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The Gambia’s Increasingly Isolated President Frees Almost All Prisoners · Global Voices
Demba Kandeh

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh. Public domain photo by the White House uploaded online by Wikipedia user Alifazal.
President Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia has reportedly emptied the country's notoriously overcrowded prisons and vowed to turn a new page. In a televised address on the 21st anniversary of his toppling of democratically elected President Dawda Kairaba Jawara on 22 July 1994, Jammeh said he has pardoned all convicts between 1994 and 2013.
Jammeh's prison pardon also comes with a general amnesty for all exiled political activists. It is not clear as to how many convicts are affected, but the announcement indicated that those pardoned include inmates on death row, which was estimated to be at 38 in August 2012.
Below is a YouTube video from The Gambia Inquirer of the address by Jammeh:
Jammeh's announcement has so far generated mixed reaction, especially from some of those affected. Many Gambian dissidents based abroad have dismissed the so-called magnanimity as a mere political maneuvering.
Jallow Mathew wrote on Facebook:
Yahya Jammeh says he has forgiven all dissidents. Are you kidding me? Forgive us for what; speaking out against his killings, robbing the country blind, incarcerating everything that breaths, and much, much more. Yahya Jammeh is in a tough spot and he knows it. He is scared and is resorting to cheap propaganda to save his dying regime. My advise to Yahya Jammeh is to immediately resign so that together with the political parties, we will create a government of unity for 18 months, while we prepare for the first free elections in twenty years. This is our common position. It is non-negotiable.
Commenting on that thread, Karamba Touray dismissed Jammeh's amnesty as nonsense:
It is all absolute non sense . His fate is sealed and we will ensure he ends up like every dictator and tyrant: down and out.
However, some voices are of the view that Jammeh should be commended for his gesture. Bakary Badjie wrote:
Bravo and thanks to President Jammeh and those who convinced him to extend such huge gesture to the many prisoners he has pardoned. From convicts of treason, dead row inmates, drug traffickers and abusers, rapists etc. However one analyses the announcement of the President, the fact remains that it should be welcomed and he should be commended for doing such and certainly there is reason to celebrate as all those in the categories he mentioned will unexpectedly be reuniting with their families. Forget the politics, view it from a social angle. Can you imagine if one of them was your son, brother or husband.
He further added:
For many years we miss appearing in the news for a positive reason, in the coming days, we will. My hope is that this will the beginning of new life in The Gambia, a life of freedom and respect for human rights. It should also be a time for reconciliation as we were in the verge of been socially and politically divided nation.”
Sophie Sarr also thought the news was worth celebrating. She wrote:
Praise God. I cannot help it but had to shed tears of joy when I read about this great news. Though am not related to any of these people. I am just here to cerebrate with all the women whose husbands have been released and with all the kids who are privileged to re-unite with their fathers today. This is the healing we need as a country and I pray that God in his powers will heal all hearts today FOR THE GAMBIA OUR HOMELAND.
Barely a week ago, Jammeh vowed to execute all prisoners on death row arguing that crime is on the rise. In a rather more twisted move, Jammeh reportedly revoked the pardon he had given 85 prisoners in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. However, authorities later clarified that there was a mistake in identity for some of the released prisoners, leading to rearrest.
HE Alagie Jobe has a question for President Jammeh:
Excellent move Mr President… But what about those illegally detained, and those made to disappear, don't they deserve to be pardon too if they are still alive Mr President?”
The Mile II prison, which also houses the insect-infested maximum security wing, is where most political prisoners, drug convicts and death row inmates are kept. In November 2014, the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced that two of its special rapporteurs, Christof Heyns and Juan Méndez, were denied access to certain sections of a prison, which was later said to be the maximum security wing.
On 22 July 2015, rights group Amnesty International released a reported detailing what it described as a sharp deterioration of human rights abuses during Jammeh's 21st year in power.
Whereas families of the pardoned families will be happy to reunite with their loved ones, there is high level of uncertainty among many.

author: Demba Kandeh


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Trinidad’s Capital Sent Into a Tailspin as Three Inmates Shoot Their Way Out of Prison · Global Voices
Flora Thomas

Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital city. Photo by Mariordo (Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz)CC BY-SA 3.0
The Friday afternoon bustle of downtown Port of Spain was today transformed into something much more befitting an action movie set, as three prisoners reportedly shot their way out of the Royal Jail, a facility located on Frederick Street near the heart of Trinidad's capital.
@tv6tnt Prisons officers on high alert outside POS jail. pic.twitter.com/5D3dwIThHT
— Mark Bassant (@MarkBassant1) July 24, 2015
Reports are still murky, but the escapees, Allan “Scanny” Martin, Hassan Atwell and Christopher Selby, were reportedly able to flee the prison when the gates were opened to allow an official vehicle to enter. A getaway car was either waiting or acquired and in the ensuing shootout between the prisoners and the protective services Martin was shot dead, and one police officer, Sherman Maynard, was shot and injured. Maynard subsequently died on the operating table at the nearby Port of Spain General Hospital. Atwell and Selby are said to be still on the run.
Martin was one of ten suspects to stand trial for the murder of businesswoman Vindra Naipaul-Coolman. He is also reported to be a member of the Jamaat al Muslimeen, the organisation behind the failed coup attempt in 1990. The group's leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, was recently held for questioning with regard to the 2014 murder of Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal, who was working as a prosecutor in the Naipaul-Coolman case. But police officials and Trinidad and Tobago's Minister of National Security have been careful to say that no connection has yet been established between the jailbreak and Bakr's detention:
Police: No confirmed link to Muslimeen despite report of shooters in Muslim garb
— CCN TV6 (@tv6tnt) July 24, 2015
Atwell was due to be extradited to the United States on hostage-taking charges, and there has been speculation that the jailbreak could be connected to the pending extradition. Minister of National Security Brigadier Carl Alfonso, has stated, however, that he has “no information on any planned extradition of Atwell”.
Today, at approximately 10:30am Trinidad and Tobago time, Hassan Atwell had posted the following message publicly on his Facebook page, prompting speculation online as to how a prison inmate had access to Facebook in the first place:
A true believer would accept death any day over oppression. And a true believer must do everything in his or her power to remove themselves from under oppression without fearing death. For it is more pleasing to ALLAH for a believer to stand up and fight against oppression and die in the process than for a believer to sit down and just accept oppression because he or she is afraid of death.
DEATH IS ONLY AN INVITATION FROM ALLAH TO ME MEET HIM IN PERSON.
Heavy traffic in Woodbrook after today's shootup in PoS pic.twitter.com/ByNMkYaK4Y
— CCN TV6 (@tv6tnt) July 24, 2015
On Facebook, Jason Blackknight Subero publicly posted a video of the shootout on the grounds of the hospital, where the escapees reportedly fled, saying, “Live shootout, five minutes response from police…. POS hospital.. Bhagdad!!”:
Live shootout, five minutes response from police…. POS hospital.. Bhagdad!! .
Posted by Jason Blackknight Subero on Friday, July 24, 2015
The Global Voices Caribbean team will provide updates on this story as more information becomes available.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Flora Thomas


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Why Indian Film Students Have Been Protesting for More Than a Month · Global Voices
Sakshi Rai

Screenshot from the FTII Press conference video
Since 12 June 2015, students have been protesting in Pune, India, regarding the appointment of actor Gajendra Chauhan as the chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). The post has previously been held by dignitaries like RK Laxman, Shyam Benegal and U.R. Ananthamurthy.
FTII is one of the most prestigious government institutions established in 1960, known for its notable and respected alumni. The longtime perceived neglect of the institution by the current government and previous governments have fuelled student discontent, as well as what protesters say is Chauhan's lack of credentials. Chauhan is most famously known for his work as ‘Yudhishthir’ in the 1980s popular TV serial Mahabharat.
Fatema Kagalwala, a current student of FTII participating in this protest, explains on Campus Diaries Blog:
The credentials of Mr Chauhan and the other four members, show no such connection to or aptitude for the same. Their political affiliation hence becomes worrisome for us.
Chauhan is a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and some speculate that his appointment is a means to extend the party's nationalistic ideology and restrict artistic freedom and expression at the institute. The other four members appointed are: Anagha Ghaisas, Narendra Pathak, Pranjal Saikia and Rahul Solapurkar. All known to have affiliations with the BJP or the hardline Hindu group RSS.
Although to some, such as an ex-student belonging to the 1983 class Bina Paul, believe that the problem runs deeper than meets the eye:
[…] Successive governments have been unable to articulate the need for the institute to continue, the dynamics of the profession itself have changed, film schools have sprung up all over the country, and technology has become available to everybody. But there has been no one within this premiere institute with an ear to the ground. Mantras such as short-term courses and vocational studies have been floated, but the bigger picture has been lost.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting paid heed to the qualms of students and organised a dialogue meeting with them, but did not succeed in justifying its appointment of Chauhan. Oscar winner and former student of FTII Resul Pookutty, who was also a part of this meeting, expressed his disappointment over the current state of things.
Not just @AnupamPkher Mr.@arunjaitley also told us in the meeting that we haven't made the best of choice but as a Govt.we can't retract!
— resul pookutty (@resulp) July 10, 2015
Affable support for the protesting students has poured in from both veteran and contemporary actors and other members of the Indian film fraternity like Ranbir Kapoor and Salman Khan. Several social media users have urged transparency and the immediate removal of the recently appointed authorities.
Advice. After all the protests and controversy,Gajendra Chauhan,the FTII Chairman should voluntarily retire. Will do good to the students.
— rishi kapoor (@chintskap) July 10, 2015
#FTII needs to be in safe hands. Students need somebody who they can trust and look up to. It's their future which is at stake here.
— Rajkummar Rao (@RajkummarRao) July 10, 2015
In recent revelations this week, the director of the film institute, D J Narain, issued a warning letter to all students protesting, asking them to end the strike or face expulsion. Undeterred, students continue their fight, calling for a second round of communication between the FTII Student Association and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting that leads to a concrete decision. Students from all over India have shown support to FTII in their cause.

