text:
A One-Two Punch of Natural Disasters in Cuba’s Camagüey · Global Voices
Periodismo de Barrio

Damage to homes caused by the tornado. Photo by Rogelio Serrano. Used with permission.
The following extract of an article by Rogelio Serrano Pérez is published exclusively on Global Voices. The original Spanish-language version of “Las víctimas de Irma en la ciudad de los tornados” (Irma's Victims in Tornado City) can be found on Periodismo de Barrio's website.
Yainelis’ eyes nearly sprang from their sockets, but her shock didn't freeze her in place. Phone in hand, she went to hunt the tornado.
A few years ago she was close to two waterspouts, and in 2008 Hurricane Ike threw her and her family into a wall as they battled to save their apartment door. For Yainelis, however, the tornado that cut a path of destruction in the central Cuban city of Camagüey on 29 August 2017 was the most striking.
“It came out of nowhere. It wasn't even raining! I decided to fetch my phone when I saw a flock of pigeons who couldn't even land because of the wind,” Yainelis explains. “When I returned to the street the roof tiles were flying like sheets of paper.”
A few blocks away from the packed Plaza San Juan de Dios, Georgina Vergel Aguilar saw how the wind lifted the entire roof off a house:
¡Menos mal que está deshabitada! Los trabajadores de la Empresa Eléctrica trabajaron hasta la madrugada para bajarlo del tendido eléctrico.
Thank goodness there was no one there! Electricians were working into the early hours to get it down from the power lines.
The historic quarter was taken by surprise by the tornado, but there no one was unprepared for Hurricane Irma, the extremely powerful storm that would barrel through the Caribbean several days later. Hurricanes are familiar on the island; tornados, not so much.
“Camagüey has the strange infamy of being the city most affected by storms in the history of Cuba, having been struck by six tornadoes in the last 12 years,” Roger Rivero Vega, researcher for Camagüey's Meteorological Centre, wrote in the 1989 “Atlas de Camagüey” (Camagüey Atlas):
Los tornados en Cuba no se pronostican. El especialista puede tener la convicción de que todas las condiciones son propicias para que ese día ocurra un tornado, pero no existen suficientes elementos para localizar el lugar donde va a ocurrir”.
Al haber un tornado debe hacerse un estudio del recorrido, analizando todo tipo de daño y recibiendo información de todos aquellos que lo vieron desarrollarse. Ahora no se pudo hacer, y es cada vez más difícil.
Cuba's tornadoes are never predicted. An expert can be certain that all the conditions are right for a tornado that day, but there's never enough data to identify where it will take place.
When there is a tornado a study should be made of its path, analysing every kind of damage and collecting information from anyone who saw it develop. This wasn't possible this time, and it's becoming more and more difficult.
“We have made advances in the use of radars, but the Institute isn't carrying out a study into tornadoes. I have been almost entirely dedicated to climate change since 1995, and I was the only one to investigate the tornadoes in Camagüey,” Roger Rivero explains.
Not a single media outlet releases warnings to prepare the locals for tornadoes. “It's different with hurricanes; we're warned, but tornadoes form in minutes,” says Idalia Andreu.
For her, Irma wasn't too bad as her house is made of stone. The unusual strength of the tornado, on the other hand, was bad news. She was trapped in the hallway of her own house by the force of the wind, which ended up carrying away towels and clothes and breaking three of her windows. “If I hadn't held onto the fence it would have carried me away, too.”
A neighbour, José, doesn't want to talk. “If it could actually make a difference…”
Nobody from the government came to these people's homes to ask about the damage caused by the tornado. Now, if José wanted to get back the tiles that the tornado took away, he could claim that they were destroyed by Irma.
The tornado's toll, according to the figure offered up by Televisión Camagüey to national news outlets, was 20 residences and the recently renovated Guiñol Theatre. The disgraceful situation of the residents of the Nuevo Venezuela area, near the canned foods factory El Mambí, was similarly ignored by the news reports.
The Nuevo Venezuela area is new and has sidewalks, paved streets and stone houses. Many people squat illegally between the city limits and the central railway lines.
“This area isn't on the maps.” Pedro Luis Hernández Martínez's words hit home. He's new here, and is living here illegally like the rest. “If I don't buy the tiles myself no one is going to give me anything. I've lost 300 pesos just on tiles.
“But others have lost a lot more.”
The tornado ripped Rolando Carmenate Consuegra's house apart. “I had just started to prepare when the cyclone came along. The worst part is that no one came here to evacuate us or anything — with the number of children there are in the area!”
Irma caused even more damage to his house and doubled the number of holes in the roof. Rolando and his wife are now making do with pieces of nylon to shelter their six-month-old son from the leaks.
The tornado was enough to make Ramón Reynier Almanza Díaz seek refuge in relatives’ houses when they found out about Irma.
His small house made from tables with a ceiling of tiles was in a panic on the day of the tornado. “I saw it coming from El Mambí and barely had enough time to tell my wife: ‘Hide!’. We locked up the house, sat in the doorway of our wardrobe and put our crying daughters inside it. The oldest is three and the little one is a year and a half. Now, whenever they play outside, they only have to hear a rumble of thunder and they come running.”
Ramón still lives in fear. “My wife is desperate to escape from here, but we have no money, where could we go?”
For those who saw it on TV, the tornado was sad, curious, brief and faraway. The news channels didn't come to talk to those whose children are traumatised, like Ramón.
Now, everything is the same: the media never stops talking about the impact of Hurricane Irma and the rescue efforts made by the people and the government. No one says anything about those who were left to their fate, like Rolando and his children. For them, Irma will always be the peak of the most turbulent time in their lives, which started on 29 August in Tornado City.

author: Periodismo de Barrio


text:
Macedonian Fugitives from Justice Seek Refuge in Hungary · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Nikola Gruevski and Viktor Orbán in Ohrid, Macedonia on 28 September. Photo by D. Chubrikj, SDK.mk, published with permission.
In a grand sweep to re-establish the rule of law in Macedonia after the demise of the populist regime of Nikola Gruevski (the head of right-wing VMRO-DPMNE political party), the country's Special Prosecutors Office (SPO) has initiated 19 cases accusing government officials of various kinds of abuses of power.
These cases have prompted some of the accused and/or convicted felons to attempt to flee to nearby Hungary.
One of the most prominent cases involves former secret policemen Goran Grujovski and Nikola Boshkovski, charged by the SPO with participation in a criminal conspiracy enabling illegal surveillance on the orders of former Prime Minister Gruevski and his cousin Sasho Mijalkov, the former head of the secret police.
Alongside several other colleagues, Grujovski has been convicted of the destruction of evidence by burning documentation. The other cases against him also charge him with the pulverization of state-owned wiretapping IT equipment in the spring of 2015.
Кежо 4.5 год, несреќникот со ќебапите 3год и сега пазете го ова. Главниот за уништување докази од нелегално прислушување на 20,000 граѓани доби „драконска„ казна од 1.5 год затвор.
Македонско судство in a nutshell.
— Emil Atanasovski (@EmilAtanasovski) November 8, 2017
Kezarovski got 4.5 years, the unfortunate man caught stealing kebabs got 3 years, and now hear this! The main guy in charge of destruction of evidence for illegal wiretapping of 20,000 citizens just got a “draconian” sentence of 1.5 years in prison.
Macedonian judiciary in a nutshell.
The SPO cases against the two are code-named “Target” and “Fortress.” For over a year, courts stacked by Gruevski's loyalists refused to approve arrest warrants, even though the SPO searched Grujovski's home in 2016 and found evidence that he had engaged in surveillance of the SPO and their witnesses.
Screenshot of Wanted Persons page from the website of Ministry of Interior of Republic of Macedonia featuring the information on Nikola Boshkoski and Goran Grujovski. Click to enlarge.
The legal wrangling only resulted in the confiscation of the suspects’ passports in early July. By the end of the month, Grujovski and Boshkovski ‘disappeared.’
The Macedonian Ministry of Interior issued an international arrest warrant for Grujovski and Boshkoski at the end of July.
In September, criminal charges were pressed against the president of the Supreme Court, Jovo Vangelovski, whom the authorities hold responsible for enabling the escape.
On 18 October, Grujovski and Boshkovski were apprehended by Greek authorities at the airport in Thessaloniki while attempting to board WizzAir, the Hungarian low-budget airline, bound for Budapest.
The fugitives were caught using forged Bulgarian passports under the false names of Hristo Atanasov and Nedžbi Hasan. Macedonia netizens commented that these names imply Bulgarian and Albanian (or Turkish) identity, which is curious given the xenophobic and nationalistic rhetoric of their right-wing party promoting Macedonian ethnic purity.
Неџби Хасан ни го бранел идентитот со лажен бугарски пасош на Халкидики. #СиктерДПМНЕ
— Zarko Trajanoski (@zombifikacija) October 20, 2017
Nedžbi Hasan defended our [Macedonian] identity with a fake Bulgarian passport in Chalkidiki [Greece]. #GoAwayDPMNE
The Greek authorities have postponed the trial of the two arrested fugitives until 1 December, due to the lack of an official Macedonian translator.
Неџби и Христо остануваат во притвор се додека не научат грчки! ??
— Дробојаднико (@dunge39) October 24, 2017
Nedžbi and Hristo will remain in detention until they learn to speak Greek! :’)
Macedonian Minister of Interior Oliver Spasovski announced that the whole operation had been a regional effort, involving cooperation between several countries. Macedonian authorities have requested extradition, expected to take place after the December trial.
What made the fugitives think it was a good idea to flee to Hungary? They attempted this foiled feat only after their boss, Gruevski, held a crucial meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Macedonia on 28 September.
Using a private airplane, Orbán visited Gruevski in Ohrid, Macedonia. He didn't come in his capacity as the prime minister of Hungary, however, but ‘on his own time’ as the president of the ruling right-wing Fidesz party.
Fidesz and VMRO-DPMNE are “sister parties” and both are members of the European People's Party (EPP). Analysts posit Orbán was Gruevski’s “shield” in the European Union (Hungary is an EU member, while Macedonia has been a candidate for membership for years), and speculate his role as Gruevski's mentor in populism tactics.
Orbán spent three hours in Macedonia in private talks with Gruevski. He then publicly expressed his support for him at a press conference organized as part of a local elections campaign. They were joined by the controversial former Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Janša who has been convicted of corruption.
Orbán urged VMRO-DPMNE party members to remain loyal to their leader even though he is losing power. Orbán defended his counterpart by encouraging loyalists to stick by him “when the sun is shining and when it rains.”
Meanwhile, Gruevski has continually requested the court to return his confiscated passport in order to travel abroad to represent his political party. He submitted an invitation letter from Orbán as proof. However, the Court of Appeals ultimately refused the request on 31 October.
K-Monitor, the leading Hungarian anti-corruption blog, was among the first in the public sphere of that country to address this issue on 1 November, raising the following questions:
A sajtóhírek alapján tehát felmerül a kérdés, miért hív meg magához a magyar miniszterelnök egy olyan külföldi politikust, akikről tudvalévő, hogy eljárás alatt áll és nem hagyhatja el az országát? Ennyire semmibe venné egy politikai szövetséges kedvéért a macedón igazságszolgáltatás döntését? Kérdés továbbá, hogy tudtak-e a magyar hatóságok a két volt titkosszolga szándékáról, esetleg tervezi-e a magyar kormány, hogy befogadja a macedón igazságszolgáltatás elől menekülő vezetőket?
The question is, why does the Hungarian PM invite a foreign politician who is under investigation and not allowed to leave his country (according to the press)? Is loyalty to a political ally so much more important than a decision of the Macedonian law enforcement? Another question is if Hungarian authorities knew about the intention of Macedonian ex-secret service people to come to Hungary and whether the government intends to give refuge to ex-leaders trying to escape prosecution?
Several media outlets such as hvg.hu,168 Óra, 24.hu and Népszava covered the developing story following K-Monitor's lead.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Filip Stojanovski


