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Moderate globally, impact locally: A series on content moderation in the Global South · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Public domain image.
This article was written by Michael Karanicolas, a Resident Fellow at Yale Law School where he leads the Wikimedia Initiative on Intermediaries and Information as part of the Information Society Project. It is the first in a series of papers published by the initiative to capture perspectives on the global impacts of platforms’ content moderation decisions. You can find the author at @M_Karanicolas on Twitter, and you can read all of the articles in the blog series here.
Every minute, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube, 350,000 tweets are sent, and 510,000 comments are posted on Facebook. Managing and curating this firehose of content is an enormous task, and one which grants the platforms enormous power over the contours of online speech. This includes not just decisions around whether a particular post should be deleted, but also more minute and subtle interventions that determine its virality. From deciding how far to allow quack ideas about COVID-19 to take root, to the degree of flexibility that is granted to the President of the United States to break the rules, content moderation raises difficult challenges that lie at the core of debates around freedom of expression.
But while plenty of ink has been spilled on the impact of social media on America’s democracy, these decisions can have an even greater impact around the world. This is particularly true in places where access to traditional media is limited, giving the platforms a virtual monopoly in shaping the public discourse. A platform which fails to take action against hate speech might find itself instrumental in triggering a local pogrom, or even genocide. A platform which acts too aggressively to remove suspected “terrorist propaganda” may find itself destroying evidence of war crimes.
Platforms’ power over the public discourse is partly the result of a conscious decision by global governments to outsource online moderation functions to these private sector actors. Around the world, governments are making increasingly aggressive demands for platforms to police content which they find objectionable. The targeted material can range from risqué photos of the King of Thailand, to material deemed to insult Turkey’s founding president. In some instances, these requests are grounded in local legal standards, placing platforms in the difficult position of having to decide how to enforce a law from Pakistan, for example, which would be manifestly unconstitutional in the United States.
In most instances, however, moderation decisions are not based on any legal standard at all, but on the platforms’ own privately drafted community guidelines, which are notoriously vague and difficult to understand. All of this leads to a critical lack of accountability in the mechanisms which govern freedom of expression online. And while the perceived opacity, inconsistency and hypocrisy of online content moderation structures may seem frustrating to Americans, for users in the developing world it is vastly worse.
Nearly all of the biggest platforms are based in the United States. This means not only that their decision makers are more accessible and receptive to their American user base than they are to frustrated netizens in Myanmar or Uganda, but also that their global policies are still heavily influenced by American cultural norms, particularly the First Amendment.
Even though the biggest platforms have made efforts to globalize their operations, there is still a massive imbalance in the ability of journalists, human rights activists, and other vulnerable communities to get through to the U.S.-based staff who decide what they can and cannot say. When platforms do branch out globally, they tend to recruit staff who are connected to existing power structures, rather than those who depend on the platforms as a lifeline away from repressive restrictions on speech. For example, the pressure to crack down on “terrorist content” inevitably leads to collateral damage against journalism or legitimate political speech, particularly in the Arab world. In setting this calculus, governments and ex-government officials are vastly more likely to have a seat at the table than journalists or human rights activists. Likewise, the Israeli government has an easier time communicating their wants and needs to Facebook than, say, Palestinian journalists and NGOs.
None of this is meant to minimize the scope and scale of the challenge that the platforms face. It is not easy to develop and enforce content policies which account for the wildly different needs of their global user base. Platforms generally aim to provide everyone with an approximately identical experience, including similar expectations with regard to the boundaries of permitted speech. There is a clear tension between this goal and the conflicting legal, cultural and moral standards in force across the many countries where they operate. But the importance and weight of these decisions demand that platforms get this balancing right, and develop and enforce policies which adequately reflect their role at the heart of political debates from Russia to South Africa. Even as the platforms have grown and spread around the world, the center of gravity of these debates continues to revolve around D.C. and San Francisco.
This is the first in a series of articles which is meant to bridge the divide between the ongoing policy debates around content moderation, and the people who are most impacted by them, particularly across the global south. The authors are academics, civil society activists and journalists whose work lies on the sharp edge of content decisions. In asking for their contributions, we offered them a relatively free hand to prioritize the issues they saw as the most serious and important with regard to content moderation, and asked them to point to areas where improvement was needed, particularly with regard to the moderation process, community engagement, and transparency. The issues that they flag include a common frustration with the distant and opaque nature of platforms’ decision-making processes, a desire for platforms to work towards a better understanding of local socio-cultural dynamics underlying the online discourse, and a feeling that platforms’ approach to moderation often did not reflect the importance of their role in facilitating the exercise of core human rights. Although the different voices each offer a unique perspective, they paint a common picture of how platforms’ decision making impacts their lives, and of the need to do better, in line with the power that platforms have in defining the contours of global speech.
Ultimately, our hope in this series is to shed light on the impacts of platforms’ decisions around the world, and provide guidance on how social media platforms might do a better job of developing and applying moderation structures which reflect their needs and values of their diverse global users.

author: Guest Contributor


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Who are the 6 Hong Kong activists wanted by the police under Beijing’s national security law? · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Beijing's six wanted Hong Kong fugitives. Image from the Stand News. Used with permission.
Six pro-democracy activists have been branded fugitives of justice by the Hong Kong Police Force, according to a report by China Central Television (CCTV) aired on July 31. Local authorities refused media request to comment on the case.
Among the activists are Nathan Law, Ray Wong, Honcques Laus, Simon Cheng, Wayne Chan — all Hong Kong citizens living overseas. The sixth activist, Samuel Chu, is a United States citizen and has been living in that country for the past 25 years.
CCTV reported that the six men are wanted for “incitement to secession and collusion with foreign forces,” which would be violations of the newly-enacted national security law.
The arrest order of US citizen Samuel Chu seems to confirm fears that China aims to apply the draconian law to anyone on Earth, including non-Hong Kong citizens residing overseas.
Since the enactment of the new law, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and some European countries including France and Germany have suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong.
Why are the six men wanted by Beijing? Below is a brief summary of the activists’ background and their reactions to the “fugitive” status.
The 42-year-old pastor was born in Hong Kong, but since 1995 has been a citizen of the United States, where he also lives. He has been involved in anti-poverty activism in his country of residence, for example, advocating for schools to provide free meals to students and campaigning against “lunch shaming.”
He is a son of Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, who was a prominent figure in Hong Kong's 2014 Umbrella Protests.
In September 2019, Samuel Chu founded the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington DC-based nonpartisan human rights group that promotes democracy and human rights in Hong Kong.
On Twitter, Chu mocked the accusations levied against him:
Today, I woke up to media reports that I am a wanted fugitive.
My alleged crimes? “Inciting secession” & “colluding with foreign powers” under HK's National Security Law.
Except I am an American citizen & have been for 25 years. pic.twitter.com/rppP14kLnU
— Samuel Chu 朱牧民 (@samuelmchu) July 31, 2020
Born in mainland China, the 27-year-old activist left Hong Kong to the United Kingdom shortly before July 1, 2020, when the national security law was enacted.
Besides being one of the student leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Protests, Law is also the founding chairperson of Demosisto, a now-disbanded political party led by student activists, including Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow.
The party advocated for a referendum to determine Hong Kong's sovereignty post-2047, when the “one country, two systems” principle of the 1997 Sino-British declaration is due to expire.
In 2016, at the age of 23, Law was elected as the youngest-ever member of the Legislative Council, but he was disqualified from holding office after making a protest statement during his oath-taking ceremony.
He now lives in London and has continued to lobby international bodies to safeguard civil liberties and human rights in Hong Kong.
After seeing the CCTV news, he tweeted that all of his decisions have been made out of the love for Hong Kong, and that he is willing to pay “the price of displacement”. He added that, in order to protect his family from political harassment, he would sever relationships with them:
8. At the same time, I hereby reiterate: My advocacy work overseas is conducted in my own personal capacity, without any collaboration with others. Since leaving Hong Kong, I have also stopped contacting members of my family. From now on I’ll sever my relationship with them.
— Nathan Law 羅冠聰 ? (@nathanlawkc) July 31, 2020
Wong founded the localist political group Hong Kong Indigenous soon after the Umbrella Protests in 2014, which favored more radical action in contrast with the city's mainstream pro-democracy movements. He was arrested in February 2016 on charges of “inciting a riot” in Mongkok district during the Lunar New Year.
Wong jumped bail and fled to Europe in November 2017. Germany granted him refugee status for political persecution in May 2018.
Despite Beijing's claims that the national security law will not be applied retroactively, the inclusion of Ray Wong in the wanted list suggests otherwise.
Wong reacted to the news on Twitter:
So the only reason why I was sought for “incitement to secession and collusion with foreign forces ” must be based on my activities before the NSL is in force. Today,#HKGov unveils the fact that they'd use the law retrospectively.
— Ray Wong ???? (@Ray_WongHKI) July 31, 2020
The 19-year-old Vietnamese-Hongkonger is the youngest of the six activists.
He was arrested in April 2018 after a body search near the Legislative Council found he was carrying a toy gun. The activist was sentenced to 18-month probation by a District Court, but he appealed to a High Court and won.
In June 2019, he established the Hongkonger Utilitarian Party, a pro-independence group.
Like other activists, he fled to the UK shortly before the security law was enacted, and now seeks political asylum in that country.
In response to his “fugitive” status, he wrote on Facebook:
As I can enjoy freedom of speech in the UK, I will dare to express my political opinion freely, and continue to request the international community to impose sanctions against the Hong Kong government and the Chinese government, including sanctions on Carrie Lam, PK Tang and “Winnie the Pooh”.
The 30-year-old activist is the convener of the political group Hong Kong Independence Union.
Chan joined the Civic Party in 2013 and participated in the Umbrella Protests in 2014. He left the party in 2015 and took a political turn towards advocating for Hong Kong's independence.
He was arrested, and then released on bail, for participating in protests in June 2019 that were deemed illegal by the authorities. The activist jumped bail and fled Hong Kong to the UK in June 2020.
Chan has kept a low-profile since settling in the UK. He has told Hong Kong Free Press that was not sure why he was included in the list but pondered that the fact that he posted the Hong Kong independence flag on Facebook on July 1 might have drawn the authorities’ attention.
In the same interview, he expressed concern over the security of fellow activists in Hong Kong and stressed that he is not afraid of the wanted order:
I would not change my political view after leaving, especially when those in Hong Kong can no longer speak out as they wish.
Cheng was a former trade and investment officer at the British Consulate-General in Hong Kong. He was arrested and detained by mainland Chinese authorities during a trip to Shenzhen in August 2019 and was forced to make a video confession for “soliciting prostitutes” in exchange for his release.
In November 2019, he said Chinese agents tortured him and forced him to confess that he was a British spy who instigated the anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong.
He traveled to the UK in December 2019 and was granted refugee status by the UK on June 26, 2020. Together with other exiled activists, Cheng has been helping Hongkongers to seek asylum abroad.
As the Hong Kong government had disqualified pro-democracy candidates en mass from running to the Legislative Council election, Cheng's group of exiled activists are drawing a plan to establish an unofficial parliament-in-exile.
He made a brief statement on Facebook regarding the wanted order:
Statement: I keep speaking up and acting for the public cause of our people’s interest and freedom, esp. for those who have no power and wealth, now the totalitarian regime criminalises that and frame me up, then I would take that not as a shame but an honour.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Oiwan Lam


