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Albania slowly going back to normal after devastating quake · Global Voices
Ardi Pulaj

The center of Tirana, the capital of Albania prepared for year end celebrations. Photo by Ardi Pulaj, used with permission.
The catastrophic 6.4-magnitude earthquake that hit Albania before dawn on November 26, 2019, took the lives of 51 people, left thousands injured and homeless, and many buildings damaged.
Scenes of demolished buildings and panicked people made headlines all over the country and the world. Many abandoned their hometowns of Durrës, Thumanë and even the capital Tirana in fear of the aftershocks and found shelter elsewhere in the country or in neighboring Kosovo.
#Tirana has been looking empty with buildings half lit over the past four days. Many people appear to have left town to escape anxiety of #earthquake #aftershocks. Little damage in #Albania capital considering what has happened in nearby #Durres.
— Global355 (@Global355) December 1, 2019
Prime Minister Edi Rama said the country's draft budget of 2020 would be revised to allocate 0.4% of the GDP for rebuilding homes and that it will not hurt other public expenses.
More than half of the country's population of 2.8 million were affected by the quake. On December 6, a total of 7,077 buildings were reported damaged. Around 12,000 people have been left homeless. Most of them have been transferred to hotels, and the government has promised to pay rent until their homes are rebuilt. Others have reportedly chosen to stay in tents or their cars.
Lights of hope! Lights of life! Durrës ❤ #aftermath #intoalbania #durres
A post shared by  IntoAlbania (@intoalbania) on
Nonetheless, Albanians are trying to get back to normality. The month of December is when Christmas and New Year celebrations are prepared; Tirana and Durrës are in full festive atmosphere.
People taking pictures in the center of the capital Tirana, where New Year decorations have been put up. Photo by Ardi Pulaj, used with permission.
The monument of the national hero Skanderbeg in the square bearing his name in Tirana, the capital of Albania. Photo by Ardi Pulaj, used with permission.
The aftermath of the earthquake generated discussion about construction standards in Albania as many building were not prepared for the tremor.
Redi Muçi, a civil engineer and professor at the Faculty of Geology and Mining in Tirana, told Global Voices that in recent years many buildings were erected with structural flaws, or lacked a geology study.
The new Attorney General Olsian Çela started his job with a visit in Durrës on December 7. He said the press that district prosecution offices will include construction experts in an investigation into the earthquake damages.
Çela added that the focus will be indictments regarding illegal building and misuse of duty.
“We are conscious about what happened. Irresponsible individuals with a full conscience didn’t respect the law and, as a result, many people are dead. Law enforcement should be correct and precise and we will have clear results of the investigation”, the Attorney General said.
Prime Minister Edi Rama also announced his office is preparing a bill that would punish companies, professionals and investors who overstep construction permits.
Children gather around the tree in the Pazari i Ri (New Bazaar) area in Tirana, the capital of Albania. Photo by Ardi Pulaj, used with permission.
Meanwhile, help from abroad is coming through: Janez Lenarcic, the European Union Commissioner for Crisis Management, was in Albania on December 6 to assess the damage and reconstruction priorities. The European Commission has already sent 15 million euros (16.6 million USD) to Albania in relief funds.
Additionally, Turkey has promised to build 500 homes in Albania. Entirely new neighborhoods will be built in Durrës, Tirana, and Laç.
FC Teuta, the local soccer team from Durrës, won against Skënderbeu on December 8 on a match played in the city's stadium where weeks ago homeless people were sheltered. A few players of the team were also affected by the quake. FC Teuta announced that the revenues from ticket sales will be donated.
Teuta, më shumë se fitore/ Të ardhurat nga biletat e ndeshjes në “Niko Dovana” për tërmetin https://t.co/zHp4CwCBCV via @topchanneltv
— Top Channel (@topchanneltv) December 9, 2019
Teuta, more than a victory/ Revenues from ticket sales in “Niko Dovana” [stadium] will go to [the affected by the] earthquake.
Two young boys, Aurel Lala, 10, and Alesio Cakoni, 7, who both survived the earthquake by jumping from a building in Thumanë, had their dreams come true when they met soccer legends Ronaldo and Buffon:
Ronaldo and Buffon meet with Alesio and Aurel. Both of them jumped from their apartments during the earthquake in Albania ❤?? (1/3) pic.twitter.com/9F9Vo4mPom
— Team Albanians (@TeamAlbanians) December 6, 2019

author: Ardi Pulaj


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Civil society criticizes the arrest of 18 political delegates in Mozambique · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

“Free them now”. Image used with permission from Nova Democracia party.
Eighteen political delegates from the Nova Democracia (New Democracy) party were arrested on 15 October, in Gaza province, for allegedly carrying false credentials, according to local police. They were released on bail on November 30.
Local newspaper Zambeze highlights the arrest case (screenshot)
Mozambique held elections for the presidency, lawmakers, and provincial governors on 15 October. Opposition parties and some civil society organisations criticized the election as fraudulent.
The delegates’ arrest was reported by Wilker Dias, a defeated legislative candidate with New Democracy:
JOVENS PRESOS ILEGALMENTE.
Depois do jornalista Amade Abubacar, eis que o regime efectua mais uma prisão ilegal.. ilegal?? Sim ilegal, o mesmo acusa 18 jovens que eram delegados de candidatura do Partido Nova Democracia em Gaza de portar credenciais falsas, em que no entanto foram atribuídas pelos órgãos eleitorais.
Gaza foi um dos palcos de conflito intenso durante a campanha eleitoral, onde para alem das intimidações, danos materiais também houve perdas humanas…curiosamente a Nova Democracia sairia daquele ciclo eleitoral com Deputados eleitos para a Assembleia da Republica apesar dos fantasmas recenseados.
YOUTHS  ILLEGALLY ARRESTED.
After the journalist Amade Abubacar, here the regime makes another illegal… illegal arrest??? Yes, illegal, it accused 18 youths who were New Democracy party delegates in Gaza of carrying fake credentials, which were, however, accorded by the electoral authorities.
Gaza was one of the scenes of intense conflict during the electoral campaign, where as well as intimidation, [there was] material damage [and] also human losses… Interestingly, New Democracy would emerge from that electoral cycle with deputies elected to the Assembly of the Republic despite the fears built up.
Quitéria Guirengane, the party's national representative, told a local newspaper that this was an act of intimidation against the party.
The party also started an initiative for people to send letters of solidarity:
Hoje iniciamos uma corrente de conforto aos familiares e os respectivos presos políticos do ND. Essa corrente, visa a recolha de cartas com mensagens dos membros, amigos… que directa ou indirectamente compartilham da dor da privação da opressão!
Se sente-se tocado por essa situação, mande já a sua carta para um ou todos presos do ND. A carta, pode ser enviada para o nosso “inbox”, whatsapp, email, na nossa sede ou nas outras delegações!
Today we begin a flow of comfort to the families and the respective political prisoners from the ND. This flow aims to collect letters with messages from members, friends… who directly or indirectly share the pain of the deprivation of oppression!
If you are touched by this situation, send your letter to one or all of the ND prisoners now. The letter can be sent to our inbox, whatsapp, email, to our headquarters or to other offices!
Using the hashtag #Gaza18, numerous people reacted to the delegates’ arrests, including the activist Cídia Chissungo:
Participe da campanha. Ajude-nos a divulgar sobre o #Gaza18, não permitamos que a nossa indiferença e silêncio mantenha os 18 jovens detidos na provincia de Gaza. As mulheres estão num espaço improvisado de 4 chapas a comer e fazer necessidades no mesmo local e ninguém faz nada. pic.twitter.com/0HysD3Q0cw
— Cídia Chissungo (@Cidiachissungo) November 12, 2019
Join the campaign. Help us to spread the word about the #Gaza18 we won’t allow our indifference and silence to keep the 18 youths detained in the province of Gaza. The women are in an improvised area with 4 spaces eating and doing their needs in the same place and nobody does anything.
Ele tem apenas 19 anos e jà é um preso politico. Qual foi seu crime? Não alinhar-se com o sistema e optar por um partido que achou ser o melhor pra ele. Até que ponto chegamos?
Deixem os jovens decidir por eles mesmos. Chega de opressão.
Exigimos sua liberdade imediata#Gaza18 pic.twitter.com/m5zpPFiyiC
— Cídia Chissungo (@Cidiachissungo) November 7, 2019
He's only 19 and he's already a political prisoner. What was his crime? Not to align with the system and to choose a party that he thought was best for him. What point have we reached?
Let young people decide for themselves. No more oppression.
We demand his immediate freedom #Gaza18
Nelson Machele, a student at Eduardo Mondlane University, also called for more people to join the movement:
Não pode ignorar mais!
Precisamos de si!
Caro amigo, até quando vai fingir que não vê? Nós precisamos de si, ajude-nos a espalhar a mensagem, do mesmo jeito que partilharia se fosse uma comédia ou qualquer outra coisa fútil.
You can't ignore it anymore!
We need you!
Dear friend, how long are you going to pretend you don't see? We need you, help us spread the word, in the same way you would if it were a comedy or some other trivial thing.
Similarly, Ashlenio de Joana reacted on Facebook:
Liberdade aos Presos Políticos
O regime deteve 18Jovens, demonstrou a sua Arrogância, Sua Insensibilidade e escamoteio às Liberdades Democráticas:
• Pelo medo da derrota;
• Pela Intolerância política;
• Pela intolerância ao pensar diferente;
• Pelo seu fracasso;
Presos políticos por temerem a juventude! #LiberdadeJa #Gaza18
Freedom for Political Prisoners
The regime arrested 18 youths, demonstrated their arrogance, their callousness and stole democratic freedoms:
- For fear of defeat;
– For political intolerance;
– For the intolerance of thinking differently;
– For its failure;
Political prisoners because they fear the youth! #FreedomJa #Gaza18
The #Gaza18 campaign reached other African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo:
Rejoignez la campagne #Gaza18 et aidez-nous à faire passer le message. Sortons de notre indifférence et brisons notre silence pour exiger la libération de 18 jeunes arrêtés dans la province de Gaza au #Mozambique et détenus dans des conditions ne respectant leur dignité.#Free18mz pic.twitter.com/z5skKvrcZp
— Nicolas Mbiya (@NicolasMbiya) November 12, 2019
Join the #Gaza18 campaign and help us spread the word. Let’s leave behind our indifference and break our silence to demand the liberation of 18 youths arrested in Gaza province in Mozambique and detained in conditions which do not respect their dignity
Free them now | photo used with permission from Nova Democracia party
Similarly, in Uganda people showed support to youths in detention:
#Free18Mz
We join our comrades and civil society to call upon the #Mozambique Government to unconditionally and immediately release the #Gaza18 who were arbitrarily arrested while monitoring the polling station in Chokwé district during the general election. These youth have been detained since 15 october 2019. Justice must be upheld for democracy to prevail @NyusiConfioemti, @DavidKaye @UNHumanRights @UN_SPExperts @ParlamentoMoz
Free them now | photo used with permission from Nova Democracia party

