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Data shows trend of fewer Hungarians attending public protests · Global Voices
Atlatszo.hu

A protest against so-called “slavery law” in Budapest, Hungary on December 16, 2018. Photo by Atlatszo.hu/Áronl Halász, CC BY-NC-SA 2.5. Click on image for full album.
This story was first published by the Hungarian investigative journalism non-profit, Atlatszo. An edited version is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
Even though more public demonstrations and rallies took place in Hungary in 2019, there's been a drop in participation.
If you want to stage a protest in Hungary, you must first notify the police as to its time and location. Drawing on these archived notifications, the national headquarters of the Hungarian police service furnished the human rights NGO Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) with data showing the trend of decreased attendance.
Atlatszo independently identified these trends by comparing similar data sets from 2015 to 2018 — which the organization had used in previous analyses — in order to gain insight into whether participation dropped after the country's new law governing public assembly came into force on October 1, 2018.
Prior to its adoption, human rights defenders demanded that the law be withdrawn because they found its scope — such as the ability to limit freedom of assembly — repressive. Eva S. Balogh, history professor and editor of the blog Hungarian Spectrum, warned that “the rules are written in such a way that the police will find it easy to ban any demonstration.”
The new law brought about two changes affecting the outcome of the data analysis. Firstly, because the old law did not require prior notification to police for political rallies, the data sets obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by 2018 didn't contain information on events from the national election campaign period in April 2018. After the adoption of the new law, the number of events that were covered increased, because it also contained data on election rallies from campaigns for the European parliament, as well as local elections that took place in May and September of 2019.
Secondly, people could no longer notify the police about an upcoming public gathering via email; they now had to submit a more complicated online form, located on the police website.
The two graphs below show the data for 5,957 public gatherings to which the police were alerted; they took place between November 2015 and October 2019, and had a total of 2,077,621 expected attendees. The first graph shows a remarkable increase in the number of events after the new law took effect, with higher density of events per period, while the second graph shows a decrease in the number of participants.
A tüntetések száma és a rajtuk résztvevők számának alakulása
The number of demonstrations and the number of their participants
Darab
Events
Résztvevők száma
Number of participants
The analysis noted that several events with extremely high numbers of participants — such as the 200,000-strong Peace March (Békemenet) and the I Would Like to Teach Movement (Tanítanék Mozgalom), which expected a turnout of 50,000 — acted as outliers, resulting in spikes of over 200,000 in March of 2019.
Pruning the outlier data and using median (the value in the middle of a sequence of numbers) for the rest, provided a realistic picture of the average attendance in all the other types of protests, which turned out to be quite small. The median number of such participants in Budapest was 50; in the county capitals it was 30, and in other towns, 20.
The research also examined the themes of the protests, differentiating between standard topics (poverty, education, health care, government), human rights issues (freedom of press/speech, labor rights), and trending topics (environment and climate change).
The data shows that while the number of announced protests around these themes hasn’t decreased dramatically, the expected number of participants diminished in 2019. With some exemptions — like the series of protests against the so-called “slavery law” in January 2019, or the demonstrations demanding that Hungary joined the European Public Prosecutor's Office — pressing issues like education, health care, poverty and freedom of the press, though extensively covered by local and international media, failed to channel into large anti-government protests in 2019.
One possible explanation is that dissatisfied people “protested by their votes” in the municipal elections held in October 2019. The election results brought surprising gains for the opposition, including wrestling political control of the capital, Budapest, away from the right-wing, populist party Fidesz, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Unsurprisingly, the data showed that most of the demonstrations were held in Budapest, as well as in bigger cities that serve as county capitals. In the past four years, 43 percent of the protests were held in Budapest, which 76 percent of participants attended. Any protests that expected a turnout of 5,000 or more took place in Budapest. The largest demonstration outside the capital, ranked at 104 in the overall list, was in Szeged, Hungary's third-largest city.
Built around the police data, this dynamic map shows the density of demonstrations across Hungary, indicating entire regions with no demonstrations at all in the past four years. This may partly be due to the low density of the settlements, especially in the rural Western regions.
The data analysis team, which comprised Attila Bátorfy of Atlatszo, and HCLU members Attila Szabó and Szabolcs Hegyi, concluded:
First, while the new law made it more difficult to organize assemblies, we can see that their number has increased. One plausible explanation for the decreasing number of attendees can be the more rigorous regulations. The police require more organizers and security guards for large protests, and that’s why the organizers estimate smaller turnouts. We only have data for the past four years at the moment, so can’t see the trends for longer periods.
The number of participants is not just a question of the [new law]; it can be a mirror of social and political circumstances. With the aim of promoting the right of assembly, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union created the site tiltakozz.hu, where everyone can access information on the regulatory framework affecting public assembly and how to organise gatherings.


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Farewell to Lina Ben Mhenni, Tunisian blogger and human rights defender · Global Voices
Global Voices

Lina Ben Mhenni, June 2013. Photo by Habib M’henni, used with permission, Wikimedia Commons.
Prominent Tunisian blogger and human rights defender Lina Ben Mhenni passed away at the age of 36 on Monday 27 January, 2020.
Lina was a key figure in the Tunisian revolution that toppled the 23-year dictatorship of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. When the revolution began in December 2010, Lina travelled to Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, where she reported on the very first protests before they spread to other regions of the country. Her reporting helped publicize the authorities’s deadly crackdown on protesters, at a time when media freedom and press freedom were greatly restricted in Tunisia, and the internet heavily censored.
Prior to the regime’s collapse, she blogged and wrote about the human rights situation in the country on her award-winning blog, A Tunisian Girl. She was also a contributor to Global Voices, where she wrote extensively about internet censorship, the crackdown on bloggers and freedom of expression under the Ben Ali regime.
Lina continued her tireless activism after the revolution. She was critical of the rule of the Islamist Ennahdha movement, which governed with two other parties from late 2011 and early 2014. During this period, violations of human rights and individual freedoms continued to take place, including on religious grounds. Ben Mhenni also received death threats for her criticism of the Islamists and the authorities.
Ben Mhenni also campaigned for the socio-economic and cultural rights of all Tunisians. She was a strong supporter of the rights of those who were injured for protesting during the revolution, including their right to compensation and adequate healthcare. In 2016, along with her father Sadok Ben Mhenni, a political activist and human rights defender who was imprisoned under the regime of Bourguiba (Tunisia’s post-independence president), she started a campaign to collect books for prisoners to help fight radicalization in prisons. They collected more than 45,000 books in two years.
The award-winning blogger died of a chronic illness that required her to have a kidney transplant in 2007.
Speaking to a local radio station on 14 February 2019, Lina paid tribute to her mother for donating her kidney to her and for supporting her activism. She said:
Thanks to her I got to live another 12 years I may not have lived, or I would have lived a prisoner in my own body. But I have fully lived these years thanks to her. I travelled, I moved, I filmed, I ran, I screamed, and I lived the Tunisian revolution, something I may not have been able to live…

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Global Voices


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Justice elusive for nine victims of funk party police raid in São Paulo favela · Global Voices
Agência Mural

Protesting on 4 December 4, three days after the deaths, residents walked to São Paulo's government headquarters asking for justice | Photo: Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil, used with permission.
This post is an aggregation of several stories by Agência Mural. It is published here via a content-sharing partnership between Global Voices and Agência Mural.
On December 1, nine people aged between 14 and 23 died in Paraisópolis, a favela in São Paulo that is home to more than 100,000 people, during a police operation in a funk street party.
Since then, residents have been demonstrating, demanding answers and accountability for the police's actions at the popular “Baile da 17” which attracts thousands of partygoers every weekend.
Authorities claim that the police were chasing two men who were on a motorcycle. The men allegedly fled to the area where the dance was being held amid a gunfight with police officers, triggering a tumult. In the rush, people were trampled. It is estimated that 5,000 people were at the party when the commotion began.
But footage contradicting that version surfaced online on the night of the incident. The video below, published by public security reporter André Caramante, shows police officers cornering and beating people in an alleyway:
pic.twitter.com/X7XUUw8lqK
— André Caramante (@andrecaramante) December 3, 2019
The fatal victims that night were Gustavo Cruz Xavier, 14; Dennys Guilherme dos Santos Franco, 16; Marcos Paulo Oliveira dos Santos, 16; Denys Henrique Quirino da Silva, 16; Luara Victoria Oliveira, 18; Gabriel Rogério de Moraes, 20; Eduardo da Silva, 21; Bruno Gabriel dos Santos, 22; and Mateus dos Santos Costa, 23.
The specific circumstances of their deaths are still unclear. Thirty-one police officers are being investigated. Some residents speculate that the raid might have been retaliation for the murder of a police officer in the area in November 2019.
Hundreds of residents protested on December 2, carrying posters and crosses. Motorcyclists sounded their horns, and a minute's silence and a prayer were also held.
They also sang the “Rap of happiness”, a classic funk song whose lyrics say: “I just want to be happy and walk peacefully in the favela where I was born, and be able to be proud and know that poor people have their [own] place.”
pic.twitter.com/49q8hNQhVd
— Agência Mural (@agmural) December 2, 2019
In the following week, life in the neighbourhood was quieter than usual, according to residents; still afraid, most avoided giving interviews.
On the other hand, family members protested throughout the week. Chants such as “the hood wants peace”, “stop oppression”, and “justice” were heard at one of the events, which also criticised São Paulo state governor João Doria (from PSDB, a centre-right party).
The governor, who denied the liability of the police soon after the news of the deaths, changed his tone after videos showing a policeman laughing as he assaulted youths on the streets of the favela surfaced. He received family members of the victims and announced an external commission to investigate the facts:
Ao tomar conhecimento do novo vídeo que mostra um policial agredindo jovens em uma esquina de Paraisópolis, exigi punição exemplar ao agressor, já afastado de suas funções. Práticas como essa não condizem com o procedimento da Polícia de SP e serão veementemente condenadas.
— João Doria (@jdoriajr) December 3, 2019
When I learned of the new video that shows a policeman beating young people in a corner of Paraisópolis, I demanded exemplary punishment for the aggressor, already suspended of his duties. Practices like this do not conform to the procedures of the São Paulo Police and will be vehemently condemned.
A page dedicated to Paraisópolis on Facebook published a text in solidarity with family members. “We will not accept this silently, we demand justice and the punishment of the guilty. Paraisópolis and the communities need social action to face their difficulties, instead of just reacting we need to prevent [problems]. STOP the violence, we want peace”.
The group also published a series of nine demands, including a transparent investigation into the case, support for leisure activities in the neighbourhood, and working against the criminalization of funk music.
The incident in Paraisópolis raised discussions in Brazil about two points: the lack of leisure spaces for young people in impoverished areas of the city, and prejudice against funk music.
Several young people from this area, interviewed during the week by Agência Mural, spoke of the lack of leisure spaces, in addition to the expense needed to move around the city. There are also questions over whether incidents such as that of Paraisópolis would have occurred in wealthy areas of the city, where funk is also played.
The party where the police operation took place is one of the most famous in São Paulo. The nine victims were not from the Paraisópolis itself, but from other suburbs: Capão Redondo and Interlagos, in the south, Pirituba and Jaraguá, in the north, Vila Matilde, in the east, and the towns of Mogi das Cruzes and Carapicuíba.
A Facebook post from April by one of the murdered youths, Dennys Guilherme, went viral. The caption on one of his photos said: “I'm going to be one of the favela people who will conquer the world. I'm going to be the reason for so much of my mother’s pride”. At the protest, Fernanda, his sister, called for justice.
One of the contentious issues is the loud noise during the nights of these parties. Residents who do not attend the event usually complain about it, and claim it is excessive. On the other hand, the events also stimulate the local economy.
The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (CIDH) condemned the actions of the police and demanded that São Paulo state reform its security policies. Although the number of homicides fell 11 per cent in 2018 in Brazil, the number of people killed by police increased, according to a recent survey by the Brazilian Forum of Public Security. In 2018 alone, 6,220 people were killed during military police actions.
In an editorial about the tragedy, we, Agência Mural, stated:
A morte desses jovens de Paraisópolis escancara o que está nas entrelinhas: as periferias não têm direitos ou têm menos direitos de ser feliz do que outros lugares da cidade. Ela não é vista como parte da cidade, mas como um território de exclusão.
The death of these young people from Paraisópolis reveals what is between the lines: the outskirts have no rights or have fewer rights to be happy than other places in the city. It is not seen as part of the city, but as a zone of exclusion.

