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More independent media added to Russia’s “foreign agent” roster · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

TV channel Dozhd displays the required “foreign agent” wording during their live broadcast on August 20, 2021. Screenshot from YouTube.
Prominent Russian television network Dozhd (TVRain) and investigative media outlet Vazhnye Istorii (iStories) have been designated as “foreign agents” by Russian officials. They join an already crowded roster of independent newsrooms, non-profit organisations and individuals in Russia that have been added to the multiple registries of those whom the state deems to be “involved in political activity” in the interests of “foreign entities” and “receiving assistance from abroad”.
Diana Magnay, Moscow correspondent for Sky News, noted that the announcement came soon after President Vladimir Putin's meeting with outgoing German leader Angela Merkel in Russia's capital.
Moments after Putin wraps up his final presser with Merkel (her 60th visit to Russia), two more independent news outlets in Russia are declared foreign agents – #Dozhd (Rain) TV and #iStories. Draw the curtains and turn off the lights, RIP the free press here
— Diana Magnay (@DiMagnaySky) August 20, 2021
Dozhd and iStories’ designation comes just two days after the independent election monitoring group Golos was declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian Justice Ministry. Previously, the label had been bestowed upon news websites VTimes, Meduza and US-funded RFE/RL, investigative journalism project The Insider, and individual journalists.
Russian law requires organisations or individuals designated as foreign agents to register with the state or face sanctions, including fines and prison time. They are also required to regularly report on their activities and indicate their foreign agent status on any materials or content they distribute, including social media posts.
Say hello to the new bumper that plays before every new segment on Dozhd TV. (It’s the standard legalese warning that you’re tuned into the ravings of an evil foreign agent.) pic.twitter.com/OWcWctWQYX
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) August 20, 2021
For media outlets in particular, being dubbed a foreign agent has meant difficulties in getting quotes from sources and a swift decline in advertising revenues. While some organisations have chosen to shut down their operations or move abroad, others are now relying on crowdsourced donations. But that space is becoming increasingly crowded.
While iStories was likely labelled a “foreign agent” due to the outlet being registered in Latvia, Dozhd is registered in Russia – and dependent on advertising revenue. As Jake Cordell, correspondent for The Moscow Times, noted on Twitter, in the first half of 2021, 40 percent of Dozhd's ad revenue came from YouTube.
Dozdh got 190 million rubles ($2.5m) from ad revenues and cable distribution deals last year. That was 55% of their entire income. If advertisers head for the exit like at other media outlets designated “foreign agents,” that will deliver a huge blow to their operations https://t.co/3wQQQdnCBw
— Jake Cordell (@JakeCordell) August 20, 2021
In an interview with independent news outlet Meduza, Dozhd's founder Natalya Sindeeva said she did not have “anything to say yet except a bunch of obscenities” regarding the foreign agent designation, but that the channel would be “thinking hard now” about their next steps.
Roman Anin, editor-in-chief of iStories, whose home was raided by law enforcement this spring due to a high-profile corruption investigation, said the newsroom was prepared for the designation and understood the risks. Speaking to Meduza, Anin lamented the fact that it was impossible for an independent media outlet to be registered in Russia, be profitable, and survive.
The Russian authorities have left journalists with no choice. Our registration abroad and our work with such financing is out of necessity. In other circumstances, we’d gladly register in Russia.
iStories’ team said in a statement on their website that they were open with their audience about being registered abroad and did it “in order to remain free”:
А что касается самого списка иноагентов, то в нем уже столько приличных людей и изданий, что не находиться в нём просто неприлично.
As for the list of foreign agents, by now it has so many decent people and publications on it that not to be on this list is simply indecent.


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Nanjala Nyabola joins Global Voices as Advox Director · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

Nanjala Nyabola, Global Voices’ new Advox Director. Photo courtesy Nanjala Nyabola.
We are thrilled to announce that Kenyan writer and researcher Nanjala Nyabola has joined Global Voices as the director of our Advox project. As head of Advox, she will guide our editorial reporting, research, activism and advocacy on online freedom of expression and digital rights.
Nanjala's work focuses on the intersection between technology, media, and society. She holds a BA in African Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham, an MSc in African Studies and an MSc in Forced Migration from the University of Oxford, and a JD from Harvard Law School.
She has held numerous research associate positions, including with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), and other institutions, and has worked as an independent research lead for several projects on human rights broadly, and digital rights specifically, around the world.
She is also a fellow at the Stanford Digital Civil Society Lab, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), the Digital Forensic Lab at the Atlantic Council, The Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology (CIPIT) at Strathmore University, and the Centre for International Cooperation (CIC) at NYU.
She has published in several academic journals including the African Security Review and The Women's Studies Quarterly and contributed to numerous edited collections. She also writes commentary for publications like The Nation, Al Jazeera, The Boston Review, and others.
Nanjala is the author of two books, “Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya” (Zed Books, 2018) and “Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move” (Hurst Books, 2020).

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Georgia Popplewell


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Japan’s ‘Battleship Island’ hides history of wartime forced labor · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Tourists visiting Hashima (“Battleship Island”) in 2017. The island, a former coal mine, was approved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2015, as part of Japan's Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution. In July 2021, UNESCO gave Japan a deadline to address the “insufficient” information available about the history of forced labor on the island. Photo by Nevin Thompson. Image license: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
In July 2021, the Japanese government and UNESCO briefly engaged in a war of words over heritage sites and Japan's legacy of forced labor. When UNESCO reprimanded Japan for failing to acknowledge the use of forced labor during wartime at a UNESCO heritage site, the Japanese government promised to issue a formal rebuttal, and said that it is “sincerely making good” on the promise to remember victims of forced labor.
On July 12, 2021, UNESCO issued a draft decision stating that Japan still needed to improve the way it talked about the historical use of forced labor at former industrial installations now recognized collectively as a World Heritage Site. UNESCO followed this with a formal reprimand on July 22, 2021, over Japan's seeming unwillingness to tell the “full history” of the former industrial sites.
The row centres around “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining,” 23 historical sites on the western island of Kyushu that are designated collectively as a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Site. The 23 sites are recognized as the birthplace of Japan's rapid industrialization in the latter half of the 19th century.
The UNESCO reprimand came after an information center, built in Tokyo specifically to explain and celebrate the Meiji Industrial Revolution UNESCO World Heritage Site on Kyushu, failed to inform visitors that some of the locations were the scene of wartime forced labor of Koreans.
Prior to the reprimand, the draft decision on July 12 had noted that the Japanese government, as part of its original UNESCO submission in 2015, said it was:
[…] Prepared to take measures that allow an understanding that there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites, and that, during World War II, the Government of Japan also implemented its policy of requisition. Japan is prepared to incorporate appropriate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims such as the establishment of information center.
The UNESCO reprimand noted that Japan had not fulfilled this obligation and focused specifically on forced labor that occurred on Hashima, a coal mine located on an island off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture in western Japan. Best known around the world as “Battleship Island,” Hashima, also the site of one of Japan's first coal mines, was featured in the James Bond movie “Skyfall.“
Japan has until December 1, 2022 to implement UNESCO's recommendations about acknowledging forced labor.
The mine on Hashima was operated by giant conglomerate Mitsubishi, which relied on forced Korean labor during World War II to extract coal. At least 800 Koreans were sent to Hashima during the war, 134 of whom reportedly died while working there.
Another fact so far officially unacknowledged by interpretive materials is that other industrial facilities in UNESCO's “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining” also relied on forced labor. For example, Mitsui, another industrial conglomerate, relied on prisoners of war slave labor to operate its Miike coal mine in Omuta, Kumamoto.
Even before World War II, or even before Japan engaged in colonialist expansion in Asia at the start of the 20th Century, the Miike mine relied on forced convict labor to extract coal.
Despite its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, there is no acknowledgement of this part of Miike's history.
“Japan has a responsibility under its UNESCO World Heritage agreement to tell the full history of [Miike] and other ‘Meiji Industrial Revolution’ sites.”
An important article by David Palmer on wartime forced labor at Miike mine: https://t.co/xrtlwDOwNa
— 永原宣 Hiromu Nagahara (@HiromuNagahara) July 7, 2021
Japan's transformative Meiji period Meiji period followed the end of the Edo period in 1867 and more than two centuries of strict control over nearly all aspects of everyday life.
With a new government and political system, Meiji entrepreneurs in Japan quickly capitalized on new opportunities to trade with Europe, the United States, and other places around the world.
These local entrepreneurs and the new Japanese government itself also imported new industrial technologies from abroad, including mining, steelmaking, manufacturing, and shipbuilding, in an effort to match the capacity of Western powers and in the process, jump-starting an industrial revolution.
While the center of Japanese economic and political life was in Tokyo, in the east, in the early Meiji era the western island of Kyushu is generally regarded as the cradle of Japan's industrial revolution. This was due to established trade routes with China stretching back more than a thousand years, and with relatively newer oceanic trade connections with Europe.
For example, the city of Nagasaki and the surrounding regions were the scene of Japan's first drydock and shipyards, which were powered in part by coal mined from nearby Miike and Hashima. The shipbuilding facilities in Nagasaki would eventually produce some of the biggest and most complex warships in the world, and would be targeted for atomic attack by the United States in August 1945.
Japan's “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution” initiative, as well as the controversial UNESCO Heritage submissions seek to memorialize and celebrate this heritage.
Nagasaki Harbor. Illuminated in the center of the picture stands the Giant Cantilever Crane at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard, which, as a major naval shipyard, was targeted by B-29s for atomic attack on August 9th, 1945. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries conscripted at least 3,400 laborers to work at various facilities in Nagasaki during the war. Australian, British, Dutch and U.S. prisoners of war were also forced to work in Japanese war industries in Nagasaki. Mitsubishi Materials, a mining company, conscripted yet more laborers to work at various mines, including Hashima, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Photo by Nevin Thompson. Image license: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
“Very little of Japan's history of industrialization presented at their new UNESCO Heritage sites is true,” says historian Mindy Kotler in a July 2021 newsletter. Kotler is the director of Asia Policy Point, a Washington, D.C. research center studying the U.S. policy relationship with Japan and Northeast Asia.
In a July 2021 article about Japan's UNESCO initiatives, Kotler points out that the mines, foundries, and wharves that form the core of the Japan's UNESCO World Heritage list typically omit a key historical detail:
The Japanese, however, left out any mention of […] forced labor and abuse, which was the substance of the hundreds of war crimes trials throughout the postwar Pacific.
UNESCO approved the designations in 2015 but conditioned the designations on a promise to provide a “full history” of these sites. Yet, six years later, Japan has not fulfilled this promise.
While Japan has until December 1, 2022 to implement recommendations about acknowledging forced labor, there is little chance that the UNESCO designation will be rescinded, according to a South Korean government official.
A South Korea foreign ministry representative said:
UNESCO withdraws inscriptions only when the site has been altered beyond its original state and character that made it worthy of inscription […] UNESCO has informed us that the current issue regarding the sites in Japan is not something that calls for re-evaluation of the inscription decision.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Anti-immigrant sentiments lead to violence in Turkey · Global Voices
Doga Celik

