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In Turkey, satirical TikTok video leads to arrest and travel ban · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

Photo by Solen Feyissa, https://unsplash.com/photos/1S1w1c4_VyA
It was a satirical video posted by two 23-year-olds on TikTok, titled “Areas where the Turkish passport is used,” that poked fun at the inability to travel during the pandemic — but the alternative ways in which the duo used the travel document (as a bookmark, an oven mitt and a coaster) angered the authorities. They were accused of belittling national symbols through their mockery of the Turkish passport, and charged with “openly insulting the state's sovereign insignia.”
After their arrest, the TikTokers attempted to explain that the video was made with comedic intention. In a statement during the interrogation, one of the video's creators said, “We had no intention whatsoever to insult or belittle the Republic of Turkey, its passport or the Turkish flag.”
They were still charged. Having been released on probation, however, they were required to report to the police station daily, and — quite ironically, given the subject matter of their video — placed under a travel ban until their hearing begins.
Twitter user Can Okar couldn't believe both the absurdity and the threatening nature of the government's reaction:
I literally cracked up when I read “Şanlı Türk Pasaportu”.
Be nationalist, fine, but claiming a Turkish passport is “glorious” is utter fantasy. It’s an extremely difficult passport with which to travel.
Also, trying to destroy kids with your big account is morally repugnant. https://t.co/Nxk5P8fi09
— Can Okar (@canokar) April 25, 2021
This actually hurts. Two kids who did a TikTok satirizing the value of the Turkish passport have been detained, HANDCUFFED, and banned from leaving the country.
That is such an incredible over-reaction to a comic video. This is an absurdly dark and dangerous response. pic.twitter.com/J3bAHLadbE
— Can Okar (@canokar) April 28, 2021
Not all social media users, however, found the video funny:
Devletime açık açık sesleniyorum
Şanlı Türk Pasaportunu bu izansızların elinden kurtarın. pic.twitter.com/MaMeSPYX2z
— SON LAİK BÜKÜCÜ ???? (@TheLaikYobaz) April 25, 2021
I call on my government. Save the glorious Turkish passport from the hands of these incompetents.
To emphasise the discrepancy in the degree of the government's reaction, some netizens brought up the issue of Turkey's service passport. Also known as the grey passport, it is issued to citizens such as national athletes for the purpose of official or government-related trips. Family members of these passport holders may also be awarded the privilege of carrying a grey passport, which comes with the benefit of being able to travel to Schengen states without a visa.
In early April, the ruling Justice and Development Party found itself in the midst of a grey passport scandal when 43 of its members who traveled to Germany went into hiding there and refused to return. In response, Turkey's interior ministry suspended the issuance of new service passports pending investigation, prompting one Twitter user to compare the two incidents:
İstanbul'da 23 yaşındaki iki genç Türk pasaportunun değerini TikTok'ta mizahi bir dille eleştirdiği bahanesiyle gözaltına alındı. Gençlere yurt dışına çıkış yasağı verildi.
Gri pasaport aracılığıyla yurtdışına insan kaçakçılığı yapan AKP'li belediyelere ise işlem yapılmadı. pic.twitter.com/1ojK6GO3hz
— Hergele Postası #0 (@HergelePostasi) April 28, 2021
Two 23-year-olds in Istanbul were detained on the pretext of criticizing the value of Turkish passports on TikTok with humor. Young people were banned from going abroad. No action was taken against AKP municipalities that smuggle people abroad through grey passports. [AKP is an acronym for the ruling party, Adalet ve Kalkinma, which means Justice and Development.]
Still incensed at the double standard, Can Okar pointed out how easy it is to acquire a Turkish passport once you can afford to buy property in the country:
gLoRioUs TurKiSh pAsSpoRt pic.twitter.com/CmW6tXhutN
— Can Okar (@canokar) April 25, 2021
Under the current administration, humour has become one of many items on the government's list of intolerable acts, regardless of whether it targets the president, members of the ruling party or the state and its symbols.
In 2018, three university students who upon graduation held up a satirical banner that read, “Now it’s […] Kingdom of the Tayyips” — accompanied by depictions of animals with the president’s face — were arrested. Police also detained the student who helped transport the banner and the manager of the printing shop where it had been produced. They were all tried under Article 299 of the Turkish penal code for “insulting the president”, but were eventually released without serving any time in prison. When the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, tweeted the banner text in support of the students, the Ankara prosecutor’s office initiated a preliminary investigation against him on the same grounds.
In 2016, a former Miss Turkey was sentenced to a 14-month suspended sentence for sharing an Instagram post about a satirical twist on the national anthem. Just one year prior, two cartoonists from the popular magazine Penguen were given a 14-month jail sentence for drawing a cartoon of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan which he found insulting; the sentence was later reduced to a fine. In a similar vein, 40 contributing writers of the satirical Sour Dictionary (Eksi Sozluk) were put on trial in 2014 for insulting religion.
In a 2017 opinion piece for The Guardian, internationally renowned Turkish writer Elif Safak wrote:
In the past we had a solid tradition of black humour. Politics was always rough, but it was OK for the people to laugh at politicians. Not any more.
In a country where diversity has been stifled and freedom of speech curtailed, even satire is under scrutiny and may land offenders behind bars — or at the very least, in an interrogation room, as in the case of the TikTok couple.
If found guilty, the pair faces either fines or up to one year in jail. There have been no further updates about their hearing, however, as the government has introduced lockdown measures in an attempt to curb the country's growing COVID-19 infection rate.


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As FIFA World Cup draws closer, migrant labour concerns in Qatar persist · Global Voices
Richard Wanjohi

“Khalifa International Stadium, Doha, 20191029″ by G · RTM is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
As the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar draws near, concerns continue to be raised over the country's labour practices.
In March, a number of countries playing in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers staged protests against the Qatari authorities over the death of over 6,500 migrant workers between 2010 and January 2021, a figure revealed in February 2021 by an investigation by The Guardian newspaper.
Germany and Norway were involved in the protests during the international qualifying matches, and they were joined by the Netherlands as noted on the tweet below:
The Netherlands have joined Norway in protesting Qatar's human rights record before their World Cup qualifiers ? pic.twitter.com/TFXLxlyy7q
— Goal (@goal) March 27, 2021
In 2010, Qatar was awarded the hosting rights of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and as early as 2012, red flags were raised over the huge influx of migrant workers to the country which employs them through the controversial kafala system.
The kafala is a labour system that requires migrant unskilled laborers to have an in-country sponsor who’s nominally their employer and is responsible for their visa and legal status. The system applies to most construction and domestic workers in the Gulf region, including Qatar.
Under the kafala system, employers enjoy almost total power over the movement of the workers, including their ability to reside in Qatar, change jobs, and leave the country. Workers under kafala are often afraid to report abuses for fear of retaliation. The system has been criticized by human rights organizations as it creates easy opportunities for employers to exploit and abuse these workers.
A 2012 report by Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) funded by MacArthur Foundation said:
Qatar is planning to invest more than $250 billion to build 12 stadiums, 70,000 hotel rooms, and a network of road and rail links. The investment is expected to trigger rapid economic development in Qatar, a nation already enriched by oil and gas reserves, as well as the highest per capita income in the world. The human and business risks associated with Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup—the “Mega-Sporting Effect”—stem from the influx of an estimated 500,000 to 1 million foreign workers who will be called upon to build the infrastructure for the event. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report 2012 warned that these migrant workers could face abuses related to recruitment, wages, working, and housing conditions in Qatar.
According to the 2012 report by Human Rights Watch referred above, Qatar has the highest ratio of migrants to citizens in the world, with only 225,000 citizens in a population of 1.7 million. That notwithstanding, the country perpetuates some of the most restrictive sponsorship laws in the Persian Gulf region and has witnessed several cases of exploitation and abuse at their workplaces. From the same report, there were accounts of forced labour and human trafficking.
In November 2013, FIFA appealed for “economic and political leaders to join the football community in contributing to ensure that the International Labour Organization's (ILO) core labour standards are introduced quickly, consistently and on a sustained basis in Qatar.”
The majority of the migrant workers in Qatar come from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. An estimated 506,000 of these work in construction, currently geared towards hosting the 2022 World Cup. A report by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) released in 2014, titled “The Case against Qatar,” notes:
Frequent contacts with Qatar authorities since late 2011 have shown no political will or progress towards Qatar implementing labour-related commitments of the Qatar National Vision 2030 to reform kafala and ratify a further 14 ILO conventions.
There were a number of cases documented in the ITUC report which offered more proof of the incidents of harassment, discrimination, and safety of workers compromised
One of the cases is told by construction worker Jago (name anonymized for safety reasons), aged 34, from the Philippines:
I came to Doha through the recruitment agency Mayon International to earn enough money to send my children to school and to build my own house in the Philippines. I arrived in Qatar in October 2011 and immediately had to hand in my passport. I am highly qualified and trained in architectural drawing software AutoCAD and therefore expected to work in architectural design. My contract stipulated that I would be paid US$ 330 per month and that I would be provided with accommodation and a food allowance. On arrival in Qatar I found out that I would work as a construction worker in a residential construction for 60 hours per week and that I would be paid US$ 261 per month. In the beginning I received food but that stopped soon. When I take one day off from work, two days pay is deducted from my salary. This is also the case when I am sick. One of my concerns is safety at work. My employer does not provide any boots or other safety equipment, not even a uniform. I have been lucky so far not to have suffered an injury at work, but I have seen many colleagues who did. This is especially worrying me because my employer didn’t give me a medical card, and I can’t afford to go to hospital on my current salary. I am fed up with the situation and don’t see why I should suffer these conditions. I handed my resignation in, but my employer just ripped the letter up and threw it into the bin. He also told me I wouldn’t get my passport back.
The report also noted the fatal incidents that have occurred in previous major sporting activities, between the award of the event to the kick-off. In the World Cup in Russia, five workers were reported to have died, while in the World Cup in Brazil seven workers have reportedly died. So far, Qatar holds the highest fatalities at 6,500 even before the tournament kicks off.
The causes of death have been workplace accidents, traffic accidents as well as natural deaths, and suicides. Working conditions and the extreme heat arising during the summertime are also some of the other causes of the high number of deaths in Qatar.
A February 2021 article appearing in The Guardian indicated that migrants from India had the highest number of deaths, with 2,711 dead, while Nepal had 1,641, Bangladesh had 1,018 with the figures indicative of the period 2010 to 2020.
Countries including Bangladesh and Pakistan rely on the migrant workers’ remittances for their fragile domestic economies. This means that migrants’ home nations will often do little to advocate workers’ rights abroad. A complex mix of recruitment agencies from the home country, to little or no consular protection and the kafala system custodians, make the working conditions untenable, The Guardian notes.
The Qatar Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy (SC) responsible for the delivery of infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup issued the following statement:
We have always been transparent about the health and safety of workers on projects directly related to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. Since construction began in 2014, there have been three work-related fatalities and 35 non-work related deaths. The SC has investigated each case, learning lessons to avoid any repeat in the future. The SC has disclosed each incident through public statements and or Annual Workers’ Welfare Progress Reports.
In summary, it is worthy to note that it will take more than hosting the World Cup event to improve Qatar's labour conditions and solve migrant workers’ concerns. Dr. Sebastian Son, a researcher and expert on the Arab Gulf states at the Centre for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO) Institute in Bonn told Qantara.de, a project run Deutsche Welle:
It is going to take more than criticism of Qatar to break this vicious cycle. What is needed is a constructive and inclusive dialogue that pools together the efforts of international organisations such as the ILO, all the Gulf states, as well as civil society actors in labour-sending countries and Europe. In recent years, many Gulf states have demonstrated an increased willingness to enter into such an exchange, as evinced by the Abu Dhabi Dialogue (…).
Both the Gulf states and the international community must do more to acknowledge their responsibility – not just on their home turf, but also in the migrants’ countries of origin. A greater effort should also be made to integrate diaspora community representatives into such dialogue. After all, it is their rights that require transnational protection.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Richard Wanjohi