author: Sakshi Rai


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Conspiracy Theories Abound in Aftermath of Trinidad Jailbreak · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Belmont rooftops”; image by (ha)SanMan_ish, used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license. Belmont is the Port of Spain suburb to which one of the escaped prisoners was reportedly trying to flee.
It is a calm day in Trinidad and Tobago. There are no blaring police sirens, no rumbling of helicopter rotors—a stark contrast to the confusion and panic yesterday caused by the escape of three “high-risk” prisoners from the Royal Gaol in Port of Spain. In the aftermath, escapee Allan “Scanny” Martin and one police officer lay dead; the two other escaped prisoners, Hassan Atwell and Christopher Selby, remain at large.
One newspaper report which is being heavily shared on social media details how Selby commandeered a taxi to flee the scene, saying to its occupants, ““Excuse me but we just trying to fight the system.” In a satirical post on the jailbreak, Wired868 quipped:
Well, that was bacchanal. Trinidad and Tobago was so hot yesterday even Jack Warner considered asking the US Attorney General for a plane ticket.
The post went on to poke fun at the fact that Atwell appeared to have an active Facebook account while in prison:
At around noon yesterday, Port of Spain inmate Hassan Atwell and two fellow prisoners Allan ‘Scanny’ Martin and Christopher ‘Monster’ Selby made a daring jailbreak.
But first, they had to wait for the 41-year-old Atwell to update his Facebook page with the usual rant about his unwillingness to bend to the oppressive nature of incarceration and to share a ‘Ent! Breaking News’ video.
On Facebook, Darren Trinity Cheewah posted cartoon commentary on Atwell's apparent ability to gain internet access while in prison:
Artwork by Darren Trinity Cheewah; used with permission.
Artwork by Darren Trinity Cheewah; used with permission.
As of the time of writing, Atwell's Facebook page is no longer visible to the public.
In the absence of an official version of events from either the police or the Ministry of National Security, netizens have begun cooking up conspiracy theories regarding links between the jailbreak and the Jamaat al Muslimeen. The Jamaat is the organisation behind the attempted coup d'état in 1990, and its leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, was detained earlier this week for questioning, along with eight other Jamaat members. Among the most talked about news items this morning was that one of the eight detainees, Hamid Ali, has been charged for the murder of Dana Seetahal, the Senior Counsel who was gunned down at point blank range on May 4 last year. Hamid Ali is the brother of Rajaee Ali, who is currently incarcerated on charges of conspiracy to murder. The latter had been involved in the controversial Lifesport programme, which has been plagued with corruption allegations.
Wired868's Mr. Live Wire tried to connected the dots by explaining:
Ali (R) is the son of Hassan Ali who is the Imam for the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen’s Carapo mosque and he leads prayers there himself as well.
It meant another round of questions to Imam Yasin Abu Bakr and his son Fuad Abu Bakr, the political leader of the NNV party, on whether their religious sect was housing and benefitting from crime. […]
Of course, Government interests seem to run alarmingly close to several criminal cases at the moment, not least the Seetahal murder, which, according to the police, might have been organised by persons who were on the LifeSport payroll at the time.
In a brilliant parallel, the post basically asked why what was good for Peter was not good for Paul:
Four years ago, attorney David West, who is now the PCA chairman, found it “passing strange” that then AG Anand Ramlogan did not appeal a ruling against extradition for UNC financiers Ish Galbaransingh and Steve Ferguson since Atwell was in a similar situation. […]
‘It is passing strange that the State loses one application before a single High Court judge in a complex and highly politically charged case and deems it not fit to appeal,’ said West. ‘An appeal is necessary to clarify this ‘grey’ area in the law…Two other accused persons, Hassan Atwell and Gary Govindass are also in this same predicament by having a local charge existing whilst extradition proceedings are ongoing.’
Earlier this week, Works Minister and Tabaquite MP Suruj Rambachan unveiled a $14 million State project that was completed by Galbaransingh’s Aztec Asphalt Pavers company. […]
Food Production Minister Devant Maharaj, whose ministry oversaw the tendering process, sang from the same hymn sheet.
‘Why should we distance ourselves? Is it that he is not allowed to do business in Trinidad?’ asked Maharaj, knowing full well that Trinidad is the perfect place for men like Galbaransigh to do business.
On Friday, Atwell decided that he deserved to be free to do business too. So, he updated his Facebook page and then blasted his way out of jail, leaving a dead officer in his wake. […]
This place gone though, oui.
The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service has since announced that it will hold a press conference on the Dana Seetahal investigation at 2:30 p.m. today.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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The 20-Year-Old Activist Who Died Trying to Help Rebuild a City · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Hatice Ezgi Sadet in an undated selfie. Credit: Hatice Ezgi Sadet's Instagram.
This article and radio report by Zeynep Bilginsoy and Jared Goyette for The World originally appeared on PRI.org on July 21, 2015, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Before she was killed by a suicide bomber, before her Instagram photos were shared and liked by thousands, Hatice Ezgi Sadet was a 20-year-old art history student from Turkey looking forward to going on an archaeological excavation trip and using her newly obtained driver’s license.
Sadet postponed her trip though; she had more urgent plans. She was part of a group of students and activists going to volunteer to help rebuild the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane, destroyed during fighting between Kurdish and ISIS forces last year. She took a selfie with a group of young men and women in a bus, smiling wide, with the caption “heading to revolution.” She had begun to document the journey under her Instagram handle, Umutlugil, or the hopeful family. She told friends she’d be back in a few days.
The volunteers came from all over Turkey, many from the Federation of the Socialist Youth Association and other leftist groups. Among them were students, activists, election monitors, revolutionaries, anarchists, socialists, conscientious objectors and an MP candidate. Sadet got on one of three buses from Istanbul headed to Suruç, the predominately Kurdish town in Turkey that borders Kobane. Known for her smile and cheery personality, she was an unofficial spokesperson for the Rebuild Kobane project, giving interviews to media and communicating with government officials as the students navigated the complex state bureaucracy that regulates permits to cross into Kobane.
Hatice Ezgi Sadet is in the brown shirt, to the right, as she travels on the bus to Suruç with fellow activists. Credit: Hatice Ezgi Sadet's Instagram.
On the morning of July 20, the group and locals met to discuss plans for rebuilding Kobane. They had collected humanitarian supplies, including books and toys for children. They hoped to help build a school, a library and a park. As the cameras rolled, they began to slowly chant, holding flags and a banner that read “we defended it together, we are building it together.” Then came the explosion, the panic, the screams, the maimed bodies strewn among the trees. A suicide bomber.
“When I heard about the explosion on the radio, I thought ‘no, it has nothing to do with her, she can’t die’,” said Sadet’s friend Zeynep, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym because of concerns for her own safety. “I asked her not to go. I was afraid of something like this because people are constantly getting killed.”
The bomb ripped through the Amara Culture Center, killed 32 and wounded more than a hundred. Turkish officials have called it a terror attack and said they’ve identified a suspect who they believe has ties to ISIS, though the group has yet to claim responsibility for the bombing. The attack comes after several sweeps on militants with alleged ties to ISIS.
“Clearly you are starting to see a pattern emerge, where ISIS sympathizers or ISIS itself, is ramping up terror attacks, both inside Turkey and across the border in neighboring Syria,” says Aaron Stein, an Istanbul-based doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, and host of the podcast, Turkey Wonk.
But the evident danger wasn’t enough to dissuade Sadet or her colleagues. “She was so hopeful. She went to Kobane hoping that she’ll be of use, that she’ll help,” said Zeynep.
Sadet was only 20, but she was not new to activism. She was a veteran of the 2013 Gezi park protests, and had participated in numerous demonstrations since. “We worked on many issues apart from Kobane, especially the prevention of murders of women,” explains fellow activist and schoolmate Emre Demirel. “Ezgi worked on this a lot. The murders of women is one of Turkey’s bleeding wounds. LGBT rights, children’s rights are important to us. We worked on these. We gave the necessary importance to all rights and rights struggles. We attended marches, we made press statements, worked to inform the public.”
Hatice Ezgi Sadet stands at the far right of this group selfie, making a peace sign during a Gay Pride rally in Istanbul. Please note that this photo is not a photo of Suruç volunteers or victims, as the photo has widely been misrepresented on social media. Credit: Hatice Ezgi Sadet's Instagram.
“But we had this reality, a Kobane that was destroyed, to rebuild it,” says the 25-year-old Demirel of the urgency to go there. “There is a human tragedy there and children have lost their families, their lives have been darkened. We were going there to be a hopeful light. We were going to do things to change the lives of the children.”
Demirel regrets not having been there with his friends and says that, despite the attack, the students plan to regroup, and plan another trip. He pictures Sadet’s smile and says, “We’ll take over the smiles of our comrades.”
“We won’t leave our friends’ ideals half-finished,” he says. “We will do whatever necessary. In Kobane, we will build that kindergarten, that park, that library.”
Zeynep Bilginsoy reported and edited from Istanbul, Jared Goyette wrote from PRI’s Minneapolis offices.

author: PRI/PRX's The World


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Videos of Trinidad Jailbreak Show Prisoners Made Confident Exit from Downtown Prison · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

A screen grab of the escape video footage taken by a CCTV camera outside the Royal Gaol on Frederick Street, in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Video posted by Beyond the Tape's Facebook page.
Two videos of Friday afternoon's jailbreak in Port of Spain, Trinidad have surfaced on social media.
The footage appears to have been taken by CCTV cameras inside and outside of the Royal Gaol on Frederick Street where the escape occurred, and then filmed from a computer screen—the voices of the persons filming can be heard in voiceover. The videos posted on Facebook by Beyond the Tape, a local crime-related reality television show. The series works alongside the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at crime in the country.
The first video captures the view from the prison entrance:
At the time of publishing, the video post had over 17,000 views and more than 1,200 shares. Facebook user Bryce N. Stowe commented:
1. A jail holding high risk criminals in the middle of a heavily populated city, POS (near impossible to catch escapees as they can go any direction & get transport out easily).
2. No armed officers at strategic points in the prison (like the exit).
3. Prison officers say the jail wall is low enough that people can through things over for prisoners.
4. Over a decade now with the crime situation getting worse each day with prisoners having access to phones/internet for years yet jammers have not been implemented in the nations prisons up to this day.
5. Poorly thought out facilities allow prisoners to escape as easily as we just saw.
Billions and billions of dollars spent each year on this tiny island. What have our governments been doing for the last 15 years?
Other netizens felt that the whole thing looked too easy. Junior Smith quipped that it was “more of a jail release than a jailbreak”, while Krys Leisel posed several pertinent questions:
Where are the rest of guards on duty? Where did these prisoners obtain weapons from? Where did they get their civilian clothing? How did they know who had the keys of the door? Do we not have a protocol that alerts the guards when a cell block has been breached? How come more prisoners did not take the opportunity to escape as well??
A few netizens suggested that it could have been an inside job.
The second video, taken from the exterior of the prison, shows the prisoners exiting the prison gates. It was viewed over 38,000 times and shared over 1,800 at the time of publishing:
Viewer Justin Thompson interpreted the sequence of events this way:
For the Ppl who don't understand …. based on the footage , there were 3 officers within the vehicle , 3 escaped prisoners , as the men emerged from the prison gate shooting , 1 of the officers got shot , also as they were shooting 1 of the men threw a grenade on the driver side , who happened to b the only officer that saw the grenade , got out of the vehicle and ran up to the corner while the other officer attended to his wounded colleague. The officer (driver ) who ran to the corner came back to the vehicle and at that point he drove to the hospital
At the time or writing, neither the police, the Ministry of National Security or any other official body had commented on the videos or their authenticity.