text:
Today’s Russia Fails to Live up to the Sky-High Hopes Buried With Time Capsules in 1967 · Global Voices
Alexey Kovalev

Soviet workers laying down a time capsule into a factory floor's foundation, 1967 // Credit: Seryogin100, Wikicommons
1967 was a significant milestone for the Soviet Union: the 50th anniversary of the Great October Revolution (as it’s still known in Russia and ex-USSR countries) which changed the course of history on the entire planet. Thousands of streets, factories and military units across the largest country in the world were renamed to commemorate the jubilee.
Among other festivities from half a century ago was the burial of hundreds of time capsules across the entire USSR by students, labor collectives and other Soviet citizens, with instructions to open them exactly 50 years later, on the revolution’s centennial.
With much fanfare, many Russian and ex-Soviet cities and towns obliged.
В день столетия Октябрьской революции в Пензе вскрыли капсулы, внутрь которых в 1967 и 1977 гг. были помещены “письма потомкам” pic.twitter.com/NIvikJGWK6
— Валерий Савельев (@Saveliev_VP) 7 ноября 2017 г.
On the day of the October Revolution’s centenary the city of Penza opened time capsules buried in 1967 and 1977 and containing messages to the descendants.
Turns out their contents are somewhat dispiriting for Russians living in 2017.
The messages from 1967 come across as rather naive, full of hopes and optimism. Their authors were convinced that by 2017, most diseases would be eradicated, wars would be a thing of the past and space-faring communists of the future would have long colonized the solar system. One message in a capsule unearthed in Murmansk in the north of Russia said:
Мы сделали лишь первый шаг в космос, а вы, наверное, будете летать на другие планеты. Вы раскроете много новых тайн природы, которые еще не известны нам, обуздаете ядерную энергию, подчините своей воле стихийные силы природы, переделаете климат, разведете в Заполярье сад… Помните же о нас, ваших предках, о тех, кто строил ваш город и чья жизнь была отдана борьбе за создание коммунизма..
We only made the first step in space, and you will probably be flying to other planets by now. You will have uncovered many mysteries of nature yet unknown to us, submit the elemental forces to your will, change the climate and transform the polar regions into a blooming garden… Remember us, your ancestors, those who laid the foundations of the city you are living in and who gave their lives for the advent of communism…
And another in Serov stated:
“Мы вам завидуем, молодое поколение коммунистического завтра”: в серовской школе вскрыли капсулу времени pic.twitter.com/bi8iqeTRUT
— Stepan Kuharev (@Newesprod) 7 ноября 2017 г.
“We envy you, the young generation of communist tomorrow”: a school in the town of Serov opens a time capsule
Perhaps the most hopelessly futuristic is this message from 1967 Novosibirsk:
Мы верим, что вы превосходно оборудовали нашу прекрасную голубую планету Земля, освоили Луну и высадились на Марсе, что вы продолжаете штурм космоса, который начали люди первого пятидесятилетия, и ваши корабли давно уже бороздят Галактику.
Что вы ведете переговоры о научном и культурном сотрудничестве с представителями других, иноземных цивилизаций. Мы верим, что дело, которое начали 50 лет тому назад наши отцы и деды и которое продолжаем мы, вы доведете до победного конца. Счастья вам, дорогие товарищи потомки!»
We believe that you have taken great care of our beautiful blue planet Earth, colonized the Moon and landed on Mars, that you are carrying on with the brave exploration of space that the people of the first semicentenary had initiated, and that your spaceships are crisscrossing the galaxy.
We also believe that you are already negotiating terms of scientific and cultural cooperation with delegates from other, extraterrestrial civilizations. We believe that you will fight to finish victoriously what our fathers and grandfathers started 50 years ago and we have been carrying on since. Be happy, our dear descendants!
Not all messages were equally inspiring — some were rather lackluster and formal, informing the communists of the future in minute detail about the millions of eggs their poultry farm produced in 1967 or megawatts their power station generated. Some social media users were quick to ridicule the Soviet nostalgia:
на пензаинформе лежит текст из капсулы 67-го про надои и киловатт-часы, под ним комменты “рыдаю, такую страну потеряли”
— кровьтополей (@nvm_lj) 7 ноября 2017 г.
Penzainform [a local news website in Penza] published the contents of a time capsule from ‘67 about milk yields and kilowatt-hours, am laughing at the comments below: “We lost such a great country”
Сегодня был на вскрытие капсулы с посланием потомкам,когда зачитывали пафосный текст,молодёжь хихикала,один старик плакал,а мне было стыдно. pic.twitter.com/loUh4eeors
— Иван Кузьмич (@pinega12) 7 ноября 2017 г.
Today I was at the ceremony of the opening of a capsule with a message to future generations, when they were reading out the melodramatic message, young people sniggered, one old man was weeping and I felt ashamed.
The sense of acute embarrassment over the betrayal of their grandparents’ hopes seems to dominate Russian social media. A couple of representative Twitter comments read:
Лучше бы не вскрывали сегодня эти капсулы времени. Стыдно как то.
— Голос Мордора (@spacelordrock) 7 ноября 2017 г.
I wish they hadn’t opened those time capsules. What a shame.
Те же комсомольцы, которые 50 лет назад писали потомкам, сейчас достают эти капсулы и читают. Скажите.Понимают ли, что это они всё проеб@ли?
— Владимир Матов (@1964Matov) 7 ноября 2017 г.
The same Komsomol [Communist Union of Youth] members who wrote these letters to future generations, they are now opening these capsules and reading their contents. What do you think, are they aware that it was them who f*cked everything up?
Which probably explains why some towns aren’t eager to open the capsules at all. A local newspaper in Shakhty in the south of Russia tweeted:
Послание потомкам в Шахтах оказалось никому не нужным: капсулу в “Авроре” вскрывать не планируют [ОПРОС] https://t.co/T08cLFusR5
— kvu.su (@wwwkvusu) 8 ноября 2017 г.
A message to future generations from Shakhty turned out to be unwanted by everyone: no one is planning to open the time capsule [POLL]
The article which the tweet links to says the paper’s reporters approached local authorities, but their requests to open the capsule were turned down. However, the poll conducted by the paper shows that the overwhelming majority of their readers (85 percent at the time of writing) support the opening of the capsule: “It’s our history.”

author: Alexey Kovalev


text:
Freedom of Expression or ‘Obscene Representation’? The Case Against Indian Cartoonist Bala G · Global Voices
Rezwan