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Egyptian TV show reignites political schism over 2013’s bloody summer · Global Voices
Dahlia Kholaif

Screenshot of the poster for “The Choice 2″, an Egyptian 2021 TV production that has stirred political divisions through presenting a one-sided narrative of a polarizing period.
The first episode of the second season of “The Choice”, a popular Egyptian police series that delves into the events of the country's divisive summer of 2013, was titled “For us not to forget.” Such a reminder is hardly necessary. For the millions of Egyptians who witnessed or were impacted by the events of those heated months, the details of this period are deeply engraved in their memories.
Produced by Synergy, a studio that has been accused of monopolizing TV entertainment content through its alleged links to the Egyptian army, “The Choice” follows the stories of several police officers, both fictional and real, against the backdrop of the 2013 coup that ended the tenure of Mohamed Morsi, the country's first elected civilian president who hailed from the Muslim Brotherhood. While the first season pitted an army officer against a mastermind of Sinai Province, the local branch of the Islamic State, the second season projects police forces as heroes battling another form of ‘terrorism’ – Morsi's supporters.
The show depicts the official narrative of the events, in line with the current government's designation of the brotherhood as a terrorist group. Its second season, which began airing April 13, seems to focus and magnify the sporadic violence projected by Morsi's supporters across Egypt in defiance of the coup — while concealing the systematic brutality to which they were subjected by state security.
In doing so, the show has deepened the fault lines that have long divided the Arab world's largest population, who either recall these events with a burning sense of grief or utter jubilation.
An episode that provoked exceptional debate was the fifth, which focused on the events of August 14, 2013, when security forces violently dismantled a pro-Morsi sit-in at Cairo's Rabaa Al-Adawiya square. Attended by tens of thousands of Egyptians, the Rabaa sit-in was the largest of two in the capital, with protesters demanding the reinstatement of Morsi, who had been overthrown by the army several weeks earlier with huge popular support, and held captive in an unknown location.
The episode portrayed the security forces as adopting a very humane approach to dismantling the vigil — a narrative that many would challenge. The dispersal of the two vigils marked the bloodiest day in Egypt's recent history and a turning point in its short-lived democratic journey. The security forces’ dismantling of Rabaa's sit-in alone left at least 900 people dead, according to a 2014 investigation by Human Rights Watch, and thousands more wounded. At least 848 protesters were detained on the day and thousands in the months that followed. In its report on the 12-hour-long dispersal, Human Rights Watch said the operation “not only constituted serious violations of international human rights law, but likely amounted to crimes against humanity.”
The show seems to subscribe to a recent media trend in Egypt that glorifies police officers while casting the Muslim Brotherhood as criminals and traitors. This account, naturally, has renewed political friction that was salient on social media.
On one hand, it sings to the feelings of bliss many Egyptians feel towards the dispersal, as many rejoiced over the army ridding the country of the Islamist group's rule and its supporters. The show reminded coup supporters of the threat they felt under Morsi's reign, as it reiterated official accusations that linked the Muslim Brotherhood to a rise in militancy in the eastern province of North Sinai, while overstating its supporters’ assaults against police forces and Egypt's Copts in response to the coup. One Twitter user wrote:
مسلسل الإختيار
مش مجرد تجسيد لبطولات رجال مصر ده كمان توثيق لفترة زمنية من أخطر المراحل فى تاريخ مصر بلقطات ومشاهد واقعية و حقيقيةحصلت بالفعل وشفناها و بنسترجعها وبتفكرنا بأيام الله لا يرجعها بالإضافة الي مشاهد تانيةمكتوبة بعبقرية
— مستشار /محسن تمراز (@Temraz1990) April 26, 2021
The TV show “The Choice” does not just embody the victories of Egypt's men, but it also documents a period that is one of the most dangerous in Egypt's history, with real footage and scenes that happened and which we've seen and recall. It reminds us of days which we pray not to relive, in addition to other scenes written with geniality.
Another supporter of the dispersal wrote:
#احنا_اخترنا_مصرنا ?????? 1
الاختيار مش مجرد مسلسل دا اختيار بين الوطنين والاخوان
احنا اخترنا نقول تحيا مصر وهم اختاروا يقولوا ماسر
احنا اخترنا نكون جنب جيش بلدنا
وهم اختاروا يقولوا عليهم عسكر
احنا اخترنا بلدنا ونكون فخورين بيها
وهم اختاروا يكونوا فى صف العدو ويشتموا عليها
— @SABERHASSAN8621 (@SABERHASSAN8621) April 26, 2021
The Choice is not just a TV series, this is a choice between the patriots and the Muslim Brotherhood
We chose to say, Long Live Egypt, and they chose to say otherwise
We chose to be alongside our country's army
And they chose to refer to it derogatorily
We chose our country and are proud of it
And they chose to be on the side of the enemy and insulted it
On the other hand, the series also provoked an opposite stream of posts, with many of those who opposed the coup and condoned the violent dispersal or were impacted by it, challenging the show's narrative, recalling their version of the story.
According to one Twitter user, who shared gruesome still shots of alleged victims of the dispersal:
وكان الاختيار الحقيقي اختيار اجباري للموت ?#قطار_طوخ #مذبحه_رابعه pic.twitter.com/uD8SVVouPO
— ®Rahma♡ (@rahma________1) April 18, 2021
The real choice was a compulsory choice of death
Wael Kandil, a journalist, wrote:
هذا”الاختيار” ليس عملًا فنيًا، بل هو جريمة ضد الإنسانية.. والسؤال هنا ماذا لو قرّرت مجموعة من النازيين الجدد إنتاج شريط سينمائي أو مسلسل تلفزيوني يمجّد في مذبحة الهولوكوست، هل كان العالم سيسمح بذلك؟ وهل كنتم سوف تلتزمون الحياد باسم المهنية والموضوعية؟ https://t.co/fkF2achWnB
— wael kandil (@waiel65) April 18, 2021
“The Choice” is not a work of art, but rather a crime against humanity. The question here is what if a group of neo-Nazis decided to produce a movie or television series glorifying the Holocaust massacre, would the world have allowed that? Were you going to adhere to impartiality in the name of professionalism and objectivity?
Another tweet mocked the way the show narrated the events of the day, sarcastically calling on its director, Peter Mimi, to produce a sequel on police brutality, in reference to an incident whereby a police officer allegedly gassed 37 political prisoners to death while they were trapped in the back of a van:
نريد من بيتر ميمي يألف لنا مسلسل الاختيار ٣ عن موت ٣٧ شاب في سيارة الترحيلات ويوضح كيف انهم خنقوا روحهم بأوامر من الجماعه لكي يورطوا العسكر
— Najlaa (@zahre_ellatus) April 18, 2021
We want Peter Mimi to put together The Choice 3 about the death of 37 young men who suffocated themselves after orders from the brotherhood to implicate the army.
Despite repeated calls by local and international human rights groups on Egyptian authorities to hold accountable all officials responsible for the bloodshed that marred the dispersal of Rabaa, impunity has prevailed. Human rights groups have also denounced the Egyptian state's prosecution of survivors after a 2018 court ruling found 739 people guilty on charges linked to the dispersal, sentencing 75 protesters to a death sentence, and 47 to life in prison.
As the show continues during Ramadan, Islam's holy month of fasting that has been for years the peak season for television entertainment, societal divisions widen. A show timed to be broadcast as family and friends gather has once again sparked arguments and rifts that have not been forgotten, but buried in their minds.