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Why Britain Owes India for 200 Years of Brutal Colonialism · Global Voices
Rezwan

Shashi Tharoor speaking at Jaipur literary festival. Image by Jim Ankan Deka. Copyright Demotix (23/1/2015)
Indian Opposition MP, former minister and former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations Shashi Tharoor recently participated in a debate at the Oxford Union society arguing that Britain owes reparations to India for misdeeds committed during two centuries of colonial rule.
The 15 minute clip containing Tharoor's powerful and lucid argument for reparations went viral on social media soon after the Oxford Union debating society posted it online on July 14.
The British East India Company ruled or dominated on the Indian subcontinent from 1757 to 1858. The British directly ruled over the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947 when the region was commonly known as British India or the Indian Empire.
Here are some excerpts from Tharoor's speech:
India's share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was 23 per cent, by the time the British left it was down to below 4 per cent. Why? Simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain.
Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India. In fact Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India. [..]
By the end of 19th century, the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports and the source for highly paid employment for British civil servants. We literally paid for our own oppression. [..]
What is required it seems to me is accepting the principle that reparations are owed. Personally, I will be quite happy if it was one pound a year for the next 200 years after the last 200 years of Britain in India.
Tharoor's speech was widely appreciated in India and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Parliament:
Tharoor’s speech reflected the feelings of patriotic Indians on the issue and showed what an impression one can leave with effective arguments by saying the right things at the right place.
Miss Malini wrote in her blog:
Irrespective of our political leanings and beliefs, we can agree to the fact that Dr. Shashi Tharoor is one of the top debators of the country. That’s why it’s not surprising when the diplomat and former minister of state for external affairs took part in a debate at the Oxford Union.
Shashi Tharoor himself said on Twitter:
Somebody told me this is one speech of mine that my usual “Hindu nationalist” critics might agree with! True? https://t.co/BCBuXqbjJ9
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) July 15, 2015
Writer and film director Radha Bharadwaj writes on Twitter:
@minhazmerchant outlines what British rule cost India. I'd add Indians’ self-esteem; the damage in this dept. lingers http://t.co/g5UfsPXQee
— radha bharadwaj (@radhabharadwaj) July 24, 2015
All differences aside, im blown over by this Shashi Tharoor speech. http://t.co/txUWZi45Vm must watch.
— Vande Mataram (@UnSubtleDesi) July 21, 2015
What a brilliant brilliant speech by Shashi Tharoor. A must see by every Indian. Would be good for Britain to return our Kohinoor to us.
— Priya Gupta (@priyaguptatimes) July 19, 2015
https://t.co/kfwdnxeCFG @ShashiTharoor That was a fantastic speech. Thank You fpr upholding India's pride. Thank You.
— Dinesh (@DineshHegde) July 24, 2015
Sandip Roy claimed in Firstpost that Tharoor's speech had united a polarised Indian society, adding:
While the reparations he argues for are for the sins from centuries past, there is a bit that might have far more contemporary relevance for our politics today. At the end of the speech making a passionate case for even symbolic reparations Tharoor says “The abilty to acknowledge a wrong that has been done, to simply say sorry will go a far far longer way than some percentage of GDP.”
Now if only some of the politicians furiously butting heads in parliament and dredging up each other’s scams to shame each other would pay attention to that bit, we could all get moving with the nation’s business.

author: Rezwan


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Why Do Seniors in Singapore Still Collect Cardboard Boxes? · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Minister Tan Chuan-Jin interviews an 80-year-old cardboard collector. Photo from the widely shared Facebook post of the minister.
The plight of elderly cardboard-collectors has become a popular topic in Singapore over the past two weeks, after a government minister conducted a random street interview and concluded that some older people, struggling under various economic hardships, are in fact only collecting cardboard as a form of exercise.
Together with some youth volunteers, Social and Family Development Minister Tan Chuan-Jin talked to some elderly cardboard-collectors two weeks ago and posted his reflections on Facebook. The story went viral, after many people accused the minister of simplifying the country’s poverty problem.
What did Tan Chuan-Jin write that provoked many to react strongly against him? First, he expressed doubt that cardboard collectors are financially-challenged:
The normal perception that all cardboard collectors are people who are unable to take care of themselves financially is not really true.
Second, he described cardboard-collecting as a form of exercise:
Some prefer to earn extra monies, treat it as a form of exercise and activity rather than being cooped up at home. They do this to remain independent, so that they can have dignity and not have to ask their families for help.
And third, he assumed that many people have a wrong perception about the elderly collectors:
More often than not, people make judgements without finding out the facts of the matter, in this instance, the stigma surrounding cardboard collectors.
Reactions on social media have been mostly critical about the minister’s interpretation of why older people feel the need to scour the streets for old cardboard, with many accusing the minister of being out of touch with reality. Sociologist Daniel PS Goh pointed out the official's error in “representing the truth without contextual and deeper interpretation.”
Many seniors are likely collecting cardboards because they want some exercise, desire independence AND so they can survive. That seniors collect cardboards because they seek exercise does not mean that they are not driven to it by poverty.
Ariffin Sha, who has experience assisting cardboard collectors through the Happy People Helping People Foundation, reminded the minister that cardboard collecting is not an enjoyable physical activity for seniors:
Slogging it out under the scorching sun while pushing heavy loads is not something many do “for fun” or “to exercise in their free time.” If given a choice not to collect cardboard and rest or work somewhere else, most will take that choice without hesitation.
Mohammed Nafiz Kamarudin, also from Happy People Helping People Foundation, is hoping that the issue will create more awareness about the existence of poverty in Singapore, which is one of the richest countries in the world:
I think it’s important for us to understand that Singapore is not always as the media portrays us to be, like very glamorous. We think Singapore is very rich and there’s no one poor, but if you come down to these areas you’ll see that some people barely earn enough for a meal in one day.
Because of the viral post, many are becoming interested in learning more about the country’s cardboard-collectors. Some collectors are unhappy about the attention, while others online have described their own experiences.
Tan Loy Chai, a 65-year-old collector, narrates the hardships of cardboard-collecting:
I can go out around eleven o’clock or midnight, until the next morning. Even now I haven’t slept. In the afternoon, the places might have [cardboard] but we can’t take yet, so mostly we sleep in the afternoon.
It is reported that a kilogram of used cardboard could fetch about 10 cents and that collectors earn about 4-5 Singapore dollars (about 3 USD) a day.
Youth Corps Singapore, which is responsible for the minister's controversial interview, is quite unhappy that many have already dismissed the relevance of the project. It acknowledges the limitations of its initiative, but the group has urged the public not to ignore the small reforms that can alleviate the suffering of cardboard-collectors. Cheng Jun Koh, the leader of the project, wrote on Facebook:
We hope that our research will not be swept under the carpet amidst the cacophony of noises and accusations of political posturing, just like how this social issue of cardboard collecting should not be brushed away as irrelevant, but one that inspires more in-depth studies by other interested parties. We hope that more would be encouraged to participate in looking for ways to help and not be put off by the negativities.
We are not political pawns that can be manipulated for reasons other than the genuine desire to serve the community.
The youth leader emphasized that the aim of the project is to answer at least two questions:
Why are there still cardboard collectors in our first world country? Who are these people who are slogging away under inclement weather in our neighbourhoods?
The situation of cardboard-collectors highlights the persistence of inequality and worsening poverty in a First-World country like Singapore. The issue will likely fuel continued public debate, as Singapore prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence from Malaysia on August 9.

author: Mong Palatino


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How to Explore Japan By Train Without Ever Leaving Home · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

