stuffing.” Several violations were caught on video, as well.
Apparent widespread voter fraud in Russia's 2011 parliamentary elections sparked the largest protests in more than a decade, though Vladimir Putin easily won a third, non-consecutive presidential term the following spring.

author: Aliide Naylor


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The Amazing, Endearing PSAs of the Belarusian Ministry of Emergencies · Global Voices
Sergey Kozlovsky

Source: Belarusian Ministry of Emergency Situations
The Belarusian government ministry in charge of managing disasters and national emergencies has produced a cartoon show. The series, called “Magic Book,” features animals in Looney-Toons-style misadventures, and teaches children how to stay safe.
There's a happy trio of protagonists: a curious rabbit, a clever beaver, and a nervous bird — all armed with a computer spouting safety instructions. They face off against Volchidze the Wolf, who wants very much to eat them, though he inevitably lands himself in trouble, instead.
Since February, the ministry has shared three short cartoons on its YouTube channel. In the first episode, the wolf lures the animals to a frozen lake, where he hopes to eat them after they drown. The animals think about going ice skating, but their computer warns them that it could be dangerous, foiling the wolf's plan.
In the second episode, the good animals play in a band. The wolf tosses them a box of anthropomorphic matches, which burst out, begging to join the jam session. Again, the computer tries to spoil the fun, warning that it's very dangerous to play with matches.
This time, however, the animals ignore the machine, and the matches are invited into the band. As you'd expect, the get so excited moments later that they burst into flames, running around spreading the fire. The safety computer comes to the rescue, of course, telling the animals how to call for help and get rescued.
In the third episode, the beaver becomes a popular blogger. Jealous of his success, the wolf decides he wants to become famous, too, and tries to launch a cooking Web series. Antagonist that he is, the wolf ignores safety precautions, and quickly overloads a power circuit and starts a fire. Things go from bad to worse, when the world tries to put it out using a bucket of water, electrocuting him and reducing him to a small pile of ash.
Meanwhile the beaver follows all the electrical safety tips and cooks up a batch of delicious pancakes.
This animated effort isn't the first time the Belarusian government has dabbled in video entertainment. In September 2015, the Ministry of Emergency Situations released a public service announcement featuring a boy who shares lessons in “taking cool selfies safely.”
“When I want to surprise my friends, I don't do silly things, imitating daredevils,” the boy in the PSA explains. “I can make selfies absolutely safely. When someone wants to challenge me, I use my brain,” he says, explaining how Photoshop is as good as an extreme stunt.
On Jan. 19, “Rescuers Day” in Belarus, the ministry released a short video about firefighters’ everyday work.
These creative efforts seem to be paying off with the general public. On YouTube, the Ministry of Emergency Situations has recorded more than 2.5 million views, and its news cartoons are, by far, the most popular clips in recent months.

author: Sergey Kozlovsky


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UAE Court Sentences Jordanian Journalist Tayseer al-Najjar to Prison · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

In June 2016, the ‘Their Freedom Is Their Right’ campaign called for the release of Tayseer al-Najjar, who has been in prison in the UAE since December 2015.
On 15 March, a United Arab Emirates court sentenced Jordanian journalist Tayseer al-Najjar to three years in jail and fined him 500,000 dirhams (about 136,000 US dollars) for insulting the state in a Facebook post he published in 2014 while he was still living in Jordan.
In the post, al-Najjar criticized the Emirati position on the 2014 Israeli war in Gaza, which left more than 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead. Six Israeli citizens and 64 soldiers were also killed in the conflict. According to the Emirates Center for Human Rights, al-Najjar wrote:
Message to some journalists and writers who do not like the Gazan resistance […] There is no two rights in one case, but the right one is the Gazan resistance and all else is bad – such as Israel, the UAE, [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-] Sisi and other systems that are no longer ashamed of shame itself
Al-Najjar, who was detained by UAE authorities in December 2015 and spent more than a year awaiting trial, will also be deported as soon as he completes his sentence. The State Security Court in Abu Dhabi found him guilty of “insulting symbols of the state” on social media. Under Article 29 of the 2012 UAE Cybercrime Law, publishing statements, information, news or rumors “with intent to make sarcasm or damage the reputation, prestige or stature” of the state, its institutions and leaders is a crime punishable by temporary imprisonment and a fine.
It is not uncommon for the UAE to send users to jail for peacefully expressing their views. But what is troubling about al-Najjar's case is that he is serving jail time for statements he made before he even moved to the country to work as a culture reporter for a local newspaper.
A writer, journalist and a member of the Jordanian Press Association, al-Najjar used to work for the culture section of the daily newspaper al-Dostour in Jordan. In April 2015, he moved to Abu Dhabi where he started working as a culture reporter for al-Dar newspaper, which is affiliated with the government-owned center Aljewa for Culture and Media.
UAE authorities detained Najjar in December 2015, after banning him from boarding a flight to Jordan at the Abu Dhabi International Airport to visit his family. He was held incommunicado for nearly two months, and remained in pre-trial detention for over a year.

author: Afef Abrougui