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Brexit and bias? The framing of immigrants in the media · Global Voices
Connie Moon Sehat

From the ‘I am an immigrant’ poster campaign, a Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Movement Against Xenophobia effort to “challenge the negative rhetoric against immigrants, celebrate them and provide their story.” (Broad sharing policy)
Recently, Facebook's confirmed sharing of at least 87 million profiles with Cambridge Analytica has made big headlines, especially in connection to the US. But reports of this collusion have been in the news for some time in the UK, particularly in relation to the 2016 national referendum to leave the European Union otherwise known as “Brexit.” In journalist Carole Cadwalladr's words last year, democracy itself was “hijacked” through Cambridge Analytica operations; her report called it the “Great British Brexit Robbery” (a report that is still the subject of legal complaints).
To what extent technological platforms have been used to shape public response is a matter of strong concern, as with the case of Brexit. Anyone who has been paying attention to Britain's departure from the European Union next year knows that it is a topic that provokes intense emotion. So, is there something in the topic of Brexit that disinformation efforts can take advantage of? What perspectives might a high-level, data-driven analysis of Brexit news provide?
According to a Media Cloud collection of US and UK media mainstream sources, and a web crawl of outlets connected to them, the topic of Brexit has appeared in approximately 70,000 stories between 1 March 2017 and 28 February 2018.
What is Media Cloud?
Media Cloud is an open source platform developed by the MIT Center for Civic Media and the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Media Cloud is designed to aggregate, analyze, deliver and visualize information while answering complex quantitative and qualitative questions about the content of online media.
Major themes that emerged in Media Cloud included a number of expected key terms such as references to the US election and the UK referendum and prominent politicians such as Teresa May or Boris Johnson.
However, when focusing on topics related to potential motivations behind Brexit among the terms, the issue of the economy appears to be more frequent. In addition, a prominent topic of discussion in the media was immigration.
This is an ordered word cloud of a sample of stories that contained “Brexit” in Media Cloud. The words that show up more often appear bigger and show up first in the list. (View larger image)
Exactly how were these topics discussed in US and UK media in relationship to Brexit?
To get a sense of the tenor of the conversation around immigration, our Bias Prism tool processed key terms related to the discussions around immigration. Bias Prism is a Natural Language Processing tool that analyzes language for expressions of personal perspective and potential bias.
What is Bias Prism?
Bias Prism is an experimental feature being developed by the Georgia Tech's Behavioral Modeling and Computational Social Systems Group in partnership with NewsFrames. Results from Natural Language Processing algorithms signal a number of possible ways that texts may be using perspectival or biased language. Learn More >>
The Bias Prism tool aims to offer more precise ways of thinking about the presence of perspective or bias in statements. Rather than producing a “biased/not biased” result, researchers are able to analyze texts through a number of considerations such as sentiment or expressions of doubt.
Comparing the samples of key terms flagged for further inspection, stories talking about immigration used more terms — like “damaging,” “anxieties,” “crisis” — that signaled perspectives and emotions than were used when discussing the economy, even though there were many more sentences about the economy.
Exploring the stories in context further, the key terms of immigrant or immigrants also came to the fore. They followed the same pattern, with Bias Prism results around immigrant appearing slightly still more perspectival or biased than those around immigration.
Our examination of several Media Cloud samples examined 4,500 words. Based upon a statistical analysis of Bias Prism results, keywords related to “immigration” and “immigrant” showed significant tendencies towards more perspectival or biased language. The averages for each sampling — Brexit keywords overall, focused around the economy, around immigration, and around immigrant — were progressively higher. Higher numbers indicate the potential for more perspective or bias. This progression was slight, but the overall bulk or density of the results more clearly tipped higher as this graph shows:
This boxplot shows where the majority of the 4,500 results lay on the Bias Prism spectrum on the themes of economy, immigrant, and immigration. Higher numbers indicating the potential for more perspective or bias. Source: NewsFrames
It is important to remember that not all perspective or bias is negative. Some can be partisan and reflect a specifically held opinion or they can even be positive. Just take some of the words that appeared in our search such as “high-skilled,” “innovative,” or “optimism” — all of which are on the sunnier side of the spectrum.
However, in the graph below, we can see the top flagged words for review in association with the “economy,” “immigration” or “immigrants.” As we can see, there is an overall negative connotation in the words listed:
Terms flagged by Bias Prism for further examination related to the economy, immigration, and immigrant in Brexit-related stories during March 2017 – February 2018. Including all the terms above the means of the dataset would have result in more words for examination. Source: NewsFrames (View larger image)
In the sample cited above, there were overall 44,401 sentences associated with the term economy in the Media Cloud Brexit-related search. Flagged results from our sample resulted in 38 words (left column). The immigration sample, derived from 22,068 sentences, produced 57 flags (middle column). But immigrant, which had the fewest number of sentences at 4,862, topped out with 69 words on the biased end of the spectrum (right column).
Since it's immigrants that seems to generate the most tension, let's look at some of those conversations in context.
Exploring articles one by one, the issues at stake can be hard to understand.
Take for example recent reporting on migration. At the end of February, the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its regular Migration Statistics Quarterly Report.
A number of news updates followed. Looking at the texts of various news articles alone, it is hard to see much cause for concern. Take the beginnings of these three examples, whose numbers can make for confusing reading on their own:
Net immigration has risen to 244,000 a year in a reminder of the scale of the task facing the government to curb numbers.
The net flow to the UK in the year to September was up from 230,000 in the 12 months to June.
The increase was driven mainly by a rise in arrivals from outside the EU, with immigration from the bloc slipping sharply, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The number of EU citizens leaving the UK is at its highest level for a decade with 130,000 emigrating in the year to September, figures show.
But 220,000 EU nationals still moved to Britain over the same period, the Office for National Statistics found.
That is 47,000 fewer than the previous year.
Net migration from Europe has fallen below 100,000 for the first time in six years, ONS figures show.
Some 90,000 more EU migrants arrived in Britain than left in the year to September 2017, a significant dip which statisticians suggest is the result of Brexit.
It is the first time net migration from the bloc has dipped below six figures since the year to March 2013, when it was 95,000.
The last time the measure was lower was in 2012, when it was 82,000.
Perhaps they are hard to make sense of, but nothing in these sentences seem particularly slanted. To confirm this evaluation, Bias Prism was used on these articles to see if there were marked differences, just as we did with the words “economy,” “immigration,” and “immigrant.” The results appeared to be similar across the three.*
But taking a step back, the entire framing of the problem in the first article is clearly different compared to the last two. All you need to do is look at the titles in this case: is the issue that people were immigrating to or migrating away from the UK?
“Net immigration RISES to 244,000 a year and is still more than DOUBLE the PM's target but numbers from the EU drop below 100,000 for first time since 2013“
– from The Daily Mail
“Migration figures: Highest number of EU nationals leaving UK in a decade“
– from the BBC
“Net migration from Europe falls below 100,000 for first time since 2012“
– from The Telegraph
The larger meaning of the stories is defined by the titles themselves. In the case of the right-leaning Daily Mail, the title addresses whether the government is doing enough to achieve its goals about UK immigration, and the Brexit-related promise to restrict the movement of peoples. Or, in the case of the BBC and the more centrist Telegraph, the question is whether or not the fears of EU residents about Brexit are already having an impact.
For perspective on these two interpretations, we looked to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, an academic research project that provides “impartial, independent, authoritative, evidence-based analysis of data on migration and migrants in the UK.”
Their position is that the figures are not conclusive. The Observatory writes, “these headline figures tell us essentially nothing about whether changing EU migration since the referendum is a good or bad thing for the UK.” They point to the lack of information these figures provide: no information on the skills, incomes, and activities of the immigrants in addition to integration factors such as learning English.
At the heart of the immigration framing are two larger questions. The first is whether migration is economically beneficial for a country. This is a question that has produced a number of studies that conclude that positive net migration is generally positive (including more recent ones from Breugel or Harvard Business Review).
This picture of the overall positive economic impact of immigration may be a surprise to some participants in the Brexit discussions. But even if there is an agreement over the general economic effects, there can still be room for disagreement on the value of migration.  And this is the core of the second question: what is it about immigrants that provokes so much negativity if it's not economics?
In the words of another Migration Observatory analysis,
Economic estimates are important, but limited in that they cannot resolve important judgements about the type of society people want. These preferences over the ‘sort of place we want to live in’ can drive people’s views and choices on migration just as much as the ‘pure’ economic factors.
Perhaps another way to put it is that discussion about immigrants is also around values. And indeed, values have also been among the dominant themes when it comes to reporting on immigrants and Brexit.
Dominant terms around ‘immigrant’ from the Brexit topic results. Source: Media Cloud
One of the most linked-to articles in Media Cloud's results on the theme of values and immigrants was Theresa May's Plan For Britain speech on 17 January 2017, in which she laid out 12 priorities for the government regarding Brexit.
In her message to Europe, May mentioned values a number of times, including:
So to our friends across Europe, let me say this. Our vote to leave the European Union was no rejection of the values we share. … For all these reasons – and because of our shared values and the spirit of goodwill that exists on both sides – I am confident that we will follow a better path. I am confident that a positive agreement can be reached. [emphasis added]
At the same time, May addressed the issue of immigration:
Britain is an open and tolerant country. We will always want immigration, especially high-skilled immigration, we will always want immigration from Europe, and we will always welcome individual migrants as friends. But the message from the public before and during the referendum campaign was clear: Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain from Europe. And that is what we will deliver. [emphasis added]
However, to get a sense about how the idea of values and immigration interact (at least as much of a sense as you might get from the wider news), Media Cloud enabled us to explore what combination of words most often appeared both before and after “values” in media sources.
The word “values” in context of stories on immigrants in the Brexit search topic in Media Cloud. The words most often associated with “values” on the left and right from a sampling of 1,000 sentence fragments are presented. (View larger image)
There are a number of conversations appearing above, but some terms to highlight are “threat”, “destroying,” and “white western” on one side against “openness,” “tolerance,” and “respect.” This does not seem that the tensions are about EU immigration to the United Kingdom alone. It is important to note that some of the overall tone in stories about Brexit and immigration does come from US writers and the US perspective, who are taking into account similar issues that emerged around the election of Donald Trump as US President.
But in the UK, according to the most recent government report on nationalities, the influx is both EU and non-EU. The most common non-UK country of birth is Poland, a European Union country. India and Pakistan, which are part of a region previously under the rule of the British Empire, follow thereafter.
Statistics from the 2016 ONS report.
In any case, if there is a clash of values and expectations between old and new citizens, what exactly are the values that immigrants bring?
They were not readily available at least through the 1047 stories and story comments with sentences on immigrants and values presented for inspection by Media Cloud. Instead, we had to go beyond the news alone, finding deeper dimensions of immigrants being accomplished through efforts like the #IamAnImmigrant which began in 2015 (image above).
What “pictures” of immigrants exist now in the media is an important question, given that one in four 15-year-olds are immigrants or are related to them in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. According to this study, integration with their new societies can be a challenge for immigrant children because of their circumstances. However, one of the things that immigrant children brought was an overall greater motivation to achieve – a rather positive value.
Almost one in four 15-year-old students reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Source: OECD (View larger image)
But while the question of integration itself appears to be the news, a good understanding of those who are trying to integrate does not seem to be strong in media reporting. At least judging by the overall perspectives given by the data reviewed here.
This issue is not so much bias in reporting as it is a question about frames. As UK and US reporters relayed tensions related to immigration and immigrants with regards to Brexit, they certainly brought their interpretations and perspective. But whether certain reports were more biased than others — this is not the question we are trying to answer.
Framing can be a natural human response to interpreting complex situations. The struggle for understanding around the issue of immigration is partly the result of the struggle for large scale integration, which includes major shifts in population around the world as a whole and particularly in the UK. In the UK, if the number of immigrants has doubled in the past 25 years, then increased encounters with new citizens and new ideas naturally generate conversations about what makes up British culture.
And it's also worth remembering that UK citizens migrate themselves and are part of integration conversations elsewhere. In fact, the United Kingdom numbered among the top 10 countries in 2015 that provide migrants to the rest of the world.
The question here is about the larger frame, in this case, the overall tenor around immigrants in the media, which appears rather negative. Frames are necessary but also tricky things. Even if it is accurate in relaying the fears of others, the weight of the media's overall framing on stories related to immigration may inadvertently be amplifying the perspectives they are reporting on.
Fears of manipulation generated by the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal do remind us that it is not just false information but human interpretations around facts or political beliefs that disinformation campaigns can be built upon.
What can trustworthy media outlets do to foster healthy discussions about the values around immigration, and share more facts about immigrants and their values? Perhaps answering this question, and thinking about the frame, can go towards building the sort of place we all want to live in.