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Angolan police kills 23-year-old for breaking confinement rules, local media reports · Global Voices
Simão Hossi

A young man ikilled by Angolan police. Screengrab of a video  shared by Televisão Pública de Angola.
The Angolan National Police officers shot dead 23-year-old José Teokamba Manuel on 12 July while enforcing confinement measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to local media.
Maurício José, 17, who was with Manoel at the time, was shot in the shoulder and taken to hospital by the police themselves. He has already been discharged.
The incident took place in Maianga District, in the capital Luanda. A National Police communiqué said that officers were on patrol when they came across a crowd of young people at an unauthorized time and place, reports newspaper O País.
The National Police spokesman, Nestor Goubel, acknowledged that the shots were fired by officers, according to Observador, and he added that the agents responsible were detained and will be punished.
Manuel's funeral was marked by protests by local residents. There were barricades on the main road and the police were called to disperse them.
Activist and academic Miguel de Barros, who is from Guinea-Bissau, posted a video of the protests. The video is of the protest in Luanda after José Teokamba Manuel’s death:
Entre abuso do poder e violência desnecessária do estado, impera uma forte cultura de impunidade e desrespeito pela vida sob encobrimento das autoridades. Quando se mata um jovem sem qualquer perigo por não ter máscara protetora é crime e expõe toda violência sofrida. Revoltante! pic.twitter.com/6WcJDKqQzF
— Miguel de Barros (@debarros_miguel) July 14, 2020
Between abuse of power and unnecessary state violence, reigns a strong culture of impunity and disrespect for life under cover of the authorities. When you kill a young man posing no danger because he has no protective mask, it is a crime, and exposes all the violence suffered. Outrageous!
Angola has been witnessing cases of police violence in the capital Luanda since it declared a state of emergency because of the pandemic.
In May, 21-year-old António Domingos Vilola was killed by a gunshot to the head after police approached a group of people on the street without masks, Voice of America (VoA) reported. According to the victim's relatives, a National Police officer shot Vilola after he said he had no mask. In a statement, the National Police accused the youths of resisting and “moving to attack the forces of law and order.”
In April, a video was shared online of police officers violently assaulting people after they supposedly failed to comply with confinement measures.
The journalist and writer Victor Hugo Mendes shared, on Facebook, a text by Dilson Barros, condemning the incident with José Teokamba Manuel:
Mais uma pessoa morre vítima de violência policial. Fez ontem uma semana que o jovem José Kilamba Rangel, de 23 anos, foi morto no bairro do Prenda supostamente por não estar a usar máscara.
Não é o primeiro, o segundo, nem o terceiro. Já foram vários. A violência policial contra pessoas indefesas está a aumentar aos nossos olhos. Desde a morte da zungueira Juliana Cafrique, já morreram vários inocentes.
As questões que colocamos são as seguintes: 1. Até quando vamos assistir essas mortes? 2. O que estará o Estado a fazer para que não se voltem a registar este tipo de mortes? Não basta deter e julgar os agentes, é preciso traçar um plano com medidas concretas para diminuir a probabilidade deste tipo de actos ocorrer, desde a formação dos agentes ao seu armamento e controle.
Lembro que a polícia deve proteger os cidadãos e ser sinónimo de segurança e não uma causa de mortes de indefesos que, completamente desarmados, não representam ameaça para homens fardados e armados…
Admira-me o silêncio das autoridades no meio de tantas mortes, numa altura em que a violência policial é causa de uma onda de manifestações pelo mundo afora na sequência da morte de George Floyd por um polícia.
Another person dies from police violence. It was a week ago that young José Kilamba Rangel, 23 years old, was killed in the Prenda neighbourhood because he was supposedly not wearing a mask.
Not the first, nor the second, nor even the third. There have been many. Police violence against defenceless people is escalating before our eyes. Since the death of street vendor Juliana Cafrique, several innocent people have died.
The questions we ask are: 1. until when will we see these deaths? 2. what will the state be doing to prevent these types of deaths from happening again? It is not enough to detain and judge the officers, it is necessary to make a plan with concrete measures to reduce the likelihood of this type of event occurring, from the training of officers to their weapons and control.
I remind you that the police should protect citizens and be synonymous with security and not a cause of death for defenceless people who, completely unarmed, pose no threat to uniformed and armed men…
I am surprised at the authorities’ silence in the face of so many deaths, at a time when police violence is the cause of a wave of demonstrations around the world following the death of George Floyd by a policeman.
Journalist Felix Abias wrote that the only thing left to do was to put a photo of the deceased on his profile:
Só me resta colar a foto no meu perfil
Somam e seguem as mortes por conta de agentes da Polícia que parecem não saberem mais nada senão mexer o gatilho, a matar gente pobre, do subúrbio, lá onde o vento faz a curva, além da GASOSA, e no final do mês recebem os seus salários.
Sem nada acontecer de substancial como consequência desses actos perfeitamente evitáveis, como a exoneração de responsáveis de lugares-chave no Ministério do Interior, a exoneração do próprio ministro, por exemplo, é caso para dizer que os POBRES continuam sem porta-voz lá EM CIMA.
É simples. Se no meio tanta gente a morrer estivesse um filho de GENTE GRANDE, que o diabo seja surdo, alguns dirigentes já nem se lembrariam do último cargo. É esta dura realidade que custa admitir.
All I have left to do is paste the photo to my profile
Killings by police officers add up and continue, they seem to know nothing else than pulling the trigger, killing poor people from the suburbs, there where the wind makes a turn, beyond GASOSA, and at the end of the month they receive their salaries.
With nothing substantial happening as a consequence of these perfectly avoidable acts, such as the dismissal of key figures in the Interior Ministry, the dismissal of the minister himself, for example, it goes to show that the POOR remain without a spokesperson there UP ABOVE.
It's simple. If in the middle of so many people dying there was a child of THE BIG PEOPLE, let the devil be deaf, some leaders would not even remember their last job. It's this harsh reality that's hard to face
Activist Nelson Dembo, better known as “Gangsta”, was outraged and called his followers to join a virtual conversation on his Facebook account, where he argued that Teokamba's murder showed the silence and hypocrisy of Angola’s public figures who, faced with barbarities committed by the state, did not speak out against it:
#Família hoje a partir das 22:00 entrarei em #directo para abordar, a #morte #gratuita do #jovem do #prenda as mãos da #Polícia #Nacional
Polícia está que tem como função a #proteção e a #segurança do povo #Angolano mas que múltiplas vezes atropela a #ética #deontológica da própria #Instituição, regras estás que só aparece no papel mas na prática é a #inversão dos #valores…
Cadê os #Músicos para darem a cara por estas mortes constantes a mão da polícia??? Só precisam do povo Angolano para ir comprar os vossos #CDS na praça de #independência?..
#Family today from 10:00 pm I will be on #direct to address the gratuitous death of the #young man from Prenda at the hands of the #national police
The police has as its function the #protection and #security of the Angolan people, but very often tramples on the #ethics of the #Institution itself, rules only appear on paper but in practice it is the reverse of these #values…
Where are the #Musicians to put a face to these constant killings at the hands of the police??? Do you only need the Angolan people to go buy your #CDS in #independence square?…

author: Simão Hossi


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Can Sudan’s new government solve the annual mass flooding crisis? · Global Voices
Khattab Hamad