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Dércio Tsandzana


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‘Creating Suspension Between Contradictory States’: An interview with artist Parastou Forouhar · Global Voices
Omid Memarian

Parastou Forouhar,  Water Mark, a tribute to the drowning refugees, 2015. “This work was created within the scope of the artist residency program of the Brodsky Center, Rutgers University, and in collaboration with Anne McKeown and Randy Hemminghaus, masters of papermaking and printing at the Brodsky Center.” Image courtesy of the artist.
Germany-based Iranian-German artist Parastou Forouhar is known for creating masterful artworks that embody “the synchronicity of harmony and beauty, along with other layers that display violence and a sense of insecurity and entrapment.”
Autobiographical in nature, her work uses a range of media including installation, animation, digital drawing and photography.
In 1991, Forouhar left Iran and settled in Germany where she received her postgraduate degree in art. Her work has been exhibited widely in galleries and museums in Iran, Germany, Australia and New York, and can also be found in the permanent collections of the German Parliament in Berlin and the British Museum in London.
Forouhar is a professor of Fine Arts at the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts in Germany. Her work currently appears in a group show of Iranian women artists titled A Bridge Between You and Everything, curated by acclaimed photographer Shirin Neshat at the High Line Nine gallery in New York City (November 7-December 14).
Excepts from my interview with Forouhar follow:
Parastou Forouhar, The Eyes, 2018. Image courtesy of the artist.
Omid Memarian: Your “Eyes” collection evokes a police state and political repression. At the same time, the curved lines, recurring symbols and use of black and white show a harmony and tranquillity that clash with the meaning conveyed by the work. To me a viewer, it felt shocking. Iran is your preoccupation, but this narrative appears to be universal. What motivated this collection?
Parastou Forouhar: You pointed out something which I consider to be fundamental in a lot of my work: The concurrence of contradictory perceptions—the synchronicity of harmony and beauty, which are evident in the patterns and in their accumulation at first glance, along with other layers that display violence and a sense of insecurity and entrapment. Most of the latter layers become evident at second glance. In reality, by engaging the viewer in a work of art, I’m trying to show how to look at things and view them. I want to compel the viewer to look more carefully. As you in some way pointed out, this polarity and contradiction in perception, or the concurrence of opposing phenomena, is part of the human/social condition. You see its manifestation in Iran, but it’s not limited to a single society. Or, as you mentioned, it’s a universal narrative.
While working on the “Eyes” collection, which is one of my recent works, I was feeling a kind of intense crisis. There are social crises that stare at us and we seem to be fixated on them with anxiety, unable to overcome them. More than anything, this collection may have risen from the psychological and emotional crises that I’m going through, whether from the perpetual violence and oppression in Iran, the social collapse resulting from the various wars in the Middle East, growing confrontations with “the other” and fascism in Europe, where I live and work, or the coldhearted brutality against asylum seekers here and there.
Parastou Forouhar, RED IS MY NAME GREEN IS MY NAME III, 2015. Digital drawing on Photo Rag, 80 x 80 cm.Image courtesy of the artist.
OM: Politics, violence, discrimination, inequality and pain are major themes in your work, including “Eyes,” “Watermark” and “Red is my Name.” Sometimes they are clearly discernible, and sometimes more effort is needed to find the relationship between the various symbols and elements. What has led you to create such harmony in your repetitive symbols?
PF: Every artist works with life experiences. A person’s emotions and channels of understanding are formed by experiences. I grew up in a family and among a group of people whose main concern in life was to fight for freedom and justice under the dictatorship of the second king in the Pahlavi Dynasty. My father and mother and many of the people around me spent part of their life as political prisoners. In my youth, I witnessed the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, along with the brutal suppression of political opponents by the Iranian government, followed by migration and expulsion from my homeland… These situations in life shaped my human emotions and gave rise to my art. My artistic language and forms are based on ornaments and patterns which I gradually picked up over the years and tried to use to express my art. The ornamental structure allows me to present a mixture of visible and hidden meanings, to create beauty, balance and harmony with details that make you feel trapped in an organized turmoil and chaos. I try to create the potential for suspension between contradictory states that will emotionally and psychologically engage viewers and make them ask questions. From a technical standpoint, many of these sets of works are digitally created and printed with wide use of computer programs.
Parastou Forouhar, Written Room. Photo credit: Marc Domage. Image courtesy of the artist.
OM: Many of your works are spacious. Instead of being framed and hung on gallery walls, they take over the entire gallery, so that the viewer feels a common experience.
PF: You can generate a more complex and compact connection when an art form engulfs the audience, rather than just being in front of you. I see this aspect being in harmony with my work. These site-specific works take over and transform the space. As an emigrant, space has always been a challenging element. I think the desire to transform space is, to some extent, related to the experience of immigration and the struggle to open up your own space. I think you can see traces of these special works when I first started as an artist after finishing my studies in Germany in the mid-1990s. I think my first work that had this special feature was “The Written Room.” It was initially presented in 1999 and most recently I performed it a few months ago. It has been my most traveled work.
Parastou Forouhar, four-part photographic work Friday. Image courtesy of the artist.
OM: Your parents were murdered in Iran by the regime’s security agents in 1988, and since then you have been seeking justice and accountability for these political crimes and have sought to keep the memory of your parents alive. How has this impacted your artistic activities?
PF: The political murder of my parents has undoubtedly burdened me with a heavy load that I will always carry. These kinds of tragedies stay with people. I have always tried to avoid being crushed by this tragedy and as a human being, to react in a socially responsible way. Throughout the years, I have stood by the relatives of other victims of political crimes in Iran in order to seek justice and develop a culture of remembrance. There is no doubt that I have become more political and the impact of it can be seen in my artwork. But at the same time, I have always tried to be mindful of the basic difference between politics and art, and avoided taking advantage of them in favorable or detrimental ways.
Dariush and Parvaneh Forouhar were brutally murdered in their family home in southern Tehran on 22 November 1998. Dariush, 70, was stabbed 11 times. His wife, who was 12 years his junior, had been stabbed 24 times. Image courtesy of the artist.
OM: You are frequently traveling between Iran and Germany, as well as other countries. What impact has three decades of life, culture and travels in the West had on your identity?
PF: By now I have spent more than half of my life in Germany. This second half of my life has shaped my professional career to such an extent that when I think and speak about my art, I rely on German as my primary language. In Germany and other countries, I’m introduced as a German-Iranian artist. I see myself as an immigrant who belongs to different cultures. I am attracted to spaces that are in between. Given this background and life experience, my identity is a process that is affected by many things. It’s alive and fluid, as opposed to fixed or solid.

author: Omid Memarian


text:
Global Voices is 15! · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

December 2004. You had to be a university student to use Facebook, Twitter didn’t yet exist, and trolls still lived mostly under bridges in fairy tales. Our phones were dumb, a leak was something you called in the plumber to fix, and there were still some things Amazon.com didn’t sell. There was a diversity of independent news sites, blogging was alive and well, and we actually talked to each other online. And Global Voices was born.
That makes it 15 years since we’ve been at it! In dog years, that’s 110. In internet years, it’s practically a millennium.
Today we want to take a moment to thank our brilliant global community of contributors and our faithful readers and supporters for giving Global Voices the strength and energy to endure. Since 2004, we’ve helped make some of the biggest stories in the world. We've published almost 100,000 posts, created sections devoted to empowering local and underrepresented communities to use digital media and to defending online rights, as well as built a community of translators working in over 51 languages. Without you, there would be no Global Voices.
Help us make it another 15. We really mean that—we need your help. Donations from individuals help us preserve our independence and allows us to take risks to grow and change. Please support us today!
Donate now!