A mob stands around a burning car in Altındağ, Ankara. Screenshot from the BBC video titled “What happened in Altındağ?”
A brawl between a group of Syrian migrants and locals in the Turkish capital of Ankara on August 12 reflected the worsening anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. Two Turkish citizens were stabbed during a confrontation, one of whom died after being taken to a hospital. The incident led to further violence as mobs ransacked and vandalized stores, homes, and cars belonging to Syrian immigrants in Ankara's Altindag neighborhood, which is home to a large number of Syrians. Police have so far detained 76 people.
Gün içerisinde mahallenin gençleri mahallede “nizamı sağlamak” için bu şekilde gruplar halinde gezmeye başladı. Gençler Suriyeli arıyor pic.twitter.com/ZgrK8UXRVY
— nevsin mengu (@nevsinmengu) August 11, 2021
During the day, Turkish youth formed groups to “bring order” to the neighborhoods. They are looking for Syrians.
Riot police on the scene were heard urging residents not to allow any provocations.
Altındağ'da iki gencin bıçaklanması, 18 yaşındaki Emirhan Yalçın'ın ölümü üzerine yaşanan ırkçı saldırılara, her gün Suriyeli nefreti körükleyenler ne diyecek? Cinayetin faili yakalandı, ev taşlayıp çocuk yaralayanlar tespit edilebilecek mi? pic.twitter.com/paYQScoKKx
— Banu Guven (@banuguven) August 12, 2021
What will those who incite Syrian hatred every day say to the racist attacks on the stabbing of two young people in Altındağ, after the death of 18 year old Emirhan Yalçın? The perpetrator of the murder has been caught, but will those who stoned homes and injured the child be identified?
The district governor who reportedly arrived at the scene, tried to defuse tensions. But the defiant mob continued to express their discontent, as reported by BBC Turkish Service. “All of them [Syrians] must be terminated,” yelled one woman while another local said:
Just because we give them homes, economic opportunities, they think they are above us. Then they come and say they don’t want Afghans in this country.
Speaking to the BBC Turkish service, another resident of the neighborhood where attacks took place said:
What are they going to do? Take them away? Instead, we say, give us half an hour. We will, as a nation, take them away in half an hour. Our goal is not to kill them, but send them away. They should leave.
Meanwhile, Syrian residents expressed concern over the safety of their families. One Syrian resident whose home was targeted said he will move as soon as possible, as he is scared for his three children.
The anti-immigrant sentiments have reached a new high as Turkey finds itself on the receiving end of thousands of Afghan migrants fleeing for their safety. This coincided with a growing disillusionment against the refugee deal between Ankara and Brussels in 2016 in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. According to the agreement, Turkey halted the flow of Syrian migrants to Europe in return for visa concessions and 6 billion euros in aid for Syrians arriving in Turkey.
Other reasons include the ongoing economic crisis as reflected in the rising unemployment, inflation, and currency devaluation.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that some 4 million refugees, mostly Syrians, live in Turkey. Afghans make up the second largest group.
But patience is running thin as Turkey struggles with an incoming flow of refugees and an EU unwilling to proceed with 2016 pledges to smooth Turkey’s EU accession negotiations and visa concessions for Turkish citizens.
On July 18, the opposition Republic People's Party leader tweeted that Turkey won't become “an open prison to refugees.”
My call to the world: I’m nothing alike to Erdogan. I come from the Kuvayi Milliye tradition. No one can declare our soldiers as watchmen to where they fled; or declare my country an open prison to refugees. Let me tell you in advance, very tough negotiations are waiting for you.
— Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (@kilicdarogluk) July 18, 2021
A week later, following an interview conducted by German Bild newspaper with Austrian Prime Minister Sebastian Kurz who said that Turkey was a more suitable place for Afghan migrants, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement, saying, “Turkey will not take in a new wave of migration,” and that “Turkey will not be a border guard or a refugee camp for the EU.”
Some local observers said that statements like this and a lack of sound immigration policies should be blamed for the increasing anti-immigrant sentiments in the country, with the clash in Ankara as a recent example.
Speaking to Deutsche Welle, sociologist Ulaş Sanata said:
Tensions between refugees and locals were never properly defused. There have been a lot of mistakes in immigration policy. It was non-transparent and poorly communicated.
Meanwhile, Metin Çorabatır, the president of the Research Centre for Asylum and Immigration (IGAM), blamed the rhetoric used by politicians threatening to send immigrants home or refusal to accept more ahead of the upcoming election in 2023.
Çorabatır was referring to a tweet in July 16 by the leader of opposition Republic People party (CHP) Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who claimed that once in power, the CHP will send Syrians away.
İktidarımızda Suriyeli misafirlerimizle helalleşip iki yılda memleketlerine uğurlayacağız. Bu iktidarımızın en önemli beş önceliğinden biridir. Plan ve programlarımız hazır. Bu video da bunun taahhüdü olarak burada dursun istedim. pic.twitter.com/5kE4csutCo
— Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (@kilicdarogluk) July 16, 2021
If we become the government in power, we will say our farewells to our Syrian guests. This is one of our five goals. We have our plans and programs ready. I wanted this video to be here as a proof.
The leader of another opposition Iyi Party, Meral Akşener, used similar rhetoric. Akşener has said that the government should contact Syrian rulers and send Syrians back to their country as soon as possible.
Ülkemizi göçmen hendeğine dönüştüren iktidara, Genel Başkanımız sayın Meral Akşener yapılması gerekenleri söyledi;
-İran hükûmetinin sınırımıza bıraktığı Afganların gelişini durdurun.
-Biden ile ne görüşüldüğünü açıklayın.
-Suriyeli mülteciler ülkelerine geri gönderilsin. pic.twitter.com/7F7Pt3Bis5
— Ümit Dikbayır (@UmitDikbayir) August 16, 2021
Our general president, Meral Akşener said what needs to be done to the government that turned our country into a migrant ditch;
– Stop the arrival of Afghans left at our borders by the Iranian government.
– Explain what was discussed with Biden.
– Syrian refugees must be sent back to their countries.
Nezih Onur Kuru, a political scientist, told Al-Monitor in an interview that the anti-Syrian violence in Ankara was “neither new nor surprising.” According to Kuru's own research, there have been at least “246 separate incidents of violence against Syrian refugees since 2011.”
The situation hasn’t always been this tense. According to a poll in 2012, only 52 percent of Turkish citizens disagreed with taking Syrian refugees. But in a September 2018 poll, 83 percent of Turkish citizens reported negative views on Syrians.
Currently, Syrians are under “temporary protection” by the government. As the government states on its website, temporary protection includes education for all children, healthcare, and suitable places for worship, in addition to education centers for adults who want to gain skills for employment.

author: Doga Celik


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Belly dancing class in Kuwaiti ladies gym stirs uproar, prompting government intervention · Global Voices
Raseef22

