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How can Nepal’s literary tradition make its mark on the global scene? · Global Voices
Sangita Swechcha

Some of the Nepali books featured during Nepali Literature Month at GLLI. Image by the author.
The author of this story was a guest editor at GLLI during the Nepali Literature Month.
Despite its rich publishing history, Nepal's literary tradition is still relatively unknown to international readers. While Nepali author Laxmi Prasad Devkota began the tradition of writing and translating in English during the 20th century, this trend did not continue for long and it is only in the past two to three decades that the number of Nepali books being written in English is slowly growing. However, according to translator and researcher Mahesh Poudel, Nepali literature is still largely excluded from literary publications focussed on the region and it rarely appears in major international anthologies and journals. There are many publications awaiting translation and popular Nepali authors’ books are not the exception. The expense of translation and royalties, as well as the lack of collaboration between national and international publishing houses are among the major challenges, according to publisher Bhupendra Khadka.
In November 2019, US-based Global Literature in Libraries Initiatives (GLLI) hosted a virtual Nepali literature month to showcase Nepali literature to international audiences. In June 2020, Global Voices interviewed GLLI Chief Editor Karen Van Drie via email to gain insight into Nepali literature within the global literary context.
GV: What is the prospect of Nepali literature (either written in English or translated into English) in the global literature world? And what is the future of translated literature in the West?
Karen Van Drie (KVD): English-language cultures are not as open to translated literature as we should be. Our countries are so physically big that it is hard for us as readers to keep up with the output of our own publishing, let alone works from other cultures. This is the wrong attitude to take though, as there is so much from other nations we could learn. Currently, only 3% of what is published in the United States every year has been translated from another language.
But there are two signs beyond literature that shows the situation could improve. A foreign film called Parasite, from South Korea, was chosen as Best Picture of the Year at the Oscars this year for the first time ever. Also, Netflix is stocking its content library with selections from around the world. And, the third promising sign is that there are new publishing houses starting to publish translated literature.
All of these trends could make the English-language reader more willing to try titles from faraway cultures.
Nepali literature being displayed during the ‘Nepal Yatra’ exhibition in 2019 at the Hawth Theatre, United Kingdom. Photo by the author.
GV: How can Nepali literature be more visible to global readers? Do you have any suggestions which could help Nepali literature make its mark internationally?
KVD: To make Nepali literature more visible to global readers, I would find a way to turn every potential tourist and visitor to Nepal into a potential advocate for Nepali literature.
Anytime someone requests information about Nepal before they come, do they also get information about locally-written literature? Does everyone involved in international tourism in Nepal have three home-grown titles they would recommend to foreign visitors as good reads? Are literature advocates in Nepal asking their worldwide Embassies to feature authors on their Facebook feeds, for example? Also, submitting Nepalese titles to book prize contests is a wonderful way to let someone else do your publicity if a book is a winner.
What I noticed is that Nepali titles were not available to buy immediately as an e-book. When someone reads a review of a title, that is when they are most inspired to purchase a book. That book needs to be available electronically immediately.
The second thing I would add is that when people are looking to specifically seek out books about Nepal, they are first likely to see books written on your biggest issues by foreign writers, not Nepalese writers. They are judging a book by its book cover; make it as competitive and compelling as possible. Make sure the most compelling events and issues in Nepal have home-grown writers writing about them.
GV: You have decades of experience bringing global literature to libraries. How can Nepali publishers find ways to reach global libraries?
KVD: 1) Invest, as a nation, in fantastic translation skills. Translators are non-stop advocates for authors.
2) Have a literary festival that showcases the books and the nation. I think you already do that.
3) An add-on at the literary festival could be a fellowship program for publishers interested in your nation's creative output. Bring them in for three days, at their own travel expense, to meet and greet publishers and learn about the writers and illustrators from Nepal. Get them excited to publish your books in their own language.
4) What English-language markets have an affinity for Nepal? For example, in the US state of Colorado, a fun thing people do is set a goal to hike every mountain in the state over 14,000 feet tall. There are 54 of them. I imagine Coloradans would be quite taken with all things Nepalese. How could you target these markets specifically?
5) Don't underestimate the power of your cuisine to get people around the world interested in your literature. Cookbooks related to Nepalese cuisine and a natural advocate for your cuisine able to cook and market the books in English are an exciting entry point to learning about the culture.

author: Sangita Swechcha


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Remembering Marco Leung, the first to die in Hong Kong’s anti-China extradition protests · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Marco Leung. Image from the Stand News, Global Voices’ content partner.
Supporters of the anti-China extradition movement in Hong Kong count around a dozen unnatural deaths related to last year's protests.
The majority of the deceased committed suicide — at least six individuals left suicide notes expressing their support of the protests and frustration towards the government.
The most shocking incidents were the deaths of Marco Leung Ling-kit on June 15 and Chow Tsz-lok on November 3.
Marco Leung, 35, was the first to die during the protests.
He fell from Pacific Place, a shopping mall, while he was hanging up a protest banner at 4 PM on June 15, a week after a one million-strong demonstration failed to convince the city's leadership to withdraw the bill.
Marco Leung Ling-kit ( 梁凌杰 )
2019-06-15 Passing away 1 Year ?
Black shirt + White ribbon ??#StandWithHongKong ??♀??♀ pic.twitter.com/kYATHxtIX7
— Apple (@Apple68335100) June 14, 2020
Leung was wearing a yellow raincoat displaying the words “(Chief Executive) Carrie Lam killed Hong Kong, Cops were cold blooded.” (林鄭殺港 黑警冷血).
On the banner he wrote:
全面撤回送中。我們不是暴動。釋放學生 傷者。林鄭下台。Help Hong Kong。
反送中 No EXTRADITION TO CHINA。MAKE LOVE No shoot!
Complete withdrawal of the China-extradition bill. We are not rioters. Release the students and the injured. Step down Carrie Lam. Help Hong Kong. No Extradition to China. Make Love, No shoot!
The Hong Kong government continued to refuse to withdraw the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019, better known as the China extradition bill.
In response, on June 12, thousands of protesters charged towards the Legislative Council (LegCo).
Riot police cracked down on the protest with tear gas and rubber bullet rounds. Authorities labeled the protests as riots, a definition that left the protesters facing sentences of up to ten years in jail.
Marco Leung's individual protest was a reaction to the government's refusal to listen to people's demands and its labelling of citizens as rioters.
He fell to his death after a rescue team launched an attempt to pull him inside the shopping mall. Leung's death shocked all of Hong Kong.
The following day, two million people took to the streets, calling for Carrie Lam to step down as leader along with five other demands reflected in Leung's last stand: Complete withdrawal of the China extradition bill! Stop labeling protests as riots! Drop charges against protesters! Conduct independent investigations into excessive use of police force! Implement universal suffrage for both Legislative Council and the Chief Executive!
Since his death, Leung’s yellow raincoat has become a protest symbol, while protesters have vowed that they will carry on his path and force the fulfilment of his demands.
梁凌杰 1984/3/7 – 2019/6/15
享年35歲。? pic.twitter.com/CAVJm96Syu
— Huckebein (@JOSHUAHUCKEBEIN) June 15, 2020
Leung Ling-kit. 1984/3/7 – 2019/6/15. Aged 35 years old.
It had been a year since you left us. I remeber that you were the first person who say Five Demand. Hong Kongers never forget. 梁凌杰義士，他是被政權推下去。 未能忘記，亦不會忘記. pic.twitter.com/9E71RUM4th
— Linghk??❤ (@lingliberaty) June 15, 2020
It has been a year since you left us. I remember that you were the first person who said the Five Demands. Hong Kongers never forget. Marco Leung Ling-kit, a fighter for justice, he was pushed to fall by the regime. I can’t forget and will never forget.
Another protester, Chow Tsz-Lok, 22, fell from a car park during a riot police operation around midnight on November 8, 2019.
The death was suspicious as Chow was sending out text messages to fellow protesters, containing information about the whereabouts of riot police at the time of his death.
Moreover, he only fell from the third level to the second level of the car park — just a few meters in height. Many believe that he was murdered.
The Coroner’s Court is still yet to launch inquiries into the causes and circumstances of both Leung and Chow’s deaths.
Leung’s father told journalists that Hong Kong police has delayed handing over the investigative report to the court.
Ahead of the anniversary of Marco Leung’s tragic fall, Civil Human Rights Front, a coalition of local non-governmental organizations, urged citizens to commemorate Leung by putting flowers outside the Pacific Place shopping mall.
Thousands answered the call, despite the heavy presence of riot police.
We shall never forget! https://t.co/xGfGZCji2Y
— HK dreamer (@hkfajie) June 15, 2020
15/06
17:20金鐘現場 pic.twitter.com/Ex5ycQvAbw
— 貓婆婆(1) (@chowkinwah2) June 15, 2020
Eventually, the queue grew to such a size that people had to wait for two hours to place the flowers outside the shopping mall.
#hk – the queue to pay tribute to deceased protester Leung Ling-kit extending all the way from Pacific Place to Hong Kong Park pic.twitter.com/nbQdL4tazA
— Lok. (@sumlokkei) June 15, 2020
The crowds outside the mall continued into the early hours of June 16, while pro-democracy district councillors set up temporary memorials in other parts of the city to allow local residents to pay their tributes.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Oiwan Lam