author: Georgia Popplewell


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Popular ‘Nausicaä’ animated movie from Japan performed as kabuki play · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Princess Nausicaä and an Ohmu in a new kabuki stage production of Miyazaki Hayao's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Screencap from Oricon YouTube channel.
One of Japan's most popular stories is being staged as a kabuki play in December 2019. Created by famed Japanese director, animator and storyteller Miyazaki Hayao, “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” (風の谷のナウシカ, Kaze no Tani no Naushika) first appeared as a manga serial starting in 1982, and then as a hit animated movie in 1984 that still popular with audiences around the world.
The kabuki version of Nausicaä is performed by an all-male cast featuring famed kabuki performers Onoe Kikugorō V and Nakamura Shichinosuke II. Onoe plays Nausicaä, the female protagonist of the story, while Nakamura portrays Princess Kushana, the antagonist. The stage play began its run at Tokyo's Shinbashi Enbujo on Friday, December 6, and will continue until December 25.
A short synopsis of the kabuki adaptation can be viewed on YouTube and on Twitter:
“Nausicaa” Kabuki stage play is opening tomorrow in Japan.https://t.co/0tcRvmYhxX
Thanks @ButaGhibli for the link. pic.twitter.com/YfJlzhefVb
— Catsuka (@catsuka) December 5, 2019
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, both the manga and the anime versions of “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” tell the story of Princess Nausicaä's attempts to prevent humanity from destroying itself and all other remaining life forms on a poisoned, largely inhospitable Earth. Like all of Miyazaki's work, Nausicaä uses fantasy to explore complex themes of environmentalism, pacifism, and human fallibility and greed.
Miyazaki Hayao is one of Japan's most celebrated auteurs. The founder of Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki's most popular works both inside and outside of Japan include “My Neighbour Totoro” and “Spirited Away“. Miyazaki got his start producing serialized manga in the late 1960s, which would eventually lead to the Nausicaä series.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ) was a long-running manga (comic) serial by Miyazaki Hayao first published in 1984. Photo by Nevin Thompson.
Nausicaä will be performed from December 5 to December 25, 2019, in Tokyo. It follows a similar kabuki production of Star Wars, which can be watched online on YouTube.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Battle-scarred: The lasting impact of the PolyU campus siege on Hong Kong’s protesters · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

Protesters outside Polytechnic University who attempted to help trapped protesters escape the siege. Photo: Holmes Chan/HKFP.
The following post written by Holmes Chan and Jennifer Creery takes a close look at the traumatic experience of the protesters. It was originally published on Hong Kong Free Press on 12 December and its trimmed version is republished on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
The fiercest battle in the Hong Kong anti-government protests in the past six months had been the violent clashes surrounding Hong Kong's Polytechnic University. In a single day on 18 November, riot police launched 1,491 gas canisters and 1,981 rounds of rubber bullets, bean bags, and sponge grenades at about 2,000 protesters who were trapped inside the campus. Thousands came to rescue their trapped fellows at the outskirts of the campus, resulting in multiple clashes in Kowloon district. All across the city, supporters of the protesters created roadblocks with an attempt to distract and divert the police forces. The battle ended up in a 12-day siege of the campus in which hundreds of protesters were trapped. Eventually, some were escorted out of the campus by church leaders and school principals, while others successfully escaped. However, the incident has left a deep scar for many.
Among the hundreds of protesters trapped inside Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University on the night of 18 November, surrounded on all sides by riot police, Mario and Cathy discovered a route to freedom six metres below a narrow footbridge.
All they had to do was slide down the dangling ropes and reach the drivers who were waiting at the bottom to whisk them to safety. It was now or never, Mario recalled thinking. The violent stand-off between students barricaded inside the campus and police outside had already been raging for 24 hours, and anybody leaving risked arrest. The 23-year-old told HKFP:
I was very nervous because riot police had already discovered the route. They were watching us as we were escaping, and I could hear the reinforcement police vans coming our way.
Separately, Cathy, 27, was ushering three 16-year-old students she had taken under her wing towards the ropes, but tear gas was making their escape harder. Many who attempted it were injured, either from ropes cutting into their skin or falling to the ground, some breaking their bones in the process.
Cathy and Mario – both regular frontline protesters using aliases out of fear of arrest – hit the ground with only minor injuries, and flung themselves into waiting vehicles.
The 12-day siege ended with more than 1,300 people arrested and over 300 hospitalised. Violence had reached a new level as protesters used Molotov cocktails, catapults and bows and arrows, while police fired tear gas, water cannon jets, and volleys of crowd-control projectiles.
At the height of the siege, police said that they may use live rounds, sparking fears that officers would storm the campus and conduct mass arrests amid an information blackout – similar to the infamous raid of the Prince Edward MTR station on August 31. Eventually, police opted for the alternative: a waiting game that turned the university into a pressure cooker.
The intensity of the fighting was not the only reason the PolyU siege was unprecedented. It also raised fundamental questions over how to maintain unity in a leaderless movement, now in its seventh month. It exposed tensions over tactics and strategy, underscoring the physical and mental challenges faced by protesters like Mario and Cathy as they grappled with the trauma.
Since the beginning of the movement, demonstrators have stuck to the key tenet of “Leave no-one behind, advance and retreat together.” In PolyU, however, the guerrilla-style “Be Water” tactics of street clashes no longer worked as those trapped inside found themselves encircled.
Mario and Cathy were among those who had to face a dilemma: should they stay and show solidarity with the holdouts, or escape to fight another day? The choice was further complicated by unreliable information, as protesters suspected that police sowed misinformation in chat groups on messaging apps like Telegram. Some escape routes also became quickly outdated, making every escape attempt risky.
Familiar with the campus, Cathy said that she had had an opportunity earlier in the siege to escape but chose to stay because she wanted to witness what would happen and to look after the “humble and pure” students.
Cathy recalled how one of the teenagers she met was the son of a police officer and had been facing pressure from his mother to surrender himself, but was afraid of arrest. After talking through the situation they decided to stay on campus.
Mario, on the other hand, tried to escape multiple times in broad daylight, after a group of protesters attempted to overwhelm police lines with sheer numbers. He had thrown away his protective gear, hoping it would make him less conspicuous.
That decision turned out to be a mistake:
At one point, I was breathing in so much tear gas I nearly suffocated. I inhaled tear gas with every breath, and I could feel it in my lungs. It was so painful I felt I was dying.
Meanwhile, away from the PolyU campus, 21-year-old student William (also using an alias) was busy helping coordinate the rope escapes by contacting all the drivers he knew to ferry protesters away from the bridge.
The organisers cut off sections of the road to allow only protester-friendly vehicles to pass through but, although the plan was partly successful, William said he felt guilty he could not do more, explaining that around a fifth of all who got away were arrested. He said:
It’s definitely heartbreaking. It was one of the toughest situations I’ve ever been in because I’m making decisions that affect whether or not people get out, or whether they get out safely.
Cathy, unlike Mario who was tipped off about the rope escape by a friend, stumbled across the escape route by accident. She took what may have been the last opportunity to make a break for it. Confronting the guilt that arose from seizing the chance to leave has been part of coming to terms with what happened at PolyU.
Mario said he feels he acted “selfishly” and regrets not helping more people:
I could not spread the message, because I had to put my own safety first. If I spread that message, the whole world would know and it would doom us all.
Those who successfully fled the campus also spoke with HKFP about how the sense of dread and despair over what could have befallen them threatened to break solidarity between protesters, jeopardising the unity that many felt had been their source of strength.
Both Cathy and Mario went into PolyU in the afternoon on 17 November, responding to online calls for reinforcement. As the fighting intensified that evening, police issued a statement telling everyone to leave via a bridge at the north end of the university, but protesters who tried to take the route were quickly arrested.
The consensus among demonstrators was that it was safer to stay inside as the police were not yet able to breach the perimeter. But that illusion of safety was quickly shattered: armed officers entered through the main entrance before dawn, only to be pushed back by a stream of Molotovs that turned the foyer into a sea of fire.
The following morning, many of the protesters were tired, demoralised and injured. Cathy said she only slept around an hour during a long night of heavy fighting, while Mario said that people around him “persisted by willpower alone.”
As those inside the besieged PolyU came to terms with the gravity of their situation, the infighting and bickering began. Many were teenage students, according to Cathy, who described them as totally unprepared for the clashes.
Others were too keen to hold the frontline and fight with the police, she added. She blamed them for creating a trap from which it became increasingly difficult for anyone to escape.
As the siege dragged on, reports emerged of the deteriorating mental conditions of the PolyU holdouts – which included erratic behaviour, paranoia, and even self-harm. Most stopped talking to journalists and social workers, instead, retreating into hidden spaces within campus buildings.
Mario described the situation as “mental torture” that became unbearable.
You were constantly afraid of people charging in and arresting you, and you didn’t know who undercover police officers were. You didn’t know who to trust.
Cathy and Mario both believe what happened at PolyU was a “mistake” that betrayed the protesters’ central ideology, its fluidity and refusal to be pinned down.
Mario said it was a “painful lesson” to remind protesters of the dangers of rigid, immobile forms of resistance. Speaking with HKFP, he said he was still psychologically scarred from the experience days after emerging from the campus – shaking, suffering loss of appetite and having emotional breakdowns.
But while the siege pushed protesters to their mental and physical limits, exposing fractures along the way, Cathy and Mario said it ultimately affirmed to them the importance of working hard to retain solidarity, even under the greatest pressure.
Cathy said she was grateful for the partnerships she formed with the students:
Throughout these five months I have always been alone, but I [realised] there are always people you can work with.
Mario said that, despite the friction over how the PolyU siege played out, he felt the fundamental pledge of solidarity between protesters had survived and remained key to the movement:
I don’t agree with fighting pitched battles, but I will still choose to go in because I will not abandon my comrades. Every one of them is a person, a Hong Kong citizen… If we abandon them, our movement will have lost its moral compass.