Several lawmakers from Kuwait's National Assembly pressured the government to close down the ladies fitness club. Public domain photo.
This piece was originally published on Raseef22, an independent Arabic media platform, on August 13, 2021, and an edited version is being republished under a content-sharing agreement.
The Kuwaiti Ministry of Commerce and Industry rushed to close down a sports club and suspended all its activists for the foreseeable future, in response to a crisis sparked by popular and parliamentary protests over the fitness club's belly dance class.
In exclusive statements to the United States–based Al-Hurra channel, the club’s manager confirmed that the ministry had officially notified him on August 9 of the shut down, and that he — along with others in charge within the club — has been summoned for investigation. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry had indeed already closed the club down one day earlier, August 8, before even alerting its owner.
أبناء #الجهراء يطالبون بمنع دورة تعليم رقص شرقي في نادي نسائي بمنطقة الجهراء
• رفضوا تأييد مثل هذه الدورات التي لا تناسب المجتمع الكويتي وخصوصا في الجهراء pic.twitter.com/vNax7XcPqo
— شبكة الاسبوع نيوز ?? (@shabakatalusbue) August 7, 2021
People of Al-Jahra demand the banning of the belly dancing class in a ladies gym in Al-Jahra district. They rejected the support of such courses that is not suitable for the Kuwaiti society, particularly Al-Jahra.
The crisis began when a ladies gym called “Viva Fit” in the northern governorate of  Al-Jahra, which is home to a largely tribal and conservative population, published an advertisement for a women-only belly dancing class from August 8 to August 24, for a subscription fee of 78 Kuwaiti dinars (around 260 US dollars).
The advert sparked widespread controversy, prompting several MPs in the Kuwaiti National Assembly to voice their concerns over the nature of the class, stating that it violated the values of the Kuwaiti society. This forced authorities to announce the gym's closure and summon those in charge for an investigation.
Kuwaiti media sources stated that the Commercial Control Department at the Ministry of Commerce will follow up on the closing procedures remaining.
Behind the decision to close the club was the pressure exerted by a number of parliamentarians, including Representative Fayez Ghannam Al-Jumhour, who announced on his Twitter account:
اجريت مكالمة مع #وزيرالتجارة الدكتور عبدالله السلمان وأبلغته بهذه المخالفة للترخيص والقيم وأكد لي انه سوف يتخذ الاجراءات القانونية لصاحب الترخيص ومنع اقامة هذه العروض
وكنا ولازلنا وسنستمر باذن الله حجر عثره امام من يريد جرف المجتمع الكويتي عن دينه وعاداته وتقاليده . pic.twitter.com/Ey0cSLdcfL
— فايز غنام الجمهور (@fayezaljumhour) August 7, 2021
I made a call to the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Abdullah Al-Salman, and informed him of this violation of licensing (legal permit) and our values, and he assured me that he will take legal measures against the license holder and prevent such promotional offers from being made in the future.” He added that, “We were, still are, and — God willing — will continue to be a stumbling block for those who want to steer the Kuwaiti society away from its religion, customs, and traditions.
Meanwhile, many other Kuwaitis considered these courses a “normal” thing that can be found in all Kuwait gyms and clubs.
In defense of belly dancing, Kuwaiti writer and actress May al-Eidan tweeted:
يعني خلصت كل مشاكل البلد عشان يتم إغلاق معهد او نادي مسوين دوره لرقص الشرقي وين المشكله يمكن بتعلم رقص عشان ترقص لزوجها تسعده او مع صديقاتها في عرس او زفاف موشرط بتعلم رقص عشان ترقص بملهى ليلي ولابشقة شباب ما اتفكرون الا بالشي بنظره وصخه#الرقص_الشرقي
— مي العيدان (@mayal3eidan) August 9, 2021
I mean, have all the problems of the country been solved so that what was left was the closing down of an institute or a gym that has a belly dance course? What is the problem? Maybe she [a lady] is learning to dance so that she could dance for her husband to make him happy, or with her friends at a wedding or event. Just because [a lady] is learning to dance doesn’t mean it is in order to dance at a nightclub or in some young men’s house. You only see things through a dirty mind.
Another Kuwaiti opponent of the decision wrote:
نادي نسائي رياضي ..
للنساء فقط ..
حاله حال مختلف الأندية النسائية في الكويت يقدم مختلف البرامج والدورات والصفوف الرياضية بمختلف أنواعها..
ومنها الرقص الشرقي
وين الغلط ؟
كل الاندية الرياضية النسائية عندها هالنوع من الصفوف.. رقص شرقي .. زومبا.. هيب هوب.. الخ
ليش الانتقائية؟ pic.twitter.com/acMcj1388K
— ???بيبي الخضري BB (@bb_alkhudari) August 8, 2021
A ladies gym..
For women only..
Like all the other different women's fitness clubs in Kuwait, offering various sports courses and class of all types, including belly dancing..
Where is the problem?
All women-only sports clubs hold these types of classes, belly dancing, zumba, hip hop etc
Why the discrimination?
According to tweets by a number of Kuwaiti women and some local online newspapers, many fitness clubs in Kuwait organize and hold belly dance courses as part of their slimming and fitness programs. However, they must file for and obtain special licenses in order to hold these types of courses.
The fitness club’s director told the Kuwaiti online newspaper Jaridatkum that the course that sparked the debate was expected to be strictly coached and taught by female fitness trainers and attended exclusively by women.
The incident happened shortly after another member of the country's stateless population, also known as bidoon, committed suicide, the latest in a series of suicides that reflect the community's decades-long frustration over their suspended legal status, and policy-makers’ idle approach in handling their aggravation.
Referring to this incident, a Twitter user wrote:
أستغرب من تخاذل المجتمع المدني في الكويت..
يستفزه دورة في الرقص الشرقي بمعهد نسائي ولا يستفزه إزهاق نفس مسلمة..#البدون_أولوية
— Eng.ItcTeacher ? (@teacher_itc) August 10, 2021
I am surprised at Kuwait's civil society..
They're outraged by a belly dancing class in a ladies institution, and is not outraged by a Muslim taking his own life. #Priority_to_bidoons
Kuwait is home to the Arabian Gulf's only freely-elected assembly and has the region's most democratic political system.


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Blogger gets prison sentence for branding Kazakhstan’s language policies “russophobic” · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Yermek Taichibekov speaks in an interview to Ukraina.ru, a Russian state-funded media outlet. Screenshot from YouTube.
An Almaty court has sentenced Kazakh blogger and activist Yermek Taichibekov to seven years in a penal colony after finding him guilty of “inciting inter-ethnic strife” through the mass media (Article 174 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan).
The pro-Russian blogger, who was detained in September 2020, claims his charges stem from a May 2020 video interview he gave to a Russian media outlet Ukraina.ru, which is part of the Russian state-funded media holding Russia Today (Rossiya Segodnya). In the interview, Taichibekov was commenting on the ongoing conflicts between ethnic Kazakhs and Dungans (a Muslim group with Chinese origins) in the Korday region of Kazakhstan's Jambyl Province.
The 2020 Kazakh-Dungan clashes in February 2020 resulted in damage to property and houses of over 4.44 million US dollars and the displacement of around 20,000 people to neighboring Kyrgyzstan.
Speaking in front of a black-yellow-white flag of the Russian empire (1858-1896), the blogger, known for publicly supporting the use of Russian language in the country, told the interviewer that Kazakhstan's authorities were conducting a “russophobic policy.”
According to Taichibekov, the Kazakh state has been “sourcing Russian individuals who speak out in favor of banning Russian television, banning Russian language, excluding it from the Constitution.” He also claimed that in Kazakhstan “everything is aimed at humiliating other nations.”
The blogger had previously been sentenced to four years behind bars for “inciting inter-ethnic hatred” through social media posts in 2015. At the time he did not plead guilty and called his sentence “politically motivated.” In 2017, he was released ahead of time.
Earlier in August, Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Russian Rossotrudnichestvo agency that assists ethnic Russians living abroad, criticized Kazakh authorities for “not denouncing the actions of local nationalists,” following reports of alleged nationalist-led raids on shops, with activists checking whether labels on goods had been translated into Kazakh and whether sales personnel were speaking Kazakh to  customers.
According to independent media outlet Eurasianet, the language patrols had been instigated by by Kostanay-based activist Kuat Akhmetov, who has inspired a fringe movement of Kazakhs demanding to be served in their native language. Videos of the raids appear on Akhmetov’s YouTube channel, Til Maydani (The Language Battleground), with some having over 20,000 views.
The incidents have also ignited the ire of Russian nationalist groups. Tsargrad TV, a far-right, pro-Kremlin channel, has called the patrols in Kazakhstan “russophobic,” likening them to Ukraine's nationalist movements that Russian authorities have used as one of the justifications for invading the country.
Responding to Russia's criticism in early August, Dauren Abayev, first deputy head of the Kazakh president's administration, called it “unfair” and said that the raids were “caveman nationalism” and “unacceptable and outrageous,” promising that law enforcement would be assessing these action “in a just manner.”
According to the Kazakh constitution, both Kazakh and Russian are official languages. Both are widely spoken in Kazakhstan, but Russian is more common in urban areas and in the north of the country, where ethnic Russians are often a majority. However, Kazakh authorities are mandated by the Constitution to  promote the use of the Kazakh language, which was relegated to second-tier status during the Soviet era.

author: Tanya Lokot


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Kanal Istanbul, Turkey’s Middle Corridor, and the Belt and Road Initiative · Global Voices
Emre Demir

