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Nigeria declares ‘state of emergency’ on rape and sexual assault · Global Voices
Adetomiwa Isiaka

Triple G: Girls Go for Greatness members from Lagos and Ogun state at the “Guard Against Rape” seminar in Lagos, February 13, 2016, via CEE Hope on Flickr CC BY 4.0.
In June, Nigeria declared a state of emergency on rape and sexual violence in all 36 Nigerian states.
Earlier that month, activists from women-led groups marched and sent a memo to Nigeria’s House of Representatives, demanding Nigeria adopt and properly implement the 2015 Violence Against Prohibition Person’s Act (VAPP).
This was triggered by brutal rape cases reported in May and June: Barakat Bello was raped and killed in her home; Vera Uwa Omozuwa was killed in her church in Benin City, southern Nigeria; and a 12-year-old girl was raped by 11 men in Jigawa, northern Nigeria.
Despite this new state of emergency, a culture of rape and impunity persists, making it difficult for victims to hold their abusers accountable. One in four girls and women will experience rape and/or sexual assault in Nigeria before the age of 18, according to the United Nations. However, there are fewer than 80 total recorded rape convictions in Nigeria.
VAPP ensures that victims of rape and sexual assault have the right to physical and psychological examinations. Perpetrators found guilty of a sexually motivated crime could face between 14 years and life imprisonment.
So far, only 17 of Nigeria’s 36 states have adopted VAPP into state laws.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo tweeted:
Gender based violence, rape and sexual assault have no place in our society. It is unacceptable behaviour and a blemish on our collective humanity and dignity as a people and as a nation.
— Prof Yemi Osinbajo (@ProfOsinbajo) June 19, 2020
The most recent high-profile rape case involving popular Nigerian musician D’banj is a chilling reminder that despite the state of emergency, a culture of rape persists.
On June 3, a woman named Seyitan Babatayo alleged in a since-deleted Twitter thread that artist Oladapo Daniel Oyebanjo, known as D’Banj, entered her hotel room and raped her.
Seyitan says she decided to go public with her story because she wanted to call out D’banj out on his hypocrisy after he declared solidarity with the #NoMeansNo campaign.
D’banj denies these allegations and tweeted:
Innocent until proven guilty…., STOP SOCIAL MEDIA TRIAL ???⚖⚖⚖#SAY NO TO RAPE AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION https://t.co/YSI8Zb3Mg5
— D'banj D Kokomaster (@iamdbanj) June 22, 2020
On June 23, Seyitan released an official statement through legal representation with Stand To End Rape (STER), detailing the horrific ordeal that followed after she went public:
PRESS STATEMENT: Ms Seyitan Babatayo on her criminal complaint of rape against Mr Oladapo Daniel Oyebanji and the timeline of events since she shared her experience. pic.twitter.com/NB9qqUhdKP
— S.T.E.R Initiative (@StandtoEndRape) June 24, 2020
According to the statement, Seyitan reported her case to the police on June 6, but officers did not pursue the case. On June 16, however, Seyitan said she was arrested from her apartment without a warrant, by four plainclothed police officers, from her apartment in Lagos. She was detained for 48 hours.
Around this time, Seyitan's Twitter account was compromised. Her accusatory tweets were deleted and replaced with two new tweets: one withdrawing her claims and the other promoting D’banj’s new music. It is unclear at this time who gained access to her account.
After she released her statement, netizens and lawyers expressed disappointment in the police force. Soon after, the Nigerian Police Force officially subpoenaed D’Banj and opened the case for investigation.
This is crazy. The Nigerian police must also prosecute @iamdbanj for kidnapping/deprivation of liberty (s269/270), perversion of justice (s97), and bringing false accusation (s93) under Lagos criminal law.
And discipline the officers who aided these. Cc: @PoliceNG @PoliceNG_CRU https://t.co/vmIJ0wkXgm
— Ayo Sogunro – #Transformist (@ayosogunro) June 24, 2020
A state of emergency implies that police are obligated to take rape cases and reports seriously, but women have recounted incidents where the police — both male and female officers — often dismiss these cases, blame the victims or assault their legal representation.
In Nigeria, women are increasingly turning to protests and social media callouts to hold perpetrators accountable. But these actions can sometimes increase the threat of harm to activists who dare to speak out.
In 2019, Fakhrriyyah Hashim coined the hashtag #ArewaMeToo, to highlight the gravity of domestic and gender-based violence in northern Nigeria. Arewa is the Hausa word for “north.” While women face a range of dangers throughout patriarchal Nigeria, the dangers of being a woman are magnified in the north, where religion and collectivism are often used as tools for oppression.
In her tweets, Hashim proclaimed that Abubakar Sadiq Aruwa, the then-special adviser to the governor of Kaduna State, had raped or sexually violated multiple girls and women. Amid the flood of tweets and posts under #ArewaMeToo, Aruwa was one of the highest-profile men named in the northern region:
For years, @MusadiqZ ventured to find vulnerable girls and ‘ allegedly ‘ abuse them because he knew age being a factor, he could scare them into doing anything he wants, while also harbouring items as his tools for blackmail.
— Fakhrriyyah (@FakhuusHashim) February 14, 2019
Maryam Awaisu, a friend of Hashim, also got involved in the movement, sharing alleged stories of girls and women getting sexually harassed and abused in northern Nigeria, many of whom are minors in secondary school.
Awaisu, who uses the Twitter name “Ice131Queen,” tweeted:
We will come for you creeps and all you value. Your nonexistent reputations. Your jobs. Your unabashed ways. Satans in human form, put on your running shoes. Cause the #ArewaMeToo tornado is JUST beginning.
— FeistyQueen (@Ice131Queen) February 15, 2019
? ? The allegations against @MusadiqZ are here, after thorough investigation (by @FakhuusHashim @fatousky @crankysolicitor @KingNelo2 @AmiraYSalisu @AhmadJaafaru @FatimaSalihijo @_AfricanHippie @Ice131Queen & many others) Attached is his picture. Caveat! ? ? #ArewaMeToo pic.twitter.com/GY6UAK332l
— FeistyQueen (@Ice131Queen) February 15, 2019
Note : All these came from first-hand testimonies by his victims, who are mostly underage girls. They were compiled painstakingly over months.
Surrounding circumstances have left us with no option but to conceal the identities of these victims. #ArewaMeToo
— FeistyQueen (@Ice131Queen) February 15, 2019
In response, Aruwa released a statement through his attorneys claiming that these accusations are “defamatory commentary” on his person and “spurious and unsubstantiated allegations of rape,” by a list of seven Twitter handles mentioned in the letter, including Awaisu's account.
On February 19, 2019, Awaisu was arrested by the Abuja unit of the Nigerian Special Anti-robbery Squad for her direct involvement in the #ArewaMeToo movement.
Amnesty International released a statement in Awaisu’s defense, affirming that officers attempted to violate her privacy:
While arresting Maryam, the police attempted to gain access to her laptop and mobile phone by force; this is clearly an effort to access the sensitive evidence she and other human rights defenders have been gathering to seek justice for victims of sexual violence.
Awaisu was released the next day after a torrent of tweets and statements from advocacy groups demanding her release.
“Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Maryam Aiwasu @Ice131Queen who has done nothing more than speaking up for women’s rights. #FreeMaryamAwaisu #ArewaMeToo @PoliceNG @unwomenafrica @aishambuhari #Nigeria pic.twitter.com/Ph8s9WWm4w
— Amnesty Int. Nigeria (@AmnestyNigeria) February 19, 2019
Awaisu’s arrest demonstrates a trend in Nigeria of the police favouring people with financial power and social status at the expense of female victims.
Awaisu said that police reform is critical, in a conversation with Global Voices on June 16:
We’d have to educate the designated law enforcement on what works and what doesn’t since it’s their duty to escalate these issues. There are only so many people activists can reach, so the police need to be taught and they need to be trained.
Organizations like the Mayafi Initiative now provides legal and social service support in nearly every northern state, making it easier for girls and women to seek help. But law enforcement must take further steps to hold abusers accountable.

author: Adetomiwa Isiaka


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Uyghur emojis help spread message of cultural resistance over social media · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