Rain and floods in Sudan, August 2013. Photo by Nafeer Sudan via Flickr CC BY 2.0.
This year's rainy season led to disaster when the Bout Dam collapsed during the annual Eid al-Adha holidays in Sudan.
The town of Bout, situated in the southeastern Blue Nile province, was severely hit by heavy rains and floods over the past week. The town of about 100,000 residents saw at least 1,200 houses destroyed, according to statistics provided by the Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS). The collapse displaced thousands and left many without access to clean water.
No government in Sudan's history has been able to solve the humanitarian disasters brought on by annual flooding in June and July, which inevitably leads to chronic destruction and loss of life.
More than 120 houses in the nearby town of Wad Abuk were also destroyed. Until now, the field teams are working to help people in Bout and Wad Abuk.
According to SRCS, there were at least four deaths, 75 houses were completely destroyed and 280 houses were partially destroyed in the Abu-Hamad locality in northern Sudan.
The East Nile area, a sub-city within Khartoum, also continues to experience mass flooding. At this time, no cars or people can pass through the area and the only way to save lives is through the use of local boats.
The East Nile area floods. Photo by Khattab Hamad, used with permission.
Rescued residents are sleeping beside the highway in tents provided by the civil defense, the Sudanese Red Crescent and a few nongovernmental organizations.
East Nile floods forced residents to flee their homes and seek assistance along the side of the highway. Photo by Khattab Hamad, used with permission.
The crisis has been compounded by a lack of city planning from Khartoum's municipal leadership.
Every year in Sudan, heavy rains lead to massive flooding throughout the country including Khartoum, the capital. Citizens suffer as floodwaters destroy property and take lives. Recovery efforts strain Sudan's limited financial and human resources.
Residents are often left on their own to cope and recover:
A woman repairs damages to her house, after torrential rain lead to landslides and flash floods, in the town of Umm Dawan Ban, near Khartoum, Sudan, on Aug. 2, 2020. pic.twitter.com/68a7Ure8sT
— Shanthi Fonseka (@GLSFonseka1) August 5, 2020
Nafeer, a youth-led initiative, responded swiftly to the humanitarian crisis caused by heavy rains and flash floods that struck Sudan. The term nafeer is a Sudanese social tradition that comes from an Arabic word meaning “a call to mobilize” to help people in crises.
On August 2, the group announced a call to all volunteers to a meeting on August 4, to discuss a crisis plan. The governor of Khartoum joined the meeting to support them with government resources.
Abdallah Hamdok, Sudan's prime minister, wrote a thread on Twitter detailing all the ways in which the government is prepared to address the rainy season crisis, highlighting that this rainfall has been the heaviest in 30 years:
اجتمعتُ اليوم بمقر رئاسة مجلس الوزراء بالسيدات والسادة وزراء كل من شؤون مجلس الوزراء، الداخلية، المالية، العمل والتنمية الاجتماعية، الري والموارد المائية، ووالي ولاية الخرطوم والسيد الأمين العام للمجلس القومي للدفاع المدني، وذلك لنقاش تنفيذ خطة الاستعداد للخريف المعدة مسبقاً. pic.twitter.com/Ot3iKz52Ho
— Abdalla Hamdok (@SudanPMHamdok) August 4, 2020
[Tweet 1] I met at the headquarters of the Presidency of the Cabinet, ladies and gentlemen, ministers of the Cabinet Affairs, Interior, Finance, Social Development, Irrigation and Water Resources, the Governor of Khartoum State and Mr Secretary General of the National Council for Civil Defense, to discuss the implementation of the prepared rainy season plan.
He goes on to say in his Twitter thread:
Tweet 2: The meeting decided to provide urgent shelter needs for those affected by the rains of the previous days. We also decided to allocate all machines that have been restored through the empowerment removal committee to work in the treatment of the effects of the rainy season.
Tweet 3: We have issued a directive to all states to form committees to deal with rainy season emergencies headed by the governor, provided that the National Council of Civil Defense continues to coordinate centrally and establish a media platform to own information and publish weather forecasts and actions taken by the council.
Tweet 4: We also mandated the Ministry of Labor and Social Development to address international agencies and international organizations to coordinate the response to the rainy season emergency, and we also decided to direct the Ministry of Health to prepare for the epidemics accompanying the rainy season and launch an early cholera vaccination campaign to avoid any possible epidemic outbreaks.
Tweet 5: Rain forecasts indicate that we will face an unprecedented rainy season during the past 30 years, and there are emergency measures in place to avoid the effects of long-term treatments to fix urban planning problems and ensure the safety of citizens and their property.
Tweet 6: I introduce my great thanks and pride for the active role that popular organizations, resistance committees and civil society activities initiated, to move quickly to ward off the effects of the fall as a role that evokes the authentic Sudanese values of social solidarity and the activation of the values of collective action in the journey of building and reconstruction.
Tweet 7: We will go hand-in-hand to harness all the capabilities and efforts to take advantage of the bounties of the rainy season and avoid its negative effects on citizens in all parts of the country. May God save Sudan and the people of Sudan.
A future without flooding crises requires planning to re-house displaced people living along flood routes. Sudan must also enact plans to actually benefit from heavy rain through rainfall storage and other ecological measures.

author: Khattab Hamad


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In the age of misinformation, who holds the power to categorize the ‘truth’?  · Global Voices
Mohamed Suliman

A networked globe. Photo via NeedPix, CC0.
When confronted with basic information such as ”Boston is in Massachusetts,” for instance, humans readily limit feedback to “true” or “false.” This binary framework is simple and intuitive, but the world is far more complex, and humans require more nuanced categorical frameworks to determine the truth.
When technology companies and researchers go through the process of building and constructing frameworks for information categories, they are often prone to bias. Yet, companies obscure these decisions from ordinary citizens who eventually consume this information every day and ultimately shape their lives around it.
In Africa, where mis- and disinformation campaigns often go viral online, especially during politically charged periods, US-based tech and social media companies become arbiters of the “truth.” Millions of Africans use search engines and platforms like Google, Twitter and Facebook, who filter information through their own biased lenses.
To complicate matters, these tech and social media platforms, who act as main gateways for news and opinions — often adopt dissimilar frameworks to categorize information.
For example, Google, the giant of the search industry, has developed a feature to check viral claims by categorizing news using a scale of False, Mostly False, Half True, Mostly True, and True. Facebook uses a similar rating but instead focuses on False, Partly False or False rating in reports submitted to them. Meanwhile, Twitter recently announced its framework that has three categories Misleading Information, Disputed Claims, and Unverified Claims.
Fact-checking organizations differ radically in their categorizations.
For example, Politifact invented what is called Truth-O-Meter. While it follows the standard “true, mostly true, mostly false, false” rating, it also uses a “pants on fire” category for statements that are “not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.” Snopes uses a very different method with 14 categories.
By contrast, Africa Check uses eight categories. To guide their decisions they rate statements of fact, leave the burden of proof with the speaker, focus on significance, use the best evidence available at the time and commit to updating information and clarifying mistakes when “new or better evidence appears.”
Meanwhile, Full Fact, a UK-based fact-checking organization, uses no categorization at all — leaving it for the reader to judge.
However, tech platforms who launch partnership programs with fact-checking organizations usually demand that their partners adhere to their categorization framework. For example, Facebook expects its fact-checking organizations to rate reviewed content according to its Facebook published framework. Over time, this results in the dominance of a single world view, making Facebook a central arbiter of truth.
Many other categorizations are published without sharing the rationale behind them, yet everyday users are asked to adopt and adhere to them. When platforms change these categorizations, based on the views of a few experts or engineers, society is expected, again, to adapt and update their worldviews accordingly.
Researchers have attempted to find solutions to the convoluted problems of information categorization. Claire Wardle, a known scholar in the field, created a categorization of seven types: satire or parody, misleading content, imposter content, fabricated content, false connection, false context and manipulated content.
And Bill Adar, a professor at Duke Reporters Lab, has taken a unique approach to information categorization with his MediaReview Taxonomy, which engages a democratic deliberation process to categorize information through public feedback.
But categorization is not a mere technical issue — it deeply influences how citizens think and reason about the world. Cognitive scientists have shown the importance of categorization, with some who argue that “to cognize is to categorize.”
Others warn of the danger of categorization. Derek Cabera, professor at Cornell University, wrote an essay called, “The dark sides of categorical thinking.” Bart de Langhe and Philip Fernbach penned a Harvard Business Review article titled, “The danger of Categorical Thinking.”
The categorization of information is the real authority — but in disguise. Those who hold the power to categorize information can, unwittingly, impose their own perceptions of reality onto citizens.
Categorization of information is an irrefutable necessity, but citizens must remain vigilant in terms of who holds the power to do it.  The process of categorization must be transparent, and indeed, subject to constant rational and open scrutiny by society.

author: Mohamed Suliman


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Minister accused of rape gets appointed. What does this say about France? · Global Voices
Jade Dussart