author: Connie Moon Sehat


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Syria and the anti-imperialism of idiots · Global Voices
Leila Al Shami

Hunkering down: a poster of Syria's president at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Damascus, Jan. 14 2012. (PHOTO: E. Arrott/VOA. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Once more the western ‘anti-war’ movement has awoken to mobilise around Syria. This is the third time since 2011. The first was when Obama contemplated striking the Syrian regime’s military capability (but didn’t) following chemical attacks on the Ghouta in 2013, considered a ‘red line’.
The second time was when Donald Trump ordered a strike which hit an empty regime military base in response to chemical attacks on Khan Sheikhoun in 2017. And now this past weekend, as the US, UK and France took limited military action—targeted strikes on regime military assets and chemical weapons facilities—following a chemical weapons attack in Douma which killed at least 34 people, including many children who were sheltering in basements.
The first thing to note about the three major mobilisations of the western ‘anti-war’ left is that they have little to do with ending the war. More than half a million Syrians have been killed since 2011. The vast majority of civilian deaths have been from conventional weapons, and 94 percent of these were killed by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance. There has been no outrage or concern expressed for this war, which followed the regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators. There’s no outrage when barrel bombs, chemical weapons and napalm are dropped on democratically self-organised communities, or target hospitals and rescue workers. Civilians are expendable; the military capabilities of a genocidal, fascist regime are not. In fact, the slogan ‘Hands off Syria’ really means ‘Hands off Assad’, and support is often expressed for Russia’s military intervention. This was evident this weekend at a demonstration organised by Stop the War UK, where a number of regime and Russian flags were shamefully on display.
This anti-war left exhibits deeply authoritarian tendencies, that place states at the centre of political analysis. Solidarity is therefore extended to states, who are seen as the main actor in a struggle for liberation, rather than oppressed or underprivileged people. Blind to the social war occurring within Syria itself, this left views the Syrian people—where they still exist—as pawns in a geo-political chess game. They repeat the mantra ‘Assad is the legitimate ruler of a sovereign country’. Assad—who inherited a dictatorship from his father and has never held, let alone won, a free and fair election. Assad—whose ‘Syrian Arab Army’ can only regain the territory it lost with the backing of a hotchpotch of foreign mercenaries and supported by foreign bombs, and who are fighting, by and large, Syrian-born rebels and civilians.
How many would consider their own elected government legitimate if it began carrying out mass rape campaigns against dissidents? It’s only the complete dehumanisation of Syrians that makes such a position even possible. It’s a racism that sees Syrians as incapable of achieving, let alone deserving, anything better than one of the most brutal dictatorships of our time.
For this authoritarian left, support is extended to the Assad regime in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’. Assad is seen as part of the ‘axis of resistance’ against both the US Empire and Zionism. It matters little that the Assad regime supported the first Gulf war, or participated in the US's illegal rendition programme where suspected terrorists were tortured in Syria on the CIA’s behalf. The fact that this regime probably holds the dubious distinction of slaughtering more Palestinians than the Israeli state is constantly overlooked, as is the fact that it’s more intent on using its armed forces to suppress internal dissent than to liberate Israeli-occupied Golan.
This ‘anti-imperialism’ of idiots is one which equates imperialism with the actions of the US alone. They seem unaware that the US has been bombing Syria since 2014. In its campaign to liberate Raqqa from Daesh all international norms of war and considerations of proportionality were abandoned. Over 1,000 civilians were killed and the UN estimates that 80 per cent of the city is now uninhabitable.
There were no protests organised by leading ‘anti-war’ organisations against this intervention, no calls to ensure that civilians and civilian infrastructure were protected. Instead, they adopted the ‘War on Terror’ discourse, once the preserve of neo-cons, now promulgated by the regime, that all who oppose Assad are jihadi terrorists. They turned a blind eye to Assad's filling his gulag with thousands of secular, peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrators destined for death by torture, while releasing militant-Islamists from prison.
Similarly, the continuing protests in liberated areas in opposition to extremist and authoritarian groups such as Daesh, Nusra and Ahrar Al Sham have been ignored. Syrians are not seen as possessing the sophistication to hold a diverse range of views. Civil society activists—including many amazing women—citizen journalists, humanitarian workers are irrelevant. The entire opposition is reduced to its most authoritarian elements or seen as mere conduits for foreign interests.
This pro-fascist left seems blind to any form of imperialism that is non-western in origin. It combines identity politics with egoism. They view everything that happens through the prism of what it means for westerners—only white men have the power to make history.
According to the Pentagon there are currently around 2,000 American troops in Syria. The US has established a number of military bases in the Kurdish-controlled north for the first time in Syria’s history. This should concern anyone who supports Syrian self-determination, yet it pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of Iranian troops and Iranian backed Shia militias which are now occupying large parts of the country, or the murderous bombing raids carried out by the Russian air force in support of the fascist dictatorship.
Russia has now established permanent military bases in the country, and has been handed exclusive rights over Syria’s oil and gas as a reward for its support. Noam Chomsky once argued that Russia’s intervention could not be considered imperialism because it was invited to bomb the country by the Syrian regime. By that analysis, the US’s intervention in Vietnam was not imperialism either, invited as it was by the South-Vietnamese government.
A number of anti-war organisations have justified their silence on Russian and Iranian interventions by arguing that ‘the main enemy is at home’. This excuses them from undertaking any serious power analysis to determine who the main actors driving the war really are. For Syrians the main enemy is indeed at home; it’s Assad who is engaging in what the UN has termed ‘the crime of extermination’. Unaware of their contradictions, many of the same voices have been vocally opposed—and rightly so—to Israel’s current assault on peaceful demonstrators in Gaza.
Of course, one of the principal ways imperialism works is to deny native voices. In this vein, leading western anti-war organisations hold conferences on Syria without inviting any Syrian speakers.
The other major political trend to have thrown its weight behind the Assad regime, and organise against the US, UK and French strikes on Syria is the far right. Today, the discourse of fascists and these ‘anti-imperialist leftists’ is virtually indistinguishable. In the US, white supremacist Richard Spencer, alt-right podcaster Mike Enoch, and anti-immigration activist Ann Coulter have all opposed the US strikes. In the UK, former BNP leader Nick Griffin and Islamophobe Katie Hopkins have joined the calls.
The place where the alt-right and alt-left frequently converge is the promotion of conspiracy theories to absolve the regime of its crimes. They claim chemical massacres are false flags, or that rescue workers are Al Qaeda and therefore legitimate targets for attack. Those spreading such stories are not on the ground in Syria and are unable to verify their claims. They are often dependent on Russian or Assad state propaganda outlets because they ‘don’t trust the MSM’, or Syrians directly affected.
Sometimes the convergence of these two seemingly opposing strands of the political spectrum turns into outright collaboration. The ANSWER coalition, which is organising many of the demonstrations against a strike on Assad in the US, has such a history. Both strands frequently promote Islamophobic and anti-Semitic narratives. Both share the same talking points and the same memes.
There are many valid reasons for opposing external military intervention in Syria, whether it be by the US, Russia, Iran or Turkey. None of these states is acting in the interests of the Syrian people, democracy or human rights, but solely in their own interests. The US, UK and French intervention today is less about protecting Syrians from mass atrocity and more about enforcing an international norm that chemical weapons use is unacceptable, lest one day they be used on westerners themselves.
More foreign bombs will not bring about peace and stability. There’s little appetite to force Assad from power—the action that would contribute to ending the worst of the atrocities. Yet while opposing foreign intervention, one needs to come up with an alternative that would protect Syrians from slaughter. It’s morally objectionable, to say the least, to expect Syrians just to shut up and die to protect the higher principle of ‘anti-imperialism’. Many alternatives to foreign military intervention have been proposed by Syrians time and again, and have been ignored.
And so the question remains, when diplomatic options have failed, when a genocidal regime is protected from censure by powerful international backers, when no progress is made in stopping daily bombing, ending starvation sieges or releasing prisoners who are being tortured on an industrial scale, what can be done?
I no longer have an answer. I’ve consistently opposed all foreign military intervention in Syria, supported Syrian-led processes to rid their country of tyranny, and international processes grounded in efforts to protect civilians and human rights and ensure accountability for all actors responsible for war-crimes. A negotiated settlement is the only way to end this war—but still seems as distant as ever.
Assad, and his backers, are determined to thwart any process, to pursue a total military victory and crush any remaining democratic alternative. Hundreds of Syrians are being killed every week in the most barbaric ways imaginable. Extremist groups and ideologies are flourishing in the chaos wrought by the state. Civilians continue to flee in their thousands as legal processes such as Law No.10 are implemented to ensure they will never return to their homes. The international system itself is collapsing under the weight of its own impotence.
The words ‘Never Again’ ring hollow. There’s no major people’s movement which stands in solidarity with Assad's victims. They are instead slandered, their suffering is mocked or denied, and their voices either excluded from discussions or questioned by people far away, who know nothing of Syria, revolution or war, and who arrogantly believe they know what is best. It is this desperate situation which causes many Syrians to welcome the US, UK, and France’s action, and who now see foreign intervention as their only hope, despite the risks they know it entails.
One thing is for sure—I won’t lose any sleep over targeted strikes aimed at regime military bases and chemical weapons plants which may provide Syrians with a short respite from the daily killing. And I will never see people who place grand narratives above lived realities, who support brutal regimes in far-off countries, or who peddle racism, conspiracy theories and atrocity denial, as allies.
This essay was originally published on Leila's blog.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Leila Al Shami