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‘Where is the center of the story?’: Revisiting the traditional view of Russia’s Muslim communities · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Tatar family on a picnic (place unknown, first half of the 1910s). Photo from Renat Bekkin's archive, used with permission
Muslims account for 10 percent of Russia's population, making their religion the second largest behind the Russian Orthodox Church. They have been part of Russian history for centuries and inhabit the entire Russian Federation: from Siberia to the North Caucasus, in large cities such as Moscow and Saint-Petersburg.
The largest ethnic group professing Islam are Tatars, who are also the first ethnic minority in Russia, with over 5 million members, their own Turkic language and their own administrative territory within the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tatarstan.
Tatar family. Photo from Renat Bekkin’s family archive (Saint-Petersburg, 1917). Used with permission
Tatars played a specific role in the colonial expansion of Tsarist Russia as intermediaries between ethnic Russians and colonized nations of Siberia and Central Asia, who often shared close religious and linguistic ties with them. They acted as missionaries, translators, and later as reformists of Islam in the late 19th and early 20th century. They are often described as the Jadids – intellectuals, writers, thinkers who proposed a new and modern brand of Islam inspired by political and social reforms seen in the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe.
But this narrative of male Muslim intellectuals solely guiding modernization that has dominated academia until very recently is being increasingly challenged by researchers.
Global Voices spoke to Danielle Ross, who taught at Nazarbayev University in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, and is now an Assistant Professor of Asian and Islamic history at Utah State University.
In her latest book Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia she openly challenges this myth and proposes another reading.
The interview was edited for brevity.
Danielle Ross: One of the main goals of my book is to bring the study of Islam and Islamic reform in Russia’s Volga-Ural region up to date with recent trends in historical research on other parts of the world. This means moving away from a model of modernity as something imported or introduced from one society into another, and, instead, viewing 1600s-1910s as a period in which a set of changes—globalization of commerce and politics, centralization of governmental power, rising literacy rates, democratization of religion—unfolded in societies across the world. The Volga-Ural region, linked into larger global networks through Russian imperial rule, Islam, and European and Asian trade, was as much shaped by these trends as were Britain and France, with the caveat that the Volga-Ural region was a colonized space rather than an imperial center. Within this framework, the Jadids can no longer be seen as the importers of modernity. Rather, Jadidism appears as one of many local responses to high colonialism, vertically integrated mass production, and religious revival across the world in the 1880s-1910s. The Jadids were in dialogue with their contemporaries outside of their ethnic communities but were also greatly indebted to previous generations of their own people, who had responded to globally driven changes in their own day. In my book, I wanted to convey an impression of the Volga-Ural region as a continually dynamic place rather than as a land and culture that froze in place in 1552 and suddenly awakened in the 1860s.
Tatar family. Photo Renat Bekkin’s family archive (Saint-Petersburg, mid 1910s). Used with permission
FN: You also make the point in your research that the building of the Tsarist, and later Soviet Empires was not the monopoly of ethnic Russians — it did include other groups such as the Tatars, Germans, Jews, Georgians and others. Why is this aspect seldom mentioned in the colonial history of those two empires?
DR: The academic study of history as we know it today arose within the context of nineteenth-century nationalism and colonialism. In this context, history-writing served two purposes: to articulate a coherent, unifying past for the modern nation-state and to justify political dominance of some peoples over others. Historians have worked since the 1960s to deconstruct these national and colonial narratives, but, in the Russian case, such work is difficult for a few reasons.
First, there is the question of assembling a coherent narrative. Telling the history of Russia as a story of grand princes, tsars, and Communist Party leaders is relatively focused and linear. But how does one tell a coherent, compelling story of over one hundred ethno-confessional groups spread over thousands of square miles? Where is the center of the story?
Second, Russia and the Soviet Union’s intellectual approach to its non-Russian, non-Orthodox peoples was to place them in designated spaces (nationalities, union republics, etc.) and to confine discussions of their cultures and histories to those spaces. Ethnographers, regional experts, and historians of the union and autonomous republics could choose to write about specific ethnic and confessional groups, but little of that writing was included in general histories of Russia and the USSR. This same structure of Soviet national spaces and categories was replicated and reinforced in Cold War-era western scholarship.
In the 1990s, historians began to pursue research that dismantled or transcended the national and regional categories around which Cold War-era historical studies had been organized, but this is transformation is still in progress and it is still not well represented in the textbooks and other generalist literature that would appeal to non-specialists and students entering the field of Russian history. So, the integration non-Russian sources and histories into mainstream Russian history and the decentering or provincializing of ethnic Russian history continues to be a slow process.
Page from the Tatar-language chronicle “Fasl tarikh dastanninda (1740s), produced in the 1740s and held in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Kazan Federal University Library in Kazan, Tatarstan. Photo provided by Danielle Ross, used with permission
FN: What is Moscow’s current discourse about the role and presence of Muslims — both indigenous and migrants — in Russia?
DR: Since Putin came to power, Moscow has turned increasingly to Russian ethnonationalism as a unifying ideology. In ethnically diverse Tatarstan, recent policies of consolidation and streamlining of cultural and educational institutions have amounted to the reduction of the resources that sustain the republic’s non-Russian languages and cultures. Moscow’s rhetoric and policies toward Uzbek, Tajik, Kyrgyz, and Azerbaijani migrants send the message that: (1) these Muslims are not wanted in Russia despite their now indispensable role in Russia’s economy; and (2) Central Asian and Caucasian Muslims’ cultures are alien to and incompatible with Russia’s prevailing culture despite the shared experience of seventy years of Soviet rule. Given Moscow’s current stance on indigenous and migrant Muslim people and cultures, it seems fairly clear that they are not prepared at this time to recognize the contributions of non-Slavic, non-Orthodox peoples to Russia’s past or to propose a vision of the future that would include Muslims as full members of Russian society.
Assistant Professor Danielle Ross. Photo by Andrew McAllister, used with permission from the History Department of Utah State University
FN: Who are the conveyers of modernity in today’s Muslim communities of Russia?
DR: I don’t know that “conveyers of modernity” is a useful term for discussing Islam in Russia today. Unlike in the 1880s-1920s, the major discourses in Islam today are not about how to adapt Islamic faith, law, and culture to the modern world, but, rather, about who speaks for Muslims, whose Islam is most correct and legitimate, what the appropriate languages for the transmission of Islamic knowledge are, and what the position of Islam in Russia should be now and in the future. The faces of Islam in contemporary Russia include historically Muslim peoples as well as recent ethnic Russian converts, Salafists as well as adherents of the various classical Islamic legal schools, and local and national Muslim intellectual traditions as well as international and transnational trends. This multiplicity of voices and opinions lends dynamism to Russia’s Muslim communities.

author: Filip Noubel


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How Trump’s ‘game-changer’ drug is boosting nationalism in Brazil and India · Global Voices
Taisa Sganzerla