“Oil Tanker in the Bosphorus” by MrHicks46 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Despite mounting opposition from political and civil society groups due to potential environmental and political issues, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is determined to proceed with the controversial Kanal Istanbul project, an artificial, 45-km long shipping canal that will connect the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. On June 26, Erdoğan attended the groundbreaking ceremony of what he referred to as his “crazy project.” Many, including the Mayor of Istanbul, scientists, retired admirals and ambassadors, and ordinary people, have criticized the project due to its environmental, economic, and security impact.
So far, the project’s estimated cost is 15 billion US dollars. However, the amount is likely to reach 21.06 billion US dollars once operational and financing costs are added.
Erdoğan insists that Kanal Istanbul will contribute to Turkey's economy and help reduce traffic on the Bosphorus.
According to the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoğlu, the profits from the canal will cover the estimated costs about 12 years after the canal is completed.
But in the meantime, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) seems to have overestimated the country’s financing capacity and has been trying to secure foreign investors. Some of these potential investors include the Netherlands, Belgium, and Russia — though China has emerged as the most viable option. However, China’s possible involvement is likely to worsen an already negative perception of China in the country.
The Middle Corridor, formally known as the Trans-Caspian East-West-Middle Corridor Initiative, reflects Turkey’s dream of building links to China via the Caucasus and Central Asia. The Middle Corridor trade route project connects China to Europe via Turkey through railways and highways. Turkey views the Middle Corridor as a complement to China’s Belt and Road Initiative rather than a competitor.
As can be seen on this map from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, the blue line represents Turkey's Middle Corridor and the red line represents the Northern Corridor of the BRI.
Completed in 2017, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) Railway is one of the initiative’s main projects. It is estimated that by 2034, the BTK will carry 3 million passengers and 17 million tons of cargo annually.
So far, the first cargo train from China to Europe using the Middle Corridor arrived in Turkey in November 2019, and the first cargo train from Turkey using the same route arrived in China in December 2020.
As part of the Middle Corridor and BRI, Turkey has made numerous substantial infrastructure investments. The most prominent include the Marmaray undersea railway, Eurasia Tunnel, and the Third Istanbul Bridge that connects Europe and Asia through Istanbul and the Istanbul Airport. Several other infrastructure projects such as the Çanakkale Strait Bridge, Edirne-Kars high-speed rail, and the Three-Level Tube Tunnel are also underway.
Both China and Turkey are eager to integrate the BRI and Middle Corridor. President Erdoğan said that “the Middle Corridor… lies at the heart of the BRI” and that Turkey “will continue to work with our Chinese friends to integrate the Middle Corridor into the BRI.” China's President Xi Jinping “called on the two sides to promote synergy between joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Middle Corridor project of Turkey.” In the meantime, Turkey’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoğlu said that Kanal Istanbul is an integral part of the Middle Corridor, noting, “With Kanal Istanbul, our Middle Corridor objective will become stronger.”
Turkey-China trade relations grew substantially after China joined the World Trade Organization on December 11, 2001. At the time, bilateral trade was less than 2 billion US dollars. Over the next 20 years, the turnover reached 26 billion US dollars. However, this is an uneven relationship. While China’s exports to Turkey total 23.041 billion US dollars, Turkey’s exports to China total a mere 2.865 billion US dollars.
One way to change the uneven trade landscape is to increase Chinese investments in Turkey through initiatives like the BRI. Although China is not among the top ten investors in Turkey, over 1,000 Chinese companies have invested in areas such as finance, energy, production, and infrastructure. In 2019, the former Chinese Ambassador to Turkey, Deng Li, expected Chinese investment to reach 6 billion US dollars by the end of 2021. When paired with tourism revenues, Chinese investments in Turkey can play an important role in reducing the foreign exchange outflow from Turkey.
China has also made significant infrastructure investments in the country. In 2015, a Chinese consortium acquired 65 percent of Turkey’s third-largest container port, Kumport, for 940 million US dollars. In January 2020, a Chinese consortium attempted to acquire 51 percent of the Third Istanbul Bridge for 688 million US dollars, however, recent reports suggest the deal is yet to be finalized. This development could derail China's BRI-related infrastructure investments in Turkey, especially as the Turkish state increasingly views the bridge as a major part of its Middle Corridor initiative.
A screenshot from Vox report, “China's trillion dollar plan to dominate global trade.”
Of all Chinese investments in the country, possible Chinese funding of the Kanal Istanbul project has triggered the most heated debate in Turkey.
The Turkish government estimates the cost for the project will reach 15 billion US dollars. But with mounting economic problems, which have worsened due to COVID-19, the ruling government needs a cash infusion. Furthermore, according to Reuters, Turkish banks have largely stayed away from the project because of the expected environmental damage, potential financial risks, and widespread political and societal opposition to the project.
Several reports claim that China is eager to finance the expensive project and has discussed it with Turkish officials during diplomatic visits. On April 30, 2021, Turkish Minister Karaismailoğlu confirmed China’s interest and added that Netherlands, Belgium, and Russia are also interested in financing the project.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) President Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has warned potential investors and foreign governments not to finance the project. On May 9, he stated that if the opposition coalition wins the next election, the new government will not pay back the money invested by the investors and will even distance Turkey from the investing countries. A similar warning was made by the leader of the Good Party (İYİ Parti), Meral Akşener.
According to a MetroPOLL survey, the majority of Turkish society opposes the Kanal Istanbul project. While 51 percent of respondents think that the main reason for the project is to generate profit, only 29.1 percent believe Erdoğan’s claim that the canal will reduce maritime traffic in the Bosporus.
Alaeddin Yalçınkaya, a professor from Marmara University, believes Chinese investment will result in China’s colonization of the Kanal region. The Future Party (Gelecek Partisi) leader Ahmet Davutoğlu also claims that the AKP government expects China to provide funding for the Kanal in exchange for lands around the Kanal area, which would damage Turkey’s national sovereignty. Others also warn Turkey about “debt trap” diplomacy, which refers to China’s policy of confiscating lands for unpaid loans.
So far, the government has shrugged off the criticism by focusing instead on actively promoting the Kanal Istanbul project.
This story is part of a Civic Media Observatory investigation into competing narratives about China’s Belt and Road Initiative and explores how societies and communities hold differing perceptions of potential benefits and harms of Chinese-led development. To learn more about this project and its methods, click here.

author: Emre Demir


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Venezuela and China: Strong bond or empty words? · Global Voices
Alessandra Soler

Illustration: Giovana Fleck/Global Voices
For more than 20 years, Venezuela has been China’s closest ally in Latin America. Yet, Venezuela’s stunning economic unraveling, U.S.-imposed sanctions, and a new oil import tax imposed by China have called into question what the future holds for the alliance.
In practice, the partnership consists of dozens of agreements in which Venezuela received cash in exchange for oil shipments. Critics in Venezuela claim this scheme is a debt trap, one that has brought little to no benefit to Venezuelans. However, the Venezuelan and Chinese governments say the partnership is crucial for Venezuela.
China and Venezuela became close allies in the early 2000s when Hugo Chávez rose to power with a strong anti-imperialist, anti-U.S., and anti-liberal international order stance. In the rapid rise of China, Chávez saw an opportunity to push forward his ideal of a “multi-polar world.” For its part, China saw in Venezuela a door to Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as a source of much-needed commodities and markets for its products.
The Venezuelan and Chinese governments were also drawn together by their rejection of any sort of “international meddling in domestic affairs” — including criticism of their human rights records. These claimed values are at the core of their political, economic, and financial relations. Unlike other international lenders such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, China offered Venezuela fresh funding without strings attached.
By 2020, Venezuela received $68.7 billion U.S. dollars from China, of which 91 percent were state-to-state loans. This is nearly half of all Chinese loans to Latin America and the Caribbean in the same period. Venezuela committed to repaying China with oil, the amount of which varied depending on its price.
China's cash came along a particular narrative: Chinese funds were part of bilateral cooperation to improve Venezuela's economic and social development, benefit both countries and become a model for South-South relations. In 2014, both countries upgraded to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.“
China and Venezuela officials and their vast network of state-affiliated media have been aligned in portraying China as a critical ally of Venezuela. Yet, none of the agreements are publicly available.
With the little accessible information, Venezuelan experts and independent media conducted thorough analyses of the loans. They have reached a vastly different conclusion.
Some critics consider the loans to be counterproductive, and that Venezuela was led by its own government and by China to a debt trap. “Debt trap” refers to a lending practice in which the debt becomes too heavy of a burden for the borrowing country, which in turn gives China more political and economic leverage. Critics note that the repayment terms are simply too onerous and even contribute to Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis by slashing government revenue.
Other international observers assessed that Chinese loans and investments in Venezuela are, in reality, a lose-lose situation. Besides the obvious loss of natural and economic resources, Venezuela’s struggle to repay the debt damages China’s foreign image, including its Belt and Road projects.
With regards to results, Venezuelan critics have also decried that many — if not most — Chinese-funded projects in infrastructure, machinery, and equipment in oil, mining, and energy industries have not been concluded, in spite of millionaire investments; and that China's funding did nothing to improve the living conditions of Venezuelans. In their view, Venezuela is repaying China at the expense of Venezuelans. All the while, the country has not truly reaped any tangible benefit from the funding received.
Between both governments, the initial frenzy has been followed by a more sober period. China has not made any new loans to Venezuela since 2016, right at the onset of the economic and financial crisis that has devastated the South American country. Venezuelan officials tried to obtain fresh funding, to no avail.
In early 2019, the U.S. added sanctions on Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Venezuela’s state-owned oil company that provides over 90 percent of export revenue. Until then, refineries in the U.S. had been the top buyers of Venezuela’s heavy crude.
China then became the main destination of Venezuelan oil exports, receiving oil from Venezuela through hidden means. According to Bloomberg, among the mechanisms used by traders are mixing Venezuelan crude with other additives in a practice known as “doping,” ship-to-ship transfers, payments via shell companies, and vessels that silence their satellite signals.
China has not taken any real action to halt the shipments. On the contrary, Chinese officials, including China’s ambassador to Venezuela, Li Baorong, regularly criticize the imposition of sanctions on Venezuela as unjustified and illegal, claiming that they are an affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty.
For its part, the Venezuelan government, eager to showcase its powerful allies, usually promotes its meetings with Chinese officials. In these meetings, they often discuss how to strengthen their relationship and the rejection of sanctions, seen as unjustified meddling in domestic affairs.
Despite the defiant rhetoric and China’s consent of Venezuela’s opaque shipments, sanctions have in fact stood in the way of business as usual. When the U.S. threatened sanctions against foreign energy companies trading or working with PDVSA in August 2019, the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) canceled direct purchases of Venezuelan oil.
More than a year later, Reuters reported that direct shipments had resumed, likely in anticipation of a change of government in the U.S. However, indirect shipments circumventing sanctions have increased, an indication that Chinese official entities may be wary of sanctions against them.
In May 2021, China imposed a new environmental tax on oil imports, which tests once again whether the China-Venezuelan partnership goes beyond shared rhetoric.
The new tax significantly increases the price of the Venezuelan crude in China and makes it less profitable to import, thus discouraging traders from engaging in an already high-risk operation. The Venezuelan government has not commented on the issue, whereas independent experts have warned that the new tax may negatively affect Venezuela’s oil exports.
China and Venezuela claim that their alliance is as important as ever, but the Venezuelan government has not received much support to sustain the oil industry that once was the center of it. Experts at Argus Media, a London-based independent media outlet covering energy and commodities markets, note that China seems more interested in “lending a hand to state-owned refiners than keeping the spigot open for Venezuelan crude,” indicating that priorities in Beijing have changed.
This story is part of a Civic Media Observatory investigation into competing narratives about China’s Belt and Road Initiative and explores how societies and communities hold differing perceptions of potential benefits and harms of Chinese-led development. To learn more about this project and its methods, click here.