author: Agência Mural


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Red palm fruit flourishes in Côte d’Ivoire, despite national shortage · Global Voices
Jeslyn Lemke

Ivorian vendor Koffe Pauline and her family sell red palm oil along with fresh fruits and vegetables like cassava root, pineapple and papaya at the Faya market in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.
Côte d'Ivoire recently announced a plan to triple its palm oil production without endangering more indigenous forests, but the plan “may seem unrealistic” due to low yields and diminishing lands, according to a 2019 article from Radio France Internationale (RFI).
“The old model is no longer sustainable,” said Siaka Coulibaly, a representative of the Ivorian ministry of agriculture. “We can no longer produce extensively as before, we must ensure that existing plantations produce more with less area, even if it means reclaiming old wasteland,” Coulibaly told RFI.
Sauce graine is one of the most popular sauces in Côte d'Ivoire, made from red palm oil, October 22, 2014, by
Aboukam via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Despite the global trade in refined palm oil, the original red palm tree originated from forests in West Africa. In this region, including Côte d'Ivoire, many people still use the unrefined, more nutritious red palm oil in Ivorian cooking, just as their ancestors did.
Using manual presses or a simple mortar and pestle, Ivorian women pound up the oily scarlet fruit, then render off the bright red oil for cooking.
At home, women extract the juices and oil to make a rich, fruity sauce called sauce graine. The oily sauce keeps the nutritional juices, antioxidants and oils of the fruit intact for the meal.
Côte d'Ivoire ranks 11th in the world in producing refined palm oil, according to Indexmundi. It is the second-largest producer among African nations, behind Nigeria. About 75 percent of Côte d'Ivoire’s oil is consumed within the country — the rest is sold to neighboring nations, according to RFI. Between the localized demand for red palm fruit and the commercial industry, the palm oil industry employs almost 10 percent of the country's population.
Traveling to Côte d'Ivoire, Global Voices’ Jeslyn Lemke spoke with women who sell red palm oil in the markets and with people who use red palm oil to make soap, as seen in this short video:
In the busy, sprawling markets, red palm oil is often sold in open-air stands in recycled plastic bottles by women. Lemke talked with Ivorian vendor Koffe Pauline and her family, who sell red palm oil along with fresh fruits and vegetables like cassava root, pineapple and papaya at the Faya market in Abidjan.
Pauline, like other vendors in the market, sells hand-pounded oil for the equivalent of $1-2 United States dollars, depending on the quantity. Unlike the more refined golden palm oil, red palm oil has a robust tomato-like flavor and is rich in Vitamin B and Carotenoids, the same orange substance found in salmon and carrots.
Lemke also visited a long-standing soap-making facility located outside Divo, Côte d'Ivoire, that produces kaba-kuru — a soap made from red palm oil and sometimes cocoa butter. The bright yellow balls of hearty soap are specifically used by Ivorians for washing clothes and are sold to neighboring African countries of Burkina Faso and Nigeria as well.
Women make soap from red palm oil in Divo, Côte d'Ivoire. Screenshot from video by Jeslyn Lemke.
Here, women measure out quantities of liquid potassium hydroxide and red palm oil. Workers mix up the two liquids, which saponify into a thicker yellow paste. The paste is rolled into balls while still liquid and then stacked to dry with the other soap. The rough soap is strong enough for washing clothing — but too strong to be used on the skin.
Ironically, Côte d'Ivoire is experiencing a shortage of palm oil and imports much of its oil from Asian nations, which leads the world in palm oil production.
GroIntelligence, an agricultural platform, describes the global palm oil industry as a ” ‘tug-of-war’ of global proportions:”
On the one hand, the practical benefits offered by palm oil have become a ubiquitous part of the lives of consumers; and the industry has helped pull many out of poverty. On the other hand, palm oil producers, in many cases, are leaving environmental devastation in their wake.
Still, in Côte d'Ivoire, the use of unrefined red palm oil in Ivorian cooking and kaba-kuru soap production continues to flourish.

author: Jeslyn Lemke


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From Cox’s Bazar to Yangon, poets show solidarity with Rohingya minority in Myanmar · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

‘Poetry for Humanity’ event in Yangon. The three Rohingya poets from Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh joined the poetry reading through a Skype video. Photo from the Facebook page of Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica.
More than forty poets from across Myanmar participated in a poetry reading event in Yangon City aimed at expressing support to displaced Rohingya minority. They were joined by several Rohingya writers who recited poems through a Skype video from their refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh.
The ‘Poetry for Humanity’ themes event was a small cultural activity with national symbolic importance. Myanmar has more than one hundred ethnic groups but the government has refused to recognize the Rohingya people, who are mostly Muslims living in the northwestern state of Rakhine. In recent years, communal clashes erupted in Rakhine involving some Rohingya and Buddhist hardliners. The conflict reflected the discrimination against the Rohingya who are treated as illegal immigrants by state institutions.
Since 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya residents have fled their homes to escape the fighting between government troops and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Many fled to the neighboring country of Bangladesh.
On 23 January 2020, the International Court of Justice ordered Myanmar to implement measures against genocide based on a case filed by Gambia.
In light of this global court ruling, the poetry event held on 25-26 January should be seen as a courageous act of solidarity with the Rohingya minority. It is also noteworthy to mention that organizers adopted the name Rohingya in the event, instead of the pejorative ‘Bengali’ label which many Burmese officials use to indicate that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants.
But instead of directly commenting on government policies or court rulings, the participants demonstrated how ethnic groups can unite despite the diversity of cultures in the country.
Mayyu Ali, a Rohingya poet in the Cox's Bazar camp, emphasized that he and other refugees consider themselves to be part of Myanmar:
All we want our Burmese brothers & sisters is to feel us, we #Rohingya also love our #Myanmar & adore our Burmese literature.
Building bridge between different communities through poetry.
We’ve strong tradition of poetry movement since colonial era.
Reactions on Twitter celebrated the success of the event in proving that Buddhists, the Rohingya, and other ethnic minorities can show love and support for each other in a single event.
Best picture of a day (probly in a decade) I couldnt believe my eyes to witness this scene. #Rakhine youth recited his poem while #Rohingya poet @AliMayyu & organizer poet @maung_saungkha listening in Yangon #Myanmar. “poetry for humanity”. Youths bring real #peace & #change. pic.twitter.com/mjiapitqD3
— Thinzar Shunlei Yi (@thinzashunleiyi) January 25, 2020
A Day of Ethnical Courage
Myanmar’s oppression dispersed our ethnic minorities, now our poetries bring us together
We, 5 #Rohingya poets were reading poetry through Skype
Atmosphere of our Burmese audiences is heartwarming
Acceptance to us as who we are is the bravest pic.twitter.com/sqmYgMVCxo
— Mayyu Ali (@AliMayyu) January 26, 2020
Three of young poet & poetess from Cox Bazzar recited their own heart-touching poems today public event in Yangon thru video call. Poetry for Humanity” brought poets of diff faiths & ethnicities to share #humanity. #myanmar #youthvoicesmatter #youthnow #Poetry4Humaity @athan_info pic.twitter.com/NA4GgVG7Yh
— Thinzar Shunlei Yi (@thinzashunleiyi) January 25, 2020
A poem by another Rohingya poet Azad Mohammed was also featured in the event
this is yours! Congratulations bro! pic.twitter.com/uadwvFbAcC
— Cape Diamond (@cape_diamond) January 24, 2020
Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, also praised the event.
Screenshot from ‘Poetry for Humanity’ live streaming.

author: Mong Palatino


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International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Auschwitz in pictures · Global Voices
Metamorphosis Foundation