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Though opposition remains, Trinidad & Tobago takes a historic legal step towards LGBT equality · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

On the steps of Trinidad and Tobago's Hall of Justice in Port of Spain, LGBT rights supporters outnumber those protesting the judgement to decriminalise Trinidad and Tobago's buggery laws based on religious grounds. Photo taken by Maria Nunes on April 12, 2018, used with permission.
On one side of courtroom POS 09 sat a small group of pastors dressed in suits and expressions that were just as stiff. On the other were supporters of sexual and gender minorities’ rights, at least one of them sporting a T-shirt that declared details of the “homosexual agenda” in Trinidad and Tobago: “1. Buy Crix [a popular local cracker] 2. Spend time with family 3. Fight for equality”.
On April 12, 2018, Justice Devindra Rampersad brought the twin island republic's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community that much closer to achieving item number three when he delivered his decision in the case of Jason Jones vs. the Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago, ruling that Sections 13 and 16 of the country's Sexual Offences Act Chapter 11:28, which criminalise anal sex between consenting adults, are “unconstitutional”.
In his eloquent summary of the judgement, Justice Rampersad explained:
At this point, the Court feels compelled to state in conclusion that it is unfortunate when society in any way values a person or gives a person their identity based on their race, colour, gender, age or sexual orientation.
That is not their identity.
That is not their soul.
That is not the sum total of their value to society or their value to themselves.
Comparing the law with those that allowed apartheid and the Holocaust to exist, he added:
This conclusion is not an assessment of denial of the religious beliefs of anyone. This court is not qualified to do so. However, this conclusion is a recognition that the beliefs of some, by definition, [are] not the belief of ALL, and in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, ALL are protected, and are entitled to be protected, under the Constitution.
Soon after the ruling, the government announced that it would appeal. As expected, the public response to his ruling has divided society right down the middle, mirroring the physical divisions that existed in court.
In a Facebook status update, Rhoda Bharath challenged the contradiction:
A Facebook status update by Rhoda Bharath which reads: “Trinis: we want Constitutional Reform.
Also Trinis: But not reform that will give gays, women or children rights! #DonkeyLogic”
Facebook user Jill Lian Goddard echoed this perspective:
It's particularly sad when an activist cannot understand that ALL oppression has to end for the one in which you are particularly interested to stop. When a white gay male doesn't address racism. When a black straight male promotes homophobia. When an adult female slaps children or exerts authority over them.
You don't have to be the champion of other causes but you can't be so unaware that you don't see the importance of intersectionality.
Still, many were sticking to their sections. In a guest post at Wired868, Afryea Charles suggested that the ruling put Trinidad and Tobago “in great danger of losing our religious liberty”:
For me, these are clear indications that Jesus is coming back soon. Any student of bible history and prophecy—I count myself among them—knows that, once we begin to pass legislation to ensure LGBTQIA [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and allies] rights, we are taking one more step towards D-Day and the eventual destruction of the earth. […]
I understand the concern and angst about this recent decision. It is not lost on me how the removal of this law might have a serious impact on our way of life. I understand what it can mean for our educational institutions, hospitals, businesses and general lifestyle.
Apparently speaking for the religious-minded, her opinion piece went on to make the point that “the LGBTQIA community is the least of our worries”. Worryingly, Charles named paedophilia, sexual abuse, elderly abuse and stealing — all of which lack consent — as equal to what the law will now legitimise:
We need to acknowledge the existence of the sinfulness being practised within our congregations and clean that up first. Adultery, elderly abuse, fornication, homosexuality, lying, paedophilia, sexual abuse, stealing, underhand business deals and all manner of crimes are rampant within and are being practised with impunity.
So, Trinidad and Tobago, get ready! To bugger in public or to bugger in private, that is the question that was answered today.
This critical idea of consent seemed to be a difficult one for many people to grasp. Take, for example, one Facebook thread, which shared a screen grab of a comment by a civil society member who attempted to argue that there is a slippery slope between “chang[ing] the laws to suit behavioural preferences” and the eventual breakdown of law and order. Rhoda Bharath asked:
How do we not get that consent is critical to sexual behaviour?
How do we not grasp that people have a right to privacy?
[…]
Her opinion is saying that anal sex will lead to crimes being made legal?
Seems uninformed and likely to cause fear. And fear always leads to hate. She should be more responsible.
Julie Mango explained:
Dear homophobic people of Trinidad & Tobago and The World,
I am exhausted.
I am hurt. I am saddened. I am anxious. And I am human.
I deserve rights. I shouldn't have to explain that to you. I shouldn't have to watch my friends suffer and die. I shouldn't have to fight for my right to just exist.
I am queer and I am not “less than” you. I am not “abnormal” nor “unnatural”. I am not a threat to you.
I am a human person deserving of the same rights as any straight person. I may love someone of the same sex, but that is of no importance to you, or to the politics of this country.
We are all humans. We are all the same.
When are you going to realize you’re on the wrong side of history? You’re on the side of those who fought against interracial marriage. You’re on the side of those who were pro-slavery. You’re on the side of those who fight against women’s rights.
Let me explain.
LGBT rights are human rights. […]
Remember, homosexuality isn’t a choice, but homophobia is.
In response to the argument that decriminalizing the LGBT community will result in damage to the existing status quo, many Facebook users began sharing a buggery law “fact sheet”, which irreverently laid out exactly what changes will and will not take place as a result of the court judgement:
A buggery law fact sheet that was being circulated on social media which makes it clear that the judgement means that consenting adults can now engage in anal sex in private without breaking the law. Tongue firmly in cheek, it also reassures people that, among other things, “Fire, brimstone and other Wrath of God events will not occur”.
There has been other immediate fallout, however, with Trinidad and Tobago Newsday reporting that three young men who took part in the rally outside the Hall of Justice following the landmark court ruling, have been kicked out of their homes as a result. Several Facebook users were saddened by this turn of events and offered them temporary accommodation.
Attention is also turning to bigger concerns. As Jason Jones told reporters on the steps of Trinidad's Hall of Justice following the decision, “The human rights issue is not just local. This is a global issue. Over 75 million Commonwealth citizens are criminalised using similar laws — 37 Commonwealth nations — criminalised similarly to Trinidad, but it was just struck down by one; it's now 36!”
With the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place in London from April 16, 2018, many social media users are agitating for the issue to be dealt with at that level. Jones wrote an opinion piece for the UK Guardian in which he noted, “It is imperative that LGBTQ+ is on the agenda in London. The event offers both a safe space for this discussion and an opportunity for the capital of the former empire that bequeathed us these heinous laws to help rid us of them.”
For now, though, the battle is taking place locally and Jones is optimistic that Trinidad and Tobago's Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) will be instrumental in putting anti-discriminatory laws in place in order to protect vulnerable communities, saying, “The next step will be to move for inclusion in the Equal Opportunity Act.” He thanked the EOC for its support in his case and said now the focus should be on drafting proper policy in order to move forward.
In the words of Facebook user Dion Boucaud, who was at the Hall of Justice when the judgement was announced:
Today I saw love …. I felt the hate. I saw victory …. and defeat. I saw tolerance and ignorance. I saw activism … I saw democracy.
Today I saw peaceful protest.
Today I saw hope.
A lot to unpack. A lot to discuss. Let the dialogue continue. Peace and love.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
Pakistan’s under-threat minorities have found their voice. But will the state listen? · Global Voices
Nicole Valentini