One of the emojis designed to represent an Uyghur man wearing traditional clothes. Illustration reproduced with permission.
Emojis representing Uyghur characters and culture are now available on the encrypted messenger platform Telegram in an effort by the Uyghur diaspora in Russian-speaking countries to raise visibility.
While Uyghurs living in China are experiencing unprecedented attacks on their most basic human rights, the Uyghur diaspora in Russian-speaking countries (an estimated 350,000 people mostly in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Uzbekistan) enjoy relatively greater freedom of expression, and are able to advocate for their rights. One group, called Biz Uyghurlar (We are Uyghurs) based in Russia, publishes information about Uyghur politics, history and culture, mostly in Russian on their website. In late June, the group also launched an initiative to promote Uyghur visibility on-line by releasing a series of stickers for Telegram, which is particularly popular in the post-Soviet space. To understand what motivated Russia's Uyghur diaspora to engage with social media, Global Voices spoke to Regina Uygur, the coordinator of the sticker project with Biz Uyghurlar.
The interview was edited for brevity.
Uyghur man playing one of the national instruments, the dutar (دۇتتار, in Uyghur) . Illustration reproduced with permission.
Filip Noubel (FN) How did you come up with the idea of making stickers for Telegram celebrating Uyghur people and culture?
Regina Uygur (RU) We had the initial idea a long time ago, we just needed time to work out how to develop it. Our first goal is to introduce the rich Uyghur culture to netizens, our second goal is to send a specific social message, since today, in our historical Uyghur homeland, Uyghurs are victims of a genocide, and the ones living in post-Soviet states feel pressure and discrimination, thus we hope our stickers will fill the hearts of Uyghurs with hope and pride for their culture and history. We want other users to see our stickers, use them and get interested in our culture. The fact that nothing like this existed is what motivated us to develop them. We always wanted Uyghurs who use online Russian-language platforms to be able to share elements of their culture with others.
Uyghur man eating a plate of lagman. Illustration reproduced with permission.
RU As of June 30, 437 people have downloaded our stickers and they have been used 1,028 times. They have been available since June 26, but were ready much earlier. We wanted to offer them on different platforms, but eventually decided to launch them first on Telegram, and get feedback from users. If people want us to add specific emotions, traditional clothing, etc, we will, and later we plan to make them available on other platforms.
Image of Uyghur milk tea and piece of nan, the traditional bread. Illustration reproduced with permission.
RU A multi-ethnic group of artists worked on them as a team. The process started with selecting emotions and situations from daily life that Uyghurs are familiar with: happy, rebel, satisfied, surprised, in love. Those ideas were developed by me, and then turned into drawings by the artists. Then they were discussed and edited. In fact a very detailed understanding of Uyghur history and all the nuances of our culture went into making these stickers. Throughout our history, certain details of our national costumes changed frequently, reflecting different regions. That's why, when we developed our stickers, our goal was to represent not just emotions, but all the variations of our ethnicity. That is why our characters wear different hats and clothes. We also wanted to present interesting aspects of our traditions: our love for tea with milk (Əткян чай), and lagman, our famous hand-made noodles, hunting with eagles that was popular last century, our talent for music, etc. We will continue to expand our collection as we get more feedback from users.
Uyghur woman wearing a traditional hat, called doppa (دوپپا in Uyghur). On her arm is written Qizlar küchlük, which means “Girls’ power’. Illustration reproduced with permission.
РУ Этот проект был изначально создан в далеком 2015 году в виде групп в социальных сетях, как эксперимент. Дело в том, что мы, русскоязычные Уйгуры СНГ все знаем нашу великую историю, поддерживаем нашу богатую культуру и чтим древние традиции. Но к сожалению, политические обстоятельства сложились таким образом, что мы были информационно оторваны от нашей исторической Родины. Нам были доступны только новости западных СМИ связанных с политикой и ущемлениями прав человека в Синьцзянском-Уйгурском Автономном Районе. В 2015 было очень мало сайтов которые бы регулярно публиковали интересный контент связанный с интересными личностями и событиями в Уйгурской Автономии.
Поэтому в 2015-2016 годах мы сделали упор именно на этот контент, практически не затрагивая политику, которой, итак, было много на других ресурсах. Эта инициатива вызвала позитивный отклик и нам удалось развить проект благодаря активной поддержке наших подписчиков.
Ситуация изменилась в 2017, когда стало известно о новом секретаре Компартии  в Синьцзяне, Чэнь Цюаньго который проводит «репрессивную кампанию» против уйгуров, направленную на полное уничтожение уйгурской национальной идентичности. А потом стало известно и о проблемах уйгурских общин в Средней Азии, которые тоже страдают из-за китайского влияния.
Мы не стали ломаться под вездесущей цензурой, которая так душит уйгуров как в Китае так и в СНГ, и начали переводить и публиковать материалы связанные с нарушениями прав человека.
RU This project started as an experiment way back in 2015, as a group on social media. The fact is that we, as Russian-speaking Uyghurs living in post-Soviet states, know our great history, engage in our rich culture and pay tribute to our ancient traditions. But the political situation is such that we have become separated from the information flows relating to our homeland. We were only able to access news about the violation of human rights in Xinjiang in Western media. In 2015 there were very few sites publishing interesting content about public figures and events in Xinjiang.
That is why in 2015-16 we decided to focus on this content, without touching on politics that was already available on so many sites. This idea was met positively, and we were able to develop our project thanks to the active support of our audience. The situation changed in 2017, when the new Party head for Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo appeared and started his repressive campaign aimed at destroying Uyghur national identity. And then the news came out about Chinese pressure on Uyghur communities in Central Asia. We decided to ignore the censorship that suffocates Uyghurs in China and in post-Soviet states, and started translating and publishing content about violations of human rights.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Filip Noubel


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Indians create awareness with #DalitLivesMatter · Global Voices
Tejasvini Prasad

Dalits joining in a land rights campaign in 2013. Dalites are often conned by uppercaste landowners. Image via Flickr by Action Aid India. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Indians are attempting to awaken their fellow citizens with social media action around #DalitLivesMatter, in the fashion of #BlackLivesMatter.
The hashtag was first used in November 2014, shortly after #BlackLivesMatter started trending. But since May 2020 #DalitLivesMatter had more engagement than the entirety of 2019 (engagement measured as the number of posts with 10 or more replies, likes and retweets).
For Dalits, people from lower castes who are considered and treated as “untouchable” in India, the fight against systemic and social subordination by African Americans has long resonated. In 1972 the Dalit Panthers was founded, inspired by the social activism of the Black Panther Party.
In India, Dalits are traditionally excluded from education, land ownership, employment. While the Indian constitution bans caste-based discrimination, untouchability practices are still enforced by more than half of the upper-class households. Minor infractions by Dalits may result in punishment ranging from humiliation to death.
A 2020 article in the Journal of Business Ethics titled “Understanding Economic Inequality Through the Lens of Caste,” authors  Bapuji and Chrispal note that:
the caste system influences every aspect of socioeconomic life in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere, through prescriptions that prohibit and restrict actors in particular social arrangements….maintains socioeconomic inequalities through everyday practices and habits, such as last names, food habits, clothing styles, ceremonies, rituals and relationships.
When discrimination occurs the recourse available to Dalits is slim. There is ample anecdotal evidence of police bias against people possessing caste markers.
A Dalit boy was killed by boys from upper caste families after he prayed in a temple in Amroha, UP. Police is denying it rather suggesting it looks as a ‘fight’ between boys. This is how historically caste operates in India and continue to do today. #DalitLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/ufrCBzLTtB
— The Dalit Voice (@ambedkariteIND) June 9, 2020
The anecdotes are backed by a 2019 report by the non-profit Common Cause and the Center for Study of Developing Societies that examined police bias in India. The report concluded that 50% of police personnel believe that reported atrocities against Dalits may be false or overblown.
Policing bias is reflected in the reality that more than half of Indian prisoners are from marginalized groups, and they are more likely to die in custody, according to a UN Convention Against Torture report.
A total of 1,731 persons died in custody in India during 2019 which comprises almost five such deaths daily and most of the victims belong to the poor and marginalised communities including Dalit, tribal and Muslim.
– MuslimMirror#DalitLivesMatter #MuslimLivesMatter
— Apurv Jyoti Kurudgikar (@ApurvKurudgikar) July 2, 2020
With diminished police protection, Dalits are at the mercy of ancient social mores that see them as “less than” and believe that their place is at the bottom of a stratified socioeconomic system.
Darbhanga, Ashok Paswan's daughter Jyoti Kumari went to the mango behind the adjacent house. Arjun Mishra caught sight of the Dalit girl while breaking the mango and caught her and killed her with a stone.
The terror of Brahmin litigants is increasing in Bihar.#DalitLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/RL5Okq14Qf
— Apurv Jyoti Kurudgikar (@ApurvKurudgikar) July 2, 2020
The Coronavirus outbreak has exacerbated the situation for Dalits living in crowded conditions with scarce access to medical facilities. In addition to worsening their segregation, there has also been an uptick in violence against Dalits.
Indians who support #BlackLivesMatter have been criticized for supporting African-American struggles while staying complicit in subordinating fellow Indians.
Indians’ support to #BlackLivesMatter is hollow and utterly useless if we don't talk about atrocities on Dalit lives here. We don't talk / outrage enough about this. #DalitLivesMatter https://t.co/sWm6w1DOfB
— V (@ivivek_nambiar) June 11, 2020
Woke Indians are tackling Dalit subjection with long-term interventions like fostering entrepreneurship and education. As the Dalit visionary Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar said, social reform is difficult, but not impossible.

author: Tejasvini Prasad


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COVID-19 leads to closure of popular bookshops in Bangladesh · Global Voices
পান্থ রহমান রেজা (Pantha)