View from a streetcar in Nagasaki. Photo by Nevin Thompson.
There is an entire community of Japanese vloggers devoted to the genre of tenbo shaso (展望車窓), which roughly translates as “train observation car videos.”
Basically, the vlogger, typically a trainspotter, sets up a video camera to look out a train window (車窓, or shaso, sometimes translated as syaso) and records the view for the entire journey.
There are two subgenres of tenbo shaso videos: “front view” (前面展望, senmen tenbo) taken from the front of the train, and “window view” (車窓, shaso / syaso) which records scenery as it passes by the passenger window.
Videos uploaded to YouTube typically run for at least a couple of hours, and are sometimes broken up into playlists to accommodate their long running time.
Viewers of these videos can, for example, take a trip right at the front of the train and under the shadow of Mount Fuji from Shizouoka Station to Tokyo Station.
The trip above was recorded in 2007 on the old Tokai (東海) limited express train, shortly before the service was discontinued a few months later.
If there is a train or tram line in Japan, there will be a shaso video of the entire journey uploaded on YouTube. For example, this playlist of 40 videos records the entire train trip from Osaka to Sapporo on the northern island of Hokkaido:
It was recorded on the Twilight Express overnight luxury train service which, until it was discontinued in March 2015 traveled from Osaka to Hokkaido up the rugged and rural Japan Sea coastline.
As Japan introduces more high-speed rail services, and thanks to cheap air travel and the increasing popularity of long distance highway buses, many long distance express train services are being discontinued.
The train videos thus often serve as a window into history while providing a sense of nostalgia for train buffs.
Popular Japanese train vlogger RailKingJP has made dozens of train videos, often while traveling on business trips around Japan.
In this video, he shoots a “front view” video from the Yurikamome monorail that provides service between Nihonbashi in Tokyo and the Odaiba waterfront development:
If you want to get an idea of what central Tokyo itself looks like, there are plenty of videos documenting the view from the Yamanote loop line that travels around the city:
These trainspotting videos are also a good way to observe how Japan continues to recover from the 2011 tsunami and earthquake that devastated much of the long, isolated coastline stretching northeast of Tokyo.
In this video below, borojins, another prolific YouTube train vlogger, recorded the view from the recently reopened Sanriku Railway:
Much of the rail line had been destroyed following the massive tsunami in March, 2011, and there were some doubts the railway would ever operate again. However, the rail bed has been rebuilt, bringing tourists back to the area.
While there are thousands of YouTube videos that can let you explore almost every part of Japan by train from your own computer, it can be challenging to determine where to go if you don't read Japanese.
A good place to start is with the Wikipedia list of rail lines in Japan. Choose a rail line, and find the corresponding Japanese language page to find out what the rail line is called in Japan.
Copy and paste the Japanese name of the rail line into YouTube search box, being sure to add 展望車窓:
In this case we were able to start from Wikipedia and find a video taken from the Chiba Monorail.
YouTube vlogger borojins has also arranged some of his video into playlists according to region, and English is included in the title of the playlist.
Syaso.com also has dozens of YouTube playlists of rail lines from every region of  region of Japan, although there are few if any English hints.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Malaysia Blocks News Website and Suspends Two Local Papers for Reporting on Government Corruption · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Media groups in Malaysia are calling the public to protect the right to free speech. Image is part of the campaign to support the suspended newspapers
A news website was blocked and two local papers in Malaysia were suspended for three months after publishing investigative reports about a financial scandal involving the country’s prime minister.
Sarawak Report was blocked on July 19 based on an order issued by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) for allegedly posting “unverified accusations” about the financial dealings of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), a government-managed investment company. A few days later, the Malaysian Home Ministry (Kementrian Dalam Negeri – KDN) suspended the license of The Edge Financial Daily and The Edge Weekly, also for publishing stories and releasing documents on 1MDB.
The 1MDB issue refers to the questionable financial transactions of the company, which allegedly cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Early this month, the Wall Street Journal published a report suggesting that 700 million US dollars were transferred to the bank accounts of Prime Minister Najib Razak via the company. The government is currently probing the 1MDB as Najib denies the allegation.
The MCMC said in a statement that Sarawak Report was blocked “based on complaints and information received from the public.”
…the MCMC will not hesitate to take action against any party who falsely or inaccurately reports anything, or spreads misinformation which has not been verified.
But Sarawak Report has maintained that it did not do anything criminal and it urged the government to present evidence about 1MDB rather than censor news websites:
Sarawak Report will not be impeded in any way by this action in bringing out future information as and when its investigations deliver further evidence. This latest blow to media freedom only brings further discredit upon the present administration, who have proven unable to counter the evidence we have presented in any other way.
The blocking of Sarawak Report inspired many Malaysians to visit and ‘like’ its Facebook page. As of this writing, Sarawak Report now has 129,000 Facebook ‘likes’.
Meanwhile, the Home Ministry said it suspended two papers of The Edge because their 1MDB reports were allegedly “prejudicial or likely to be prejudicial to public order, security or likely to alarm public opinion or is likely to be prejudicial to public and national interest”.
The Edge decided to release more documents about 1MDB and hinted that it may be their last story on the issue because of the suspension order:
We have in this report, which is possibly the last on this subject, laid out all the key facts about what happened during the three-year business ties between 1MDB and PetroSaudi International
Our report is based on evidence corroborated by documents that include bank transfers and statements.
How can the work that we have done be deemed as a political conspiracy?
The Edge is set to file a judicial review in response to the suspension order.
The blocking of Sarawak Report and the suspension of two papers of The Edge were viewed by many as an attack on Malaysia’s media sector.
The Centre for Independent Journalism said the government should probe allegations of corruption instead of restricting free speech:
CIJ is also deeply concerned that there is a further clamp down on the discussion around a critical public interest issue which negates the public's ability to find out information, debate and form important opinions. CIJ renews its calls for a focus on investigating the actual issues at hand, and rejects further regulation and censorship on the internet as a way to manage the issue.
Malaysiakini, an alternative news website, published an editorial denouncing the action of the government, which it says has already shed its credibility:
For a leadership that has nothing to hide, silencing the media does nothing for its credibility. Instead, this suspension sends an indelible message to Malaysians that the government has indeed something big to hide.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of Malaysia noted that none of the 1MDB coverage government agencies are questioning has been challenged in court for being unfair or false:
To begin with, the very idea that the government can suspend or revoke printing licenses at a moment's notice needs to be done away with if the government is truly committed to press freedom. But to suspend a newspaper over reports that no one has been able to prove were false, is plainly contrary to the notion of natural justice.
Human rights group Suaram urged the government to uphold truth and transparency. The Lawyers for Liberty group said the suspension of Sarawak Report has a chilling effect on the press:
The authorities must be reminded that journalism is not a crime. Press freedom is an indispensable component of any modern and democratic society as it functions as a form of check and balance against government excesses. Such authoritarian behaviour unfortunately sends a chilling message to the press to self-censor on issues such as 1MDB or else they may invite retaliation.
It added that media reports like those published by The Edge should be encouraged to promote good governance:
The Edge’s coverage of the 1MDB scandal was Malaysia’s press’ finest hour. It was journalism at its best as they fearlessly investigated and reported on the massive and complex 1MDB scandal despite the overwhelming odds and threats against them. The Edge should be lauded for their outstanding journalism instead of being persecuted.
Local media groups are planning to hold a public rally on August 8 to condemn the government’s actions against critical media groups. Their five-group coalition is asking the public to protect free speech in the country by supporting the campaign for a strong and independent media.


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Reality TV’s New Stars Are Tanzanian Farmers · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Contestants on Oxfam's “Female Food Heroes” Credit: Sven Torfinn for Oxfam
This article and radio report by Marissa Lorusso for The World originally appeared on PRI.org on July 22, 2015, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Most people would say that reality television isn't necessarily a good place place to look for role models. But in Tanzania, that's exactly the goal of a reality show named “Female Food Heroes.”
“Female Food Heroes,” or Mama Shujaa wa Chakula as it is known in Tanzania, stars a group of female farmers who live and work together in a village. The “village” is actually a specially constructed set — which is where the reality-show cameras come in. Producers film the women sharing farming techniques with each other while being trained on such things as leadership and finance. Viewers vote on whose work they like best, and each season, a winner is chosen by a combination of these votes and a panel of judges.
As in many reality shows, “Female Food Heroes” features challenges. This season, participants struggle to use local materials to create a tool, try out new cooking techniques, and win a treasure hunt. Eluka Kibona, who works on the show in Tanzania, says the competitors “have to use their own own local knowledge. They have to use their own experience, they have to use their background.” Outside experts also visit to talk about everything from agronomy to gender-based violence to climate change. The women also visit banks and food processing companies to learn more about the larger economy around them.
The set of Oxfam's “Female Food Heroes” Credit: Sven Torfinn for Oxfam
In Tanzania, poverty is concentrated among small-scale rural farmers, such as the women who compete on “Female Food Heroes.” They rely on what they grow to feed themselves and their families, since most poor farmers in Tanzania lack the access to infrastructure and investment they would need for more secure livelihoods.
And this hits Tanzanian women especially hard; according to Oxfam, women are 75 percent of the country’s agricultural labor force, but cannot get loans and are often denied ownership of their land. In addition, most social attitudes about female farmers are negative. Women aren’t necessarily valued, or appreciated, for what they bring to the table.
So Oxfam and its Tanzanian TV partner, Maisha Plus, set out to change attitudes and empower female farmers through the show. Since “Female Food Heroes” started in 2011, it has reached about 25 million people throughout the country. Part of the show’s success comes from it being both informative and fun. “We were really thinking throughout this whole thing: How can we make it not only entertaining but also educative?” Kibona explains. She says she wants viewers to come away “not talking only about the show, but talking about the issues of the show.”
After episodes are broadcast on TV, they’re made available on Facebook and YouTube. And since many people in Tanzania don’t own TVs, Oxfam also bought time on local radio shows in Tanzania to air episode re-caps in audio form.
A contestant on Oxfam's “Female Food Heroes” Credit: Sven Torfinn for Oxfam
The top three winners are awarded a prize from Oxfam. Kibona says for Oxfam, “everybody who is a part of the show is a winner.” But she also recognizes that part of the appeal of the show is the selection of a top contestant. This year, the prizes are between 20 million and 25 million Tanzanian schillings (approximately $9,000-$11,000), in the form of cash and farming and fishing tools. These women generally go on to help bring modern farming equipment and techniques to their villages and communities. One woman now represents the farmers on her local council and shares the tractor she won with her neighbors. Another uses her farm to house and support orphans and vulnerable children.
Because the show is so popular, contestants often become local celebrities after having competed. They return home with their new skills and knowledge, and often help model these new techniques for their communities. Oxfam says that the government of Tanzania has begun to introduce new policies related to land leases that may have been influenced by the huge popularity of the show.
From the set of Oxfam's “Female Food Heroes” Credit: Sven Torfinn for Oxfam


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Taiwan Will Most Likely Have a Woman President in 2016 · Global Voices
Sophie Hsu