Cartoonist Bala G from Tamil Nadu, India. Screenshot from YouTube Video.
Freelance cartoonist Bala G was arrested on November 5, 2017 for defaming the Chief Minister of the South Indian State of Tamil Nadu.
The case has stirred up new debates on the boundaries of freedom of speech and silencing of critics.
In the morning of November 5, G Balakrishnan (Bala), an independent editorial cartoonist based in Tirunelveli district, was arrested by the Crime Branch wing of Tamil Nadu police for a cartoon he posted on social media criticising the district administration and Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami.
He stands accused of “obscene representation” and defamation and was booked under Sections 67 of Information Technology Act and 501 of the Indian Penal Code.
Bala arrested for cartoon of a burning child lying while police, collector, CM, covering their nudity with cash#FreedomOfSpeech #TamilNadu pic.twitter.com/RYHpOMLNBs
— T M Krishna (@tmkrishna) November 6, 2017
After working for 12 years as a journalist for Tamil weekly Kumudam, Bala became the editor of the digital media platform LinesMedia. With more than 42,000 followers on Facebook, he has a large following, mainly due to his political cartoons, which have come to play a key role in social media debates in Tamil Nadu.
In the controversial cartoon, the Chief Minister, the Police Commissioner and the District Collector of the city of Tirunelveli are shown nude, covering their genitals with bundles of cash. They stand motionless, watching as a child's body burns in the foreground.
With this caricature, Bala sought to criticize the authorities for failing to prevent the recent death by self-immolation of a family that succumbed to pressure from money-lenders who had raised interest rates to levels that the family could not meet — nearly double the amount they had originally borrowed.
The family had filed complaints at the district collectorate, but the police took no action against the moneylender. In an act of desperation, the father took his wife and two young daughters to the office of the district collectorate. Standing outside the office, he poured kerosene on his family and himself, and then set them ablaze. Despite bystander efforts to save them, the man's wife and daughters died from severe burns. The man remains in critical condition.
After the incident, the Indian national human rights commission had issued a notice to the Chief Secretary, Director General of Police of Tamil Nadu, the District Collector and Police Superintendent of Tirunelveli to submit a report within four weeks investigating the deaths.
The Chief Minister Palaniswami defended his position, arguing that the state already has legislation barring lenders from charging exorbitant interest rates. He says he asked the concerned authorities to act swiftly on complaints.
Although the incident drew local media attention, Bala's cartoon has put a national spotlight on the incident and the predatory practices of private money lenders in India.
Before his hearing, Bala told the press:
The incident made me think that my children were burning. I have no words to express my sorrow, so I drew the cartoon out of rage. It was not aimed at anyone.
On November 6, 2017, Monday the Tirunelveli District Court granted bail to Bala.
Tonight at 8: cartoonist Bala on bail after his arrest for caricaturing the TN CM. Has humour and dissent become more difficult?
— Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) November 6, 2017
The arrest of Bala prompted a lot of anger and discussion in social media and the #standwithCartoonistBala hashtag began trending. Many journalists and common people protested in different parts of the state:
No space for satire? Freedom of expression a mockery?
Also, what about due process of law?#StandwithCartoonistBala
— Deepshi (@talkativegirl29) November 5, 2017
Journalists erect huge banners of Bala’s cartoon in press club pic.twitter.com/ICco0v73qq
— Savukku_Shankar (@savukku) November 6, 2017
Agitation condemning bala’s arrest pic.twitter.com/Ldvrd7N1ta
— Savukku_Shankar (@savukku) November 6, 2017
Many on social media defended Bala's style of representation:
When the rulers behaviors are in bad taste how should one react? Our rulers are really naked in corruption and inefficient. We’ve to call the naked as naked. Bala’s cartoon is exactly what I would have done if I were a cartoonist. We can’t treat our politicians like children
— ReasoningTamil (@ReasoningTamil) November 6, 2017
#IndiaWithBala all freedoms have limit except corruption of politicians, bureaucrats etc. they have unlimited freedom for corruption, crime
— Saurabh (@SaurabhCapt) November 6, 2017
Meanwhile, some questioned the appropriateness of the cartoon:
What are the limits for the freedom of expression? Everything is bound by rules. It is courageous and bold but inappropriate at d same time
— Laks (@laks1977hk) November 6, 2017
The thing about defending Cartoonist Bala's problematic cartoon is that you should be willing to defend Muhammad cartoons as well.
— Udhav Naig (@udhavn) November 6, 2017
Some called the cartoon outright obscene and defamatory:
#indiawithbala
Stop this Nonsense
Obscenity is Not Criticism
Will Cong Accept NUDE Sonia & Rahul Cartoons ?
FoE comes with Duties.
— Bharatvanshi (@vidyootb) November 6, 2017
Maya Kavi wrote on Facebook:
As a cartoonist Bala has right to criticise the matter but definitely, this is something vulgar. Unfortunately, as usual, the matter has deviated from the facts and Bala became a hero!
He described that he did in an extreme anger! Being a journalist how could he say that irresponsibly!
An article on the independent news and commentary site The Logical Indian noted that in recent weeks, at least five citizens have been arrested across India for expressing contradictory views on social media.
Although freedom of expression is guaranteed via the constitution in India, it is not absolute. Pratyush Raj from Symbiosis Law School writes in a paper that:
The freedom of expression guaranteed under Article 19(1) (a) can be subject to reasonable state restriction in the interest of decency or morality. Obscenity in India is defined as “offensive to modesty or decency; lewd, filthy and repulsive. The test of obscenity is whether the publication, read as a whole, has a tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and therefore each work must be examined by itself.
The section 67 of India's Information Technology Act deals with obscenity in online publications. India has a British  colonial-era law which defines and criminalizes obscenity. In the past, various writers, artists, and poets have been charged with obscenity using that law.
In a recent Facebook post Bala thanked people for their support and vowed to continue his work:
Still, my computer and mobile phones are in police custody. Soon I will meet you all through my cartoons.
The case against Bala G will be an important one to watch as it may alter how courts define obscenity and freedom of expression — and how power and politics influence the process.

author: Rezwan


text:
Humanitarian Crisis Escalates at Australia’s Refugee Detention Centre in Papua New Guinea · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Protest for Manus refugees, Melbourne 4 November 2017 – Photo courtesy Corey Oakley Flickr account (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
A fully blown humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Papua New Guinea at the recently decommissioned Manus Island Regional Processing Centre, the much-criticised detention facility where for years Australia sent asylum seekers who had arrived to its shores by boat.
The centre was officially shut down at the end of October; in April 2016 the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court had ordered its closure after finding that the detention of asylum seekers there was illegal.
However, 600 asylum seekers have refused to be relocated to other facilities, citing fear of violence and distrust of authorities, and the same court has rejected an application to restore services such as electricity, health, food and water.
There are growing concerns for their safety:
“After four years of fear, violence and suffering, these men deserve a future,” says @DanielHRLC https://t.co/CsBLzfkKFK #BringThemHere
— HumanRightsLawCentre (@rightsagenda) October 27, 2017
There have been many incidents of violence against detainees including shots being fired into the camp, allegedly by members of the Papua New Guinea military.
As explained in earlier Global Voices posts about the issue, Australia's controversial policy deals with asylum seekers who arrive by boat by:
[…] housing them in offshore detention centres on either Nauru or Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, and turning those headed to Australia back. Those who are detained and their asylum claims accepted are only supposed to stay in the centres until they are successfully resettled in a regional country. But the lack of acceptable countries for relocation means many asylum seekers languish in the detention centres for extended periods of time.
The Australian government claims that its goals include “defeating people smuggling and ending deaths at sea.”
So far approximately 50 refugees have been accepted by the United States under a deal negotiated with President Barack Obama in September 2016 and reluctantly accepted by Donald Trump. Processing of the claimants continues slowly. However, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull did not accept a renewed offer by New Zealand to take 150, which recently elected Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern reiterated on November 5, 2017.
That decision has compounded the distrust that asylum seekers have for the Australian government, Iranian journalist and detainee Behrouz Boochani, who brought the court action to restore basic services at Manus Island, explained on Facebook. He detailed the reasons for their refusal to leave the centre:
Despite the conditions people are still saying that we won't leave the prison camp until we are offered freedom in a safe place; we committed no crime and are too tired to be in prison any more. Just thinking about relocating from a prison to another prison makes the refugees so tired. […] The refugees have no reason to trust the Australian government and have been treated with lies and disrespect for more than four years.
Boochani has written a series of articles on the crisis for The Guardian and was co-director and writer of the documentary “Chauka Please Tell Us the Time” about life in detention. He used his mobile phone to record scenes from the inside. It has appeared at a number of international film festivals including in London:
Boochani isn't the only asylum seeker who has documented their stay. Omar Jack, a refugee from Darfur, Sudan, has regularly tweeted from the detention centre over the past 12 months:
The world today fighting #terrorism but Aus gov fighting refugees!
Being #refugee NOT a crime.#UN#SOS #MANUS 4-5 yrs under torture& abuse. pic.twitter.com/gVxbsnTt3k
— OMAR JACK (@Omarjack003) November 7, 2017
It appears that he is also part of a video published this week featuring Manus detainees:
Meanwhile, there has been a social media frenzy in Oz. The Twitter hashtags #EvacuateManus and #BringThemHere were just two of several being used. Twitter user Liz used others in her call for global support:
Call-out worldwide #media #journalists @ICIJorg #Manus situation rapidly deteriorating. We need world media to BEAR WITNESS NOW #ManusSOS pic.twitter.com/OD4Nykiafa
— Liz (@mivoicetoo) November 7, 2017
Many people have taken direct action in Australia. A series of rallies were held during the first weekend of November:
Right now Flinders St is shut down. We need to #EvacuateManus and #BringThemHere right now! pic.twitter.com/0AkFaBDeqF
— James Clark (@_spock) November 4, 2017
Protesters even took their case to the Flemington Racecourse on iconic Melbourne Cup day. The Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance claimed responsibility:
Our climbers r preparing to come down after being up on the crane for over 3.5 hours. #EvacuateManus #manus #sos #justice4refugees #auspol pic.twitter.com/hjT5OOyzLI
— WACA (@akaWACA) November 7, 2017
Another activist parked a car on the railway line to the racecourse:
Heroes – #Manus protester charged over Melbourne Cup disruption https://t.co/wkQ76FfnDU via @theage #EvacuateManus #BringThemHere #auspol
— Mary Debrett (@Mary_Debrett) November 8, 2017
The following day, protesters scaled the Perth office of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop:
“We are desperately concerned that if action is not taken in the next week that we're going to see people die.” #EvacuateManus #LoveMakesAWay https://t.co/GDWwc5VJA2
— Kate Ausburn (@kateausburn) November 8, 2017
Not everyone in Australia opposes offshore detention. The Labor opposition have had a similar policy for a number of years. While public opinion is polarised, a fairly silent majority appears to support the current harsh approach.
Comments at the “conservative, independent, patriotic” Morning Mail represent some of the anti-refugee sentiment. Jarrah responded to their Troublemakers at Manus post:
If they really want to go somewhere, send them back from where they came from, we certainly don’t want them here. They can cry and wail as much as they want, I have no sympathy for them, they have had plenty of warning that this day was coming.
Melbourne's Wheeler Centre, a public talks venue, has been hosting a regular podcast since March 2016 with detainee Abdul Aziz Muhamat, using 30-second bursts via WhatsApp. Aziz, dubbed “The Messenger” is Sudanese.
Following the Papa New Guinea Supreme Court's refusal to restore power, water and food to the detention centre, Aziz maintained that the Australian government is “sending a message to the world. If you seek asylum from Australia, you will suffer.”
He explained why the detainees had little hope of a good outcome from the court. “Everything in [Papa New Guinea] has been politicised, especially our case.” He stated that they were prepared “to die with dignity.”
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has suggested that the detainees are not actually scared, but are being manipulated by activists and the Greens party. To that, Aziz had a very different view:
I truly believe that each and every of these men … made his own choice to stay.
The full episode can be heard here:
Meanwhile, the latest action has involved another Aussie icon:
Protesters scale Sydney Opera House to shine light on Manus Island refugees ✌?❤ @akaWACA #refugees #auspol https://t.co/CqbThBynIV pic.twitter.com/s1U9Hn1RTO
— tony serve (@PeacePiper) November 9, 2017
Back on Manus, Behrouz Boochani posted this plea on Facebook:
Immigration just put up a notice saying you have only two days to move. If you don't move we'll take you by force. We have been in a peaceful protest for more than 100 days. We have shown peaceful resistance to send a message that we are not going to leave this prison camp for another prison camp and we don't want to live in PNG . We did not come to PNG by our will. Australia exiled us by force to this country and has kept us in this prison camp for nearly five years even though we have committed no crime. It has then abandoned us and it's [sic] obligation under international law to offer safe asylum. What the PNG government has done is try to force people to accept living in PNG, and it still insists on moving us under pressure and force to another prison camp. Using force is completely unacceptable. We have been totally peaceful and even silent in our daily protest. We are not doing anything wrong, we are only resisting peacefully. We are asking again for freedom in a third country.