Participants at a rally in Paris on 10 July 2020 express their anger following the 6 July cabinet reshuffle. Writings on a few of their signs: “Ministry of Shame,” “A State that Glorifies Rapists,” and “Governed by Rapist Culture.” Photo @sandfemi, used by generous permission of photographer, who wishes to remain anonymous.
The appointment to the ministry of the interior of a man under investigation for rape and sexual harassment reveals a certain tolerance for violence against women along the fringes of French politics. It also raises broader questions about the normalization of sexist remarks and actions in our society.
On 6 July 2020, as part of a ministerial reshuffle, Prime Minister Jean Castex chose as interior minister Gérald Darmanin, a man being investigated for several charges, including rape.
In 2015, a woman from the city of Tourcoing, where Darmanin was mayor, accused him of “abuse of weakness” for forcing her to have sexual relations in exchange for housing and a job. The inquiry was dismissed in 2018, but it may be taken up again after the association Pourvoir féministe [Feminist provider] filed a court motion on 21 July 2020. In the interim, a second woman accused him of rape, sexual harassment, and fraudulent breach of trust. She filed a complaint three times, and was denied each time. But in June 2020, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered investigations to resume.
The appointment of Darmanin launched multiple feminist protests denouncing a “reshuffle of shame.” The local feminist group, Nous Toutes 35 [All of us 35], complained, “With an alleged rapist as head of police, they’re telling us that a woman’s life is less important than a man’s ability to climb the political ladder.”
The appointment of another minister, a notorious anti feminist attorney, also poses problems. He is Eric Dupond-Moretti, named head of the Justice Department. A critic of the #MeToo movement, Dupond-Moretti had lashed out in particular at new measures against street harassment on the grounds that some women “were sad no one whistled at them anymore.”
In the daily Le Monde, Céline Piques, spokesperson for the Osez le féminisme [Dare to be a feminist]] association, stressed:
These are representatives of the police and justice, two key institutions in the experiences of victims of sexual violence.
In addition to feminist groups, numerous politicians have called for Darmanin to resign, on both the left and the right of the political aisle. Facing them is a rapidly organizing defense.
Since the new interior minister was appointed on 6 July 2020, his defenders have consistently waved the flag of the presumption of innocence. This legal principle states that a person suspected of a crime cannot be considered guilty until he has been found guilty by a court. While Darmanin has been implicated in two lawsuits, he has in fact never been convicted.
When President Macron was asked about the situation during a TV interview on 14 July 2020, he replied that he would “guarantee the presumption of innocence,” which he felt superseded “emotional reactions” and the “democracy of opinion.” In an opinion piece published the next day, 167 majority parliamentarians reminded us that “only our legal institutions can say who is guilty and who is not,” while excoriating “conviction by the populace.”
According to many observers, this line of defence conforming to legal principle avoids the tricky question of politics: What message does this appointment send?
Beligh Nabli, public law expert, explains on France Culture radio station:
The argument that “He is presumed innocent” is totally deceptive. Yes, that’s true according to the law, but that’s not the question. The question is whether that undermines confidence in our representatives….it is a question of both political ethics and confidence in democracy.
Madeline Da Silva, a member of the Nous toutes [All of us women] organization, asks :
Do you think they would have appointed someone under investigation for another crime, a murder or an assassination? No, this happens only for crimes that involved sexist and sexual violence, like rape…. We are talking about political choices and the messages being sent.
The new prime minister is taking “full responsibility” for this political choice.
Defenders of the new interior minister also rely on dated, sexist motives that appear to be normalized.
When asked about Darmanin, Macron spoke of the “relationship of trust from man to man” that connects them. Many interpreted this statement as an expression of the male solidarity and clannishness that rule in the halls of power. “Could he have chosen a worse defense?” wonders reporter Laure Bretton.
Such solidarity looks suspicious when you consider that several of the deputies who have publicly defended Darmanin have themselves been accused of sexual harassment and assault.
The political fringe also makes use of a well-known tactic in the #MeToo era: victimizing the accused, which tends to make the accuser invisible. According to the president, Darmanin is a man who has been “wounded by these attacks.” An op-ed signed by 200 representatives described him as being “targeted by disparate attack groups.” Darmanin himself says he is the victim of a “man hunt” and denounces “a form of injustice.”
Meanwhile, the plaintiffs watch as their pasts are picked apart and their integrity questioned.
Another revealing misstep by Darmanin was when he admitted to having had “the life of a young man.” A female activist analyzed this remark on Twitter:
The problem is that we have a culture where “the life of a young man” means behaviors of domination and predation over women. To excuse (and thereby validate and maintain) this culture at the highest levels of government is an extremely serious ethical failing. #Darmanin https://t.co/9r7ZXpVjmq
— Claire Lejeune (@ClaireMLejeune) July 18, 2020
Journalist Christine Ollivier reported the highly problematic comments by an anonymous minister that appear to reveal the breadth of the phenomenon in politics:
Off mic, a minister answered a question from AFP about Darmanin by saying, “If every guy who acted badly with girls can’t have a position of responsibility anymore, we’re going to have a problem.”
— Christine Ollivier (@Chr_Ollivier) July 21, 2020
Without meaning to, Darmanin’s supporters are highlighting the power mechanisms that contribute to the silence and to the impunity of the aggressors.
Gérald Darmanin joins a long list of male politicians accused of harassment or sexual assault: Georges Tron (Republican), Denis Baupin (Greens), Jean Lassalle (Center), Gilbert Cuzou and Pierre Joxe (Socialists), Christophe Arend (En Marche!), etc. While some cases are ongoing, no convictions have been handed down at the time of this writing. Sexual harassment is punishable in France by two years of prison, sexual assault by seven years, and rape by a minimum of 15 years.
Nearly three years after the #MeToo movement exploded around the world, France has not had a single major conviction, despite this new outlet for free speech of the victims and the swelling number of testimonies against men in power at #BalanceTonPorc [Squeal on your pig.]
According to the office of the Secretary of State for Equality between Men and Women, only one percent of rapes or attempted rapes led to a conviction in 2018. While some make reference to the French cultural exception, the underlying impunity shows it is time to recognize the systemic sexism and culture of rape permeating our society.

author: Jade Dussart


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‘Shadow Means Strength, Shadow is Invincible’: A conversation with Turkish artist Selma Gurbuz · Global Voices
Omid Memarian

Forest. Full Moon. ink on hand made paper, 155x300cm, 2012
Turkish artist Selma Gürbüz is fascinated with shadows.
“Shadow is strength. Shadow is invincible. Nothing can overpower the shadow. Shadows follow you; they change,” said Gürbüz in an interview with Global Voices.
Gürbüz was born in 1960 in Istanbul, where she currently works. She graduated from Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts in 1984 following two years at Exeter College of Art Design. Since her first exhibition in 1986, Gürbüz has been part of numerous solo and group exhibitions in both in Turkey and abroad.
Gürbüz's works create worlds from imaginary creatures, ghosts, and threads drawn from The 1001 Nights, and draw inspiration from history. While her works might seem disconnected from the outside world or current events, they are fundamentally concerned with issues such as race, women, love, identity, and nature.
Excerpts from the interview follow.
Selma Gürbüz: Economic and political instability in Turkey have long affected the local art world. Collectors’ interest has slightly declined compared to previous years. However, I see this as temporary. A number of our important artists continue to produce works that make waves in the global art world. So, the interest that was shown in the works of Turkish artists both nationally and internationally remains. The Istanbul Biennale is one of the most important such events anywhere in the world.
Arter, a non-profit initiative that brings together artists and audiences in celebration of today’s art in all its forms and disciplines, relocated to a new venue last year. This new space boasts 18,000 square meters of indoor area and houses, exhibition galleries, terrace, performance halls, learning areas, library, conservation laboratory, arts bookstore, and a café.
The Odunpazarı Modern Museum opened in the city of Eskişehir. The Istanbul Modern Museum will soon move to a new, much larger building. There is no doubt that all these developments will greatly benefit the visibility and production of contemporary art within Turkey.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on the art world, internationally and within Turkey. International organizations will continue to be adversely affected, including through the impact on international travel, and therefore I think it is important that countries show more support and take an interest in their own artists, helping them to overcome these difficulties. The art markets will localize for a few years and this, in turn, will give a different kind of motivation to artists.
Maybe you feel like it, oil on canvas, 155x230cm. 2016
SG: Black, for me, is fundamentally, shadow. In life, I've always enjoyed looking at shadows. My discovery of shadows is influenced not only by my interest in the shadow theater of my own country but also of the Far East, such as China, Japan, and Indonesia. Some of these shadow plays are quite vocal in their political discourse.
My first piece of shadow theater was an installation I prepared for the Kuandu Biennale in Taiwan. The papier mâché figures I created moved among themselves and I projected their reflection onto the wall. As well as their own movements, they threw black shadows onto the walls. Their movements transformed into an erotic theater piece.
Later, I prepared other shadow plays for an exhibition of mine in Yokohama in Japan. In these plays I was also there within the shadows. It was a difficult piece. I was in front of the curtain this time, with the shadow puppets in my hands. They were animal puppets, roosters, ravens and suchlike. Along with my puppets, I entered into a performance that resembled a battle, an actual physical fight. It turned into a play in which the ostensible struggle was between such emotions as jealousy, passion, and vulnerability. In time, these black shadows made it into my paintings. Shadow means strength. Shadow is invincible. Nothing can overpower shadow. Shadows follow you; they change. Along with the movement of light itself, the position and form of shadow also changes. Shadow can change the shape of an object. Shadow lends length. That which is real does not change, but its shadow can change. Shadow is a two-dimensional representation. It shows us ourselves.
Woman with Roosters, oil on canvas, 155x230cm. 2011
SG: I usually portray myself in my depictions of the figures of women in my paintings. The vulnerability, courage, caprices, and smiles of my female figures are reflections of my own feelings. They are the innocent figures of an undefined time. They are vulnerable. They are flirty. Instead of being in dialogue with the viewer, the viewer can instead form a strange closeness with them. They are mystical and naïve while also being courageous and intelligent. They have been trained in the ways of both the east and the west. Each one has a different story in my world. And I'm not talking here about a story as a product of fiction. These, instead, are stories that play out in an impromptu fashion; stories that have broken through into the free movement of the imagination. Every story gives birth to a new one and they all have this element of discipline and sustainability. For them, nature is extremely important, they feel the yearning for nature. They miss nature. These women see nature in its tiniest details, they study it, paint it, and wish to be consumed by it: to be lost in nature. It is this courage that gives them the power to be free.
Dance in the Forest, Ink on handmade paper, 61×118 1/10 in, 2013.
SG: It starts with a mental picture. Then I ponder on which images I can use to compose that vision within a painting, and the kind of dramatic effect it will have. I have often felt that people who look at my paintings can read them like a story and that I have somehow enabled them to do so. But we have to distinguish here between this kind of storytelling and the compositional coherence of a literary author and the written tales that they build up through their layers, the gradation that takes place from start to finish as they compose drafts, erase, and rewrite.
In my creative process, the continuation of a spontaneous flow is clearly visible. I open up the doors to impromptu creation. There is nothing in my pictures that I cover up with something else. For example, I'd never say, “this part hasn't turned out quite as I'd have liked, so I'll change the paper.” Whatever I do is represented there. This is an idiosyncrasy that makes me, me. But at the same time, this can be a drag. The process requires the highest degree of concentration. What's more, I have to know from the outset exactly what I want. Then again, that's not to say that I will sit in front of a painting having toiled and performed every calculation. I like to leave myself to be free. My free form associations can cause the painting to flow in a new direction. And I feel it's these surprises that make a painting a painting.
SG: I don't make political paintings. I don't sit in front of a piece of work and feel the pressure of daily politics. The themes of the paintings, the subjects and contents are separate and are not influenced by everyday events in life or current developments. And therefore I can't really say that I feel subject to a definite effect coming directly from that context. However, I am affected indirectly, there's no doubt. And not only as an artist, I am affected first and foremost as a person. The disappointments I suffer in the outside world due to events that occur tend to turn me deeper into my own inner world. This is not a form of submission but can be better thought of as a stronger impulse to bring out the artistic powers. I say that I do not get directly affected, and then I suddenly remember a painting I made some three years ago.  In the name of defending the rights and freedoms of those people who are oppressed in so many places in the world I painted a Statue of Freedom. The Statue of Freedom was only symbolic here of course. And to look at that painting again now in light of what is currently happening in the United States gives rise to new readings of it in totally new contexts and I personally find that very interesting.
Left: Ad Gloriam, ink on hand made paper, 220×120 cm. 2016. Middle: “Faced with Myself”, Archival Pigment Print 17/30 ed., 83x42cm,2012. Right: Serpentine. ink on hand made paper, 240x122cm, 2011.
SG: Istanbul was the capital city of three huge empires: the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. It has a vast, rich, history and culture that very few other world cities can challenge. Istanbul's rich identity results from a synthesis of “east” and “west”. When you take a walk on the historical peninsula of Istanbul you can see Ottoman miniatures, Byzantine mosaics, historical mosques and churches all of which are hundreds of years old, in just one day. Being born and brought up in a city such as this has had very direct effects on my art. For example, the Ottoman hunting miniatures or the paintings of Byzantine saints are only a few of the subjects I have portrayed. At the same time, the lands of Anatolia, which countless civilizations have made their home throughout history, are a place of incredibly rich mythology. Some of the references I go back to frequently for my paintings are those such as Kybele, the goddess figure whose roots we find in the Hittite and Phrygian civilizations. In addition to this, I love to return to universal myths, such as those of Adam and Eve or Medusa. I always find that I discover new points of view, new aspects, every time I go back to them.
Night. Sleeping Beauties. ink on hand made paper, 155x300cm, 2011
SG: Two years ago I visited Tanzania with my friend Burak Acar. We went on safari in the Serengeti and took videos and photographs for a whole week. Africa opened new doors of inspiration to me. I've been working in Africa for a very long time. In November 2020 I will launch my new solo exhibition at the Istanbul Modern. In the exhibition my paintings and sculptures inspired by Africa will be exhibited. Alongside these we'll be setting up various video installations showing the films that we took whilst in the Serengeti.  At the moment I am directing a team and we're working to get it all ready. I am really excited about this.