The presidential election in January 2016 is most likely to be a competition between two female candidates – Tsai Ing-wen (left) and Hung Hsiu-chu (right). Image remixed from Tsai and Hung's Facebook pages.
The world's news media recently turned to the Taiwan presidential election in January next year because the top two contenders are women, putting the country on track to have its first female president.
Unlike many female top leaders in other Asian countries who secured their position through family ties, most reports stressed that Taiwan is posed to elect a woman president who climbed through government and party ranks on her own.
This strong international focus on the presidential hopefuls’ gender stems from a global perspective that welcomes Taiwan once again taking democratic steps. Observers hope that Taiwan can have a positive influence on China’s future domestic politics because China has yet to democratically elect its leader and women's civic engagement there is limited to a strict Communist Party mold. Just in March of this year, the Chinese government cracked down on women's rights activists.
The two women contenders in this election come from the two major political parties of Taiwan.Tsai Ing-wen, 58, is the candidate from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and 67-year-old Hung Hsiu-chu is the candidate from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Tsai is a former university professor with experience in the legislative and executive branches. She is not new to the presidential race as she ran in the 2012 election as the DPP's endorsed candidate, but lost against incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou from the KMT.
Hung was formerly a high school teacher with experience as a legislator for eight consecutive terms and has held various executive positions inside her party. She is currently the deputy speaker of the legislature.
In Taiwan, discussion of the gender factor has been scant, however, the reason being that public attitudes over women's participation in politics have changed for the better. This is the result of a maturing society as well as decades-long struggle for equality by women in Taiwan. In 2012, Taiwan was ranked second in gender equality in the world (only from a male-female gender perspective and not including other gender identities such as transgender). Taiwan's first and highest-ranked woman in politics is Former Vice President Annette Lu, who was elected in 2000 under the DPP ticket. The latest parliament consists of 33.6% women, which is the highest in Asia and among the top 20 worldwide.
An online commenter talked about the changing attitudes on women candidates among the Taiwanese public:
前幾天我們 RA 跟我聊台灣的總統選舉，說他看鳳凰電視在討論「台灣名嘴分析總統候選人」，然後說，「調查顯示有 76% 台灣人可以接受女總統欸~」是說現在應該很少有人會覺得女性不能當總統吧？
Just a couple of days ago, I was discussing Taiwan elections with our RA, who said that while watching an analysis on presidential candidates by Taiwanese media pundits on Phoenix TV, they presented a poll showing that 76% of the Taiwanese people were accepting of a woman president. Does this mean that there are few people now that believe that a woman is incapable of being president?
Nevertheless, the Taiwanese public considers the upcoming election a no-brainer as to who will win, and there isn’t too much excitement or expectations compared to previous elections. The ruling party performance these past eight years has been poor and its popularity is low.
Last year, the approval rating of the president drastically declined as a result of the Sunflower Movement, in which students occupied the legislature for 18 days to demand government reform. During the local elections at the end of 2014, the KMT's lackluster performance by only winning six seats out of 22 municipalities was characterized as vote of no-confidence in the president and his party.
As President Ma Ying-jeou is unable to run again due to term limits, none of the potential men candidates in his party have chosen to run, unwilling to risk a loss and embarrassment. The only person in the KMT brave enough to bear the responsibility was a woman, Hung. Yet, she struggled for her party to endorse her candidacy, which was finally announced on July 19 at the party’s congress.
A blogger talked about this issue, posting:
反觀國內，國民黨“夾層”處處刁難洪秀柱的參選之路，其背後的阻力會不會是國民黨存在著女性不得當家的大男人主義呢？
In contrary, domestically the KMT “layer by layer” from left to right made things very difficult for Hung Hsiu-chu to participate. One wonders whether the resistance comes from the existence of sexist views within the party that women are incapable of managing.
Despite the hurdle, Hung’s participation made strides in changing a political party that most people had never thought would endorse a woman.
Meanwhile, online responses regarding a future woman president of Taiwan is positive. This commenter welcomed the news of Taiwan’s changing trend:
真的是破天荒了，主要政黨派出的候選人都是女性。2012的總統大選時，身旁無藍綠色彩的長輩其實還是有點性別歧視，有些人覺得女性不如男性，而且蔡英文又是單身未婚，所以直覺的就把票投給馬。這屆未婚的女性候選人一次就出來兩個，也是對這些長輩的考驗與教育XD，在政治上，女人並不一定比男人弱
It is a breakthrough that the two main political parties endorsed women candidates. During the 2012 election, elderly from both sides of the color spectrum were in fact a little sexist. There were some people that believed that women were not better than men. Also because Tsai Ing-wen was unmarried, the majority still voted for Ma [her male opponent]. This time we have two female candidates, both unmarried, presenting a challenge and an education to the elderly XD, that in politics, women are not weaker than men.
A male online commenter summed up the laudable evolution of Taiwan's political scene:
2016年中華民國總統大選意外促成兩位女性共逐大位，這場原以為會非常沉悶的選戰頓時熱鬧了起來。其實台灣女性早已多次獻身總統選戰，但多居副手地位，擔任性別互補角色。這次不同了，不管你怎麼投，最後必定出現一位女性總統。
蔡英文在洪秀柱出線代表國民黨參選後說：「這不是兩個女人的戰爭，期待共塑新的選舉文化。」洪秀柱則說：「期盼兩個女人的選戰，能給社會大眾全新觀感，塑造真正的民主典範。」
By chance, the 2016 election in Taiwan produced two women candidates competing for the big seat. I originally thought this election would very dull, but it suddenly got very interesting. But in fact, women early-on in Taiwan had already been dedicated to electioneering although reaching only to the vice presidential position and playing the complementary role to men. This time is different and no matter who you plan to vote for, the final result will be a woman president.
After Hung Hsiu-chu appeared representing the KMT, Tsai Ing-wen had said, “This is for me not about two women competing, but it is more about looking forward to sharing this new election culture.”
On a related note, Hung said, “I look forward to the election of two women, to give the public a new impression and to create a truly democratic model.”

author: Sophie Hsu


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Uganda Ponders a Sustainable Future as MDGs Become SDGs · Global Voices
Prudence Nyamishana

Speakers at the Dialogue in Kampala: Photo by UNDP Uganda.
2015 is here and with it the overall target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which began in 2000. According to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report, Uganda, a country of over 37 million people in east Africa, met two of its 17 MDGs targets over the last 15 years: halving the number of people living in absolute poverty and achieving debt sustainability.
But in a country that placed 142nd out of 175 countries in Transparency International's 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index, many believe more can be done.
Like other countries Uganda will now push to achieve its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 17 UN-backed action-oriented goals, which will come into effect in September and are illustrated in the infographic below by Global Daily:
As prominent development commentators have noted, it is unrealistic to expect any country to achieve all 17 goals and the 149 targets therein:
There is no country that will realise all the #SDGs. They all have to choose which the priorities will be – @ECA_Lopes #Post2015Ug
— Aine (@Ruthaine) July 20, 2015
Uganda has been one country actively involved in discussions on financing progress towards the SDGs. The third conference on financing took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 13-16, 2015.
As the UN website indicates:
The Conference resulted in the adoption of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, a comprehensive framework to guide policies that will mobilize financial resources, as well as the launch of new initiatives to finance the achievement of the proposed sustainable development goals, including on social welfare, access to clean energy, and greater cooperation on tax issues.
Immediately after the Addis Ababa resolution, the office of the Prime Minister of Uganda organized a high-level dialogue with delegations from all over the world to contextualize the outcomes of the Conference within the framework of Uganda’s NDPII (National Development Program II) implementation process, and to reflect on strategies for financing sustainable development in Uganda.
Key discussions centred on resources for financing sustainable development and how Uganda can explore untapped resources.
According to Hon. Sam Kutesa, a former Foreign Minister of Uganda and president of the 69th session of the UN General Assembly, Uganda became the first country to hold such a dialogue following the meeting in Addis Ababa:
“This is the first high level dialogue in any country after that discussion in Addis” -Sam Kutesa #Post2015Ug
— kemigisa jacky (@JackyKemigisa) July 20, 2015
Kutesa also stressed:
Uganda must focus its energies on resource mobilization through domestic revenue collection by exploring untapped potential and the potential of alternative resource mobilization strategies for financing Sustainable Development in Uganda and necessary steps.
His points were relayed by Ugandans attending the event:
“Nobody owes us a living,but while we fight for ourselves, those who disturb the world with other things shud contribute”-Kutesa #Post2015Ug
— kemigisa jacky (@JackyKemigisa) July 20, 2015
Moreover, he said, Africa must combat illicit financial flows:
“Everybody agrees that we fight corruption,it is clear that multi national companies make alot of money and take it away”-Kutesa #Post2015Ug
— kemigisa jacky (@JackyKemigisa) July 20, 2015
Unlike the MDGs that were discussed by a select group of UN staff members, seven million people from all over the world were consulted during the designing of the SDGs, offering hope they will be better-tailored to the needs of the developing world.
In Uganda, the second National Development Plan that was launched in June this year has a development agenda aligned with the post-MDGs agenda. While the government of Uganda has shown commitment to further development in the country, it has also been accused of failing to implement laws and policies that are attractive on paper.
Assuming all factors are constant and alternative sources of funding are obtained, the question of transparency and accountability will certainly come into play. History has shown that corruption and mismanagement of resources have slowed down development:
Uganda loses resources they Trade misinvoicing, tax evasion, tax avoidance, & money laundering – Ahunna Eziakowa #Post2015Ug
— Aine (@Ruthaine) July 20, 2015
This in turn affects critical sections of society:
Wow! So Teacher Abseentism in Ug ranked at 27%, a World Bank study shows that 30% were actually not in class – Ahunna Eziakowa #Post2015Ug
— Aine (@Ruthaine) July 20, 2015
Thus, Uganda must do more than append signatures on the commitments made in Addis. It must ensure that whatever resources it can ‘mobilise’ are put to use as intended.

author: Prudence Nyamishana


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Afghans Nail #GrowingUpAfghan on Twitter · Global Voices
Samea Shanori