author: Alessandra Soler


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Australia’s iconic Kosciuszko National Park faces threats on two fronts · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Morning views from the summit of Mount Kosciuszko, Kosciuszko National Park. Source: With permission Dhx1, (CC0 1.0), via Wikimedia Commons
Kosciuszko National Park, one of Australia’s iconic natural attractions, is facing threats from numerous government draft plans. Kosciuszko became a state park in 1944 and has been a national park since 1967, though it is now facing increasing pressures from government proposals — one concerned with economic development and the other about wild horse control.
Opponents argue that these plans could lead to overdevelopment, negatively impacting the park's fragile ecosystems. There is also controversy over how the government should handle the park's wild horses. Some argue that the horse population is ballooning, with wild horses destroying habitats such as waterways and wetlands and threatening native wildlife. Others claim the government statistics are inflated and argue that brumbies (wild horses) have a cultural significance for many Australians and should be protected.
The park is famous for its ski fields and hiking trails which can primarily be accessed through the town of Jindabyne. Mt Kosciuszko is the country’s highest mountain at 2,228 metres (7,310 feet) and is part of the Snowy Mountains region.
The park is primarily the responsibility of the New South Wales (NSW) state government through the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, though the Federal government also provides some support.
According to a Department of Planning, Industry and Environment discussion paper, The Snowy Mountains Special Activation Precinct Draft Master Plan ‘aspires to create a year-round tourism destination for the Snowy Mountains which will provide more stable local employment and economic prosperity.’ In addition to new tourism opportunities, the 40-year strategic plan aims to ‘facilitate more accommodation and housing options, and improved community facilities.’
Their promotional video explains:
There has been considerable opposition to the plan from environmental and activist groups.
The National Parks Association of NSW and the Nature Conservation Council have launched a campaign criticising the government's plan to ‘increase the cap on resort beds by more than 40 percent (up from 10,915 to 15,360), build new and expanded carparks, allow helicopter flights onto the ski fields, and open walking tracks to four-wheel-drive vehicles.’ NSW National Parks Association Executive Officer Gary Dunnett said:
These reckless proposals overturn more than 40 years of careful planning and management of the park.
These plans treat the park as a commodity and get the balance between nature protection and recreation completely wrong.
Pearls and Irritations website posted two recent articles critiquing the plans, in which Park Watch NSW member, Carolyn Pettigrew, argued that:
…commercial interests will be dictating developments within the park with scant attention to nature conservation, landscape, and heritage values for which the park was dedicated.
Deirdre Slattery, coauthor of the book ‘Kosciuszko: A Great National Park’, shared her longstanding knowledge of the park and the pressures it faces:
It’s about imposing the culture of money on the carefully developed culture of nature conservation for the public good: a culture for which the great Kosciuszko National Park was once a world leader.
Her co-author Graeme Worboys introduced their book in a 2020 video, which presents both its major assets and its troubled history:
Tim Pallin, Managing Director of travel and outdoor retailer Paddy Pallin, posted his objections to the plan on their website:
It also takes direct control of the KNP Plan of Management away from the NSW Environment Minister and gives it to the Deputy Premier.
National Parks are there to preserve wilderness for all Australians to enjoy, but this plan will damage the delicate alpine environment by encouraging development where there should not be any.
His comment reflects ongoing tensions between the Ministers overseeing the park, especially over environmental issues such as the climate crisis.
The Snowy Mountains stakeholders website, which represents government agencies and ski resorts, strongly supports the plan:
The Plan addresses crucial issues that directly impact Snowy Mountains tourism stakeholders’ ability to sustainably thrive.
Submissions about the draft paper closed on August 23.
The second planning controversy concerns the future of wild horses in the park. Government officials estimate there are currently around 14,000 horses in the park — up from 3,000 in 2002. The Facebook group ‘Snowy Mountain Brumby Sustainability & Management Group Inc’ claims that those estimates are far too high.
A Wild horse heritage management plan was due in the first half of 2021 but has yet to be released.
The Invasive Species Council is currently taking legal action to gain access to the draft plan and other key documents. It is part of the Reclaim Kosci campaign to reduce the number of feral horses in the park:
“The Australian Alps are a priceless national heritage icon and home to many nationally threatened species that need urgent protection from feral animals”
We urging the NSW government to release its long-overdue draft feral horse planhttps://t.co/Yob9QyNosV
— Reclaim Kosci (@ReclaimKosci) July 20, 2021
The presence of brumbies (wild horses) in the park has been an ongoing issue for a long time, with divisions within the community and between politicians. Culling, which would involve shooting significant numbers of horses, has been one contentious suggestion.
Brumbies have long been a part of Australia’s cultural identity. Many high country people regard them as a vital part of the local identity. Banjo Paterson’s 19th-century poem ‘The Man from Snowy River‘ has embodied the bush mythology surrounding wild horses in the mountains and high plains of the southeast.
The Guardian's Calla Wahlquist reported in 2018:
The NSW government has been fighting an internal battle about the brumbies for five years. In 2018 it passed legislation, driven by the Nationals leader, John Barilaro, to ‘recognise brumbies as a heritage species’, and developed a policy of trapping and rehoming as its preferred method — a method that ecologists and the pro-brumby lobby say cannot remove more than a few hundred horses a year.
Ministers Barilaro and Kean have taken very different positions over The 2018 Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Act. Broadcaster Wendy Harmer has criticised the deputy premier for his role in both issues:
“Development of the park will be coordinated by Deputy Premier John Barilaro’s Department of Regional NSW. “
Hair raising, since his opposition to culling feral horses has resulted in 1000s trampling the fragile, wild places. #SaveKosciuszko https://t.co/NOzZ1XZ0vD
— Wendy Harmer (@wendy_harmer) July 28, 2021
ABC TV’s Landline aired The battle of brumbies on August 22, 2021:
For some, they are an Australian icon in need of protection; for others, a feral animal destroying a unique ecosystem.
…Pressure is mounting on the NSW government, including from federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley.
Ms Ley has threatened to intervene, using her powers under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Act, if no action is taken.
Landline caused a stir on pro-brumby Facebook groups. In ‘Don't blame it on The Brumbies’, many blamed the media for inflammatory messages:
Well ABC’s program on our brumbies was definitely biased and skewed towards science . Still spouting 14,000 horses, no mention of the fires wiping out so many. Bitterly disappointed in the way ABC skewed this program.
The controversies about the future of the park will undoubtedly continue well into the future.

author: Kevin Rennie


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Azerbaijani activists in Georgia want family names “liberated from occupation” · Global Voices
OC Media

Rabil Ismail, a Salam campaigner, collecting petition signatures in Karajala, a village in Georgia’s Kakheti region. Image: Shota Kincha/OC Media.
This article was first published on OC Media. An edited version is republished here under a content partnership agreement.
In Georgia, an activist group of ethnic Azerbaijanis is collecting signatures to support legislation that would allow people to remove or alter Russian-sounding endings from their last names. Salam, a grassroots organization in Georgia, advocates for equal rights for and stronger public engagement by ethnic Azerbaijanis in Georgian public life and has been behind several recent campaigns and protests, including opposing early marriages and promoting greater access to basic goods for rural Azerbaijani communities in Georgia.
The group's goal is to have parliament amend Articles 64 and 65 of the Law on Civil Status Acts in order to allow Georgian citizens “whose surnames end with inauthentic/non-traditional suffixes” to remove the suffixes or replace them with “traditional/authentic” suffixes that “already exist.”
Members of Salam have one month left to collect at least 25,000 signatures for the lawmakers to consider their draft law.
If they succeed, ethnic Azerbaijanis in Georgia whose family names, typically ending with -ov, -ova, -ev, and -eva, could have suffixes that are Russian in origin removed or replaced with typical Azerbaijani endings.
Campaigners hope that a signature list with typical Azerbaijani suffixes — including -oghli, -oghlu, and -qizi — would serve as evidence for the civil registry authorities that such so-called original surname forms already legally exist.
The Georgian Law on Civil Status Acts formally allows a person to change their surname to one used by someone from their familial line up to four generations ago. The law also permits recovering one’s “historical” surname provided that the person has “evidence” supporting the claim.
According to Merab Kartvelishvili, Human Rights Program Director at Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), civil registry archives are not a helpful instrument for ethnic Azerbaijanis in this case, as surnames with Russian-style suffixes have been in place for generations, some dating back to the pre-Soviet period.
Salam members have also reported, and OC Media has independently verified, a practice of civil registry authorities informally advising applicants against trying to change their surnames.
“I was told I had to pay 300 Georgian lari [around 100 US dollars in late 2019] when I first applied to change my surname, and they also told me it would probably be rejected,” Sema Sadiq, a 21-year-old Salam board member who wants to change her current legal surname from Sadikovi, told OC Media.
Petitioners, supported by GYLA, the Social Justice Center, and several other major Tbilisi-based rights groups, also cited the 2016 decision by Lithuania’s authorities to allow their citizens to change or remove their surname suffixes.
Mikheil Sarjveladze, Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights and Civil Integration, told OC Media on August 17 that he had not seen Salam’s draft. However, they are also working on a separate bill to address this matter.
Sarjveladze said the discussion will have a broad format and will involve different ethnic minority communities in Georgia.
Sarjveladze has said that he will abstain from commenting on the bill extensively until September but noted that amendments addressing surname endings should be “accurate and clear” before they are passed into law.
Meanwhile, this summer, some opposition leaders, including right-libertarian leaders Zurab Girchi Japaridze, Iago Khvichia, and Vakhtang Megrelishvili, have publicly endorsed Salam’s demands.
According to Salam, former European Georgia member and the country’s first ethnic Georgian Muslim MP Tariel Nakaidze is among their supporters, and many others are expected to join.
Salam members travel nationwide almost daily to visit settlements in Georgia populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis. Members hope to acquire a signature list long enough for the parliament to notice them and show a  diverse and regionally representative set of signatures.
The campaign, according to Kamran Mammadli, an ethnic Azerbaijani community organizer who seeks to have his legal name changed from Mamedovi — goes beyond ethnic Azerbaijanis of Georgia.
In the case of Yazidis in Georgia, it’s often -ian or -ov’ suffix forms… One lady came to our office recently saying her mother was Greek with the -ovi ending and that she wanted to sign the petition.
Sulkhan, a 30-year-old ethnic Kist and an activist from Georgia’s Pankisi Valley, said he also tried to change his family name from the Georgianized version, Bordzikashvili, to an original Kist version, Bordzgēr. However, he found it impossible to provide the authorities with the requested archival documents.
“I absolutely support [Salam’s campaign],” Sulkhan told OC Media. “There is a hope that I’ll be able to change my surname with their help.”
In a country where most Georgians decry Russia “occupying 20 percent” of Georgia, referring to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Salam has promoted the idea that surnames of many Georgian citizens have been equally “occupied” and need to be “liberated” from the heritage of Russia’s domination and assimilation policies.
Activists point out that ethnic Azerbaijanis were given surnames with Russian suffixes since the 1840s under the Russian Empire and especially during the Soviet Union and that other ethnic groups have had similar historical experiences.
“I think that our surnames are indeed occupied by Russians,” ethnically Azerbaijani journalist in Georgia Jeikhun Muhamedali told OC Media. “We are not obliged to have surnames with Russian endings.” Muhamedali, who was raised in the southern Georgian city of Marneuli, said his legal name is Narzalovi but that he doesn’t use it publicly and has, so far, been unable to change it.
Samira Bayramova, an ethnic Azerbaijani civil activist in Georgia, “welcomes” Salam’s initiative but also has some misgivings about its consequences.
“I don’t want all this leading to me being labeled as a “guest” and connected with the identity of another country as I’ve been fighting this all my life […] I don’t want [to have my surname end in] -zade, for instance,” Bayramova told OC Media on August 13.
Bayramova was referring to a trend in Azerbaijan to “de-Russify” Azerbaijani surnames, often by replacing a suffix with a Russian origin to the -zade suffix, which is common among Iran’s ethnic Azerbaijanis. She also referred to a common discriminatory discourse in Georgia that describes ethnic Azerbaijanis as “recent guests” in the country.
Both Samira Bayramova and Salam decried the Georgian Parliament earlier this year for referring to the community of ethnic Azerbaijani citizens of Georgia as a “diaspora.” Salam member Rabil Ismail told OC Media that the last thing they were interested in was endorsing a surname suffix that someone would associate “with another empire” or with neighboring Azerbaijan.
Ismail, from the village Darbazi of Bolnisi Municipality, also noted that as some ethnic Azerbaijanis treat it as part of genuine ethnic Azerbaijani identity, they leave the matter up to individuals while the campaign is about people’s right to restore their family name.
Meanwhile, Samira Bayramova underlined that it is a responsibility of the state, first and foremost, to invest in its own citizens’ quest for identity and help all ethnic groups on this journey.