author: Hong Kong Free Press


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‘Burning books and burying scholars’: Book burning causes uproar on Chinese social media · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Viral image on Chinese social media.
A photo showing staff members of a library in Gansu burning books in front of the building has caused an uproar on Chinese social media since Sunday, 8 December.
The image was published on the library website of Zhengyuan county in Gansu province on 23 October with an announcement that the act is to “fully exert a library's central role in broadcasting ideology through mainstream society”. The news was originally released and circulated on mainland Chinese social media platforms including WeChat and Weibo and later picked up by overseas Chinese news outlets before it went viral online. The library page was removed as a large number of critical comments emerged.
The book-burning was a response from grassroots party officials to an administrative directive released by the Ministry of Education on 15 October. The ministry demanded that all primary and elementary school libraries should cull books that are harmful to national interests, Chinese culture, and socialist core values.
Ideological struggle has become a norm in China and everyone knows that all films, books, TV drama, news and information items are subjected to censorship. However, the act of burning books openly in front of the library reminded people of the ancient barbaric act of “burning of books and burying of scholars” during the Qin Dynasty.
Even among Chinese state-affiliated news outlets, the book-burning act has caused controversy. An opinion piece running in the Beijing News called for an investigation of the incident stating that “how society treats books reflects its attitude toward knowledge and civilization.” But the commentary was quickly withdrawn and taken offline soon after and related discussion muted.
A majority of the comments from outside of China took the incident as another sign of Chinese authoritarianism. For example, U.S Senator Marco Rubio commented on Twitter:
Nothing says authoritarian like a good old fashioned book burning. #China
https://t.co/PFJpapQKhO
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 10, 2019
For intellectuals living within China, the political act of burning is much more serious as it shows how the Chinese Communist Party's grassroots organs embrace dictatorship without hesitation. Chinese journalist Micheal Anti looked into the political symbolism of the performance:
现在的年轻人是不是不知道焚书这个动作不仅仅是不环保的，而且是有历史象征意义的？几乎所有的电影，一想表达独裁，就上焚书镜头，然后镜头转向群众的的愤怒、知识人的泪水和握紧的拳头。不管是二战片还是中国的民国片都这样。焚书不仅仅代表言论压制，而且代表我就烧给你看你能如何的公开狂傲。
— Michael Anti (@mranti) December 8, 2019
How come young people just talked about the environmental impact of burning books? Are they not aware of the historical symbolism of “book burning and scholar burying”? Whenever the films want to portray a dictator, the book-burning scene would appear and the audience could see anger, tears and despair in the crowd. Burning books not only means repression of expression. It is an act of political performance for the public to have a good look at it.
@jiongnasen talked about the political effect of such an act:
烧书显然无法完全阻止真相和思想的传播，GFW也从来没能完全阻止访问互联网。但千万不要因此就觉得滑稽。
思想控制的目标从来就不是，或者不需要是，控制100%的人。
只需要控制足够多数就可以随时对任意的“一小撮”进行检举批斗乃至肉体消灭了。
这“一小撮”是地主、资本家、右派还是绿绿，全看党的心情。
— 约拿坦 (@jiongnasen) December 9, 2019
Of course they could not curb freedom of thought by burning books. Just like the Great Firewall has not stopped people from visiting the free Internet. But this is no joke. The objective of thought control is not to put 100% of people under control. Once they control a sizable population of people, they could start reporting or eliminating a minority of people. Whether the “minority” is landlord or capitalist or rightist or greenish, the CCP has the say.
The act of “burning books and burying scholars” has kept recurring in Chinese history and many people anticipate the coming of darker days:
秦始皇第一次焚书坑儒，第二次是反右，毛贼狂言秦始皇坑儒才区区四百六十个，我们一个反右也不止四万六千个！
第三次是文革，被迫害的知识分子不计其数。
现在习包子，这次焚书与他反动思想有关，这人没文化没教养，偷偷追随毛泽东，可见他心理阴暗。这人掌权是中国的悲哀，他给中国制造祸害刚刚开始。
— 哈拉宾斯基 (@Ff28BXn2Q9m0Vbw) December 9, 2019
“Buring books and burying scholars” started in Qin Dynasty. [In contemporary Chinese history] the anti-Rightist campaign had persecuted thousands of intellectuals. Mao [former CCP leaders] laughed at Emperor Qin for burying 460 scholars, our anti-Rightist campaign had more than 46,000 [editorial note: more than half a million intellectuals were persecuted during the anti-Rightist campaign]. The third wave was the Cultural Revolution, countless numbers of intellectuals were persecuted. Now Bun Xi [editor note: Chinese president Xi Jinping] was behind the new wave of “burning books and burying scholars”. This person has no cultural upbringing and he follows Mao Zedong closely. It is sad to have him in control of China. He will bring disaster to the country.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Ethiopia: Stop hate speech, not free speech · Global Voices
IFEX

Citizens catch up on the news in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 17, 2008. Photo by Tristam Sparks via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Editor's note: This article by Samuel Gebre, an Addis Ababa and Abidjan-based journalist working in East and West Africa, is republished through a partnership between Global Voices and IFEX. Read the original story here.
The proliferation of “hate speech” and false information has become a global phenomenon, and Ethiopia is no exception — but a new attempt to curb the vice with new legislation might just do more harm than good.
There are concerns that Ethiopia’s new Hate Speech and False Information law will stifle freedom of expression and return Ethiopia to its repressive past.
Befekadu Hailu, co-founder of the Zone 9 blogging collective and 2019 recipient of PEN International’s Writer of Courage award, has first-hand experience of Ethiopia’s repressive past; he was jailed four times under the country’s Anti-Terrorism law.
Hailu is wary of the new bill:
Hate speech is a big problem in Ethiopia. I think trying to regulate speech through laws in the Ethiopian context makes it all the more dangerous.
The bill “could really threaten democracy,” he added.
The government says that the aim of the Hate Speech and False Information law is to “tackle the erosion of the nation’s social cohesion, political stability and national unity.” The legislation proposes a five-year maximum jail term.
But what exactly are we talking about when we talk about “hate speech”? We all think we know what it is, or isn’t, and that we will recognize it when we see it. And we can imagine how dangerous and toxic it can be. The problem is that when it is used as a term to describe speech that is excluded from freedom of expression protections and subject to serious legal sanctions, it can be abused by those in power and bring about a chilling of critical expression more generally.
ARTICLE 19, an advocacy organization, has a useful resource on the topic of how to identify hate speech and effectively counter it.
“One of the problems is that the types of speech that such laws criminalize are often vague and overly broad, which not only makes it hard for people to know how to stay on the right side of the law but also makes them easy to abuse,” Human Rights Watch’s Laetitia Bader said. “This is particularly worrying given the country’s very recent history of using vague and overly broad laws to clamp down on legitimate dissent and speech.”
Berhan Taye, a senior analyst at Access Now, an advocacy organization, argues such assessments need to be based on evidence. “The current research that’s being referred to justify this law is one that was published back in 2015 when the political landscape of the country was very different.”
The Ethiopian government was notorious for arbitrary arrests of activists, journalists and opposition leaders in the past three decades. Ethiopia regularly shut down the internet without explanation. It is only in the past year and a half, under a new prime minister, that rapid political reforms came. Thousands of political detainees and journalists were freed. Exiled activists and politicians were welcomed to participate in local politics.
David Kaye, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has called on the Ethiopian parliament to fast-track the repeal and replace the process for the “much-despised Anti-Terrorism Proclamation.”
As the political space has opened up, hate speech and disinformation incidents have been on the rise. Recent ethnic and religious violence has led to the deaths of hundreds of people in the tense and fragmented country. Amnesty International’s Fisseha Tekle suggests that the governmental and non-governmental organizations should work to address these root causes of the hostility and inequality among groups before jumping to legislation.
“The country has, over the last few months, faced very serious bouts of communal violence and the government is, justifiably, under pressure to respond,” Bader said, adding thatwe see little evidence however that laws criminalizing hate speech achieve their stated purposes, and they have often been abused.”
Speaking earlier this year, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopian prime minister and the former head of INSA, Ethiopia’s cybersecurity agency, firmly urged “constructive” and educational use of social media, warning that there was no place for platforms that would destroy the country.
In recent months, violence was sparked when influential activist, Jawar Mohammed, who heads the Oromia Media Network, with 1.7 million Facebook followers, posted that the state had withdrawn his security personnel, endangering his life. In subsequent days, homes and places of worship were destroyed and 86 people lost their lives.
The bill was approved by the cabinet a few weeks later.
Following talks with civil society and government officials this week, Kaye warned that the bill threatened freedom of expression. “As constructed presently, it could reinforce rather than ease ethnic and political tensions,” he said.
Ethiopia will hold general elections in mid-2020.
“It seems obvious to say that the bill is politically motivated,” said Helefom Abraha, a researcher at the Information Policy and Governance at the University of Malta, who formerly worked at INSA as a cyber law and policy researcher in Ethiopia. He argued that Ethiopia already has the computer crime proclamation and the mass media proclamation which, if implemented, could curb hate speech and the dissemination of false information.
“I know there could be mechanisms to address this issue by using the existing criminal law,” said Elias Meseret, a prominent journalist in Ethiopia addressing the issue of fake news.
The social media landscape is an even riskier space for women to navigate. Violence against women occurs frequently, usually without accountability. Online gender-based violence against women and sexual minorities is rampant in Ethiopia.
“While many Ethiopian women use it as a tool to make connections and express themselves, it can also be dangerous. Many women complain of being stalked and harassed on social media platforms, and sometimes this behavior exacerbates or compounds harassment they face in day to day Ethiopia,” said Haben Fecadu, a campaigner with Amnesty International.
Taye is not confident in the country’s law enforcement agencies, noting their reluctance to investigate offline gender-based violence, let alone online gender-based violence. “Legal protections are already difficult to guarantee for the average person, and this could have disastrous consequences for Ethiopian women facing violence – both online and offline.”
“Most of the dissemination of false info and hate speech is online and by anonymous people, or by those living abroad where there is no anti-hate speech laws, so it is less likely to be effective,” Hailu said.
Ethiopia has a politically active diaspora in North America and Europe, whose support pushed the Ethiopian government to reform in 2018. There is also a growing internet-savvy population in Ethiopia now. Ethiopia has just over 6 million active social media users and the numbers are growing quickly, according to the Global Digital 2019 report.
“Given the increasing digitalization and internet penetration in the country, this problem [of hate speech and false information] will only continue to grow,” Abraha said.
As the social media user bases grow, the companies behind the platforms must take up more responsibility, David Kaye said.
They cannot be mere bystanders while playing such major roles in Ethiopia’s public square. They make money from countries, and here they should devote resources to supporting independent media that itself can counter hate speech. What they should do is create a fund — let’s start with $10 million dollars, a rounding error for both Facebook and YouTube.
Bader is not against a hate speech law in principle, but argues that the government needs a comprehensive strategy and that such a law — better-drafted — would only be a small part of it:
[The government] should be developing public education campaigns, and high-level officials at both the federal and regional level should be speaking openly about the dangers of hate speech and the importance of tolerance.
Abraha added:
The government has to support and promote independent initiatives to debunk fake news and fight hate speech. There are some fact-checking initiatives, but they do not have the proper training and resources.
“The best way to fight these problems is to work on media literacy and open up space more, said Messert, who fact-checks social media posts on a daily basis. While he maintains that the bill could be an important tool to deal with hate speech and disinformation, he added:
At the same time, I share the widespread concern that it could be used to stifle dissenting voices, as has been the case with the anti-terrorism law. To prevent this, the law should be applied by a competent judicial body and it should only be used for the purpose it was intended to deal with.
Messert’s comment about a competent judicial body resonates; there is still distrust of the judiciary in Ethiopia, and arrests based on this new law could be seen as politically motivated and intended to stifle dissenting voices as the country moves towards very important elections in 2020.