author: Dahlia Kholaif


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Alternative Indian movies: Is Netflix at last embracing cultural diversity? · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Screenshot from the Youtube trailer of the Taj Mahal 1989 series.
There is little doubt the Covid-19 pandemic has benefitted global streaming platforms as the lockdown imposed in most countries has shut down cinemas, and forced people to stay at home and create their own entertainment programs. One of the most successful ones, Netflix, gained a record 37 new million viewers in 2020, and is not only broadcasting but also producing its own series, movies and documentaries.
But while Netflix, like its competitors HBO, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and others, is enjoying a global expansion in terms of viewers, for most of its history, it remained Western-centered and predominantly in English. Yet a shift emerged and today the platform, as well as others, offer a wide range of content in non-English languages, produced or directed outside the Western world.
One region that has witnessed a growing and much more nuanced representation is South Asia. And while Netflix continues to produce and stream Western stereotypes of South Asia such as the action movie “Extraction”, it has also opened to a number of movies that are also different from the typical Bollywood industry and allow for an unprecedented diversity of languages, narratives, and genres.
To understand this trend, Global Voices talked to Shumona Sinha, a Bengali-French author, who gained international recognition through her awarded novel “Assommons les pauvres !” [Knock down the poors!]. Sinha, as many citizens affected by a strict lockdown in her home in France, is able to reconnect to her youth in Bengal via new Indian series and films that she perceives as a much welcome change in film production from the subcontinent. As she admits, as a person who has no TV set in her home, she has indeed spent much more time on Netflix than before the pandemic started, and explains the difference with what is offered on French TV:
Netflix investit dans les productions cinématographiques qui déjouent l’eurocentrisme ou l’occident-centrisme, explorent les cultures diverses peu représentées. Ces productions sont des collaborations entre les pays occidentaux et orientaux, africains, asiatiques, sud-asiatiques… Puis aussi il y a des films, des docus et des séries déjà produits par des pays divers et désormais disponibles sur Netflix. En tout cas, il y a une vraie diversité ethnoculturelle qui est totalement absente à la télé classique, française ou autre.
Netflix is investing in film productions that bypass eurocentric or Western-centric attitudes, explore diverse underrepresented cultures. Those productions represent forms of collaboration between Western and Eastern, African, Asian, South Asian countries…There are also movies, documentaries, series already produced by diverse countries and now available on Netflix. What is clear is that there is a real cultural and ethnic diversity that is completely missing on regular television, whether in France or elsewhere.
Asked about her favorite South Asian show on the streaming platform, she explains:
Taj Mahal 1989! La production me semble presque artisanale : peu de moyens et beaucoup de rêve. Elle ressemble davantage au théâtre engagé qu’à une série. Dès la première scène on entend le nom de Safdar Hashmi, dramaturge-poète-comédien communiste assassiné en janvier 1989 lors de sa performance de théâtre de rue par les suppôts du parti de droite Congress-I. C’est inédit dans une série ou un film indien. L’histoire de la série évolue autour de cet axe : l’assassinat de Safdar Hashmi et sa perception chez les protagonistes. Deux clans se dessinent : les politiquement engagés et les apolitiques, égoïstes, considérés comme peu cultivés ou de la culture commerciale massive et capitaliste. Le décor de la série est le milieu des universitaires, on y découvre le militantisme communiste et la politique de droite quasi féodale. Tous ces éléments me rappellent mon adolescence et ma jeunesse militante communiste à Calcutta: j’avais écrit un poème en hommage à Safdar Hashmi quand j’avais quatorze ans ; plus récemment dans mon dernier roman “Le testament russe” j’ai évoqué l’assassinat de Safdar Hashmi. Autant de raisons d’aimer cette série !
Taj Mahal 1989! The production evokes handicraft: small budget and large dreams. It looks more like politically engaged theater than a series. Within the first scene, one can hear the name of Safdar Hashmi, a Communist playwright, poet and actor assassinated in January 1989 during one of his street theater performances by the henchmen of the right-wing party Congress. This is unprecedented in an Indian movie or series. The story revolves around this axis: the killing of Safdar Hashmi and how this is perceived by the main characters. Two camps emerge: those who are politically active, and those who stay away from politics, are selfish and considered not very educated or more engaging in commercial mass culture. The background of the series is the world of academics, and one discovers Communist political activism and right-wing, almost feudal, political ideology. All those elements remind me of my youth as a Communist activist in Kolkata. At the age of 14, I had written a poem about Safdar Hashmi; and in my latest novel  “Le testament russe” [The Russian Will], I did mention Hashmi’s killing. So I have many reasons for liking this series!
As can be seen in the trailer of Taj Mahal 1989, the series plays up a vintage feel:
But beyond the sheer nostalgia, Sinha points out that there is a new generation of Indian movies and series, that she attributes in part to three key names: the producer Anurag Kashyap, who also created Netflix’s first India series, an adaptation to Vikram Chandra’s novel “Sacred Games”, and incidentally started as an actor in Safdar Hashmi’s cast. She also recommends Vishal Bhardwaj, another film producer who will act as a the leading producer for  the Netflix series “Midnight’s Children”, adapted from Salman Rushdie’s novel.
According to Sinha, this Indian New Wave cinema is a real alternative to the Bollywood narratives:
Regardez les séries comme Le seigneur de Bombay, Pataal Lok, Leila, Delhi Crime ; les films comme Pink, Talvar, Haider… qui explorent l’Inde réelle de façon néoréaliste, la violence et les discriminations de la société indienne, le fondamentalisme religieux hindouiste mêlé de sale politique nationaliste, sanguinaire. Puis il y aussi des films et séries néo-réalistes plus agréables, qui se détachent de Bollywood sans être complètement des films ou des séries d’auteur, comme A suitable boy, Dil dikhane do.
Look at the series such as “Sacred Games”, “Pataal Lok”, “Leila”, “Delhi Crime”; or the movies such as “Pink”, “Talvar”, “Haider” that explore the real India in a neorealism fashion, the violence and discrimination present in Indian society, the Hindu religious fundamentalism that gets mixed with dirty nationalistic politics. There are also neo-realism style films and series that are more entertaining, yet differ from the Bollywood narrative without being art house cinema, such as “A Suitable Boy”, “Dil Dikhane do”.
The typical Bollywood storytelling, Sinha explains, is traditionally built on a clearly marked opposition between good and evil, and includes romantic love stories filmed in beautiful sceneries, in India and well as in other countries, and includes songs and dances that appear at regular intervals. This kind of movie is best epitomized by cult actor Amitabh Bachchan who has dominated Bollywood since the 1970s.
But regardless of the differences between Bollywood and art cinema style, what is clear for Netflix is that India has become a growing source of content, and a market in full expansion: it has just announced 41 new Indian titles for 2021.

author: Filip Noubel


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In the grip of pandemic, ‘the time is now’ · Global Voices
Shivanee Ramlochan

A blossoming lantana flower mimics the appearance of the COVID-19 virus. Photo by Jim & Robin Kunze on Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.
Editor's note: Against the backdrop of Trinidad and Tobago's increasing rates of COVID-19 infections, the government re-introduced certain restrictions on April 29, including the closure of restaurants, gyms and places of worship, and the reduction—to 25 per cent capacity—of the air and sea bridge routes between the two islands.
By May 3, those restrictions became even tighter after Principal Medical Officer Dr. Maryam Abdool-Richards advised that the country sits at the “tipping point,” with the possibility of the parallel healthcare system reaching capacity in less than two weeks should the current rates of infection, including the number of patients needing access to intensive care or high dependency care units, continue to climb.
Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan has given a lot of thought to how people can dig deep and find ways to cope in the midst of this crisis. An edited version of her piece is republished below.
It's now. The time is now.
We're in a strange stasis, a kind of emotional stranglehold. We feel the daily effects of our physical limitations. Some of us haven't kissed our nieces and nephews who've turned one during the pandemic. Some of us still haven't been able to visit our grandparents, or their gravesites. There are babies whose most solid impression of the human face are that it is masked.
How will we get through this? I don't know how we will get through this.
I've put off so much doing because I've been convinced I'm made wrong, fashioned improperly, or worse, that I mutated myself from the previously “normal” prototype I received when I landed here on earth. I fattened it, queered it, made it rebellious, irresponsible, and weak. And I've taken this very body and been very irreverent with it. I've wondered why, during a pandemic, better bodies than mine are no longer here, doing better things, while mine persists.
It's not like love is the answer, or peace, or daily bread when everyone doesn't get daily bread or dhal […] or rice. But I do feel, I really do feel, that the answer in every small moment we've all been asked to face more and more of, is you. Your imperfection. Your holy, riotous mess. Your snotty-nosed tears and incoherent rambling. Your dutty wine in front of the mirror alone at four a.m. with a half-bottle of puncheon [rum]. Your prayers on your knees to the god you're either falling back in love with or learning how to ghost. I don't know, but I want to be here, persisting. Intemperately. Ridiculously. Maybe even foolishly. And the difficulty has been in believing I deserve that grace. Maybe you feel the same way.
So it's now. The time. To confront the person who has caused you pain during the pandemic, or possibly your whole life. To break up with them. To say yes, fuck yes. To say no, fuck no. To buy the dress that you think makes you look fat, and to flaunt it fatly down fat aisle of fat-land, because you will be nothing but beautiful in it. Now is the time to take the giant interstellar loan from the gilded bank of every possibility you've been denying yourself. To believe that what you make, magnificently, will pay it all back. Now is the time to adopt a cat. Now is the time to grow a twelve-foot beard. Now is when you admit you are depressed. Now is when the ribs in your chest open like bone hands and you fill the space inside with flowers, music, marijuana, good sex, the Goddess, and chocolate.
Not only because we don't know how much time is left. That has always been true. The pandemic didn't make it truer, so much as it underlined how few choices the poor, the at-risk, and the so called Global South have when confronted with disaster capitalism. The time isn't now because we're running out of it.
It's now because you are worth every second of peace you can claim for yourself on this brutally indifferent spinning rock. Eat all the chocolate cake. Ignore all the sanctimony. There are no white knights, but there is *you*.
And that's something.

author: Shivanee Ramlochan


text:
‘Industrial Heaven’: A Ukrainian Instagram account digs deeper into the Donbas region · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