author: OC Media


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Azerbaijani experts debate causes of recent escalation · Global Voices
OC Media

Peace keeping forces in Nagorno Karabakh. Screenshot taken from Al Jazeera report, “How fragile is the ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan? | Inside Story.”
This article was first published on OC Media. An edited version is republished here under a content partnership agreement.
Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan have recently escalated to their highest point since the signing of the Russia-brokered peace agreement that ended the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War on November 10, 2020.
Dozens of clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces near the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the Nagorno-Karabakh line of contact have left at least six soldiers dead since May. Tensions have also risen on the diplomatic side, with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev regularly referring to territory inside the Republic of Armenia with Azerbaijani names and vowing to reacquire them.
Armenia, meanwhile, has bristled at Aliyev’s comments and has begun purchasing new weapons from Russia — as symbolized on August 11 when Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu gifted Armenian Defense Minister Arshak Karapetyan a dagger.
While Azerbaijan’s independent experts have shared various perspectives on the causes of the ongoing ceasefire violations — there appears to be a consensus that the recent tensions are dangerous.
Arzu Abdullayeva, who heads the Azerbaijan Office of Helsinki Citizens Assembly, told OC Media that Russia is likely behind the recent escalations.
All the clashes that have taken place in recent days are in fact Russian provocations, because Russia’s interests are always at the forefront, as always.
Having said that, Abdullayeva does not think renewed military actions are likely.
According to Abdullayeva, Azerbaijan’s main post-war interest remains “opening of the corridor mentioned in the tripartite peace agreement.” The Zangezur corridor is of key geopolitical importance, said Abdullayeva, as it will provide Turkey with direct access to central Asia via Azerbaijan.
Abdullayeva added that to maintain the peace, Azerbaijan must tone down its heated language, as it cannot “achieve any results with harsh rhetoric” and should “offer real diplomatic rhetoric and solutions.”
Ahmad Alili, the director of the Caucasus Center for Political Analysis, a Baku-based independent think tank, told OC Media that he thinks that the priority for Baku is the delimitation and demarcation of borders. In particular, he said, Baku has an interest in seven Azerbaijani exclave villages under Armenian control.
Control over this territory, located in northeastern Armenia and which overlaps with the main thoroughfare connecting Armenia to Georgia, would allow for “the safer operation of gas and oil pipelines from Azerbaijan to Georgia.” Additionally, it would allow Baku to “control all communication lines from Yerevan to Tbilisi.”
But Armenia is unlikely to sign any document that demarcates and delimits borders, Alili told OC Media. If such a document were signed, “it will be a recognition of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, that is, Nagorno-Karabakh will be accepted as an integral part of Azerbaijan.”
As a result, Alili argued, Armenia is “trying to postpone” negotiations or document signing.
Speaking to OC Media in a private capacity, Eldar Mammadov, a foreign policy advisor for the Socialists and Democrats Group at the European Parliament, said “Although Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared [the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict]  is solved, the facts on the ground contradict these statements.” He added:
You can declare that this question is closed and that there is no such a thing as “Nagorno-Karabakh”, but only “Karabakh”. But this assessment neither reflects the realities nor is it shared by major powers like the U.S., Russia, France and the European Union (EU).
Mammadov also pointed out that part of Nagorno-Karabakh is presently under the protection of Russian peacekeepers and that Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over the territory has not been fully re-established.
These forces are there because the rhetoric and actions of the government in Baku do not reassure the local Armenians about their future as part of Azerbaijan.
Baku “can try to impose its will by force,” said Mammadov but that would “pit it against the West and Russia.” Azerbaijan would also need to be prepared to “ethnically cleanse the whole Armenian population” from the territory — a move with a very “high cost” to Azerbaijan’s international reputation.
The best Azerbaijan can do, Mammadov argued, “is to offer a decent and dignified deal to the Karabakh Armenians to convince them that they have a future in Azerbaijan.”
As for “unblocking the trade and transport communications in the region” as spelled out in the tripartite peace declaration, Mammadov agreed that Baku has a particular focus on what he said Azerbaijan calls, the “Zangezur corridor.”
But the stress on the “corridor” Mammadov said, is misleading.
The trilateral statement made on November 9, 2020 says nothing specific about this “corridor”. [The statement mentions] Only the general principle of establishing direct communication between the western regions of Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan.
Establishing such a direct line of communication, according to Mammadov could “in principle, foster economic interdependence and shared prosperity in the region” but this possibility is “consistently undermined by Baku’s talk of Zangezur as a ‘historical Azerbaijani land’ as it fuels fears on the Armenian side” that establishing this link would be a cover for the annexation of southern Armenia.
Any viable long-term solution requires a buy-in from all parties concerned, including Armenia. Azerbaijan should not repeat the miscalculation made by Armenia in the early 1990’s that it could keep its military gains forever, without finding a mutually acceptable solution.
According to Mammadov, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev is the “main beneficiary” of the ongoing tensions as they are allowing him to leverage some “key provisions” of the trilateral agreement “such as the re-opening of the trade and transport communications” that have not yet been implemented.
It is designed to put pressure on Armenia to deliver on the opening of the “Zangezur corridor”, and also on Russia as the sponsor of the trilateral statement. It is, therefore, no coincidence that the latest round of tensions on the Armenian–Azerbaijani border occurred just before Aliyev’s visit to Moscow.
Additionally, the tension allows Aliyev to keep Azerbaijani society mobilized around the conflict and divert attention from rising social and economic problems.
But Aliyev likely is not the only beneficiary of the escalations.  They might also benefit Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan who is using the conflict to “portray Azerbaijan as the ‘unreasonable party’ and try to build international support around this assertion,” Mammadov explained.
“This explains Pashinyan’s latest maneuvering in securing the support of the West — the U.S. and the EU, mainly through the French,” said Mammadov.
The danger is that now “in the absence of a meaningful political track” there is the possibility the conflict will escalate “unless international players impose a political process.”


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Space for peaceful protests is vanishing in Hong Kong as pro-democracy coalition is disbanded · Global Voices
CitizenNews