author: IFEX


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India’s citizenship bill fuels anti-Muslim prejudice fears · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

Indian Home Minister Amit Shah discussing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 at the Indian Rajya Sabha. Screenshot from YouTube video by Rajya Sabha TV.
On 11 December 2019, the Rajya Sabha, India's upper house of Parliament, passed legislation by 125-99 votes that offered citizenship rights to refugees and immigrants from neighbouring countries Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. However, this move came with a caveat that is stoking paranoia throughout the country's 200 million Muslims and minorities — it will only allow non-Muslim immigrants to seek Indian citizenship.
Earlier this week, India's lower house of Parliament approved the bill which drew stark comparisons to Nazi Germany and Hitler from Indian Parliamentarians opposed to the bill.
The bill advocated by right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is being argued against by opposition parties including Indian National Congress (INC), Trinamool Congress (TMC), and former Modi ally Shiv Sena.
Former opposition leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted that the bill was against the Indian Constitution's ethos of secularism:
The #CAB is an attack on the Indian constitution. Anyone who supports it is attacking and attempting to destroy the foundation of our nation.
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) December 10, 2019
Human Rights Watch mentioned:
“The Indian government is creating legal grounds to strip millions of Muslims of the fundamental right of equal access to citizenship.”
Reactions to the bill have been strong on social media. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan said:
We strongly condemn Indian Lok Sabha citizenship legislation which violates all norms of int human rights law & bilateral agreements with Pak. It is part of the RSS “Hindu Rashtra” design of expansionism propagated by the fascist Modi Govt. https://t.co/XkRdBiSp3G
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) December 10, 2019
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi said:
Last night at midnight, India’s tryst with bigotry and narrow minded exclusion was confirmed as the CAB was passed in the Lok Sabha. Our forefathers gave their lifeblood for our freedom.
In that freedom, is enshrined the right to equality, and the right to freedom of religion.
— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) December 10, 2019
But, Modi, responsible for bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir and internet shutdowns in the valley since August, tweeted in favor of the bill:
Delighted that the Lok Sabha has passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 after a rich and extensive debate. I thank the various MPs and parties that supported the Bill. This Bill is in line with India’s centuries old ethos of assimilation and belief in humanitarian values.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 9, 2019
The Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) in its current form provides a pathway to citizenship for Hindus, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs facing persecution in their home countries, but excludes Muslims. This has created fear among India's already marginalized Muslims about being pushed back as second-class citizens.
“They have no place to go except India. The beneficiaries of the bill can reside in any state of the country,” Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the Parliament on Monday, following a day-long debate.
Critics have pushed back against the amendment for discriminating against Muslims terming it unconstitutional. The law in its current form prevents illegal immigrants from seeking Indian citizenship. The amendment, meanwhile, allows immigrants adhering to six different religions except for Islam from seeking citizenship.
India's constitution, which was inspired by the U.S. Constitution, guarantees everyone equal rights regardless of their religion but the bill violated this fundamental right to equality, opposition leaders said in the Parliament on Monday.
Critics say the bill violates Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which assures equality before law stating “the state shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.”
India has been and should be a sanctuary for any group of persecuted people, irrespective of their religion. It was always meant to be a haven for those seeking Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (literally, the very basis of our constitution!) #NoToCAB https://t.co/Xi4OLA56q9
— Ruchi Kumar روچی کمار रूची कुमार (@RuchiKumar) December 10, 2019
Home Minister Amit Shah repeatedly announced rolling out a nationwide National Registry for Citizens and was responsible for advocating passage of the law in Parliament, leading the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States and US Commission on International Religious Freedom to criticize the move and seek out sanctions against Shah calling the bill a ‘dangerous turn in the wrong direction that undermines most basic democratic tenet’.
In response, The Indian government said such an initiative should be welcomed and not criticized by those who are genuinely committed to religious freedom.
Meanwhile, the Assamese from India's North East are also protesting against the bill stating it would threaten the identity of local culture by legalizing Bangladeshi Hindu immigrants.
Ever since his re-election with a thumping majority in May this year, Modi has focused on executing the election issues he promised, including abrogating article 370 which ensured Kashmir's autonomy. From the internet to schools, hospitals to transport, Kashmir (India's only Muslim majority former state and now a union territory) has been under lockdown and thousands of soldiers patrol its streets and protests are silenced with violence.
Another shot in the arm for Modi was the Supreme Court verdict that critics say favoured Hindus over Muslims in the infamous 1993 Babri Masjid demolition case.
The bill, popularly known as CAB has also excluded other minorities escaping religious/political persecution including Tibetans, Tamils, and Rohingyas.
Anghshuman Choudhury writes in Mumbai Mirror:
“The CAB is another example of BJP's deeply cynical and divisive politics. It makes a mockery of India's constitution.”
Earlier this year, India's government declared 1.9 million people stateless after a citizens registry audit, mostly Muslims, forcing them into detention camps. Modi, under whose tenure, India's economy has fallen to 4.5 percent from 7 percent a year earlier has focused on ‘influx immigrants’ narrative after failed economic decisions stymied Asia's third-largest economy into a slowdown.
Modi and Shah have announced replicating the citizen's registry nationwide with a focus on removing ‘infiltrators’ by 2024 when India is ready for another general election.
Shah also said the bill would not be necessary if Congress had not consented to partition of India on the basis of religion. But, the argument, which many parliamentarians used in the upper house is flawed as all founders of a democratic India wanted a secular India with equal protection to all citizens.
Human rights activist Harsh Mander called for a countrywide protest against the bill:
If CAB is passed, this is my civil disobedience:
I will officially register Muslim. I will then refuse to submit any documents to NRC. I will finally demand the same punishment as any undocumented Muslim- detention centre & withdrawn citizenship.
Join this civil disobedience
— Harsh Mander (@harsh_mander) December 10, 2019
India's Economic Times noted:
The CAB ringfences Muslim identity by declaring India a welcome refuge to all other religious communities. It seeks to legally establish Muslims as second-class citizens of India by providing preferential treatment to other groups. This violates the Constitution’s Article 14, the fundamental right to equality to all persons. This basic structure of the Constitution cannot be reshaped by any Parliament. And yet, the government maintains that it does not discriminate or violate the right to equality to all persons. This basic structure of the Constitution cannot be reshaped by any Parliament. And yet, the government maintains that it does not discriminate or violate the right to equality.
As India continues to enact more policies excluding Muslims and minorities, political animosity deepens and threatens its secular credentials.
Read our special coverage: Who is paying the cost of India’s declining democracy? for more details on the protests against the citizenship laws in India.