Hazara girl in Quetta. Photo widely shared.
It is just another spring Sunday in Quetta, Pakistan. In the Hazara section of the district of Mehrabad, Nazar Hussain is about to start his work day. He grabs the keys of his yellow cab and leaves his home for what would be the last time. He knows that his almond eyes are like a target on his back, his faith a slogan for people that want him dead.
Members of militant organizations including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are active in Quetta, searching for Hazaras to kill. For Hazaras in Quetta, therefore, working is not an ordinary activity: it is an act of courage. At any rate, Nazar Hussain doesn’t have a choice—he needs to make a living.
He starts to drive through familiar streets with a customer in the passenger seat. Soon, a terrible crescendo of explosions streaks through the air. Armed men are opening fire on Nazar's cab. Seconds later, Nazar Hussain is dead. His passenger recovers in hospital. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
According to a report by the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) titled ‘Understanding the Agonies of Ethnic Hazaras’, 509 members of Quetta's Hazara community were killed and 627 injured in extremist violence in the last five years alone. According to Bostan Ali Kishmand, regional head of the Hazara Democratic Party (the political party of the Hazara people in Pakistan) the real number is much higher.
Terrorists justify their attacks according to sectarian logic. The Hazaras are mainly Shia Muslims, a minority in Sunni-dominated Pakistan. In 2012, threatening letters started to circulate in the Hazara areas of Quetta. In these letters Lashkar-e-Jhangvi warned the residents “either to leave Balochistan or to get prepared for more violence as the LeJ will be intensifying the ‘holy war’ against the Shia Hazaras, similar to the one waged by the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Mohammad Omar against the Shia Hazaras in Bamiyan and Ghazni provinces of Afghanistan.”
Yet not all Hazara belong to the Shia sect, and that's why some experts believe that there are other reasons behind the targeted killings.
The Hazara community has been living in Pakistan since the 1880s. Most of them migrated from Afghanistan due to persecution by the Emir Abdul Rahman Khan, under whose reign Hazara were branded “infidels” and killed in large numbers after they rebelled against the ruler.
Another influx took place in the 1990s due to an ethnic cleansing attempt launched by the Taliban.
After Nazar Hussain’s murder on April 1, other Hazara taxi drivers launched a protest in Quetta against what, for them, was just the latest in a long series of last of targeted killings in the city.
Just in case you didn’t know; there is a protest sit-in going on in #Quetta’s Alamdar Rd against #HazaraGenocide. So far no media outlet, except @BBCUrdu, has reported. Media blackout is criminal. #Pakistan https://t.co/r1NAEgNS5R
— Saleem Javed (@mSaleemJaved) April 5, 2018
Hundreds of people joined the demonstration, which soon spread to other cities of Pakistan, such as Islamabad and Lahore.
The protests have involved many female activists, despite the fact this demographic is most often the target of online abuses and threats. The protests lasted eight days.
Today, Nazar Hussain rests in a cemetery where thousands of Hazara lie buried side by side, all victims of extremist attacks and targeted killings, all bearing testimony to a state that is either indifferent to or complicit in their deaths.
Day 6: Sit in by Hazaras continues in Quetta against their targeted sectarian killing forcing them to stay behind barriers and inside their homes. They don't effectively enjoy right to life, freedom of movement, freedom to trade despite all the security checkposts in Quetta pic.twitter.com/KMl3ZGXiQk
— M. Jibran Nasir (@MJibranNasir) April 6, 2018
But Hazara are not alone in suffering at the sharp end of militant violence and injustice. Another oppressed minority, the Pashtun, has been protesting since January, when the killing of a young aspiring model sparked outrage in their community.
Pashtuns from the tribal areas in Pakistan's northwest have suffered militant attacks, internal displacement, ethnic stereotyping and crackdowns by the army.
Manzoor Pashteen is the leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (Pashtun Protection Movement), which started in 2014 as an initiative for clearing landmines in Waziristan and evolved into a movement demanding rights and security for Pashtuns.
On April 8, tens of thousands of ethnic Pashtuns gathered in Peshawar for a mass demonstration to demand the protection of their rights.
Manzoor Pashteen’s speech at #PTMPeshawarJalsa today:
“Naming or blaming the ISI or MI was equal to death. But not anymore. I will call out any tyrant, and I am proud of it. You cannot scare a Pashtun with death threats anymore”.#PashtunLongMarch2Peshawar @a_siab @sid_abu pic.twitter.com/DVcxsBcZ3c
— Hameed Shuja (@hameedshuja) April 8, 2018
Pakistan's Christian community have been victims of targeted killings as well. On April 15, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a group of Christians outside a church in Quetta. Just a few weeks before, four other Christians were shot dead in the city. Credit for the attack was claimed by the Islamic State group, but security forces have denied the organized presence of ISIS in Baluchistan, indicating LeJ as the probable suspect.
As of today, the plight of these communities is being ignored by the Pakistani establishment. Perpetrators are never arrested and Pakistan authorities recently exhorted Christians to stay at home as the only way to ensure their security.
The international community should pay attention to what is happening in Pakistan and show support for movements of people defending the simple right to leave home without the fear of being kidnapped, injured or killed.
Sima Batool Sahar, Fatima Atif and Dr. Alia Haider Karmal contributed to this article.

author: Nicole Valentini


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Pressured by protests, the Bulgarian government increases funding for pediatric healthcare · Global Voices
Nevena Borisova

Children dancing in the village of Zimitsa, Bulgaria in 2011. U.S. Army photo by Maj. M. B. Gorospe, Public domain.
The dire condition of children's healthcare in Bulgaria is in the spotlight after the head of the surgical department at Sofia's famous pediatric cardiology hospital warned that the institution might be forced to close.
Dr. Stoyan Lazarov issued his warning at the beginning of 2018, in light of a scarcity of medical personnel. It alarmed the parents of children treated at the hospital, who formed a Facebook page titled “Let’s help the best children’s cardiology hospitals in the Balkans” and initiated a protest.
On the Facebook page, they posted an open letter addressed to the Bulgarian president:
Ние, родителите, възрастните пациенти с ВСМ и близките на деца със сърдечни малформации се обръщаме към Вас за съдействие, да не се допусне Детската кардиологична клиника към Национална кардиологична болница да спре да функционира. Тя е единственото място в България, където се дава шанс за живот на стотиците деца, които се раждат със сложни сърдечни малформации. Клиниката приема пациенти от цялата страна, 24 часа в денонощието.
Годишно се извършват над 400 сърдечни операции и инвазивни процедури на деца от 0 до 18 г. Те биват оперирани и спасявани в клиниката, а впоследствие и проследявани през годините.
We, the parents, the adults with congenital cardiac malformations and people close to children with cardiac malformations, address you appealing for an action, in order to not let the Child Cardiac Hospital, a unit of the National Cardiology Hospital, to stop functioning. It is the only place in Bulgaria where the hundreds of children born with complex congenital malformation are given a chance at life. The hospital welcomes patients from all over the country, 24 hours per day. On an annual base, there are 400 cardiac surgeries and invasive procedures performed on children from the ages of 0 to 18. They undergo surgery and are saved in the clinic and afterwards they are monitored over time.
Screen shot of the Facebook page “Let’s help the best children’s cardiology hospitals in the Balkans”.
Concerned citizens tried to use other online tools to mobilize support, but with limited success. For instance, only 1,443 people signed this petition promoted on Facebook, despite appeals such as the one by a user named Julia Raicheva:
Да не допуснем това да се случи! Децата и младежите са богатството на цялата държава ! Нека подкрепим прекрасните лекари и сестри, които спасяват живота на децата ни !
Let's not allow this to happen! Our children and youth are the treasure of the whole country! Let's support the great doctors and nurses, who save our children's lives.
In response to Lazarov's statement, Deputy Minister of Health Zheni Nacheva sought to shift blame for the situation to the hospital management. Hospital director Anna Kaneva responded by saying that Lazarov’s comment was “a bit exaggerated” and that the accusation by the deputy minister was “unfortunate.”
The hospital isn't alone in its struggles, however.
In 2015, child mortality in Bulgaria stood at 6.6 out of 1,000 babies, according to an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) health profile of Bulgaria. This is 80 percent higher than the EU average of 3.6 out of 1,000 children.
The OECD analysis also showed that in provincial areas the mortality rate was four to six times higher than in the capital, and that 72 percent of the general child mortality occurs in the prenatal period (i.e. shortly before birth, during birth or up to a week after birth) or because of congenital malformations, which is one of the conditions treated at the pediatric cardiology hospital.
Bulgaria, with a population of 7 million, currently has only 10 pediatric surgeons, and 400 pediatricians are currently needed to fill the existing vacuum. Cardiologists in pediatric units complain about the lack of nurses in intensive care units. The increasing age of doctors is another issue: many are over 55 years old and working even though they are technically retired.
When it comes to neonatologists, or doctors specialized to provide medical care to newborn infants, especially the ill or prematurely born, those working in the country's larger hospitals are on average over 50 years old, according to testimonies at a 2017 parliamentary roundtable on child healthcare. Smaller Bulgarian hospitals have no neonatologists at all. Hospitals have difficulty attracting young people to work in outside of the big cities, and many young people prefer to work in private hospitals over state clinics.
Lack of funding is an issue. Municipal hospitals service 150 Bulgarian municipalities, and 20 hospitals have been closed in the last 10 years due to lack of funds, according to data of The Union of Municipal Hospitals. 31 hospitals are experiencing dire financial problems, including 10 which cannot pay salaries to their employees because of debt.
In the city of Dimitrovgrad, for example, staff have not received their full salaries for two years in a row. Even in Sofia, the obstetrics and gynecology unit in Second Multi-Profile Hospital is facing closure. There are only eight gynecologists and one neonatology expert at the hospital.
In January 2018, the Union of Municipal Hospitals in Bulgaria organized a protest against the “destruction of the municipal health in recent years and against the lack of adequate rescue measures.”
For 2018, however, the state has earmarked around 285 million Bulgarian lev (146 million euros) for child healthcare, or about 12% of the total 2.4 billion lev budget of the National Health Insurance Fund, a figure that was criticized as still too low.
In response to the protests and the deteriorating financial conditions of hospitals, the health ministry increased funding for clinical pathways—the main tool used to manage the quality of healthcare and improve health outcomes—by 150 million (77 million euros) in February 2018. The general state budget for health was boosted by 400 million (200 million euros). This allowed an increase of about half of the clinical pathways mainly for pediatrics and pulmonology, and also for gynecology, neurology and congenital malformations.
At least for the time being, these measures are considered a victory for child healthcare. But it is yet to be determined if the injection of new funding is sufficient to help the hospitals achieve normal operation. Some people have criticized the new measures as not enough or even as posing a threat to some of the hospitals in the province.
Bulgaria's health minister Kiril Ananiev, however, has said that in spite of increased funding, without structural changes the kinds of improvements needed will not be achieved. Ananiev has hinted that he is committed to putting forward a new model that would be amenable to all sides.