Photo of Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi by Palácio do Planalto (CC BY 2.0). Photo of Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 3.0). Image remix by Georgia Popplewell.
As COVID-19 spread around the world in early 2020, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-malaria drug touted as a miracle cure by the US president Donald Trump, triggered a global, polarized debate with significant geopolitical impacts.
The debate around HCQ in the United States was widely covered in international English-language media, but the controversy swirling around the same drug in Brazil and India — two countries where partisanship is equally as rife — has received less attention.
The countries deployed drastically different responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. India declared a national lockdown on March 25, while Brazil never instituted one. In both countries, however, the HCQ debate quickly became a useful rhetorical lever to push nationalist positions. Even as HCQ's efficacy remained unproven, its use was aggressively touted by Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.
HCQ has now been removed by the US Federal Drug Administration's list of drugs approved for use against COVID-19, yet both India and Brazil continue to recommend its use as a treatment.
Brazil and India have plenty in common. Both are middle-income economies and large democracies that have elected far-right nationalist leaders in the past decade. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have galvanized support around Hindu-nationalist sentiment in an attempt to raise India’s profile as an international powerhouse. Brazil elected Bolsonaro president in 2018 on a platform that blended tough-on-crime-and-corruption rhetoric with hardline cultural conservatism and ultra-liberal economic policy that promised sweeping labor and environmental deregulation.
India, the world's largest manufacturer of HCQ, was in a unique position to exploit the opening provided by Trump and his supporters’ championing of the drug. The Indian government had initially banned the exportation of HCQ, then reversed the ban and began supplying the drug on a large scale to the US, Brazil, Morocco, and other countries.
In Brazil — a modest manufacturer of the drug in comparison to India — Bolsanaro ordered an Armed Forces’ pharmaceutical lab to boost its production of HCQ three days after Trump first called the drug a “game-changer.” By mid-April, the lab had increased its output of the drug a hundredfold.
Bolsonaro began aggressively promoting HCQ as a miracle cure, causing the resignation of two health ministers between April and May. In April, Twitter deleted a video post by Bolsonaro in which he defends the drug's use at a political rally. Twitter asserted that the tweet violated the platform’s rules, marking the first time the company deleted a post by a Brazilian head of state. In May, Bolsonaro said in one of his weekly live broadcasts on social media that “if you’re right-wing, you take chloroquine; if you’re left-wing, you take Tubaína” (Tubaína is a soft-drink popular in some Brazilian regions).
Bolsonaro, Modi, and Trump all employ conspiracy narratives and seek enemies or traitors in order to energize their supporters. In both India and Brazil, as in the US, these narratives hinge on unproven claims of scientific evidence that HCQ is effective against COVID-19. The imagined enemy in these narratives is the World Health Organization (WHO) and China, which are accused of suppressing this information in collusion with social media companies and the media. The beneficiaries of this alleged scheme include big pharmaceutical companies, who are said to be poised to produce a new treatment that is sure to be both expensive and lucrative.
The idea that there’s a miracle cure for a disease that has killed over 400,000 people, and that a few powerful but morally dubious elements are preventing people from accessing it, allows these leaders to them cast themselves in the role of saviors fighting against an evil system.
A favorite tactic of Bolsonaro’s supporters is amplifying the opinions of the handful of scientists and doctors who defend the early administration of hydroxychloroquine to COVID-19 patients.
When Exame, a well-established Brazilian business magazine, reported on a study conducted by a private hospital network that allegedly “cured 300 COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine,” the article was shared extensively on social media in right-wing circles. According to the Exame story, Brazilian hospital Prevent Senior administered HCQ to 500 COVID-19 patients, of whom 300 recovered from the disease.
Similarly to the discredited French study that sparked the HCQ debate in the first place, the Prevent Senior trial was neither randomized nor double-blind, the gold standard for clinical drug trials. Many experts pointed to problems with the study’s sample.
Two weeks later, Brazil’s National Ethics Board in Medical Research ordered the suspension of the study, on the grounds that Prevent Senior had not obtained prior authorization to begin the research. Its directors will be investigated by the board for misconduct.
None of that prevented Carla Zambelli, one of Bolsonaro’s closest allies in Congress, from promoting the study on Twitter and on Facebook, where the post was shared over 6,800 times.
Social media posts by Brazilian federal deputy and member of Congress Carla Zambelli, promoting an article highlighting a discredited research study on the efficacy of HCQ in treating COVID-19. The post attracted hundreds of comments and was shared thousands of times on both platforms.
An English-language text detailing the study was also published after the suspension on Medicine Uncensored, a portal frequently mentioned by supporters of Trump and Bolsonaro in Brazil and the United States.
Other favored targets of Bolsonaro supporters are medical studies concluding that HCQ is ineffective or unsafe for treating COVID-19. On social media, death threats were leveled at the authors of a study conducted in Manaus, one of the cities hardest hit by the pandemic, which compared the effects of different dosages of HCQ on patients with severe symptoms. After the authors published a preliminary finding that HCQ could be lethal in severely ill patients on the online portal medRxiv, the New York Times picked up the story, which drew widespread attention to the study in Brazil. Bolsonaro supporters began digging through the researchers’ social media profiles, allegedly finding evidence showing the researchers’ support for leftist politicians.
On an April 16 Facebook post by federal deputy and Bolsonaro ally Bia Kicis criticizing the study, many of the commenters call for one of the researchers to be arrested or killed for “murdering people on purpose in order to disprove HCQ.” The post has been shared over 29,000 times.
A photo of one of the researchers of the Manaus medical study is shown in this Facebook post by Bolsonaro ally Bia Kicis. Many commenting on the post called for the researcher to be arrested or killed.
Conexão Política, a pro-Bolsonaro website, added fuel to the fire when it published a story with screenshots and links to the researchers’ social media profiles. According to the story: “Everything seems to suggest that the research was financed by federal funds allocated by leftist senators, and it was also known by the former Minister of Health Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who at a press conference on Wednesday (April 15) cited the clinical trial by political militants of Manaus, without criticizing or denouncing the irresponsibility of leftist activist researchers.”
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has trumpeted India’s massive exportation of HCQ as one of its great achievements. The BJP sees India’s HCQ production as an opportunity to develop soft power as well as strengthen its position in relation to its regional rival China.
In early April, Trump praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his leadership in the export of HCQ in a tweet and a press conference. On the same day, Bolsonaro sent Modi a letter thanking his Indian counterpart for resuming HCQ exports. Pro-BJP media and Hindu nationalist social media spaces glorified Bolsanaro’s message, which they viewed as proof of India's success in strengthening diplomatic relations between the two countries, and noted the Brazilian president’s reference to the Hindu god Hanuman.
The idea that India is leading the charge against COVID-19 through its production of HCQ has resonated strongly among BJP and Modi supporters, some of whom have exploited existing tensions with China and Pakistan to further exalt India as a COVID-19 leader. One Facebook post asks whether India should make supplying Pakistan with the drug conditional. Other posts on pro-Modi Facebook groups promote the characterization of China as an aggressor who infected the world with COVID-19 and posted graphics bearing statements such as “China sent the virus to the world…My India sent medicine to the world. Proud to be an Indian.”
Popular social media posts exploiting tensions between India and Pakistan and India and China.
A major element of the right-wing discourse around HCQ in both Brazil and India is antagonism toward the WHO, though on this score Bolsonaro and Modi diverge in terms of approach. Bolsonaro has long disdained multilateralism, while Modi holds a more favorable, if opportunistic view, believing that multilateralism could help advance India’s national interests.
In both countries, however, a series of recent missteps by the WHO gave a boost to each leader’s agenda.
In late May, after a highly publicized study published in the prestigious Lancet medical journal concluded that HCQ increased the risk of death and cardiac complications in COVID patients, the WHO temporarily suspended trials of the drug. Ultimately, the study was retracted by its lead author, and the WHO rescinded the suspension of the clinical trials.
The WHO’s indecision, combined with the growing skirmishes at the China-India border and a more global narrative that seeks to blame China for the pandemic, triggered a surge of Indian right-wing discourse against the organization.
The day after the WHO announced the suspension, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) stated that India would continue testing HCQ in combined trials. BJP supporters applauded the ICMR’s decision, calling the WHO “incompetent” and trotting out the claim that the organization was controlled by China and big pharmaceutical companies who want to “diminish India’s global impact and economy.”
After the WHO reversed its decision, Modi supporters celebrated the organization's “caving in” to India, which they viewed as a strike against China’s attempts to diminish India’s importance in the international market.
Popular social media posts by a journalist from a pro-government news outlet and a pro-Modi Facebook group touting India's HCQ production and promoting the idea of COVID-19 as “made in China” virus.
A similar dynamic played out in Brazil. Immediately after the May 15 resignation of Nelson Taich as health minister — the second to resign since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic — his replacement, General Eduardo Pazuello, signed a protocol recommending that Brazilian doctors use HCQ for COVID-19 patients.
Brazil's government didn't change its stance after the Lancet study appeared, and when the study was eventually retracted and the WHO apologized for having suspended solidarity trials based on it, Bolsonaristas gloated that their hostility toward the WHO was justified.
Pro-Bolsonaro social media pages and legislators have claimed that denying HCQ to COVID-19 patients is a “crime against humanity,” an assertion also made in April by US doctor Vladimir Zelenko in an interview with former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon. Dr. Zelenko rose from obscure general practitioner to right-wing media stardom in the US for trumpeting the use of the hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc sulfate against COVID-19. He is being investigated by federal prosecutors in the US for falsely claiming that a hospital study of drugs he had promoted had won federal approval.
While Indian opposition to China stems from regional disputes and competition for global influence, in Brazil the anti-China narrative is more abstract and based on a deep ideological allegiance— some would say subservience— to the United States.
Militant anti-communism has been a staple of Brazilian right-wing politics since the 1930s, with the Bolsonaro government its most recent incarnation. Part of the current anti-communist narrative is that there is a new cold war, a global struggle between freedom— represented by the Trump’s United States— and communism— represented by China — and Brazil is simply siding with morality. This is the logic by which Bolsonaro critics, including some of Brazil’s most emblematic right-wing figures, end up being labeled as “communists” by his supporters.
The controversy surrounding hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19 is a testament to the challenge scientists face in a post-truth era. As research on effective treatments for COVID-19 continues, hydroxychloroquine stands on a precarious pedestal. It is used to advance partisan geopolitical anxieties about science and healthcare, and influences and overshadows coverage of other aspects of the pandemic.
In Brazil and India, which are experiencing a rapid decline in both democracy and public faith in the democratic process, that challenge can be particularly hard to navigate and understand.
Modi was notorious for his misrule as chief minister for the state of Gujarat, where under his tenure Muslims were targeted and killed. Bolsonaro rose up from the fringes of Brazilian Congress, where he made a career out of insulting LGBTQ+ people and praising Brazilian’s right-wing military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985.
Both administrations have been marked by the erosion of institutions, attacks on the press, and persecution of critics. In India, religious minorities, especially Muslims, bear the brunt of that persecution, to the detriment of a multicultural and secular India enshrined in the republic's 1947 constitution. In Brazil, it is plurality of political opinion, and the social rights enshrined in the country’s progressive 1988 constitution that are most at risk.
Asteris Masouras and Alex Esenler contributed research for this story.

author: Taisa Sganzerla


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Impoverished youth in the Middle East turn to cheap — sometimes deadly — alcohol · Global Voices
Saoussen Ben Cheikh