Members of Yugoslav family Mandić (Oleg, aged 11 at the time, his mother Nevenka and grandmother Olga) with Soviet soldiers in Auschwitz after the camp's liberation on January 27, 1945. Source: znaci.net, public domain.
This story originally appeared on Meta.mk News Agency, a project of Metamorphosis Foundation. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
The United Nations has declared January 27 the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the genocide over 6 million Jews and 11 million others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during the Second World War. On this date in 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp, was liberated by the Red Army.
Auschwitz was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied southern Poland, near the town of Oświęcim. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz since its opening in May 1940, 1.1 million were murdered with poisonous gas, starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions or beatings, and as a consequence of medical experiments.
On this death camp alone, 960,000 Jews, 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans were murdered.
Most of the prisoners were brought to Auschwitz in special railway transport, in cattle wagons with a bit of hay on the floor.
The photos below belong to several museums in the former Yugoslavia and were digitized by the online archive Znaci.net.
Prisoners transported to Nazi death camps in railway wagons previously used to transport cattle. Photo by znaci.net, public domain.
Women and children wearing the star of David, a Nazi-imposed designation for Jews, standing by the Auschwitz railway station. Photo by znaci.net, public domain.
The Auschwitz extermination camp complex was surrounded by a fence consisting of concrete pillars and high-voltage barbed wire. Only 144 prisoners have managed to escape the complex while it was operational.
After the prisoners exited the wagons, Nazi camp guards would separate them by gender while grouping the children with the women.
Electric barbed wire fence and concrete pillars of Auschwitz concentration camp have been preserved as part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Photo by znaci.net, public domain.
After that, they'd separate the sick and disabled from those fit to work. Many among the first group were sent to gas chambers before they were listed in the camp's books, which is why the total number of victims and their identity remains unknown.
The prisoners selected for slave labor underwent dehumanizing processing, which included tattooing of serial numbers, head shaving, and confiscation of all their meager possessions, including their clothes, which were replaced with the striped uniforms.
The body parts of the murdered victims also served a commercial purpose. Human hair was used to produce fabric, bones and skin were turned into gruesome souvenirs. Groups of prisoners were forced to search the corpses for golden teeth or other possessions hidden in the bodies.
Another form of extreme exploitation was using prisoners in deadly experiments, such as testing weapons of mass destruction and methods to advance the Nazi racial ideology.
Disposal of the remains of the victims was a big logistical challenge for the Nazi death factory. Five crematoria whose furnaces burned 24/7 were built in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The camp was often engulfed in a thick veil of smoke — surviving inmates later testified that they would go months without seeing the sun.
Before retreating from the camp around Christmas 1944, the Nazis blew up a few installations in an attempt to cover up their crimes.
Roll call of newly arrived female prisoners in the Birkenau concentration camp. Photo by znaci.net, public domain.
All belongings were taken from the prisoners and brought to a camp chamber called “Canada.” Photo by znaci.net, public domain.
Block 10 in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where Nazi doctors conducted human experiments. Photo by znaci.net, public domain.
Retreating Nazis took some of the prisoners with them on a death march whose purpose was to let them die of exposure and hunger along the way. Several thousands remained or returned to the camp, where they found food in the storerooms. About one in five nevertheless died before the Soviets arrived several days later.
The Red Army units liberated about 4,800 prisoners from Auschwitz. Among them, there were 108 Yugoslavs, including the members of Mandić family. They were from Rijeka, Croatia, which was first occupied by Italian fascists and then by the Nazis during the war.
In May 1944, the Nazis arrested 10-year-old Oleg Mandić, along with his mother and grandmother,a his father and grandfather joined the partisans – the Yugoslav communist anti-fascist resistance army. After several months spent in jails in Croatia and Italy, they were sent to Auschwitz as “political prisoners.” They survived eight months in the death camp.
Oleg spent two months laboring in the women's quarters, but when the Nazis found out he had turned 11, they moved him to the men’s ward. When he developed fever due to stress, he was sent to the medical ward where SS-officer Josef Mengele conducted experiments. Over the course of several weeks, he learned to manipulate the thermometer and devised other strategies to remain interesting as an observation subject.
Oleg Mandić, his mother Nevenka, and grandmother Olga were the last prisoners who left Auschwitz alive.
The film linked below, which Mandić only saw during a visit to Auschwitz 20 years after he was fred, depicts the moment the family received a letter from Stalin’s assistant Nikolai Bulganin ordering their transport to Moscow by truck via Krakow. In the Soviet capital, they joined a visiting Yugoslav delegation led by resistance leader Josip Broz Tito, who returned with them to Belgrade by airplane on May 1, 1945.
Mandić, who is now 86, devoted his life to promoting the truth about the Holocaust. He led an antifascist NGO in Opatija, Croatia, organized an exhibition, and gave lectures and interviews in different languages. He also participates in annual group visits to the Auschwitz museum on the day of the liberation of the camp.
In 2015, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation, he said that he still feels chills when he thinks about “the notion of a human mind devoted to devising an industrial production of death.”

author: Metamorphosis Foundation


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Africa’s creative industries get a half-billion-dollar boost by big banks · Global Voices
Pamela Ephraim

Screenshot of Nigerian artist D'banj speaking at CAX Weekend in Cairo, Egypt, 2018. Dbanj told investors that “content is the next crude oil” and must be respected as much.
In recent years, cultural and creative industries have played a growing role in developing economies, in terms of their economic contribution as well as their power to effect social change and cultural engagement.
In 2013, cultural and creative industries (CCI) generated $2,250 billion United States dollars worth of revenue and 29.5 million jobs worldwide [but] only 3 percent of these jobs came from Africa and the Middle East, according to a 2013 study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) called “Cultural time.”
For this reason, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) in collaboration with UNESCO and African Development Bank Group, developed the Creative Africa Exchange (CAX) as a “catalyst that brings together the identified assets and resources within the creative industry” to consolidate, monetize and impact African creative and cultural economies, according to the CAX website. CAX launched during the Intra Africa Trade Fair in Cairo, Egypt, in December 2018.
African creative talents from the fields of music, arts, design, fashion, literature, publishing, film and television came together for a Creative Africa Exchange Weekend in Kigali, Rwanda, January 16-18, 2020. It advertises itself as the “first continental event dedicated to promoting exchange within the creative and cultural industry in Africa,” with over 2,000 participants from 68 countries.
Over 2,000 participants from 68 Countries expected at CAX weekend in Kigali https://t.co/28gWP2HjNB
— africanews (@africanews) January 4, 2020
On the second day of the event in Kigali, professor Benedict Oramah, president of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) announced a $500 million USD fund “to support the production and trade of African cultural and creative products” over the next two years, New Times Rwanda reported.
Omarah told guests at the event that the funds, which would build on what the bank was already doing, would be accessible as lines of credit to banks, direct financing to operators and as guarantees. He said that “while Africa had a deep pool of talent, it lacked the infrastructure and capacity to commercialize its creative talent and “reap the vast fortunes lying in wait, according to Afreximbank. He continued:
Because of underinvestment in the creative and cultural industries, Africa is largely absent in the global market of ideas, values and aesthetics as conveyed through music, theater, literature, film and television. African countries import overwhelmingly more creative goods than they export or trade amongst themselves.
He commended Egypt’s “astronomical growth in creative exports over the last decade.” In December 2019, Afreximbank was honored at the International Fashion Awards (IFA) in Cairo for its role in supporting Africa's creative industry. Omarah also commended Nigeria's Nollywood industry.
On Twitter, artists who were attendance showed their appreciation for the gathering held at Intare conference center in Kigali:
Siki Jo-An, a singer from South Africa, called the event “amazing:”
The CAX weekend was amazing in Kigali, Rwanda ??
Today I am singing at the Africa Forum Corporate Event. I love my Job!
?Midrand, South Africa. ?? pic.twitter.com/BHBo4yCDLQ
— Siki Jo-An (@Joan_Siki) January 22, 2020
CAX Weekend organizers raved about the performance of Marina Debol, a singer from Rwanda:
We are still re-living some of our favorite moments from CAX weekend and this sensational performance from Marina Debol is definitely on our list! pic.twitter.com/cTqPMLTjDU
— Cax Africa (@caxafrica) January 20, 2020
Speaking at the 2018 CAX Weekend in Cairo, Nigerian artist D'Banj told bankers and investors:
What we need is for you guys to really understand is that content is the new crude oil and however well you respect the oil industry you have to respect the creative industry.
The concluded CAX Weekend 2020 will be followed by CAX Week on the sidelines of the second Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF2020) from September 1-7, 2020, also in Kigali.

author: Pamela Ephraim


text:
In Dhaka’s mayoral election, environmental promises undermined by plastic campaign posters · Global Voices
পান্থ রহমান রেজা (Pantha)