author: Omid Memarian


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The chilling tale of mass surveillance and spying in Rwanda · Global Voices
Louis Gitinywa

As part of the 2017 Rwanda Green Growth Week, participant documents zero-carbon construction materials, photo by Rwanda Green Fund via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0.
This article is part of UPROAR, a Small Media initiative that is urging governments to address digital rights challenges at the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
The Rwandan state is built on two competing narratives.
On the one hand, Rwanda is the West’s “donor darling,” seen as a shining example of African development, especially when it comes to internet development and digital transformation. Rwanda has received global acclaim for its expansive mobile network coverage, impressive 4G network coverage, and local smartphone manufacturing.
On the other hand, it operates as an authoritarian state with hegemonic, tightly centralized power. The ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party has positioned itself as the only guarantor of peace, security and development after the country underwent a massive political transition in the wake of the 1994 genocide and civil war, when many politicians, journalists, and civil society actors were killed, displaced or discredited.
The state justifies its tight control over media freedoms, suppression of dissent, and hostility toward opposition as issues of national unity, safety and security, specifically targeting a politically active diaspora who fled Rwanda to live in exile after the war, including former members of armed rebel movements based in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as former government figures who fled Rwanda to join political parties in Europe and the United States.
Given the country’s history of divisive ethnic violence, the government has developed a sophisticated strategy of actively monitoring and dismantling opposition voices through cyber-surveillance, threats and violence — not just within the Great Lakes region but across the world.
Over the past three years, the state has also broadened its local mass surveillance capacities with the recent implementation of closed-circuit TV cameras network (CCTV) throughout neighborhoods in Kigali, the capital.
There have been many examples of the state allegedly deploying technology against dissidents and opposition members, as evidenced in several court cases where the prosecution presented private communications sourced from mobile chats apps.
In September 2017, evidence surfaced that the national security and intelligence service was using technology and other spyware to monitor the online activities of dissidents and opposition members.
For example, just a few months after politician Diane Rwigara announced her presidential bid in 2017,  she was arrested, along with her mother and sister, on trumped charges of tax evasion and incitement against the government. During the pre-trial hearing, the prosecution presented a WhatsApp audio message allegedly taken from the mobile phones of Rwigara and her mother as evidence against them. It is believed that the authorities got hold of the messages through the use of spyware.
In 2019, an investigative report by the Financial Times shed more light on the state’s tendency to closely monitor citizens’ social media usage. The report revealed the state’s possible use of Pegasus spyware, made by an Israeli tech company.
Through Pegasus spyware, security agencies can collect data from citizens’ smartphones without a trace, including phone calls, contacts, passwords and any data transmitted over applications like WhatsApp or Skype.
The right to privacy is enshrined in the constitution of the Republic of Rwanda as well as in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Rwanda is a signatory.
But law nº60/2013 regulating the interception of communications authorizes the prosecutor to issue a “verbal warrant” to national security and intelligence service to watch, intercept and decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource for reasons of national security.
Further, the absence of specific legislation on personal data protection has given Rwandan security services unfettered discretion to collect data with impunity.
When the state abuses surveillance tools, it puts all citizens at risk. Rwanda currently lacks an appropriate legal framework to guide the usage of online technologies in the context of national security.
The state must consider how to regulate the usage and application of these new technologies. Authorization must rely on objective evidence that comes from a judge or another independent, legal body. Additionally, the state should prohibit the indiscriminate collection of personal data, making allowances only when absolutely necessary.

author: Louis Gitinywa


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Another Australian university criticized for censoring voices supporting Hong Kong’s human rights · Global Voices
Fiona So