Photo of alcohol with inscription in Arabic. Photo by Ben Abdallah Abdel Karim on Flickr used under Licence CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0.
In May, young Tunisians looking for a buzz by drinking homemade alcohol ended in tragedy.
At least seven youth died and 56 were hospitalized for alcohol poisoning in Kairouan, an ancient Islamic center about 130 kilometers from Tunis, the capital, and one of the poorest governorates of Tunisia, where nearly 40 percent live below the poverty line.
A neighbor of one of the young people who died in a video uploaded on Facebook said:
Young people want to forget their situation. They don’t care about dying. In fact, they say sometimes they want to die. Look at their environment, at the poverty. We don’t even have roads; the water is dirty. We are not stupid, but we don’t have the means. We are forgotten by the authorities.
The parents of three brothers who died from the poisoning added:
My sons were unemployed. One of them was 37 and unable to get married and start his own life. We don’t even have toilets at home.
This is not the first time toxic homemade alcohol has killed young people in the Middle East. Alcohol and drug use is on the rise in the region, where young people who can’t afford locally produced or foreign imports opt to drink homemade, methanol brews —  strong concoctions mixed up by illicit dealers.
Methanol — used for industrial and automotive purposes — is a highly toxic and potentially deadly substance that can cause blindness, kidney failure and seizures and death if consumed in high quantities.
Islam prohibits the consumption of alcohol and many Arab countries ban or enforces strict regulations on its sale, but it’s still widely available, whether obtained underground or on shelves.
#SputnikAnalyse | En Tunisie, le décès de sept personnes après la consommation d’alcool frelaté a provoqué beaucoup d’émoi. Hormis la tragédie, c’est la précarité de la population et l’indifférence de l’État qui sont pointées du doigt. @HanZbiss analysehttps://t.co/431FrwCdqa pic.twitter.com/izybyqM35q
— Sputnik France (@sputnik_fr) May 29, 2020
In Tunisia, the death of seven people after consuming adulterated alcohol caused turmoil. Beyond the tragedy, it is the precariousness of the population and the indifference of the state that are pointed out.
The Middle East region has the largest youth population in the world, with more than half under the age of 25, but it also accounts for the highest unemployment rates reaching 27 percent in 2019. In 2011, youth-led protests — known as the “Arabic Spring” — erupted after years of frustration over social, economic, and political exclusion.
A 2019 report by the Brookings Institution argues that this delayed transition to the work market affects “other pathways to adulthood, including marriage, homeownership, and civic participation.”
Young men, traditionally seen as breadwinners for their families, are unable to fulfill their social obligations.
Within patriarchal societies in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and Palestine, men  “face tremendous stress to be providers. Men are ashamed to face their families due to lack of money,” according to a BBC report on patriarchy in the Middle East.
Alcohol flows freely in restaurants, bars and shops in the Middle East — for those who can afford it. In Libya, for example, a bottle of Chivas Regal in 2014 was available for US$100 whereas a homemade Libyan brew was only US$15 a liter.
But in these conservative countries — where drinking is expensive and also a social taboo — it can turn into a grim and risky endeavor. Mohamed Cheik, a Tunisian activist, told Global Voices:
Homemade alcohol is widespread among idle young people, especially in poor remote areas. But it only makes the news when it ends in tragedy.
The Alexandria Faculty of Medicine in Egypt reported that 5 percent of monthly poisonings are related to alcohol, a figure likely lower than the true scale. Due to social stigma, shame and fear, many methanol consumers do not go to hospitals for treatment unless they are in critical condition.
Alcohol is widely available in the Middle East, but it remains a taboo with negative associations and connotations. Young people in these countries often struggle to balance traditional Islamic values with the desire to live a liberal, globalized lifestyle.
Tunisia has a contentious relationship with alcohol, where consumption rose sharply from 20 to 30 percent since the 2011 revolution. And yet, a survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013 affirmed that 82 percent of Tunisians disapprove of the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Social class also influences attitudes. Educated, wealthy Tunisians who live in big towns and are often more secular may drink openly, whereas the less well-off living in more rural, conservative areas may drink discreetly but still consider the behavior morally corrupt. Taher al-Saidi, an underemployed college graduate from Iraq, told Global Voices:
We are like schizophrenics. We drink and enjoy drinking while at the same time thinking it is bad and we should not be drinking. I can’t drink in front of my family and society. They would think I am a bad guy and lose my respected social status
In the Middle East, commercial alcohol sales are largely restricted on religious grounds. In Tunisia, since the 1990s, for example, shopkeepers can not sell alcohol on Friday, an Islamic prayer day, or during the holy month of Ramadan and religious holidays — except in bars and hotels. In some countries like Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sudan and Iraq, alcohol is completely banned.
Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, with large foreign communities, apply partial bans toward Muslims only.
In Yemen, the law is more ambiguous: it’s officially dry, but alcohol can be consumed on private property and sold to foreigners in hotels and nightclubs in Sana’a and Aden. These restrictions leave ample room for smugglers in a black market to flourish.
In Kairouan, Tunisia, no shops are authorized to sell alcohol, but young people can choose from over 100 shops that sell methanol.
There have been several alcohol poisonings in the region. The deadliest was in 2013 in Libya, when 101 people died and 1066 were poisoned, with dozens suffering irreversible brain damage or blindness, after drinking methanol-filled homemade brew. After this tragic incident, the government attempted to crack down on alcohol dealers. But this kind of repression alone does not stop young people from drinking.
“The government should legalize alcohol because Libyans will keep drinking anyway and at least legalizing it will ensure that what they drink is safe,” said Mohammed, a small-batch homebrew producer who spoke in 2014 with The World, a US-based radio program.
When large-scale alcohol poisoning outbreaks occur, they make the news. But the political will to tackle this sensitive and controversial issue remains silent in comparison.
This issue affects mostly deprived youth often forgotten by authorities. For youth to thrive in the Middle East, governments can restore a sense of purpose and hope in the future by creating more opportunities.

author: Saoussen Ben Cheikh


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Jamaica’s Brian Heap, Caribbean regional winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, talks storytelling · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

Brian S. Heap, Caribbean regional winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Screenshot taken from the Commonwealth Writers YouTube video “#CWprize 2020 Shortlist”.
This is the second instalment of a two-part interview. Read Part 1, here.
In the Commonwealth Writers video he recorded after learning that his story, “Mafootoo”, had been shortlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Brian Heap called storytelling “the greatest achievement of human beings”.
As a retired educator and former head of the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus in Kingston, Jamaica, Heap has had a close relationship with storytelling for most of his life: telling them himself, learning about the stories of others, and being a worthy custodian of those narratives.
He has also directed 15 of Jamaica’s annual pantomimes, written several books, conference papers and articles, and was honoured with the Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica in 2002.
After his selection as the Caribbean regional winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story prize, we chatted via email about his story, “Mafootoo”, storytelling in general, and what the win means to him.
EL: You are very well known as a leading light in Jamaican drama. Is this your first venture into writing prose?
Brian S. Heap, Caribbean Regional Winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Photo courtesy Heap, used with permission.
BH: I did do some prose writing many years ago, but I seem to remember that it wasn’t very well received at the time, or so I felt. I sort of convinced myself that I was better at drama and that I should stick to that particular genre. Plus, I was really fortunate to have the University of the West Indies supporting me in getting productions onto the stage. Otherwise, I think drama would have been an overwhelming challenge.
EL: What are the differences between telling a tale through drama or through a short story?
BH: The difference is really between ‘showing’ and ‘telling.’ In drama, I get to work with wonderful shapeshifters called actors who bring the characters to life on stage in all their many dimensions. Good actors will take you into the deep psychological recesses of a character and show that to the audience.
The audience can see the relationships between characters unfold in time and space in front of them and respond accordingly. The audience is ‘reading’ a complex semiotic field of spoken word, gesture, body language, lighting, silence, movement, proxemics and stillness. Largely because of the development of film and television, modern audiences have become very sophisticated and adept at interpreting nuances in the dramatic performance.
Telling a story via the symbolic process of writing it down depends even more heavily on the skills of your audience for its interpretation. I often say that being able to read doesn’t necessarily make somebody a reader. A lot of functionally literate people don’t have the patience to get through a story, much less a novel. Yet, other people will get totally lost in reading a book. I laughed at one comment about ‘Mafootoo’ where the reader said she devoured it ‘in one gulp.’
EL: Evadne, your protagonist, is a straight-speaking, no-nonsense woman. Have you ever met an Evadne in real life?
BH: I have met several no-nonsense women like Evadne; not all of them were Jamaican, though many were. I’m sure the same is true for you. Many readers of the story have commented that they know Evadne well, so I’m really encouraged by that kind of response.
EL: What future projects do you have in mind?
BH: There may be a theatre festival later in the year, but it will probably have to go virtual since it is unlikely that theatres will reopen any time soon, due to COVID-19. I am working on a couple of other short stories which are slowly coming together. I think I’m going to have to pick up the pace if I want to put together a collection!
EL: What is the importance of humour in storytelling?
BH: The Jamaican practice of ‘tekkin’ serious t’ing, mek joke’ [taking serious things and making jokes of them] is both inspired and inspiring — so, at what should be a tragic moment in the story, a phrase like ‘plug him out’ makes you want to laugh, all the more so because it is given an earnestly straight-faced delivery.
Jamaican language tends to have that effect because it is designed to subvert the English language. I love its frequent juxtaposition of archaic English words and African expressions and syntax, which can be used to sometimes devastating effect. That is not to say that Jamaican language cannot be tender or poetic, which it obviously can, but its wry comic impact can enrich a story immensely. A little humour can lighten the writer’s hand.
EL: What does the win mean to you?
BH: Making it to the shortlist of 20 writers from a field of 5,107 entries was already more than I could have imagined. To have actually won the Caribbean Regional Award left me in total shock. Winning the overall award would probably be, in the words of Rex Nettleford, “Gilding the anthurium.”