author: Kevin Rennie


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Meet Khazar Fatemi, a Swedish Journalist Still Searching for the Afghanistan She Left Behind · Global Voices
Nevena Borisova

Screenshot from Where My Heart Beats. Version uploaded to Vimeo by Khazar Fatemi.
At first glance, Khazar Fatemi, a leading TV reporter in Sweden, is as happy-go-lucky as she is talented and beautiful. But personal sacrifice and struggle have deep roots in her family, and re-emerge with tremendous force in her documentary Where My Heart Beats, filmed in Afghanistan.
Fatemi was born in 1983. Her family moved to Sweden when she was eight after her parents — both initially involved in the Kurdish resistance to the regime in Iran — fled growing violence in their adopted home of Afghanistan.
At the time, the mujaheddin had rolled back the Soviet invasion only to collapse into a spiral of internecine conflict. Fatemi would later experience strong nostalgia for the Afghan capital Kabul, where she spent her childhood, as well as guilt that she, unlike many of her friends, had succeeded in escaping the country's bloody wars.
Where My Heart Beats tells the story of Fatemi's return to a very different Kabul through tears and laughter, with an authenticity that has already fetched the film international acclaim after it was presented at international festivals including IDFA and the Raindance Film Festival.
Her journey was both a reporter's journey — to see how the country had changed — and a personal journey, as she searched for people from her childhood. However, the most important search of all, for her best friend, proved elusive. She never found out what had happened to her.
Global Voices recently met up with Fatemi, and engaged her in a conversation that touched on everything from the difficulties of life in Europe for people born in Muslim-Majority countries, through her childhood, and Afghanistan's turbulent past and present.
Nevena Borisova (NB): What is it like to be a modern woman whose identity is rooted in a strongly traditional society?
Khazar Fatemi (KF): The reason my family fled Iran during the 1980s was that they wanted to keep the freedom their parents have given to them, despite their own religious background […] My grandparents were Muslims but still believed that everyone has the right to make their own choice of life and beliefs. So, for me it is important to use the freedom my parents fought so hard for, including [their struggle] against the regime, which left them with no choice but to leave their home. For 35 years they have not been able to go back.
The biggest challenge for me is not that I am coming from a traditional society. For me it has been Swedish society, which keeps questioning me because of my foreign name the way I look. I have had to work ten times harder to prove myself, despite the fact that I know Swedish perfectly. God knows what my mom has gone through because of her accent.
Screenshot from Where My Heart Beats. Version uploaded to Vimeo by Khazar Fatemi.
NB: You explain in the documentary that during your team's travels around Kabul there were regular security precautions like bomb checks and so on. How did you cope with the sense of fear?
The fear is always there, but one still can travel under control. I have tried my best to work with people that have the knowledge of security but they also know the local society, culture, tradition and religion. We tried not to leave the car unwatched and we also tried as often as we could to travel low key profile. We did not stay too long and we even changed our car from day to day when it was possible. At the same time, no one has ever taken so much care of me [as my team]. Even when I got sick, they treated me so well. I'm their guest, they kept saying.
NB: The way the documentary is shot makes it feel very authentic, with every emotion captured. Can you tell us how you came up with the idea to make the documentary and how you went about it?
KF: When you make a documentary, you know what you want. However, we never had a script, so we just let the camera roll and hoped for the best. I kept asking myself what had happened to those who didn't have the chance to flee when the war came. I wondered what had happened to my best friend Marim, to my teachers, to the baker in the neighborhood. So, I had all these questions that I needed to find answers to. Maybe I wanted to ease my own guilt which kept growing the older I got. I had always known I would go back at any chance, so why not document it? So I talked to my media outlet and asked if I could borrow technical equipment.
I have learned that if you just listen to what people say, you will understand that they have amazing, heartbreaking, but inspiring and empowering stories to tell.
NB: From the documentary, it is clear that security and poverty have only gotten worse in Afghanistan in recent years. But do you think the Afghan people have changed? Are they as resilient as ever?
KF: The worst was the hopelessness, especially among men. Many times it felt that women were braver. Many of them continue studying, even if they know that the society won’t let them in, when it comes to time to actually work.
The young men I talked with wanted to leave the country, they didn't see any future for themselves. The elders keep living with the corrupt system and the so called “leaders” and [believe] foreigners only come to Afghanistan to serve their own interests. This lack of trust and disappointment has grown every time I returned. When I was there in 2008, Kabul was safe and we even traveled with a car on roads, whereas today it is totally impossible to travel. Now, even Kabul has become very unsafe. For me as a journalist it means it is more difficult to gain the trust of those I interview, to get close and to understand them. The good thing is that I see how the young generation which got the chance to get an education has really done well. One can find hope there, especially among young women, even though they are fighting two wars — one a physical war, with poverty and the insecurity, the other in terms of their own society, family, tradition, culture…
Screenshot from Where My Heart Beats. Version uploaded to Vimeo by Khazar Fatemi.
NB: Did you ever feel targeted as a woman at certain moments making the documentary?
KF: I haven’t noticed this so much, because they still treated me as a foreigner. But I can say that taking a walk around the neighborhood, going to the bazaar by myself, even if I almost managed to fit into the crowd, it would still have been much easier if I was a man. I have also noticed that women didn’t feel comfortable to be interviewed in front of the camera. […] Attitudes about women have only grown harder. I think I got away with that, because I am regarded as a foreigner.
NB: Do you also feel nostalgic for Iran? What are your impressions on the current state of civil society there?
KF: No, I don’t have any nostalgia feeling, but would love to go back one day.
NB: Cheryl Benard, who has been a researcher at RAND corporation has suggested that Afghan youths, (rather than older generations of Afghans and young people from other countries) face a particular problem integrating into society following migration to Europe. Is this fair to say?
KF: I don’t know about such a phenomenon, What I know from studies made here in Sweden is that Afghans are doing very well. They learn Swedish much faster than other groups. Of course when maybe 80% of the youth that come here [from other countries] are from Afghanistan, [it is no surprise] that when crimes are committed by migrants, most of them turn out to be from Afghanistan. But as I mentioned, we are talking about people who value education and have managed to learn the language and integrate into society faster than other groups, as one study I know has shown.

author: Nevena Borisova


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One Nation, One Tax: The Impact of India’s Goods and Services Tax · Global Voices
Rohith Jyothish