Nilkhet second-hand book market in Dhaka. You can find old, rare, or out of print books here. Image from Flickr by Francisco Anzola. (CC BY 2.0).
The COVID-19 situation is worsening in Bangladesh as reflected in the rising death toll. It is now the 18th worst affected country in the world in terms of the number of coronavirus cases.
The economic disruption caused by the pandemic is also rapidly unfolding. One of the first signs of the economic ‘Tsunami’ is the closure of many shops in the capital Dhaka even after the easing of restrictions in June 2020.
Book stores are among those that are struggling to survive the economic fallout.
Most bookstores in Dhaka were closed when the COVID-19 lockdown was enforced in March 2020. The closure of educational institutions until August 6 means that the book buyers, who are mostly students and professionals, will not return soon to help reverse the falling revenues of booksellers.
Over 21 million people live in Dhaka. There is already a shortage of bookshops that can cater to this market but the pandemic has forced many of the stores to stop operating.
Nilkhet is the center of the second-hand book trade in Dhaka. Apart from used curriculum books, fiction, non-fiction or reference books from Bangladesh and abroad, you can even find old, rare, or out of print books in the Nilkhet old book market. Mostafa Baighar (bookstore), one of the biggest second-hand book shops in Dhaka, started its business in this market thirty years ago. The pandemic came and closed the shop.
sidewalks as open book shop…#nilkhet
A post shared by  Jimi Chakma (@jimichakma) on
There are many more old and new bookstores in Nilkhet. Author Shoaib Sarwanam explains on Facebook why Mostafa Baighar is unique:
বাংলা ভাষায় প্রকাশিত যে কোন রেয়ার বই, প্রিন্ট আউট বই, হারায়ে যাওয়া গুরুত্বপূর্ণ বইটা দরকার হইলে একমাত্র ভরসা ছিল মোস্তফা।
মোস্তফা হয় একজন অলৌকিক ক্ষমতাসম্পন্ন লোক। যে কোন বইয়ের নাম বললেই সে চোখ বন্ধ করে সেই বইটার লেখকের নাম, প্রকাশনীর নাম, গায়ের দাম গড়গড় করে বলে দিতে পারে। তার চেয়ে বড় কথা, যেইখান থেকেই হোক বইটা ঠিকই জোগাড় করে এনে দিতে পারে!
Mostafa was the only hope if one needed any rare book, 0ut-of-print book, or any important book published in the Bengali language. Mostafa is a man of miraculous powers. Whenever a buyer mentioned the name of a book, he would close his eyes and recognize the name of the author of the book, the name of the publication, and the price of the book. And what is most important, he could source the book from anywhere!
Mostafa, the owner of the bookstore, has deep knowledge of published Bengali books. Ehsan Islam highlighted this in his Facebook post:
বই অনেকেই বিক্রি করে নীলক্ষেতে, পাঠক অনুযায়ি আগ্রহ জাগানিয়া বইও তুলে দিতে পারেন নাকের সামনে, কিন্তু বইয়ের প্রসঙ্গ ধরে আরেকটা বইয়ের খবর সবাই দিতে পারে না। আমি অজস্র দিন দেখেছি, মোস্তফা ভাই ঝুঁকে পড়ে বই পড়ছেন। নিতান্ত ফ্ল্যাপ নয়, ভেতরের পাতা উল্টে উল্টে পড়ছেন। গল্পের চমকলাগা খটকা নয়, প্রবাহটুকুও বলতে পারেন। পরের মুখে ঝাল খাওয়ার মতো শুনে শুনে আত্মস্থ করে তা বলা যায় না, বোঝা যায়।
There are many sellers in Nilkhet who can suggest interesting books according to the individual buyer's taste and requirement. But not everyone can suggest a similar or a supplementary book that could help the buyer. I have seen countless days, Mostafa is leaning forward while sitting and reading books. Not just flipping through the flaps, he was a voracious reader. He could tell the flow of the story, not just the highlights. Not just memorized sales pitches, readers can tell.
Researcher and playwright Nazrul Syed wrote on Facebook about the possible impact of the closure of old bookstores on preserving Bengali literary culture:
পরিবারে বিশাল বিশাল কয়েকটা তাক ভর্তি পুরনো পোকায় কাটা বই অধিকাংশ পরিবারের জন্যই অভিশাপের। অনেকটুকু জায়গা খেয়ে ফেলছে! হয়তো আস্ত একটা ঘরই দখল করে আছে! এগুলো কেউ পড়ে না, ছুঁয়েও দেখে না। পরিবারের বৃদ্ধ মানুষটি ঘোলা চোখে মাঝে মধ্যে তাকান, ধুলো ঝাড়েন, গন্ধ নেন। পরিবারের তরুণ সদস্যরা অপেক্ষা করে থাকে বুড়োর একটা গতি হলে এই জঞ্জাল ঝেঁটিয়ে বাড়ি থেকে বিদায় করার।
[…]
এই বইগুলো তখন কিনে নেন মোস্তফা মামারা। হয়তো একা পারেন না, কয়েকজন মিলে কিনে নেন। লট ধরে কিনে নেন। তারপর ফোন যায় আমাদের কাছে, যারা পুরনো বইয়ের পুরনো ক্রেতা। তাঁরা ঠিক চেনেন এই শহরে কে কে এই বইগুলো কিনতে পারে। আমি নিজে অসংখ্য দুষ্প্রাপ্য বই কিনেছি এই সুবাদে।
মোস্তফা মামাদের পেশা বদলের ফলে এই ব্যাপারটি ঘটার আর সুযোগ থাকবে না। বইগুলো তখন চলে যাবে ভাঙ্গারির দোকানে। এমন অসংখ্য বই, যেগুলোর সারা পৃথিবীতেই হয়তো আর কোনো কপি নেই, কেউ জানেও না তার খবর… হারিয়ে যাবে বাংলা সাহিত্য সংস্কৃতির অমূল্য সব দলিল…
In many families, you will find a few huge shelves or a large room filled with neglected, insect-infested books taking a lot of space! The younger members of the family do not read or touch them. They are waiting for the last days of the old generation so they can clear this rubbish after their death.
[…]
Only a few booksellers like Mostafa bought these books a lot. Maybe not alone, a few of them together would buy each treasure trove. Then they would inform people like us, who are always looking for old and rare books. They know exactly who is interested to buy what books in this city! I myself have bought many rare books from him.
As sellers like Mostafa are closing shop and changing profession, this will no longer happen. These books will then go to old-paper recyclers. There are so many second-hand books with probably no more copies in the world. No one in the present generation knows about it… many valuable documents of Bengali literary culture will be lost like this.
দীপনপুর গিয়েছিলাম ঘুরে দেখার জন্য। ?
A post shared by  আসাদুজ্জামান জয় (@bookworm.joy) on
A view of the Dipanpur bookstore I visited recently…
In Dhaka, creative bookstores (independent bookstores specializing in fiction and non-fiction and including amenities like reading area and cafes) have become popular in the past decade generating interest among book lovers. However, a number of prominent independent bookshops in the city such as Nalanda, Madhyama, Pencil, and Dipanpur are closing down due to financial crisis amid the coronavirus outbreak. The closure of Dipanpur has especially disappointed many since it was not just a bookstore but also functioned as a cafe and a hub for creative people. In fact, various literary events were organized there. It was opened in memory of publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan, who was killed brutally by Islamic militants in 2015 in Dhaka. Friends of Dipanpur are trying to initiate a campaign to revive it.
However, author Munmun Sharmin Shams thinks that the reason behind the closure of the creative bookstores is the declining demand. According to her, books are the least important thing in the lives of Bangladeshis now and many readers don't know about the books shops that are still struggling to survive.
A book stall in old Dhaka which sells mainly text books. Image via Flickr by David Brewer. ( CC BY-SA 2.0).
In Bangladesh, publishing of digital books has not yet picked up due to a lot of reasons such as the high price of e-book readers and lack of demand. Rifat Munim wrote at Indian online publication Scroll.in about this issue:
Although many publishers, such as the University Press Limited, are increasingly considering the potential of releasing ebooks, digital editions are yet to gain wider currency in Bangladesh, mainly owing to cultural orientation, and also because of the high prices of devices.
Rifat Munim noted that the rate of book publication increased in recent years:
In 2010, a little more than 3,000 books were published yearly, and the number now exceeds 6,500. Members of the Academic and Creative Publishers Association of Bangladesh reckon that more than 75% of books are launched during the Ekushey Book Fair, the country’s biggest book event. Currently, some 2,00,000 people depend directly on the publishing industry for their livelihoods, with nearly 10 times as many people involved indirectly with the industry.
As per reports 4,919 new books have been published at the Ekushey Book Fair in 2020 and books worth Bangladeshi Taka (BDT) 720 million (US$ 8.47 million) have been sold there. There is no information on how many books are sold in the rest of the year.
In the past few years, the country has seen a few online platforms that sell hard copies of books. The country's largest online bookstore, Rokomari, sells about 1 million books (hard copies) a year.
But will this offset the loss caused by the sudden closure of popular book shops such as Mostafa Baighar and Dipanpur?

author: পান্থ রহমান রেজা (Pantha)


text:
Housewife, mother, frontliner: A look at women in Hong Kong’s anti-China extradition protests · Global Voices
The Stand News

Image from The Stand News.
Hong Kong's anti-China extradition protests are now a year old. Hong Kong online media outlet The Stand News curated a series of articles to reflect on the opposition movement. Global Voices is publishing edited versions of these posts under a content partnership agreement. The original Chinese version of the post below was written by Susanne Choi, Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
When Hong Kong's anti-China extradition protests peaked last year, the media spotlight was firmly trained on young protesters. In reality, the protest movement — now struggling under the shadow of Beijing's newly-imposed national security law — has been diverse in terms of class, age, gender, sexual orientation and ethnic composition.
Women’s participation provided some of the most striking moments of the protests. In May 2019, before the million-strong  protest on June 9, an anonymous woman launched a joint signature campaign against the China extradition bill using the identity “housewife”.
Within a few days, she had collected more than 3,700 signatures.
The open letter said:
師奶每日都好盡力去完成照顧家庭的工作，但唔代表我地唔關心社會。無論幾疲憊，作為社會一份子，我地有責任出黎反送中。 …我地知道內地啲師奶，唔見左律師老公好耐好耐，千里尋夫不果，審訊無得睇，係監獄都不能探。我地知道內地師奶，不能公開拜祭川震死難女兒，揭豆腐渣尋冤未雪被封殺。我地知道內地啲師奶，為左假疫苗問題被監控，有冤不能訴。我地知道內地師奶，為強拆被非法拘禁。除左敬佩和支持這些師奶外，我地盡量唔想成為下一個。
As housewives, we have to take care of the household everyday, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t care about society. No matter how tired we are, we bare the responsibility to stand up against the anti-China extradition bill… We know about the conditions of housewives in China. Their lawyer husbands could suddenly vanish and they have to keep looking for them. They cannot even attend court hearings nor visit them in jail. We know that they were unable to publicly mourn their kids who died in the Sichuan earthquake (2008) and could not talk about the Tofu dreg construction problem. We know that they are forbidden to address the fake vaccine problem and they are arrested for standing up against forced evictions and land seizures. While we respect and support these housewives, we don’t want to become the next ones.
On June 12, “Big sister Shing”, a 47-year-old housewife with two kids, left a deep impression on Hongkongers.
As riot police fired tear gas to disperse protesters gathered outside the Legislative Council (Legco) building, she walked into the eye of the storm without a mask in order to persuade police to stop firing at the young protesters.
On that very day, the police labelled the protests as riots. Chief Executive Carrie Lam, also a mother, justified police use of tear gas and rubber bullets by adapting a proverb from a Chinese classic. In the original Three Character Classic, a line says: “to feed the son without teaching [with the rod] is the father’s fault.” Lam tweaked the proverb (養不教 父之過) and made it “mother’s fault”.
The photo of “Big sister Shing” walking into tear gas went viral on the Internet and created a sharp contrast to Carrie Lam's comment.
That night, nine women (including this author) launched an online signature campaign “A response to the Chief Executive’s ‘motherhood’ comment by a group of HK mothers.” In less than 24 hours, more than 30,000 mothers signed the open letter.
Two days later, the same group of mothers organized a peaceful gathering at Chater Garden. About 6,000 mothers attended.
Thousands of mothers gathered at Chater Garden on June 14. Image from The Stand News.
This is the first time in Hong Kong protest history that self-identifying “mothers” mobilized en masse. Lam, 63, is fond of reminding the public that she is a mother with two children.
On July 17, thousands of “grey hairs” attended another protest. Their envoy to the press was Yeung Bohei, a first generation female student activist with four decades of experience as an activist.
The participation of young women on the protest front lines has challenged the stereotype image of the materialistic and “princess-like” Hong Kong girl.
As early as June 12, netizens on LIGHK forum, a portal dominated by misogynistic sentiment, said that they were shocked by the fact that so many young females had protested on the frontlines.
While many male netizens dissuaded female protesters from joining the protests, citing stereotypical reasoning such as lack of physical strength and risk of sexual abuse, women continued to demonstrate.
According to figures released by the police, about eight percent of those arrested in June 2019 were female. From July 2019 through March 2020, those figures had risen between 20 and 30 percent.
The majority of the female protesters identify as “Hongkongers” rather than as women when they are out on the streets. They do not blame male protesters for gender stereotyping, and tend to regard their comments as expressions of concern over their security. Regardless of social media calls for “frontline brothers, backup sisters” (前線巴，後勤絲), female activists continued to be present on the frontlines throughout the year-long protests.
Women have been active in Hong Kong's civic movement since the Second World War in Hong Kong.
From the 1950s, they campaigned against sexual violence. In the 1960s, women organizations and unions fought for equal pay and paid maternity leave. From the 1980s, women organizations joined the democracy movement for direct elections and universal suffrage.
In recent years Beijing has extended its interventions into the education sector. In 2012, parents and especially women parents joined the campaign against the introduction of National Education into elementary education. In this sense, women’s participation in the anti-China extradition protests continues a well-established legacy.
The leaderless nature of the protests has generated space for women to take up various prominent roles and break free of gender stereotypes.
Yet, gender violence still prevails during the protests. Female protesters were targets of verbal abuse based on body shape and facial complexion. Noted female activists are often targets of cyber-bullying. Most disturbing of all is the surge of claims that some protesters were sexually assaulted by police during protest crackdowns, or when detained inside police stations.
The COVID-19 pandemic and deepening crackdown on civil society in line with the new security law makes large scale mobilizations of the one million and two million-strong types unlikely in the near future. But the protests have increasingly taken root in everyday life struggles, including the setting up of new labour unions and the so-called “yellow economy” tactic, which sees pro-protest consumers give support to pro-protest businesses and boycott businesses that support the establishment.
If anything, women will be more proactive than men in these domains, since women — most of whom are highly educated and actively involved in the labour market — tend to be the main decision-makers regarding household consumption.