author: Nevena Borisova


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‘Sometimes, embracing the Afro identity…means having unpleasant conversations with people you love’ · Global Voices
Sandra Abd'Allah-Alvarez Ramírez

Photo by Maité Escarria and courtesy of Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio. Used with permission.
Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio is a journalist from Spain, the city of Madrid to be more exact. She is the daughter of a woman from Segovia, Spain and a man from Niefang, Equatorial Guinea in central west Africa.
Among other things, this multi-faceted reporter has published a Spanish-language novel titled “The Women Who Dared” (“Las que se atrevieron“), collaborated with multiple organizations such as Global Voices‘ partner Afroféminas, an online community for Afro-descendant women, and runs her own YouTube channel.
Global Voices spoke with Mbomío about her contributions to the fight against racism in the context of Spain, her thoughts about blackness, and her work as an activist.
Global Voices (GV): What are the risks or challenges of embracing the Afro or black identity in a society like Spain?
Lucía Asué Mbomío Rubio (LM): In Spain, there is a fear of talking about race (acknowledging that races, from a biological perspective, don't exist and are a socio-economic construct), or let's say of dealing with certain topics that are uncomfortable or that, as photographer Rubén H. Bermúdez would say, ‘prove to be awkward,’ among other things, because it's assumed that it's something bad.
So it's not uncommon to hear phrases like ‘I'm not racist, but,’ as if that preamble were to invalidate the racist remark that usually follows.
For this reason, Mbomío says an important part of the fight against the injustices caused by racism depends on making the discrimination visible. And that in turn largely depends on the spaces in which those affected by it can be heard:
LM: Not long ago, Luis Castellví, a professor at Cambridge, wrote in an article: ‘For the white majority of Spain, racism is invisible, just like male chauvinism is for certain men, homophobia is for many heterosexuals, and a big etcetera. But obviously that doesn't mean that these kinds of discrimination don't exist. To know how much racism there is in Spain, the minorities who are affected and those who live with them must be given a voice.’
Well, this is what often happens in this society, that various -isms are discussed by those who have the privilege of not experiencing them and when we, the affected, offer an opinion, we are automatically accused of having a victim mentality without the understanding that listening to us is an opportunity to alter behaviors and, therefore, to contribute to the improvement of a country that we too belong to.
She continues:
My awareness has gone hand in hand with my anti-racism activism, which includes my work of almost four years with Afroféminas to increase visibility by interviewing black women who could become points of reference for anyone, if some media outlet were to be so kind as to put the spotlight on them. I've also concentrated on organizing workshops at different forums with the goal of critically analyzing the way in which us journalists contribute to the dissemination of an image of black people that treats the part as the whole and refuses to let go of the stereotypes traditionally associated with us (yes, I'm speaking as someone who has disseminated as well as received that image, because as a journalist I've also made mistakes).
Although conversations about racism are generally seen as difficult, the frequent pushback is often ignored. In Mbomío's experience, people's responses are varied and complex, but the majority have a common denominator that complicates the question even more: the refusal by many to recognize differences in daily life that they don't experience.
LM: Embracing the black or Afro identity can mean hearing phrases like ‘we're all the same’ or ‘you're the racist for pointing out these differences’ more than once. That ‘we're all the same’ line exposes the existing disregard of certain everyday realities, like how it's possible that while walking down the street you can be asked for your ID more times than would happen to someone who's white, because it's assumed you aren't ‘from here’ (with all that this idea of not being ‘from here’ entails [being a foreigner, an Other, not belonging, not having equal legal privileges, etc.]), or that you hardly ever appear in the media except in a stereotyped way, to give two examples.
Sometimes, embracing the Afro identity, from a more, perhaps, mundane but no less important point of view, means having unpleasant conversations with people you love and who love you. The most infinite love may not necessarily be exempt from prejudices that have been ingrained by a racist system.
GV: What's your opinion of the concept of a unified struggle against racism that seeks to move beyond racial division and have identity and experience as a main point of convergence?
LM: Allies are necessary, but there is no way they can lead the fight against racism. Not even my mother, who has two children who are well-read and who consciously self-identify as black, could. She can contribute with her vision as a parent, her experiences and opinions are important, but she can't know what my brother and I live (even if she suffers some of its consequences). Neither do I know what it is to be white and have children who are not: children who come home from school in tears because they were insulted, or angry or fearful after enduring some abuse.
GV: I want to dive into a question that arises every time we try to define ourselves: the use of the word “black.” It's a term that was and is at the center of racism as a theory and whose use was born linked to colonization. On what side of the debate are you?
LM: I believe it's something that's very contextual. When I was little, here [in Spain], if you weren't white, you were black. All of the nomenclatures created to distinguish a gradation that groups you more with one person or the other, so specific to some Latin American countries (and the legacy of the Spanish caste system), weren't used very much. As many people have experienced in Spain, I've been told to go back to Africa when I complained about something that wasn't right or for having opinions that some people didn't agree with. So while I'm aware of the white, Spanish part of me, and recently also of the privilege that derives from it because of the colorism that exists and because I was born with the Spanish national identity card under my arm, I've always self-identified as black. “Afro-descendant” is something very recent for me, even though I recognize that when I'm in some places, knowing full well the power of ‘where,’ I use that word.
You also have to keep in mind that there are many people who are against the term ‘mulato’ because it's an exogenous and imposed name whose etymology comes from ‘mule.’ They animalize us.
Regarding the power of geographic and social contexts, Mbomío says:
I'm certain that had I grown up in other parts of the world, I would surely see it differently. In Equatorial Guinea, for example, which is my other country, they call me ‘white.’ But I've spent almost my whole life (with exceptions that haven't exceeded a year's time) in Madrid, and my stances correspond to my experiences here in Spain.
Here I want to quote Amin Malouf, who in his book “In the Name of Identity” explained that normally, despite the fact that we are multi-faceted, we cling to the facet of our identity that we consider to be the most attacked.
In the second part of this interview, Global Voices will talk with Mbomío about her work in digital Afro-activism, her YouTube channel, and her book “The Women Who Dared.”