Dhaka is now a city of posters. Photo by Sanim Haque. Used with permission.
Polls are set to open on 1 February 2020 when voters from Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, will choose two mayors for the Dhaka North City Corporation and the Dhaka South City Corporation. Candidates are in the last phase of their campaigns with mayoral hopefuls pitching plans for development that is both modern and environmentally friendly. Campaign promises focusing on the environment have come to the forefront as Dhaka continues to top the list of the most polluted cities in the world with many people dying each year from diseases directly linked to pollution.
With limited resources, tackling increasing urban waste is a challenge for any mayor in Dhaka. However, despite candidate promises, the sincerity of their environmental aspirations was called into question after almost all the 778 candidates plastered Dhaka's streets with non-biodegradable plastic laminated election posters and banners.
This poses a serious threat to the environment as the city corporation bodies lack thorough mechanisms to dispose of plastic. A study by non-profit Waste Concern carried out in collaboration with the government’s Department of Environment, found that only 36 percent of the total plastic waste in the urban hubs of Bangladesh was recycled in the informal sector while 39 percent were dumped in landfills and 25 percent polluted the earth and water sources.
On social media, many people expressed concern over the impact of the posters on the environment with many fearing that they will clog drains and swamp the city in the garbage.
Human rights activist Mahmudul Hasan expressed frustration on Facebook:
উন্নত বিশ্ব যখন পরিবেশ রক্ষায় বিলিয়ন বিলিয়ন ডলার খরচ করছে তখন আমাদের শহর পরিবেশের জন্য অতিব ক্ষতিকারক লক্ষ লক্ষ পলিথিনের পোস্টার দিয়ে ছেয়ে ফেলা হয়েছে। এইসব পোস্টার যারা ঝুলিয়েছে তাদের ভোট দেয়া তো দুরের কথা তাদের প্রত্যেকের নামে আন্তর্জাতিক আদালতে মামলা করা উচিত। এদের কেউকে ভোট দিবেন না, এরা শুধু আমাদের জন্য নয় সারা পৃথিবীর জন্য ক্ষতিকারক প্রাণী।
When the developed world is spending billions of dollars in protecting the environment, millions of polythene posters inundated our city. Those who have ordered those (laminated) posters to be hanged should have been tried in the International Court of Justice. Vote for none of them, they are harmful not only for us but for the whole world.
Most of the top-level policymakers of Bangladesh live in Dhaka where laminated posters are being used in front of their eyes. Pointing out that they are not doing anything about it, educator Obaidullah Mahmood writes:
হিসাব কষে দেখুন কতশত টন পলিথিন মোড়ানো পোস্টার ঢাকার আকাশ ঢেকে রেখেছে!
নির্বাচন শেষে এই টন টন পলিথিন হয় বস্তিতে বস্তিতে জ্বালানী হয়ে পুড়ে বায়ুদূষণ ঘটাবে, নয়তো আবর্জনা হিসেবে ড্রেনে ঢুকবে, মাটিতে মিশবে।
Take into account how many tons of polythene laminated posters cover the skies of the city! At the end of the election, tonnes of polythene will either burn in the slums and cause air pollution, else, they will clog the drains as garbage, contaminate the earth.
Candidates are making many claims during the election campaign including plans to make Dhaka a modern city like Singapore. Twitter user Saddam Hossein tweeted about the garbage situation in the capital:
লাগবে না আমার সিঙ্গাপুর সিটি কিংবা লাস ভেগাস
যিনি নির্বাচনে জয়ী হবেন, তিনি যেন নির্বাচন শেষ হওয়ার ১ সপ্তাহের ভিতর ঢাকাকে পোস্টার মুক্ত করেন।
দেশ ডিজিটাল হয়ে গেছে…আর আপনারা এখনও মোঘল আমলের প্রচারণাতেই পড়ে আছেন https://t.co/TpWBtjGTx6
— Saddam Hossain (@saddambd93) January 22, 2020
No need to turn my city into Singapore or Las Vegas. Whoever wins, should dispose of the posters from Dhaka within 1 week from the end of the election. The country has gone digital … and you are still campaigning like it's the Mughal era (a few centuries back)
While the city publishes a list of rules that candidates must follow during elections, there is nothing in the country's electoral law that prohibits the use of laminated posters. Despite calls on social media for candidates to be sanctioned, no action can be taken as a result.
However, people were pleased to see that the country's High Court issued an order on January 22nd banning the use of posters wrapped in polythene or laminated posters after taking into consideration the environmental damage. It has also banned the production and printing of laminated posters. However, this rule came a bit too late as the mayoral candidate posters are already up.
রুল নিষ্পত্তি না হওয়া পর্যন্ত নতুন করে প্লাস্টিক আচ্ছাদিত বা লেমিনেটেড পোস্টার উৎপাদন, ছাপানো ও প্রদর্শন বন্ধের নির্দেশ দিয়েছেন হাইকোর্ট। নির্বাচনকে সামনে রেখে সাঁটানো বা প্রদর্শিত পোস্টার নির্বাচনের পরপর যথাযথভাবে অপসারণ ও ধ্বংসের নির্দেশ দেওয়া হয়েছে।https://t.co/et9pDk1auY
— Niaz@Shopno30 (@shopno30by_niaz) January 22, 2020
The High Court banned printing and displaying new laminated posters from now on until the case is settled. All the used laminated posters should be disposed of properly immediately after the polls.
Polythene bags were introduced in Bangladesh in the eighties and became a cheap alternative to the traditional jute bag. In 2002, the government banned the production, transportation, storage and use of shopping bags, making it the first country in the world to ban it on a nationwide level. Although the use of polythene had declined after the ban, relaxation in enforcement of that law saw their revival. According to a report on the widely read Bangla daily Prothom Alo, about three hundred thousand tonnes of plastic wastes are being dumped into rivers and canals every year. On January 6, 2020, the High Court (HC) directed the concerned authorities to ban single-use plastic products in the coastal areas and hotels, motels and restaurants across the country within one year.

author: পান্থ রহমান রেজা (Pantha)


text:
Is Trump’s Middle East peace plan a one-state solution? · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Bethlehem is a Palestinian city located in the central West Bank, Palestine, south of Jerusalem, October 9, 2016. Photo by Dennis Jarvis via Flickr CC BY 2.0.
On Tuesday, January 28, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his long-awaited Middle East peace plan known as the “deal of the century.” The plan calls for a separate Palestinian state and promises Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital.
“Palestinians are in poverty and violence, exploited by those seeking to use them as pawns to advance terrorism and extremism. They deserve a far better life,” Trump said in a speech on Tuesday.
According to Trump's plan, a Palestinian state will only be realized if Palestinians meet demands made by Israel. Palestinians widely rejected the plan before it was even announced.
The plan includes a “conceptual map” that shows territorial compromises that Israel is making to accommodate a Palestinian state. According to the BBC, Trump added that the map “more than doubles the Palestinian territory and provide[s] a Palestinian capital in eastern Jerusalem.” The U.S. would open an embassy in the “new Palestinian state.”

“No Palestinians or Israelis will be uprooted from their homes,” Trump said in his speech. He added that the existing Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — illegal according to international law —  will remain.

He said that territory allocated to Palestinians “will remain open and undeveloped for a period of four years.” During those four years, Palestinians “can study the deal, negotiate with Israel, and achieve the criteria for statehood,” according to the BBC.
Finally, “Israel will work with the king of Jordan to ensure that the status quo governing the key holy site in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims is preserved,” according to the BBC.
The plan asserts that the current physical separation barrier between Israel and Palestine should remain and will be considered the border between the “two states.” Over the decades, the U.S has attempted to mediate between Israel and Palestine to create what is known as a “two-state solution” where both Israelis and Palestinians live independently.
On Twitter, Shahed Amanullah compared the plan to the United States’ Native American reservations:
This doesn't look like a state. It looks like a Native American reservation. https://t.co/ZwHMt0L0V7 pic.twitter.com/S2gO5gdV4t
— Shahed Amanullah (@shahed) January 28, 2020
Following the announcement, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said that Israel is free to annex settlements at any given time.
Hours later, Netanyahu’s spokesman Jonathan Urich announced on Twitter that the prime minister will ask the cabinet to back the full annexation of settlements in the West Bank on Sunday.
The following tweet shows the changes over time in the proportions of the land in Palestine versus the Israeli settlements:
The PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] does not agree with the math… pic.twitter.com/LyyltDgJAY
— Mariya Petkova (@mkpetkova) January 28, 2020
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, — who is also indicted on corruption charges in Israel, — stood at the White House in Washington, D.C. alongside Trump while he made the announcement. Ambassadors of Egypt and Jordan — the only Arab countries that have a peace treaty with Israel, — were both absent.
“My vision presents a win-win opportunity for both sides, a realistic two-state solution that resolves the risk of Palestinian statehood to Israel's security,” Trump said during his speech.
Political analyst Marwan Bishara called the plan a “farce” on Twitter, given that both Trump and Netanyahu facing charges in their respective countries and aim to redirect attention away from that. As Trump made his peace plan announcement, his defense team was in the Senate battling his impeachment. Meanwhile, hours earlier, Netanyahu was formally indicted on corruption charges.
My early assessment of the Trump's ‘peace plan': The farce, the fraud and the fury @AJEnglish https://t.co/jJKW4oV7I8
— Marwan Bishara (@marwanbishara) January 28, 2020
The plan has been highly criticized as an endorsement for the unilateral Israeli annexation of the settlements.
When was the last time anyone made an agreement about a third party, with the third party not present? #DealOfTheCentury
— Shay (@shayandahalf) January 29, 2020
Arab states have called for a conversation that includes all parties to reach an agreement. Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Jordan has said that establishing an independent state of Palestine is the only route for peace in the region.
Want to know why this “ultimate deal” is a sham & a disgrace that will never lead to peace? @OmarBaddar explains:#DealOfTheCentury #Apartheid pic.twitter.com/1k9Ig0q9ND
— Arab American Instit. (@AAIUSA) January 28, 2020

author: Guest Contributor


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Nigeria’s border closure puts a dent in intra-regional trade optimism · Global Voices
Kofi Yeboah