author: The Stand News


text:
Sudan uprising: Nertati sit-in, the new wave · Global Voices
Khattab Hamad

Thousands of protesters gather at a sit-in in Nertati, Central Darfur, Sudan, to make demands for peace and security in the region, July 3, 2020. Screenshot from a report by Sudan YouTube.
As the world continues to combat the coronavirus pandemic, citizens in the Nertati region of central Darfur, Sudan, are rising up to demand security and peace.
On June 28, citizens gathered for a sit-in that continues today with several key demands: An end to armed militia attacks on civilians, disarmament, the arrest of perpetrators and agricultural protection during the harvest season.
About 3,000 citizens have gathered in front of the army garrison in Nertati, with support from neighboring villages and towns. Resistance committees from the town of Nyala, southern Darfur, marched together to Nertati to support protesters at the sit-in.
Since at least 2003, the region has been known for war and armed conflict, having suffered from major insecurities after years of war between rebel groups and the government-supported Janjaweed, armed Arab groups supported by then-ruler Omar al-Bashir. The war in Darfur claimed the lives of over 300,000 people and displaced at least 2.7 million people, in what several human rights groups described as genocide.
When Bashir fell from power in April 2019 after a series of revolutionary uprisings and protests that led to his ouster, a governmental civilian-military power share was established. Their plans to resume peace talks have faltered in Darfur, and until now, insecurity in the region continues with intercommunal, ethnic violence between Arab and non-Arab groups.
The sit-in has received a wide popular and official response, as Sudanese activists have created hashtag #كلنا_نيرتتي, which means “We are all Nertati.”
Netizen Alaa Alhadari tweeted:
لن تنتهي الثورة الا بتحقيق جميع مطالبها مومب نيالا يصل الي نيرتتي لدعم الاعتصام وتحقيق جميع المطالب#السلام_اولاً#اعتصام_نيرتتـي pic.twitter.com/wLMn31V7Ok
— آلاء? (@Alaa__Alhadari) July 3, 2020
The revolution will not end, unless all its demands are fulfilled. The Nyala march arrives to Nertati to support the sit-in and fulfill all the demands.
The people of Nertati annually face the threat of armed robbery of agricultural crops and the killing of civilians by armed militias. People also suffer from intercommunal violence due to the widespread availability of firearms in Darfur, despite the government's efforts to disarm civilians.
In October 2019, two underage girls were raped near Nertati by militiamen.
In January 2017, Janjaweed militia killed 10 people and injured at least 60 in a retaliatory attack due to the death of a militia member in Nertati.
These are just some of the more recent examples of why citizens in the Nertati region have decided to hold a sit-in.
Many Sudanese netizens on Facebook added a cover to their profile pictures to show their support for the sit-in.
The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) issued a statement published on Twitter announcing its full support for the sit-in and its demands. The SPA described the Nertati sit-in as “a new stream that flows into the course of the Sudanese people's battle.” It speaks to the proven power of peaceful protest to access human rights and also speaks to the urgent need to stop the war and end policies of marginalization, human rights violations and the chaos of an illicit arms trade.
This netizen shared photos of protesters holding signs against the proliferation of weapons in Darfur:
#اعتصام_نيرتتـي
No justice no peace ✌?? pic.twitter.com/OfK055YJZN
— يا خرطوم جوطي جوطي ??✨ Y.V (@LastVeteranH) July 2, 2020
Over the last week, several photos circulated on Twitter of the large crowds gathered with their demands made clear:
More than 3,000 citizens enter their fourth day as they sit in Nerti Central Darfur, and in front of the army garrison demanding an end to the continuous violations achieving peace, the return of the displaced, and retribution for the martyrs.#كلنا_نيرتتي pic.twitter.com/ucMnhSSRRh
— H A M Z A-ود عــائــشــۃ (@osman_hmza) July 1, 2020
The sit-in received support from several high-profile government officials, such as Sudan's Prime Minister Dr. Abdalla Hamdok, who wrote on Twitter:
مطالب أهلنا في نيرتتي بولاية وسط دارفور هي مطالب عادلة ومستحقة، لقد وجهت وفداً حكومياً بزيارة ولقاء المعتصمين للعمل على تحقيق مطالبهم لضمان أمن وإستقرار المنطقة، ننحني تقديراً وإحتراماً للشكل الحضاري للإعتصام والتعبير السلمي المستمر، حفظ الله السودان وشعب السودان. #اعتصام_نيرتتـي
— Abdalla Hamdok (@SudanPMHamdok) July 3, 2020
The demands of our people in Nertati, in the state of Central Darfur, are just and deserving demands. I sent a government delegation to visit and meet the protesters to work to achieve their demands to ensure the security and stability of the region. We bow in appreciation and respect for the civilized form of the sit-in and continuous peaceful expression, may God preserve Sudan and the people of Sudan.
Since 2019, Sudan’s transitional government has been working hard to make peace and manifest social justice. This is a chance for them to prove their seriousness in achieving these goals.
Before the Sudanese revolution, citizens were not allowed to talk critically about the government, let alone protest vocally against them. Today's sit-in at Nertati is a sign of a new, bright Sudan where citizens finally have the right to freely express their concerns and calls for justice.

author: Khattab Hamad


text:
Vietnamese authorities arrest four land rights activists · Global Voices
Loa

L to R: Trịnh Bá Tư, Trịnh Bá Phương, Cấn Thị Thêu. They were arrested by the police on 24 June and later charged for “conducting propaganda against the state.” Source: Facebook – Viet Tan
This article was originally published on Loa, a news website and podcast on Vietnamese news by Viet Tan. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
In the early morning of June 24, land rights activist Trịnh Bá Phương narrated his impending arrest in a video posted to Facebook.
Both uniformed and plainclothes police are surrounding my house. It is 5:30 am. I think they are going to arrest me today.
He continued:
As I have said in my will, I have no intention of committing suicide if I am arrested. I am very healthy at the moment, without any signs of illness. If I die in a police station or detention center, it is because the police killed me.
Security police forcibly broke into Phương's property and arrested him shortly after. The same day, authorities arrested his mother, Cấn Thị Thêu, his brother, Trịnh Bá Tư, and another activist, Nguyễn Thị Tâm. All four activists were outspoken about the clash in Đồng Tâm in January, when security police raided the home of an elder village leader and killed him. Phương had met with diplomats of the US embassy in February to discuss what had happened in Đồng Tâm.
State media reported that Phương's Facebook account had “attracted more than 50,000 followers” and claimed it had “carried distorted information” about the clash in Đồng Tâm. His Facebook account has since been shut down.
On Monday, June 29, attorney Đặng Đình Mạnh went to the Investigation Security Agency in Hà Nội to conduct procedures for Trịnh Bá Phương's defense. He brought back reports that all four activists are being charged under Article 117 of the penal code, for “conducting propaganda against the state.” People charged under Article 117 face up to 20 years in prison.
Trịnh Bá Phương’s wife had given birth to their second child just four days prior to his arrest. In the video posted on Facebook, he briefly turned the camera to his newborn child, who was sleeping.
Citizen journalist Nguyễn Anh Tuấn shares on Facebook that he had spoken with Phương at the end of May and that Phương had predicted that something bad would soon happen to him, but didn’t want to go anywhere because he wanted to be with his wife and children when they needed him most.
The Vietnamese government also arrested two other activists on June 24 because of Facebook posts critiquing the state. This series of arrests come just weeks after the arrests of three journalists in what human rights groups are calling a crackdown on activists ahead of the 13th National Party Congress.
Human Rights Watch reported at the end of last year that Vietnam had more than 130 political prisoners. Other NGOs, such as Defend the Defenders, recently placed that number at almost 250 political prisoners. Among those detained are land rights petitioners who are fighting to protect their land from seizure by the authorities.
Listen and watch to Loa's reporting about the arrest:

author: Loa


text:
‘African art has nourished all civilizations’: A Conversation with Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi · Global Voices
Omid Memarian