Image by Tiven Gonsalves via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) launched in India on 1 July is a new indirect tax structure which removes the cascading of several taxes on goods and services levied by the central government as well as individual states.
The aim of GST is to facilitate easy compliance, uniformity of tax rates and structures, easy administration, revenue efficiency in order to boost domestic production. But the GST has triggered massive protests and criticism throughout India among small businesses and trade groups.
Each producer in a supply chain now needs to show invoices of its produce to claim input tax credits. This registers the entire supply chain through a self-policing mechanism. The new structure has raised a lot of questions in terms of roll out. The opposition was quick to criticize the government for the ‘mess’ of its ‘hasty’ roll out. Public opinion is also divided.
The national spokesperson of the Indian National Congress party, Sanjay Jha tweets:
I guess India will have a true #GST , One Nation One Tax only in 2019, as assured by @OfficeOfRG . Till then, it's a rough ride.
— Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) November 7, 2017
Over 160 countries have adopted some form of GST, a notable exception being the USA. However, in a country where the informal sector accounts for at least for one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP), and four-fifths of employment (UNCTAD 2017), GST is expected to come at a cost, especially when it follows the dramatic demonetization of 86% of circulating cash in November 2016.
While macroeconomic indicators show factory activity in July slowing down to the lowest levels in nine years, and a further slowdown in exports because of the GST, damage to the informal sector is much more difficult to measure.
The first line of criticism relates to the rate structure set by the GST Council, a newly formed council chaired by the union finance minister and finance ministers of all 29 states of India as members.
Goods and services in India currently have five tax rates: 0%, 5%, 12%, 18%, and 28%. Additionally, there are special rates of 0.25% for uncut diamond and 3% for gold, silver, and processed diamond. This does not include GST-exempted goods such as alcohol, petroleum, electricity, healthcare, education, land, and real estate as well as cesses on goods in the 28% rate in order to compensate states for losses in tax revenue.
In a report in December 2015 by a committee headed by Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor, it warned that the “broader the scope of exemptions, the less effective GST will be.”
Veerappa Moily, an opposition member of the Upper House of Parliament, amusingly summed up critics’ questions about the logic of new rates:
‘High quality’ of debate in Parliament about the GST!
Is Kit Kat a chocolate or biscuit? asks Veerappa Moily.https://t.co/WUrCkOvycl
— ChaitanyaChinchlikar (@filmy_foodie) March 29, 2017
Actor Kalki Koechlin was the face of a campaign against the 12% GST on sanitary napkins.
Watch: Kalki Koechlin (still) wants to know why women have to pay 12 percent GST on sanitary napkins https://t.co/CjGtRXw7b4
— scroll.in (@scroll_in) October 26, 2017
From small vendors in Jaipur, Rajasthan, to tourism in Kerala, apple growers in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, to ragpickers in New Delhi, and small businesses in the Northeast, a high proportion of those in micro, small and medium enterprise sectors have been adversely affected by GST. Handlooms, the lifeline of over 2.7 million households, is also being taxed for the first time in independent India.
Protests have been held throughout the country especially by textile traders in the cities of Ahmedabad and Surat, Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state.
Massive protests of textile sector in Surat are continuing since the introduction of #GST
Protesters are demanding #RollbackGST on textiles pic.twitter.com/m2kfYOqsYd
— GoNews (@GoNews24x7) July 11, 2017
Moreover, lottery traders, industrialists, truckers as well as petrol dealers, tax professionals, resident welfare associations, garment exporters, are some of the other groups protesting GST.
GST Network (GSTN), the massive technological backbone responsible for the GST rollout, has also been under scrutiny. A week before the GST launch on 1 July, doubts rose over the progress made in the software.
Following several software glitches after the launch, government officials blamed Infosys, the IT services giant that runs GST's backend, for the hiccups. The company had been under fire for the acrimonious exit of its CEO, Vishal Sikka. They then brought back co-founder Nandan Nilekani as non-executive chairperson of the board, who is also the brainchild of the GSTN, Infosys co-founder, and architect of Aadhaar (Unique Identity Number), another controversial scheme.
Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI), the Aadhaar-issuing authority, has also been roped in as interim-chairperson of GSTN. Serious conflicts of interest surrounding the ownership of GSTN, the decision-making within the GST Council, and the auditing of GSTN infrastructure and data also cause for concern, though getting relatively less attention.
Following the protests and criticism, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia stated the need for a ‘rejig’ of the tax structure to cut the burden on small businesses. The GST Council is expected to meet again on 10 November to discuss rate changes. A reported 30 billion USD in working capital has been locked up due to the lack of clarity in tax refund rules.
In an op-ed, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram writes on the flip-flops by the government on GST:
“I counted 27 reduction of rates; 7 prescription of rates; 22 exemptions; one waiver; and 15 extensions of time.”
For now, the Prime Minister has assured more relief measures to be determined at the upcoming GST meeting.

author: Rohith Jyothish


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Amid the Vast Universe of the ‘Valerian’ Movie, Ukraine Gets a Special Shout-Out · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

Photoshopped screenshot from the sci-fi film “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” with cosmonauts wearing the Ukrainian flag as shoulder sleeve insignia, shared on social networks.
The presence of the Ukrainian flag on the sleeve of an astronaut in the movie “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” has created a small sensation among Ukrainian social media users.
“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” is the most recent French science fiction film by acclaimed director Luc Besson. It was released in July and possibly still runs in some theaters across the world. It's based on a long-running comics series Valérian (1967-2010) by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières.
The opening scenes of the film introduce the history of the fictional universe, including the construction of the giant space station Alpha, which was completed by adding spaceship hulls from Earth and alien cultures onto the International Space Station of today.
Viewers are shown the arrival of a Ukrainian cosmonaut crew lead by a woman with the flag on her sleeve, delighting Ukrainian sci-fi fans and prompting tributes.
For instance, the animation above combines the scene featuring the fictional Ukrainian cosmonaut, who shakes another character's hand, and the 2014 hit song “Podaj Rękę Ukrainie” (literally “Extend your hand to Ukraine,” or “Give Ukraine A Helping Hand”) by the Polish band Taraka. That song was inspired by the Euromaidan protests of 2013 and 2014 against the abuses of the Ukrainian government under President Viktor Yanukovych, and used to raise donations for the families of protesters who were killed by snipers and other violence. It's considered a symbol of Polish-Ukrainian solidarity.
Some of the online discussions also cleared up some misconceptions held by enthusiastic movie fans.
Нет. Там есть делегации Ирана, африканских стран и так далее. Делегации “Земли” нет. Сама станция русская.
— Konstantin Govorun (@litewren) November 5, 2017
Tweet 1: In Luc Beson's film “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”, the delegation from Earth is represented by Ukraine. Cosmonauts wear our flag on arm patches.
Tweet 2: No. There are delegations from Iran, African countries, and so on. There's no “Earth” delegation. The station itself is Russian.
In fact, this correction is only partly true. The International Space Station is a joint project of the space agencies of the USA (NASA), Russia (Roscosmos), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA).
State Space Agency of Ukraine logo. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia.
Besides science fiction, Ukraine indeed runs an actual space program, which started in 1930s. The State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU), established in 1992, is one of the descendants of the Soviet space program, and inherited all its installations in the country. Until 2014 it conducted launches from Kazakhstan and Russia. After Russia annexed Crimea, the SSAU sends satellites to space via the multinational Sea Launch‘s floating platform.
While a number of Ukrainians served as Soviet cosmonauts, the first Ukrainian to fly in space under the Ukrainian flag was Leonid K. Kadenyuk on 13 May 1997.


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Maung Maung Has Spent a Lifetime Collecting Gramophone Records in Myanmar · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

Maung Maung shows a gramophone. Photo by Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy.
This edited article by Wei Yan Aung is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, and is republished by Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
In the early 1960s, when Maung Maung was attending the 7th grade, his grandmother gave him a His Master’s Voice (HMV) gramophone, locally called as dog brand gramophone, a present that he obsessed over for the rest of his life.
“This was one of the main factors that inspired me to collect gramophone records,” said Maung Maung, who is commonly known as researcher Maung Maung.
When it comes to the history of the gramophone in Myanmar, no one knows as much as Maung Maung, who has collected almost a century’s worth of gramophone records—from the records of a play by Saya Pu, a court artist in the reign of Myanmar’s last monarch King Thibaw in late 19th century, to the last gramophone record produced in Myanmar in 1976 by classical musician Kyaukpadaung Kyaw Lwin in 1976.
He started collecting gramophone records while he was a student after his grandmother gave him a gramophone and kept on collecting through various stages of his life as a university student, a police officer, and then a lawyer.
Gramophone records have recorded Myanmar’s classical music, traditional culture and historical events that were previously passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth as well as from books and literature, he said.
Gramophones and accessories. Photo by Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy
Around 1972 I was attending university [in Yangon] and gramophones started to lose popularity. Because of the invention of cassette players and the decline in quality of gramophone records.
He related the quality decline to the socialist system being practiced by Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) at the time.
As cassette players became popular, people were selling their old gramophones to dealers.
At that time, people started to exchange their gramophones for cassette players. Later, gramophones were [discarded and] stacked in piles like bricks. Nobody would stop you if you take them because people thought they were garbage and you’ve just cleared it. If I had been the director-general of [State Broadcaster] Myanma Radio and Television [MRTV], I would have taken them by car.
He scavenged through piles of gramophones and records in Yangon and took his favorites back to his native Daik-U Township in Bago Region.
After he graduated, he worked as a school teacher back in Daik-U and taught his students Myanmar literature and nationalism which was taken from Anyeint [traditional Burmese entertainment show] and marionette songs [which he] played on gramophone records.
Maung Maung’s research book on gramophone records. Photo by Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy
Then he joined the police force and served as a police chief in a number of townships in Bago Region.
When he heard somebody had some rare gramophone records, he went there along with his gramophone. He bought gramophone records if owners sold, but when owners didn’t, he requested owners to let him play it on his gramophone.
He continued collecting gramophone records while he was working as a lawyer after retiring from the police force. He continued to get gramophones and records from his clients and friends.
Former information minister U Kyi Aung, who is also a gramophone fanatic, once solicited him to donate his gramophone records to his ministry, but he refused.
However, with the approval of the minister, he got an opportunity to group the gramophone records of MRTV according to their genres.
Maung Maung’s in-house gramophone records collections. Photo by Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy
MRTV has plenty of gramophone records, but not as many as my archive in terms of records with real historical values, for example, only I have the original record of the song Doh Bamar which was the origin of today’s Myanmar national anthem and sung by Thakhins in colonial period. However, that was very beneficial to my research on gramophones. I am grateful to authorities for this.
Based on his collection of records, newspaper clippings, adverts and references, he published a 1,000-page research book on the country’s gramophone disc history, for which he won the national literature award in 2015.
About the future of over 100,000 records which he collected for nearly six decades, he said:
Frankly speaking, I don’t expect to receive help from the [information] ministry. If I say something, they [information ministry officials] would reply they would submit a letter to the minister or come back again at this or that time. I don’t care. In fact, they should come to us. If they don’t, I will do it on my own. But if there are people who know the value and can afford to keep my records in a museum or alike, I will transfer them. I’ll keep on collecting those records. That’s my life.

author: The Irrawaddy


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Netizen Report: Memes and ‘Obscene’ Messages Are Under Fire in Indonesia · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