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


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Interview with Bektour Iskender, co-founder of Kyrgyz outlet under attack for corruption investigation · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Image of Aierken Saimati (centre), one of the coordinators of a major corruption scheme which transported millions in cash with the knowledge of Kyrgyzstan's customs officials. Illustration (c) by Edin Pasović for OCCRP / Kloop. Used with permission.
Kyrgyzstan is often described as the odd one out among the five states of post-Soviet Central Asia. The mountainous republic of six million people receives better rankings from human rights watchdogs than any of its neighbours when it comes to freedom of expression, political pluralism and media diversity. It's a stark contrast to neighbouring China, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Yet that reputation has been increasingly tarnished as attacks on independent media multiply amidst a major political scandal which erupted after the publication of investigations conducted by local and international media outlets.
On December 3, the Kyrgyz civic media platform Kloop.kg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and Azattyk, the Kyrgyz-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), published an investigation revealing how millions of dollars in cash were funnelled out of Kyrgyzstan, mostly to Turkey, by a group of smugglers coordinated by businessman Aierken Saimati, an ethnic Uyghur from China who was shot dead in Istanbul on November 10.
Prior to his death, Saiermati shared a trove of financial documents incriminating not only several Kyrgyz businesspeople, but also the former deputy head of Kyrgyzstan's customs service Raimbek Matraimov. According to Saimati, Matraimov and his businesses benefited from the money laundering scheme.
Matraimov strongly denies the accusations, for which he is taking Kloop, OCCRP, and RFE/RL to court for defamation following the publication of their investigation. On December 12, it was announced that Kloop's bank account had been frozen by a court decision in relation to the defamation lawsuit brought by Matraimov.
I asked Kloop's co-founder Bektour Iskender to comment on the situation and speak more broadly about the challenges investigative journalists face in Kyrgyzstan today. The interview has been edited for brevity.
informed
Bektour Iskender: To be honest, yes. Raimbek Matraimov promised to file a lawsuit against the journalists last week, immediately after he had been questioned by the GKNB, Kyrgyzstan’s security services. This news was not a surprise for us at all, even though his lawyers didn't send us any official notification. Moreover, the lawsuit is an amazing opportunity to see Matraimov himself and his family in court. This is something many people in Kyrgyzstan hoped to see one day anyway. This gives us a unique chance to prove all the facts that we published in the investigation in the courtroom. We hope that the trial will be fair, and that we will be able to question Matraimov and representatives of his [customs] agency in the presence of judges and the public. Of course we are not satisfied with the court's decision to freeze our bank accounts, this is an outrageous attack on press freedom, and we will appeal the decision.
BI: One thing I can say for sure is that Kyrgyzstan does not face the threat of authoritarianism. In this regard we, journalists, are in a better position compared to our colleagues in other Central Asian countries. But this does not mean that we don't face challenges. We've had plenty of them both before and after we published our investigation on corruption among customs officials. Our journalists faced mass surveillance while they were collecting information. There were DDOS [Distributed denial-of-service] attacks against our website. There is a massive wave of trolling attacks against us on social media: they have flooded our posts with comments that try to discredit our investigation. There is a smear campaign in pro-government media which labels us as ‘agents of the West’ or something similar. The scariest thing of all was that Aierken Saimiti — the person who leaked many documents to us for this investigation — was murdered in Istanbul in November. And finally, we're now facing this lawsuit. Even if the trial is fair, it will still be a huge challenge for us.
BI: I would say there are only benefits. Partnering with OCCRP basically means that any attack against us will result in an immediate reaction from the international media community. It would have been so much more difficult to withstand the pressure if we were alone.
BI: The move to freeze our bank accounts is an attempt to paralyse our work. This will of course not stop us from working, but does create many obvious difficulties we need to overcome. There are always security risks for our journalists too.
BI: We have started a crowdfunding campaign on Patreon, which is unfortunately only available in Russian right now. Considering that we might face some financial troubles in the near future, this type of support is vital at the moment. And of course it is very important for the international community — and especially for international organisations of which Kyrgyzstan is a member — to remind the Kyrgyz authorities that they should guarantee a free and fair trial. The Kyrgyz government must be aware of the global scope that this story is getting now.
BI: Shortly after we published the first part of the joint investigation at the end of November, there was a 1,000-strong protest in [the capital] Bishkek. Considering that the authorities have not been impartial when it comes to Matraimov's case, the mood has soured into a general mistrust in the actions of the government, members of parliament, and [the] court system. However, this situation presents a huge opportunity to any major politician willing to make the fight against corruption part of his or her agenda.
That's important given that parliamentary elections will be held next year, and whichever party is able to campaign with a credible anti-corruption stance could win a lot of votes as a result.

author: Filip Noubel


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Protests against a media house in Pakistan mount · Global Voices
R Umaima Ahmed

Zaffar Abbas, the Editor of The Dawn at the 2019 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. Screenshot from YouTube video by Committee to Protect Journalists.
A large crowd held protests outside the Dawn Newspaper office in Islamabad and Karachi Press Club last week after the newspaper reported that Usman Khan, the London Bridge attacker, was associated with Pakistan. Khan had stabbed two people to death and left three injured a day before the Dawn report. Protestors chanted slogans against Dawn Media Group, hurled death threats, demanded Hameed Haroon (owner of Dawn) and Zaffar Abbas (Editor of Dawn) be hanged, burnt copies of the newspaper and held a number of journalists hostage for hours in Dawn Office in Islamabad, while they continued their protests.
Pakistan raised voice against #Dawn pic.twitter.com/ZfDLNWV7Qp
— Sania (@sania9200) December 2, 2019
Pakistan newspaper Dawn besieged by Islamists calling for editor to be hanged over London Bridge coverage
The mob was angry that the attacker was identified as being of Pakistani origin https://t.co/zahpoAIm8f
— Natasha Fatah (@NatashaFatah) December 12, 2019
This is not the first time that Dawn Newspaper has taken heat over their stories. Since the Dawn Leaks scandal in 2016, it has been in the government's bad books and some people think these protests are a continuation of the smear campaign against the outlet.
Chaudhry Fawad Hussain, Federal Minister for Science & Technology, lashed at Dawn with tweets:
Dawn walas please have some mercy on this Nation, shocked on your cheap attempt to link a British terroist to Pakistan, Anwar Al Awlaki and Anjem ch both are brit origin nothing to do with Kashmir or Pak, Britain should handle its problem within—irresponsible n cheap attitude pic.twitter.com/tvldBCNMUd
— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) December 1, 2019
Other newspapers such as The News cleverly reported saying that his parents were from Azad Kashmir but he did not attend any militant or radical training in Pakistan.
If Dawn was wrong to identify the terrorist Usman Khan as being of Pakistani origin, how should the authorities that allowed his body to be flown to our country be described? https://t.co/ZXnXptAFii
— Mosharraf Zaidi (@mosharrafzaidi) December 6, 2019
On social media, people started tweeted against the paper using the hashtag #BoycottIndianDawn:
Yet to see such a shameless media house #DawnNews that keeps retriating Indian narratives where personal interests&affiliation takes precedence over National interest.@pid_gov It's high time to fix such an unprofessional riff raff. Bloody traitors!#BoycottIndianDawn pic.twitter.com/U8fSXt58Dt
— Asma Khan (@IKhanz_Tigress) December 1, 2019
Zaffar Abbas, the Editor of Dawn News recently received the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award for “extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom.” He tweeted about the protest:
Yet another orchestrated demo against Dawn outside it’s office in Islamabad. Same lot, threatening tone, bigger in nmbr & hve blocked entrance. We hve informed police, & hve told them it’s their duty to protect our staff & property. Let’s hope someone from govt. will intervene!!
— Zaffar Abbas (@abbasz55) December 6, 2019
They have just dispersed after burning some copies of Dawn. Everyone has a right to protest as long as they are not violent. https://t.co/b30VFqIvQH
— Zaffar Abbas (@abbasz55) December 6, 2019
The Dawn was also criticized for another headline recently.
The same news is published by Express Tribune. Also the official Iranian news agency has published it. Why single out DAWN?https://t.co/JnJ4mHO9FW https://t.co/1r64OhXz39 pic.twitter.com/yJ5BvC0xKU
— Murtaza Solangi (@murtazasolangi) December 9, 2019
Umer Ali points this out:
The Express Tribune and The News used similar phrasing as Dawn. So did the state radio and news agency.
But Pakistan's military spokesperson singles out Dawn for “factually incorrect” reporting. Pretty extraordinary given the context. https://t.co/TTeurxpHy7
— Umer Ali (@IamUmer1) December 9, 2019
For about a year now, Dawn Newspaper has been banned from distribution in the Lahore Cantonment, and after this recent incident, Defense Housing Authority (DHA) also banned Dawn Newspaper in their area:
After harassing and threatening Dawn and its media workers (for their report on creation of Twitter trends for political agendas), the “unknown persons” are now banning #Dawn newspaper in their housing societies. Shame!
Yeh jo گنڈہ-گردی hai
Kya iske peechay وردی hai? pic.twitter.com/lKEDtUPOys
— Maria H. Malik ☭ (@marriyamalik1) December 6, 2019
Translation: “DHA has placed a ban on Dawn Newspaper. In lieu of this paper distribute the alternate papers.”
“Is uniform (military) behind public intimidation”
Apart from leftist groups in Pakistan, politicians and opposition parties also extended their support to Dawn News. The Journalist community also protested against the incident condemning criticism of the outlet as a way of curtailing media in Pakistan. International journalists’ rights groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists, International Press Institute and Reporters Without Borders condemned the incident and asked Prime Minister Imran Khan to look into this matter urgently.

author: R Umaima Ahmed


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Taxing dissent: Uganda’s social media dilemma · Global Voices
Sandra Aceng