author: Emma Lewis


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Migrant workers face racism and rampant human rights violations across the Gulf · Global Voices
Gulf Center for Human Rights

This post was written by Khalid Ibrahim, executive director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR), an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in the MENA region.
Anti-kafala demonstration in Lebanon. The sign in Arabic reads “I'm a [female] human and I have a right to live.” Photo by International Domestic Workers Federation, licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Migrant workers in the Gulf region and neighboring countries have been subjected to fierce campaigns calling for their deportation that is riddled with racist speeches and hatred. They have been left alone to face the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic with no access to medical care or unions, according to research by the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR).
Over the years, migrant workers in Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Bahrain have been subjected to massive human rights violations through the notorious kafala (sponsorship) system that strips them of their basic civil and human rights. They lack the right to move, travel or change work, the right to health care and the right to union representation or formation of organisations. In addition, migrant workers are denied the right to citizenship — even if they spend their whole lives working in these countries.
The kafala system, which enshrines discrimination and exploitation, contradicts the principles of human rights and modern work systems that are guaranteed under the International Convention on the Rights of Migrants and Members of their Families, signed in 1990. This convention entered into force on July 1, 2003, after being ratified by 20 states, but has not been signed by the Gulf states and Lebanon.
With the collapse of the Lebanese pound and the stress of COVID-19, migrant workers — especially domestic workers — face extremely harsh conditions. The Lebanese labour law does not protect domestic workers  — who are usually women — because they are subject to a sponsorship system that links their legal status with a contractual relationship with employers. At the end of this contract, workers lose their legal status and face possible detention and deportation. Likewise, they can only change their place of work with employer consent, which exposes them to exploitation, forced labour and human trafficking.
The number of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon stands at 250,000, most of them women, who immigrate from different countries — notably Ethiopia. On June 5, Ethiopian domestic workers gathered in front of their country's consulate in Beirut, waiting to return home. Some left work after being paid in Lebanese pounds, which was inadequate to meet daily needs and made it impossible to send any money home to their families. Others left work who had not been paid in the past several months. Their status has become illegal and they need a speedy resolution from authorities.
The crisis in Lebanon has cast a shadow on all migrant workers, according to this BBC report.  In 2012, Stop Violence and Exploitation, a civil society organisation, published a study on the sponsorship system, calling for the end of exploitation of women migrant workers and an alternative system that provides legal protection and freedom to choose their workplace.
On May 28, blogger Reem al-Shammari posted a video on Snapchat, verbally attacking Egyptians working in Kuwait. She said:
Kuwait is for Kuwaitis, not for Egyptians. … You are hired. Understand … Egyptians are not partners with Kuwaitis in the homeland.
The video met widespread opposition from Kuwaiti citizens, but hate speech is still a growing phenomenon on social media sites, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of this hate speech has illogically linked migrant workers to the spread of COVID-19. However, moderate voices have defended migrant workers and their achievements as a result of their hard work.
Due to COVID-19, a sharp decline in oil prices has led Gulf countries to reassess their policies regarding migrant worker numbers — many companies have laid off thousands and started deporting those who work illegally.
On June 3, in a press interview, Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Khalid al-Hamad al-Sabah noted that 70 percent of the 4.8 million population was foreign, and said that this amount should be reduced to half in stages. He concluded that “we have a future challenge to address the demographic imbalance.”
In May 2020, in an episode of “We Are All Responsible,” presented on the official Saudi TV channel, the host, Khaled al-Aqili, said:
Unfortunately, the control of expatriate workers over the economy has become a real threat to national security and not only on the economic side but beyond much of that.
He concluded:
We must stop making the Saudi employee a scapegoat with every crisis, and make the expatriate workers, who replaced Saudi workers — who are more efficient than them, the first to be dispensed of, not the sons of the homeland.
This was preceded by a ministerial decision issued on May 3, to regulate labour contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Promoting discourse that directly targets foreign workers and portraying them as a national security threat definitely stirs up racist, hostile feelings. Justifying this sentiment only fans these flames.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, press reports have confirmed the prevalence of the disease among migrant workers, due to a lack of protection and lack of social distancing. Most migrant workers live in crowded common areas and in densely populated commercial neighborhoods.
On April 10, a letter sent by a coalition of 16 nongovernmental organisations and trade unions to UAE Minister of Human Resources and Emiratisation Affairs Nasser bin Thani al-Hamli states:
Low-wage migrant workers remain acutely vulnerable to severe human rights violations, that increase their risk of infection from COVID-19.
On March 26, the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation issued an arbitrary ministerial decree that allows private companies to amend migrant worker contracts, force them on unpaid leave, or to accept permanent or temporary salary reductions. This decision legally protects companies 100 percent — expatriate workers have no right to complain or resort to the courts.
Migrant workers in Qatar are not allowed to form unions. Many are exploited doing heavy work for long hours with low paying salaries. COVID-19 has revealed another chronic problem — a lack of health care and adequate housing. The drop in oil prices has led to the layoff of thousands of migrant workers, forcing many onto the streets.
In an April 15 statement, Amnesty International said that Qatari authorities had arrested and expelled dozens of foreign workers after informing them that they would be tested for COVID-19.
On May 23, 100 foreign workers demonstrated in Doha, to protest non-payment of their wages by Qatari authorities.
Local sources confirmed that migrant workers who work for World Cup 2020 suffer from widespread human rights violations, including low pay and long work hours under the harsh sun. They can not terminate their contracts or return home. A recent report issued by Amnesty International UK on June 10 confirmed these conditions and mentioned workers who have not been paid for seven consecutive months.
Bahrain also targets migrant workers. On June 5, Member of Parliament Ghazi al-Rahma announced that he and a number of deputies would present a proposal to amend the labour law in the private sector, favoring Bahraini citizens in the private-sector recruitment process and prioritizing terminations for foreign workers.
Gulf states must abolish the kafala system, ratify the International Convention on the Rights of Migrants and Members of their Families and allow equal civic rights for all migrant workers.

author: Gulf Center for Human Rights


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Speaking with Jamaica’s Brian Heap, Caribbean regional winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

Screenshot of Brian Heap's short story “Mafootoo,” as it appears on the Granta magazine website.
Brian Heap, a retired educator and former head of the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus in Kingston, Jamaica, confesses to being “shocked and very honoured” at winning the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean.
His winning story, “Mafootoo,” follows Evadne, a Jamaican immigrant of Maroon heritage living in the United Kingdom, who reflects on her unsatisfying life with her husband as he lies dying in hospital. The piece was chosen from over 5,000 entries and is published in Granta magazine. Five regional winners are awarded each year, from Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.
Heap has worked in theatre and education in Jamaica for over 40 years. A graduate teacher from northern England, he taught at St. Joseph’s Teacher Training College and was director of studies at the Jamaica School of Drama (Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts). He served as artistic director for the University Players, whose productions of the Caribbean and other classic dramas garnered numerous accolades, including Jamaica’s annual International Theatre Institute Actor Boy Awards.
We recently chatted, via email, about storytelling — both in the theatre and on the written page. In this, the first instalment in a two-part series, we talk about some of the nuances of his winning story and the Jamaican immigrant experience in the UK.
Brian S. Heap, Caribbean Regional Winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Photo courtesy Heap, used with permission.
Emma Lewis (EL): The chair of judges, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, praised the five regional winners of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for “their lateral leaps, their use of language, voice and subversion — and their sheer courage.” How much of a brave leap did you take to write this story?
Brian Heap (BH): I suppose it does take a certain amount of artistic courage to try to find more innovative ways of shaping the form of a story, and even in presenting different kinds of content and language. A friend who read ‘Mafootoo’ told me that the protagonist, Evadne, is essentially Jamaican but ‘unusual’ and I was grateful for that observation. As a writer, you don’t want to be reinforcing stereotypes in your work. But also I didn’t want to have to spend more time than was necessary explaining Maroon culture to readers. However, I’m not totally convinced that the greatest courage lies in the writing process so much as in making it available for others to read. You can never easily predict just how your readers are going to respond to your work, especially if it might be considered ‘unusual.’
EL: You pointed to a link between the Maroon culture and Islam, which Evadne seems drawn to. Is this something you researched for the story?
BH: I worked with [Jamaican cultural historian, anthropologist and musicologist] Dr. Olive Lewin for many years. She did a lot of research into Maroon culture and was herself initiated as an Honorary Maroon. I heard the use of the Muslim greeting among the Maroon elders myself during our many field trips, then later discovered that UWI historian Dr. Sultana Afroz had written about Islamic retentions among Africans transplanted to Jamaica. Her work was apparently considered controversial and she eventually returned to her home in Bangladesh. But for the purpose of the story, it is something I heard first-hand.
A display about the Islamic history of Maroons in Jamaica. Photo by Kent MacElwee on Flickr, taken at the Maroon Festival in Accompong, in Cockpit Country, Jamaica, January 6, 2013. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
EL: Mafootoo, which is the cacoon vine used by the Maroons for everything from trap setting to furniture construction, is used symbolically in the story. The plastic tubes Evadne's husband is hooked up to in the hospital seem to entangle him like vines. I don't know whether to feel sorry for Hubert, or impatient with him like Evadne does. How do you feel?
BH: I keep pointing to the fact that Evadne has stuck by this man for fifty years and she’s put up with his impracticality for all that time. There is a great deal of love and affection there. However, her chance to return to nature and the hills of Jamaica is clearly the result of her kindness to others and the fact that she is the steady one in the partnership.
We don’t hear much about her career in England but it is made clear that she had one, plus she cooks and cleans and pays the bills. She is the responsible one. One gets the impression, on the other hand, that Hubert is a self-centred individual, constantly following schemes that don’t result in much, has little time for holidays, and ends up with the ‘stroke he worked for’. His ‘Mafootoo’ of the life-support machine evokes a stark separation from the natural world of the cacoon vine.
EL: Would you call “Mafootoo” a typical immigrant tale of struggle and overcoming, or is it one of resignation and loss? How has the experience of Jamaican immigrants in England evolved, and did you draw on any of your own experiences in writing it?
BH: I’m not sure what a typical immigrant tale is. People from the Caribbean have migrated all over the place. During the 19th century, Jamaicans even went to the Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory. Mary Seacole first travelled to England when she was just 16 years old. I think every immigrant story is different and we still haven’t told enough of them.
Some involve spouses, sons and daughters who left and were never heard from again. Some migration stories involve entire families broken apart, and second families being established in the host country. Casualties of migration include abandoned children, aged parents and lost loves.
I did see some of that for myself growing up in England — the psychological scars left by separation, as well as the sometimes hostile environment of the assimilation process. The Windrush scandals have thrown a lot of that into sharp relief. I think the experience of Jamaican immigrants in England has evolved, because their children now have sufficient confidence to challenge history by pulling down the statues of the very people who enslaved their ancestors!
EL: Are there more stories to be told about Jamaicans in England — and the English in Jamaica? Or, perhaps “straddling the Atlantic,” which Evadne was considering?
BH: Oh, absolutely. Jamaica is so rich in stories that it surprises me that in popular culture we keep going back to the same old narratives of sex and violence in very stereotypical ways. I worked with [Jamaican cultural historian, anthropologist and musicologist] Olive Lewin and the Jamaica Memory Bank for many years and some of the stories our older informants told were absolute treasures. It’s so important for us to delve into the inner life of Jamaican subjects, and also to realise that a great deal of Jamaican knowledge and tradition resides among the citizens of the Jamaican diaspora, as it does in the case of Evadne.
Part 2 of this interview is here.