“The Power of Setya Novanto.” Cartoon by Bajims, shared on Instagram.
Global Voices Advocacy's Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in Internet rights around the world.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Information is seeking to increase controls on “obscene” content online.
The country already takes pains to censor online pornography, dating services, websites with information related to sex and sexuality, and online content that is deemed insulting to Islam.
Director General Semuel Pangerapan announced that officials would summon representatives from Google, Twitter and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) to pressure these companies to screen their networks for content that they deem to be sexually obscene.
The announcement specifically addressed “lewd” animated GIFs and the prevalence of the typically playful looped animations circulating on WhatsApp. The Ministry threatened to block WhatsApp if the company failed to remove such GIFs within 48 hours. The company, which is owned by Facebook, did not see this as an empty threat — authorities blocked messaging app Telegram in July 2017 due to concerns of terrorist activity on the platform.
It is technically impossible for WhatsApp to identify “lewd” content in specific messages and then remove it — WhatsApp is encrypted, which means that the company cannot screen the content of messages sent between users. Users are free to share with each other anything they find online. But the app also offers fixed packages of ready-to-use GIFs from third-party creators. Shortly after the announcement, popular third-party creator Tenor Inc. had disabled access to these packages. In the eyes of authorities, this seems to have solved the problem, at least for now.
Alongside this effort to tamp down on obscene content online, congressional House Speaker Setya Novanto has unleashed a stream of legal threats against social media users for mocking him online.
A powerful force in Indonesia’s congress, Novanto has evaded corruption allegations on multiple occasions. This is often the subject of online commentary about the House Speaker.
The Indonesian police briefly detained Instagrammer Dyann Kemala Arrizqi for spreading memes that mocked House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto. He could face up to six years in jail under Indonesia’s Cyberlaw.
Police warned that nine other individuals will be charged for violating the anti-defamation provision of the Information Technology Law (ITE) for sharing the photo and associated memes on social media.
Law expert Henri Subiakto said that memes are equal to satire and shouldn’t be subject to charges of defamation or spreading a hoax.
A court in Rahim Yar Khan in Pakistan sentenced a man to life in prison for allegedly committing blasphemy on social media. These cases appear to be on the rise. Earlier this year, an Anti-Terrorism Court sentenced a man to death for allegedly sharing blasphemous content about Islam on Facebook.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, photographer and journalist Jesús Medina Ezaine has been missing since November 4. On Twitter, he reported that he began receiving threats directly after publishing an article about one of Venezuela's most violent and overcrowded prisons. The article was posted on Dólar Today, a US-based news site that features critical news coverage of Venezuela’s government and ruling party, alongside black market exchange rate information.
Jailed Algerian blogger Merzoug Touati ended a hunger strike that he began on 13 September in protest of prison conditions. Touati has been in prison since January 2017 on accusations of “exchanging with agents of a foreign power intelligence which could harm the military or diplomatic status of Algeria or its vital economic interests.” The charges were filed after he interviewed an Israeli official and posted that interview on YouTube and his blog. He could risk 20 years in jail. His file has been sent to the Algerian criminal court, and he is currently awaiting a verdict.
A coalition of human rights groups began proceedings this week at the European Court of Human Rights, which has agreed to hear their claims against the UK government concerning unlawful surveillance. The filing focuses on the exchange of information between UK and United States intelligence agencies. The coalition includes Privacy International (UK), the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Bytes for All (Pakistan), the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.
The music streaming sites Soundcloud and Spotify are now accessible online again in Iran. However, Spotify’s internal corporate rules still explicitly prohibit Iranians from using its services, for reasons the company has never officially explained. It is unclear why the music platforms are suddenly accessible, GV’s Mahsa Alimardani writes, leading some Iranian netizens to speculate it may have been a mistake, while others see it as a move to loosen restrictions on Internet content.
The Spanish activist group #AkelarreCiberfeminista put together a feminist self-defense kit to combat cyberbullying online.
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Mohamed ElGohary, Mong Palatino, Talal Raza, Juke Carolina Rumuat and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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Traveling Japan by Bus… on YouTube · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Taking the Nagasaki Kenei bus to the Shimabara Peninsula. Photo by Nevin Thompson.
Tamura Kenichi has pulled off an incredible achievement: he has traveled from one end of Japan to the other by local bus.
What's more, going by the username OleOleSaggy, he's posted videos of his trip (220 videos in all) to YouTube as a playlist.
The first video in the series begins near Wakkanai, Japan's northernmost settlement. The trip continues by bus along the remote Sea of Okhotsk coastline, passing through some of the most spectacular scenery in Japan. Not all of the 11-plus-hour trip is documented in the video, but it's still a great way to explore Japan.
More than 200 videos and three years later, OleOleSaggy finishes his trip at Kagoshima Station, a distance, depending on the route taken, of at least 2,600 kilometers. You can view the entire trip here.
According to the playlist description, OleOleSaggy isn't quite finished with the project yet, with plans to travel and document several bus routes in more detail, as well as one day traveling by bus through Okinawa to conclude the series.
OleOleSaggy's videos are part of a genre or subculture of YouTube called “front view” (前面展望, zenmen tenbo), where rail or bus enthusiasts record and upload videos of train and bus routes throughout Japan.
In another video, Olelesaggy travels by bus from the Japan Sea castle town of Kanazawa up the west coast of the wild and remote Noto Peninsula, a trip of about 100 kilometers.
As the bus travels through some of the more isolated towns on the coast towards the end of the video, based on the warm and animated conversation it becomes obvious the bus driver is quite friendly with the passengers on the bus, locals who rely on the transit service to get around this rural area.
OleOleSaggy's YouTube channel features dozens of playlists and hundreds of videos of “front-view” bus and train travel all over Japan. He also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account, as well as a separate YouTube channel devoted almost entirely to recreating “ekiben“–the boxed lunches featuring local delicacies sold at almost every major train station all over Japan–in his kitchen at home.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Female-Run Restaurant Bends Back Social Barriers in Pakistan’s Quetta · Global Voices
Maisam Iltaf

Hamida Ali Hazara, her staff and some patrons at the Hazara Restaurant in Hazara Town, Quetta. Hamida is standing fourth from the left. Photo shared on Hamida Ali Hazara's Facebook. Permission to reuse.
Restaurants aren’t a rare sight in Hazara town, a middle-income neighborhood in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, but there’s one that has caught the attention of many. Subtle in its splendor, the eatery's interior features traditional Hazaragi decorations and a poster of a giant Buddha. More unusual, however, is the fact that the restaurant is run and staffed exclusively by women.
The Hazara minorities are Hazaragi/Dari speaking people. Hazaras have continued to face regular persecution since they escaped ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan and migrated to neighboring countries including Iran and Pakistan.
Most ethnically Hazara people are religiously Shiite Muslims. Hazara Restaurant opened its doors to women and families looking for quality time in Quetta, the administrative capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province, earlier this summer.
Hamida Ali Hazara, who comes from the marginalized minority, is the driving force behind the bustling restaurant, whose small menu features mostly authentic Pakistani delicacies like biryani (generally made with spices, rice and meat), karhai (stew, made with meat), kebab and fresh-squeezed juices.
The newly-created space is also used for business conferences, gatherings, wedding parties and birthday celebrations. Hazara Restaurant employs six women in total.
Probably the first restaurant in #hazaratown, #quetta – owned & designed by a female entrepreneur. Hamida Ali Hazara is breaking barriers. pic.twitter.com/lPhc9m0hVH
— Saba Chaman (@chaman_saba) October 19, 2017
Hazara Restaurant is a second home 4 many Hazara women in community. The initiative is changing minds & invading hearts. #HazaraRestaurant
— Riyasat Ali (@RiyasatAlii) October 28, 2017
Hamida Ali Hazara, who is also a social and political activist, is perhaps best known as the founder of the Hurmat-e Niswa Foundation (HNF), which enables Hazara women to improve their lives through health, education, and sports. HNF has helped dozens of Hazara girls receive scholarships to study at universities in Pakistan's major cities Lahore and Karachi.
Shattering a glass ceiling or two in the business world was perhaps the next logical step for an uncompromising trailblazer. But as a single woman in a deeply patriarchal region, getting a foothold in the male-dominated hospitality industry was fraught with challenges.
“Some friends and relatives within my close circle mocked and ridiculed my choice of business,” Hamida Ali Hazara recalled in a phone interview with Global Voices.
“They said things behind my back. But I will not throw my efforts into a sponge. I will not stop because of what people think.”
So far, the rewards have outweighed the hardship. At lunchtimes and in the evenings, the restaurant can struggle to accommodate the flow of patrons. Even more pleasingly, is the change Hamida Ali Hazara has witnessed  in her close-knit staff.
“One of the employees, at first, was quiet and melancholic. [She said] that due to financial problems she could not continue her studies. She had nearly given up at that point. But the restaurant has helped her to keep going. I feel happy for her,” she said.
Quetta at night. Image originally posted to Flickr by Beluchistan. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Just as education is a goal for her employees, Hamida Ali Hazara believes it is also the main reason that, eventually, initiatives like hers will gather wider acceptance in the community. Illustrating her point, a local bakery in Quetta published last month what might well be the city's first ever job advertisement targeting skilled women specifically.
“Times have changed,” explains Hamida Ali Hazara. “Years ago, women’s lives were limited to the four walls of the house in Hazara Town, but it is no longer the case now. Education is changing the mindset of women.”
One ill that continues to cast a shadow over businesses in Quetta, especially those owned by Hazaras, is insecurity. As recently as October 9, Pakistani media reported, three Hazara were among five killed in a gun attack police characterized as sectarian.
The October tragedy brought scores of bereaved Hazaras onto the thoroughfare of Mizan Chowk in Quetta to protest against increasing violence towards their group. As in Afghanistan, Shiite Muslim Hazaras are regularly targeted by extremists in Pakistan that view them as heretics.
Fears over potential violence encourage the group to set up businesses in neighborhoods like Hazara Town, where they form a majority. The pioneering founder of Hazara Restaurant chose Aliabad road as a location to set up shop rather than the packed bazaar, primarily for safety reasons.
But if the world outside continues to pose dangers and problems, Hazara Restaurant itself is a sanctuary. Here Hamida Ali Hazara and her community can discuss, organize and feel at ease. By all accounts, the food is pretty tasty, too.

author: Maisam Iltaf


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Toxic Smog in New Delhi Leaves Residents Coughing and Demanding Action · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