author: Sandra Abd'Allah-Alvarez Ramírez


text:
Will Singapore’s plan to combat ‘deliberate online falsehoods’ stifle free speech? · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Screenshot of YouTube video during the Parliamentary committee hearing on “Deliberate Online Falsehoods.” Some civil society groups questioned why witnesses were subjected to intense interrogation during the hearings as if they were accused of doing something wrong.
A committee was created by Singapore Parliament in January 2018 to address the problem of “deliberate online falsehoods”, or disinformation on the internet.
The committee's mandate is to examine “causes, consequences, and countermeasures” related to the spread of disinformation. In a rare move for Singapore, the committee solicited the views of the public and held public hearings to discuss various sides of the issue.
Alongside 170 written submissions, the committee received and heard the presentations of 65 individuals and organizations over the course of 50 hours of public hearings. Written statements represented the views of diverse groups which included media organizations, technology companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google, academics, policy experts, religious groups, civil society organizations, and even foreign offices like the Russian embassy.
Charles Chong, the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, summarized the work of the committee after the public hearings concluded on March 29:
We heard how there is no one silver bullet and how we need a suite of different measures to address this complex problem, including public education, media literacy, fact checking, quality journalism, technology and legislation.
We heard evidence about how current laws had limits of scope, speed and adaptability and why we need new legislative levers…Some witnesses were opposed to any legislation at all, even if today’s laws were inadequate in countering the harms posed by deliberate online falsehoods.
Chong's summary touched on a key area of dispute, but did not directly acknowledge the committee's treatment of civil society members who oppose creating new legislation.
Although a wide range of voices were heard, civil society members who argued against new legislation reported that they were “harangued, harassed, threatened and misrepresented” in the hearings.
In contrast to the official summary, artist Alfian Sa'at offered this observation:
What I see are some activists and academics trying to give their views in good faith. But rather than being listened to like citizens representing the spectrum of political views in Singapore society, they are instead treated with sneering hostility, as if they were not witnesses giving evidence but the accused.
It seems as if the effect is to intimidate those with contrary views from making submissions to the government in the future. How can this ever be good for Singapore?
Some participants even used the hearings as an opportunity to directly undercut the work of civil society and academia.
Singapore Community Action Network reported that historian Dr. Thum Ping Tjin was questioned for six hours “over his work and expertise on Singapore history and whether there was evidence of a Communist United Front conspiracy in the 1950s and 1960s.” Although the historian had submitted recommendations on how to mitigate online disinformation, the committee did not ask or allow him to address these.
The group also described the committee's questioning of writer Kirsten Han, who is also a Global Voices contributor.
Kirsten Han was questioned over an article she had written for an online news publication. It was suggested that she had presented a misleading picture within the article. It was not clear how this was relevant to the Select Committee’s Terms of Reference. The exchange ended with Committee member Edwin Tong issuing a veiled threat that Ms Han had “not yet” been sued or jailed.
Some submissions to the hearings took a similar tack. A paper submitted by the People's Action Party Policy Forum (affiliated with the ruling party which has been in power since the 1960s) focused mainly on refuting the December 2017 report of Human Rights Watch about the decline of free speech in Singapore. It argued that the report is based on deliberate online falsehoods.
While some maintain that Singapore's legal framework is already sufficiently equipped to address legal aspects of the issue, others (many of them lawmakers) argue that new legislation or regulatory measures are needed.
The senior editors of Channel News Asia, a mainstream media company, proposed that Singapore establish a “fact-checking council”:
It will be useful to establish a “fact checking” council, committee or body made up of diverse representatives to assess and thereafter designate ‘deliberate online falsehoods’ as specifically defined. This council should be independent, transparent and be able to react to emergent ‘deliberate online falsehoods’ quickly.
It should include Singaporean representatives from academia, NGOs, civil society, including from the legal community, and other social groups that are representative of Singapore society. Its mandate must include identifying ‘deliberate online falsehoods’ and thereafter recommending appropriate remedial actions.
Singapore Press Holdings, the country’s leading media company, argued that quality journalism is necessary to fight “fake news”:
The best antidote to “fake news”, or deliberate online falsehoods, is quality journalism – journalism that is accurate, objective, purposeful, credible and reliable.
The company suggested that if Parliament were to draft legislation on the issue, the new law should focus on the “unregulated sphere of online content” and social media distributors:
Legislation that restricts the investigative and reporting power of the media would hit the wrong target, as newsrooms already have rigorous and effective mechanisms to check and counter falsehoods. It might also inadvertently curb the media’s ability to fulfill its critical role in informing society, or to remain credible in the eyes of its readers.
Another protection against overly broad legislation would be the involvement of the judiciary in dealing with disinformation. The Association of Women for Action and Research touched upon this issue in their comments:
To prevent the measure from being overbroad, it is important that such restrictions must always be dependent on a judicial finding of that harm materializing. The involvement of the judiciary is a vital check and balance for this purpose.
One popular recommendation was the promotion of public education as a countermeasure to disinformation. The National Council of Churches of Singapore explained its position:
…the most important way to counter fake news is public education. Helping the public to acquire media literacy and learn how to spot fake news can counter their harmful effects in ways that legislation alone is unable to do…Such education should also be provided in schools and universities to enable young people to be more judicious in their consumption of media.
In tandem with several civil society organizations, independent news website The Online Citizen asserted that Singapore has adequate laws to deal with ‘deliberate online falsehoods.’ It also referred to extant media regulations, charging that they already represent a significant threat to democracy:
…the biggest threat to the stability and growth of the democratic process in Singapore is the government’s control of the media and information.
It urged the government instead to practice greater transparency.
To combat falsehoods online or spread through social networks, legislation is not the way forward but a few steps back. The best way is to allow citizens to gain access to more sources of information and for them to develop a questioning and critical mindset on what is true or false, whether the information is from official or independent sources.
Kirsten Han emphasized her opposition to measures that would codify a centralized practice of censorship and content removal requests (to private social media companies):
I am opposed to measures that would give a sole body the power and authority to decide what content can or cannot be accessed by the population. It is my view that such censorship — enacted, for example, via executive takedown orders that would compel a social network to remove content — would curb freedom of expression and have a chilling effect on public discourse in Singapore.
The Parliament will resume its deliberations about the issue next month.

author: Mong Palatino


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WordFrames: ‘Migrants’ and ‘refugees’ in French media · Global Voices
Suzanne Lehn