The University of New South Wales received criticism for removing an article calling out the decline of human rights in Hong Kong. Photo from Flickr page of Sompop S (CC BY 2.0)
In the latest of a string of incidents sparking national debate over undue Chinese influence on Australian university campuses, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) was criticized for its decision to delete an article published on its website that urges the international community to put pressure on China to “wind back recent infringements on human rights in Hong Kong”. The article was written by a member of UNSW's media team, and quotes director of Human Rights Watch Australia and adjunct professor at the university, Elaine Pearson.
A Twitter post from UNSW's official account promoting the article was also deleted. The article was later restored, briefly removed again, then reinstated to a different section of the website and labeled as an opinion piece.
UNSW happy to confirm to me they deleted tweet linking to @PearsonElaine article as it was being “misconstrued” as the opinion of the University. Yet they haven’t felt the need to delete any other tweets quoting academics. Story here: https://t.co/Td9baMn14r https://t.co/MvUPAmORWL
— Clare Armstrong (@ByClare) August 3, 2020
The article refers to the recently enacted National Security Law, the implementation of which has raised serious concerns amongst Hong Kong citizens, international human rights advocates, and legal experts over how it criminalizes a wide range of speech and acts of protest, weakens judicial independence, and asserts extra-territorial jurisdiction.
It appears the article was originally removed due to complaints lodged by pro-Chinese Communist Party supporters, some of whom are students attending UNSW. Several students also reportedly contacted the Chinese consulate to assist them in pressuring the university.
I understand there was a backlash from some pro-Chinese Communist Party supporters complaining about the article and asking UNSW to remove it.
— Elaine Pearson (@PearsonElaine) August 2, 2020
A pro-democracy Chinese student at UNSW sent me these screenshots from WeChat. Pro-CCP students want UNSW to issue an official apology and they want Professor @PearsonElaine to recant her statement criticizing Hong Kong human rights abuses pic.twitter.com/HSVHF0ENtt
— Drew Pavlou 柏乐志 (@DrewPavlou) August 1, 2020
Update: Screenshots shared with me proved that Chinese students at @UNSW have contacted the Chinese consulate, hoping to seek their support in pressuring the school over the opinion piece that they published last Friday.
— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) August 3, 2020
China's state-owned news outlet the Global Times also published a piece focusing on ‘outraged Chinese students’ who want the university to apologize for publishing the article.
Oh hey nothing to see here just a PRC state media outlet demanding that a university in Australia delete an article that discusses recent stripping away of human rights in Hong Kong. I’m sure everyone sees no evidence of interference right? https://t.co/0YYAmBcXKQ
— Kevin Carrico (@kevincarrico) August 1, 2020
However, the backlash UNSW received over the incident came overwhelmingly from concerned citizens on social media, university alumni and Australian Federal Members of Parliament from both major parties who disagreed with the university's actions and called for adherence to traditions of free speech and academic freedom.
The reader comments on this story are pretty scathing about UNSW's actions. Of about 70 comments, I can't see one supporting the university. Some real anger from people identifying as UNSW alumni. https://t.co/iAXE1h36rs
— Fergus Hunter (@fergushunter) August 3, 2020
My latest Cartoon on @UNSW kowtowing to China.@UNSW removed tweets about @PearsonElaine‘s article on #HongKong‘s Human rights condition after pressured by Chinese nationalists.
Please see the thread below for more details and development. https://t.co/uctEjOVMzl pic.twitter.com/xXOTojlBdV
— 巴丢草 Badiucao (@badiucao) August 1, 2020
Education Minister Dan Tehan has warned the university free speech is paramount after it deleted tweets about human rights in Hong Kong. https://t.co/5yeWseo5b0
— The Sydney Morning Herald (@smh) August 3, 2020
Several days after the incident, UNSW President Ian Jacobs issued an apology for the way in which the situation was handled in an email to university staff. He cited UNSW's ‘unequivocal commitment to freedom of expression and academic freedom’, but reiterated that the tweet was removed as it appeared to represent the university's view, rather than the view of an individual:
UNSW President, Professor Ian Jacobs, has apologised after a China article from Human Rights Watch's Elaine Pearson was removed following social media pile-on – says “There is no excuse for our failure” and tweets of the article “should not have been removed” pic.twitter.com/KEf5jyijoT
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) August 5, 2020
In notable contrast to the above statement, another letter written in Chinese by the university that surfaced on social media and is addressed to UNSW's ‘business partners’ apologizes for the disturbance caused by the incident, and thanks them for their understanding.
?@UNSW‘s apology in Chinese language is totally oppsite to its English version.
It says a big SORRY to China for posting @PearsonElaine‘s HK article on UNSW’s twitter.
The Chinese version issued by Laurie Pearcey, Chief Executive Officer of UNSW Global Pty.
Again, used by GT. pic.twitter.com/cFUa9Y1EyN
— 巴丢草 Badiucao (@badiucao) August 6, 2020
Global Times picked up on the Chinese statement and promptly published an article entitled, ‘UNSW apologizes to Chinese students after controversial Hong Kong article':
.@UNSW apologizes to Chinese students after publishing a controversial article believed to support #HK secession, saying the article only represented the author's personal opinion. But some Chinese students believed the apology came too late. https://t.co/Cfz6pIC0Sm pic.twitter.com/c9kzCkS3Mh
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) August 6, 2020
The incident is one of several that have recently thrown a worrying spotlight onto the potential influence wielded by the Chinese Communist Party over Australian universities.
In May of this year, University of Queensland (UQ) student Drew Pavlou was suspended for two years following a disciplinary hearing over alleged misconduct linked to his activism in support of democracy in Hong Kong. His suspension was later reduced to one semester (until 13 November 2020), but Pavlou has been banned from all campuses and removed from his elected position in the UQ senate, the university's governing body. UQ maintains that the sanctions have nothing to do with Pavlou's political views regarding China or Hong Kong.
We fully expect the Human Rights Commission to overturn UQ’s disgraceful decision to suspend me and overturn my democratic election to the Senate. All of the world knows that UQ targeted me simply for my criticism of the Chinese government https://t.co/it56OWYQgH
— Drew Pavlou 柏乐志 (@DrewPavlou) August 4, 2020
Last year, UQ was one of several sites across Australia where supporters of China clashed with pro-democracy protestors speaking out against police brutality and Hong Kong's controversial extradition bill, which now forms part of the new National Security Law. Chinese state media publicly praised the pro-China protestors. As a result, some Federal government MPs warned of Beijing's growing role in censoring certain viewpoints on Australian universities. Tim Wilson, a Federal Member who sits on the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, said:
Many MPs have a concern about Australian university campuses and whether they're both a bastion for free speech, which they need to be, but more critically the role that foreign influences like the Confucius Institutes are having — any influence over curriculum and of course the influence of foreign governments on protests.
Concerns over foreign influence extend to the nature of research partnerships between Australian universities and Chinese state entities. Last year, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Curtin University were prompted to review their research approval procedures after investigations revealed that lucrative joint research initiatives around artificial intelligence and surveillance technology could have been used by the Chinese government to facilitate human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
While Australian universities embroiled in China-related controversies have repeatedly emphasized their commitment to human rights and freedom of expression, the fact that many are heavily financially dependent on international students from China adds a complicating element. Fees from Chinese students at the University of Sydney, for example, make up one-fifth of the university's total annual revenue.
The Chinese students threatened to deprive the university of Chinese cash — by themselves not attending. The way they treat themselves as instruments of Chinese govt repression, as mere customers at higher ed institutions, is frankly sad. https://t.co/eiwzcAG1rD
— Yaqiu Wang 王亚秋 (@Yaqiu) August 3, 2020
An independent review released in March last year by former High Court Chief Justice Robert French concluded that there was no evidence of systemic threats to free speech in Australian higher education. As the UNSW incident shows, however, the ability of Australian universities to safeguard an environment conducive to open political debate remains under sharp scrutiny.

author: Fiona So


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Calls, SMS, and radio: How pre-internet tech helps low-income children’s schooling in India’s lockdown · Global Voices
Rezwan

Parents performing educational activities with children using ThinkZone's resources received via mobile phone. Screenshot of YouTube video by ThinkZone.
As classes shifted to virtual environments in India following the COVID-19 lockdown, students from remote areas and low-income families who lacked internet access faced tremendous challenges in keeping up with their studies.
India entered lockdown in March and only in June began gradually lifting restrictions. Classes were shifted to virtual environments, despite the fact that only a quarter of all Indian households have internet access.
An award-winning non-profit start-up from the city of Cuttack, in the state of Odisha, has found a way to help struggling families: Through non-internet-based technologies, such as voice calls, SMS, and radio, they're providing low-cost education to over 5,000 children in 400 villages.
Social entrepreneur Binayak Acharya came up with the idea five years ago. Along with community educators, Anganwadi (rural child care workers), and primary school teachers, he developed an early-grade education methodology called ThinkZone for children from under-resourced communities.
During the lockdown, ThinkZone's methods proved effective. As schools shut down, ThinkZone partnered with FM 104 Radio Choklate, a local station in Odisha, to broadcast lessons. Chandrima Banerjee reviewed the program at the Times of India — “It’s like Zoom, minus the video and the interaction. But it works.”
This is the place where ThinkZone’s Early-Childhood Education program started five years ago. Image used with permission.
ThinkZone's educators also use voice calls, interactive voice response (IVR) and SMS to teach modules. The system is free and operates in two ways: With “Pull Calling,” parents call a number or send an SMS which will grant them access to daily learning modules for their children. In “Push Calling,” ThinkZone offers daily 1-2 minutes of IVR-based calls and tailored SMS modules.
Acharya's organization also developed “Do-It-Yourself” activities for parents to use with their children at home, in combination with non-internet-based technologies.
Children in four districts of Odisha – Cuttack, Kendrapara, Khordha, and Bhadrak – have benefitted from ThinkZone’s programs. Their initiatives also employ over 300 women from the districts.
What keeps us going? Read these amazing stories, reviews and feedback from parents who have been a part of our Home Based Learning Program.
Celebrating #NationalParentsDayhttps://t.co/LfBUFYGPeO pic.twitter.com/lOcjmzkjzi
— ThinkZone (@ThinkZoneIndia) July 26, 2020
According to UNESCO, over 1.37 billion students in 138 countries worldwide have been affected by school and university closures since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 60.2 million teachers are away from the classroom, and many of them are teaching through some sort of technology.
While the school year in India is due to begin in September, there is still no clear national plan for resuming offline classes in the country.
“Many children will not be returning return right away because parents will be hesitant, wanting to keep their children safe,” Acharya said in an interview with the International Youth Foundation.
While other non-profits in India are using similar methods, such as providing remote classes through popular low-bandwidth apps like WhatsApp, wide-scale solutions aren't simple. ThinkZone's 5,000 children are a drop in the ocean when considering India's 320 million students affected by the lockdown.
Meanwhile, Twitter user Sangsan reminds that some students in the Indian state of Mangalore have to reach the hilltop to attend online classes due to connectivity issues:
Dear @narendramodi @HPoonja Sir. Right to education is for every student/child. More than 100 kids in this remote village are struggling for the same by climbing hills in forest areas, facing risk from wild animals too. Please help. https://t.co/u8RDH4MxeR pic.twitter.com/NQEB7ipCGd
— Sangsan (@Sangsan31796804) July 28, 2020
Barsha can communicate better with her family and friends after she joined the ThinkZone's education program. Image used with permission.
Besides, not just children from low-income community suffer from the transition to virtual — children with learning disabilities also have a harder time adapting, as Researcher Seema Nath tweets:
Children with a disability across several states in India including Odisha, are facing a huge risk of dropping out of school as they are not being able to cope with online/digital medium for their classes during the Covid-19 pandemic.https://t.co/LPStlO3X48
— Seema Nath (@seemanath) July 27, 2020
And Janhavi Apte writes an Op-Ed at Statecraft urging the government to build better infrastructures for remote learning:
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the severe inequalities that exist between the rich and the poor, rural and urban households, and between males and females. These disparities lay bare the pitfalls in access to education in India, even on virtual platforms. While a push towards remote learning is understandable in these trying times, the current system is insufficient to serve as a suitable alternative to in-person learning. Following the current trajectory, an inability or unwillingness to build and strengthen the education infrastructure in the country will only push the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged even further into the margins of society, and even worse, leave them behind.

author: Rezwan


text:
COVID-19 and China’s information control policy · Global Voices
Weiboscope HKU