A foggy morning in Dhaula Kuan, Delhi. Image via Flickr by Oatsy40. CC BY 2.0
Over the last few days, India's political capital, New Delhi, has witnessed toxic smog engulf the city, threatening a break-out of major respiratory ailments.
In response, the government has shut down schools and declared a public health emergency, but criticism is building that authorities aren't doing enough to solve the situation.
There have been increasing instances of smog engulfing many parts of North India just before the winter in recent years. 2017, however, has seen the problem worsen dramatically. The photos below, uploaded by Twitter user @gandabherunda, illustrates how thick the smog was at the end of October.
This is #Delhi as seen from above just few minutes before landing.Wonder how do ppl even breathe,live & survive here everyday! #Smog pic.twitter.com/jQFtq8TeUR
— Chetan Anantharamu (@gandabherunda) October 27, 2017
According to the US Embassy air pollution tracker in New Delhi, the levels of PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) reached 703 on November 7, 2017, which is far above 300, the mark when air is deemed as hazardous. The World Health Organization says sustained exposure to high levels of PM 2.5 can cause respiratory diseases, inflammation of the lungs, and even heart problems.
To compare, New Delhi's smog beats Beijing's infamous pollution, according to reports, as the carcinogenic pollutants in the city's air are ten times the reading in the Chinese capital.
The capital's chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, took to social media, terming the megacity of 20 million people as a “gas chamber” and blamed the pandemic to crop burning in neighboring Indian states:
Delhi has become a gas chamber. Every year this happens during this part of year. We have to find a soln to crop burning in adjoining states
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 7, 2017
Garbage fires and factory emissions are said to contribute to the problem, too. This augured by low wind speeds and low temperatures make the problem worse and are having a negative impact on residents’ health.
According to the UK newspaper the Guardian, doctors in New Delhi have claimed half their patients suffering from lung cancer are non-smokers. Arvind Kumar, a lung surgeon at the medical facility told the Guardian:
In the last two years, half my lung cancer patients have been non-smokers. I am seeing a peak in people aged in their 40s, even people in their 30s. Our cancers are occurring earlier, more in non-smokers, and more in females.”
The World Health Organization meanwhile has named Delhi the world's most polluted mega-city, beating Cairo, Mumbai, and Kolkata. And according to international medical journal, Lancet, air pollution has claimed as many as 2.5 million Indian people in 2015.
Many citizens have taken to Twitter to express their disdain. The #SmogInDelhi hashtag was trending for a while. Journalist Annie Gowen wrote:
Is “bad weather” some kind of euphemism for “Punjab and Haryana farmers illegally burning acres of paddy stubble and endangering millions across northern India and Lahore, Pakistan”? https://t.co/FUCBV80e7W
— Annie Gowen (@anniegowen) November 10, 2017
Journalist Aman Sharma expressed concern over the perceived lack of action to solve the problem:
Feeling sick to the core due to this smoke & smog though I was not out much. No one doing anything about it. UP, Punjab, Haryana all not bothered. Delhi CM trying but alone can't do much. This too, shall pass – seems everyone's solution to this! ?
— Aman Sharma (@AmanKayamHai_ET) November 8, 2017
Many have complained about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government's silence over the smog issue:
So far we have seen zero sense of emergency from Central Govt when it comes to capital’s killer pollution. Emergency meetings should be called & action taken on a war footing. Environment Minister @drharshvardhan should cancel his visit to Germany and come back to India soonest
— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) November 8, 2017
Blogger Shivam Vij wrote for Quartz:
Headlines even in the international press have been telling for years that India has the worst air quality in the world. The planet’s most polluted cities are concentrated in this country. You’d think prime minister Narendra Modi would at least want to be seen as doing something about this, if not actually doing something. He hasn’t said a word.
Recently, the Supreme Court of India banned burning firecrackers during Diwali festivals in New Delhi because of the pollution they cause. Rafiul Rehman observed on Facebook:
Can't believe it's been close to a month since Diwali and  Delhi is still so polluted! There is smog everywhere. I suddenly feel I am on a different planet. I want to go back to Assam now! Sigh.
The court's ruling was seen as a “communal” one by right-wing groups, who in response distributed firecrackers. One netizen called them out for their behavior:
Any plans of distributing masks to slum kids now? #DelhiSmog https://t.co/VKMTT6AAP8
— Hasiba (@HasibaAmin) November 10, 2017
Journalist Mayank Austen Soofi, in his photo blog, chronicled the catastrophic Delhi smog. You can check the blog here. A comment under the blog reads:
I have been coughing for over a month, and it is only a week or so back, that I realised that it’s because of the pollution. It’s terrible. It can be brought down, but no one is doing anything about it.
While Anuradha Sengupta urged on Facebook for people who are able to take more personal responsibility in their consumption habits:
Don't understand this – helpless many? Give up the car (or do not buy multiple cars), stop so much consumption, shut down factories. … but most people do not want to make changes to their lifestyle. The people who are lowest down the ladder, who have to live (and work) in the open on the roads – they are suffering the most. And of course, the creatures who are not humans – who are probably dying by the droves without being accounted for.
For some like daily laborers and rickshaw drivers, smog is a daily problem affecting their health:
Even rickshaw drivers wear masks in New Delhi now but this is clearly not enough to protect them against the #airpocalypse pic.twitter.com/JgSfvbPeZj
— Agnès Bun 黃瑩燕 (@AgnesBun) November 8, 2017
Other users took a darkly humorous route to describe the smog:
Sums up the early morning ride in delhi #smog pic.twitter.com/upYEqcStmV
— Saptarshi Chowdhury (@7RishiChow) November 10, 2017
Tuberculosis patients aren't safe in Delhi, as this journalist noted:
Patients suffering from lung diseases line up out in open near @aiims_newdelhi OPD – 150 of them choking on noxious air as air quality index deteriorates upto 1000 – #righttobreathe #DelhiSmog @dna @maneeshchhibber pic.twitter.com/be7nGW0v8G
— Medical Macaroni (@dawalelo) November 9, 2017
People are attempting to leave Delhi but air ticket prices have skyrocketed:
Smog envelopes Delhi. The cost of an air ticket out to Mumbai jumps to $1,500. pic.twitter.com/aO3zS4bEMs
— Kiran Stacey (@kiranstacey) November 9, 2017
And Atishi Marlena emphasized that the smog problem goes beyond New Delhi:
For anyone who thinks that smog is just a Delhi problem, pls look at this map of North India! pic.twitter.com/M2K5KHCqGI
— Atishi Marlena (@AtishiMarlena) November 8, 2017
The Delhi government has decided to reintroduce the Odd-Even nameplate traffic rule from 8 am to 8 pm in the national capital from November 13-17. Under this rule, private vehicles are allowed to run based on the last number of their license plates. The system was first implemented in Beijing in 2008 just before the summer Olympics and was tried in 2015 and 2016 in Delhi.
According to Shivam VJ, this may not be the answer as “the main cause of pollution is road dust and farm fires, but even within vehicular pollution, it is trucks and two-wheelers.”

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


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Azerbaijani Activist Defies Government Pressure, NGO Stereotypes · Global Voices
Eurasianet

The following is a partner post from EurasiaNet.org written by Durna Safarova. Republished with permission.
Shanin Javadov [center] is the founder and chairman of the Construction Workers Union in Gabala, Azerbaijan. His union focuses on labor rights advocacy at the grassroots level. (Photo courtesy of Shanin Javadov).
Shahin Javadov comes from a long line of rabble rousers.
His great-grandfather assassinated a Russian colonial official in Gabala, a crime for which his ancestor was exiled to Siberia. Only in 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution, was his family allowed to return to Azerbaijan. Another relative also spent time in Siberia amid the 1937 Soviet repressions for publicly coming to the defense of Nariman Narimanov, the famous Azerbaijani Bolshevik revolutionary and writer.
“So, I was raised with the idea of fighting against injustice,” Javadov said.
Javadov, 52, is the founder and chairman of the Construction Workers Union in Gabala. With about 2,000 members, it's one of the largest non-governmental organizations in Azerbaijan.
Over the past several years, Azerbaijan's government has steadily cracked down on the country's civil society sector, particularly by restricting foreign funding, resulting in the closure of some of the country's most well-known NGOs. In August, the local branch of Transparency International announced it was all but shutting down, spurring soul-searching among the beleaguered NGO community about the failure of internationally funded groups to make meaningful change in Azerbaijan.
Javadov represents a different form of civil society activism: grassroots, volunteer, local. The union focuses on labor rights, advocating for workers whose employers don't pay them. It also lobbies against construction projects that bring in foreign workers, rather than employing locals. And since 2011 he has published the newspaper Qızıl Alma (“Golden Apple” in Azeri), a six-page monthly that covers politics and corruption in local and national government. Javadov and other volunteers hand them out on the streets, teahouses and other public places.
“People still come to me and share their problems, and I try to pass them on to the appropriate authorities, as an intermediary,” Javadov said. “The most important thing is the idea of the solidarity of ordinary people to be able to demand their rights and keep struggling.”
For the most part NGOs have had only a superficial impact in Azerbaijan because they have tended to be organized from the top down, by international donors, rather than built up by ordinary citizens, said Cabir Aliyev, a legal expert who works with a variety of international organizations.
“Shahin Javadov is a rare case,” Aliyev said. “People who have experience in working with donor-organized NGOs learn how to get grants, rather than doing something for the community like Javadov does.”
Javadov also holds a dim view of most civil society in Azerbaijan. “There is no difference for me if NGOs exist or not. Most of them look like this government,” he said. “If an NGO wants to work with ordinary citizens, it should be organized by ordinary citizens, they should live as ordinary citizens.”
“Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but what I've seen during my lifetime is that most of the democracy and freedom fighters sold out in the end,” he added. “That’s why ordinary people in Azerbaijan don't trust politically active people.”
The government has justified its crackdown on foreign-funded NGOs by invoking the need to protect Azerbaijan from potential foreign influence and threats.
But the Gabala Construction Workers Union has fared little better, despite getting no funding at all, foreign or local, and being entirely volunteer-run. It, too, has been refused registration.
Javadov also was jailed for five days in 2011 on what he asserts were spurious charges of assault; Javadov believes his real offense was writing an article that attacked Ramiz Mehdiyev, President Ilham Aliyev's longtime senior adviser.
“The government has zero tolerance to any small protest coming from society,” Javadov said. “All the people connected to this government are paranoid and attack every single independent organization, person, initiative that they see as a threat. All the authoritarian regimes are the same: they think that a small compromise can open door to big, unstoppable uprisings.”
Publicly, though, the authorities praise Javadov. “He's very well known and respected in Gabala,” said Damir Bagirov, a member of Gabala's district council. “He is a very active citizen who brings good things to our community.” Gabala is the administrative center of the district with the same name, situated in northern Azerbaijan.
Javadov's civic activism, however, has brought him little material reward. He has been unemployed for two and a half years, and he and his family – including two children, 8 and 10 – have been living on his wife's teacher salary. The family also has a large garden where they grow food for themselves, and he's planning soon to get a few sheep.
He said he hasn't given up hope in helping to create change in Azerbaijan, but he's pessimistic.
”All the ways of struggle that we see in normal democratic countries, are closed in Azerbaijan,” he said. “Elections? No. Rule of law? No. Public opinion? No. Government is not dependent on its people. That’s why using your constitutional rights and doing activism is not working, that's the reality.”
Still, he plans to keep living the life of an activist and publishing Qızıl Alma. “It won’t be possible to find a job anyhow,” he said. “The only thing that I've gained is people's trust,” he said.