Lagos skyline, February 28, 2015. Photo by Clara Sanchiz/RNW via Flickr CC BY 2.0.
In August 2019, Nigeria unexpectedly closed all of its land borders with Niger, Cameroon, and Benin, to stop all movement of goods, except oil, from import or export. The Nigeria-Benin border closure was made without any formal communication with government officials of neighboring countries.
The closure is part of Nigeria’s economic strategy to tackle the smuggling of goods across the border, to increase local production and protect local producers, as outlined in its 2017-2020 Economic and Recovery Growth Plan. Smuggling activities across the Nigerian-Benin border account for about 110 billion nairas ($303,614,300 United States dollars) in trade revenue loss every year.
However, smuggling is nothing new along these borders, with historical roots from British and French colonial authorities, when colonial rivals implemented trade policies to protect local industries from external competition, which exacerbated illicit trade activities across the border.
Activating a prolonged trade restriction to solve the recurring issue of smuggling will have a negative economic effect on Nigeria and puts a damper on Africa's much-anticipated intra-regional trade investment agreement, the African Continental Free Trade Area, known as AfCFTA, slated to begin in July 2020.
AfCFTA — projected to add a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $3.4 trillion USD to Africa's economy — focuses on creating a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, and thus pave the way for accelerating the establishment of the Continental Customs Union and the African Customs Union. It also intends to expand intra-African trade through better harmonization and coordination of trade liberalization and facilitation.
The border closure has spiked food prices, causing inflation to increase to 11.24 percent, the highest level since June 2019, and it is expected to rise even higher.
Presently, Nigeria produces about 6.9 million metrics tons of rice annually, but the country has to import rice worth $4 billion USD to meet the rising consumer demand.
When Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office, one of his major goals was to improve the growth of the agriculture sector to decrease dependency on the oil sector, enacting a policy to restrict the Nigerian Central Bank from distributing funds to facilitate the importation of food, especially rice.
Additionally, the border closure will further decrease Nigeria’s ability to attract foreign direct investment. The World Bank ranked Nigeria as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to ease of trading across borders, ranking 182 out of 190 countries.
As expected, Benin will be heavily hit by the closure because of its informal trade dependence on Nigeria, which accounts for 70 percent of Benin's GDP. However, it is important to note that apart from the formal importation of petroleum from Nigeria, Benin also imports poultry, rice and vegetable oil accounting for about $100 million USD in revenue to Nigeria’s GDP.
Nigeria stands to lose this significant source of revenue should it continue to close its borders to Benin and other African countries.
Leaders in Ghana are growing impatient with the border closure, due to the negative economic consequences on their economies, which could result in potential political tensions between the two countries. Nigeria could stand to lose about $300 million USD in export revenue from Ghana if Ghana retaliates by imposing similar trade restrictions on Nigeria. Ghana depends on the Abidjan-Lagos Highway for overland access to markets in West Africa, which has been closed due to the Nigerian-Benin border closure.
In a recent discussion in Abuja, Nigeria, between Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister and Ghana's Foreign Minister, Nigeria assured Ghana that they would open the border by January 31, 2020.
However, the Nigerian government recently made an announcement indicating an extension of the border closure until mid-2020, prompting Ghana’s Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, to condemn the plan, citing risk to the entire Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS]. Nkrumah said:
It is very important for ECOWAS as a bloc to engage Nigeria on the closure of the borders because moves like this have a way of negatively impacting the West African Economic Integration project.
The Ghana Union Traders Association (GUTA) has petitioned to the government of Ghana to also close its trade borders in retaliation to what they call, “unfair treatment” from Nigeria.
Nigeria is a key regional player in the economic growth of West Africa and facilitates the growth of informal trade across the region. This border closure is expected to affect the informal sector which represents about 50 percent of West Africa’s combined GDP.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Jideofor Kwusike Onyeama recently announced a  list of strict conditions that all ECOWAS members must meet in order to be accepted as Nigeria’s trade partners.
The border closure and the list of strict conditions send a negative signal to the world and other African governments about Africa’s commitment to boost intra-African trade activities by at least 53 percent through AfCFTA. The treaties intend to facilitate smooth intra-regional trade to ensure regional growth, but Nigeria's trade restrictions fail to achieve this.
A recent article published by the World Bank Group asserts:
Nigeria’s policy of food import substitution, a form of industrial policy, is often at odds with the idea of regional integration…The AfCFTA will only succeed if member countries make the regional strategy part of their national policy and proactively address the tensions that arise between the two. Countries should find the sweet spot that reinforces national economic goals and ensures maximum gains from increased integration, looking beyond a static assessment of their priorities.
Nigeria’s border closure strategy is not new. Nigeria closed its border with Benin in 1984 and 2003 for the same reason – to curb smuggling — but never succeeded.
In 1987, Nigeria's military government banned barley, an essential product for beer production. The aim, like that of the current rice ban, was to arrest the value of the country's currency, reduce forex reserve depletion and ignite economic growth.
However, the barley ban did the exact opposite. David Hundeyin of the African Report asserts that it destroyed Nigeria's “local beer industry” resulting in the sacking of “thousands of Nigerians” workers and “delivered almost 90 percent of the local beer market” to foreign-dominated beer makers.
To solve the recurring smuggling menace across borders, Nigeria needs to create a national or regional institutional framework that can monitor and ensure compliance with respect to verification, certification, and monitoring of the rules or agreements either in ECOWAS or the AfCFTA and fix its dysfunctional economic policies.
As many economists have proposed, Nigeria should take effective measures to diversify the economy away from overreliance on the oil sector and agriculture, by implementing more market-friendly measures that encourage foreign and local investments into other revenue-generating sectors.

author: Kofi Yeboah


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Subdued recognition in Japan for Sugihara Chiune on 75th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Signage in from of the “Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum” (人道の港　敦賀ムゼウム) in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture. Sugihara Chiune pictured in bottom-left. Photo by Nevin Thompson. Image license:  Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Lithuania has declared 2020 the year of Sugihara Chiune, a wartime Japanese diplomat who has been recognized by Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations for his efforts to save the lives of Jews in Lithuania in 1940.
The year 2020 is the 120th anniversary of Sughihara Chiune's birth, and the 80th anniversary of the actions he took as a Japanese diplomat to save as many people as he could before the Japanese government could stop him.
Monday, January 27, 2020, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, would have been a perfect time for the Japanese government to call attention to Sugihara Chiune.
However, little has been done so far in Japan little to officially recognize the date, nor had there been much attention paid to the proclamation by Lithuania.
The Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center held an event in Tokyo, but Prime Minister Abe Shinzo did not attend. A week earlier in January, Abe had met Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki, but talks focused on bilateral trade rather than the legacy of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which is located on what was once German-occupied Polish territory. On the anniversary on Monday, January 27, Abe made no remarks about Auschwitz.
However, Japan's Ryoko Shimbun, a trade journal covering the tourism industry, did mark the anniversary with a Holocaust-themed story about plans to encourage tourism to Sugihara Chiune's birthplace in rural Gifu Prefecture.
Born in 1900, Sugihara Chiune joined the Japanese Foreign Ministry in 1919 and would eventually be posted to northeastern China as part of Japan's colonial occupation government there. Sugihara became fluent in Russian during this time. Due to his language skills, Sugihara was appointed Japanese consul to Kaunas, Lithuania in November 1939, two months after the German and the Soviet Union invasions of Poland. In June 1940, the Soviet Union invaded the Baltic states, including Lithuania.
Because of the Soviet Union's intention to annex Lithuania, Sugihara and other diplomats were ordered by the U.S.S.R. to leave the country by July 1940. As Sugihara was preparing to leave, a Jewish delegation in Kaunas approached him, requesting transit visas that would allow Jews in Lithuania to travel through Japan in hopes of reaching the Dutch colony of Curacao, which was said to require no entry visas.
Sugihara agreed. Sugihara stated in 1977 that soon his consulate was surrounded by up to 4,500 people. In defiance of his superiors at the Foreign Ministry, he wrote nearly 300 transit visas a day.
The remaining facade of Chiune Sugihara's dwelling, which also served as Japanese consulate, in Kaunas, Lithuania. Photo by Adam Jones, Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
“I know it was a problem, but I couldn't help it,” said Sugihara in the 1977 interview. “I told (Foreign Ministry staff in Tokyo) it was a matter of humanity. I didn't care if I was axed. Someone else would have done the same thing if they were in my place. There was no other way.”
After receiving a transit visa for Japan, the Jewish refugees would then travel by rail to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East (it's reported that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin personally approved the transit) or Busan, on the Korean Peninsula, where they would board a steamer to the Japan seaport of Tsuruga, before transiting on their way to whatever country that would take them.
By the time the Germans invaded the Baltic Republics in June 1941, Lithuania was home to about 250,000 Jewish people, including 15,000 refugees who had fled from Poland in 1939. By the end of the war, only 27,000 Jews would survive in Lithuania.
With transit visas in hand, the eventual destination for Jewish refugees in Japan was the port of Kobe, in 1940 an important steamship hub with connections to China, Asia, and North America. First, many of the refugees would travel to Tsuruga, a small but important port on the Japan coast that was once regarded as offering the shortest route to Europe from Japan.
A diorama of pre-War Tsuruga's steamship terminal. Photo taken at Tsuruga Railway Museum by Nevin Thompson. Image license:  Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
From Tsuruga, Jewish refugees traveled to Kobe, which was also home to a sizable foreign Jewish community known as JewCom. JewCom would help the refugees with visas and other paperwork with, it has been suggested, tacit support from Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke, a powerful member of the Japanese government.
Many of the Jewish refugees were resettled in Shanghai, while others traveled to the United States, Argentina, Canada, and other destinations until the war in the Pacific commenced in December 1941.
It's estimated that Sugihara's exit visas saved between 2,200 and 6,000 people, although there is some dispute about the final number. For example, some refugees escaped using family visas that covered a larger number of people, while it's likely other exit visas were forged. Sugihara's surviving son Nobuki estimates the total was indeed 6,000.
Sugihara Nobuki has spent considerable time trying to dispel the myths that surround his father the diplomat. For example, while the quote “I may have to disobey my government, but if I do not, I will be disobeying God,” is commonly attributed to Sugihara, Nobuki says that it is inaccurate.
In a May 2019 interview with Times of Israel, Nobuki Sugihara said: “The truth is, he just took pity on these people and decided to do something.”
Sugihara spent the rest of the war as a consular official in various embassies in eastern Europe. After the war, he returned to Japan, and either quit or was fired from the Foreign Ministry in 1947. He spent his final working years in virtual exile, living away from his family in Moscow, where he worked for a Japanese trading company. He was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1984, and died in 1986 in Kamakura, Japan.
Besides attempts to encourage more tourism to Sugihara's birthplace in Gifu, other commemorative activities in 2020 include renovating and expanding the existing Tsuruga Port Museum to tell the story of Sugihara Chiune and increase tourism to the city.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Doing journalism in a deadly narco state · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