COVID-19 outbreak world map. Image from Wikimedia (CC: AT-SA)
The following post is written by Dr. Fu Kingwah, associate professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the Hong Kong University and convener of censorship monitoring projects, Weibosocope and Wechatscope. The post was originally published on Meedan’s Misinfodemic Report on July 28, 2020. An edited version is republished on Global Voices with the permission of Dr. Fu and Meedan's Misinfodemic team.
China’s strategy to control COVID-19 narratives has become a global concern as the coronavirus has claimed more than 700,000 lives worldwide by early August. The origin of the virus has become a most contentious issue in international diplomacy and will likely continue to make an impact on the world's politics.
On March 12, 2020, China’s deputy director of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian published an unusual tweet. It claimed that the United States army brought COVID-19 to China when the country participated in the October 2019 Military Olympic Games. The claim, if not a conspiracy, was not supported by any evidence. It spread like wildfire, becoming a global piece of misinformation about the origin of the pandemic.
A few days later, disinformation messages arrived on the cell phones and social media feeds of individual American citizens. One post read: “The Trump administration is about to lock down the entire country,” which the White House later said to be false. United States’ intelligence officials, who spoke with the New York Times on the condition of anonymity, have attributed the messages to Chinese operatives, and considered the tactic to be “unprecedented.”
Weiboscope, a censorship monitoring project that monitors the Chinese social platform Weibo for disinformation, misinformation, and censorship, has observed how the Chinese government exerts information control over COVID-19 narratives inside China since the early stage of the outbreak.
On the afternoon of December 31, 2019, a Weibo post read, “Wuhan pneumonia cannot be judged to be SARS. Wuhan has the only virus laboratory in the country and is also a world-class virology laboratory. There are ways to deal with the virus. If Wuhan can’t figure it out, no one can handle it.” It was swiftly censored within an hour.
The post mentioned both the SARS-like nature of the virus, suggesting its high infection rate, and the Wuhan laboratory, signaling the origin of the virus. Based on our knowledge of the government’s censorship system, both of these characteristics seem to be attributable to the decision to remove the post from the social platform.
At the time, social media was already seeing speculations that a new kind of pneumonia was linked to a SARS-like disease, according to Weiboscope data. Ophthalmologist Dr. Li Wenliang, who learned about the then-mysterious illness in a hospital, had sent a message in the popular Chinese private messaging app WeChat warning other medical doctors about the unnamed disease. Wenliang was then accused, along with another six people, of disturbance of public order by local authorities. He later died of the disease that would be known as COVID-19.
On December 31, 2019, the same day that post was removed from Weibo, and shortly after Wenliang’s warning, the Chinese government claimed that the “viral pneumonia cases” had “no apparent pattern of human-to-human transmission” and were “preventable and controllable.” It also informed the World Health Organization and the United States of those conclusions.
Less than a month later, on January 20, the Chinese central government announced the COVID-19 epidemic to the public. A group of leading Chinese virologists appeared on a state television program and confirmed that the virus was transmissible between humans.
Censoring virus-related messages in late December and early January may have put countless Chinese people unknowingly at risk of infection, depriving them of receiving early warnings from media and social media about the highly transmissible disease. The censorship and information control may have also delayed the general public’s response to take necessary and timely protective measures.
Internet and digital technology have been profoundly shaping China’s social, economic, and political domains. Even though the internet is known to serve as an enabler for citizen activism, the state’s repressive power is remarkably strengthened by the means of digital technologies.
Chinese authorities have strongly emphasized the concept of cyber sovereignty, which broadly extends the notion of cybersecurity as a justification to control certain online activities viewed as a potential threat to the state’s stability. Against this backdrop, China has introduced a sophisticated system to regulate traditional and online media, and the system has been integrated into all internet platforms.
The Chinese government's large and sophisticated internet filtering system, along with its digital governance framework, is usually described as the “Great Firewall.” These stringent measures make the Chinese internet virtually an intranet, in which sensitive private and public communication are filtered, and access to foreign sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are blocked.
Chinese citizens have little choice but to rely on local media, which are mostly state-owned, in order to receive information about COVID-19. International media or foreign social media sites are not accessible, and posts circulating foreign media reports are also censored. For example, our system records a censored post on January 18, which is attached with a screen capture of a coronavirus story titled “Four new confirmed cases in Wuhan; Estimated over 1,700 cases, according to expert” from the Hong Kong-based outlet Radio and Television Hong Kong. Another Weibo message titled “Express: Suspected cases with unknown pneumonia found in South Korea,” which was hyperlinked to a story of the Yonhap News Agency on January 8, 2020, was detected to be censored.
China’s Cybersecurity Law, together with real-name registration policies, have curbed online space for free expression and make anonymity virtually impossible.
Moreover, surveillance technology, such as surveillance cameras, facial recognition, and identity tracking, which have been extensively used to assist the authorities’ monitoring of self-quarantine measures during the coronavirus outbreak, has further tightened social control.
To avoid crossing the so-called “red line” (an often invisible, unknown yardstick) which could trigger the censorship of content, the suspension and termination of user accounts, or police investigations and even jail sentences, Chinese citizens have retreated to self-censorship.
It is worth noting that the “red line” is opaque and its threshold and boundaries are largely unknown: Lifestyle “clickbait” articles have been blocked, rap music has been banned, television drama series have been disapproved of, and video game services have been stopped. Three Chinese volunteers were detained by police for uploading censored COVID-19 material to Github.
With China’s economic rise and growing global influence, the country has modernized its information systems and cyber warfare capabilities. For the second-largest economy in the world, information technology is not only key to both economic growth and the vital functions of society, but also national security.
China now operates the most sophisticated online censorship system in the world, with over 854 million online citizens under its sphere (CNNIC 2019 report). Apart from traditional warfare methods such as land, sea, and air, cyberspace has become a highly recognized domain of warfare to the Chinese government.
As it increases its engagement with the world, a struggle for controlling the narrative about the Chinese Communist Party and the country has expanded to global public opinion in an ambitious external propaganda project, and the internet is one of its battle spaces.
Apart from traditional forms of propaganda published on Chinese state media, there are now cases of organized and coordinated efforts of online influence campaigns on issues deemed of core interest and importance to the Chinese government, such as the detentions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the Taiwanese presidential elections, and the more recent Hong Kong protests.
At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic is still developing, and the crisis changes daily, but it seems apparent that the world after COVID-19 will look different. Relationships between China and the world are anticipated to become bitter and more contentious.
China’s strategy to control information and its consequences has become a global concern. The US state of Missouri is suing China for economic losses and demand compensation from the Asian country due to negligence and lack of transparency in containing the virus in Wuhan.
China's information control on the narrative of COVID-19 has served as a wake-up call on how censorship in a country could impact the rest of the world. Yet, further development on exactly how COVID-19 would change China's diplomatic relations with the world remains an open question.

author: Weiboscope HKU


text:
How the murder of musician Hachalu Hundessa incited violence in Ethiopia: Part I · Global Voices
Endalkachew Chala

Hachalu Hundessa interview with OMN via Firaabeek Entertainment / CC BY 3.0.
Editor’s note: This is a two-part analysis on Hachalu Hundessa, a popular Oromo musician whose murder incited ethnoreligious violence fueled by disinformation online. Read Part II here.
Iconic Ethiopian singer Hachalu Hundessa gained prominence for using his creative talent to raise the consciousness of the Oromo people. He was assassinated in a suburb of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on June 29.
That night, at 9:30 pm, as Hachalu was exiting his vehicle, a man named Tilahun Yami allegedly walked up to his car and fired a gun into the artist’s chest. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, where he was officially declared dead. It was later determined that the bullet severely damaged his internal organs.
Addis Ababa’s police chief reported two suspects were arrested. After a few days, government authorities charged an alleged assassin along with two other accomplices.
In the wake of his murder, the country has struggled to come to terms with the violence that followed. The truth of Hachalu's assassination is not yet fully clear, and in its aftermath, speculation began to fly as politicians and activists stoked long-standing tensions between Oromo and Amahara elites, two of Ethiopia's largest ethnic groups.
That day, mourners flooded the streets of Addis Ababa and cities and towns across Oromia state. The next morning, Oromia Media Network (OMN), a satellite TV station on which Hachalu had his last contentious interview, provided online and TV coverage as his casket was transferred from Addis Ababa to Hachalu’s hometown, Ambo.
The slow, televised journey turned into a deadly battle between government authorities and opposition politicians over where Hachalu would be buried, and OMN interrupted its coverage as the hearse was forced to return to Addis Ababa. At least ten people were killed and several were injured in Addis Ababa.
The scuffle led to the arrest of several opposition politicians including Jawar Mohammed, an OMN figurehead, and opposition politician Bekele Gerba, who were both charged with instigating the mayhem.
Confusion swirled after government authorities eventually took Halachu's body back to Ambo by helicopter, where feuding parties continued to clash, denying the bereaved family members a proper burial.
Meanwhile, turmoil and violence ensued. A three-day rampage gripped parts of Oromia and Addis Ababa, at a substantial cost: 239 people were left dead; hundreds of others were injured and more than 7,000 people were arrested for violence and property damage worth millions of Ethiopian birr.
On June 30, the government imposed an internet shutdown to attempt to halt calls for violence circulating on social media that lasted three weeks.
A number of people were shot and killed by government security forces, but several news outlets including Voice of America and Addis Standard reported that angry mobs from the Oromo ethnic group attacked multiethnic, interfaith towns and cities in southeastern Oromia, targeting non-Oromo, non-Muslim families in the region.
Most of the violence fell along ethnic Amahara-Oromo lines, but religion may have played a more central role due to an intricate, localized understanding of ethnicity: The southeast Oromo community’s ethnic identity markers usually combine the religion of Islam and the Afan-Oromo language. A local farmer reportedly said “we thought Hachalu was Oromo” after he watched Hachalu's televised funeral rites that followed the traditions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
According to reports, most victims of the most gruesome violence were minority Christian Amharas, Christian Oromos and Gurage people. Eyewitnesses say mobs destroyed and burned property, committed lynching and beheadings and dismembered victims.
When news of Hachalu’s assassination first hit, Oromo diaspora media outlets zeroed in on Hachalu’s fateful interview with OMN host Guyo Wariyo, that aired the week before Halachu was killed.
During the interview, Guyo repeatedly asked Hachalu provocative questions about his alleged sympathy for the ruling party, interrupting him multiple times to challenge his answers.
Hachalu fiercely denied any sympathies with the ruling party, but also decried the deeply discordant and fractionalized Oromo political parties, demonstrating his staunch independence as a thinker and musician — a quality that made him a target for online abuse until the day of his murder.
At one point, however, Guyo asked Hachalu about the historical injustices allegedly committed against the Oromo people by Menelik II, Ethiopia’s 19th-century emperor who shaped modern Ethiopia.
Hachalu shocked some listeners when he answered that the horse seen immortalized in Menelik’s equestrian statue in Addis Ababa belongs to an Oromo farmer called Sida Debelle, and that Menelik robbed that horse.
This exchange attracted applause — and criticism — from commentators on Facebook and Twitter.
When Hachalu was killed one week later, many members of the Oromo diaspora community immediately speculated that Hachalu’s criticism of the Menelik II statue infuriated sympathizers of imperial Ethiopia, which may have led to his murder.
On social media, Oromo netizens focused obsessively on Hachalu’s Menelik-related remarks, which led many down a winding path to an insidious disinformation campaign. The rest of the interview contains other loaded issues of divisions and contradictions within the Oromo community.
Throughout the interview, Guyo grilled Hachalu about the country’s ongoing political reforms, stoking anti-government sentiment with questions about Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, himself an Oromo, and whether or not the government had met the demands of the Oromo people after the prime minister came to power in 2018.
Hachalu reiterated his non-involvement in the rabid partisanship of Oromo politics but he did criticize those who question Abiy’s Oromo identity.
He defended his position against top Oromo opposition leaders who sought an alliance with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a once-dominant party with historic ties to the now-defunct Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Front (the EPRDF). The TPLF turned into an opposition party after Abiy dismantled the EPRDF.
Hachalu also addressed the political violence in the Oromia region, blaming both government authorities and the militant, splinter right-wing Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) militia group (informally known as OLF-Shane).
Following Hachalu’s murder, the government was able to acquire and release the full 71-minute interview to the public. The missing tape included Hachalu’s accounts of death threats he received from parts of western Oromia, where the radical OLF-Shane militia is active. Hachalu said he believed he would not have been attacked on social media if he had praised OLF-Shane.
He addressed a direct conflict he had with Getachew Assefa, Ethiopia’s security and intelligence chief during the TPLF period.
Guyo, who promoted this interview on Facebook as “must-see TV” in the days before its broadcast, has since been arrested and the government is investigating the full 71-minutes of interview tape for further clues that may help determine the facts regarding Hachalu's murder.
Read more about the consequences of Hachalu Hundessa's murder in Part II.