The ruins of a dismantled industrial factory in Lysychansk, Luhansk region, Ukraine. Courtesy photo by Oleksandr Kuchynskyi.
The East of Ukraine is typically visualised in the public imagination as a constellation of coal mines, factory mega-structures, and mining towns, set amid dusty steppes and sparse bodies of water. But the region’s industrial history is quite recent: Although the industrialisation of the mineral-rich steppe in Eastern Ukraine took place in the 19th and 20th centuries, it became the defining frame for the highly urbanised region of over 3 million people. The region’s complex history, identities, and aesthetics, however, demand closer scrutiny.
More recently, the Donbas landscape has had to face the “double challenges of de-industrialisation and military aggression.” The armed conflict with Russia, which began in 2014 and saw large parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions occupied by Russian and pro-Russian forces, has displaced millions of local citizens and has drawn unprecedented attention to Donbas, putting its toponyms on the front pages of global media. It has also created an opportunity for local activists, writers, poets and artists to contest the simplified, stereotypical framing of their region presented to mainstream audiences.
The Instagram account “Industrial Heaven” (“Індустріяльний рай”), created by Sievierodonetsk-based artist Oleksandr Kuchynskyi, offers a rich visual canvas portraying “a split region” through a curated collection of current photos, found imagery and ephemera (from Soviet posters and industrial design to postcards), and archival images from bygone eras. Kuchynskyi himself participates in artistic expeditions to derelict industrial zones and examines the infrastructure of monotowns. His own art, in the words of art curator Dmytro Chepurnyi, speaks to the “contradictions connected to the industrial heritage, the aesthetics of decay, and the human existence in this context”.
For Global Voices, I interviewed Kuchynskyi about his inspiration for the project and his reflections on the evolving identity of the Donbas region.
Назва з’явилася раніше за сам проект. Це алюзія на міф про “соціалістичний рай”, яким радянська пропаганда репрезентувала Донбас. Цей регіон був перенасиченим промисловістю і останні 30 років потерпав від сильної кризи, пов’язаної з деіндустріалізацією. Зараз до цього ще додалася війна з Росією, яка поглибила кризу та прискорила руйнування його економічного потенціалу. Зараз Донбас скоріше можна назвати пост-індустріальним пеклом, і в цьому також є деяка іронія.
The name was born before the project itself. It is an allusion to the myth of the “socialist heaven” that the Soviet propaganda used to represent Donbas. This region was oversaturated with industry and for the past 30 years has suffered from an acute crisis of deindustrialisation. On top of this there is now the war with Russia, which has deepened the crisis and exacerbated the destruction of the region’s economic potential. Today Donbas can more accurately be called a “post-industrial hell”, and there is a degree of irony in this as well.
A post shared by Індустріяльний Рай (@industrialheaven)
Коли я створював акаунт (ще до Інстаграму, у ВК), у мене не було ніякої особливої мети. Вона сформувалася пізніше, коли я зрозумів що цей регіон насправді має дуже складну та маловивчену історію. Донбас є неоднорідним та строкатим, тут проживає багато різних етнічних груп та релігійних громад. Тутешні люди з сусідніх міст або сел можуть сильно відрізнятися один від одного, в залежності від того де саме вони живуть: у шахтарському містечку, крупному промисловому центрі або селі. Донбас є роз’єднаним не тільки через те, що одна його частина зараз окупована Росією. Він роз’єднаний ментально, релігійно, культурно. Особливо гострим тут є конфлікт між старим радянським та молодим прогресивним поколіннями. З початком війни у людей з’явились попит на вивчення цього краю й потреба пізнати його історію та культуру поза загальновідомими міфами та стереотипами, які були сформовані ще в радянські часи й досі дуже часто є домінуючими в інформаційному просторі й у свідомості самих місцевих жителів. Я сприймаю це як своєрідний пазл з безліччю білих плям, який треба скласти та зрозуміти, чим ті білі плями треба заповнити.
When I first created the account (on VK, before Instagram), I didn’t have any particular aim. That took shape later, when I understood that this region actually has quite a complex but poorly researched history. Donbas is heterogeneous and diverse, it is home to a multitude of different ethnic groups and religious communities. The local inhabitants of neighbouring towns or villages can be quite different from one another, depending on where they live: in a miners’ town, a large industrial centre or in a village. Donbas is “split” not only because one part of it is currently occupied by Russia. It is split in mental, religious, cultural terms. The conflict between the older soviet generation and the younger, more progressive one is especially evident here. With the start of the war, we have seen people develop a demand for examining this land and a need to learn more about its history and culture beyond the commonly known myths and stereotypes.  Those were formed in Soviet times and often dominate the information space as well as the conscience of the local residents. I approach this as a kind of puzzle with lots of blank spots that one must put together and understand what those blank spots need to be filled with.
Щодо Донбасу та сходу України існує теза про те, що це територія “культурного пустища”, в якій населення є повністю русифікованим. Цей дерогативний стереотип активно культивувався в роки незалежності, зокрема завдяки деяким діячам культури, які, на мою думку, тим самим показали своє невігластво та поверхневе розуміння того, що з себе представляє цей регіон насправді. Також останні роки Росія активно просуває тезу про “російськомовний та православний” схід, ігноруючи те, що ані російськомовна, ані православна групи не є тут найбільшими чи домінуючими. На Донбасі свого часу селилися адвентисти, баптисти, протестанти. За царських часів тут було безліч німецьких, бельгійських, французьких та валлійських колоній, які безумовно залишили свій відбиток в розвитку регіону.
Сама назва “Донбас” є скороченням від Донецького вугільного басейну, і найчастіше цей край асоціюють саме з вугільною промисловістю. Проте значну частку економіки тут складали важке машинобудування, науково-технічні та дослідницькі інституції, металургія, хімічна промисловість, сільське господарство, виробництво кераміки та безліч інших галузей. По можливості, я стараюсь охоплювати всі ці теми та показувати невідомі широкому загалу матеріали.
There is a thesis arguing that Donbas and the East of Ukraine are a kind of “cultural wasteland” where the local population has been completely Russified. This derogatory stereotype was actively cultivated in the years since Ukraine’s independence thanks to some of the people influential in the cultural sphere. To my mind, this really showed their ignorance and quite a superficial understanding of what the region is really like. In recent years, Russia has also actively promoted the idea of a “Russian-speaking and [Christian] Orthodox” East, completely ignoring the fact that neither the Russian-speaking nor the Ortodox community here are the largest or the most dominant. At various times in the past, adventists, baptists, protestants made their home here. During tsarist times, there were numerous German, Belgian, French and Wallonian colonies here, and they have definitely left their mark on the development of the region.
The name “Donbas” itself is an acronym for the Donetsk coal basin, and the area is most frequently associated with the mining industry. But a large chunk of the local economy was composed of heavy engineering industry, scientific and technical research institutions, metallurgy, chemical industries, agriculture, pottery and ceramics, and many other branches of industry. I try as much as possible to cover all these topics and to share content and materials that the lay audience isn’t aware of.
A post shared by Індустріяльний Рай (@industrialheaven)
Це не єдиний індустріальний регіон України, тож “сердець” у нас декілька. Але на Донбасі протягом тривалого часу навіювалась атмосфера “винятковості” цього регіону. При тому, що паралельно з цим відбувалась поступова, але дуже шокова деіндустріалізація. Багато людей залишилися без роботи через закриття шахт та заводів. Для донбаських моно-міст/поселень це було безнадійною ситуацією. Багато районів швидко стали вельми депресивними місцями. В деяких шахтарських містечках люди навіть обмінювалися бартером вугіллям з копанок, бо в людей просто не було валюти.
Ніколи Донбас не описують як сільськогосподарський край, хоча “дикого поля”, як його ще називають, тут майже не залишилося окрім невеликих відсотків заповідних зон. До індустріалізації тут було безліч козацьких поселень та переважала сільська культура, проте через появу європейських капіталів та подальшу розбудову промисловості вона нікуди не зникла. Значних втрат донбаські села зазнали під час Голодомору. Однак багатьом людям з міст за роки пропаганди нав’язали думку що Голодомору на Донбасі не було. У містах голоду не було, так. Але в селах – був. Щодо “індустріального серця” України – більшість найкрупніших промислових об’єктів регіону вже знищено. Серце це вже не б’ється так сильно.
[Donbas] isn’t the only industrial region in Ukraine, so we have several “hearts”. But in the region, the atmosphere of “exceptionality” was insistently promoted for quite a long time. And this was happening in parallel with the gradual, but quite shocking deindustrialisation. Lots of people were left without jobs as the mines and factories shut down. For many Donbas monotowns and settlements this was a dead-end situation. Several regions quickly turned into quite depressing places. In some mining towns people would barter coal mined in kopanky (illegal mines) [for other goods – GV], simply because no one had any currency.
Donbas is never described as an agricultural land, even though there is virtually no “wild field” [uncultivated land – GV] left here, apart from several wildlife reserve zones. Before industrialisation, there were scores of Cossack settlements here and the rural culture was dominant, but it hasn’t simply disappeared with the arrival of European capital and the further development of industry. Donbas villages suffered significant losses during the Holodomor [man-made famine – GV]. But many people living in cities were conditioned by propaganda that there was no Holodomor in Donbas. Sure, there was no famine in cities. But in villages, there was. And as for the “industrial heart” of Ukraine, most of the largest industrial objects in the regions have been destroyed, so this heart isn’t beating as strongly today.
Більшість контенту знаходжу в інтернеті на різних ресурсах: локальних публічних сторінках, блогах, новинних сайтах тощо. Деякий контент створюю сам завдяки знахідкам, пов’язаних з регіоном та експедицій по різним місцям і районам. Зображення що публікуються можна розділити на декілька груп: фото териконів, промислових та закинутих об’єктів; артефакти та друкована продукція, пов’язані з Донбасом; фотографії з минулих століть, мистецтво та природні об’єкти. Також в планах робити більше публікацій про видатних людей з цього регіону.
I find most of the content online in various places: local public pages, blogs, news websites. Some of the content I create myself thanks to the many discoveries related to the region and the findings from our field trips to the many local spots and districts. The images I publish can be divided into several groups: photos of slag heaps, industrial or derelict objects; artifacts and print ephemera related to Donbas; photos from past centuries, art and natural or environmental objects. I also have plans to publish more posts about prominent individuals from the region.
A post shared by Індустріяльний Рай (@industrialheaven)
Минуле є невід’ємною часткою сьогодення. Я не можу ностальгувати за минулим століттям, бо прожив там надто мало, але фотографії минулого допомагають мені зрозуміти, чому цей регіон зараз такий який є. У нас величезна концентрація закинутих об’єктів, частина з яких є вражаючою за своїми масштабами, але вони дуже швидко зникають. В Лисичанську, наприклад, останні десь роки чотири демонтують декілька величезних підприємств. На їх місці тепер поле битого залізобетону. Такі місця дуже швидко зникають з людської пам’яті. Мені б хотілося їх хоча б зафіксувати.
The past is inseparable from the present. I can’t feel nostalgic for the past century since I didn’t spend all that long in it, but the photos from the past help me understand why this region is the way it is today. We have a huge number of derelict objects, most of which are quite impressive in scale, but they disappear very quickly. In Lysychansk (a city in Luhansk region), for instance, for the past four years they’ve been dismantling several large industrial enterprises. In their place there is now a field of crumbling reinforced concrete. Places such as these vanish from human memory incredibly fast. I would like to at least preserve a snapshot of them.
A post shared by Індустріяльний Рай (@industrialheaven)
Часом я публікую фотографії про війну та її наслідки, однак більшої переваги надаю іншим матеріалам. Зокрема тим, які пояснюють, чому це насилля та війна стали тут можливими. Як на мене, це не менш важливо для розуміння сьогоднішньої ситуації.
Sometimes I do publish photographs about the war and its consequences, but I mostly give preference to other content. Especially those that explain why this violence and this war became possible here. To my mind, this is just as important in order to understand the current predicament.
A post shared by Індустріяльний Рай (@industrialheaven)
До Інстаграму проект існував у вигляді публічної сторінки в ВК – там також публікувались статті, локальна музика та фільми про регіон і з усього цього вийшов доволі великий архів. Після блокування ВК в Україні кількість українців у пабліку почала стрімко падати, тож згодом я переніс його в Інстаграм. Хоч це і не ідеальна платформа, але вона досить зручна. Аудиторія в “Раю” доволі різна – це люди робочих і творчих професій, журналісти, історики, активісти. Переважна більшість, звісно, є українцями (як місцевими, так і з інших регіонів), але й іноземців теж багато.
Before Instagram, the project existed as a public page on VK – it also hosted articles, local music and films about the region, and all of this turned into quite a hefty archive. After VK was blocked in Ukraine, the number of Ukrainian visitors began falling swiftly, so I ended up moving it to Instagram. While it isn’t an ideal platform, it is quite convenient. The audience for “Heaven” is quite diverse – blue collar and white collar workers, creatives, journalists, historians, activists. The majority of them are Ukrainians, of course (both locals and from other regions), but there are many foreigners as well.
Цей акаунт я зараз розглядаю більше як архів. Можливо, він колись виллється в якийсь мистецький проект – це було б логічною спробою якось розвіртуалізувати “Рай” та розказати якусь історію. Моя творчість сильно пов’язана з Донбасом та сходом України. Те, що я займаюсь вивченням регіону в якому живу, безумовно впливає і на мої творчі проекти. Деякі фотографії, зроблені під час прогулянок по різним містам Луганщини, я використовую як матеріал для своїх колажів або полотен. Наразі в процесі дві серії робіт: “Тринадцята область” та “Сірість”.
At the moment I see this account as more of an archive. Maybe one day it will result in an art project of some kind – this would be a logical attempt to materialise “Heaven” and tell some kind of story. My own practice is intensely connected to Donbas and the East of Ukraine. The fact that I study the region where I live certainly impacts my artistic endeavours as well. Some of the photos I take when walking around the different cities of the Luhansk region I end up using as material for my collages or paintings. I am currently working on two series of artworks: “The thirteenth region” and “Grayness”.