Row of soldiers and policemen facing protesters marching against the 2009 Honduran coup. August 11, 2009. Photo Credit: Francesco Michele/Flickr
According to UNESCO’s Observatory of Killed Journalists, 38 journalists have been killed in Honduras since 2010. More than 70 percent of these cases are unresolved.
Those figures make Honduras the most dangerous place in the Americas for a practicing journalist.
Reporters Without Borders noted that journalists who are particularly outspoken or critical of the government “are often the target of death threats or violence or are forced to flee abroad. They are also often the targets of abusive judicial proceedings, and prison sentences for defamation are common, sometimes accompanied by bans on working as a journalist after release.”
On a first-person essay for Salvadoran outlet El Faro, Jennifer Ávila, the director of the Honduran digital investigative news site Contra Corriente, explained the difficulties of reporting in her country:
In Honduras, doing independent journalism means constantly running into a wall. This wall is built by mafia-run institutions that have silenced and terrorized whole communities. To simplify a complex reality, the media has labelled the country a narco-state.
Yet, Ávila believes that the biggest threat to Honduran journalism is the people's “fear and distrust.” Journalists are either seen as government sell-outs or political activists — and she argues that some Honduran media follow these patterns. This leaves little space for independent journalists to gain people's trust and search for the truth:
Journalists covering street protests are often labelled as “sell outs” or as “reporters of the people.” On one hand, they are seen as victims of the demonstrations, while on the other hand they are seen as aggressors. The popular belief that journalism is done to attack others and not to reveal truth explains a lot about power structures in Honduras. Journalism can either show the consequences of an event or turn that same event into a problem. It turns Honduras into even more of a hostile environment for journalism.
Ávila also argues that tragic stories of migrants deported back to places such as her hometown of El Progreso in Northern Honduras should go beyond simply detailing the humanitarian aspect. Stories should delve further into the power structures in play, which can bring about more scrutiny on the authorities, she says:
I told the story of Pilar, a member of COFAMIPRO, a committee made up of the mothers who organize every year to travel to Mexico in search of their sons or daughters who have disappeared while migrating north. Pilar has spent years searching for her daughter. (…) To be a mother in Honduras is to know that you may find your child’s body hacked into pieces. To be a journalist in Honduras is to know that these stories are not an exception. The country is in pain. Telling these stories means it’s also necessary to tell what causes them, but that’s just where more problems begin.
Please visit El Faro to read the full essay.

author: Eduardo Avila


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For Taiwan, the Wuhan coronavirus is also a diplomatic battle · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Elderly citizens, the most at risk in the case of 2019-nCoV infection, sitting in a public park in Tainan, Taiwan's fourth city on January 20, Half of them wear respiratory masks. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
Taiwan finds itself at the frontline of the Wuhan coronavirus also known as the  2019-nCoV coronavirus epidemic given the multiple ways that it is connected to China. But this challenge doubles as Beijing prevents the island nation from participating in international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) which plays a key role in global public health prevention and crises.
Though Taiwan is separated from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by the 180-km-wide Taiwan Strait, and has so far confirmed only 8 cases of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus infection, the two countries maintain close economic, labor, academic, tourism relations that explain why large numbers of people travel across the Taiwan Strait extensively on a daily basis.
An estimated one to two million Taiwanese citizens live in mainland China, where they work, study, or accompany their families. Taiwanese employees mostly work in Taiwanese companies and factories that have invested in China or are employed by Chinese and foreign companies. An estimated 12,000 young Taiwanese also choose China as their third most popular destination to study after the US and Australia, and benefit from special advantages to study in China. In 2019, the PRC was Taiwan’s top trade partner, representing almost 30 percent of Taiwanese exports.
Taiwan hosts close to 10,000 mainland students on its soil. On January 29, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education authorities announced a temporary ban on exchanges for PRC students and trainees.
Besides, many families that were split after the Kuomintang took refuge on the island in 1949, after a long civil war in mainland China, are now able to visit each other. In 2019, close to 100,000 PRC citizens visited Taiwan.
Taiwan clearly stands as one of the most vulnerable places for the spread of the virus after the PRC given that many of the Taiwanese living in or visiting the PRC can be expected to return to Taiwan if the epidemic continues to spread. According to data released in the PRC:
Among the 5 million people who fled the novel coronavirus-affected Chinese city of Wuhan during the Lunar New Year holiday, 7,515 headed to Taiwan.
Wuhan is a major industrial center hosting the top 500 companies where a number of Taiwanese are employed. In this context, it comes as no surprise that the first seven cases of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus were all confirmed in people from Wuhan or who had recently traveled in Wuhan.
What is perhaps more surprising is that despite such strong integration of human and economic exchanges, the WHO refuses, under pressure from Beijing, to integrate Taiwan in its global fight against and prevention of the epidemic.
In 1971, Beijing took over Taipei’s seat at the United Nations as the international community gradually switched diplomatic allegiance from the Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan’s official name, to the PRC. Taiwan officials were sidelined from UN meetings, including from the WHO, yet often tolerated until 2013 when Xi Jinping-led Beijing decided to enforce a full isolation policy.
As a result, Taiwan was excluded from a key emergency meeting on January 22 at the WHO discussing measures to fight the 2019-nCoV coronavirus.
The row has since expanded to another UN body, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that until 2013 tolerated the presence of Taiwanese officials but has since blocked any participation, including in the most recent meetings dedicated to the 2019-nCoV virus. Health control in airports and planes is now paramount to contain the epidemic as the Chinese New Year break is ending and many travelers are expected to fly globally.
The rejection has been met with criticism across all political parties in Taiwan and is echoed by netizens who post under a trending hashtag in Taiwan: #TaiwanCanHelp
What makes you so silent?
Block All of talking about #Taiwan speech?
Or UN is #China Government organization?
Denying Taiwan's contribution to the international community.
I am ashamed of having such an organization internationally.#TaiwanCanHelp @UN @icao @WHO pic.twitter.com/zmTU2pQcXU
— Justin (@Justin45263012) January 29, 2020
Traditional allies of Taiwan, mainly Japan and the US, have since expressed their support for Taiwan's bid to reintegrate into these key international organizations. On January 30, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo reiterated his support to Taipei, as one netizen notes:
Did you know Taiwan has been left out of the @WHO because of pressure from China? As #WuhanCoronavirus cases keep rocketing – including Taiwan – Japan’s Prime Minister Abe has now said Taiwan needs to be part of the global health body to fight this #MadeinChina virus. https://t.co/Zg4QZdsJCI
— Ramy Inocencio 英若明 (@RamyInocencio) January 30, 2020
Similar calls were made by US state officials in January and most recently by Canada. Meanwhile, Beijing has refused to give permission to Taiwan's authorities to evacuate Taiwanese citizens currently residing in Wuhan.
Meanwhile, Taiwan has taken several measures to protect its population, including a ban on exports of surgical masks that are now unavailable in most pharmacies — the supply system has been on hold during the Chinese New Year break. The government justifies this measure by pointing out that most masks sold in Taiwan are imported from China:
Some have called Taiwan's decision to stop mask exports inhumane. However, Taiwan has traditionally relied on imported masks from China. #WuhanCoronavirus is likely to reduce China's capacity to export masks. The export ban aims to ensure we have steady supply of masks in Taiwan. https://t.co/FilUqUNhjg pic.twitter.com/inBHRc6qr6
— 王定宇 Wang Ting-yu MP ?? (@MPWangTingyu) January 29, 2020
While the authorities take the threat seriously, even fining one Taiwanese citizen 10,000 US dollars as he failed to declare his illness upon returning from Wuhan, they have not imposed the use of masks in public spaces. However, a cursory look on the streets indicates that nearly half of the people are wearing them already. This food store in Tainan has a sign in Chinese, English, and Japanese where the original Chinese says: “In order to prevent the new Wuhan coronavirus, please wear a mask when needed”:
Street sign on a shop in Tainan in Chinese, English and Japanese. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission,
Certain large public events scheduled in February, such as the Taiwan International Book Fair (TIBE), featuring Chinese, Taiwanese and other writers and expecting half a million visitors and scheduled to start on February 4, got cancelled.
A Google search in Chinese on news trending in Taiwan today shows all top news are 2019n-CoV related.
the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus

author: Filip Noubel


text:
Hong Kong medical workers frustrated at government indecision about blocking mainland visitors · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

A recently formed medical workers union urged Hong Kong government to seal off the city from mainland Chinese visitors. Photo from the Stand News. Used with permission.
Since January 23, medical professionals in Hong Kong have been urging the government to close Hong Kong-China border checkpoints in order to limit the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus into Hong Kong. The government, however, has only agreed to tighten border controls and cut the number of mainland travelers by half.
As of January 30, there are 7,830 confirmed and 12,167 suspected coronavirus infections in China. This figure has surpassed the 5,327 confirmed cases recording during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003. In Hong Kong, the 10 confirmed coronavirus cases are either visitors from Wuhan or Hongkongers who had recently visited the city.
Though Beijing has imposed a lockdown on Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and the center of the outbreak on 23 of January, according to senior officials from Hubei, about 5 million Wuhan residents (more than 40 percent of the city’s population) had left the city during the lunar new year seasonal travel rush. This suggests that several thousand coronavirus carriers may be moving around the country.
Thus far, Beijing and Shanghai have reported more than 100 confirmed cases and Guangdong, a province adjacent to Hong Kong, already has 354 confirmed cases. The medical sector is worried that if Hong Kong does not close its borders to mainland travelers, the coronavirus could spread to the city, where the population density makes it especially vulnerable to epidemics.
Though the prolonged anti-government protests in Hong Kong resulted in a 50% drop in mainland visitors in 2019, the city nevertheless received 1,927,649 mainland Chinese visitors in November 2019 alone. This means that on average, more than 30,000 mainland Chinese entered the city each day. As a large number of Hong Kong residents would have returned to their home provinces in mainland China for lunar new year, and would be returning to Hong Kong at the end of the festivities between January 28 to early February, the Hong Kong medical sector is worried that hospitals risk being overloaded if the government does not restrict entry by mainland Chinese travellers.
The medical sector's concern is not groundless. Hong Kong was the region hardest hit by the SARS epidemic 17 years ago. Between March and June 2003, the epidemic claimed 286 lives in Hong Kong, nine of whom were medical workers. The outbreak was traced back to one super-spreader from Guangzhou, who accounted for 80 percent of Hong Kong’s cases, including 30 nurses and doctors in the hospital where he was treated.
As a result, the city went on high alert when the news about Wuhan coronavirus broke. Between January 5 and 15, when China declared that there was zero increase in infection, Hong Kong identified 76 suspected cases. On January 21, when China denied the possibility of human-to-human transmission, Yuen Kwok Yung, a top Hong Kong infectious diseases expert, proclaimed that the virus has entered transmission stage. Before Beijing quarantined Wuhan on January 23, many mainland Chinese netizens accused Hong Kong of spreading social panic.
While Hong Kong’s medical sector has learned from the painful lesson of the SARS outbreak and solicited the help of the city’s residents in fighting the epidemic, the government has been a few steps behind.
In response to requests that all China and Hong Kong border checkpoints be closed, the authorities have only agreed to suspend direct transportation between Wuhan and Hong Kong. The Hospital Authority Employee Alliance, recently formed medical workers union with 15,000 members, threatened industrial action if the government refused to seal off the borders, explaining that:
The goal of such a measure is to prevent any non-Hong Kong resident from entering Hong Kong via China without a crucial purpose, and if such entry to Hong Kong is deemed unavoidable, each case should be reviewed independently on whether his [or] her entry should be granted. As for Hong Kong citizens returning to the city from China, stringent health monitoring measures should be implemented.
Macau，a former Portugal colony returned to China in 1999 under the One Country Two System rule, has banned residents from Wuhan and Hubei province from entering the city starting January 26, and Hong Kong followed suit on January 27. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam also announced the suspension of high-speed rail service between Hong Kong and mainland China on January 30 with approval from Beijing, and that China will suspend the issuing of permits for individual visitors to Hong Kong in 49 Chinese cities. The policy would cut the total number of mainland Chinese visitors to Hong Kong by half, to about 15,000 per day.
Meanwhile, Russia has announced the closure of its borders with border to prevent the spread of Wuhan coronavirus to the country. Vietnam has also announced the suspension of visas to all Chinese citizens, including those from Hong Kong and Macau.
As the lunar new year holiday comes to an end, the next two weeks would be crucial for the control of the epidemic. Meanwhile, however, Hong Kong is still awaiting Beijing's approval on border control.
the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
How Zimbabwe’s biometric ID scheme — and China’s AI aspirations — threw a wrench in elections · Global Voices
Kudzai Chimhangwa