Mother's Day in Afghanistan 2010. Photo by the U.S. Agency for International Development. CC 2.0 Generic.
For Afghans at home and abroad, national traditions — from tea with cardamom to habitual tardiness — are thoroughly ingrained elements of identity.
On Twitter in recent weeks, they have been sharing thoughts on family, pilau, oversized weddings and other things using the #GrowingUpAfghan hashtag.
The result is a catalogue of nostalgia, humour and an abundance of affection for their homeland.
Parents never stop!
Afghan children usually live with their parents up until marriage, and their elders’ authority over the household is never in doubt. Afghan parents have the highest expectations of their children and never miss a chance to remind them that someone somewhere else is doing better. This is a way to encourage their children to work harder:
#GrowingUpAfghan When your family is all like “Why can't you be like so and so?” That happened tonight w @HabibKhanT …
— Ali M Latifi (@alibomaye) July 18, 2015
They really never stop!
#GrowingUpAfghan defined in a single term: “Mardom chi migoya?”
— Ali M Latifi (@alibomaye) July 15, 2015
#GrowingUpAfghan defined in a single term: “What would people say?”
Indeed, Afghans are the most persistent up-bringers in the world. I still remember when my own mother would force me to talk to relatives on the phone,  reminding me to ask them about their children and everyone else in their home. She wasn't the only one!
When your parents force you to speak to your relatives on the phone #GrowingUpAfghan
— •Haleywiz• (@HaleyShaubzada) July 20, 2015
If Afghans visit their relatives and/or have lunch or dinner there, their mothers make sure all the dishes at the relatives’ house are left spotlessly clean. It shows that Afghan parents have raised their children correctly:
#GrowingUpAfghan when your mom made you wash the dishes every time you went to your relatives’ houses.
— Spogmay Waziri Kakar (@Spogmayy) July 15, 2015
Lie-ins are for the weak, whether it's a week day or not:
#GrowingUpAfghan your dad wakes you up at 6 am for no reason on a weekend because you can't be tambal in life
— Zachary Hashemi (@Sheikh_Brotein) July 20, 2015
#GrowingUpAfghan your dad wakes you up at 6 am for no reason on a weekend because you can't be lazy in life.
Punishments are always collective:
#GrowingUpAfghan when one of your siblings did something wrong but your mom punished everyone for it.
— Spogmay Waziri Kakar (@Spogmayy) July 15, 2015
And storage space is always used creatively:
#GrowingUpAfghan this didn't really have cookies inside. It had sewing material pic.twitter.com/uq0KRA9iEi — Wurishmeen (@Afgeezy97) July 15, 2015
Photo from afghan aid.org.uk. Licensed to reuse.
Tea is at the core of Afghan daily life, with few drinking less than a teapot in a given day.
My dad just asked me to make him tea when it's 84 degrees outside #GrowingUpAfghan
— morrasa (@merrrrber) July 19, 2015
Food and guests are the best part of an Afghan childhood. Especially the food:
Great #Eid party, the host couldn't resist not to have any of these as #Afghan #growingupafghan pic.twitter.com/nIIOtdfGQo — Zheela Nasari (@ZheelaJ) July 20, 2015
Highlights of the Afghan culinary repertoire include Bolani (a flat-bread filled with vegetables baked or fried), pilau (rice cooked with meat, raisins, carrots, pistachios and almonds) and mantu (dumplings filled with meat):
Best part of #GrowingUpAfghan pic.twitter.com/L9zE8M0XPE
— R (@razmeezy) July 15, 2015
But if you have to choose between food and guest, always choose the guest, because parents never stop:
#GrowingUpAfghan where you can't eat the dried fruit/nuts that was set up for the maimanah or your mom would murder you when everyone left.
— ɱąཞყąɱ ɧąıɖąཞ (@_baery) July 22, 2015
Even if that guest is your least generous relative:
When you ask that Afghan uncle for ur Eidi….? nah why is kaka jan so stingy tho #GrowingupAfghan #Eid2015 pic.twitter.com/Nzmdh8ixlU
— Afghan Girl Problems (@AfghanGirlProbz) July 18, 2015
Journalist Frud Bezhan recalls huge weddings, with thousands of guests. These were not just a way for relatives to meet up, but a means for parents to find wives for their sons:
#GrowingUpAfghan When you go to a wedding and your mum and aunties try to pick out a wife for you
— Frud Bezhan (@FrudBezhan) July 15, 2015
And every guest must be greeted without exception:
#growingupafghan having to say hi to over 1 million people when a party shows up
— abe nevin (@ABENEVIN) July 22, 2015
Despite other great qualities, or perhaps because of them, Afghans are never on time. If they say that they are 5-10 minutes away, that means they are either still trying to find an outfit to wear, or that they have just got out of the house, which means they will be between half an hour to an hour late.
#GrownUpAfghan when 10 minutes means anything between half an hour and a whole day.
— nushin arbabzadah (@NNushin) July 16, 2015
#GrowingUpAfghan u tell someone on the phone you are 5 minutes away when u know u've just left home & won't get there anytime soon ?
— Marzia Faraz (@Marzofaraz) July 19, 2015
Last but not least, Afghans take a “no pain no gain” approach to fashion.
#GrowingUpAfghan the heaviest dress you'll ever try on, lost of bangari and a KUCHI headpiece pic.twitter.com/aG4TxQqTgP
— diana (@taoszain) July 15, 2015
The hashtag is still trending and Afghans are still sharing their memories.

author: Samea Shanori


text:
For a Glimpse of Plan Central America’s Future, Look to Colombia · Global Voices
NACLA

Woman in market. Antigua, Guatemala. Photo taken from Flickr account of Thomas Frost under Creative Commons License.
This article by Steven Cohen was originally published on NACLA's website and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
In an attempt to curb the flow of thousands of unaccompanied children who flee to the US, the Obama administration has proposed ‘Plan Central America’: a US $1 billion aid program for improving the economic and security situation in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, collectively known as the Northern Triangle. The US Congress is expected to vote on it later this summer.
When Vice President Joe Biden presented the plan in an op-ed in the New York Times, he argued for increased training and support for police and armed forces, measures to increase transparency and accountability including strengthening tax collection and encouraging foreign direct investment through market liberalization.
The plan, the vice president wrote, will be modelled after Plan Colombia, continuing a Washington tradition of coupling neoliberal projects with military aid. A similar approach was applied in Mexico with the 2008 implementation of the Mérida Initiative. All three plans have in common a belief that complex social and economic problems, and the outcomes of these, such as a rampant narcotics industry, can be resolved through ramped-up military and security spending.
Revisiting Plan Colombia can be instructive as to what could lie ahead. For over ten years, it provided Colombia with over US $9 billion in military and financial aid aimed at fighting the narcotics industry. As one of the original designers, Biden argues that the program led to “notable improvements in security, governance and human rights”.
When Plan Colombia was introduced in 1999 by then Colombian President Pastrana, it was presented as an ambitious strategy to end the ongoing violent conflict. In close collaboration with the US, the plan set out to defeat illegal armed groups while offering social and economic help to the poor and eliminate the cultivation of coca leaf, a key component in cocaine.
During his 1998 campaign, Pastrana had vowed to improve stability through a softer approach than his predecessor Ernesto Samper. The president claimed the narcotics industry reflected a ‘social problem whose solution must pass through the solution to the armed conflict’ and that Colombia needed help ‘to implement some sort of “Marshall Plan”’. Pastrana argued that once increased social programs had resolved the armed conflict, the growing narcotics industry be curbed. He explicitly saw the drug business not as a cause but as a consequence of the conflict.
However, US funding came with a condition: a serious redesign making counter-narcotics the foremost objective. Of the first US $1.3 billion provided by the US, Pastrana had originally allocated 55 percent for the Colombian Armed Forces with the remaining 45 percent for funding development programs. The US-approved version allocated 80 percent to the military. This emphasis on militarization continued, particularly during the Bush administrations and the ‘democratic security’ policy of Álvaro Uribe, who succeeded Pastrana in 2002.
The most important tactic used against coca production was aerial fumigation. After an initial decline, coca cultivation shot back up, a predictable outcome given the dire situation poor Colombian farmers found themselves in. Once all their crops were destroyed, many reverted to simply planting more coca. In this way, fumigation paradoxically led to more coca fields, while also damaging the environment and the rural population’s health.
Plan Colombia strove to encourage crop substitution by providing financial assistance to farmers during a transition to legal crops. But not only was this assistance inadequate to support a family, it generated only about a quarter of the average annual profit from two hectares of coca. Farmers who were willing to cooperate in many cases never received the promised aid money. By April 2002, 37,000 peasants had signed the crop substitution pact but only 8,500 had received any financial support. In some cases the alternative crops were accidentally fumigated by spray planes.
The plan also lacked any long-term strategy. Crop substitution left farmers with a harvest but no way of getting it to market. This contrasted starkly to prior arrangements with drug traffickers who came to a farmer’s land to pick up coca paste. Given the limited transport infrastructure in Colombia’s remote areas, many farmers concluded that planting more coca plants was their only viable economic option.
The most important goal was to crack down on armed groups involved in the drug trade. Officially this was done through counter-narcotics operations, but in reality the Colombian Armed Forces were trained by US military personnel in counterinsurgency tactics, or COIN. Their main target were the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and to a lesser extent the National Liberation Army (ELN). Little evidence exists, however, that the FARC were actively involved in the drug trade, although they often taxed coca crops, especially where they functioned as the local government. Nonetheless, Plan Colombia presented the FARC as ‘narcoguerrillas’, a moniker switched to ‘narcoterrorists’ immediately after 9/11, in order to fit them within the global War on Terror framework.
On the other hand, Plan Colombia did not focus on the notorious Colombian paramilitary forces, collectively known as the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). These paramilitaries had strong links with several high-ranking Colombian officials, including members of Congress, and direct family members of former President Uribe. The long-time leader of the AUC, Carlos Castaño, who was murdered in 2004, revealed publicly that 70 percent of the AUC’s income came directly from trafficking. Nevertheless, the AUC were not a target in the counter-narcotics operations of Plan Colombia.
Human rights violations skyrocketed. By 2001 the military had managed to push a National Security bill through Congress, which reduced outside scrutiny and limited investigation of human rights accusations. Immediately after his 2002 inauguration, President Uribe declared a “state of internal commotion” which greatly expanded military authority. A 2003 anti-terrorist bill legally allowed the military to intercept communications, search private property, and arrest civilians without warrants.
Throughout Plan Colombia the military used the paramilitaries to conduct operations akin to “dirty war” tactics reminiscent of the right-wing death squads active throughout Latin America from the 1960s to the 1980s. Murder, torture and disappearances of anyone suspected of being connected to the guerrillas were common. A program that rewarded the capture or killing of guerrillas led to the murder of innocent civilians, their corpses subsequently dressed in guerrilla uniforms. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, some 3,000 innocent civilians were killed as such “false positives” between 2004 and 2008.
Another success claimed by Plan Colombia adherents was the 2006 demobilization of the AUC. While several AUC leaders were extradited to the US, many former members regrouped in what are now known as BACRIM (Bandas Criminales) such as the Rastrojos and the Urabeños. These have been terrorizing Colombian cities like Cali and Buenaventura in recent years with violence, torture and murder.
Plan Colombia was successful in stimulating the Colombian economy. Inflation and unemployment rates dropped and foreign direct investment jumped, mainly as a consequence of a Free Trade Agreement with the US. However, the poor in Colombia, and particularly those relying on agriculture, suddenly faced increased competition, while income inequality increased.
The situation in the Northern Triangle is quite different. But what Plan Central America has in common with Plan Colombia is its emphasis on military training and aid. Just as in Colombia, effective accountability and monitoring mechanisms over the Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran security forces are inadequate. And their human rights records are appalling.
In Honduras, newly elected President Hernandez faces various allegations of corruption and the security forces stand accused of involvement in numerous human rights violations. Hernandez’ presidential campaign was accused of voter intimidation, and during the run-up to the elections over 30 political opponents and activists were murdered. Last November a young woman was allegedly kidnapped from a bus stand and subsequently gang-raped by eight members of the newly established military police, created to address the high levels of corruption within the Honduran security forces. It is telling that the national director of police is a former death squad leader.
Similarly in Guatemala and El Salvador strong links exist between organized crime and the security forces that often go back to both countries’ civil wars, massacres and death squads. Human Rights Watch reported that police in Guatemala in recent years attempted to curb gang activity by reverting to extrajudicial, “social cleansing” killings to eliminate suspected gang members. Although in Guatemala accountability for past atrocities has improved, the police routinely violently repress anti-mining protests while attacks on journalists and trade unionists are common. In El Salvador, anti-terrorist laws have been used by security forces to harass government opponents.
The US is financially supporting Colombian marines to provide military training in the Northern Triangle. This means the Colombian military, itself accused of widespread human rights violations, will likely teach techniques and tactics that often have had horrific consequences for local populations.
Plan Central America is at best a well-intentioned but naïve attempt to improve the security situation in the Northern Triangle. Particularly in Honduras it seems probable that any aid or training will be used not only against criminals but also against innocent civilians. As it always has done, Washington conveniently turns a blind eye to such issues and seems more concerned with supporting Latin American governments in line with its neoliberal free market ideology. Just as Colombia fit that profile in 1999, so do the countries of the Northern Triangle now. It is no coincidence that Nicaragua, with a leftist government, is not part of Biden’s aid proposal.
Mexico’s Mérida Initiative also opened the door to heavy US financial and military aid, but no one argues this “Plan Mexico” has managed to restore security in the US’s direct southern neighbor. Like Colombia and Mexico, Plan Central America will undoubtedly benefit the region’s business elite thanks to investor protections to stimulate business. However, for the majority of the population, an escalation of violence and corruption is a more likely outcome than Biden’s promise that Central America will be the “next great success story of the Western Hemisphere”.
Quintijn Kat is PhD candidate at the Institute of the Americas, University College London and a Senior Research Associate with the Jindal School of International Affairs, O.P. Jindal Global University