author: Tanya Lokot


text:
Taiwan, ‘the most dangerous place on Earth’? Not according to Taiwanese. · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's response to the Economist. Image from Tsai's Twitter.
British magazine The Economist's cover story on Taiwan this week elicited strong reactions on Taiwanese Twitter, with many users showing astonishment at the headline, “Taiwan: The most dangerous place on Earth.”
The Economist's story focuses on the tensions between the United States and China and depicts the self-ruling island as an arena where these hostilities play out.
Many users criticized this choice of framing:
Wait WHAAAT ????
First, can I now put “grew up and lived in the most dangerous place on Earth for 23 years” on my CV?
Second, wow, thank you for putting Taiwan's future in the hands of US and China. That's *very* reassuring. https://t.co/4hc42GQPu7
— Yao-Yuan Mao (@yaoyuanmao) April 30, 2021
Dear Economist, Taiwan is absolutely not the most dangerous place on earth. To be exact, Taiwan is beside the most dangerous country in the universe.
— Marco Chu (@astmarcochu) May 2, 2021
Others sarcastically mocked it:
I totally agree with the Economist. Taiwan is the most dangerous place in the world if you’re trying to lose weight. ? pic.twitter.com/jqH2qLy9wz
— James Hill (@jameshilltaiwan) April 30, 2021
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen also tweeted a reaction on April 30, saying that Taiwan was “at the front lines of democracy worldwide”:
Taiwan stands on the front lines of democracy worldwide. As long as the people of Taiwan remain united and uphold our core values while responding prudently to regional developments, we can overcome the challenges posed by authoritarian expansion. I trust that our like-minded partners, having seen the risks involved, will rise to this challenge and work together to maintain peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.
While the story's headline is exaggerated, the military threat is indeed real. China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when the Kuomingtang lost the Chinese civil war and fled to the island. Since Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progress Party, was elected present in 2016, China has doubled down on the nationalist rhetoric, with the slogan “unifying Taiwan by force” becoming ever more popular — and military drills across the strait ever more frequent.
The U.S. has long adopted a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan, in which it provides political and military support to the island without openly promising it would defend it in the case of an attack by China. But in President Joe Biden's administration, American officials have been increasingly calling for an explicit pledge of Taiwan's defense.
On April 14, ahead of a visit by U.S. emissaries to Taiwan, Beijing sent 24 military aircraft, including fighters and nuclear-capable bombers, into Taiwan’s air defense zone. Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council stressed that the military action was to show Beijing’s determination to stop Taiwan’s independence.
Two days later, in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, China’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Yucheng warned the U.S. against playing the “Taiwan card.” He also implied that China is open to resorting military force:
China firmly opposes any form of official engagement between the United States and Taiwan. Whether low-level or high-level, official engagement is what we firmly oppose. The United States should not play the “Taiwan card”. It is dangerous. The one-China principle is China's red line. […] We are prepared to do everything we can for peaceful reunification. That said, we don't pledge to give up other options. No option is excluded.
Although the threat from China is real, some found that The Economist’s story framing echoed China’s fear-mongering tactics, while also undermining Taiwan's position:
This breathless fearmongering, threat inflation, and borderline fatalism does not help Taiwan https://t.co/AcTYDCu0bk
— Tobita Chow (@tobitac) April 30, 2021
Others urged Taiwan to develop a diplomatic framework that is able to stand up to China’s threats without relying on the United States alone.
Taiwanese citizens have widely praised its officials for their handling of the COVID-19 outbreak — there have been only been 12 deaths on the island by the disease since the start of the pandemic. Taiwan has seen a GDP growth of more than 8 percent in the first season of 2021 despite China’s economic sanctions and military drills. A large number of Hong Kong protesters have also taken refuge in Taiwan in face of Beijing’s political persecution following the 2019 anti-China extradition protests.
@letsupupup thus describe this paradoxical status with a common Chinese expression:
全世界最危險的地方，就是全世界最安全的地方。#台灣地位是世界和平的關鍵#天下圍中
— 鄉民挺起來 (@letsupupup) April 30, 2021
The most dangerous place on earth is the safest place.
#Taiwan’s status is the key to world peace
#Enclose China

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
#YoTeCreoVZLA: The movement that breaks the long silence on sexual abuse in Venezuela · Global Voices
Melissa Vida, Laura Vidal, Romina Navarro, Gabriela Mesones Rojo