Tourists take selfies at the monument marking where the road out of Kampala crosses the equator. Kayabwe, Uganda, September 2017. Photograph by Jason Houston for USAID.
Every day, millions of Ugandans hop on social media to get the latest news, chat with friends, and express their views.
But in May 2018, when the Ugandan government introduced controversial taxes on social media and mobile money services to raise revenue and “curb gossip,” it amounted to an internet shutdown in terms of accessibility and affordability.
A year and a half later, the number of internet users has dropped by at least 30 percent, about 3 million users, according to Deutsche Welle.
Since July 2018, when the law went into effect, Ugandans have to pay .05 cents (United States Dollars) per day to access the internet along with 50 over-the-top media services (OTTs) — streaming media offered directly through the internet.
The taxes apply to social media platforms and apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Viber. Given that these social media platforms have been main news distribution sources, journalists noted a significant decline in the level of engagement with readers.
With one-third of Ugandans living below the poverty line, surviving on $1.90 USD per day, the new tax drove thousands offline and off social media to meet other basic needs.
Poor, marginalized groups continue to be hit hardest.
According to the Internet Health Report 2019, that tax has directly pushed poor people offline, increased barriers to internet access and greatly limited freedom of expression and access to information as well as access to online goods and services:
With the average Ugandan already spending 15 percent of their monthly income for 1 [gigabyte] of broadband data, the new tax puts popular Internet services out of reach for most people.
Others, however, have begun to use Virtual Private Networks to avoid the tax. A year of its implementation, the tax raised only 49.5 billion Ugandan shillings ($13,434,225 USD), or just about 17 percent of the expected revenue, due to increased VPN usage according to the Uganda Revenue Authority.
The government had previously warned that all installed VPNs would be blocked. In July 2018, Uganda Communications Commission’s (UCC) executive director, Godfrey Mutabazi, said the government already had all “‘needed software’ to block VPN services, according to a Daily Monitor report, but Ugandan authorities have not yet taken steps to block VPNs.
That same month, Mutabazi tried to deter Ugandans from using VPNs when he said, “It will cost more than the cost of bandwidth and the social media tax,” in a Facebook statement on the Government of the Republic of Uganda page. He explained that VPN encryption utilizes slightly “more bandwidth” and most user connections have caps and overage fees.
Netizen Charles Onyango-Obbo said that the OTT tax hit youth harder as a cultural tax. He noticed fewer social media photos for 2018 #NyegeNyegeFestival even with higher attendance than 2017, due to the social media tax.
Mobile money transaction at agent's office in Uganda. Photo by Fiona Graham via WorldRemit, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Uganda’s finance ministry said the aim of the tax was to raise revenue, but President Yoweri Museveni also called for the tax to regulate “gossip.’’ Activists slammed it as an attempt to restrict free speech and crack down on dissent.
Government officials have continually denied any intention to shut down opposition voices via social media tax.
Jimmy Haguma, a cybercrime investigator at UCC, explained in an interview with Global Voices that “social media taxes were discussed in parliament in detail. Any government, when they put up taxes, the first priority is to raise revenue because the government realized that there are many people on social networks doing business and raising money, communicating on the domain and not being taxed.”
According to Haguma, the government also introduced the social media tax to create more accountability and responsibility — if people pay taxes on social media, they are less likely to waste their time and will communicate more responsibly.
However, Haguma did hint at other motives for the tax:
Sometimes, the government has [its] own intentions because the president can sometimes be his own ‘chairman.’ Government employees are bound to codes of ethics such as the Official Secret Act, Non- Disclosure Act and you may not easily get other reasons directly — unless it is a court case. It is an internal process.
Extending the internet beyond Kampala was one reason the government gave for introducing the tax. According to The East African daily, “The government needs over 200 billion USH [Ugandan Shillings] ($536.3 million) to extend internet access to rural areas since the government had previously borrowed to invest in affordable Internet, it was time Ugandans contributed to this effort through the tax,” as quoted from David Bahati, Uganda’s State Minister of Finance for Planning.
At a protest march against the tax in Kampala on July 11, 2018, organized by musician and People Power opposition party leader Robert Kyagulanyi (known as Bobi Wine), police fired live bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstration, deemed illegal by the police. Protesters argued the tax violated Ugandans’ rights to free expression and information.
Based on the report, “How Social Media Taxes Can Burden News Outlets: The Case of Uganda,” the timing of these events plays into the idea that the “social media tax was intended to suppress opposition.” Juliet Nankufa, who authored the report, draws from the example of Bosmic Otim, a musician who faced censorship when, in June 2018, security officials in Kitgum, northern Ugandan, banned a song that was critical of government officials for being misleading and inciting violence. The song “criticized four parliamentarians for allegedly being sycophants of the government and unresponsive to citizens’ problems in northern Uganda,” according to Human Rights Watch.
Nakufa’s report also draws from the experiences of Bobi Wine, who, over the course of 2018, was denied the opportunity to perform and meet with constituents, and often took to Facebook to narrate his experiences. The social media tax was implemented at the very same time the opposition leader was being targeted.
Popular singer Bobi Wine speaks at a protest against the social media tax on July 11, 2018. Photo shared widely on Twitter.
On July 11, 2018, Member of Parliament (MP) Bobi Wine, took to the streets of Kampala to protest against the newly introduced social media tax, along with his followers and concerned citizens and activists.
That same day, police summoned Bobi Wine and others for “disobeying the provisions of the Public Order Management Act (POMA) 2013 Sections 5 and 10,” according to New Vision, Uganda’s largest news outlet. The accused included Fred Nyanzi Ssentamu, a businessman and brother to Bobi Wine, barber and aide, Edward Sebufu alias Eddie Mutwe, disc jockey David Lule and student Julius Katongole.
Wine was charged with “holding a public meeting without giving notice to any authorized officer,” ‘’holding a public meeting without adhering to the required criteria’’ and ‘’refusing to cooperate with the police’’ under POMA Sections 5(1) and Sections 10(2), and summoned through a letter signed by Joshua Tusingwire, the officer in charge of criminal investigations with the Kampala Central Police. The letter, addressed to Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, detailed tentative charges of “assault, illegal assembly and theft of police handcuffs.”
On April 29, 2019, Bobi Wine was arrested again after he was summoned by the criminal investigations directorate to investigate his role in the anti-social media tax protests.
He was released on May 2, but continues to battle his charges in court.
On October 28, Bobi Wine appeared at Buganda Road Court, but his hearing flopped the second time in two months and postponed to December 12. The trial magistrate, Esther Nahilya, told him that his case lacked sufficient witnesses.
The Daily Monitor reported that shortly after the court session, Kyagulanyi told reporters that “the charges brought against them are exceeded since the state brought up the charges to him and his accused so as to divert them from their political agenda of challenging president, Yoweri Museveni, in the 2021 elections.”
President Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1986. In 2017, the parliament passed a bill — later enacted by Museveni — to remove the maximum age limit of 75 to run for president, which would allow the 74-year-old to run again in 2021.
Bobi Wine announced his bid for the presidency, vowing to challenge Museveni “on behalf of the people.” However, if he were to be convicted of any criminal charges, he would be disqualified.
An MTN mobile money stand in Gulu Town, Uganda. PHOTO: Fiona Graham/WorldRemit, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Some Ugandans are still able to access OTT services including social media platforms and messaging apps, without paying the tax, through the use of VPNs. Haguma, with the UCC, acknowledged that this usage is difficult to measure or track because it appears as though these users are communicating from other countries outside Uganda.
Regarding the UCC study that shows a 12 percent drop in internet users in the three months after the tax was introduced, Haguma said this drop occurred because of its quick implementation and that the study was based on those who pay social media taxes — not VPN users.
Many Ugandans are still willing to pay the price to get online, even if it hurts their wallets.
However, based on mass protests decrying the social media tax over the last year, and the government’s record of shutting down dissent and opposition, Uganda faces a social media dilemma.
As the opposition heats up and more people find their way around the obstacles posed by the tax, social media will play a critical role in Uganda’s fight for free expression.
This article is part of a series of posts examining interference with digital rights through methods such as network shutdowns and disinformation during key political events in seven African countries: Algeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The project is funded by the Africa Digital Rights Fund of The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA).

author: Sandra Aceng


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A new Pacific nation? Bougainville votes for independence from Papua New Guinea · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Source: Facebook page of Bougainville Referendum Commission
More than 180,000 Bougainvillians participated in a referendum from 23 November to 7 December and they overwhelmingly voted in favor of independence instead of greater autonomy from Papua New Guinea.
pic.twitter.com/dGllin6ZPf
— Bougainville Referendum Commission (@BRC2019) December 11, 2019
Bougainville is a region located east of the Papua New Guinea mainland although it is geographically part of the Solomon Islands in Oceania.
Civil war erupted in Bougainville in 1988 over the social and environmental impact of the Panguna mine operated by an Australian company on the island. There was unrest over how the management of the mine was not benefiting the local population. The Papua New Guinea mainland government deployed troops which resulted in an armed conflict. The crisis lasted for years and claimed thousands of lives until a peace agreement was signed in 2001 which led to the creation of the Autonomous Bougainville Government. The agreement also included a guarantee to hold a referendum in order to determine if Bougainvillians would prefer independence or autonomy from Papua New Guinea.
The parliament of Papua New Guinea will make the final decision once it receives the results of the referendum.
In the meantime, Bougainville is celebrating the successful referendum:
Its #Independence for the people of #Bougainville. 176,928 voted for #Option2 while 3,043 opted for #GreaterAutonomy from #PNG. pic.twitter.com/VGosBJ6Wbe
— makereta komai (@burebasgal) December 11, 2019
The Bougainville Referendum Commission issued a statement highlighting the importance of the results:
The Referendum roll had equal numbers of women and men voting
The Referendum roll had 25 percent first-time voters
The voter turnout of at least 85 percent was high when compared with international democratic electoral experience, and is the highest of any electoral process in Papua New Guinea
The informal vote of 1,096 was low when compared with international democratic electoral experience and national elections.
Below are some photos of Bougainvillians during the referendum. Many were excited to participate in the historic voting, especially those who endured the long years of struggle during the civil war.
Yesterday my father cast his vote in the #Bougainville referendum. I lost 2 brothers during the crisis, and like countless others, reflect on the legacy of the conflict everyday. May we have a lasting peace. pic.twitter.com/OYzCzKNL7p
— Joseph Nobetau (@JosephNobetau) November 28, 2019
In #Bouganville mother's carry ballot boxes the traditional way. They say they handle their children's future with care. “Give us what we want” Escorted by police & traditional chanting..singsing Kaur pairap lo arawa lo bik sun… ( Words & Pics ?? by June Magasu) @Scott_Waide pic.twitter.com/DdHgikrof2
— Georgina Kekea (@ginakekea) November 29, 2019
Counting will conducted in 3 shifts of 8 hours & results are expected by at least Tuesday next week. Formal announcement will be made by Referendum chairman Bertie Ahern. #BougainvilleReferendum #PeaceByPeacefulMeans @ForumSEC @PACNEWS1 pic.twitter.com/9LrCul8xW5
— makereta komai (@burebasgal) December 6, 2019
But there were also Bougainvillians who felt that the referendum should have been an opportunity to address other important concerns related to the peace process like the reparation claims of the victims of the conflict. A Facebook group named ‘Voices of Silent Bougainville’ is reminding authorities about the need to uphold human rights and consider the appeal of the ‘silent’ victims of the war. Henny Kuijpers, a member of the group, spoke on behalf of families seeking justice for the suffering they experienced during the war:
We the innocent victims of this war will never be free and the war will never end for us psychologically until our human rights, our Constitutional rights which were deprived of us as Bougainvilleans and Papua New Guineans have been addressed and sorted out by the PNG government and our ABG leaders.