author: NACLA


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Greece Crisis Propelling Some Ethnic Greeks Back to Their Homeland on a Turkish Island · Global Voices
Veroniki Bacharidi-Krikoni

Featured image is found at Wikimedia Commons, by user Bilderbrei (CC Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported).
News portal Greek Reporter and Anastassios Adamopoulos recently republished a story that first appeared at Turkish Hurriet Daily News online, focusing on a trend that has seen many Greek families escape the worsening economic crisis in Greece by returning to their homeland on the Turkish island of Gökçeada in Çanakkale  Province, known in Greek as Imbros.
In the report, local Mayor Ünal Çetin congratulates Greeks for helping to boost the island's local economy, with several repatriated families starting up small boutique hotels to make a living. Meanwhile, Turkish and Greek social media users have been coming together under the hashtags #Imvros and #Gokceada to celebrate the island's beauty.
Many Greek families, mostly descendants of ethnic Greeks born and raised on the island from antiquity until the mid-point of the 20th century, still spend their summers in Imbros. These families subsequently emigrated to Greece due to a Turkish state-sponsored campaign of discrimination. The fact that they are moving back despite less-than-perfect relations between Ankara and Athens says much about the scale of the catastrophe that has befallen Greece, as well as the strength of their bond with the island.
Moreover, while bad economic news continues to seep out of the country they left behind, the theme of their return to Gökçeada is one of gradual regeneration and homecoming:
Σχολείο άνοιξε μετά από 49 χρόνια – Έχει μόνο δύο μαθητές #imvros #shcool #students http://t.co/qhOHGJKnoQpic.twitter.com/6IJmbhAvXf
— Το Παρασκήνιο (@paraskhnio) September 16, 2014
[Private Gökçeada Greek Primary] School reopened after 49 years. Two students only #imvros #shcool #students

author: Veroniki Bacharidi-Krikoni


text:
How To Miss A Coup d’Etat · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

The Red House (L) and the Old Police Headquarters (R) in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Red House was stormed by insurgents of the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen on July 27, 1990. The Old Police Headquarters were also damaged by a car bomb. Photo by David Stanley (CC BY 2.0).
The original version of this piece was published on the Caribbean Free Radio blog on July 27, 2010, the 20th anniversary of the attempted coup d'état perpetrated by members of the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen in Trinidad and Tobago.
Start by leaving the country a few days before the event (not that you know it’s going to happen). About five days is good—say around July 22, 1990. Make sure the place you’re going is far from any established West Indian community. Northern California is a workable option.
On the morning of the event, sit down in your Trinidadian Stanford Medical School student friend’s cottage in Menlo Park, type up a television script on said friend’s boyfriend’s Mac Plus computer, print it out and take it to a nearby copy shop. From the shop, fax the script to your colleagues in Trinidad, who, later that day, will use it to shoot a segment of the television show you’re working on together. The act of faxing also inserts you—tenuously—into your colleagues’ much more heroic narrative related to the event, though of course you don’t know this at the time.
Take the train into San Francisco, trawl around the city like a tourist, then in the afternoon meet up with your friend in order to hitch a ride back to Menlo Park. While sitting in the car in rush-hour gridlock on US-101, fiddle with the dial on the radio and happen upon a National Public Radio report about an attempted coup in your country.
Marvel at the coincidence of your landing, just at that moment, upon a news report about a nation that would otherwise receive scant coverage in US news, even on public radio, but still await the jingle at the end of the report announcing that what you just heard was a comedy segment. When, instead of a jingle, you hear another report about something bad happening in some other part of the world, freeze for a few seconds. Then try to recall whether, five days before, there had been any sign or indication that something like this was going to happen. Decide that there hadn’t.
As it would be some years yet before either you or your friend—or most of the world’s citizens—acquires a cell phone, sit impatiently in traffic until you get back to Menlo Park. Once there, rush to the answering machine which is pulsating with voice messages. Be amused at the succinctness of your friend’s Washington DC-based sister’s message: “They had a coup! Call me!” Wonder how all the Trinidadians on the west coast had managed to get hold of your friend’s number. Return calls. Answer new calls that come in. Lament the fact that nobody has any real information.
Even though the phone lines to Trinidad are perpetually busy, keep trying to get through to family, but make sure you have a list of questions prepared, as long distance calls aren’t cheap and neither Skype nor the Magicjack has yet been invented. Lament the absence, in northern California, of a real West Indian community such as exists in New York or Washington D.C. or south Florida or even Atlanta, and discuss how this limits your access to the choicest rumours and to folks who know folks who had managed to get through to somebody in Trinidad who knows somebody who knows what’s going on. Experience feelings of profound isolation.
Keep the radio tuned to NPR. Make sure you tune in to an NPR report in which a journalist you know is interviewed in Port of Spain about the horrors to which your homeland is being subjected while sitting on the bonnet of a car in Stinson Beach, in the atmospheric Marin Headlands, looking out at the magnificent Pacific. Note it as one of the most bizarre juxatpositions of your life thus far.
Leave California for New York. Wait it out there for what seems like—or may well be, as you don’t yet record all your trips using as-yet-to-be-dreamed-of services like Dopplr and TripIt—weeks. Watch, over and over again, that single, worrying image on CNN of the city of Port of Spain with a plume of smoke rising up from the middle of the city. Listen to the West Indian radio stations; talk to folks on the phone—but still feel you have no idea what’s going on in your homeland, except that the insurgents have surrendered and there’s now a curfew. Write letters (longhand, on paper, as you’re still five years from getting an e-mail account) to friends in various places announcing that you might end up stranded in the US.
Be deeply envious of your two colleagues who were in fact shooting your script when news of the insurrection reached them, and who, with all other work brought to a standstill by the events, report that they’ve been venturing out with a camera to capture coup-related action.
Keep harassing the airline to put you on a flight back home. Settle eventually for one that connects in Miami, even though it means spending an awful night in Miami International Airport.
Return to Trinidad. Fail to remember, 25 years later, who collected you at the airport, what you saw from the car on the way home, what you felt when you finally walked through the doors of the home you weren’t sure you’d ever see again.
Wonder if 25 years is really that long, or if there’s some other reason you’ve shoved those memories aside.

author: Georgia Popplewell


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Learn 40 Aboriginal Hand Signs Used to Communicate Across Western Australia’s Desert · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

With its rough terrain and harsh climate, the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia can be a challenging place to live. For those carving out a life in this sparsely populated region, the vast distances of Australia's second largest desert can also prove to be challenging for those wanting to communicate with neighbors.
Hand signs have traditionally served as a way of communicating for the Aboriginal peoples who have been on this land for centuries, long before the arrival of mobile and digital technologies.
Balgo, Western Australia
To recognize this practical means of communication, local producer Willi Lempert partnered with a group of enthusiastic Aboriginal women elders from the community of Balgo. Together, they created a video that told the story of 40 hand signs.
Lempert had been working in the area when the idea for an explanatory video came up. He explained the importance of these hand signs:
While many visitors quickly learn the standard “what now?” sign, it is easy to miss the dozens of diverse hand signals being subtly exchanged in conversation. As in all languages, some elements are traditional and others are recent innovations… hand signs are not only a way of communicating information, but also serve as full-bodied ways of expressing nuance, humor, and individual personality.
The video, which is part of the “Mother Tongue” project organized by ABC Open and First Languages Australia, also serves to promote the local language of Kukatja, a vulnerable language with less than 1,000 current speakers. In the video, for each hand sign that the women demonstrate there is the corresponding word in Kukatja along with its English-language translation.
Lempert wrote about how much fun he and the women had during the making of the video in a blog post.
The women elders, such as Payi Payi and Manaya who are featured in the video, play a central role in the life of the community. As members of the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre, they are instrumental in determining the way forward for the community. The website for the centre states, “Nothing that happens at Kapululangu can happen without the Elders.”
Kapululangu’s Elders were born in the desert, and grew up and were trained in the Old Ways before the arrival of Kartiya/non-Indigenous people in their ancestral countries. This makes them custodians of an immense wealth of stories,skills and cultural knowledge. They want to share this wealth […] The Elders want their young people to grow up strong and resilient, proud of and knowledgeable in the ways of their people, secure in their peoples’ Law and Culture knowledge, so that they can better cope with the changing world.   A peoples’ own Law and Culture is the glue that holds life together.
By teaming up with local producers committed to helping them tell their own story in their own language, they are ensuring that this wealth of knowledge is shared with the next generation.