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Americans, your fantasies about Canada enable Canadians’ complacent sense of white superiority · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Justin Trudeau in a federal election campaign appearance in September 2019, addressing accusations that he habitually wore blackface until at least his early thirties. The Trudeau Liberals did not lose the election and were able to form a minority government. Screencap from NBC News official YouTube channel.
The United States is going through a tough period right now. Mass demonstrations and protests against deep-rooted racism and police brutality that are met with even more racism and police brutality. An economy that has been shut down by a pandemic that has annihilated millions of jobs. An incompetent response by authorities to COVID-19 that has shut down entire cities, and is now seeing wave after relentless wave of new infections and mortality all across the country.
And, above all else, an unstable president who threatens to inflict yet more violence, chaos, and death on Americans.
Thanks to this daily cascade of grim news, some Americans friends have turned their gaze northward to my country, Canada. For many Americans, it seems, Canada is a fantasy realm of kindness and good manners, a sexy, country-size Portlandia minus the whimsically giant donuts and the Klan, or an Austin, Texas without tacos or open carry.
On June 11, after nearly two weeks of unrelenting police violence against citizens peacefully protesting the killing of George Floyd and in support of Black lives, the Daily Show released a comedy segment in which Americans pleaded with Canada to invade the US and restore order to the country. By mid-June, the hashtag #InvadeUsCanada was trending on Twitter.
“Compared to the gong show that is the United States, Canada is pretty amazing,” is the kind of thing my Americans friends typically say in these COVID-19 times.
My response?
When it comes to racism, the United States is far more progressive than Canada. At least Americans can talk about race. In Canada, thanks to our reputation as “a really nice apartment over a meth lab”, race is almost never part of our national conversation, making racism much more dangerous.
In fact, in a national dialogue dominated by a literal sock puppet, it's not unusual for Canadians to deny racism exists here. Earlier in June, as the protests spread throughout cities in the United States, a prominent media personality, writing in The National Post, one of Canada's two ailing national dailies, stated that Canada is not a racist country. After a “newsroom revolt,” the Post's opinions editor claimed that the column was the result of an editorial “miscommunication.” The story is still live on the National Post website, with a clarification note added at the top.
However, this was not the first time in just the past year that, following a newsroom revolt, a Canadian media outlet has explained away the publication of racist commentary. The problem is, racism in the media is not limited to these high-profile cases. Some commentators are wondering why journalists don't speak up more when racist columns appear in print as a matter of course.
Instances of overt racism in Canadian newsrooms are often explained away as simple mistakes. In June, when Wendy Mesley, an influential CBC media personality, admitted to using the “n-word” during an editorial discussion (as is usual in Canada, the specifics of the incident have not been made public), the excuse she gave is that she was quoting a Black interviewee.
In an open letter to Mesley signed by the Canadian Association of Black Journalists and more than two dozen others, journalist and activist Desmond Cole called on the CBC presenter to provide clarification:
By claiming to have been repeating one of us, she is pushing responsibility for her comments onto us, and doubling down on her racist conduct by refusing to truly own it […] Black journalists are not responsible for Wendy Mesley’s racism, and we are outraged that she is trying to use us as cover for her own choices.
The silencing of Black and minority voices in Canada is not unusual. In 2017, Desmond Cole himself was essentially forced to quit his freelancing gig at the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper in terms of circulation, because of his activism about carding (random street checks by police) and other issues. As the Wendy Mesley story broke, journalists such as BuzzFeed's Scaachi Koul shared stories about how they had been blacklisted by CBC for voicing opinions or have been continually mistaken for other non-white coworkers by colleagues and managers.
Others, such as CBC reporter Angela Sterritt, reported experiencing “lateral violence” from fellow journalists. Some journalists have quit:
One. Hundred. Percent.
Codes of conduct often serve – purposefully or not – to silence marginalized journalists. https://t.co/hVMazD95NC
— Denise Balkissoon (@balkissoon) June 15, 2020
It's no wonder, then, that Canadian media is largely silent when it comes to covering racism and colonial violence. For instance, it took a foreign media outlet, the Guardian, to break the story that Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous activists who were trying to protect traditional lands from a pipeline project.
This month, white, privileged commentators and people in positions of power have been arguing whether or not systemic racism in exists in Canada even as cruel, tragic examples of police brutality were exposed on an almost daily basis. The alleged chasing down and subsequent beating of an Indigenous man by an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is just one of several allegations of police misconduct in the far northern territory of Nunavut. In Alberta, dashcam footage was released that showed RCMP officers violently assaulting a prominent First Nations leader. In the same week, police in New Brunswick shot dead two Indigenous people.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March, Canada's police forces have killed more Indigenous people than COVID-19, according to entrepreneur and writer Robert Jago.
So, as The Daily Show was encouraging Americans to share the patronizing hashtag #InvadeUsCanada against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the U.S. and Canada, racialized communities in Canada endured brutal violence, and Canadians themselves finally started to talk about and address race, and even about defunding the police.
It must be said, however, that Black journalists, activists and regular Canadian citizens have long struggled to fight for justice and to focus attention on the discrimination that Black Canadians and other people of colour experience in Canada. For example, Edmonton resident Bashir Mohamed, in his spare time, has persuaded a local school board to apologize to a Black student for racial discrimination. Mohamed has also shared his own experiences growing up Black in Edmonton and has brought to light the Alberta capital city's historical ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
Many others have worked hard to ensure Canada's Black history is not erased. In Vancouver in mid-June, Black Lives Matter activists occupied two viaducts that were all that remained of the city's plans fifty years ago to build elevated highways throughout Vancouver. The plans were foiled back then, but not before Vancouver's historic Black community of Hogan's Alley was demolished, and its residents displaced. The Hogan's Alley Society is now campaigning to have the viaduct lands placed into trust.
pic.twitter.com/snmyJE1JyA
— Black Lives Matter Vancouver?? (@VancouverBLM) June 6, 2020
By treating my country as a cute and cuddly stuffed animal of a nation that is just “better” than the United States, users of the #InvadeUSCanada are effectively silencing Black, Indigenous and other voices in Canada. And they're enabling a typically Canadian sense of smug superiority over our American neighbours.
Most of all, they're helping perpetuate white supremacism in Canada, and an ongoing harmful legacy of violent colonialism that continues to this day.

author: Nevin Thompson


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No medicine, no healing: Sudan’s pharmaceutical crisis · Global Voices
Khattab Hamad