Indelible ink on the finger of a voter. Photo by Yogesh Mhatre via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Editor's note: This piece is part of a series on digital ID systems, produced in partnership with The Engine Room. Visit the Digital ID microsite to read a full research report on this global trend, and case studies on five countries that have deployed digital ID systems, including Zimbabwe.
In July 2018, Zimbabweans went to the polls for the first time since the ousting of long-time (now deceased) leader Robert Mugabe, who had held power for nearly 30 years. This may have been promising from an outsider's perspective, but the heavily contested elections did not inspire confidence in Zimbabwean voters.
Weeks after polling day, when results had not yet been released, hundreds of people took to the streets of the capital Harare to protest the delays, with many fearing that the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) had rigged the results in favor of then-Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa, who took office shortly after Mugabe’s ouster.
But vicious party politics were not the only reason Zimbabweans distrusted the results of this particular election. In the months leading up to the vote, something else had been happening, something new: The government had begun to collect citizens’ biometric data, as part of the voter registration process.
In previous elections, citizens could visit any polling station and vote just by showing their conventional ID cards, which contained their name, ID number, date and place of birth and date of issue. After voting, one's finger would be smeared with indelible ink to avoid double voting. Now, citizens suddenly had to submit their photos, fingerprints, national identity numbers and home addresses into one integrated and digitized system. If they did not do this, they were told, they might be barred from voting. This increased public fears of monitoring and intimidation, already a common theme for elections in Zimbabwe.
The system was touted both by ruling party and opposition voices as a strong guard against “ghost” voters and other types of election fraud. But its underlying technology was not built with these issues in mind. Nor was it built in Zimbabwe.
The government of Zimbabwe signed a strategic partnership with CloudWalk Technology, a Chinese company that has become a leader in the field of facial recognition, in March 2018. The objective of the partnership was to commence a large-scale facial recognition program in Zimbabwe, which government officials said would be used to preserve “law and order,” and then expanded to other public sector programs.
Chris Mutsvangwa, a special adviser to President Mnangagwa (and Zimbabwe’s former ambassador to China) told the Herald:
An ordinary Zimbabwean probably won’t believe that you can buy your groceries or pay your electricity bill by scanning your face, but this is where this technology is taking us…as government, we are happy because we are moving with the rest of the world.
Part of the Chinese government’s Belt and Road initiative, this agreement made Zimbabwe one of the first countries in southern Africa to adopt this technology.
The relationship between the two countries is not new — with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in various sectors of Zimbabwe’s ailing economy, China has a strong interest in Zimbabwe’s political affairs. Chinese President Xi Jinping has frequently expressed his desire to spread China’s communist leadership style to political parties worldwide and he has found a willing taker in Zimbabwe’s ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.
China is eager to produce the world’s best AI and Chinese companies are turning to Africa to speed up their algorithms’ diversity training. Rolling out the technology in a majority African population will allow CloudWalk to more clearly identify other ethnicities, potentially placing the Chinese firm steps ahead of US and European developers.
Graphic rendering of a facial structure algorithm, via Pikrepo. (CC 0)
CloudWalk uses 3D light facial software, which is purportedly better than other facial recognition programs at reading dark-skinned faces. The deal allows CloudWalk to train its algorithms on data taken from Zimbabwean citizens. The resulting information is meant to help China build one of the world’s most inclusive and racially-diversified facial recognition databases.
But at what cost to Zimbabwe’s fragile democracy, and to Zimbabweans’ privacy?
Opposition parties and civil society organizations had in fact pressed for electoral reforms that included the adoption of the biometric voter registration (BVR), with the hope of eradicating the persistent problem of “ghost” voters in almost every election.
Yet while it may have helped eliminate the problem of ghost voters, the BVR system also became a new tool of voter intimidation.
“Some citizens thought it was a way of ZEC trying to gather personal information about them and could easily be tracked down using their details of photos, addresses and fingerprints,” said digital rights activist and cybersecurity expert Arthur Gwagwa.
In the end, despite all the preparation and data collection, poll workers only asked for voters’ conventional ID cards. There was no checking of voters’ photographs or fingerprints as part of the voting process, and officials offered no explanation for this decision.
But poll workers were not the only people who asked for this information. On the day after elections, agents of the ruling party went on a door-to-door campaign recording BVR registration slip serial numbers. One community advocacy group reported that ruling party agents had instructed some voters to submit the serial numbers on their registration slips along with their ID numbers — so that the ruling party could ascertain who they had voted for.
Human Rights Watch Southern Africa Director Dhewa Mavhinga told Global Voices, “In principle, the BVR system is secure, but, as the case of Zimbabwe showed, its integrity is compromised when it is used by institutions like the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission that had questionable independence.”
Human rights activist and academic Adolf Mavheneke told Global Voices:
The generality of Zimbabweans do not understand this [biometric] technology let alone those in rural areas. ZEC should take it upon themselves to educate Zimbabweans about this technology, how it works, and why the biometric choice.
Cybersecurity expert Arthur Gwagwa highlighted two cases of alleged interference with election data en masse — one with data in the election commission’s servers, and the other concerning the “black-boxing” of the ballot paper’s security features. This lack of transparency eroded trust and confidence in biometric technology but it also marred the verifiability and audit of the system’s technical functionality.
Zimbabwe does not have a data protection law, and the National Assembly has yet to debate the risks of surveillance on citizens. Such issues in Zimbabwe are peremptorily dismissed by parliamentary officials, on grounds of national security.
Among the public and in civil society groups, there is increasing concern that China is de facto creating a future of tech-driven authoritarianism, where its technology transfers are deliberately being deployed to limit freedom of expression and the development of democratic movements.
Adolf Mavheneke told Global Voices that election preparation and management in Zimbabwe has long been associated with questionable business agreements like the partnership with CloudWalk.
Not very long ago, as in the 2013 elections, it was a company called Nikuv from Israel which was involved in…[manipulating] the voter’s roll. So CloudWalk is no exception as its presence feeds a familiar narrative in the history of elections in Zimbabwe. The intention might have been good but one wonders why from China, a country which is not familiar with elections.

author: Kudzai Chimhangwa


text:
Nigeria’s Operation Àmò̩té̩kùn: Was it named after a leopard, cheetah or tiger?  · Global Voices
Aremu Adeola, Jr.