author: Mong Palatino


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Anti-street harassment campaign in Trinidad & Tobago: ‘It’s high time men are taught to do better’ · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Protesters display placards that speak to their collective experience as women on February 12, 2016, outside City Hall in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
Sexism — and its ripple effects of discrimination and sexual harassment on a scale that reaches sexual assault, gender-based violence and even murder — is an all-too-common phenomenon in most Caribbean societies.
Whether it is tone-deaf parliamentary utterances about rape and breasts in Jamaica, the region's pervasive “blame the victim” mindset, its propensity to “rape culture”, or the hundreds of stories of sexual violence that went viral the year before the #MeToo movement exploded, there is no doubt that the Caribbean has issues to address when it comes to the perception and treatment of women.
In Trinidad and Tobago, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has begun an educational campaign on street harassment, which aims to inspire behavioural change.
In an interview with the Trinidad and Tobago Express newspaper, ECLAC’s associate programme management officer Amelia Bleeker said the initiative will involve going to 30 secondary schools across the country to educate students about gender-based violence.
Bleeker referred to catcalling as a “gateway offence” into other forms of violence, such as sexual assault — and with increased numbers of Venezuelan asylum-seekers in the country, migrant women are also at risk, since many local men assume they will entertain the idea of sex in exchange for money.
The timing of the announcement of the ECLAC initiative falls in line with the annual observance of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence — the international campaign that speaks out on violence against women and girls that takes place from November 25 (the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women) to December 10 (Human Rights Day).
There have, of course, been other attempts to draw attention to the problem, like the WomenSpeakProject, which offers women an online space to share their stories. However, there is hope that the ECLAC project, which has greater resources at its disposal, will have a broader effect — especially when it comes to educating males.
“When street harassment is tolerated, it fuels harmful attitudes toward women which create a fertile environment for other forms of gender-based violence,” Bleeker explained in the interview, adding that recent surveys on intimate-partner violence show that one in three women and girls have experienced abuse at the hands of their partner, of which 29 percent was a combination of physical and sexual assaults.
In Jamaica, for example, various US Country Report on Human Rights Practices noted that violence against women is perpetuated by “[s]ocial and cultural norms” and that “many women were reluctant to acknowledge or report abusive behaviour”, while a 2013 Amnesty International report noted that “sexual violence against women and girls remains a concern.”
In Barbados, one report that mapped key issues surrounding domestic violence in the country noted that statistics pointed toward children in the Caribbean experiencing early sexualisation.
Of the 494 murders recorded in 2017 by the website TTCrime, which logs violent crime in Trinidad and Tobago, 52 of the victims were women; of those deaths, 43 were deemed to be as a result of domestic violence.
While online accounts of street harassment might offer a fair amount of quantitative data, quantitative data on the phenomenon is lacking. The fact that this type of abuse is considered a social norm — in fact, some men (and women) view it as a compliment — does not help. It is precisely because of this widespread social acceptance of the practice that Bleeker says the ECLAC team will face a challenge in shifting the narrative from street harassment being perceived as a harmless pastime to it being understood as an issue that has a direct impact on women's safety and human rights.
The news was mostly well received by social media users. In a thread on the public Facebook group Breaking News T&T, Renee Camps-Campins said:
[…] I’m sick and tired of women being told how to AVOID this or that. Men and boys have to be taught (apparently) that it is wrong. Have to be Taught that this behavior from them is not acceptable Taught that they can and should do better, and simply to NOT DO IT!!!!!!! It's despicable behavior that society [has] to stop accepting as a norm!
Anessa Douglas, who like most Trinbagonian women has been catcalled, agreed:
This accepted negative culture of ours is so disgusting and when we women reject it we are treated like an outcast; followed by comments that we cannot take a compliment. […]
There's nothing complimentary about unwanted sexual attention, it leaves you feeling violated and disrespected and far too long there have been long lists of what women should do to avoid this and it's high time men are taught to do better.
Interestingly, Facebook user Gemma Robinson found the initiative a bit unnecessary:
The whole thing sounds like paranoia to me. Now, I have no excuses for men who behave themselves stupidly. What I am displeased with are these unbalanced feminists coming to tell us how to govern our society. I will tell you as a woman, I do not feel afraid on the streets of T+T even when I experience catcalling.
Bleeker maintains, however, that gender inequality, impunity, and silence have allowed gender-based violence to become one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world, saying that one in three women worldwide currently experiences physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.
This is not a campaign about encouraging women to challenge street harassment … It’s about men and boys educating themselves and others from inflicting fear on women and girls and allowing them to enjoy their right to equal enjoyment of public spaces.
Thus far, via Facebook, ECLAC has posted powerful testimonial videos, as well as layouts for the campaign's digital billboard and poster designs, the latter of which will be displayed in secondary schools and police stations all over the country.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Gambian minister brought Myanmar to The Hague ‘in the name of humanity’ · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Gambia's Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou speaks on the first day of hearings in a case against Myanmar alleging genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya population at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, on Dec. 10, 2019, as Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi looks on. Photo by UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.
Editor's note: This interview was produced by PRI/PRX's The World and republished here through a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices. The original interview can be heard and read here.
Three days of hearings on the Rohingya genocide came to a close in The Hague on Thursday, December 12, 2019. Myanmar's army is accused of committing genocide against the Muslim minority.
The International Court of Justice must now decide whether to step in to prevent further crimes against the Rohingya.
When a case is brought at the ICJ, it's because one country decides to lodge charges against another. And in the case of the Rohingya, the country that came to their defense was The Gambia, a small West African country with its own story to tell about human rights abuses.
The Gambia's Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou spoke to The World's host Marco Werman from The Hague on why his country is standing up for the Rohingya people.
Marco Werman: Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that the situation in Rakhine state in Myanmar has been misunderstood and that the internal armed conflict and historic intercommunal violence is really what has driven the exodus of Rohingya from the country. What makes you certain that this is a case of genocide?
Abubacarr Tambadou: I mean, to start with, the United Nations Independent Fact-Finding Mission's report clearly indicates that there is genocidal intent in the activities of the Myanmar authorities against the Rohingya. The same conclusion was reached by the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations to Myanmar. And again, this Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to the Secretary-General of the United Nations also reached a similar conclusion.
Now, leaving all of those conclusive reports aside, I have visited the refugee camp at Cox's Bazaar myself and interacted with many of the refugees who recounted their stories to me. Now, I have had previous experience interacting with surviving victims of genocide, in particular the 1994 Rwandan genocide. I have spent almost a decade and a half as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and when I heard the stories being recounted by the witnesses, I noticed there were striking similarities — not only in the fact that there is a process of historical dehumanization that has occurred in Myanmar against the Rohingya, but also the fact that Myanmar authorities had engaged in systematic and organized operations which targeted Rohingya, targeted women. Terrible, horrendous sexual violence crimes have been documented, targeted children, in some instances burnt alive in their homes or places of worship. Men being arrested — unarmed, defenseless men being arrested, rounded up and summarily executed.
These are all indications that the Myanmar authorities want, indeed, to destroy the Rohingya ethnic group in Myanmar. And these are the reasons why we believe that there is compelling evidence to conclude that genocide had taken place and is ongoing in Myanmar.
Cox's Bazar, of course, is that very large refugee camp in Bangladesh that a lot of Rohingya have fled to. What took you to Cox's Bazar in the first place, and what piqued your interest in the whole situation of Myanmar?
AT: I was in New York on another official mission for the government of The Gambia with the minister of foreign affairs at the time, back in May 2018. And at the last minute, the foreign affairs minister had to cancel his attendance at the 45th Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Bangladesh, in Dhaka. And so he requested that I attend on his behalf. And it was when we were in Bangladesh that the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry organized a trip. And so we all went to Cox's Bazaar, and that is how I managed to find myself there. I have to say that nothing had prepared me for what I was going to see and hear at the refugee camps.
As you said, you saw parallels between the accounts that you heard from the Rohingya in Cox's Bazaar, what they experience in Myanmar and the tragedy of 1994 in Rwanda. How would you compare the international community's response to Myanmar versus Rwanda?
AT: Well, I saw striking similarities in many different ways. But what is most disheartening is that the international community failed Rwanda in 1994 when we did not intervene to stop the genocide of almost a million people. And then 25 years after the Rwandan tragedy, here we are again, not doing anything to stop another ongoing genocide in Myanmar. I think the treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar illustrates the failure of the international community to intervene and stop the genocide.
Back in your country, Mr. Tambadou, The Gambia, there's also been a reckoning for past abuses. There is a Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission in The Gambia that's investigating human rights abuses that happened under the 20-year rule of President Yahya Jammeh. Does that undermine The Gambia, its credibility in international human rights, or does it prepare you to deal with it?
AT: Well, our experiences in The Gambia is what has actually informed the position of the government of The Gambia to speak out against the oppression of others, wherever it occurs around the world. We believe that had the world spoken out against the abuses, the terrible claims and human rights violations that were occurring in The Gambia during the 22-year period of former President Jammeh, we perhaps would not have been under his regime for 22 years.
The fact that no one, no one helped us, no one put pressure on President Jammeh to stop his atrocities, that has led us to go through a very difficult two-decade period. We don't want others to feel our pain or our fate. We know how it feels like to be unable to tell your story to the world, to be unable to share your pain with others in the hope that they will help. We know what it feels like to be helpless. We have lived through it for over two decades, and we don't want others to suffer the same fate.
What do you think it tells us that a small country like The Gambia can have an important voice and can take the lead in addressing serious human rights violations?
AT: Well, why not The Gambia? International law is not the exclusive preserve of the rich and powerful countries. International law treats all sovereign states equally. And The Gambia, as a responsible member of the international community, has its own obligations under the Genocide Convention. And by stepping up and taking on Myanmar, in this case, The Gambia is demonstrating quite clearly that you do not have to have military power or economic power to stand for justice, to stand for what is right. We are doing this in the name of humanity. We are doing this because we want the Rohingya to be recognized as human beings, for their rights to be recognized in their own country of Myanmar.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

author: PRI/PRX's The World