Asylum Seekers Workshop at 1st French Convention On Welcoming Migrants, Grande-Synthe, March 1, 2018. Photo: Suzanne Lehn. Used with permission.
The WordFrames series explores media conversations around related word groups, comparing and contrasting their use and possible meaning in public discussions.
La crise des migrants en Europe compromet la survie de l'espace Schengen”
– Christine Lagarde, directrice générale du FMI [IMF], Davos, 23 janvier 2016
Nous ne pouvons pas accueillir plus de réfugiés
– Manuel Valls, Premier ministre français, Munich, 12 février 2016
(from the Asylum Seekers Workshop slide in the image above)
The migrant crisis in Europe compromises the survival of the Schengen space”
– Christine Lagarde, IMF executive director, Davos, Jan 23, 2016
We cannot take in more refugees.
– Manuel Valls, French Prime Minister, Munich, Feb 12, 2016
From the Asylum Seekers Workshop Slide…
As we can see from the quotes above, it has become more commonplace for many people to talk about an immigration “crisis”; however, the reality is that immigration is nothing new in France. So we wanted to get a sense of how this very large issue is currently framed in French media.
Our exploration first brought us to the term immigrant, or a person entering a country or area for a long-time stay or with the intention to settle there. We then looked at the term migrant and migration which describes the movement of individuals or groups from one place to another — something as old as humanity itself. Finally, we also looked at the words asylum seekers and refugees.
As we looked deeper at this topic, we wanted to know: Can we learn more about this so-called crisis through an exploration of how the media discusses immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers and refugees?
In broad terms, France became a country that welcomed immigration after the end of World War II in 1945. During the years of post-war reconstruction, France was experiencing a serious labor shortage and the government was eager to attract workers from all over the world.
Before and after Algeria's independence from France, Algerian workers contributed to the growth of the French economy and were allowed to bring along their families which contributed to the growth of a thriving Muslim community. At the end of the 1970s, France also rallied to welcome over 100,000 Vietnamese boat people who had fled their country after the collapse of the US-supported South Vietnamese regime.
However, in its more recent history, some feel that published immigration statistics in France are thought to lack detail and transparency. The government seems reluctant to provide developed statistics and there are continued disputes over the actual number of deportees — something the government considers to be a significant indicator of the efficiency of its immigration policies. Some of these deportees are repeatedly coming back, such as Romanians (who happen to be E.U. citizens.) However, once we take a closer look at the immigration issue in France, we can see some surprising facts — such as the fact that Albania was the first country of origin for asylum seekers in 2017. This uneasy relationship to facts has created a persistent gap between rhetoric and reality, leading to fueled suspicions, distrust, and the exploitation of xenophobic sentiments. This, unfortunately, can be seen in the language that some political figures use to discuss issues around immigration.
For example, compare the shifting statements of former socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls, now an independent MP supporting President Macron's ruling party.
In September 2016, while he was PM, Valls stated the following:
Manuel Valls a appelé jeudi à “éviter toute déclaration à l'emporte-pièce” sur la question des migrants, estimant que si la France doit prendre sa part dans leur accueil, elle est “loin d'être submergée”.
Manuel Valls called on Thursday to “avoid piecemeal statements” on the issue of migrants, saying that while France must play its part in welcoming them, the country is “far from being overwhelmed”.
After taking on the role of MP again, Valls spoke at a radio station on January 21, 2018:
.@ManuelValls : “Nous n'avons pas besoin d'une nouvelle immigration” #QuestionsPol pic.twitter.com/X2hgZyh4GX
— France Inter (@franceinter) 21 janvier 2018
“We do not need another immigration”
Some may see the move from France being “far from overwhelmed” to “we do not need another immigration” as a testament to the change in rhetoric towards a more hardline stance on immigration from many sectors of the political sphere.
However, this closed door approach to immigration is not new, as we can see from a 1989 speech to parliament by former socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard:
Il y a, en effet, dans le monde trop de drames, de pauvreté, de famine pour que l’Europe et la France puissent accueillir tous ceux que la misère pousse vers elles.
There are, in fact, too many tragedies, poverty and famine in the world for Europe and France to take in all people pushed towards them by misery.
His words were later simplified into the mantra “France (and Europe) cannot take in all the world's poor”, a catchphrase that has been subsequently reused by politicians of all stripes to claim that the immigrant tolerance limit has been reached or exceeded. Even French President Emmanuel Macron, defending his asylum policies in November 2017, referred to Rocard's comment:
“La France est un pays généreux, mais elle ne peut pas prendre toute la misère du monde, comme disait Michel Rocard. Je ne peux pas tenir un discours démagogiquement dangereux sur ce sujet.”
“France is a generous country, but it cannot take in all the poverty of the world, as Michel Rocard said. I can't use demagogically dangerous language on this issue.”
In recent years, the issue of immigration and migrants has gained more and more glaring visibility — think of Calais and its infamous “Jungle” — which has fueled the rising electoral success of right-wing populist political parties all over Europe and elsewhere.
What is Media Cloud?
Media Cloud is an open source platform developed by the MIT Center for Civic Media and the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Media Cloud is designed to aggregate, analyze, deliver and visualize information while answering complex quantitative and qualitative questions about the content of online media.
To begin our exploration, we used the Media Cloud data analysis tool (see box) to search for topics related to immigration and migration in several French media collections.
To try and look at how French media is representing the issues related to France itself, our first search looked at the use of immigration (and its associated word immigrants) as well as migration (and its associated word migrants) in sentences alongside the word “France” in the French media collections.
We started with November 2017 but ended up tightening the timeframe from 2018-01-01 to 2018-03-21, which provided 146 stories related to immigration and immigrants and 707 stories related to migration and migrants.
In the following word cloud we can see the associated keywords (in order of prevalence) that the term “immigration” had in common:
Below we can see the keywords visualized into a bar graph. The keywords most frequently associated with the search terms “immigration” and “migration” were law, bill, Minister, asylum, presentation, migrants, right (legal sense), Muslims, take in:
Word Cloud search results using the term “immigration” from 2018-01-01 to 2018-03-21. Translation of highlighted terms: law; bill; asylum; accepting; fact; should; asylum-immigration; smugglers; anti-immigration; Europe (and European).
Terms most frequently associated with “Immigration”. Translation of words: law, bill, Minister, asylum, presentation, migrants, right (legal sense), Muslims, take in.
Search results show that some key themes are related to law, asylum, migrants, and Muslims. As we delved deeper and began to analyze the articles associated with the words, one example stood out in particular: The “asylum-immigration” bill.
The major provisions of the “asylum-immigration” bill, which was submitted to the Cabinet in February 2018, are intended to expand maximum detention periods and to restrict the possibilities of appeal. To “balance” this goal, the government has made provisions for an “integration” component, including some measures which might be added to the bill later on.
As we can see from the articles below, this bill is a contentious issue within France and has lead to raucous cries both for and against its implementation. Those speaking for the bill have mostly been government and ruling party representatives, while those speaking against it are mostly made up of NGO's and human rights groups:
Asile et immigration : “Il faut être ferme parce que l'on ne peut pas accueillir tout le monde” Europe1, 19 février 2018 : Interview de la députée LREM qui sera rapportrice du texte à l'Assemblée Nationale :
“Je crois qu'il était important d'avoir ce texte qui nous permet de mieux accueillir, de mieux intégrer […] et puis aussi d'être plus efficace, d'être plus ferme sur les reconduites”, développe l'élue. “L'objectif est de montrer que l'on a une identité en France, qui est celle du droit d'asile. On va la préserver et l'améliorer”, assure-t-elle.
“You have to be firm because you can't accept everyone.”Europe1 Radio station, Feb 19, 2018, Interview with the MP from ruling party LREM who will report for the bill in Parliament:
“I think it was important to have this bill which allows us to welcome better, to integrate better […] and then also to be more effective, to be firmer on the returns”, the M.P. explains. “The objective is to show that we have our identity in France, which is that of the right to asylum. We will preserve and improve it,” she assures.
Loi asile et immigration : “Une logique de contrôle, de tri et d'expulsion” Europe1 20 février 2018, Interview du président de la CIMADE, ONG de défense des droits des migrants:
“[…] le projet qui sera présenté demain est un projet de loi résolument répressif, dont le centre de gravité penche considérablement vers une logique de contrôle, de tri et d'expulsion des personnes migrantes”, déplore le responsable associatif. “Il serait tout à l'honneur du gouvernement d'assumer cette logique répressive et de ne pas nous enfumer avec, soi-disant, des textes équilibrés”
Asylum and immigration bill: “A logic of control, sorting and deportation” Europe1 Radio station, Feb 20, 2018, Interview with the President of NGO Cimade, defender of migrants’ rights:
“The draft that will be presented tomorrow is a resolutely repressive bill, whose centre of gravity is leaning considerably towards a logic of control, sorting and expulsion of migrants,” deplores the head of the association.
Here we are introduced to the crux of the issue — whether or not it is right to sort incoming migrants, creating distinctions between the type of migrant that will be accepted into the country.
The tensions become clearer when dominant themes are grouped together:
3-word combinations associated with “immigration”. Translation of terms, top to bottom: could/should take in refugees; all economic migrants; Muslim community Europe; law-asylum-immigration
The translation of the three-word combinations from top to bottom are as follows: could/should take in refugees; all economic migrants; Muslim community Europe Combos; law-asylum-immigration Combos. These combinations help us to understand the keyword terms in context as they show the words that most often precede or follow the keyword in a sentence.
When we look at the combinations themselves, we can see interesting points of conflict: “could/should take in refugees could be interpreted as a tension point between France as a so-called humanist state and defender of human rights and its actual closed-door immigration policy; and “all economic migrants” could be seen as a tension point between ‘accepted’ refugees and all others who must be denied access.
This idea of whether or not France should take in more migrants who are seeking to change their economic future can be seen in Minister of Interior Gérard Collomb's defense of the new “asylum-immigration” bill:
Collomb se dit “obligé de faire” un tri entre les migrants
L'Express, 11 février 2018
“On ne peut faire de manière exponentielle un accueil vis-à-vis de tout le monde, comme un certain nombre de gens le voudraient. Ils disent ‘on n'a pas besoin de faire un tri, on ne doit pas choisir entre ceux qui ont besoin de l'asile et les migrants économiques’ . Si ! On est obligé de le faire parce qu'à un moment donné, nous ne pourrons pas donner un avenir à tout le monde“
Collomb says he is “compelled” to make a selection between migrants
L'Express, Feb 11, 2018
“We cannot exponentially accept everyone, as some people would like us to. They say ‘we don't have to sort, we shouldn't choose between those in need of asylum and economic migrants’. Yes, we do! We have to, because at some point we won't be able to give everyone a future.”
In this passage, we see Collomb making an arguing for the need to select people — separating those that are escaping wars and threats (they can prove) and those who are trying to find better jobs.
So, is a person's right to freedom of movement all in the name we give them?
In order to erase the rhetorical divide between “accepted” asylum seekers and “turned away” economic migrants, and generally promote a human vision of individuals with a name and a fate, a number of NGOs and human rights groups are pushing to use the word “exiles” instead of migrants.
An “exile” is a person who was compelled by whatever reason (by choice or by force) to leave his/her home country and to settle in a foreign country. We added this term in our second search alongside the term “migrant” to see if the word “exile” brought out any interesting insights into the perception of migrants within the French context.
Exil* pulls up keywords that appear in recent news which still primarily applies to ex-Catalan president Carles Puigdemont (203 mentions in 2 and a half months), who escaped arrest by the Spanish government and fled to Belgium; and an ex-Russian spy found allegedly poisoned in the UK (89 ‘Londres’ and 84 ‘mort’ mentions), whereas “Migrants” has 56 mentions.
Word Cloud for “Exil* Translation: [deposed Catalonian president] Puigdemont ; [poisoned] Russian [ex-spy]; Belgium; dead; London; migrants
The word cloud Migrant* produces Calais; associations (disagreements with state policies and police violence); Macron; and many references to vocabulary related to law, and legal/bureaucratic practices instituted by the state.
Word Cloud for Migrant* Translation of highlighted terms: Calais; between; NGOs/charities; Macron; taking in; Libya; dead; African(s); wounded; violence
This Word Cloud reflects the fact that during the the time-slot of our search, the town of Calais (mostly a transit area for migrants bound for Britain) was repeatedly under the spotlight, mainly because of ‘rixes‘ (brawls) and ‘violence‘ ‘entre‘ (between) migrants/refugees who are ‘entre la vie et la mort‘ (between life and death), which left several ‘mort‘ (dead) and ‘blessés‘ (injured). Smugglers are at the roots of those territorial fights over control of parking lots where migrants, who are helped by smugglers, climb and hide into the haulers on their way to the U.K.:
France: cinq migrants entre la vie et la mort à Calais après des affrontements RFI, 1er février 2018
« Le conflit entre Afghans et Africains a toujours été sous-jacent. C'est malheureusement un schéma classique » de voir des affrontements entre eux, a commenté une source préfectorale.
France: five migrants between life and death in Calais after clashes RFI TV, Feb. 1, 2018
“The dispute between Afghans and Africans has always been underlying. It is unfortunately a classic pattern” to see confrontations between them,” commented a source from the prefecture.
The relationship between the government and associations (charities and NGOs) also soured:
Migrants à Calais : Macron dénonce les “mensonges” de certaines associations L'OBS 16 janvier 2018:
La rupture entre le milieu associatif et l'exécutif est consommée depuis plusieurs semaines, notamment après la décision du ministère de l'Intérieur d'autoriser des équipes à vérifier la situation légale des migrants dans les centres d'hébergement.
Migrants in Calais: Macron denounces the “lies” of some organizations L'OBS, Jan 16, 2018
The split between the voluntary sector and the government became effective a few weeks ago, notably after the Ministry of the Interior decided to allow [his] teams to check the legal status of migrants inside emergency accommodation centres.
We see that references to Calais don't appear in our search for “exiles” which makes it seem that the media isn't framing people in Calais as exiles but rather migrants or people who are on the move. This concept of migrants or migratory people is one that often implies that action should be taken to prevent  “fixation” and “appel d'air” or take-ins which supposedly attract more and more newcomers.
This chart of 3-word combinations gives us interesting clues about “migrants”, showing the prevalence of administration/bureaucracy concerns:
3-words combinations associated with “Migrants” Translation of words, top to bottom: should/could take in everyone; intolerable denial of humanity; bill/law asylum-immigration; clashes/brawl between migrants; all economic migrants; meals migrants Calais; between life death; non-profits helping migrants; census migrants shelters; emergency shelters.
Briefly summarizing our search results, the most prominent words framing the issue of immigration and migrants can be characterized as generally negative — the use of terms that imply a crisis, restrictions by law, or danger for overwhelmed countries of destination as well as for the migrants themselves abound.
As we look back to the global stage, there does seem to be a crisis when it comes to forced displacement and the trend is likely here to stay now that numbers of “climate refugees” are projected to grow. But is France doing enough to use the country's full welcoming potential?
For some media outlets, public figures and experts, the answer to this question is “no”. In fact, some are tirelessly working to set the facts straight, to raise awareness about violations against migrant rights and to denounce state violence against vulnerable populations. Some are beginning to acknowledge that media coverage of immigration/migrants has some substantial gaps and are working to fill them. We can see this with the recent March 2018 French Convention Nationale sur l'Accueil et les Migrations, a meetup of various players in defense of migrant rights.
For some, the point is this: Calling people “migrants” is a way to characterize them as people on the move which defines them as people who should keep moving, as people who don't belong in “our” territory.
French sociologist and blogger Eric Fassin explains the power that the names we give to people have in the context of immigration:
“L’émigré, c'est celui qui est parti, l'immigré, c'est celui qui est arrivé, le migrant c’est celui qui n’a pas ‘vocation’ à être ici, ni nulle part : il ne fait que se déplacer”
“The emigrant is the one who has left, the immigrant is the one who has arrived, the migrant is the one who has no ‘purpose’ to be here, nor anywhere: he's just moving about”
In this case, solutions to the situation require us to change the very terms of our reporting. As long as the word “migrants”, which is devoid of any legal significance and therefore cautioned against by the U.N. and NGOs, is used to frame the situation, robust remedies to the crisis are difficult to foresee.