author: Eduardo Avila


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Saudi Woman Dies After Her Daughter Is Rejected From University · Global Voices
Mohammed Al Nemer

UPDATED ON 7/28/2015:
After a meeting with an investigation committee that was formed by the Saudi Minister of Education, Faisal Al-Hwaity said to Makkah newspaper that his daughter has been accepted to join the University of Tabuk’s medical college. But he demanded that the committee continues investigating why his wife died on campus.
Screen shot of video showing Mrs Al Hwaity, left, arguing with the university admission's office before her death
A grief-struck Saudi mother literally dropped dead at a university campus which refused to admit her daughter into its medical school. The video, which shows the mother arguing with the University of Tabuk's admission's officers, has gone viral, sparking a discussion on both mainstream and social media about the university's cold reaction to the issue.
Rahma Al-Hwaity and her husband, Faisal Al-Hwaity, went to the admission of University of Tabuk to ask why their daughter's application was refused when they applied to medical school, Makkah newspaper reported.
“I will either die victorious or be struck with grief,” Rahma Al-Hwaity told an admission adviser, shows the video that was shared on YouTube.
You can watch the video below:
Before her death, Mrs Al-Hwaity threatened that she would stage a sit-in outside the campus. Minutes later, she died from a heart attack while waiting for her husband to finish his meeting with admission consultants.
The University of Tabuk said in a press release that the woman's death had no link with her daughter's admission.
The press release included the certificate of Al-Hwaity’s family and what colleges they applied to. It shows also that Al-Hwaity daughter’s, whose name was not mentioned in any coverage, put computer science as her first choice. In Saudi Arabia, when you apply to a university, you have to choose 10 majors in order of preference. If you are qualified for all of them, you will be accepted to the first major you choose.
Faisal Al-Hwaity accused the University of Tabuk of changing his daughter's choices, adding to Al-Hayat newspaper  that he had evidence.
A spokesperson of Ministry of Education said the minister ordered for an investigation committee to be formed to reveal the reasons behind for rejecting Al-Hwaity’s daughter in medical school although they passed the requirements, according to a statement published via Facebook.
The Tabuk woman's death was discussed widely on Twitter under the hashtags #جامعة_تبوك (The University of Tabuk) and #الام_اللتي_ماتت_قهرا_في_تبوك (The mother who died from grief in Tabuk). The hashtag forced the situation to be discussed in Saudi media, TV and newspapers. It also showed how people are divided, but most of them were sympathetic to the family.
Dr. Manal Meccawy, who teaches at King Abdulaziz University, said on Twitter:
الله يرحمها، لكن الجامعات لا تدار بالعواطف. بيان الجامعة مقنع والأجل مكتوب..والأب يريد تنفيس حزنه #وفاة_معلمة_لعدم_قبول_ابنتها_بكلية_الطب
— د.مرام #قاب_قوسين (@Dr_MMeccawy) July 24, 2015
God have mercy on her soul, but universities are not managed by emotions. The university’s statement is convincing … the father wants to vent his sadness.
Another Saudi author, Barjas Albarjas said:
يدافعون عن الخطأ ليس تأييدا له، بل لأنهم يغارون ع أنظمة مليئة بالأخطاء #الام_اللتي_ماتت_قهرا_في_تبوك #وفاة_معلمة_لعدم_قبول_ابنتها_بكلية_الطب
— Barjas Albarjas (@Barjasbh) July 24, 2015
Some people defend error not because they are in favor of it, rather they are jealous of systems riddled with errors.
A cartoon describing the situation was also widely shared on social media. The caricature shows two trying to enter a manager's office. The gate-keeper is Wasta, or well-connected person who can help get to wherever you want. The man with excellent academic credentials is refused entry while the one who barely passed his exams is welcomed by Wasta:
تنشد عن الحال هذا هو الحال ! ومع ذلك هنالك من يقف في صف الجلاد ؟! #جامعة_تبوك #الام_اللتي_ماتت_قهرا_في_تبوك pic.twitter.com/kthnZGqypc
— خالد مساعد الزهراني (@KhalidMosaid) July 24, 2015
This is what's happening in our society. Despite this, some will side with the perpetrator of injustice
From Jeddah, Dr Fawaz Al Ayesh wants to know who is responsible for what happened to Mrs Al-Omrani and what penalty he will face:
القضية الآن هي قضية المجتمع كاملا، يهمنا أن نعرف من المتسبب وماهي العقوبة التي ستتخذ بحقه #وفاة_معلمه_لعدم_قبول_ابنتها_بكلية_الطب
— د. فواز العايش (@fawav) July 24, 2015
This is now a national issue. We should know who was behind it and what is the penalty he would face.
Saudi sociologist Amani Alshalan has a message to the daughter:
#وفاة_معلمة_لعدم_قبول_ابنتها_بكلية_الطب رسالتي للأبنة كوني عظيمة مثل أمك انتصري لأمك بدخولك الطب حققي حلمها يا دكتورة 👍
— أماني الشعلان ~ (@alshalanamani) July 25, 2015
My message to the daughter: You have to be a great daughter to win a victory for your mother by getting into a medical school to make her dream come true
And Riyadh-based Dr Ali bin Shareeda, an academician specialised in language learning, says if there was any wrong-doing, someone had to be punished:
إن كانت مستحقة فيجب إحالة مدير الجامعة وعميد القبول والتسجيل للمحاكمة بتهم الفساد والقتل غير العمد. #وفاة_معلمة_لعدم_قبول_ابنتها_بكلية_الطب
— د. علي بن شريدة (@ali_magid) July 24, 2015
If she had the right to get into medical school and was wrongfully not admitted, then the school's dean and dean of admission and registration should be put on trial for corruption and unintentional murder

author: Mohammed Al Nemer


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Scroll Through Madagascar History Via Vintage Photographs · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Online Photo Museum of Madagascar with their Permission
Access to the visual history of most former colonial countries in Africa is usually a challenging proposition because former colonial powers restrict access to historical archives. Helihanta RAJAONARISON and Tsiry Fy-Tia SOLOFOMIHANTA in Madagascar sought to solve this issue and make the history of Madagascar more palatable to the general public by creating an online Museum of Madagascar through a collection of vintage photographs.
The website went live on July 27, 2015, and offers a glimpse of everyday lives in Madagascar from 1850 to 1960. The collections is organized in four major periods: Pre-colonial Period, Colonial Period, Major Constructions, Everyday Life and Independence.

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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Unintentionally Amusing Illustrations Found in Japanese Textbooks · Global Voices
N'Donna Russell

Screencap from YouTube user hahaha douga
All around the world, students have the ability to turn the textbook, the symbol of compulsory yet boring learning, into a thing of timeless amusement. Japan is no exception.
母性の教科書。シュール。💆 pic.twitter.com/CvEt4LZpkA
— 莉 奈 (@chanrina_10) June 20, 2014
This was in a maternity textbook. So surreal!
On the Matome Naver website, users have taken to posting illustrations from various educational textbooks that range from unintentionally humorous to outright funny and surreal.
It’s clear they are meant to be taken seriously within the context of the textbook, but the Matome Naver community is delighting in demonstrating just how absurd textbook illustrations can be.
高校の教科書で早速シュールなやつ見つけた pic.twitter.com/izV5j0uBsc
— 鈴木 萌里 (@moering48o) March 25, 2015
No sooner had I opened my textbook when I discovered whatever these eight guys are.
Some illustrations appear to intended to resemble world-famous celebrities:
そーいえば、今日英語の時間に発見したんだけどさ、教科書にめっちゃパヴァロッティに似てる人見つけた(*^^*) しかも、歌手とゆーねw pic.twitter.com/QkYzNGbCCR
— さとうなな (@nana_3107) February 16, 2015
If we're talking [funny textbook illustrations], I discovered this one during today's English lesson: Luciano Pavarotti. It's even supposed illustrate what a singer is!
Others seem to bear an unintentional resemblance to popular anime and manga icons:
保健の教科書のこいつが、進撃の巨人に見えてしょうがない(´・ω・｀) pic.twitter.com/IDn8x762aC
— 才能の無駄遣い (@rakugaki_matome) April 2, 2015
All I can think of when I look at this textbook illustration is Shingeki no Kyojin [Attack on Titan].
The textbook illustration thread is very popular on Matome Naver, with over 700,000 views so far and over 900 users marking it as a ‘favorite.’
Matome Naver user amayasa, the creator of the thread, succinctly sums up the impact of these textbook illustrations:
おかげで勉強に集中できませんw
Thanks to these illustrations, I'm unable to concentrate while studying, haha.
Japan is no stranger to the viral nature of textbook illustrations.
Earlier in June, publisher Sanseido KK recalled 10,000 grade one school textbooks after discovering the girl in the illustration possessed three arms (the third arm is resting on table, while the girl grips a basket in both hands). The publisher issued a public apology after children discovered the error:
教科書イラストにミス！一万冊回収！ 何で、イチイチそんな事で回収する必要性があんの？意味不明(・・? pic.twitter.com/joGvofx8St
— 王禅寺 (@oogishima) June 24, 2015
Textbook illustration blooper! 10,000 textbooks recalled! Why does the publisher need to collect each and every one [and correct the mistake]? Who knows?
Furthermore, video game news site Kotaku covered student attempts to make textbook illustrations more interesting via doodling last year. Illustrations vary from homages to popular anime series to suggestive images not suitable for work or the classroom.
スターウォーズ風に落書き pic.twitter.com/vshEcq4Tml
— 茶んた (@___ayatakaoisii) October 22, 2013
A doodle in the style of “Star Wars”
Even textbooks created for students outside of Japan, Japanese-language textbooks specifically, offer unintentional humour.
日本語の教科書見せてもらって見つけた。なぜおじいさんとお兄さんなのか。 pic.twitter.com/CxBO5xE0GC
— 小鳥遊 (@tknp_ppp) March 29, 2015
[Illustration explains the Japanese term chikan (groper) and the verb sawaru (to feel).]
Found in a Japanese textbook. Why an old man and a young man, I wonder…

author: N'Donna Russell