The 2019 July 1 rally. CHRF's protest banner callied for the Chief Executive Carrie Lam to step down. Image from inmediahk.net. Used with permission.
The following post is an English translation of a Chinese report published on Hong Kong-based CitizenNews on August 14, 2021. It is published on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), a coalition of pro-democracy political and citizen groups for the mobilisation of large-scale rallies, announced its disbandment on August 15, 2021.
Many anticipated the group would eventually dissolve when the Hong Kong Police Force started investigating the group in April 2021, citing national security concerns
Throughout its tenure, the umbrella organization frequently hosted major mass rallies in Hong Kong, including the 2019 anti-China extradition protests. Since its establishment in 2002, the Hong Kong police had collaborated with the group to ensure rallies were orderly, safe and peaceful. Yet, upon the enactment of the national security law (NSL) on June 30, 2020, the Police Force banned the CHRF's 2020 July 1 pro-democracy rally for the first time since the annual protests began in 2002, citing COVID-19 and security concerns. In May 2021 the coalition was flagged as an illegal entity.
CHRF has represented the rational, peaceful and moderate front of Hong Kong's civil society since its establishment. For 18 years, it served as a platform for civic groups to communicate and build consensus on common agendas for positive social change. Though no protests have been organised since the NSL was implemented, police vowed to investigate key figures of the group for potential national security infractions.
The Civil Human Rights Front was established in 2002 by Rose Wu, a veteran feminist and a faculty member at CUHK's School of Theology. The group hoped to provide a loose platform for civil groups to regularly discuss human rights and social justice. Eventually, more than 30 groups had joined the coalition, which was officially launched on September 13, 2002.
At that time, the most pressing issue in Hong Kong was the legislation of Basic Law Article 23 — a local version of the national security law. The CHRF hosted its first rally in December 2002 against the proposed law and unexpectedly drew 60,000 demonstrators — ten times more than anticipated.
On July 1, 2003, the CHRF organized its second rally against local national security legislation. Around 500,000 people turned out, making it the second-largest protest in the city since the mass rally against China’s crackdown on the Tiananmen student movement in 1989. The rally forced the Hong Kong government to halt the legislation.
Since then, July 1 rallies have become an annual event for citizens to voice out their discontent. As the rally host, the CHRF would decide on the annual agenda while other organisations and protesters would use the occasion to voice their demands.
Between 2005 and 2013, the agenda of the annual rally covered a wide range of issues including universal suffrage, minimum wage, environmental concern, property bubbles, the introduction of a national education curriculum and more. The turnout ranged from 21,000 to 430,000 depending on the political climate at the time.
In 2014, 510,000 people joined a rally demanding genuine universal suffrage of the Legislative Council and the Chief Executive. After the rally, two student activist groups, Hong Kong Federation of Student Unions and Scholarism staged a rehearsal of ‘Occupy Central Protests‘, a massive civil disobedience campaign that advocates for democratic election reform with no pre-screening for candidates according to international standards of universal suffrage. During the sit-in, 511 protesters were arrested.
Since then, many started to question the effectiveness of the annual ‘ritualistic’ peaceful rallies organized by the CHRF and called for more radical forms of protest and civil disobedience.
Civil engagement ebbed after the Occupy Central sit-in protests in 2014 failed to bring democratic changes in the city. As a large number of activists were arrested for participating in the peaceful sit-in, some protesters became sceptical of orderly, symbolic acts of protest in favour of more disruptive resistance. The number of participants in demonstrations dropped dramatically until February 2019 when the government introduced an amendment to the Extradition Bill or The Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019.
In response to the government decision to bypass the Bill Committee and submit the controversial bill directly to the Legislative Council for second reading on June 12, 2019, the CHRF organized the anti-China extradition rally on June 9. The government decided to proceed with the reading despite the 1 million demonstrators who had turned out against the bill. After the rally, some protesters clashed with police outside the Legislative Council.
On June 12, the CHRF hosted an authorized peaceful assembly at Lung Wui Road. On the same day, some protesters surrounded the Legislature and a few clashed with the riot police. The police force ended up firing tear gas, bean bag rounds and rubber bullets to disperse the protesters, including thousands of peaceful protesters at Lung Wui Road. At the end of the day, the police justified its actions by labelling the protest a riot, a crime that could lead to a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. The CHRF called for another rally on June 16.
Although the government announced on June 15 they would suspend the amendment to the extradition law, the police operation on June 12 had turned the single-issue protests into a city-wide political movement with five demands: the withdrawal of the fugitive law amendment, holding the police accountable for the violent clampdown on June 12, the release of the arrested protesters, changing the ‘riot’ label of the June 12 protests, and stepping down of the Chief Executive Carrie Lam. Over 2 million people turned out for the June 16 protest, which made headlines worldwide.
After the 2019 July 1 rally, which ended when a few dozen radical activists stormed the Legislative Council complex, the anti-China extradition movement evolved into a series of decentralised protests hosted by different activist groups. Very often, these protests ended in clashes between riot police and protesters.
In response to the violent clashes between riot police and demonstrators and between pro-Bejing and pro-democracy protesters such as the Yuen Long subway attack incident on July 21, the CHRF hosted a ‘be water assembly’ at Victoria Park on August 18, 2019, condemning the collusion between the police and the pro-Beijing mobs, more than 1,700,000 joined the protest.
The Hong Kong government and the pro-establishment groups condemned the CHRF and the pro-democracy political parties for not cutting ties with the radical protesters.
Since March 2021, when Singapore-based Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported that the Hong Kong police had launched an investigation on the CHRF, many coalition members have cut ties with the group. One month later in April 2020, the Hong Kong police accused the CHRF of violating the Societies Ordinance for failing to register as a legal entity.  The last convenor of CHRF Figo Chan was sentenced to jail for participating in an illegal assembly on October 1, 2019. The umbrella group was left with no leadership.
The final disbandment of the CHRF was announced on August 15 through a statement:
CHRF originally hoped to continue to face the challenge with everyone in the existing ways, but convenor Figo Chan is already in jail because of several cases, and the secretariat can no longer maintain its operations. With no members participating in the next secretariat, we can only begrudgingly announce our disbandment.

author: CitizenNews


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The evil of banal censorship · Global Voices
Lokman Tsui

‘Censorship.’ Image created by Oiwan Lam.
Not all censorship is sensational or spectacular. I reviewed a data set of thousands of censored images of the 2019 Hong Kong protests (period of June to October 2019) collected by The Citizen Lab from Chinese social media platforms, including Tenchent’s Wechat. Going over the collection of censored photos, most of them appear in lockstep with the kind of images that are routinely censored: silly memes of Xi Jinping, but also photos of police brutality and calls for sanctions against the Hong Kong and Chinese government. I have been researching Chinese internet censorship for over two decades and I’m no longer surprised at this kind of censorship, but I also realize I am starting to normalize this kind of systematic censorship, which bothers me, because these photos should not be censored in a democratic society, and because such censorship is a violation of widely recognized international standards of human rights.
However, a few images in this collection still caught me off-guard. These images are mostly mundane, almost banal pictures of protesters. Looking at these images, my first thought was “What’s the problem here? Why is this censored?” Like this picture, for example:
Censored photo on Citizen Lab's Net Alert, published under Fair Use: It ‘shows a moment where protesters seem to be just milling around, waiting, doing nothing in particular …’
I believe this picture was taken at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on September 2, 2019, when students organized a sit-in to start a two-week class boycott in protest against the extradition bill. On that day, student representatives read out a joint statement and shouted slogans. This particular photo shows a moment where protesters seem to be just milling around, waiting, doing nothing in particular. In other words, this was a photo of a quiet moment at a peaceful rally. So why was this censored?
One possibility is that the censors decided to censor this photo because they wanted to erase the entire existence of these events. The objective, in this case, is to buy time so that the Party can figure out what the talking points should be. They wanted to avoid a situation where people would start asking questions upon seeing these photos, but where the Party had no answers ready yet.
Another possibility, which I think is more likely, is that this picture is censored because of what it shows: a public. As defined by American philosopher, John Dewey, a public is “a group of people who, in facing a similar problem, recognize it and organize themselves to address it” (The Public and its Problems, 1927). Instead, what the Party wants you to think: this is not a public, this is a crowd. As understood by Gustav Le Bon, a crowd, in contrast to a public, is characterized by its “impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments” (The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 1895). The CCP propaganda narrative continues to portray the protesters as violent, irrational, emotional, and this picture does not fit this narrative.
Censored photo on Citizen Lab's Net Alert, published under Fair Use
Hannah Arendt talked about the banality of evil, and how this is often not the kind of evil where men are twirling their moustaches, but instead how it can be bureaucrats who do what they are asked to do, who do not reflect upon what they are asked to do, who have no inner dialogue, who are not critical, who do not think. Similarly, I argue that this censorship of banal images is evil, in the sense that it prevents us from thinking. The propaganda narrative wants us to accept a simplistic reality where protesters are violent and emotional and irrational, instigated by foreign forces, and that’s all there is to it. That’s why images of peaceful protesters have to be censored: they do not fit the narrative, they might actually make us reflect and wonder and ask questions. This kind of censorship is neither new or surprising: think censorship of seemingly innocent pictures of Winnie the Pooh.
But that this banal censorship is not surprising does not mean we should accept it as normal. What we lose is the possibility to have a common world, where we see each other as human beings, in all our complexity, diversity and plurality, with different opinions, but also with the ability to work out our differences through dialogue and conversation. This common world is what the CCP through this kind of censorship is destroying. In the face of such repression, I am inviting you to start a dialogue and think about the following important questions: how can we refuse and reject this kind of censorship, and how can we start rebuilding a common world, one that is inclusive, diverse, that allows our imagination to go visiting and that allows us to walk a mile in the shoes of the other?
Lokman is a scholar and activist, a Fellow with The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, and currently working on a book about his experience in the Hong Kong protests.

author: Lokman Tsui


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The plight of Afghan women under the new Taliban regime  · Global Voices
Arbaz Shah