Rachid Koraichi solo exhibition, 2016. Credit: Aicon Gallery
Paris-based Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi, 73, is known around the world for his use of numbers, letters, mystical symbols and signs in his artworks. He is also an outspoken critic of the challenges people regularly face in the Middle East and North Africa, from racism to immigration to poverty.
“We cannot sit still and work in a bubble without thinking about our environment and what surrounds us,” said Koraichi in an interview with Global Voices. “There is still enormous suffering in many countries.”
In 2019, in response to devastating waves of migrants losing their lives in search of a better life, he created a cemetery in Tunisia called “Jardin d’Afrique” (“Garden of Africa”), to serve “as a burial site and memorial for migrants who have died in the Mediterranean Sea.” Dozens of drowning victims have already been buried in the cemetery.
Koraichi’s worldview is heavily influenced by Sufism, poetry, philosophy and Quranic verses, and his works have been exhibited throughout the world for decades, from solo exhibitions in New York to art fairs such as Frieze and the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.
Rachid Koraichi, from the series A Nation In Exile.
A painter, sculptor and calligrapher, Koraichi's work incorporates poems and quotes from Sufi mystics such as Rumi and Al-Arabi and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and creates a mysterious and moving universe that offers the audience the chance to enjoy its beauty, regardless of the riddle the words may, for many, pose.
I express my appreciation to Dheeya Somaiya of Aicon Art for making this interview possible. Excerpts from the interview follow:
I have realized the dream of my own mother. My mother drew a lot, even as a young girl. She received France's grand prize for drawing (at that time Algeria was a French colony). I have evolved in this direction, often under her gaze. When I was working, she would stand behind me and see where I was at, how things were going, how the canvas was developing and so on. For me, it was this sense of my mother looking over my shoulder that was very important.
It was really a continuation of what she would have liked to do in her youth and perhaps in her adult life, something she could not achieve for many reasons. She had to stop her studies after she got married. She had a lot of children, which actually meant she was not able to do what she wanted to do.
When I picture my mother, I always see her cooking for the whole family, then she moves and stands behind me, looking at a painting I have been working on for a few days, all without saying a word. She leaves and, from time to time, she comes back again. I still feel her eyes on my back, without realizing it; the tenderness, the affection and the desire for her son to make art.
Rachid Koraichi, Madrid, 2018. Credit: Aicon Gallery.
RK: The bond and connection with Mahmoud Darwish goes back several decades. Certainly, Mahmoud Darwish is a significant poet of the Palestinian cause, which has also proved to be a great cause for people across the Arab world, the Islamic world, and people in all countries who seek peace and true decolonization, because today the history of Palestine poses questions for all of us about its past, its present and certainly its future.
When Mahmoud Darwish died, a three-day period of national mourning was announced—which is rare in a state that barely exists as a defined territory, especially for a poet. This speaks to his profound importance.
Mahmoud left Beirut and settled in Tunisia where he was allocated a house in Sidi Bou Said. That's where I had a workshop. This house belonged to my friend, the painter Ali Belaada. He was an artist and a great man. We were neighbors. Mahmoud liked to cook but I did not, so that was the beginning of what became a strong bond. We saw each other every day, we spent the afternoons and evenings together, and then one day I said to him: “Listen Mahmoud, as long as you're here, as long as I'm here, let’s create as much as we can together, take things forward, reflect on them.”
What interests me in Mahmoud Darwish is his writing: the moment, the story, the pulse that triggered the writing of the poetic text. It was not about illustration—I'm not an illustrator, I'm a visual artist.
I also connected with Mahmoud Darwish over Jalaluddin Rumi who was the spiritual father of Dariush. There was work around his spirituality related to dance and music, and this in particular countered the Islamists who forbade radio, television, music, dance and the arts. Rumi is a great Islamic mystic, who anchored his philosophy and thought. Dance as an element is a fundamental axis of his philosophy and mysticism.
Rachid Koraïchi, Three Banners Installation. Credit: Aicon Gallery
RK: We cannot sit still and work in a bubble without thinking about our environment and what surrounds us. There is still enormous suffering in many countries.
Look at the experience of independence: unfortunately almost all countries that revolted against Western colonization found themselves under the dictator's boot in their own country.
It is serious. Before, we had a clear cause for which we struggled. Many were even willing to die for it. But today, we see our leaders plunder their countries and their people. We cannot sit idly by and accept this. Look at Algeria: after seven years of horrific wars, we wanted a level of existence that they did not give us. Our leaders continued to behave almost like dictators, torturers, occupiers. Maybe things will change; the world has changed and we hope things will be different.
Today we see clearly the acts of racism that are still happening in North America, we see very well acts of racism from one tribe to another in Africa, and how one tribal leader raises his population against their neighbors. Today, in many countries, we live as if we had learned nothing from the history of our continent.
We artists are questioned, we are obliged by our conscience, to take a stand, it is impossible to remain inactive and do nothing.
Rachid Koraichi onstallation. Credit: Aicon Gallery.
RK: I think that numbers chart the paths of our existence. From conception to birth, to life, to the beginning of life: this is a journey that is peculiar to us. The Arabs have invented quite a few things, including the famous Arabic numerals with which we work, the talismans and the elements found in the architecture of texts or talismans have always been the basis of pattern structure of drawings and paintings. It is this form of magic that is not black magic or simply magic, it is really an algebraic, mathematical, philosophical and also mystical reflection that comes from the mystery, the mystery of writing, the mystery of the figure.
I have always been interested in the writing of letters, the writing of words, in composition that becomes almost minimalist. It may be a form of cannibalism: of all that the eye sees, the things on which the gaze arises. After all, there is the evolution and reflection that the brain makes and that also our sensitivity and our way of digesting and seeing what all that can give and how to pass it to the other.
African art has nourished all civilizations, all cultures. Artists like Picasso, Matisse and many others drew heavily and deeply into African art. Because this land is generous, it is fertile, it is truly great. Really we owe a vote of thanks to this wonderful continent that allows us not only to exist but also to give lessons, even if some people want to push us into the corner as we are sitting at the back of the class. We are not sitting in the last row of the class. We are the first in the class, except we saw our cultures looted, and we fade from time to time. Unfortunately, in our continent we let others really loot us quietly and at all levels.
Rachid Koraichi. From the series Salome. Credit: Aicon Gallery.
RK: I think that all humans can decode aesthetic and beautiful things. When I see myself in the exhibitions on the Mayans and the Incas, the Egyptians, African art and others, the audiences are mixed. An object has a value and life, it’s loaded and it’s not just a matter of aesthetic beauty.
People all come with their life stories, with their formations, their cultures, their backgrounds, and try to apprehend things. Maybe we do not all apprehend them in the same way, but I believe that every human has a certain sensitivity and uses it.
I think about the history of art in passing time, that makes a work continue to exist or disappear on its own. It goes back to the time of Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or others who came before them and even the people of prehistory, when they drew on the cave walls, they did not think for a moment that it would last centuries or millennia.
People did things for the sake of beauty, but it was also a time when they were in a desert or were in a cave, and they wanted a playful way of painting on the walls. Even today, you will see children pick up pens and draw on the wall or table of the house.

author: Omid Memarian


text:
As the health system buckles from COVID-19 pressure, Bolivians turn to herbal medicine · Global Voices
Fabiola Gutiérrez

A herb stall at the La Ramada market in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Photo taken by the author of this article.
In Bolivia, people are protecting themselves against COVID-19 and the pandemic of disinformation with what they have on hand. Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, social networking sites and the media have been flooded with articles promoting the potentially miraculous healing properties of certain plants.
As of 29 June, Bolivia had recorded 31,524 official cases and 1,014 deaths. The country's health system has collapsed and the peak of the crisis is yet to come. Bolivia now finds itself in a “dynamic and conditioned quarantine” with regional authorities responsible for deciding when and how to restart activities or lockdowns depending on the level of contagion.
“The hospitals are full. We need to find a way to prevent the spread of this disease,” a local convenience store owner, who takes homemade syrups every day, told the national newspaper El Deber. Meanwhile for the indigenous people living on ancestral lands, Bolivia's poorest and most vulnerable population, herbal medicine is their only option.
Before the pandemic, Bolivians tended to use natural remedies alongside conventional medicine. The remedies are spread by word of mouth and are made by the users themselves according to a 2006 investigation by NGO PIEB, entitled “Mentisán, paracetamol or wira wira? Health and interculturality in the neighbourhoods of Potosí“. The title refers to a popular method used for treating a cold, which includes industrialised products such as paracetamol, along with common knowledge of herbs, such as flowers from the wira wira shrub and the popular menthol ointment Mentisán.
This report also mentions the phenomenon of self-care or home care and how this is related to the users’ economic status. 61% of Bolivians live in multidimensional poverty. Bolivia also has the largest informal economy in the world, which comprises 62.3% of its GDP. Also, many Bolivians experience discrimination in the healthcare system on the basis of their clothing, occupation, appearance or type of illness, which is another reason for self-care. Overall, 1,720 cases of discrimination and/or racism were reported in just 10 years.
A herb stall in the La Ramada market in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, before the pandemic. Photo taken by the author of this article.
Demand for these remedies has soared during the current health crisis. The most sought-after herbal medicines are those associated with curing respiratory diseases and boosting the immune system. At the top of the list of most-wanted items are eucalyptus leaves, followed by chamomile, wira wira, bee honey, ginger, matico leaves (an evergreen shrub) and propolis (a resin-like material made by bees). “Eucalyptus is used for coughs and colds. You can use it to make a herbal infusion or boil it and inhale the steam to improve your symptoms,” a traditional medicine vendor explained to the Bolivian news site Urgentebo.
There's an abundance of information available on these medicines: from serious recipes such as “Remedies from the Mountain,” a handbook on ancestral medicine published by Amazonian indigenous people, to viral posts on social media and WhatsApp chats that contain treatments using conventional and herbal medicines.
Before the crisis, these natural remedies were already widely sold at fixed and mobile market stalls. However, vendors are now selling them in the streets and outside supermarkets. By searching for eucalyptus in Facebook's Marketplace section, with Santa Cruz de la Sierra as the location, 51 offerings appear in the search results. The majority of these were posted in June and include branches, oils, steam kits, homemade syrups, pills and seedlings.
Although eucalyptus prices are still relatively low, the cost has risen recently. As a result, the mayor of the small town of Quime, Javier Flores, took eucalyptus branches to the Bolivian capital of La Paz where he recommended their use as a disinfectant and distributed them for free in a shopping district of the city.
The low prices vary between US $0.70 and $14.28 depending on its appearance and on the quantity bought. Bolivians have shared memes online that compare eucalyptus prices with the costs of coronavirus tests in private health centres, which range from US $40 to $200.
Y limon ?
Posted by MundoCuriosorz on Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Meme elaborado en base a una escena de Will Smith en la película “En busca de la felicidad”.
Meme based on a scene from the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”, staring Will Smith.
– How much does a coronavirus test cost?
– 1,000 bolivianos
– Give me eucalyptus leaves worth two Bolivian pesos please
In 2009, the Bolivian government established the Vice-Ministry of Traditional Medicine and Interculturality and then ordered the creation of similar bodies for the country's departmental and municipal governments. In 2013, Law No. 459 on Traditional Bolivian Ancestral Medicine was enacted.
In April 2020, the Vice-Ministry of Traditional Medicine and Interculturality installed “disinfection booths” in the cities of La Paz and El Alto. These booths are individual cubicles in which a person is sprayed with eucalyptus, chamomile and wira wira vapours for between 3 to 5 seconds.
“The virus has a small capsid that we can weaken with these medicinal plants. The steam penetrates the body's pores, protecting it from harmful microorganisms and bacteria. It's preventive, as we don't have a cure available,” explained the Deputy Minister of Traditional Medicine, Felipe Quilla, to AFP.
Although these disinfection booths were well received by users and became the subject of international headlines, they have also been called into question by researchers. “These chambers don’t make any sense, because plants and their vapours are not disinfectants,” said Róger Carvajal, a natural products researcher at the Institute of Laboratory Services for Diagnosis and Health Research at Bolivia's Higher University of San Andrés, to the newspaper Página Siete. The so-called “disinfodemic” around natural medicine has now become widespread.
Furthermore, this “disinfection property” of plants has been mentioned by government bodies, such as the ministries of communication and health, and the newspaper Bolivia, the latter of which quoted research findings that were subsequently disproven.
Elsewhere, mechatronics students from Bolivia's Military Engineering School designed military masks that feature interchangeable filters infused with eucalyptus essence. AFP Factual has since refuted the positive effect of the eucalyptus aroma in these masks.
The WHO says that traditional medicine can be used as comfort and reassurance for people, but clarifies that it does not provide any proven prevention or cure for COVID-19. However, in a country where more than half of the population does not have access to any type of health coverage, and where the Unified Health System is overwhelmed and lacks staff and supplies, it’s no wonder that faith rests on infusions of eucalyptus, chamomile and wira wira.