“We Declare Ourselves Rebels”. Photo from the feminist group Uquira, used and remixed with permission.
In Venezuela, the #MeToo movement is back in the spotlight with more intensity in 2021. A new wave of accusations has given rise to the “YoTeCreoVzla” (“IBelieveYouVenezuela”) movement. The voices of survivors of harassment, abuse, and rape have multiplied on social media in recent days through expressions of support with the hashtags #YoSiTeCreoVzla and #YoTeCreoVzla. Many Venezuelan women agree there had been previous complaints, but they were not given much importance until now, leading to an abrupt awakening.
The wave gained momentum on April 20, 2021, with the creation of the Instagram account @AlejandroSojoEstupro, which compiles allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by musician Alejandro Sojo. Sojo had already been reported for harassment in 2018 through a Twitter thread from the account “Libertad.” Libertad deleted the thread months later, overwhelmed by the avalanche of messages of mockery, discredit, and hate.
According to Venezuelan news site Cinco8, Sojo published a statement and closed his Instagram account on April 24, and more allegations began to rain down on the Venezuelan art scene. Testimonies appeared against members of other bands, including Okills, Le Cinemá, and Tomates Fritos. Almost immediately, the claims against the Venezuelan rock scene expanded to the entire cultural sphere, involving writers, journalists, visual artists, and others.
On April 28, there was an explosion when “Pía” denounced a relatively well-known Venezuelan writer, Willy McKey, for having committed statutory rape between 2015 and 2016, when she was 16 and he was 36. McKey put together publications on Instagram acknowledging what he did, with texts that seemed to defend women's rights, which attracted criticism from many of his female followers. Veronica Ruiz del Vizo, a specialist in social media and digital marketing, made a Twitter thread explaining why McKey's post was problematic:
Se que debes estar leyendo @WillyMcKey. Sabes la relación cercana y amigos en común. Desde mi profesión hablo, porque hoy tengo el corazón roto.
Quiero decir públicamente que me preocupa tu estrategia de redes sociales. La selección de los colores en tus publicaciones.
— Veronica Ruiz del Vizo (@VeroRuizdelVizo) April 29, 2021
I know you must be reading this @WillyMcKey. You know our close relationship and mutual friends. I am speaking from my profession, because I am heartbroken today.
I want to say publicly that I am concerned about your social media strategy. The selection of colors in your posts.
That same afternoon, when he already had an international arrest warrant following accusations of sexual abuse, McKey died by suicide in Buenos Aires. On social media, users asked to focus the narrative on survivors and not on the aggressor.
Meanwhile, some Venezuelan women fear the possible politicization of the complaints for political ends. For example, in a country where campaigns to harass and discredit journalists are common, the Venezuelan Public Prosecutor's Office opened investigations against journalists. The most relevant case is the investigation against Víctor Amaya, editor in chief of Diario TalCual, and César Batiz, director of the independent media El Pitazo, mentioned by an anonymous account which, to date, has not attracted more direct and substantiated complaints. Journalists from El Pitazo signed a statement rejecting the accusations against Batiz, and later, journalists from TalCual did the same for Amaya. In light of these two cases, people ask the government not to exploit the movement to persecute dissidents.
Feminist activist Luisa Kislinger draws attention to the fact that #MeToo had not yet reached Venezuela, until now:
Nunca tuve dudas de que el #MeToo llegaría a #Venezuela en algún momento
Y llegó
A quienes piden “perdón,” sepan que ello no reemplaza la responsabilidad por los delitos cometidos
A las valientes víctimas y sobrevivientes que cuentan sus historias, mi apoyo para Uds #YoTeCreo
— Luisa Kislinger? (@kislingerluisa) April 28, 2021
I never had any doubt that #MeToo would reach #Venezuela at some point.
And it came.
To those who ask for “forgiveness,” please know that this does not replace the responsibility for the crimes committed
To the brave victims and survivors who tell their stories, I support you #IBelieveYou
Journalist Oscar Medina responded to critics who claim that filing complaints in the country's judicial system is better than making public accusations on social media. He explained that the Venezuelan state does not have the capacity nor the political will to help reach justice. Although legislators passed an important reform against gender violence in 2018, the failure to implement it reflects the lack of institutional will to enforce it:
¿Cuál sistema legal y judicial será ese al que mandan a acudir a víctimas de abuso en lugar de hacer denuncias públicas? ¿En qué fantasía viven? ¿De verdad creen que una víctima de acoso o de estupro puede confiar en eso?
— oscar medina (@oscarmedina1) April 28, 2021
Which legal and judicial system will be the one to which they send victims of abuse to instead of making public complaints? What fantasy do they live in? Do they really believe that a victim of harassment or rape can rely on that?
Writer Oriette D'Angelo commented on the lack of media attention the allegations have received in the past:
Algunas mujeres del mundo literario venezolano tenemos AÑOS denunciando los abusos que hemos sufrido por parte de escritores/profesores de nuestro entorno.
Aquí dejo un hilo de algunas de las denuncias y notas de prensa que han salido en los últimos años:
— Oriette D'Angelo (@oriettedangelo) April 28, 2021
Some of us women in the Venezuelan literary world have been speaking out for YEARS about the abuses we have suffered at the hands of writers/professors in our environment.
Here I leave a thread of some of the allegations and press releases that have come out in recent years:
Complaints against professors, for example, also filled the internet in recent days, such as the one made by Valeria Maza about a professor at the Universidad Santa María (USM) in Caracas:
Caracas, 28/04/21.
Hoy denuncio por este medio a Rogelio Díaz, el acosador de muchas usemistas. Este hombre es un político de COPEI que se esconde detrás de un discurso feminista y de buen tipo mientras le solicita fotos desnudas a sus estudiantes para pasarles la materia pic.twitter.com/OgaHueE7r2
— Valeria Maza (@valamaze) April 29, 2021
Caracas, 04/28/21.
Today I hereby denounce Rogelio Diaz, the harasser of many USM students. This man is a COPEI [Social Christian Party in Venezuela] politician who hides behind a feminist and nice guy discourse while he asks for naked pictures of his students to pass the course.
Regarding McKey's suicide, many users emphasized that McKey's victims were not responsible for his act. Others, such as journalist Mariel Lozada, called for focusing the narrative on the victims:
No olvidemos los hechos. No le demos la vuelta a la narrativa. No le quitemos el poder a las mujeres que finalmente se atrevieron a hablar.
— Mariel Lozada (@marielozadab) April 29, 2021
Let's not forget the facts. Let us not turn the narrative on its head. Let's not disempower the women who finally dared to speak out.
Attorney Beatriz Borges emphasized that machismo is a societal problem:
Cuando se visibiliza la violencia que tiene su base en la discriminación y desigualdad, es cuando te das cuenta que los chistes machistas no dan risa, solo reflejan una sociedad que normaliza la violencia. Escuchar dolorosos testimonios la pone en su real dimensión. #YoSiTeCreo
— Bibi Borges (@BEABOR) April 29, 2021
When violence, which is based on discrimination and inequality, becomes visible, that's when you realize that sexist jokes do not make you laugh, they only reflect a society that normalizes violence. Listening to painful testimonies puts it in its real dimension. #YoSiTeCreo
On social media, various users also expressed concern about the intermittent blocking of the hashtag #YoSiTeCeCreo on Facebook:
Facebook bloquea temporalmente los contenidos con la etiqueta #YoSiTeCreo en varios países de América Latina, incluyendo Venezuela, Argentina y Chile. pic.twitter.com/Hwl3oJ18fn
— Iria Puyosa (@NSC) April 30, 2021
Facebook temporarily blocks content with the hashtag #YoSiTeTeCreo in several Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Argentina and Chile.
Journalist and Global Voices contributor Gabriela Mesones Rojo, like many, empathized with the women who publicly denounced those who tormented them, and shared a directory of psychological and legal assistance services for victims of gender-based violence:
No tengo palabras para expresar la indignación que siento. Mi empatía absoluta con las víctimas de @WillyMcKey. A ellas les agradezco la valentía y el esfuerzo de sus testimonios.
Les creemos, no están solas, las heridas van a sanar.
— Gaby Mesones Rojo (@unamujerdecente) April 29, 2021
I have no words to express the outrage I feel. My absolute empathy with the victims of @WillyMcKey. I thank them for the courage and effort of their testimonies.
We believe you, you are not alone, the wounds will heal.


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Community pantries inspire hope amid pandemic and economic crisis in the Philippines · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

One of the hundreds of community pantries established to give aid to the poor. Photo from Defend Jobs PH, used with permission.
A community-initiated food bank, established to serve the hungry amid the pandemic and its economic fallout, has inspired various mutual aid efforts across the Philippines.
More popularly known locally as “community pantries”, these food banks are spaces on the sidewalks or in plazas where people contribute food and other necessities to be taken by anyone who needs them. The first community pantry was put up in Maginhawa Street, a middle class residential area in Quezon City, on April 14, 2021.
Ana Patricia Non, the 26-year-old organizer of the first community pantry, placed a single bamboo cart containing basic food items on Maginhawa Street.
SPOTTED! | This Maginhawa Community Pantry should sprout like mushrooms all over the Metro, all over the country. Let this act of solidarity among us, the Filipino people, be one of the steps to replace this incompetent and tyrant Duterte Admin.#RESIST#SolidarityAmidCovidCrisis pic.twitter.com/MDKTUBVTTl
— TAKDER (@takderkordi) April 14, 2021
The tweet made a reference to ciriticism made against President Rodrigo Duterte for mishandling the pandemic crisis.
The cart came with a handwritten cardboard signage in Tagalog: “Magbigay ayon sa kakayahan, kumuha batay sa pangangailangan,” which means: “Give according to one’s ability, get according to one’s need”. This loose adaptation of the famous Marxist creed quickly turned viral as the idea of putting up community pantries gained ground a few days after the one in Maginhawa started.
By April 17, 2021, over 44 community pantries, sprouting as far as Davao and Iligan in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao and in Pangasinan far north of the national capital, were tallied in a study by a group of Filipino sociologists. Today, a crowdsourced digital map, that helps find the location of community pantries, counts the existence of over 800 sites nationwide with the overwhelming majority found in the national capital region.
Assisting these initiatives are activist groups, church organizations, and concerned citizens who have been helping communities organize pantries, pool resources, and solicit donations from across the class divide. The way the community pantry initiative has been embraced by wide sections of society is testament to the worsening situation for the poorest and most vulnerable amidst what is now the world’s longest lockdown as the Duterte government fails to contain the pandemic.
With the closing of economic activities, the restriction of movement, and confinement of people in their homes, millions of families have experienced the loss of jobs and sources of income while not getting enough aid and financial support from government to survive the crisis.
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority show an unprecedented increase in jobless people from 2.44 million people in January 2020, right before the pandemic struck, to 4.1 million people in February 2021. The number of underemployed, or those with jobs but are looking for additional work, rose from 6.3 million people to 7.85 million people in the same period.
The situation became even more difficult when a surge in COVID-19 cases led the Duterte government to reinstate even stricter lockdowns towards the end of March this year. A P1,000 (US$20) financial aid which the government promised for some 22.9 million impoverished families, is enough for only three days of bare subsistence, according to the government’s own poverty threshold. And yet after a month’s time, officials admit that only 4.4 million families have received this aid.
Social media users have pointed out how the community pantry idea is rooted in a native communal tradition called “bayanihan” which involves ordinary people coming together as a community to achieve a common goal.
The “community pantry” has definitely exposed cracks in the government’s pandemic response but at the same time highlighted the Filipino value of bayanihan. https://t.co/bEaHwwEZYo
— ENZO (@enzooocaasi) April 21, 2021
Sa totoo lang, nakakatuwa ang concept ng community pantry, bayanihan- kung sino pa yung wala, sila yung tumutulong, but this is CLEARLY a result of INEFFECTIVE and MISHANDLED pandemic response of PH government.
— jay (@jaayvinas) April 21, 2021
In truth, the concept behind the community pantry, bayanihan, brings joy – those who have nothing are the ones who are helping…
As grassroots mutual aid efforts are undertaken by the community themselves to momentarily fill-in gaps in government measures, many netizens agree that the Duterte government must be held accountable for its failure to curb the pandemic and give economic support to the people.
each new community pantry highlights the fact that regular civilians, even those with their own pandemic struggles, have more empathy and initiative to do what they can for fellow filipinos than the duterte administration #DuterteResign #PalpakResign
— camille #JunkRiceLiberalization (@camoodles) April 17, 2021
imagine if the resources hoarded by the state and their compradors were channeled towards a sustainable national food security system founded on similar principles to the community pantry. imagine if the state, from the very start, approached crisis with humanitarian compassion
— camille #JunkRiceLiberalization (@camoodles) April 17, 2021
Rather than alleviating people’s hardships, Duterte government's knee-jerk reaction was to repress the growing community pantry initiatives by red-tagging its organizers, or accusing them of being communist rebels. Community pantries across the country have reported surveillance, profiling, and harassment by police forces.
The Maginhawa community pantry is pausing operations today for security reasons amid reports of red tagging.
In a Facebook post by its organizer Ana Patricia Non, she reveals that the police asked for her personal number and inquired about her affiliation https://t.co/7s9Rmr7gvv pic.twitter.com/4GGODQJJQi
— CNN Philippines (@cnnphilippines) April 19, 2021
Official Facebook pages of local police departments have also posted visuals accusing the community pantry of being “recruitment hubs” for communist rebels. A community pantry in Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao Island had to close shop after its organizers, including a young physics professor at the University of the Philippines, were red-tagged by police as communist rebels.
A now deleted Facebook post shared by the Quezon City Police District red-tagging community pantries.
LOOK: leaflets being spread near the Cagayan de Oro Kauswagan community pantry accusing its volunteers as members of the CCPNPA. This has to stop!!!!!!!! #CommunityPantryPH pic.twitter.com/uCrcULjk9x
— #EqualUnderLaw (@tontonneri) April 21, 2021
Meanwhile, a leaked internal memorandum of a regional office of the Philippine National Police in Mindanao Island exposed an official plot for police units to hold donation drives imitating the community pantry. The memo, which claims to be following orders from “higher-ups”, also instructed police to “plant beneficiaries” who will then have photo shoots as a way to “gain ground in fight against insurgency.”
PUBLICITY STUNT? An internal memo from PNP RO-10 in Cagayan de Oro instructing its units to conduct #communitypantry activities. An apparent PR stunt, the memo also calls on “plant(ing) beneficiary civilians” to project “community participation”. pic.twitter.com/B3ZrHe7r3W
— Pinoy Weekly (@pinoyweekly) April 26, 2021
In fact, President Duterte himself in a late night public address criticized community pantry as “just for show” and its organizers as “mindless.” General Antonio Parlade, the spokesperson of the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) compared the Maginhawa Community Pantry initiator Ana Patricia Non to Satan. It can be recalled that Duterte formed the NTF-ELCAC in 2018 to channel the efforts of all government agencies towards its “whole-of-nation approach” to its counterinsurgency war.
But Duterte's clampdown on people's mutual aid initiatives has generated a strong public backlash, that a gag order was placed on spokesmen of its anti-communism task force so not to comment on the pantries . The Duterte government's attacks on the community pantries has only added fuel to public's discontent with the government's incompetent response to the pandemic, which is not abating.