Screenshot from TRT World interview with Mahbooba Seraj, a member of the Afghan Women's Network.
“We, Afghans would like to say to the world, that they have left us in isolation, to the wolves in our country. I do not understand the United States for undoing and now redoing the Taliban in Afghanistan whose ruling will affect women's lives the most, which will be ruined yet again. I feel immense fear for the Afghan artists, singers, business tycoons who would be suspending their activities as they had done previously during the Taliban reign back in the 1990s,” said Afghanistan’s prominent human rights activist Mahbooba Seraj, while speaking to TRT World recently.
As the Taliban took control of much of Afghanistan’s territory this month, with Kabul among the last cities to fall on August 15, they wreaked havoc. President Ashraf Ghani fled to the UAE after signing a surrender deal with the Mullah Ghani brothers.
Now that the Taliban have full control, Afghan citizens are left in fear and uncertainty as diplomats, and representatives of international organisations are fleeing Afghanistan.
The war-weary Afghans are reliving 1994, when the Taliban assaulted the government of then-sitting Afghan leader Dr. Najeeb, taking  control of Kabul by force, and establishing  an Islamic reign headed by Mullah Umar.
The abrupt withdrawal of the United States and failed troika negotiations in Doha have resulted in more violence on the ground, reminding Afghans of what they suffered 25 years ago: the loss of their entire social structure and health infrastructure, the dismissal of women's rights ,and a complete shutdown of the educational system.
As a result, many are leaving Afghanistan in fear of what is yet to come. One such person is Gull Muhammad.
For Gull, who fled Spin Boldak, a border town with Pakistan, on August 7, along with his entire family, there was little sense in staying once the Taliban's fighters arrived in town. He remembers too well how, during the Taliban's previous regime, women were turned into slaves, forced into marriages with Taliban soldiers and into adultery. In an interview with Global Voices, Gull explained:
I saw men with turbans on their heads, and rifles in hands, on their Honda motorbikes in the middle of the night chanting ‘Allah-u-Akbar’ and entering Spin Boldak.  It was then that I decided  to find a safer place for my family. I left for Pakistan, crossing the Chaman border gate. The residents of Spin Boldak knew they could not continue living safely in the area, fearing that the Taliban had come with the similar intentions that they had in the past.
Gull crossed into Pakistan with his wife and five children, and the wives of his brothers and their three children. There, he received help from a man named Bakhtiyar, the owner of a motorcycle-tyre showroom. Gull explained that the women brought with them jewelry and fabrics which the family intends to use to make ends meet in Pakistan.  “Now I will be leaving for Balochistan’s capital Quetta and subsequently for Karachi where I am intending to stay at my daughter’s home, who lives with her husband there,” explained Gull as he took a rest with his family from the scorching heat, inside the showroom.
Bakhtiyar helped Gull by arranging a motor vehicle that took Gull’s family to Quetta. “The Pashtun family arrived here in despair, looking for safety. I provided the family with food and shelter,” Bakhtiyar told Global Voices.
Gull’s family is just one of many refugee families expected to be arriving in Pakistan and other neighboring countries if the dialogue between the Taliban, the administration and the Taliban leadership sitting in Doha fails to reach a peace deal for the country.
One of the groups most affected by the decades-long war is Afghan women, who are now faced with a harsh and new reality. They fear that the loss of their lifestyles and their access to education alongside a total violation of fundamental rights is what awaits them under the Taliban.
In February of last year, long before the current crisis unfolded, an all-women press conference was held in Kabul. Among the attending guests were parliament member Fawzia Koofi, the executive director of the Afghan Women’s Network, Mary Akrami, and Palwasha Hassan, from the  Afghan Women’s Educational Centre.
During the press conference, the women demanded “an immediate, permanent and unconditional ceasefire,” and an end to civilian killings, targeted killings, the sexual slavery of women and the practice of forced marriages to the Taliban fighters.
The women also demanded gender equality in the peace negotiations, highlighting that, otherwise, there could be shocking reversals in freedoms for girls and women, especially if the Taliban run the country in the absence of any control.
Speaking at the press conference at the time, Palwasha Hassan, said, “[The Taliban] have learned nothing from the past, and are more brutal and defiant than before. They have ‘zero knowledge’ about running a country, what is an inclusive Afghanistan, or what is the value of women’s participation in nation-building. Already in some Taliban-controlled areas, girls are barred from schools after reaching puberty, which is in violation of the Afghan constitution. Reports are emerging of Taliban handing down edicts, that women should not work, receive education or leave their homes without mahram [a male relative related by blood, like brother, father or husband].”
Afghan woman civil leaders have long been fighting a complicated war. They bear the brunt of terrorist violence, and Afghan women and children have suffered the most throughout the conflict. According to a United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan report, they constitute 46 percent of all civilian casualties and remain extremely vulnerable in times ahead. According to the Afghanistan Security and Defence Department, at least 20 international militant groups are operating in Afghanistan, most of whom will attack many soft targets in order to make territorial gains.
In the last year, there has been a spate of targeted killings of women journalists, human rights defenders and women working for the supreme court. Parliament member  and negotiator Fawzia Koofi was shot in the arm in 2020, but survived the assassination attempt and went back to the peace talks in Doha as one of the few female participants. Her example illustrates the courage with which Afghan women have struggled for their rights during this difficult phase.
And despite their bleak prospects they are defiant and refuse to remain silent.
The world must give credit to these voices who speak up on one of the most complicated situations in the world.
It is 2021, and it is past time we saw Afghan women explicitly in the driver's seat at the peace talks, not just as recompense for all that they’ve suffered in these years of war, but because they are resolute and courageous leaders in the face of an uncertain future.

author: Arbaz Shah


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Cambodia’s China-funded mega dam linked to rights abuses and loss of fisheries · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

A former shrine in the village of Srekor, northeastern Cambodia, flooded after the Lower Sesan 2 hydroelectric dam was completed. © 2019 Human Rights Watch
A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has highlighted the negative social and environmental impact of the Lower Sesan 2 hydroelectric dam in northeastern Cambodia.
The dam, located in the Mekong River Basin, was built as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with a budget of approximately 800 million US dollars. It opened in 2018, and its main operator is China’s Huaneng Group.
The dam is a major BRI project in Cambodia, reflecting the close relationship between China and Cambodia's prime minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country for more than three decades. Journalists in Cambodia said they have encountered difficulties accessing information about BRI projects.
The 137-page HRW report titled “Underwater: Human Rights Impacts of a China Belt and Road Project in Cambodia” was released on August 10, 2021. The research started in 2019 and involved interviews with more than 60 community members, civil society leaders, academics, scientists, and other project stakeholders.
The report states that around 4,500 to 5,000 houses belonging to villagers near Sesan and Srepok Rivers were submerged due to the dam. It identified Indigenous groups and other ethnic minorities affected by the project, including the Bunong, Brao, Kuoy, Lao, Jarai, Kreung, Kavet, Tampuan, and Kachok communities.
HRW said the Cambodian government and its Chinese partner have failed to provide safeguards or properly compensate residents who were forced to leave their communities. HRW quoted a Bunong villager saying:
The company didn’t consider Indigenous rights. They just told us to move. In the consultation, they determined things for us. They didn’t ask us what we want or need.
The dam also severed traditional migratory routes of fish in the Mekong River. HRW’s Asia advocacy director John Sifton summarized the destructive impact of the dam:
Today, everything the dammed-up rivers provided – food, water, an income from fishing – is gone.
…the compensation that was offered did not match the value of what they actually lost: fruit trees that were decades old, villages that they and their ancestors had lived in for generations, fields, graves, and religious shrines.
The Chinese-funded Lower Sesan 2 Dam in northeastern Cambodia has displaced thousands of indigenous and ethnic minority people and destroyed the livelihoods of many others, according to an Aug. 10 report by Human Rights Watch.
Illustration by RFA's Rebel Pepper pic.twitter.com/xpF79lgXla
— Radio Free Asia (@RadioFreeAsia) August 12, 2021
Responding to the HRW report, government spokesman Phay Siphan insisted that the dam is beneficial to Cambodians:
The development of Sesan 2 Dam is providing income to people. After moving, they got better houses and land than their old houses.
It supports the economy of Stung Treng province and country’s economy by generating electricity to serve the industry, enterprises and factories as a source of employment for the people in the province and as part of boosting the national economy.
He added that through the project, aid was extended to affected communities, and included 118 houses, 471 wooden houses, 127 self-construction budgets, 63 ponds, 12 schools, 12 kindergartens, two commune halls, three pagodas, two police stations, a military post, and 181 water wells in new settlements.
Environment Ministry spokesman Neth Pheaktra emphasized that many Cambodians support the dam project because it addresses the country’s demand for renewable energy sources:
This is what Cambodians want but extremist human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch want Cambodians to continue using kerosene lamps in the 21st century.
Suos Yara, a member of the National Assembly, accused HRW of having “naked political bias, and dubious research methodology.” He wrote that the people interviewed by HRW do not represent the views of the majority of local residents affected by the project:
This sample size is too small and inadequate to be generalised in this kind of in-depth environmental study. Moreover, HRW failed to interview the vast majority of locals who have received fair compensation for their relocations and whose livelihoods have benefited from the construction of 12 schools, 12 kindergartens and numerous other public facilities created by the dam project.
His comments were republished by the Chinese state media outlet Global Times.
The response of Cambodian authorities was echoed by various agencies. Even the Cambodian Embassy in Turkey has released a statement about the HRW report:
In responding to Human Right Watch’s Report on Lower Sesan II Dam in Cambodia. #Statement of Spokesperson of the Royal Embassy of Cambodia in the Republic of Turkey, #13Aug2021 pic.twitter.com/QpJx80VK1d
— Honglim Ti (@honglim_ti) August 16, 2021
The HRW report confirmed what many groups and campaigners have been saying about the dam for many years. Residents and activists have been protesting about the project since 2017.
Environment news website Mongabay quoted 29-year-old Dam Samnang in 2017 about opposition against the dam in his community:
It provides no direct benefits to people in this community, it will destroy all our houses, and it will ruin the river system so that we can never come back.
Our ancestors are buried here and if they flood the area we will not be able to come back and visit them. I can’t put a (monetary) value on graves, but if the Prime Minister’s family graves have value, then why don’t ours?
This dam will be a disaster for us; our destiny is in trouble. They say they want to develop Cambodia, so why do they destroy our homes?
Phnom Penh Post newspaper published a report in 2017 quoting Srang Choeun, a villager in Kabal Romeas, about his family’s refusal to leave their land:
Now we live in Kabal Romeas collectively, we are united as a community by our common ownership of the land. But if we agree to relocate then we will accept private property, we will own land like the Khmer people.
Khmer refers to the ethnic majority in Cambodia.
Another villager, Kem Reoun, disclosed the harassment he and his community faced when threatened with displacement:
Authorities have been restricting villagers from their daily tasks, such as leaving the village to go to the market. In short, authorities do not allow people to leave the village. There are people guarding every gate, and they have dismantled a bridge.
There were reports about the hardships experienced by residents forced to leave their flooded ancestral lands two years after the dam completion. Even relocation sites were flooded, and settlers blamed the dam for causing a shortage of clean water.
Writer Horn Chanvoitey also probed the supposed benefits of the dam and the promises made by Cambodian officials to local communities.
Two years after the dam officially began operating, its benefits remain highly contested.
This story is part of a Civic Media Observatory investigation into competing narratives about China’s Belt and Road Initiative and explores how societies and communities hold differing perceptions of potential benefits and harms of Chinese-led development. To learn more about this project and its methods, click here.

author: Mong Palatino