Pharmacists protest in Al Jazeera State, Sudan. Photo by Sudan Pharmacists’ Central Committee, Al Jazeera, Sudan, June 12, 2020, used with permission via Facebook.
Do you have a headache? Imagine not being able to access Paracetamol, Panadol, or Vitamin C. Yes, this is the reality in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, a nation with a critical medicine shortage.
The pharmaceutical crisis began in 2016 when the government announced that it had removed subsidies for all medicines. The opposition called for civil disobedience to put pressure on the government to reverse its decision, but it did not back down. Since then, medicine prices have risen exponentially in Sudan while the government has done little to ease the strain.
To make matters worse, the government’s central bank lacks the foreign currency necessary to purchase essential drugs. Sudan has about 27 pharmaceutical firms that produce about 900 types of medicines, as well as 48 medicine companies, but this does not meet all of Sudan’s needs. Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, Sudan's largest drug manufacturer, was destroyed by a United States missile attack in 1998.
Most of these companies import medicines and medical supplies via the Central bank of Sudan or CBOS, which faces a severe shortage of foreign currency.
On June 11, the Professionals Pharmacist Association and Sudan’s Pharmacist Central Committee,  members of the Sudanese Professionals Association, declared a silent protest to put pressure on the government to provide a monthly budget for drugs estimated at 55 million dollars.
The group created a hashtag #الدواء_معدوم which means “medicine is non-existent.”
دكتور أكرم
أما بعد
نساندك في الحق و نهديك عيوبك بما يرضى الله
نعم انت مقصر
#الدواء_معدوم ومهما اعترفنا بالأسباب فالحل يظل في يدك او واجه الشعب بشفافية بما يدور في الكواليس
المواطن يموت
— Dr Ahmed McLad د. أحمد مَقلَد (@McLad84) June 11, 2020
Dr. Akram [Health Minister]: For now, we support you in the truth and guide you with your faults to the satisfaction of God. Yes, you are deficient and no matter how we admit the reasons, the solution remains in your hand, or the people transparently face what is going on behind the scenes. The citizen dies.
In April, the National Council of Pharmacy and Poisons agreed with the Chamber of Medicine Importers to raise the price of importing medicines by 16 percent and raise the profit margin for pharmacies to 20 percent, applying this increase retrospectively to create a profit margin for pharmaceutical companies.
But the next month, Minister of Health Dr. Akram El-Tom canceled the decision, justifying that the price of the medicine had increased too much for an everyday citizen to afford. This decision reflects unrest inside the ministry.
On May 18, the CBOS canceled 10 percent of proceeds from exports intended for drug imports, which affected the drug stocks.
Dr. Ameen Makki, a Sudanese pharmacist and political activist, posted on Facebook:
We sat with the Minister of Health in several sessions since September 5, 2019, before he became a minister, and we presented him with all the medical problems in the last five years, proposals for solutions, and even the amount of medicines in the storages and we told him that we will reach a stage that we may not find Panadol. All these sessions were attended by experts and consultants working in this field. All plans were aimed at providing an effective, safe and affordable medicine for citizens. In February, Sudan’s Central Pharmacists Committee invited a conference inviting all partners from the National Council of Pharmacy and poisons, the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Sudan, the National Fund for Medical Supplies, members of the Sovereign Council and the Ministry of Health, but the Minister of Health did not attend and did not send a representative. The minister's dealings were with complete neglect of this file, and we every day sounded the alarm to him until we reached this critical stage…
Last July, the United Nations also affirmed that Sudan faces a critical medicine shortage due to its ongoing economic crisis.
Pharmacists in Sudan protest against the critical medicine shortage in the country. Photo by Sudan Pharmacists’ Central Committee, Khartoum, Sudan, June 12, 2020, used with permission via Facebook.
In December 2018, the federal Minister of Health Mohamed Abuzaid acknowledged that the “medicine shortage in Sudan is serious,” and held the CBOS responsibly.
According to a March 2020 report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), Sudan’s economic crisis continues to impact the availability of medicines.
A 2019 CBOS foreign trade statistical digest shows that Sudan imported $367 million United States dollars worth of medicine in the fourth quarter of 2019. This is an increase of about $47 million USD (15 percent) compared to 2018, but it is $91 million (20 percent) lower, compared to 2017 (See Figure 1).
Figure 1: Screenshot from the UNOCHA situation report in Sudan, March 2020.
The scarcity of foreign currency has created a black market that caused inflation to reach nearly (118.18 percent) as of June 3, according to a monthly report on inflation in Sudan by professor Steve Hanke.
The black market serves as a short-term solution, enabling the medicine trade in Sudan to continue through small merchants who smuggle medicine from neighboring countries through luggage.
However, these drugs are not subject to quality and efficacy checks.
Smuggling has slowed down due to border closures on March 16, when Sudanese authorities closed borders to avoid the spread of the COVID-19, making it even harder to access critical drugs on the black market.
Figure 2: Sudan inflation rate, July 2017-June 2020, according to Professor Steve Hanke via Twitter.
Since March, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Sudan, the price of personal protective equipment (PPE) increased by more than 300 percent due to scarcity.
Medical services nearly came to a halt as many patients and doctors stopped going to hospitals and health centers out of fear of contracting the virus. As of June 18, over 8,000 people have contracted COVID-19 and nearly 500 people have died. However, there is no official account of how many deaths have occurred from other diseases due to the drug shortage.
Meanwhile, Sudanese social media has recently surged with condolences, including one from the minister of religious affairs acknowledging the deaths of several clerics.
The COVID-19 response has been fiercely debated in Sudan, where blame ping-pongs between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Finance.
A leaked letter from the Minister of Health Dr Akram El-Tom.
In a now-leaked letter, Minister of Health El-Tom accused Minister of Finance Ibrahim al-Badawi of spending foreign aid earmarked for the coronavirus on electricity and envoy dues instead.
The letter also accused Badawi of not paying the nation’s medicine bill since December 2019:
I remind you that you promised to provide monthly 20 million dollars as a partial payment of the medicine bill …I remember that the time when the Ministry of Finance made individual decisions to determine the resources of other ministries has ended on the day that this government was sworn in after a revolution that sacrificed the blood of its martyrs.
Elbadawi at the Ministry of Finance responded:
The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning flatly denies the rumor circulating that the Ministry of Finance has acted in any of the benefits or grants in kind or cash that were provided to Sudan to confront the coronavirus for other purposes than that. The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning confirms that all these subsidies and grants that have reached Sudan have been fully utilized to confront this pandemic…
This blame-game exchange makes citizens wonder when and how this crisis will ever get resolved.

author: Khattab Hamad


text:
Philippines media faces ‘eternal threat of punishment’ after cyber libel convictions · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

Rappler CEO Maria Ressa (center), former Rappler writer Reynaldo Santos Jr. (left), and lawyer Theodore Te (right) held a press conference after their hearing at the Manila Regional Trial Court. Photo by Kodao Productions, a content partner of Global Voices.
A Manila court convicted one of the Philippines’ leading journalists on charges of cyber libel in a case widely seen as the latest attack on dissenting voices and press freedoms in the country.
Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 46 Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa sentenced news website Rappler’s chief executive editor Maria Ressa and former reporter Reynaldo Santos Jr. to 6 months and 1 day up to 6 years in jail and ordered them each to pay P400,000 (about US$8,000) for moral and exemplary damages on June 15.
Ressa and Santos are the first journalists in the Philippines to be found guilty of cyber libel since the law was passed in 2012. They were allowed to post bail pending appeal under the bond they paid in 2019, which cost 100,000 pesos (2,000 US dollars) each.
Rappler, an independent website of international renown has been targeted by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte. The court, however, found Rappler itself to have no liability in the cyber libel case.
Press freedom advocates in the Philippines and across the world swiftly decried Ressa’s conviction as part of the Duterte administration’s campaign to terrorize and intimidate journalists.
The case against Ressa and Rappler was filed in 2017 by businessman Wilfredo Keng over a 2012 Rappler story covering his alleged links to Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona, who was being impeached on corruption charges at the time.
Keng’s case was initially dismissed in 2017 because it was beyond the statute of limitations. Moreover, the article itself was published four months before the cybercrime law was enacted.
But the case was subsequently readmitted by the Philippine justice department, which extended the period of liability for cyber libel claims from one year to 12 years and argued the article was covered by the law because it was ‘republished’ in February 2014, when Rappler updated it.
While Duterte and his spokesmen deny any links to the cyber libel case, Rappler has been on the receiving end of regular ire from the president and his allies for actively investigating and exposing the administration's bloody war on drugs, social media manipulation and corruption.
Rappler reporters were banned from covering presidential press briefings in 2018, for what Duterte characterized as “twisted reporting” during a presidential address.
Pro-Duterte trolls deride Rappler as a peddler of “fake news” and hurl invective at its reporters.
The cyber libel case is but the first in a total of 8 active legal cases against Ressa and Rappler which include another libel case and tax violation allegations. All were filed after Duterte came to power in 2016.
The Duterte government moved to shut down Rappler in January 2018, claiming that it violated laws on non-foreign ownership of media outlets — a claim that is demonstrably false.
A protester calls for ‘mass testing, not mass silencing’ at a rally held on June 4, 2020, the day the Philippine Congress passed the anti-terror bill. Photo by Kodao Productions, a content partner of Global Voices
The College of Mass Communication of the University of the Philippines (UP), the country’s premier state university, condemned the decision as a dangerous precedent that gives authorities the power to prosecute anyone for online content published within the past decade:
The State can prosecute even after ten, twelve or more years after publication or posting. It is a concept of eternal threat of punishment without any limit in time and cyberspace.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) said the charges that Rappler faces is only the latest in “a chain of media repression that has seen the forced shutdown of broadcast network ABS-CBN and a spike in threats and harassment of journalists, all because the most powerful man in the land abhors criticism and dissent.’’
The government forced the country’s largest television network, privately-owned ABS-CBN, off air last May after the pro-Duterte congress refused to renew the station’s broadcasting license.
Growing persecution of media comes against the backdrop of an anti-terror bill passed by the legislature that allows the president to create an anti-terrorism council vested with powers to designate individuals and groups as “terrorists.”
That designation in turn allows warrantless arrests and 24 days of detention without court charges, among other draconian provisions.
Authorities have brazenly denied the bill threatens freedom in the country.
AERIAL SHOT: 5,000 human rights advocates and activists observe physical distancing as they commemorate Philippine Independence Day and hold a ‘Grand Mañanita’ against the Duterte government's Anti-Terrorism Bill today, June 12, on University Avenue, University of the Philippines- Diliman, Quezon City. Photo and caption by Kodao Productions, a content partner of Global Voices
At a press conference after her court hearing, Ressa vowed to hold the line:
Freedom of the press is the foundation of every single right you have as a Filipino citizen. If we can’t hold power to account, we can’t do anything.
A few days before Ressa’s conviction, thousands defied the lockdown to join anti-terror bill protests in Manilla despite threats of violence from the police.
Protesters ironically described their demonstration as a “mañanita” — the word that Police General Debold Sinas, a Duterte ally, used to justify his birthday party celebration, which took place amidst severe restrictions on gatherings.
Double standards for Duterte allies and the weaponization of laws against critics were a constant theme in tweets that used the #DefendPressFreedom hashtag in response to the Ressa case.
Standing up for @mariaressa Ray and @rapplerdotcom not because I think they are above the law but because their case shows how the Duterte govt twists the law so it becomes a weapon against civil liberties. #DefendPressFreedom #HoldTheLine
— inday espina varona (@indayevarona) June 14, 2020
If they can do it to ABS-CBN and Maria Ressa (Rappler), they can do it to other media organisations and to anyone.#DefendPressFreedom pic.twitter.com/50IIJxbYaZ
— #SaveLumadSchools (@maykamaykaba) June 15, 2020
LOOK: Timeline on Maria Ressa's Cyber Libel Case
Today, June 15, the Manila Trial Court convicts Rappler CEO and executive editor Maria Ressa and former researcher-writer Rey Santos Jr of cyber libel.#DefendPressFreedom #StandWithRappler pic.twitter.com/68E0rgnPQz
— CEGP (@CEGPhils) June 15, 2020