author: Fabiola Gutiérrez


text:
Authorities in Republika Srpska accused of burying genocide memories in tourism bid · Global Voices
Mirza Hota

Screenshot of the web page of Tourist organization of Municipality of Višegrad promoting the Vilina Vlas Hotel, a former rape camp and site of other war crimes, as a top accommodation option.
The Vilina Vlas just outside of Višegrad in eastern Bosnia is no ordinary hotel, but you would not know that from the way the Republika Srpska tourism authorities are promoting stays there.
Search for the hotel and spa complex on TripAdvisor and you will find the following notice:
Due to a recent event that has attracted media attention and has caused an influx of review submissions that do not describe a first-hand experience, we have temporarily suspended publishing new reviews for this listing.
The message is likely a reference to an online backlash from Bosniaks after the authorities in Republika Srpska, a Serb-dominated federal entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, began promoting the hotel as part of a subsidized tourism scheme last month.
But the actual events that make the Vilina Vlas so notorious occurred during the Bosnian War (1992-1995), when the hotel played host to horrendous war crimes perpetrated against Bosniaks and Bosniak women in particular.
No, this is not #TheHandmaidsTale, this is real: The Bosnian Serb Tourism Agency recommends Vilina Vlas – a spa resort/rape camp where women and girls from Višegrad were raped until they got pregnant, many have been killed, just a few have survived. In 1992, in Europe! #genocide https://t.co/H1htnUGclw
— Alma (@Mustafic30) June 30, 2020
Quoted tweet  by @VisitSrpska: If your choice for this year is to visit Višegrad Spa Complex, the Vilina Vlas Hotel enables use of the tourist vouchers for the quests from Republika Srpska, subsidizing part of the expenses for hotel accommodation…
Back in 1991, when Yugoslavia began to splinter, ethnic Bosniaks made up more than half the population of the Višegrad municipality. Pogroms targeting Bosniaks and outmigration have seen those demographics shift drastically — Bosniak returnees now compose less than 10% of the municipality's population.
The town saw some of the worst genocidal atrocities committed against Bosniaks during the war, including two live pyres just two weeks apart in June 1992, which killed a combined total of 123 Bosniak civillians.
These atrocities were carried out by cousins Milan and Sredoje Lukić. Both men were convicted of war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2009.
Vilina Vlas was one of the most infamous of the Serb-controlled rape and detention camps during the Bosnian genocide. Hundreds of Bosniak women were kept as slaves there and sexually assaulted on a daily basis by Serb soldiers, as well as Serb and Russian paramilitaries.
That Vilina Vlas remains a fully functioning resort welcoming tourists every year is bad enough for many who know what took place there.
But the special effort made by Republika Srpska tourism board  to promote the hotel on Twitter and Instagram in the last week of June sparked outrage among Bosniaks. On Twitter, many used the term “genocidal tourism” (genocidni turizam).
Sign this petition to get google remove this rape camp being marketed as tourist destination, from their websites.@Google Google: Remove Vilina Vlas hotel (as a tourist site) from Google search and Google Maps. – Sign the Petition! https://t.co/j2MY4XnXVX via @Change
— Haris Alisic (@HarisAlisic) July 3, 2020
Such whitewashing is not new in Višegrad. Local tourism authorities love to promote the town's old Ottoman bridge — a gem of Ottoman era architecture.
Yet foreign tourists rarely learn during visits to the town that the bridge was a site where the town's Bosniak Muslims were slaughtered en masse.
Nor do they learn that the town's mosques, which were built during the same era, were all destroyed during the Serb-nationalist onslaught.
On some occasions, genocide denial has taken a more active form. In January 2014, Republika Srpska authorities forcefully removed the word “genocide” from a memorial stone in Višegrad's Bosniak Stražište cemetery. As well as trying to demolish one of the houses where people were burned alive in June 1992. Rebuilt by returnees, it now serves as memorial.
The extreme violence and depravity witnessed in Višegrad and all along the Drina Valley, as well as in towns and hamlets in northwest Bosnia and Herzegovina during those years were all part of the genocidal policies implemented by the Army of Republika Srpska and various paramilitary groups under command of General Ratko Mladić, a convicted war criminal.
Their success in was partly due to the fact that international attentions were trained on the siege of Sarajevo.
Detainees of Trnopolje Concentration Camp near Prijedor, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992. Photograph provided courtesy of the ICTY via Wikipedia.
Writing in 1996 war correspondent Ed Vulliamy recalled encountering Nikola Koljević, a one-time close associate of convicted war criminal Radovan Karadžić in a hotel lobby in Belgrade in 1992.
Koljević taunted the journalist over it taking him and his colleagues so long to discover a network of Serb-run concentration camps in the region —  Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm.
So you found them! Congratulations!  It took you a long time to find them, didn’t it? Three months! And so near to Venice! All you people could think about was poor, sophisticated Sarajevo. Ha-ha!
Emir Kusturica, an internationally acclaimed Serbian filmmaker, who after the breakup of Yugoslavia also started several tourist businesses, has also found a home in post-genocide Višegrad.
Main entrance of Andrićgrad. Photo by Wikipedia user UkiUros, CC BY-SA 3.0.
In 2011 he started a project called Andrićgrad (Andrić Town) named after the Yugoslav writer and Nobel Prize laureate Ivo Andrić, whose historical novel The Bridge on the Drina is centered on the old Ottoman bridge in Višegrad. The complex, also known as Kamengrad (Stone Town) is modelled on a medieval fort.
The Andrićgrad complex was also built on the site of a former sports center that was used as a detention camp for Bosniak civilians during the genocide ten years before.
Kusturica's fervent advocacy of Serbian nationalism is not been well known outside of the region of former Yugoslavia.
For those acquainted with his political activities, however, it will not surprising that he would make a home in a place where new and old Serb-nationalist mythology come together.
In 2012, the Constitutional Court of Montenegro threw out of court the filmmaker's defamation lawsuit against Montenegrin writer Andrej Nikolaidis. Kusturica had sued Nikolaidis for pointing out in 2004 that Kusturica's post-war films were either funded by the Milošević state apparatus or the post-Milošević Serbian state with a single goal in mind: To advance the Serb-nationalist narrative.
In post-genocide Višegrad, Kusturica found a place to set this narrative in stone.

author: Mirza Hota


text:
Russian journalist avoids jail term for ‘justifying terrorism’ – and fears a new assault on press freedoms · Global Voices
Maxim Edwards

Journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva leaves a courthouse in Pskov, July 6. Photo (c): Nikolai Nelyubin. Used with permission.
When journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva left a courtroom in Pskov on July 6, her supporters gathered outside were relieved. They had expected to bid her farewell before a six year prison sentence, as demanded by the prosecutor. Instead, Prokopyeva walked free — though had to pay a fine of 500,000 rubles (about US$7,000) and surrender her computer and mobile phone. The verdict of “justifying terrorism” remained in force against the freelancer, who works extensively with the local branch of Radio Svoboda.
Such pleasant surprises are few and far between. In Russia, prosecutors usually get their way, particularly when it comes to cases of any political sensitivity — and Prokopyeva's was one of the most sensitive and most controversial of recent years. In 2018, the 17-year-old anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky blew himself up in the lobby of the Archangelsk branch of the FSB, Russia's domestic security service. Three servicemen were injured. In response, Prokopyeva wrote an article which noted Zhlobitsky's anger at repression and torture cases in Russia and situated the attack in a context of shrinking political freedoms. The Russian authorities took it as evidence of Prokopyeva's supposed support for Zhlobitsky's actions, and charged her under Article 205.5 of the country's criminal code.
Investigators raided Prokopyeva's home and added her to an official list of “terrorists and extremists.” The offending article was blocked at the request of Roskomnadzor, Russia's state communications watchdog. Prokopyeva argued, and still argues, that the prosecution has never provided sufficient evidence of what exactly constitutes the “justification of terrorism” in her work.
Over the following months, Russian journalists and international human rights organisations rallied to Prokopyeva's cause. Shortly before the final verdict, editors of dozens of Russian independent publications warned that her case could set a chilling precedent for their work. Journalists who protested in support of her on July 4 were themselves detained:
А long night. At least a dozen of journalists in Moscow who protested against the prosecutor's request for a six-year prison sentence for Svetlana #Prokopyeva are still in detention. Those who have been released risk of a fine up to €4,000. pic.twitter.com/8pSWsZIb0q
— Andrei Jvirblis (@jvirb) July 3, 2020
In a July 7 interview, Prokopyeva credited this surge of public interest in her case with the outcome in court:
Ну, в головы судьям не залезешь, что на самом деле они думали и почему решили не сажать. На самом деле, именно запрошенный реальный срок и привел в Псков десятки федеральных СМИ. Я, когда вышла из суда, просто оторопела, увидев, сколько людей собралось перед входом – ну и представьте, если бы пришла новость о лишении свободы. Понятно, что судьям волна возмущения не нужна. Но возможно что суд и сразу не настраивался на удовлетворение прокурорской жажды крови – потому что вообще-то, по здравому размышлению, это нонсенс: взять обычного человека, журналиста, который никому никакого зла не сделал, и бросить за решетку. Да, в приговоре написано, что вина моя доказана, но при этом же судьи видели диаметрально противоположные выводы экспертов, слышали специалистов, которые уверенно доказывали мою невиновность. Плюс видели реакцию общества и журналистского цеха – она тоже говорит о том, что никто, кроме обвинения, никакого оправдания терроризма в моем тексте не видит. Это уже повод разжать челюсти и хотя бы, если не оправдать, то отказаться от нарочитой жестокости.
It's impossible to get inside a judge's head and figure out why they decided not to imprison me. In fact, it was precisely [the threat of] a prison sentence which brought journalists from dozens of federal media outlets to Pskov. I saw them gathering before the front doors. It's clear that the judges didn't need a new wave of public indignation. It might turn out that there is something wrong, something not right at all, about not having any doubts about all this: taking an ordinary person, a journalist, who hasn't wronged anyone and putting them in jail. Yes, the verdict says that my guilt has been demonstrated, but at the same time the judges saw diametrically opposed conclusions from experts and the opinions of experts who convincingly proved my innocence. Moreover, they witnessed the reaction of journalists and society at large: that shows that nobody apart from the prosecution sees any “justification of terrorism” in my text. This is an opportunity for them to loosen the screws and at least, if not offer justice, then abandon such brazen cruelty.
Nevertheless, many Russian public figures have suggested that a celebration is premature until and unless the verdict is overturned. This is the key distinction between Prokopyeva's case and the prominent campaign to release Meduza reporter Ivan Golunov, against whom the Russian authorities dropped their criminal case last June.
Lev Shlosberg, a prominent journalist and head of the regional branch of the opposition Yabloko party in the Pskov region, noted the following:
Для гражданского общества это не победа, но реальное достижение. Важно не успокоиться и не признать ненормальное нормой жизни.
— Лев Шлосберг (@LevShlosberg) July 6, 2020
The court's decision on Svetlana Prokopyeva's case represents a forced compromise within the police state. It cannot offer justice to a [wrongly] accused person, because that would bring down the foundations of the system, but it is forced to respond to public opinion. For civil society this is no victory, but is nonetheless a real achievement. The main thing is not to relax and to refuse to accept an abnormal state of affairs.
Even some government figures share this scepticism about the verdict. Russian State Ombudsman for Human Rights, Alexander Shishlov, wrote the following in a Facebook post:
Значение дела Светланы Прокопьевой выходит далеко за географические границы Псковской области. Солидарен с комиссией СПЧ по свободе информации и правам журналистов: попытки разобраться в причинах зарождения терроризма не делают людей соучастниками преступления. По абсурдному обвинению в “оправдании терроризма” Светлане Прокопьевой грозили лишение свободы и запрет на журналистскую деятельность. Приговор в виде штрафа не отменяет абсурдности обвинения и должен быть пересмотрен.
Svetlana Prokopyeva's case has significance far beyond the borders of Pskov Region. I stand in solidarity with the Human Rights Council's Committee on Freedom of Information and Journalists’ Rights: attempts to understand the causes of terrorism do not make people accomplices to the crime. Svetlana Facing absurd charges of “justifying terrorism”, Svetlana Prokopyeva was threatened with imprisonment and a ban on journalistic activities. The fine she received does not cancel out the absurdity of the charge, which should be reviewed.
Alexander Shishlov, Facebook, July 6
These are the reasons why Prokopyeva, who has not been banned from continuing to work as a journalist as the prosecution had hoped, told GlobalVoices that she plans to appeal the verdict as a matter of principle. Her story is not yet over.
But others have just begun.
Russia's human rights defenders are now warning of a new wave of arrests and criminal cases against the country's activists and independent journalists. This comes just after the authorities won a July 1 referendum on constitutional amendments which will permit Vladimir Putin to rule as president until 2036 — a referendum marred by credible accusations of wide-scale electoral fraud.
On July 7, the feminist activist Yulia Tsvetkova reported that a third criminal case had been launched against her (Tsvetkova is already accused of disseminating “pornography” and “LGBT propaganda” for publishing a series of body-positive drawings of female nudes). On July 8 Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Pussy Riot and the publisher of the independent news website MediaZona, was arrested yet again in Moscow.
МОЛНИЯ. Меня задержали после выхода с эфира Эха Москвы и везут на ШЕСТОЙ обыск. Работает СК.
— Пётр Верзилов (@gruppa_voina) July 8, 2020
Like lightning. They detained me after leaving the Ekho Moskvy offices and are carrying out a SIXTH search. The Investigative Committee is working hard.
Meanwhile, police searched the apartment of Taisa Bekbulatova, editor of the independent media platform Holod.Media. The raid on Bekbulatova's apartment was reportedly linked to her friendship with Ivan Safronov, arrested that same day, who is now at the heart of Russia's latest press freedom scandal.
Ivan Safronov, an adviser to the head of Roskosmos, now stands accused of high treason and of passing state secrets to a representative of a NATO member state. Safronov, who started work at the Russian space agency this May, is a former reporter on military issues for Vedomosti and Kommersant, two influential Russian business dailies. In June 2019, court proceedings were held over an article, later removed from Kommersant's website, which he had published concerning a military deal between Egypt and Russia. When Safronov was dismissed after refusing to reveal his source on a sensitive story, many of his colleagues resigned in protest.
Given the nature of the case, it is hard to discover many details about the accusations — given that they are made by the FSB, it will be even harder for Safronov to challenge them in court. He faces 20 years’ imprisonment if convicted.
There is much speculation as to whether the charges might concern Safronov's journalistic work. While Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed such suggestions, the space agency has officially stated that the case “does not concern [Safronov's] current work at Roskosmos.”
Kommersant has stood by its former employee, praising him as a “patriot” in an editorial statement. Meanwhile, journalists protested outside the Lubyanka building, headquarters of the FSB, in Moscow. Over 20 were detained.
Prokopyeva remarked that the Safronov case shows that Russian journalists will have many struggles ahead:
И это больной вопрос, как мы видим сейчас по задержанию Ивана Сафонова – еще одного журналиста, который делал свою работу и писал важные, общественно-значимые материалы. Я не знаю, что именно вменяет ему следствие, а на поверхности видно: журналист добыл информацию и опубликовал ее. Доступа к гостайне у него не было. Так как тогда он мог ее разгласить? И мое дело, и дело Сафонова, и история с Давидом Френкелем, которому полицейские сломали руку на избирательном участке – все это свидетельства того, что государство а) не уважает прессу как институт, б) до дрожи боится независимых мнений и неподцензурных СМИ. Мы, журналисты, должны защищать себя, потому что без свободы слова и свободы печати не будет вообще никакой свободы.
This is a sore point, as we're now witnessing with the detention of Ivan Safronov, another journalist who did his job and wrote important articles which were relevant for our society. I don't know what exactly the investigators have on him, but from the substance of it, it just seems as though a journalist received information and published it. He didn't have any access to state secrets. So how could he have divulged them? My case, Safronov's, and that of [MediaZona journalist[ David Frenkel, whose arm was broken by police while reporting from a polling station, all attest to the fact that the government a.) does not respect the press as an institution and b.) is shared witless of independent opinions and non-censored media. We journalists must defend ourselves, because without freedom of speech and freedom of the press there will be no freedom at all.
Russian journalist and historian Andrey Soldatov agrees; in a column for The Moscow Times on July 8, he warned that “Putin has entrusted the ‘journalist question’ to the security services.” He outlined the background to that bad omen in an earlier Facebook post:
Дело против Ивана Сафронова — это абсолютно новый уровень репрессий против журналистики в стране. До 2012 года было практически непредставимо обвинить журналиста в госизмене, поскольку журналисты по определению не имеют доступа к гостайне, и ФСБ приходилось очень ухищряться, чтобы привлечь журналистов по этой статье. Когда редакция статьи изменилась по просьбе ФСБ, стало понятно, что правила поменялись. Однако тогда бытовало мнение, что жертвами новой редакции статьи станут скорее эксперты, чем журналисты. Сегодня стало ясно, что это не так, и ФСБ дала нам это понять максимально публично. Я могу придумать лишь одно объяснение, почему это происходит — нам объясняют, какие еще важные для общества темы теперь закрыты для всех, кроме “тех, кому положено.”
The case against Ivan Safronov is a completely new level of repression against journalism in this country. Until 2012, it was almost inconceivable that a journalist would be accused of high treason since journalists, by definition, did not have access to state secrets. Hence the FSB had to be very careful in trying to sentence journalists on this article. But when editors changed an article at the request of the FSB, it was understood that the rules had changed too. At the time it was believed that the victims of the new change would be analysts rather than journalists. Today it became clear that this was not so and the FSB has signalled that as clearly as possible. I can come up with only one explanation of why this is happening: they are explaining to us that other topics which are important to society are now closed to everybody apart from “those who should know.”
- Andrei Soldatov, Facebook, July 7
In response to this multitude of new cases, the popular Russian caricaturist Sergey Elkin drew a cartoon of a journalist standing in a small chalk circle. He is hemmed in by the words “espionage,” “extremism,” “offending the authorities,” “justification of terrorism,” and other offences which have found their way into the country's criminal code in recent years.
Elkin's drawing is a good summary of the uneasy situation in which Russia's independent and critical journalists now find themselves. But in one sense it is too optimistic: Russian journalists rarely know where the line is until after they have crossed it.