author: Suzanne Lehn


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Netizen Report: Russia is blocking millions of IP addresses, all because of the Telegram #IPocalypse · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Blocking Telegram in Russia is easier said than done. Image mixed by Kevin Rothrock.
On April 16, Russia’s state media watchdog started blocking Telegram, the popular messaging app. Or at least it tried to.
The ban followed an April 13 court ruling asserting that Telegram had broken the law when the company refused to hand its data encryption keys to Russian security services.
In response, the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor, which has no powers of its own to block websites, began sending orders to Russian ISPs to make Telegram’s IP addresses unavailable to Russian users.
This marked the beginning of a cat-and-mouse game in which Telegram reverted to cloud backup services provided by Amazon and Google. This in turn caused Roskomnadzor to start banning entire subnets containing millions of IP addresses in what is being referred to on social media as the #IPocalypse. Myriad business sites, communication platforms including Viber, Slack and Evernote, and nearly all websites hosted by Digital Ocean have been rendered inaccessible over the past three days. Just before this report was published, users reported that Microsoft Azure also had become inaccessible.
Ironically, Telegram itself is still up and running.
Days after Russia announced its ban, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei announced that government entities would no longer be using Telegram, but instead would be promoting local social media networks. Global Voices’ Mahsa Alimardani told The Verge that though it “definitely seems more likely” that this could lead to an all-out ban on the service, it remains unclear whether the announcement signals a move toward shutting down Telegram in Iran.
With the European Union’s highly anticipated General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set to take effect on May 25, technology companies and users are trying to make sense of what the changes will mean for people in and outside of the EU.
Currently, the accounts of all Facebook users outside the US are governed by terms of service set by the company’s international headquarters in Ireland, which is part of the EU. But on April 17, Facebook told Reuters that it will be changing its terms of service so that only EU-based Facebook users will benefit from the privacy protections of the new EU rules.
Once in effect, the data of users outside the EU — all 1.5 billion of them — will instead be governed by US privacy laws, which are less comprehensive and more lenient by far than the EU framework.
In Kenya, Facebook’s WiFi Express program may be collecting more user data than users realize. The program offers low-cost WiFi hotspots at bus stations, markets and meeting areas, in a partnership with ISPs wherein Facebook provides the WiFi hardware and ISPs provide the connection. The program is also running in Tanzania, Indonesia, India and Nigeria.
According to The Daily Nation, Facebook made an agreement with Ubiquiti, the company that built the WiFi hotspot operating systems, in which Facebook would be allowed to “insert its own software, or, as one industry insider described it, ‘little black box’, into each access point.” It remains unclear precisely how much or how little data these systems are capturing. But in light of recent events surrounding the unauthorized use of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, it may be cause for concern.
A congressional committee in Singapore conducted 50 hours of public hearings on the issue of “deliberate online falsehoods,” or disinformation. Representatives from Twitter, Facebook, and Google, various academic and policy groups and civil society organizations spoke.
Civil society members who argued against creating new legislation to curb the spread of disinformation reported that they were “harangued, harassed, threatened and misrepresented” in the hearings. Multiple speakers were interrogated about their previous writings and research, but not invited to offer their opinions on the matter at hand.
As of March 2018, Tanzanian bloggers must register and pay over USD $900 per year to publish online. The new rule is the result of updates to the east African country’s Electronic and Postal Communications Regulation. Another update imposes prohibitions on content including nudity, hate speech, extreme violence, “content that causes annoyance” and fake news. The new rule has taken effect swiftly. Just this week, pop music artists Diamond Platinumz and Nandi were arrested for having allegedly posted “indecent” content on social media.
In a recent update to the company’s App Engine, Google eliminated “domain fronting”, a technical maneuver that had become an important loophole for circumventing online censorship. Services like Signal, GreatFire.org and Psiphon’s VPN services had used Google as a proxy, through which they could route traffic, to mask its actual origins. While the company is aware of the ways in which websites and services used the loophole, Google told The Verge that this was never an intended feature of their system.
Internet service providers in Egypt will soon be vulnerable to criminal prosecution if they refuse to block online content. Under Article 31 of Egypt’s pending cybercrime law, ISP administrators could be subject to up to one year in prison and a fine of LE $500,000 for disobeying censorship orders issued by the Criminal Court. Under the terms of the law, such a move would constitute a “threat to Egypt’s national security.”
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Mohamed ElGohary, Rohith Jyothish, Karolle Rabarison, Elizabeth Rivera, Juke Carolina Rumuat, Nevin Thompson and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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The Philippine government’s plan to shut down Boracay resort island threatens to displace thousands · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

Boracay's white sand beach. Photo credit: Alexey Komarov. CC BY 3.0
Residents of Boracay in the central Philippine province of Aklan are mobilizing against a plan by the government to shut down and environmentally “rehabilitate” the world-famous resort island for six months, at the same time that two casinos are in the works.
Fearing loss of employment for thousands of workers and the destruction of an economy based on resort operations in Boracay, residents formed the #NoToBoracayClosure Coalition to defend people’s livelihoods and oppose moves to transform the island into a mega-casino complex:
We are calling on President Rodrigo Duterte to rescind his blanket closure order of the country’s premier tourist destination. We also call on the national government to come up with a scientific and comprehensive rehabilitation plan for Boracay that will not result to massive economic dislocation after due consultation with all its stakeholders.
Boracay has long received flak from environmentalists, but these issues suddenly came into the spotlight in February 2018. Calling the resort island a “cesspool,” Duterte declared he would close down the island after six months if these environmental problems were not solved immediately.
Boats and tourists in Boracay. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Duterte's outburst came after an inspection of the island by the government’s tourism and environment agencies in January. Duterte then ordered Cabinet to prepare for the closure of the island by April 26, without consultation with local stakeholders and in the absence of any master plan for the development and rehabilitation of the island, or contingency plans for the livelihoods and relocation of those affected.
Several sectors became suspicious of Duterte’s intentions after reports came out that the government has granted the Macau-based Galaxy Entertainment Group (GEG) permission to construct a US$500 million casino complex in the prime tourist destination.
The Presidential Palace announced it was cancelling the deal, yet the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) has in fact granted a permit to GEG and its local partner, Leisure and Resorts World Corporation (LRWC). The company dismissed claims by officials that they are looking for another venue for the casino.
Duterte denied knowledge of a plan to construct a casino on Boracay, but official photos show the president meeting with GEG representatives, led by its chairman Lui Che-Woo and vice chairman Francis Lui Yiu Tiung, at the Presidential Palace on December 6, 2017.
Duterte meets with officials of Macau-based casino magnates Galaxy Entertainment Group at the Presidential Palace last December 6, 2017. Philippine government photo
PAGCOR officials also said that a second mega-casino complex is in the works in Boracay, following its approval of gaming operations by a joint venture between tycoon Andrew Tan and Malaysia’s Genting Group at the Savoy Hotel, located at Megaworld Corporation’s Boracay New Coast development.
To allay public outrage over the contradiction between the avowed aim of environmental rehabilitation and the building of mega-casinos on the island, Duterte then claimed that Boracay would in fact be subjected to land reform. But many find this statement outlandish, given that there is not much farmland left on the resort island, most of whose area is already occupied by residential and commercial structures.
The laments of Boracay residents over Duterte’s closure order are captured in a short documentary by Jason Magbanua posted on Facebook, which was contextualized with the following text:
FACT
Thousands upon thousands of real people will be affected by a complete closure of the island. Real, breathing humans, not statistics. We are talking about kids, mothers, fathers, entire families – not an “insignificant GDP drop.
FACT
There are more realistic solutions in solving the problems of Boracay. Solutions that won't completely disenfranchise the people inhabiting the island, the greatest, most important stakeholders of them all.
For Ilonggo blogger Samot Tallana, the handling of the Boracay issue only exposes the bankruptcy of President Duterte's environmentalist and populist pretensions.
Mass layoffs of tourism workers in the island have already begun as business establishments scramble to cope with the shutdown. Electricity prices across Aklan are likewise expected to shoot up as the province’s lone power supplier seeks to recover the P99 million (US$1.9 million) loss from the island’s closure.
Many also question the draconian security measures imposed by the government, such as the deployment of riot police, restricting access to many parts of Boracay, and preventing the media from monitoring the planned rehabilitation of the island.
Concerned citizens put up Friends of Boracay network to help campaign against the island's closure. Photo used with permission.
While many agree on the need to address Boracay’s environmental woes, the economic destruction to be wrought by the arbitrary and sudden closure of the island has compelled different sectors to close ranks behind the affected residents and workers.
A Friends of Boracay Facebook page has been set up to gather statements of support for the island, its workers, and its small and medium enterprises. As the date of the island’s closure nears, they are calling on the public to take a stand for Boracay and the people who will be displaced by its closure.

author: Karlo Mongaya