author: Karlo Mongaya


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El Salvador’s parliament removes checks and balances on President Bukele’s powers · Global Voices
Eddie Galdamez

Photo of President Nayib Bukele, by PresidenciaSV/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
On May 1, the newly elected Salvador legislature began its three-year term. This day is usually a formality with activities such as the swearing-in ceremony of all newly elected deputies. But not this time.
In an unprecedented move, the Legislative Assembly voted to fire all five magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Judicial Court and immediately elect new magistrates from a pre-determined list without any debate. Then, it voted to remove the country's Attorney General and appoint a new one.
El Salvador's new parliament has 56 deputies that belong to New Ideas (Nuevas Ideas in Spanish), the political party created by President Nayib Bukele in 2018. With a qualified majority of the total 84 seats, Nuevas Ideas has absolute control of the Salvadoran Congress.
Through these two actions, the Legislative Assembly removed all possible checks and balances on Bukele's powers, thus creating a heated debate on the state of El Salvador's democracy, which emerged out of a 12-year internal conflict that ended in 1992.
Since May 1, many individuals, organizations, and governments have condemned the removal of judges and the attorney general, Raúl Melara. Since November 2020, the Attorney General’s Office has conducted over 20 raids on different branches of government. The attorney general had 17 open investigations for irregular purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Bukele administration. Bukele and Melara have clashed on many occasions on social media.
Although the new magistrates have the necessary credentials for their appointed positions, they are not well known by most Salvadorans. Salvadorans could have known more about the new magistrates if the Legislative Assembly had conducted an open process of elections, as is the usual procedure.
The United States Committee on Foreign Relations issued a condemning statement, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with Bukele by phone and expressed his concerns. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted the following:
We have deep concerns about El Salvador’s democracy, in light of the National Assembly’s vote to remove constitutional court judges. An independent judiciary is critical to a healthy democracy – and to a strong economy.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) May 3, 2021
The European Union also condemned the move, and José Miguel Vivanco, Executive Director of the Americas Division for Human Rights Watch and a critic of Nayib Bukele, tweeted the following:
On their first day with a majority, Bukele supporters in El Salvador's National Assembly request the ousting of all the magistrates of Constitutional Chamber.
Bukele attacks the rule of law and seeks to concentrate all the power in his hands. pic.twitter.com/5kHrJm5Qwx
— José Miguel Vivanco (@JMVivancoHRW) May 2, 2021
Some local organizations and individuals called the move a “technical coup d'etat.” The five members of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court — the very people that the legislators voted to remove – declared the destitution of judges was unconstitutional shortly after the decision. But they were replaced anyway.
Protesters gathered on May 2 in San Salvador to express their dissatisfaction with the dismissals of the judges and the attorney general.
Estamos en resistencia contra la dictadura. pic.twitter.com/xZiNZqVdh9
— Daniela Genovez (@DanielaGenovez) May 2, 2021
We are resisting the dictatorship.
Even though the protest was in the capital, only about 400 people showed up, according to journalist Roberto Valencia. That is a low number considering that more than 1.5 million people live in the city of San Salvador and surrounding areas. Valencia wrote in the Washington Post that the vast majority of Salvadorans seem willing to forgive Bukele and approve of what he is doing.
Más fotografías de la concentración que inició a las 2:00 p.m. en el redondel del Monumento a la Constitución, en San Salvador. En el momento de mayor concentración habría entre 400 y 500 personas en la plaza. pic.twitter.com/luz274dur4
— Roberto Valencia (@cguanacas) May 2, 2021
More photos of the rally that began at 2:00 p.m. in the traffic circle of the Monument to the Constitution, in San Salvador. At the moment of highest concentration there were between 400 and 500 people in the plaza.
“Everything indicates that, in the next days or weeks, the heads of the Human Rights Ombudsman's Office, the Attorney General's Office, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and the Court of Audits will suffer a similar fate,” he wrote in the op-ed.
Despite longstanding criticism of Bukele's authoritarianism, most Salvadorans support Bukele and the New Ideas political party. Evidence of this support is apparent in Bukele's consistently high approval rating, which has hovered around 90 percent since last year. This support can be explained by the disapproval of past political corruption, a willingness for a strong leader in a context of instability and violence, and the president's focus on strong command of state communication channels and social media.
You might like: Despite claims of authoritarianism, President Bukele's popularity continues to be strong in El Salvador
Responding to the international criticism, Bukele repeated that the Salvadoran people voted for him and the new deputies to change the country, which has high rates of corruption, poverty, and violence.
Aquí nos costó 30 años botar el régimen que nos tenía en la miseria, en la corrupción, en la inseguridad y en la desesperanza.
Negociaban con la vida del pueblo y ordenaban asesinatos desde las instituciones (hay videos de eso).
El pueblo no nos mandó a negociar. Se van. Todos.
— Nayib Bukele ?? (@nayibbukele) May 3, 2021
It took us 30 years to throw out the regime that had us in misery, corruption, insecurity, and hopelessness.
They negotiated with the life of the people and ordered assassinations from institutions (there are videos of that).
The people did not send us to negotiate. Everyone. Must. Go.
Ernesto Castro, now president of the Legislative Assembly, agreed with Bukele and listed the previous governments’ faults.
?Contra el que ha construido por décadas un país injusto
Desde afuera, cualquiera puede decir lo que quiera. Pero solo el pueblo salvadoreño entiende a qué nos referimos cuando decimos que estamos limpiando la casa.
Repito: Dios nos guía y el pueblo nos bendice con su apoyo.
— Ernesto Castro (@ECastroES) May 4, 2021
?Against those who have built an unfair country for decades
From the outside, anyone can say what they want. But only the Salvadoran people understand what we mean when we say that we are cleaning the house.
I repeat: God is guiding us and the people blesses us with their support.
If what the legislative assembly did on May 1 is a sign of what is to come, there will be more changes in El Salvador, which will not be popular with the opposition and abroad. Javier Simán, a prominent businessman and critic of Bukele and his political party, put it this way in a tweet: “He [President Bukele] did what we expected. We warn you. He wants total control of all state institutions. This excessive ambition is not good for any country.”