author: Maxim Edwards


text:
Tech giants halt data requests as Hong Kong national security law casts long shadow · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Hong Kong police force warning citing national security law and its impact on internet freedom. Free image from pxhere.
The number of tech giants who say they will reject the Hong Kong government’s user requests following the recent enactment of the China-devised national security law (NSL) is growing.
The first tech company to announce its position was Telegram, a mobile messenger app that has been used heavily by Hong Kong protesters to discuss protest strategies and coordinate actions since June 2019.
After the Hong Kong Committee for Safeguarding National Security (CSNS) — a body created under the NSL —  released details of the implementation of the NSL on July 6, more internet corporations, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Zoom followed suit.
Video sharing app Tiktok meanwhile announced its plans to exit the Hong Kong market, without referring to the NSL in its statement.
Under Article 43 of the NSL, the national security police authorities are empowered to search private properties without a warrant, restrict suspects, freeze assets, intercept communications and instruct internet service providers (ISPs) and platform operators (POs) to remove and block access to content, as well as suspend user services.
If ISPs and POs fail to comply, the national security police can obtain a court warrant to seize the relevant electronic device, take action to remove content and request ISPs and POs to provide identification records or decryption assistance.
The power of national security police to compel local ISPs to block access to online content and suspend user services without judicial procedure could be viewed as legal grounds for a Hong Kong version of China's Great Firewall, which blocks users from accessing “illegal” content.
Prior to the meeting of CSNS, Telegram announced on July 5 that it would not process any data requests related to its Hong Kong users “until an international consensus is reached in relation to the ongoing political changes in the city.”
While Telegram has never processed data requests from the Hong Kong government in the past, its privacy terms state that the company “will cooperate with authorities over matters related to terrorism.”
The vague definition of terrorism in Hong Kong's NSL has compelled Telegram to make Hong Kong an exception, however.
The Hong Kong government's declaration this month that the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times” represents pro-Hong Kong independence and subversive speech is the latest in a long line of evidence that the NSL will be applied arbitrarily to crack down on freedom of expression.
Even more alarmingly, eight people were arrested this week merely for displaying blank sheets of paper — a silent protest that police stated was potentially in breach of the NSL:
Now, HK police will arrest HKers for subversion, simply holding blank papers in a mall to protest (Stand News photos)
The warning in english on the purple flag (RTHK photo)
The regime will arrest HKers and makeup the reason for prosecute, NSL is the tool for that pic.twitter.com/hop9gfeyxt
— Patrick (@PatrickinHK) July 7, 2020
While they released statements only later, Google and Twitter both told journalists that they had stopped processing user data requests as early as July 1, when the NSL was officially enacted in Hong Kong.
Facebook waited until July 6 to make the same move.
Google, Twitter and Facebook have been banned in China for many years. But both Facebook and Google have offices in Hong Kong. Facebook’s mobile messaging app WhatsApp is the most popular communication tool in the city.
Microsoft’s LinkedIn said on July 7 that the platform had paused processing requests from Hong Kong while reviewing the NSL.
LinkedIn has established a joint venture in mainland China for its Chinese version that complies with China's censorship framework. Hong Kong users of the service are not currently subjected to the same strictures.
Video conference app Zoom said it has halted processing data requests from Hong Kong government.
But just a month ago, it suspended a group of U.S-based Chinese human rights activists’ accounts after they held an online meeting to commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Hong Kong-based activist Lee Cheuk-yan’s account on Zoom was also suspended, allegedly under pressure from mainland Chinese authorities.
All the tech giants that have suspended responses to data requests from Hong Kong have stressed their commitment to the protection of users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy.
A notable absentee is Apple, which has been highly cooperative with mainland Chinese censorship. The tech giant said that it would “assess” the implication of NSL to its business before making a decision.
More curious was the sudden announcement of Tiktok that the company would withdraw from the Hong Kong market.
There are two versions of Tiktok, which is owned by the Chinese firm Bytedance. The Chinese version is Douyu which works within Chinese censorship requests. The global version of Tiktok claims it would not hand data over to Chinese government.
Yet legal action in the U.S. has seen Tiktok accused of sending U.S. user data to mainland China in December 2019. Tiktok’s employees also revealed that they had been pressured by their superiors in mainland China to censor content on the global platform.
Tiktok's market in Hong Kong is small — just 150,000 app users.
The Hong Kong government has not responded to the tech giants’ collective action directly so far. But reports about the government’s plans to strengthen control over the Internet have been circulating since August 2019, when the protests against the China extradition bill were in full flow.
Unverified claims circulating in the local online community suggested Telegram and the Reddit-like LIGHK were two likely crackdown targets. Back then, however, the government had no legal tools with which to crack down on online content except by obtaining court injunction order.
With the enactment of NSL, the worst case scenario for the tech giants’ non-compliance action could be a complete block of their platforms. This would leave Hongkongers unable to access uncooperative websites without circumvention tools.
So far Hongkongers have been preparing for the worst — on June 30, searches for VPNs in Hong Kong surged by 321% in comparison to the average daily search rate on other days in the month.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
The Uyghur Meshrep: A traditional community gathering censored in China · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Screenshot from a YouTube video featuring a meshrep in Almaty.
The Uyghurs, a Turkic nation of over 25 million people who live across Central Asia, have a long history and a rich cultural heritage that combines elements of nomadism and sedentarism, pre-Islamic, Sufi, and Muslim spiritual traditions. One component of this culture is the meshrep ( مەشرەپ in Uyghur), a community gathering, mostly male, in which music and judgement on moral conduct play a key role.
A group of men usually meet in a courtyard, play traditional music such as muqam, and hold a sort of moral court, where the behavior of male members of the community is reviewed, and criticized, usually in a humorous way through mockery, jokes, and non-violent imitation of physical punishment, as can be seen in this short video of a meshrep held in Almaty, Kazakhstan:
Meshreps vary in size and duration, but can last several hours and include anything from 30 to several hundred people. Women and children are welcome observers of the ritual.
In the 1980s, meshreps, particularly in the city of Ghulja in the west of the Chinese province of Xinjiang (where the vast majority of Uyghurs live today), gradually took a more political tone, openly discussing issues of youth disenfranchisement, unemployment, and the practice of religion. By 1995, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had banned them as a threat to its own discourse of “ethnic unity” and hotbeds of religious activism. In his book “Down a Narrow Road: Identity and Masculinity in a Uyghur Community in Xinjiang China ” Uyghur culture scholar Jay Dautcher explains:
The increased role of meshrep groups in community activism and social mobilization, in forms such as anti-alcohol campaigns and youth sports leagues, led to a realization on the part of the local government official that unregulated grassroots organizations in Uyghur neighborhoods were proving more effective than official campaigns and state institutions at mobilizing Uyghurs.
As unauthorized meshreps continued to take place, the Chinese authorities decided to differentiate between “unhealthy” (and thus banned) and “healthy” ones, co-opting the latter category, and even registering the meshrep in 2010 within the UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. As large numbers of Uyghurs migrated to Kazakhstan following Beijing's policy of ethnic persecution, the tradition is enjoying a revival in the Central Asian state that is home to over 200,000 Uyghurs, both local and recently arrived.
To find out more about the significance of the meshrep and explore the Chinese authorities’ approach to it, I talked to Rachel Harris, a London-based professor who teaches ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London, and who now leads a British Academy Sustainable Development Project to revitalise Uyghur cultural heritage in Kazakhstan. She is also publishing her book, “Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam”, in fall 2020.
The interview has been edited for brevity.
Photo of an informal “court” at the Gheyret meshrep, Kazakhstan, 2019. Photo by Mukaddas Mijit, used with permission.
Filip Noubel (FN) What is your own definition of the meshrep? What are its origins? Is it a strictly male ritual? Why is music a key component?
Rachel Harris (RH) Basically a meshrep is a party. But it's also much more than that. Formally, we might say that it is a system of community gatherings maintained by Uyghurs across the Uyghur region and in the diaspora. Meshrep gatherings involve food, music and dance, joking, readings, and an informal community court. They are an important part of Uyghur culture because they forge lasting community bonds, they support the transmission of language and expressive culture, and they provide a forum for discussion, planning, and community action.
Portrait of Professor Rachel Harris attending the 2018 International Maqam Festival in Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan. Photo by Rachel Harris, used with permission.
FN What happens to the meshrep in the form that is authorized by the Chinese state?
RH  Meshrep gatherings were inscribed by China on UNESCO’s list of “intangible cultural heritage in urgent need of safeguarding” in 2010. I've been observing China's approach to safeguarding meshrep over the past ten years. In the early years it took the form of the kind of “top-down” approaches to heritage that we so often see in China: spectacular song-and-dance performances for television and tourists, organized by government agencies.
Here is an example of government-organized meshrep performance aimed at tourists:
FN Is it accurate to talk about the revival of the meshrep through the Uyghur communities currently living in Kazakhstan? Will this “intimate heritage” be preserved as a participatory ritual in Uyghur culture?
RH Over the past few years, Uyghur communities in Kazakhstan have led a meshrep revival that takes a very different form. They are engaged in revitalising meshrep as a tool for community self-organisation and self-support, and a way to transmit Uyghur language and customs to the younger generation. At my university, we have been working with scholars, Uyghur organisations and local communities to document and support these efforts. Of course, the cultural heritage sustained in Kazakhstan represents only a tiny portion of the rich and diverse expressive culture of the Uyghurs, but what they are doing may provide a future model for real, community-based cultural revitalization.