author: Karlo Mongaya


text:
Serbian parliamentary vote campaign taps Greek beaches, Chinese robots · Global Voices
Metamorphosis Foundation

Photo: Screencap from video clip ‘First online rally of the campaign 1. Aleksandar Vučić – For
our children’ published on Facebook by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučič.
This story is based on reporting by Global Voices’ content partner Meta.mk News Agency, a project of Metamorphosis Foundation. Check out Global Voices’ special coverage of the global impact of COVID-19.
After a COVID-19-imposed hiatus, Serbia announced that it will hold its postponed parliamentary elections on June 21.
The biggest opposition parties will boycott the elections, blaming the government for failing to provide fair conditions. The ruling parties on the other hand, have started the campaign in earnest — and continued their tradition of controversial campaign ads.
Prior to the electoral announcement, the country relaxed anti-pandemic measures, which included a general lockdown.
Data provided by the country to the WHO indicates that by June 18 Serbia had recorded 12,522 confirmed cases and 257 deaths.
In a controversial move, Belgrade declared 4,000 persons who had previously tested positive to COVID-19 as ‘healed’ on June 7, reducing the offical number of active infections by about 10 times.
Epidemiologist Zoran Radovanović complained that the patients had been “written off by an act of the quill, it was an administrative decision.”
The move reduced the ratio of infected persons per 100,000 inhabitants and therefore placed Serbian citizens in a category of countries eligible for cross-border travel at regional level.
Since being able to afford a holiday in Greece is an important symbol of status in Serbia, this achievement has been presented as major win for the government.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, the head of the Serbian Progressive Party, a right-wing populist political party, started the campaign with an May 16 online rally while lockdown measures were still in force.
The President of Serbia just held a virtual rally with his supporters clapping via video stream. Looks very dystopian and creepy.
pic.twitter.com/3O7yuvm9r2
— Sergej Dojcinovic (@Serdjosega) May 16, 2020
The event invited comparisons with characters and scenes from dystopian science fiction works, from the Big Brother in 1984 to the Architect from the Matrix.
One of the most talked-about pre-election clips was the Serbian Progressive Party's “Weekend in Greece? Yes, it's possible!” The video was released before opening of the borders in Europe, which were closed to limit the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.
The video addressed the frustrations of people locked down due to quarantine measures while crediting Vučić for recently built stretches of highways connecting Serbia with North Macedonia and Bulgaria.
These new roads are how Serbians drive to Greece.
In the video, a Serbian family decides to take a weekend in Greece on the spur of the moment, implying both affluence and freedom of movement.
ТВ спикер: Пред нама је још један викенд рекордно високих температура.
Мајка: Куку, ће поцркамо сви.
Отац: Идемо у Грчку, одма'!
Синови: Јес.
Мајка: Па ти ниси нормалан. Толики пут за два дана на мору!
Отац: А б'е как'и пут?! Само гас и за четири сата смо тамо.
Мајка: Па ајде. Мени треба дупло више да се спакујем.
Отац: И што је најбоље – све ће си путујемо по ауто-пут.
Мајка: Ела, ела! Ајмо, ајмо!
Спикер: Александар Вучић. За нашу децу.
Отац: Калимера.
Мајка: Сагапо.
TV announcer: Another weekend with record high temperatures is ahead of us…
Mother: Oh my, we'll all drop dead!
Father: Let's go to Greece, right away!
Sons: Yes!
Mother: You are out of your mind. Such a long road trip for two days at the sea!
Father: What road trip?! Just pedal to the metal and we'll be there in four hours.
Mother: So let's go. I need twice that time to pack.
Father: The best of all is that all the way we'll travel via [modern] highway.
Mother: Ela, ela! [“Let's go” in Greek] Let's go, let's go!
Voice over: Aleksandar Vučić. For our children.
[Changed scene, indicating they've arrived a the Greek seaside.]
Father: Kalimera. [“Good day” in Greek].
Mother: Sagapo. [“I love you” in Greek, while looking at a pendant with the image of Aleksandar Vučić.]
In May, President Vučić and Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dačić announced that Greece was planning to open its borders for Serbian visitors from June 15.
In fact, Greece only planned to open its borders for Serbian tourists from July 1, so Serbian tourists who actually rushed towards Greek beaches via Bulgaria got stuck at the Bulgarian-Greek border.
At one point, the line was over 15 kilometres long, and many of the blocked families flooded social media with complaints about the hellish conditions affecting children and senior travelers.
Serbian diplomats pleaded with Greece, which conceded to opening its Bulgarian border for incoming Serbian citizens ahead of schedule.
On Monday June 15, President Vučić visited the Center for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in Education (CRVIO) in Belgrade, holding a public meeting with a humanoid robot made in China, called Ema.
They held a conversation in Serbian. Vučić stressed that under his leadership the country promotes digital education and artificial intelligence as roads to the future, and has gained 800 million euros from software exports.
Vučić asked Ema why she came to Serbia, and she replied that the country had rich traditions and that she came to improve education in Serbia with the help of modern Chinese technology.
Vučić: Draga Ema, dali možete da nam kažete  zašto ste došli u Srbiju?
Ema: Naravno. Ja volim Srbiju. S obzirom da sam oblik pametne tehnologije, očigledno je da biram da budem u Srbiji, ne samo zbog izuzetnih ljudi, bogate tradicije i prirode, već zato što je to zemlja koja pred sobom ima svetlu budućnost.
President Vučić: Dear Ema, could you tell us why you came to Serbia?
Ema, the robot: Of course. I love Serbia. Considering the fact that I am a kind of smart technology, it is obvious why I choose to be in Serbia. It's not only because it has exceptional people, rich traditions and nature, but also because it's a country which has a bright future.
The present Serbian government cooperates deeply with China, particularly in the field of digital surveillance.
It recently purchased over 1,000 cameras with face recognition technology from the Chinese company Huawei. The cameras will be placed in 800 locations throughout the capital Belgrade.
Meanwhile, the politician Rasim Ljajić made the news on June 17 by performing a rock-star style stage dive into the crowd during a rally in the southwestern city of Novi Pazar.
Ljajić, 56, currently holds the position of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications in the Government of the Republic of Serbia.
He is running as the leader of an electoral list “Evropski Novi Pazar – Rasim Ljajić” (meaning “European Novi Pazar – Rasim Ljajić”) composed of several smaller political parties whose voter base is Sanđak — an area mainly inhabited by ethnic Bosniaks.
His Social Democratic Party of Serbiahas been a fixture of almost all ruling coalitions in recent history.
At the rally he praised his list as the only one which has the “majority of female candidates and the only one which would win the highest number of Bosniak and Serbian voices [together], which is impossible [for others] in this day and age.”
According to Serbian Electoral Code, the country will enjoy an electoral silence starting on midnight on Thursday and ending at 21:00 hrs on Sunday. But the days are long, and there is still some time for eye-catching campaign stunts.

author: Metamorphosis Foundation