author: Eurasianet


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A Look Inside China’s Propaganda Bureaucracy · Global Voices
Jimmy Wu

The publicity department of the Communist Party of China has been producing popular rap songs to promote President Xi Jinping's policies. Screenshot from Youtube.
At the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party Chinese president Xi Jinping crystallized his power in China. His ideas are now reflected in China's constitution.
Moving forward, newly-selected Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning, an academic-turned-politician, will lead the CCP Publicity Department for further propagating and theorizing Xi's “China Dream” of national revival inside and outside China.
For Xi, ideology is a major weapon in maintaining the legitimacy of the CCP. He has leveraged China's online public sphere as a space for demonstrating and promoting party principles and ideals. All media outlets must plead loyalty to the CCP and more recently, even internet companies have been encouraged to establishes CCP participation among their employees.
The Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China plays a central role in this “ideological front” as it directs the country’s enormous propaganda machine which determines national policies on culture, art and education.
The majority of western media outlets refer to China's ideological battle as “propaganda” but do not explain the complex bureaucracy that builds and maintains this ideological front. Hong Kong-based investigative journalism media The Initium recently published an in-depth report on the transformation of the CCP Publicity Department. Below is a partial translation of the Chinese report.
In 1924, when China was divided among former military cliques of the Beiyang Army, Kuomintang and other regional factions, CCP formed a political alliance to end warlordism. This led to the founding of the CCP Publicity Department, the role of which was to publish statements, propose slogans, make flyers, and explain the ideas of Chinese communism within the National Revolutionary Army and to ordinary people during the Northern expedition for China's unification.
During the second Sino-Japanese War from 1937-1945, when the CCP's Liberation Army established its communist base at Yan'an, former CCP leader Mao Zedong (in leadership position 1943-1976) made use of the first ideological mass movement, the Rectification Movement, to restructure the party newspaper and party magazines and ensure that all publicity work should serve CCP's interest.
With this Mao established a principle of putting politics before journalism, what is now is referred to by historians as “Maoist Journalism”.
In order to control what news could be known by the public, the Publicity Department started issuing internal publications for party officials.
In addition to the duty of explaining and promoting the ideology of Chinese Communism, the department also monitored news opinions, censored publications and guided art creation.
The “Central Culture and Education Team” established in 1958 during the ideological struggle of anti-Rightist Movement was led by the head of Chinese Publicity Department. Apart from the education system, during Mao Zedong's era, the department was headed by the secretary of the CCP central secretariat, a party decision-making and implementation body, and was in charge of sports, healthcare and other non-political work.
During Deng Xiaoping‘s reform era (1979-1987), the power of the Publicity Department was reduced as Deng encouraged a certain degree of media commercialization.
But in 1990s, following the 1989 crackdown on June 4 Tiananmen democratic movement, the Publicity Department came back to the political core. Its leader was a member of the standing committee of CCP's Politburo.
Today, the Publicity Department governs four key areas:
1. Ideology. The department is in charge of the Theory Bureau and the Education Bureau. The two bureaus often publish articles on CCP theories and policies.
2. Culture and arts. The Publicity Department has become the curator of culture and art production. It leads the Ministry of Culture, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) together with other culture and arts-related official organizations such as China Federation of Literary and Art and China Writers Association.
3. Education and research. The Publicity Department is in charge of the national ideological and political education curriculum. In addition, it controls the humanities and social science research in the country by leading the national philosophy and social science planning team in allocating billions of Chinese Yuan for national social science research. In 2017 alone, there were more than 10 research topic titles that began with “President Xi Jinping's Thought on…”
4. International publicity. The department leads an International Communication Office which is responsible for interacting with foreign media and delivering the Chinese news and policy to the world.
The Publicity Department also invests in “foreign media” such as Nouvelles d'Europe (欧洲时报) and China Times (旺报) to report positively on China among overseas Chinese communities.
In China, all domestic newspapers, periodicals and publishing houses are either government or party affiliated and the Publicity Department can exercise direct supervising power.
The latest development is that the new director of SARFT Nie Chenxi is also the Vice Minister of the Publicity Department. Nie also heads the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Office of the CCP Central Leading Group for Cyberspaces Affairs. This implies that the administration of both conventional and new media answers to the Publicity Department.
The rapid growth of mobile internet and social media in recent years has allowed Chinese netizens to be more vocal in their opinions. How has the Publicity Department faced this new challenge?
Since 2012, the clampdown on online media has become the “new normal”. The newly established Cyberspace Administration Office has made use of its censorship power to make sure that the state and party-affiliated media outlets re-establish their leading role in influencing online public opinion.
In June 2017, a large number of entertainment sites on various social media platforms were banned overnight for violating socialist values. Some have millions of followers on WeChat.
The CCP publicity department is in control of censorship power and is capable of using the party's resources to invest in domestic and overseas media outlets. Its tactics have evolved over time and adopted new technologies which made censorship and political interference more efficient and opaque.
It seems that “who ever controls the present, controls the future” is no longer an Orwellian dystopia.

author: Jimmy Wu


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Albanian Activists Hold Two-Day Protest Against the Building of Hydropower Plants in Valbona National Park · Global Voices
Alida Karakushi

Protest in Tropoja 10 November 2017. Photo by Mirjan Aliaj, used with permission.
Dozens of activists in Tropoja, a Northern district of Albania, conducted a protest action on November 10 and 11 against the ongoing construction of hydropower plants in the Valbonë Valley National Park.
The protest was in response to the decision of the administrative court of Tirana to repeal the lawsuit filed by Valbona citizens who accused the  Gener 2 Company of using an expired construction permit.
Soon after the decision was announced, World Wildlife Fund declared that
Undertaking large construction activity, such as building of a hydropower plant, would without a doubt compromise natural processes and cause the destruction of pristine ecosystems in the National park.
Part of the construction in Valbona National Park. Photo by Mirjan Aliaj, used with permission.
The program of building hydropower plants in Valbona was given as a concession by the Ministry of Energy in 2009 when the Democratic Party was still in power. Currently, there are three hydropower plants under construction, and eight more are being considered by the Ministry of Energy. When the Socialist Party came into power in 2013, it promised that it would cancel all hydropower plant projects in national parks. However, this commitment has yet to be fulfilled.
According to the law, decisions about such construction must undergo a process of public hearings. However, citizens from Valbona Valley claim that no public hearings were done, and that the documents provided by the company among others revealed signatures of people who have already died.
https://t.co/lafEbMyIIE
Wonderful first day of action. #mosmaprekvalbonen pic.twitter.com/N8xFxKGmRl
— Journey to Valbona (@JourneyValbona) November 10, 2017
#MosMaPrekValbonen
Per dy dite aktiviste nga Tirana dhe banore te zones se Valbones informuan dhe sensibilizuan mbare publikun per masakren qe po i behet parkut kombetar te Valbones nga ndertimi i Hidrocentraleve ne Valbone. Ate qe po i bejne Valbones nuk ja ka bere as hasmi. pic.twitter.com/dShFdWPlnp
— Andi (@andi_tepelena) November 11, 2017
#DontTouchValbonaValley
For two days, activists from Tirana and residents of Valbona informed the public about the massacre that is being made to the Valbona National Park, through the construction of the hydropower plants. What has been done to Valbona, one wouldn't do even to the worst enemy.
Activists said some citizens from Bajram Curri, the seat of the Tropoja municipality that includes Valbona, were intimidated from joining the protest because of the threat that the government might stop giving financial aid, such as social benefits or small business subsidies.
Protesters on Friday said the construction of hydropower plants would destroy the future of tourism in the region.
Valbona Valley was classified as a national park in 1996. Investments in ecotourism have improved the park in the past two decades. Over 40,000 tourists visit the area every year.
The video below showed a minor victory when protesters managed to block some employees from entering the project site on November 11.
Valbona National Park. Photo by Besim Lushaj, used with permission.
Only journalists from media channel News 24 reported the protest. But even its video coverage seemed to have been removed from its website.
Online activists used the hashtags #MosmaPrekValbonën or #DontTouchValbonaValley to share photos and videos from the protests. The Facebook page Friends of Valbona also documented the protest.
Some social media commentators criticized the decision of the incumbent government to uphold the bad policies of the previous government in the name of respecting the rule of law. Some warned that the failure to reverse bad governance could lead to greater public cynicism and apathy about electoral democracy.
Activists added that the project to build hydropower plants violates the law amended by the government last May 4, 2017 which prohibits projects that threaten the ecosystem and biodiversity in national parks.
Other natural heritage sites across Albania are also in danger of destruction because of hydropower plant projects. One such area is the Vjosa River Valley in the south, an area identified by the European Parliament for the establishment of a national park last February.

author: Alida Karakushi