author: Endalkachew Chala


text:
How the murder of musician Hachalu Hundessa incited violence in Ethiopia: Part II · Global Voices
Endalkachew Chala

Hachalu Hundessa interview with OMN via Firaabeek Entertainment / CC BY 3.0.
Editor’s note: This is a two-part analysis on Hachalu Hundessa, a popular Oromo musician whose murder incited ethnoreligious motivated violence fueled by disinformation online. Read Part I here.
Within an hour of musician Hachalu Hundessa’s assassination on June 29 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopians netizens hit social media with scattershot conspiracy theories, hate speech & disinformation campaigns — particularly on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Most of these conspiracy theories tap into the country’s divisive historical issues with incendiary words that pitted Amhara and the Oromo communities against each other. Hachalu was an Oromo who wrote critical songs and spoke openly of fractured politics in Ethiopia.
Stories began to circulate that Hachalu’s murder was orchestrated by government authorities — and by some accounts, by Prime Minister Abiy Ahemd himself, seen by many diaspora-based Oromo activists as a stooge of the Amhara people. The term neftegna or “riflemen,” is often hurled as a dog-whistle reference to Amhara people, Ethiopia’s second-largest ethnic group after the Oromo.
CARD analyzed the trend in use of inflammatory terms, ‘ነፍጠኛ’ (neftegna) and ‘ጋላ’ (galla), on twitter and found out substantial increase in October 2019 and July 2020, when violence occurred. pic.twitter.com/GECulI5Cru
— CARD (@CARDEthiopia) August 5, 2020
Among these theories, one of the more popular claims holds that Hachalu’s disparaging remarks about Menelik’s II statue made during an interview with Oromia Media Network (OMN) a week before his killing incensed the “neftegna” and led them to assassinate him. (The statue has been a focus of tensions between the political elites of Amhara and Oromo).
Since Hachalu’s assassination, OMN has run several segments on YouTube and Facebook, with page viewership numbers ranging from 10,000 to over 200,000, that lay out different versions of this theory — that the Amhara were somehow involved in Hachalu's murder.
Proponents of this theory seem to cherry-pick lines from the consequential OMN interview to find the nuggets that fit their desired spin.
These speculative claims moved swiftly to far-reaching satellite TV channels. Several “talking heads” based in the diaspora then repeated the same unconfirmed claims — particularly on two major opposition media outlets: OMN and Tigray Media House (TMH).
It was given further prominence when several top politicians—including Ilhan Omar a US Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district, home to the largest percentage of the Oromo diaspora community in the United States — possibly unwittingly retweeted a New York Times story about Hachalu’s killing with an insinuating quote:
The world isn’t kind to people who raise the political conscious of the public.
The music and activism of Hachalu Hundessa provided hope to the Oromo people and so many others.
May he rest in power.https://t.co/V19dngZT3T
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) June 30, 2020
At the same time, false and misleading claims bubbled up in a debate over where Hachalu should be buried. Some diaspora-based Oromo activists asserted that government authorities pressured Hachalu’s family to hold his funeral in Ambo, his hometown. Others accused authorities of rushing the funeral in Addis Ababa, to hide criminal evidence. These claims further inflamed ethnic tensions. Hachalu’s family and close friends tried to dispel these claims by notifying the public that it was their decision, in fact, to bury their son in Ambo.
After the violence and destruction of properties targeted non-Oromo, non-Muslim families in parts of Oromia, many netizens viewed it as the inevitable result of specific speculations and innuendos about the ethnic identity of Hachalu’s killers — spread mainly via Facebook and OMN.
OMN, already under fire for cutting out essential details from Hachalu’s fateful interview, then broadcasted an open call for genocide against Amhara people, immediately following Hachalu’s murder:
July 1, 2020 OMN LIVE from MN: quotes from a speaker in a town hall meeting:
- “Amharas need to be exterminated in our neibourhood.” pic.twitter.com/VwsLZPJoYv
— Alemayehu Gemeda (@AlemayehuGK) July 5, 2020
Meanwhile, members of the Oromo diaspora community continued to emphasize the violence committed by government forces perceived as dominated by the Amhara elite.
Other netizens say that local authorities in Ethiopia are complicit in the organization of vigilante groups — activists and political groups — who are actively stoking ethnic and religious resentment on- and offline.
While massive speculation continues to churn on social media, government authorities have issued one theory regarding Hachalu’s murder that that appears to be supported with some evidence.
Authorities are now pursuing a theory that the murder was carried out by two opposition groups with different motives but who may share a belief that Hachalu should be assassinated. The first group is Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the second group is OLF-Shane.
The TPLF (once part of the now-defunct Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front) controlled Ethiopia’s security and intelligence services for 27 years before they were ousted from power in April 2018. Hachalu was an outspoken opponent of the TPLF regime and spent most of his life fighting against them.
In 2017, in a nationally televised concert, aimed mainly at helping members of the Oromo community who were displaced from the Somali region, he courageously and explicitly criticized the TPLF.
Politically speaking, the TPLF associates Abiy with imperial Ethiopia, alleging that Abiy conspires to bring back its relics to the government. They benefit from the assertion that recent violence is the fault of Abiy’s government, who failed to provide national security.
Abiy’s administration, in turn, denies such allegations and puts the blame on the TPLF, whom they accuse of wanting to wreak chaos and push for regime change in Ethiopia.
OLF-Shane is a splinter paramilitary organization of OLF that uses violent tactics to advance its political aim to establish an independent Oromia. The group has reportedly run shadowy death squads who call themselves Abbaa Torbee, – an Afan-Oromo phrase meaning, “Whose turn is this week?”
Abbaa Torbee has an active presence on Facebook. There are hundreds of user account profiles and roughly 28 pages and numerous groups devoted to this violent extremist group. Nearly all pages and user accounts were created over the last two years, as various factions of OLF were welcomed back to Ethiopia from exile and attracted tens of thousands of followers on Facebook.
In the months leading up to Hachalu’s assassination, Abbaa Torbee members intimidated, beat up, and, in some cases, killed sympathizers of the ruling Prosperity Party, both civilians and foreigners. They think these groups unfairly exploit Oromo peoples’ resources
These killings barely registered in Ethiopian media, let alone internationally.
Abbaa Torbee seemed to hold some inside knowledge about the chaos that followed Hachalu’s murder. Most notably, on one of their most popular pages, they warned that they will start “cleansing Addis Ababa” a day before Hachalu was murdered.
A screenshot of one of Abbaa Torbees Facebook post. Screenshot was taken on August 5, 2020.
Turmoil indeed transpired in Addis Ababa and ethnic and religious minorities faced violence in parts of Oromia. The same page posted a close-up picture of Hachalu's corpse within hours of his assassination, accusing government authorities of killing him.
Also, several Abbaa Torbe Facebook pages have called for Oromo protesters to march to Addis Ababa and haul down the statue of Menelik II.
A screenshot of Abbaa Torbee's Facebook post. Screenshot taken on August 5 2020.
To close observers of Ethiopian disinformation campaigns, this all sounds wildly familiar. Think back to the summer of 2019, when intra-ethnic rivalries among the Amhara elites ended with the assassinations of top government officials in the Amhara region. Facebook accounts associated with Amhara nationalists spread rumors that said the assassinations were part of a plot created by Oromo elites to wipe out the leadership of the Amhara people.
Similarly, disinformation campaigns about the tragic murder of Hachalu reflect a bitter divide within Oromo elites.
On the one hand, there are those who attributed Hachalu’s assassination to Amharas, rooted in the interpretation of the modern Ethiopian state as an Amhara settler-colonial project — and Hachalu’s murder is the continuation of that project.
On the other hand, there are those who believe Oromos played an integral role in building the modern Ethiopian state and Hachalu’s assassins want to shore up their dwindling political fortune by killing an Oromo icon — and pursue their political project of separatism.