author: Eddie Galdamez


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Russian feminist activist Yulia Tsvetkova announces hunger strike · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Russian activist Yulia Tsvetkova outside a courthouse. Photo (c): Yulia Tsvetkova/Anna Khodyreva. Used with permission.
Yulia Tsvetkova, an LGBT activist and feminist artist who is facing a prison sentence on charges of distributing pornographic images for sharing “body-positive” drawings on social media, has announced she is going on hunger strike.
As Tsvetkova herself is barred from using the internet and social media, her mother, Anna Khodyreva, shared a Facebook update on behalf of her daughter on May 1. In the post, Tsvetkova says the main demand behind her decision is for the court to conduct her trial more quickly. The investigation and criminal proceedings in the activist's case have been ongoing for almost two years.
In the lengthy Facebook statement, her “first public post in eight months”, Yulia Tsvetkova reflects on her motivations for embarking on a hunger strike:
Говорят, что голодовку объявляют от отчаяния, и с этим, да, трудно не согласиться. Еще считается, что это средство, к которому люди прибегают только в тюрьмах_колониях. Вот это не так. Голодовка – это способ мирного протеста против несправедливости, который использовали многие активисты и активистки по всему миру, в и вне физического ограничения свободы. А еще голодовка – это способ привлечь внимание к проблеме личной, или глобальной.
They say that a hunger strike is announced out of despair, and yes, it’s hard not to agree with that. It is also believed to be a measure that people only use in penal colonies. That is not quite true. A hunger strike is a means of peaceful protest against injustice that has been used by many artists and activists around the world, within and outside of the physical restriction of their freedom. A hunger strike is also a way to draw attention to a personal or global problem.
Recognizing Russia's many political prisoners and “inconceivable sentences for ‘words and thoughts'”, Tsvetkova focuses on a “a slightly different problem, one perhaps less easily perceptible” – that of drawn out administrative criminal proceedings and court hearings, which are typical for Russia and often see defendants spending months or years in pre-trial detention or under house arrest.
2 года следствия. 2 года украденной жизни. За репосты. И эти 2 года даже не зачтуться в срок, потому что я под самой мягкой мерой пресечения.
И мое дело не уникально. Многие люди годами просиживают в сизо, под арестом, или под следствием. Многие проходят через ад, еще до того, как им назначат срок. У системы есть все время, ей некуда торопиться. И ей все равно на людей, и их жизни. А защититься от системы почти не возможно.
Two years of investigation. Two years of stolen life. For reposts. And these two years cannot even be counted as time served, because I am under the mildest measure of restraint.
And my case is not unique. Many people spend years in pre-trial detention, under arrest, or under investigation. Many go through hell even before they are sentenced. The system has all the time; it has nowhere to rush. It doesn’t care about people and their lives. And it is almost impossible to defend yourself from the system.
In her post, Tsvetkova underscores the burden and the pain of the “invisible torture” of the less evident restrictions on civic freedom imposed by the state judicial system. She says she is barely able to withstand the isolation and the inability to work due to being barred from any social contact.
Люди, проходящие через пытку ожиданием, неизвестностью, изоляцией достойны того, чтобы про них не забывали. Нельзя мерить кто страдает сильнее или больше или правильнее. Простая истина – никто не должен подвергаться преследованию по причине своей инакости или неудобности.
People who endure the torture of waiting, of the unknown, of isolation are worthy of not being forgotten. You can't measure who is suffering more or more intensely or more properly. The simple truth is that no one should face persecution for being different or inconvenient.
Outlining why she is going on hunger strike, the activist writes that she is ready to face imprisonment and isn't asking to be acquitted, but demands swift due process, an open trial, and access to a public defender to exercise her legal rights.
Мое требование просто. Я прошу государство “быть мужиком”.
Хотите меня осудить? Пожалуйста. Но делайте это открыто.
Я требую открыть мой процесс для общественности, тк основания для его закрытия притянуты за уши.
Я требую дать мне возможность защищаться всеми законными методами, и допустить в процесс общественного защитника. И я требую не затягивать мой процесс. Назначать заседания не по одному в месяц, а чаще.
My demand is simple. I am asking the state to “man up”.
You want to condemn me? Fine. But do it publicly.
I demand that my trial be open to the public, since the reasons for closing it down are flimsy at best.
I demand the opportunity to defend myself through all legal means, and for a public defender to be granted access to the trial. And I demand that my trial proceed without delay. That hearings be scheduled more often than once a month.
Tsvetkova's statement ends on a vulnerable note: she admits her fear, but also says she cannot make peace with her current circumstances and cannot afford “the opportunity to abstract myself and think globally”.
Страшно ли мне? Да, пожалуй. Но терять мне особо нечего. Здоровье у меня подорвано уже достаточно давно. Каких то привязок ввидя работы, коллег или друзей, благодаря действием государства, тоже почти не осталось. У меня есть только мое достоинство, и сейчас я рада, что поступаю так, как говорит совесть.
Am I scared? Yes, I think so. But I don’t have much to lose. My health has been undermined for some time now. Thanks to the actions of the state, I have almost no ties left to work, few colleagues or friends. I have only my dignity, and now I am glad that I am doing what my conscience tells me to.


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Viral video sparks debate on sexual harassment in Azerbaijan · Global Voices
OC Media

Screen shot taken from the video report by Lachin TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOm8ML0NaV4
This story was originally published on OC Media's website. A lightly edited version is republished here under a content-sharing agreement.
Azerbaijani ex-MP Huseynbala Miralamov was fired from the university where he teaches on April 22 after being caught on camera inappropriately touching a female employee.
In the video, the woman smiles at first, but when she realizes that they are being recorded, covers her face in shock and runs away. The video rapidly went viral in Azerbaijan on April 21, where local media disseminated it without blurring the woman's face.
The story went so viral that United States’ late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel included the clip in one of his monologues, with the woman’s face still uncensored. The monologue has since been taken down from Kimmel’s official YouTube channel, yet many copies had already been uploaded.
Bahruz Nazarov, a department director at the Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University (ASOIU), where Miralamov worked, told Report.az that the latter has since been dismissed from his post and relieved of teaching duties.
Miralamov was also expelled from the ruling New Azerbaijan political party, where he was a member of the Veterans Council and held the position of chair of the Khatai district party branch.
In an interview with Unikal.org, Miralamov denied having a relationship with the woman in the video. “I was blackmailed,” he said. “This was a university conference. The people who broadcast this video must be found.”
While the incident was met with widespread disapproval on social media, there was little agreement on what type of incident the video actually showed and who was at fault.
Feminist activist Gulnara Mehdiyeva told OC Media that the incident sparked discussion of what constituted sexual harassment in the workplace and the power dynamics between older men like Miralamov and his subordinate.
“People expect the older generation to approach the younger generation as children, who need to be shown the way how to live,” Mehdiyeva said. “There were also those who condemned the woman in the discussions. These were mostly people who did not question the issue of consent.”
Those commentators who condemned the woman saw the incident as one of “cheating” and using “femininity as an opportunity,” Mehdiyeva said. As a result, they do not ask “whether she consented” or “why she did it.”
“Even if a woman consents in every sense of the word, he is the one who has the privilege in the first place. The man's privilege must also be questioned.”
Human rights lawyer and feminist activist Zhala Bayramova told OC Media that Azerbaijani legislation deals with sexual harassment only superficially. She said she believes that even though the Labor Code states that the employer's duty was to take measures to prevent sexual harassment, questions remain as to what these measures are and whether this duty has been fulfilled.
According to her, Azerbaijan's Law on Gender Equality refers to sexual harassment, humiliation and insult of a person at work or in a service relationship, arising from belonging to another sex or sexual orientation, including physical actions (touching, slapping, etc.), vulgar language, gestures, threats, defamatory offers or invitations that can be defined as immoral behaviour.
In the event of sexual harassment, the employment contract can only be terminated by the employee and they have to be compensated. Those who are found guilty of sexual harassment are subject to a fine of ₼1,500 (900 USD) to ₼2,500 (1,500 USD).
Bayramova told OC Media that the subjects mentioned in the definitions of sexual harassment are extremely narrow.
“Sexual harassment can occur not only in labor or service relationships, but also in other situations, such as between students and teachers, officials, and so on,” Bayramova said. “There is no penalty mechanism for these situations.”

author: OC Media


text:
Women leaders discuss campaign for digital rights in Thailand · Global Voices
EngageMedia

Graphics from The 101 World, used with permission
This article is from EngageMedia, a non-profit media, technology, and culture organization. This is republished as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
The ongoing protests for democracy in Thailand—and attempts to quell dissent— mean that Thai citizens continue to face threats to their human and digital rights. But such threats are not limited to those participating in the protests. The internet is already being used as a tool to violate the basic human rights of people, which extend to the online space. The right to privacy is violated by surveillance by authorities or trolling by state or non-state actors. Freedom of speech, especially the right to express dissent, is threatened by censorship or draconian laws.
In light of these threats, and as part of EngageMedia’s broader #HumanOnTheLine campaign that aims to educate and empower Thai netizens about their digital rights and how recent events in the country are leading to digital rights violations, EngageMedia asked six Thai women from diverse backgrounds about dealing with digital rights violations and, more importantly, how to make the Thai internet a better, freer, more secure place.
Among the goals of the #HumanOnTheLine campaign is making Thai netizens more aware and informed of how available and emerging technologies can impact these rights, for better or for worse, in order to create more space for Thai netizens to discuss these problems and advocate for solutions.
The interviews were first published in the Thai news outlet The 101 World. English translations of selected quotes from the six interviewees are republished below.
According to Thitirat Thipsamritkul, lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Thammasat University:
Thitirat Thipsamritkul. Photo from The 101 World
Digital is the new context for human life. We live under new conditions of life that are created by digital tools. We could not resist that our life also goes on in the digital world and our rights and freedom should be respected in the digital space as well. Therefore, it’s the state’s obligation to guarantee the rights of citizens in this digital space.
Wasinee Pabuprapap. Source: Facebook
Wasinee Pabuprapap, a reporter from workpointTODAY, a local online media producing both daily news and in-depth analysis, said:
I do aim to deliver information to different groups in order to make them have some common facts. If we prohibit a group from media space, the only fact that they could seek for is the fact under an agenda.
In her response, women's and human rights defender Chonticha Jangrew, who is also co-founder of Democratic Restoration Group, a civil society group promoting democratic reforms, said:
Chonticha Jangrew. Source: EngageMedia
In order to create a safe space, the government must listen to people’s voices. As a result, we will have sustainable ways to solve problems. We should change our mindset from thinking that different opinions are harmful for national security, to being aware that different opinions could be the way out of a crisis. If the government oppresses the expression both offline and online, both anonymous and publicly, there is always the risk.
Anchana Heemina. Source: EngageMedia
Anchana Heemina, women's and human rights defender and founder of Duay Jai Group, which helps those imprisoned for crimes related to the insurgency, as well as their families in the southern part of Thailand including Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani, and four districts of Songkla province where some groups are asserting the right to self-determination, said:
In the Deep South of Thailand, the government must learn to use technology as a tool to create more positive connections with the people on the ground, not using technology to oppress people.
Veeraporn Nitiprapa. Photo from The 101 World
Southeast Asian Writers Award recipient Veeraporn Nitiprapa said:
When technology creates rapid change, the question is how people in different generations adjust to the change. We must learn from our experience, accept the risks and flaws, and learn and grow with it.
Supinya Klangnarong. Source: EngageMedia
Supinya Klangnarong: co-founder of CoFact.org, a collaborative fact-checking platform in Thailand, reminded readers to be aware that we are not using digital tools and online platforms for free since we exchange our information and privacy. She added:
In the digital world, there is no free lunch. There are many things beyond our control, such as algorithms, deep fake, and echo chambers. The question is how to have literacy over the tools that we are using.

author: EngageMedia