A cheetah. Image by Cifer88 from Pixabay CC BY 2.0.
With rising security threats in Nigeria, governors of the southwestern states have put their heads together to create Operation Àmò̩té̩kùn — a regional security outfit that launched on January 9, 2020.
While many have lauded the initiative for confronting spikes in kidnappings and killings in the region, others have criticized it for being unnecessary and at odds with the federal government.
Amidst the politically charged arguments surrounding Operation Àmò̩té̩kùn, linguists and culture enthusiasts are also weighing in on suppositions surrounding the English translation of àmò̩té̩kùn.
What does the word àmò̩té̩kùn mean?
Linguists have long taken issue with ascribing the name àmò̩té̩kùn interchangeably with the leopard, cheetah and tiger. To disentangle this twist, linguists have carefully investigated the matter from the Yorùbá cultural perspective regarding names and translations.
This Yorùbá proverb lends some insight: “Asárépani bíi àmò̩té̩kùn,” which roughly translates in English as “To kill as fast as an àmò̩té̩kùn,” comparing a person or thing to a fast animal. Well, then, it must be a cheetah, right?
The cheetah is the fastest land animal — even Usain Bolt could not outrun it. The word àmò̩té̩kùn comes from the phrase “ohun tí a mò tó tó e̩kùn,”  which loosely translates to “what we know that has attributes of an e̩kùn.”
By these claims, one could conclude àmò̩té̩kùn means cheetah. Nevertheless, some call the cheetah òwàwà  — not àmò̩té̩kùn.
But what does e̩kùn actually mean? Is it a cheetah, leopard or tiger?
Some believe e̩kùn is the leopard, native to sub-Saharan Africa, which has a long-standing relationship with Yorùbá people. The proverb “fere bí e̩kùn” which means “as swift as an e̩kùn” speaks to this relationship. A cheetah is faster than a leopard. But is a leopard indeed swifter than a tiger?
Some believe that ekùn refers to a tiger —  an animal that actually hails from Asia.
This relationship between e̩kùn and tiger may have emerged from three possibilities: 1. colonization, 2. Western education, or 3. Early Africans’ encounters with the tiger, when British may have imported them to Nigeria during the colonial era.
It is possible that British colonizers may have assigned the meaning of e̩kùn to the tiger because the tiger was more familiar to them as a “fast animal.” There is no way, however, that e̩kùn originally meant “tiger” as this animal is not indigenous to Nigeria.
Some say that the word tiger is ògìdán, but this is most likely an oríkì (“praise name”) derived from the song:
Ògìdán ò ní se barber k’ájá dé’bè lo ge’run, ìpòrí ajá ò gbódò b’é̩kùnní bùbá.
Ògìdán will not become a barber, the dogs will not go there to cut their hair — no dog dare enter the territory of the e̩kùn.
This proverb, a mix of English and Yorùbá words, uses the English word “barber,” meaning that the song was likely composed during or after British colonial rule. Perhaps, that is when the idea arose that e̩kùn and ogìdán both mean “tiger.”
Another Yorùbá saying goes: “Ògìdán olólà ‘jù, akomonílà láì l’óbe”or “Ògìdán, a prominent forest animal, gives marks to it cubs without using a knife,” — referring to its sharp claws. This proverb affirms that Yorùbá people are most conversant with the leopard — the animal in their immediate environment and therefore, ogidan also means leopard, not a tiger or cheetah.
If leopard is e̩kùn, we can safely agree that cheetah is àmò̩té̩kùn.
Both have similar skins, compared with the tiger. The leopard has circular dotted spots; the cheetah also has dotted spots whereas the tiger has stripes. The face of the leopard and cheetah also bear some resemblance.
Screenshot from a video about the Eyo Festival in Lagos, Nigeria, March 30, 2012, by Dreams Shots Videos.
With respect to existing traditions, the Aláàfin of Ò̩yó̩ (king of the Yorùbá kingdom of Ò̩yó̩) His Majesty, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, always rests his legs on the skin of an e̩kùn — which is always a leopard skin. Most oba or “kings” use leopard skin, too, while few use that of àmò̩té̩kùn — or cheetah.
Notice how the eégún atìpàkó̩, a famous masquerade in Ìbàdàn, Nigeria, uses leopard skin referred to as the skin of e̩kùn.
Also, look to the popular Lagos festival Adamu Orisa Play, otherwise known as the “È̩yò̩” festival, which refers to costumed dancers. One of the priests of the Làbà E̩kùn È̩yò̩ group, the second in the hierarchy of the five major È̩yò̩ dance groups, carries a large bag made of leopard skin, referring to e̩kùn in the group’s name.
Therefore, leopard is ekùn while cheetah is àmò̩té̩kùn. And tiger has no indigenous name in Yorùbá. What cannot be found in the culture cannot be found in their language — except coined or loaned words, perhaps.
Linguists must address these misconceptions, especially in the Nigerian educational system — and especially when Yoruba words make international headline news as the name of major security operation such as Operation Àmò̩té̩kùn.

author: Aremu Adeola, Jr.


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Peruvians debate road safety and labor regulations after fatal truck explosion · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Fire and black smoke column in Villa el Salvador. Screencapture from a YouTube video de by RPP Noticias.
Just before 7 a.m. on January 23, 2020, a tanker truck transporting liquefied petroleum gas (known as GLP) exploded in Villa El Salvador (VES), a district in southern Lima, the Peruvian capital, immediately killing two and injuring dozens.
At the time of writing, another 14 had died from their injuries. Thiry-two are still hospitalized in critical condition with severe burns, including 11 children. The explosion damaged more than 20 houses in the area.
The tweet below describes the moment when the fire started while also conveying the perceived indifference of Peruvian authorities:
vieron lo que está pasando en Villa El Salvador¿? ocurrió un incendio producto de una explosión de un camión cisterna de gas, hay muchos niños heridos que están necesitando donantes de sangre, es triste saber q ninguna autoridad esté hablando de esto pic.twitter.com/eZ9EjLMtaN
— lux⁷?? (@shitdoownjk) January 23, 2020
Have you seen what's going on in Villa El Salvador? There was a fire after a gas tanker truck exploded. There are many injured children who need blood donors. It's sad to know that authorities are not talking about this.
Engineer Galo Flores Quino said that the explosion of the tanker truck happened at the intersection of two avenues and that, “evidently, [the gap between roads] hasn't been properly fixed.”
The specialist mentioned three factors that might have caused this fatal tragedy: a poorly built cross-section, lack of proper safety signs in the area warning drivers about the unevenness of the road, and the truck's high speed.
Este es el desnivel que habría provocado la fuga de gas del camión cisterna y luego la explosión. Hay un fallecido y más de 30 heridos en Villa El Salvador.@Lima_ECpe pic.twitter.com/VqbTQ20C4e
— Oscar Paz Campuzano (@OscarPazC) January 23, 2020
This is the gap that may have caused the gas leak from the tanker truck which resulted in an explosion. There is one fatality and over 30 people injured in Villa El Salvador.
At first, people thought that the driver had died on the spot, but later he was found to be alive, and reportedly he had tried to control the leak before the explosion. A few hours after the fire, he turned himself in to the authorities.
On the same day, journalist Juan Pablo León shared information about the driver:
Camión incendiado en Villa El Salvador era conducido por un chofer con 83 papeletas.
Lo peor de todo: tenía 5 multas por transportar carga peligrosa de forma insegura.
Tiene multas hasta por agredir a inspectores. Pero la empresa lo reclutó como si nadahttps://t.co/dp8FCWcXBM
— Juan Pablo León ?? (@mal_menor) January 23, 2020
Burned down truck in Villa El Salvador was driven by a motorist with 83 tickets for traffic violations.
The worst of it all: he had 5 tickets for unsafely transporting dangerous loads.
He even has tickets for aggressions against [traffic] inspectors. But the firm recruited him without giving it a second thought.
But others were more sympathetic towards the driver because he is 72:
El conductor del camión es una persona de tercera edad. Ni siquiera tendría que estar trabajando. La exposición de su imagen como presunto culpable es injusta. Son las autoridades quienes deben responder por el accidente de VES.
— Valeria Acevedo (@misssorquidea) January 24, 2020
The tanker truck driver is a senior citizen. He isn't even supposed to be working.  Having his image exposed as allegedly guilty is unfair. It's the authorities who should respond for the accident in Villa El Salvador.
As the day went on, public outrage about the accident evolved into a discussion about safety compliance and widespread precarization of labor in Peru, where 40 percent of the workforce is informally employed.
World Bank economist Norman Loayza said in a report:
Considerando el valor nominal de estos indicadores, en el Perú el 60% de la producción se realiza informalmente; el 40% de la fuerza laboral está autoempleada en microempresas informales; y sólo el 20% de la fuerza laboral está afiliado a algún plan de pensiones formal, incluso si se incluye a aquellos trabajadores que laboran para empresas grandes.
Considering the nominal value of these indicators, 60 percent of the production comes from informal labor market in Peru; 40 percent of the workforce is self-employed in informal small businesses, and only 20 percent of the workforce contribute to some formal pension plan, including those employees who work at large firms.
Back to the leak, analysts were quick to use the word “accident” in quotation marks, such as anthropologist Javier Torres Seoane, who says such tragedies could be prevented if businesses were more regulated:
En el país de la informalidad llamar “accidente” a un hecho que se produce por el incumplimiento de los standares de seguridad -sea el incendio de camión cisterna de GLP, la muerte de dos trabajadores de McDonald's o los miles de muertos en nuestras carreteras- es un insulto a la inteligencia y una manera de contribuir a que sigan ocurriendo.
In the country of informality, labelling as an “accident” an event caused by the unfulfillment of security standards — be it the fire of the tanker truck, the death of two employees at McDonald's, or the thousands of deaths in our roads — is an insult to our intelligence and helps them to keep happening.
In December 2019, two young employees at a McDonald's restaurant in Lima were killed by electric shock caused by a poorly-installed electrical system.
Other people online pointed to what they perceive as indifference by other private firms after the tragedy:
Donde están las grandes empresas?Los restaurants de lujo, chefs?Donde estás las grandes tiendas por departamento? Q esperan pa ayudar a los damnificados d VES? Aprendan la gente mas humilde es la q está poniendo el hombro, se NECESITA AYUDA de todos esta es una tragedia NACIONAL!
— krl4 (@Krloncha1) January 24, 2020
Where are the big firms? The luxurious restaurants, chefs? Where are the large department stores? What are they waiting for to help the victims from Villa El Salvador? You should learn from the poorest people, they are the ones contributing. HELP IS NEEDED from everybody, this is a NATIONAL tragedy!
The authorities launched blood donation requests in various hospitals in Lima, and the response was immediate and massive. Brazil and the United Stated donated 48,000 centimeters of human tissue for burnt victims. In Lima, volunteers willing to donate blood formed long lines in hospitals.
#EsSaludInforma: ? ¡Atención! Puedes acercarte a donar sangre a los hospitales Edgardo Rebagliati y Guillermo Almenara. Ayudemos a los afectados tras la deflagración de un camión cisterna en Villa El Salvador.
Aquí los requisitos. ⬇ pic.twitter.com/IuNlBaqC9n
— EsSalud (@EsSaludPeru) January 23, 2020
?  Your attention, please! You can donate blood at the Edgardo Rebagliati and Guillermo Almenara hospitals. Let's help the victims after the deflagration of a tanker truck in Villa El Salvador.
Agradecemos a los donantes voluntarios de sangre que han llegado para solidarizarse con las víctimas de la tragedia de Villa El Salvador. Hemos recibido hasta el momento a 39 donantes voluntarios!? pic.twitter.com/PaYd0Me7nO
— Fiorella Molinelli (@FioreMolinelli) January 23, 2020
We are thankful to the volunteer blood donors who have come in solidarity with the victims of the tragedy in Villa El Salvador. So far, we have received 39 volunteer blood donors!?
This tragedy came three days before the early parliamentary election of January 26. The election was called by President Martín Vizcarra after the dissolution of the Peruvian Congress on September 30, 2019. The parliamentary election happened amid general indifference by voters.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe