text:
Trinidad & Tobago’s 2020 election results are currently being recounted · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Finger stained with electoral ink after voting in Trinidad and Tobago's general election on August 10, 2020. Photo courtesy Janine Mendes-Franco.
On August 10, 658,297 of Trinidad and Tobago's 1,134,155 registered voters cast their ballot in the country's general election.
According to the independent body charged with electoral management, the Elections and Boundaries Commission, the preliminary results showed that the incumbent People's National Movement (PNM) led by Prime Minister Keith Rowley had won, with 22 parliamentary seats to the opposition United National Congress‘ (UNC) 19.
Despite the fact that voter turnout for both parties was lower than it had been for the last election in 2015, the PNM also clinched the popular vote.
Just as in 2015, the UNC is questioning the results. Since the preliminary results were announced, the UNC has called for recounts in five constituencies, as many have pointed out is well within its rights. The recount process began on August 11, the day after the election was held.
Five years ago, the party, then part of the People's Partnership coalition government, claimed that heavy rains, which caused flooding in some parts of the country, resulted in the PNM having an unfair advantage at the polls. They subsequently filed an election petition, challenging the outcome on those grounds; it proved unsuccessful.
This time around, the UNC has been accused of trying to plant seeds of doubt, before the voting process even got underway, as to whether the elections would be free and fair.
On Twitter, Maria Rivas-McMillan took umbrage with the UNC's approach:
I really take exception to the UNC’s implying that we did not run transparent elections. I have no problem requesting recounts but don’t impugn the integrity of the EBC plus thousands of volunteers, scrutineers (including their own) of every party present in yesterday’s process
— Maria Rivas-McMillan (@Panyol) August 11, 2020
The law dictates that the current government must stay in place throughout the recount process.
One of the main points of contention is the fact that this election lacked the presence of international observers. In a media interview, Prime Minister Keith Rowley said that once the elections were called, he wrote to both the Commonwealth and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) secretariats, inviting them to send observers. However, unease over the COVID-19 pandemic reportedly came into play, as it has for many other countries holding elections at this time.
CARICOM was only able to attract the interest of three participants, who later declined because they wanted to avoid quarantine regulations. The government was “prepared to modify” its quarantine arrangements, but ultimately, CARICOM deemed that the process would require many more than three volunteers.
The Commonwealth observers, meanwhile, came up against financial constraints: Government assistance would have been a conflict of interest. The prime minister maintained there was no need to make his correspondence with the secretariats public [though he subsequently did], and does not believe that international observers would have prevented the UNC from making legal challenges.
On the evening of August 13, Minister of Finance Colm Imbert hosted a press conference at the PNM party's headquarters, Balisier House, and clarified electoral procedures.
Imbert explained to local media that Form 69 — a Statement of Poll — basically served as “a record of observers.”
Every candidate who contests an election is entitled to have a polling agent present at every polling station to scrutinise the voting process. The presiding officer must sign Form 69, certify its accuracy and make sure that copies are given to polling officials and to each candidate or agent present at the count. These party representatives must also sign Form 69 to confirm that they witnessed the count and that the information is correct.
Suggestions circulated on social media that the PNM declared victory while results were still coming in, but Imbert explained that party representatives call in to their respective campaign offices and give count results for their polling stations.
Via this method, Balisier House had the results for each of the country's 41 constituencies by 10 p.m. on election night and the PNM was, therefore, able to claim victory.
Imbert said that the opposition would have known the results at the same time and claimed it was “deceitful of UNC to pretend not to know […] on Monday night that they’d lost the election and the popular vote.” The notion that PNM had “inside information,” he said, is “absolute nonsense — it's a lie.”
Nevertheless, such claims persist. UNC candidate Ahloy Hunt has questioned the signatures of the presiding officers on the ballots — an issue that Chief Election Officer Fern Narcis-Scope said is supposed to be raised during the count, as this is when all agents sign off on the authenticity of the ballots.
Hunt maintains that EBC officials are being uncooperative; Narcis-Scope says that candidates like Hunt have been asking to see documents — such as polling station diaries — that the law prohibits to at this stage. This documentation may be available later as part of the discovery process in a court proceeding.
Dubbing such tactics “disruptive” and the allegations “wild,” Imbert accused candidates of “deliberately trying to harass” the returning officers overseeing the various recounts.
There were also allegations — since refuted — suggesting that officers from the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) were stealing and hiding ballot boxes. The police investigated the claim and found all ballot boxes at the polling station in question on site and accounted for. However, the TTPS is currently looking into the discovery of a batch of discarded polling cards.
Meanwhile, a minor political party has accused the government of “rigging” the vote, launching an online petition that asks for a total nullification.
Minister Imbert noted that the “checks and balances” of the recount process — including putting each party’s votes into separate envelopes with paper seals, which the counting agents and candidates must sign — make it “impossible to rig the Trinidad and Tobago election.”
Facebook user Rishi Maharaj put a clever suggestion to all the candidates to make Form 69 public so that citizens can compare EBC figures.
That information is not private and I would think there is a strong argument in the Public Interest to make them public so that we the public can scrutinise. After all they are a count of our votes.
Given the current local and global circumstances we can ill afford for error and Government must go on otherwise we […] would all feel the consequences.
While the recounts continue, President Paula Mae Weekes has advised that the swearing-in ceremony, initially carded for August 14, would be postponed.
The EBC's corporate communications manager, Bobbi Rogers, confirmed that there was no particular deadline for the recount. Once completed, the government can be sworn in even if election petitions are filed in the courts. In a release issued on August 15, the EBC advised that the “clearly outlined” recount process was “being conducted within the parameters of the law.”
As of August 17, all but one of the recounts have been completed, and even UNC insiders are now calling for the party to concede.


text:
How one Telegram channel became central to Belarus’ protests · Global Voices
Maxim Edwards

An example of a recent post on Nexta Live, showing protesters in the city of Homel reading aloud their demands to the authorities. This post was viewed over half a million times. Screenshot from Nexta Live / Telegram.
It seems that everybody in Belarus follows Nexta Live. During the first days after the country's presidential election, when the entire country went nearly completely offline, this channel on the Telegram messenger service was one of the only sources of information about an escalating political crisis.
That crisis was triggered by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's bid to secure a sixth term in office in elections on August 9. According to official results, Lukashenka received 80 percent of the vote compared to just 10 percent for his challenger Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Belarusians and international observers alike suspected mass electoral fraud, leading thousands of voters to take to the streets in protest and workers across the country to declare strikes. Riot police responded with extreme violence, detaining over 6,000 protesters.
But protesters have kept up the pressure. On August 16, tens of thousands of Belarusians gathered in the capital Minsk in what may well have been the largest demonstrations since the country gained independence in 1991. They now demand nothing less than Lukashenka's resignation. But the president says he's going nowhere; the next day, before a jeering crowd of factory workers, Lukashenka vowed not to hold a re-run of the election “unless you kill me.”
Read more: Belarus shuts down internet as thousands protest election results
Belarus’ opposition activists and independent journalists have good cause to fear those words. Since becoming president in 1994, Lukashenka has ruthlessly cracked down on all resistance to his rule and on media freedoms. Domestic and international journalists alike have been beaten and detained during recent protests.
With so many obstacles to newsgathering on the ground, Nexta becomes an even sharper thorn in the authorities’ side. The channel has circulated footage of police attacks on peaceful protesters, striking workers’ political demands, and photographs of what it alleges are “real” voting tallies from polling stations across the country.
That content has got Nexta noticed. If at the start of August the channel had more than 300,000 subscribers, it now has over two million — not a trivial number in a country of around ten million.
In fact, that makes Nexta one of the most popular Telegram channels in the world. And the Belarusian authorities have noticed; that's why on August 14, the country's police opened a criminal case against Nexta's founder Stepan Putsilo, who lives in Poland, on charges of “organising mass riots” and calling for the overthrow of the Belarusian government.
“It was just a hobby. I made funny videos for my family. Then I decided to gather all the trash from Lukashenka's Belarus,” explained the 22-year-old Putsilo in an interview with Charter97, a Belarusian human rights website. Thus Nexta, whose name comes from the Belarusian for “somebody,” was born in 2015. Initially it was a YouTube channel, where Putsilo and his friends would share reflections on social issues in Belarus alongside their satirical songs with an anti-Lukashenka message.
The lyrics of one such song from 2015 would not be out of place at a protest rally in Minsk today:
Все двадцать лет
Выбора нет: Только усатые портреты.
Нужно искать
Способ сбежать, Но всё дороже здесь билеты…
Все двадцать лет
Выбора нет…
All these 20 years
There's been no choice. Just moustachioed portraits.
I need to find
A way to get out, but the tickets are so expensive
All these 20 years
There's been no choice…
— NEXTA, Выбора нет (cover Сплин), YouTube, October 4, 2015
Putilo did eventually find a way out of Belarus — with a one-way ticket. In his Charter97 interview, Putilo recounted that he returned once in 2018 to visit his family. However, upon learning that his apartment had been searched by the security services, he has not been back since. Nevertheless, Putilo is one of several opposition-minded Belarusians based in their country's neighbour to the West. The Polish capital also hosts Belsat, a Belarusian-language news channel which is critical of the Lukashenka government (The Nexta founder is the son Alexander Putilo, a Belsat journalist, and writes articles for Belsat himself under the name Stepan Svetlov.)
Nexta's prominence only grew despite, or perhaps due to, its founder's exile. In February 2018, the Belarusian authorities opened a case against Nexta for “insulting the president” in critical YouTube videos. That autumn, Nexta moved onto the Telegram messaging service, and most of its YouTube audience followed.
The channel's output also became increasingly professional. In April 2019, Nexta was the first source to report on the murder of a traffic policeman from the Belarusian city of Mogilev; the information it provided later formed the basis of journalistic investigations. Then in October 2019, Nexta released its first professional documentary — “Lukashenka: Criminal Materials”, which told the story of how the current Belarusian president rose to power. The film attracted nearly three million views on YouTube; the Belarusian authorities denounced it as “extremist.”
This growing following eventually gave Nexta a funding model in the form of paid advertisements, which disappear from its feed after 24 hours. Its editors recently told the Russian version of Esquire Magazine that Nexta has not received grants from any organisations or governments, and survives exclusively from this advertising revenue and donations from its readers.
By the time Belarus held its 2020 presidential election, Nexta had become an essential source of information for any serious observer of Belarus. The project's decentralised structure, featuring profiles on multiple social media platforms but no website, was ideal in building up this following — but led to an immense volume of submissions. Hundreds of anonymous users were sending information, photos, and videos to Nexta's channels. There was so much that Putsilo was compelled to hire three colleagues to sift through the submissions from his home country.
They would soon be working overtime.
Nexta maintains three Telegram channels: Nexta, Nexta Live, and Luxta (which mostly shares satirical posts). During the height of the protests in the days following the presidential election, Nexta Live was publishing hundreds of messages every day, many of them including content provided by anonymous users with only the most cursory contextual information. Each post now has a million reads on average.
But in recent days, Nexta has also circulated texts of protesters’ demands, updates about arrests, locations of arrests by riot police, and contacts for lawyers and human rights defenders. It is clear that the channel does not merely report on the protests, but has played a substantial role in organising them:
There are two groups behind Belarus uprising:
1) Tsikhanouskaya, incl. her team, team of jailed V. Babaryka, traditional party activists. They create a transitional council
2) Telegram'ers (led by NEXTA), including multiple channels and influencers. They organize protests mainly.
— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) August 16, 2020
Despite criticism from some quarters, Nexta's editor-in-chief Roman Protasevich does not see a contradiction between this overt political agenda and conventional journalistic ethics. The 25-year-old journalist recently joined Putsilo's team, and has now received political asylum in Poland. Speaking on August 12 with the prominent Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon, who had interviewed Lukashenka a few days before, Protasevich denied that Nexta could be described as the main coordinator of the protests, though acknowledged that he and his colleagues had been forced into the spotlight as key opposition figures:
Это в принципе невозможно координировать, в стране отключена от интернета, а вчера даже мобильный интернет отсутствовал вообще польностью. Невозможно пытаться как-то управлять толпы. Это раз. А во-вторых, да мы осознаем та ответственность которую на нас лежит. Мы понимаем это, но обладая таким резурсом и такой вообще узнаваемостью и доверием к себе среди сотен тысяч белорусов, мы понимали, что на какой-то момент действительно нужно будет отойти от каких-либо парадигмов невмешательства хотя бы по простой причине что все мы тоже белорусы, и все мы люди которые живут при диктатуре уже много лет. Многие, особенно молодежь, живут при Лукаженке с самого рождения. С этим нужно что-то делать. Да, я понимаю что в последные дни мы практически полностью нарушили какую-то журналистическую этику, отказались от каких-то этических правил в плане журналистики, но важно понимать, что мы не только журналисты, мы люди. И мы действительно хотим перемен к лучшему. Мы хотим сами вернуться домой […] Мы такие же беларусы как и все и мы просто стараемся сделать все, для того чтобы в Беларуси была сменяемость власти, чтобы в Беларуси соблюдалась элементарная права человека, для того, чтобы там существовала свобода слова.
In principle, this isn't something which can be coordinated, particularly not in a country which is cut off from the internet, where yesterday there wasn't even mobile internet. It's impossible to somehow direct the crowds. That's one point. Furthermore, we fully comprehend the responsibility which lies on our shoulders. We have an incredible resource, we're widely recognised, and hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have put their trust in us. We understood that at some point, we had to move beyond concepts of non-interference if only for the simple reason that we are also Belarusians, and we are all people who have lived under a dictatorship for many years. Many, particularly young people, have lived under Lukashenka since the day they were born. Something has to be done about that. Yes, I understand that over the last few days we have entirely violated some journalistic ethics, some ethical rules of the field, but it's important to understand that we are not just journalists, we are human beings. And we really do want change for the better. We'd like to return home ourselves some day […] We are Belarusians, just like everybody else, and we are trying to do all in our power to ensure that Belarus has rotations of power and that elementary human rights were respected in the country, so that there is some freedom of speech in Belarus.
Protasevich did not respond to GlobalVoices’ request for comment. However, his words above make his view clear: when journalists face pressure from the authorities, they are ethically obliged to push for freedom of expression — even if that means abandoning the pretence of impartiality.
There can be no doubt that Nexta and a handful of other Telegram channels have played a crucial role in informing the world about the turmoil in Belarus after the election. However, some observers voice discomfort at depending too much on these sources. The information they share is fragmentary, anonymous, contextless, and despite the best efforts of its editors, some of it appears to be unverified. For example, in the early hours of August 10, Nexta reported that the 35-year-old Yevgeny Zaichkin had died during clashes with police in Minsk. As it happened, Zaichkin was wounded but survived.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these concerns are shared by editors of older Belarusian publications whose readerships now pale in comparison with Nexta. Anna Kaltygina, an editor for one of the largest Belarusian news websites Tut.By, told the Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy on August 12 that she doubted whether it was possible to seriously fact check events on the ground in Belarus from faraway Warsaw. However, one can also ask whether it is possible to report seriously from the ground in Belarus given the authorities’ harassment of journalists in recent weeks and generally poor record on press freedom.
In this context, a media source which relies on anonymous content has practical merit. Kaciaryna Šmacina, a Research Fellow at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, told Global Voices that Nexta and other Telegram channels rose in prominence at just the right moment:
Right now the Belarusian protests are leaderless, and for the moment this is probably for the good. We have no leader in Belarus who would take charge and channel those protest moods, because if he or she were there, they would have at the very least been thrown out of the country like Tsikhanouskaya or put in jail. And in such a repressive context, these Telegram channels are something very new, allowing people to coordinate themselves and organise protests. They are an important tool and source of information, but at the same time I think it's very legitimate to ask who are the coordinators of these channels, particularly if they call on people to resist the police.
Telegram confounds autocratic rulers in the post-Soviet space, where its use is particularly widespread. This year, the Russian authorities abandoned an attempt to ban the messaging platform; the internet outages in Belarus also failed to silence Nexta and other popular channels. As Deutsche Welle noted this May, Lukashenka has denounced Telegram with ever greater frequency this year. He has continued to do so during the protests; It is not implausible that he had Nexta in mind.
It's now possible that other sources of information will be available for those watching developments in Belarus. On August 17, state television employees went on strike, no longer content to tow the government's line against the protesters.
#BREAKING! In #Minsk, #Belarus, workers of the state TV reportedly joined the nationwide strike in #protest against rigged election results & police brutality.
This is what this morning's state TV show looked like:pic.twitter.com/IonISHw8bh
— Alex Kokcharov (@AlexKokcharov) August 17, 2020
Furthermore, some Belarusian television channels have now started to broadcast footage of mass protests.
These developments are extraordinary, but Šmacina cautions against a false sense of security where freedom of expression is concerned. “Everybody who speaks up against the regime or criticises the regime is still in danger, and this danger hasn't gone anywhere. Lukashenka is not close to relinquishing power, and my main concern is that we will see even more ugly scenes.”
Until and unless something cardinally changes in Belarus, it is likely that ordinary Belarusians will continue to opt for anonymity when they speak out — and seek out Nexta when they do so.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Maxim Edwards


text:
Will China’s color-coded COVID-19 tracking system come to Hong Kong? · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Image from the Stand News. Used with permission.
The post is updated on 23 of August 2020.
With Hong Kong seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases, the city prepares to test its entire population for the new coronavirus by the end of August — while pro-Beijing politicians push to use the test results in a three-color health code system.
The color-coded system, implemented in different cities in mainland China, assigns a QR code to citizens according to their COVID-19 test results. Those who test negative receive a green QR code on their mobile phones, which allows them to bypass some social isolation restrictions, such as going to restaurants.
The proposal has raised privacy concerns in Hong Kong — many fear that authorities could use the system to track individuals’ locations and restrict their movement for political reasons.
While implementing such a mechanism in Hong Kong is still in debate, the government is on track to carry out universal testing of its 7.5 million population with the help of Beijing.
The mainland has already sent in a team of 60 medical workers to assist with the massive operation, which will cost 150 million Hong Kong dollars (about 20 million US dollars). Local authorities estimate that at least five million citizens will volunteer for the test due to begin before the end of the month.
But Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp is urging people to boycott the test.
With three laboratories based in mainland China slated to process the test results, fears of surveillance run deep. Some activists argue that the Chinese government could take the opportunity to build a DNA database of all Hong Kong citizens — a measure similar to those Beijing has implemented in Xinjiang.
Activist Joshua Wong said on Twitter:
[City-wide testing by three #China-based laboratories, with one allegedly involved in DNA collections of #Uyghurs]
1/ #Hkgov has just announced a city-wide #Covid19 testing. Without proper tendering procedures, #Carrielam directly granted 150,000,000 HKD for the project. pic.twitter.com/ufLI7WIMFU
— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 ? (@joshuawongcf) August 7, 2020
And lawmaker Eddie Chu said:
CCP is seizing any chance to set up an intrusive social surveillance system in HK, this time in the name of anti-pandemic “health code”. It will enable CCP to track individuals location, restrict freedom of movement, introduce “Social Credit System” and control the flow of money.
— Chu-Hoidick Eddie (@ChuHoiDick) August 14, 2020
The Hong Kong government says the labs in question will not have access to people's personal information, and that authorities do not intend to integrate the results of the universal testing with a future health code system.
In addition to surveillance concerns, local health experts question the efficacy of one-off universal tests in preventing the virus spread. There are studies that have found that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests may generate false-negative results if the patient is tested too early in the course of the infection.
In an interview with The Standard, microbiology expert Ho Pak Leung said that, for a health code system to be effective, universal testing would have to be conducted weekly, which would be tremendously costly.
The activist group Hong Kong Global Connect explained on a long Twitter thread how the health code system works in mainland China.
After all citizens in a particular location are tested for SARS-CoV-2, the system assigns them, via a QR code downloaded to each person's mobile phone, one of three colors: Green, yellow, or red.
Citizens with a yellow or red code are not allowed to enter public spaces or use public transportation. Restaurants and malls, for example, are required to scan all patrons’ QR codes upon entrance.
But the criteria behind color-assignment colors isn't totally clear to the public — there have been reports of unexplained red and yellow codes. An analysis by the New York Times found signs that the mobile app shares individuals’ movement and location data with the police.
In China, the health code system is hosted by the Alipay app through an API. Alipay is also behind Zhima Credit, more commonly known as Sesame Credit, a private credit assessment tool whose data is believed to be included in the algorithm of China's social credit system, which punishes “bad” citizens and awards “good” ones.
Data used in the social credit algorithm comes from citizens’ financial and criminal records, as well as minor offenses such as jaywalking or littering (and online behavior). In 2015, the People's Bank of China licensed eight companies to begin a trial of social credit systems, with AliPay is among them. Alipay is owned by Ant Finance, a subsidiary of Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
After recounts revealed the same result, Trinidad & Tobago’s government is finally sworn in · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley addresses the gathering at President's House in Port of Spain, after the swearing in of his new Cabinet on August 19, 2020. Screenshot taken from the CCN TV6 livestream of the swearing-in ceremony.
Nine days after Trinidad and Tobago's general election was held on August 10, the country's government has finally been sworn in.
After the country's Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) released its preliminary results showing that the incumbent People's National Movement (PNM) had won with 22 parliamentary seats to the opposition United National Congress’ (UNC) 19, the latter, claiming irregularities, demanded a recount in several constituencies.
Leader of the Opposition Kamla Persad-Bissessar's suggested that the absence of international election observers was “probably a plan [for the PNM] to take the election illegally. But in the end, the results of the recount only reinforced the EBC's initial findings.
Losing candidates’ claims that there were suspicious signatures on the ballots, also came to nought, proving the incumbent administration's long-held stance that the checks and balances governing the country's electoral process make it “impossible to rig the Trinidad and Tobago election.”
One of the seats the UNC did win, however, is in contention. At a press conference held on August 18 Dr. Keith Rowley, leader of the PNM, revealed that his party had sought legal advice from two senior counsels, who advised the PNM that the nomination of UNC candidate Barry Padarath, winner of the seat for the constituency of Princes Town, “does not meet the requirements of the law and is wholly invalid.”
The PNM had raised questions over the legitimacy of Padarath's nomination before the election. Rowley said that the party would not pursue the matter any further in court, as litigation was “not free, not cheap and not without risk”, but felt that it was important to bring the matter to national attention.
Rowley noted that the PNM racked up legal fees of TT$23 million (just over US$3.4 million) responding to the UNC's decision to contest the 2015 election results in court, with the EBC spending about TT$14 million (about US$2 million).
Dr. Rowley says he will furnish the EBC with a copy of the legal opinion for it to determine its own position on the matter, and also advise the President.
Padarath, meanwhile, has said that Prime Minister Rowley should either take the issue to court, or “shut up”, a stance that attorney Justin Phelps challenged:
We should be expecting more from our leaders than arguments that say ‘We have a legal right to do it’. We should be asking be them to account for the implications of exercising it, for the benefits which it could bring, for the reasons why they intend to exercise it.
As the recount dragged on, voices from with the UNC party began to clamour for Persad-Bissessar to concede, which she eventually did on August 18. In her concession speech, she said that she would no longer allow herself to be “portrayed as an obstructionist […] an excuse for the government not moving forward.”
She also spoke of the need to “respect each other’s political choices without invoking and inciting race to divide our people”. Both main political parties have uttered racial slurs over the years, but the UNC was heavily criticised for the tone of its campaign advertisements in the run-up to this election, which many felt was offensive to Black people.
Addressing calls from within her own party for her to step down as political leader, Persad-Bissessar said, “Running away is not an option at this point in time,” thereby ending any speculation that she would allow the election defeat to force her hand. The UNC, however, is scheduled to hold internal elections in 2021 to determine the future leadership of the party.
The swearing-in of Prime Minister Rowley and his new Cabinet began at 4:00 p.m. Trinidad and Tobago time (UTC-4) on August 19, at President's House in the capital, Port of Spain.
The opposition is traditionally sworn in at the first sitting of the new parliamentary term. Unless a legal challenge to Padarath's nomination is mounted before then, he will take his oath of office, having been elected by the constituents of Princes Town by a margin of 6,572 votes.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
Belarus in turmoil: The view from neighbouring Lithuania  · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Vilnius’ Cathedral Square, one of the most prominent landmarks of the capital of Lithuania. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
Belarus and Lithuania share more than just a 600-km long border in the north of Central Europe. Although both countries have gone in very different ways since the collapse of the Soviet Union — Lithuania may be a NATO and EU member and Belarus part of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance — much in their common history unites them. While Belarusians are a small minority in Lithuania, representing less than two percent of the population, this minority plays an important role in Belarusian national historical narratives; from the 14th to the 17th century, Belarus and Lithuania were part of the same entity, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and many key Belarusian intellectuals lived, worked, and studied in Vilnius, its capital.
Today the two neighbours share in the aftermath of the August 9 presidential elections in Belarus, which has seen Belarusians take to the streets in mass protests against an attempt by longtime President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to secure a sixth consecutive term in office. Lukashenka came to power in 1994, and over his long rule more than a handful of Belarusian opposition activists have moved to Lithuania. Several Belarusian civil society organisations can be found in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius as well as the European Humanities University, which the Belarusian government forced out of the country in 2004.
Lithuania remains a likely destination for opposition supporters if the political situation in Belarus deteriorates further. They would join opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania on August 11 after receiving threats from the Belarusian authorities. In exile, she continues to call upon Belarus to hold free and fair elections and announces her readiness to lead a transitional government.
For its part, the Lithuanian government has voiced strong support for the opposition protesters. For example, on August 12 the country opened its borders, which were shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to Belarusian citizens. Then on August 18, the Lithuanian parliament voted overwhelmingly in support of sanctions against Belarus, stressing that the results of the presidential election must not be recognised.
What does the Lithuanian government seek to achieve with these moves? And what do Lithuanians make of the turmoil next door? GlobalVoices spoke to Lithuanian activists, politicians, and civil society figures to find out more.
Despite this familiarity, Lithuanians were taken by surprise when Belarusians responded with such anger to the announcement of the election results, particularly their readiness to take to the streets in the face of incredible state violence and to go on strike.
Lithuania's former prime minister and current member of the European Parliament for Lithuania Andrius Kubilius told GlobalVoices that he sees a generational dynamic at work in these protests:
What triggered this unexpected reaction is a systemic change, the end of what I call the totalitarian regime syndrome of former Soviet states. After 26 years in power, Lukashenka could not provide permanent growth of social conditions. During the last ten years, it actually went into the opposite direction in Belarus. It is also a generational change, Lukashenka always tried to convince people how bad it was before he took power in 1994, but young people did not witness that “before”. They travel and see different living conditions for themselves. Belarusian society has changed dramatically, but Lukashenka hasn't, and that became unacceptable.
From Belarusian experts, we hear that the final straw was the pandemic, during which Lukashenka seriously explained to his people that “one can simply cure and prevent COVID-19 with a visit to the sauna and vodka”. But people took it on themselves to help patients and doctors; they understood they can do quite a lot on their own, and this movement [of social activism] laid the groundwork for the election campaigns and protests.
Given the proximity of Belarus, large parts of the Lithuanian population have shown great empathy, inspired by female Belarusian protesters who came onto the streets wearing white dresses and holding flowers in peaceful daytime demonstrations. Andrius Tapinas, a social activist and founder of internet TV channel Laisvės TV [Liberty TV] explained his own initiative, in which Lithuanians will channel their own struggle for independence into a statement of solidarity with Belarus:
On August 23, I am organising a human chain of people from Lithuania to Belarus. We call it The Freedom Way to Belarus; it is a copy of the Baltic Way of 1989 which has an amazingly deep symbolic value for us. We are going to build a living chain of people from Cathedral Square in central Vilnius, the starting point of original Baltic Way, all the way to the Belarusian border. We reckon it will take 25,000 people to achieve, but we have already registered interest from many more than that, so I expect a double chain of 45-50,000 people. We hope that the Belarusian people will extend the chain from the border into their country, all the way to Minsk. However after Lukashenka promised that he will break the chain by any means necessary, as of today it is unclear whether Belarusians will join.
Vilija Navickaite, a pro-democracy activist and a creative learning practitioner, says that she is eager to take part in Tapinas’ living chain to the Belarusian border. She explained her motivations for supporting the protesters in Belarus:
In my bubble almost everyone has changed their photos in FB with white-red-white Belarusian flags in support for our neighbours and I know people that are closely following the events in Belarus. All this might be a bit similar to 2014 when Lithuanians felt so close to Ukrainians… We were part of the same country with Belarusians for a long time and have similar words in our languages, very similar customs, and the same heroes from the period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It seems that for a while, Belarusians were a bit like our forgotten brothers and sisters. I am happy that's changing.
However, some Lithuanians have markedly frostier attitudes towards their southern neighbour. Lukashenka has pushed for the final construction phase of a nuclear power plant at Astravets, located not too far away from the suburbs of the Lithuanian capital. It is a sore point; Lithuanians remember the April 1986 nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl all too well. Kubilius shares these same concerns:
Lithuania has passed into law a ban on buying energy from Astravets, which was built initially to sell energy to the Baltics and Eastern Europe. People voted in a referendum in Lithuania against a Japanese-based technology plan after Fukushima to replace our own former Soviet nuclear plant in Ignalina. It is hard to predict the view of the new Belarusian government, but there is also a lot of opposition within Belarus to Astravets, so we might have better opportunities in the future for Lithuania.
Many Lithuanians also looking warily towards Moscow, which is bound to play a key role in the ongoing political crisis. Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius went as far as to say that Vilnius does not discount an intervention by Russian troops in Belarus, which the government fears. According to Kubilius:
For Putin, Belarus is a real trap: he cannot support the revolution as it could serve as an example to Khabarovsk [a city in Eastern Russia hosting anti-government demonstrations] from Moscow, but if he associates too much with Lukashenka, he will repeat the same errors as in Ukraine, with [former President Viktor] Yanukovich, ousted in 2014. In the end Putin united all Ukraine against Russia. So he would be more happy to remove Lukashenka to avoid strong emotions that could inflame people in Russia, instead opting to install a new leader who is less against the Kremlin. If there are new elections in Belarus, he could get his way. The only hope today lies with the European Union's response: in the European Parliament we have now great support through Euronext to launch an investigation into what happened in Belarus. The biggest challenge to a new democratic government will be the economic situation: just as the EU provided help to Ukraine after the Euromaidan protests, about 14 billion Euros, so should we now provide 3.5 to 4 billion Euros for Belarus, whose population is about four times smaller than that of Ukraine.
That approach is shared by other EU member states bordering Belarus. On August 14, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced a five point plan to help Belarusians, including support for independent media and civil society initiatives and support for political emigres. Some 11.4 million Euros have been allotted to these goals.
Poland has a long history of political support for its immediate neighbours to the East, which was once articulated as a diplomatic strategy known as the Giedroyc Doctrine. However, in recent years critics of the country's ruling right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party argue that the government's attacks on political pluralism and the rule of law at home undermine Poland's credibility in promoting transparency and good governance abroad — including to Belarus. For example, an op-ed published in the major liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza on August 13 argued that Poland's role in that regard had been taken over by Lithuania.
Jörg Forbrig, Director for Central and Eastern Europe at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, has directed a programme in support of civil society in Belarus for the last 15 years. He stressed that it did not necessarily make sense to contrast EU states’ perceived levels of commitment to Belarus in this manner, given that the effort towards reform is an all-European one. However, he praised Lithuania's outsized role in engaging with Belarusian civil society, stating that this gave Vilnius extra credibility with other EU states on the issue:
Lithuania is not [merely] fully in line with EU policy, it even spearheaded quite a lot of the direct support for Belarusian democrats. It hosts a free Belarusian university, numerous NGOs working on democratic change in Belarus, and has now proposed, together with others, a dialogue to resolve the current situation in Belarus. In short, Lithuania has been just as committed, and often even more so, to a democratic and free Belarus [as any other EU member state].
However the situation in Belarus develops, it is likely that Vilnius will be the first port of call for many of its young opposition activists — either as representatives of a new order or as exiles from another fateful attempt against the old.

author: Filip Noubel


text:
‘Concerned IT specialists’ launch database of detained Belarusian protesters · Global Voices
Maxim Edwards

Police vans, a souvenir from Belarus on sale at the Ў Gallery of Contemporary Art in Minsk, Belarus, 2017. Photo (c): Maxim Edwards, used with permission.
When the official results of Belarus’ presidential elections were announced on August 10, the country erupted in protest. Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, had ostensibly been re-elected for a sixth consecutive term with over 80 percent of the vote. His challenger Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya received just ten percent. Belarusians took to the streets to demonstrate against brazen electoral fraud. Tsikhanouskaya has since fled to neighbouring Lithuania and riot police have fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the growing crowds. But the crowds keep on coming.
During this turmoil, images circulated of riot police seemingly indiscriminately seizing Belarusians from the streets and bundling them into police vans. According to the country's Ministry of the Interior, approximately 7,000 people have been detained at protest rallies, but some estimates put that number as high as 9,000. What is known is that the country's police detention centres are now overflowing; detainees are held in the courtyards outside:
Затрыманыя ў Акцябрскім РАУСе pic.twitter.com/Iab4vErqYl
— Белсат TV (@Belsat_TV) August 11, 2020
Detentions in the Oktyabrsky police department
But an anonymous group of “concerned IT specialists” from Belarus has just launched a new tool to keep track of the arrests — an interactive database of people arrested during opposition protests.
Launched on August 18, it includes their names, dates of birth, and presumed location. The database uses information from the Belarusian General Prosecutor's Office, as well as updates from news websites such as Tut.by and Belsat, as well as a number of popular channels on the Telegram messaging service.
Read more: How one Telegram channel became central to Belarus’ protests
At the time of writing, the majority of detainees are located either at the Akrestina prison in the capital Minsk or the Zhodzino detention centre, to the city's North-West. The website's managers hope to update its content every evening at ten o'clock.
Given the political situation in Belarus, the creators of the database have taken pains to conceal their identities. It is hosted on a Google .app domain for Google Cloud users, which allows them more anonymity, circumventing the need to register a separate domain name. Whoever they are, their sympathies are clear; the website also features contact details of lawyers and human rights defenders such as ProBono.by, which now offers its services to locate missing detainees.
The new database even gives Belarusians some advice about how to document their incarceration if they are arrested:
Если вам причинены телесные повреждения во время задержания, ареста или  нахождения под стражей
If you are injured while being detained, arrested, or in custody:
1. Record by yourself (take a video of your wounds, record any nearby witnesses, indicate the time and date on a nearby clock, or on a newspaper.
2. Keep hold of the clothes you were wearing. Do not wash them or throw them away. Dry them and fold them away in a bag.
3. Write down on paper or recall on video what you remember from those days, in as much detail as possible. Say where you were detained, who was there, what they did, and what acts of violence were committed.
4. Seek assistance from the nearest medical institution (a clinic or any paid medical centre) and ask them to record all your bodily injuries in as much detail as possible.
This advice is useful in light of credible evidence of violence against protesters who are held in Belarus’ detention centres.
There are now multiple accounts by Belarusian citizens of ill-treatment, corroborated by several international journalists who were also detained by police in Belarus and wrote about their ordeal after their release. Some of these, such as that of Russian journalist Maxim Solopov who works for the independent website Meduza, have caused outrage well beyond Belarus. Nikita Telizhenko, a journalist for the independent Russian online publication Znak, described seeing a room in a detention centre where prisoners “lay on the floor like a living carpet, in pools of their own blood.” Furthermore, the Ukraine-based American freelance journalist Dan Peleschuk, who spent two days detained in Minsk, reported that he had witnessed several prisoners viciously beaten.
Disturbingly, when waiting outside detention centres for their relatives and friends to be released, some Belarusians have claimed to hear screams from inside the building.
Belarusian state television even circulated a video of several detained protesters who had been coerced, probably violently, into denouncing revolution:
Belarusian state television is showing this video of severely beaten young protesters. Asked if they’ll continue “the revolution” by an interrogator whose voice is altered they all say no. Seems to me that images like this will only anger people further pic.twitter.com/M8y6gjqm2v
— Evan Gershkovich (@evangershkovich) August 12, 2020
Although detained protesters are gradually being released, there are still scattered reports of disappearances across Belarus.
The news website Tut.By has launched an online service which allows readers to submit information about people who went missing after the presidential elections. The website, citing the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs, reported that over 50 people are unaccounted for as of August 18.
It is probable that some of these people surface in the country's detention centres. This database could play an important role in getting them home.


text:
From dubplates to debates: Election campaigning in Jamaica during a pandemic · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

A DJ putting down a dubplate mix. Photo by Eduardo Pontes on Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
When Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced the island’s election date in parliament —  instead of at a party rally, as is customary — it was clear that this campaign would be unlike any other.
On September 3, after an unusually short electioneering period, Jamaicans will go to the polls, overshadowed by rising COVID-19 numbers. As of August 17, there are 285 active cases on the island. Jamaica's total population numbers just below three million.
Music, blasting through open-air sound systems, has always been an integral part of Jamaican election rallies. Dancehall stanzas and snatches of popular songs regularly interrupt politicians’ speeches and help create a party-like atmosphere.
However, Jamaica’s entertainment industry has been hard hit by the pandemic, with imposed curfews and gathering restrictions still in place. The usually vibrant city of Kingston has been very quiet.
To make up for this lack of energy, political candidates have come up with their own “dubplates” or short promotional music videos posted on social media.
Former Olympian Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn, who is running for office, sprinted through her rural constituency as she highlighted her achievements:
West Rural well set wid Juliet ✌??? #GreenTeam #westruralstAndrewmp #Flynnforthewin …. Run road ?? pic.twitter.com/sRMvo9lR29
— Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn, MP, OLY (@julietcuthbert) August 17, 2020
Cuthbert-Flynn’s opponent, Krystal Tomlinson, responded with her own dubplate:
The selecta sehh a my turn so me #DUBbleUp! @KingBeenieMan di crowd sehh yuh fi fawud! #KrystalForWestRural #RoadBunAwf pic.twitter.com/CREMgQQ9AC
— Krystal Tomlinson (@krystomlinson) August 15, 2020
Not to be outdone, another woman with years of experience in the music business, Culture Minister Olivia “Babsy” Grange, had dancehall stars Masicka and I-Octane working hard in the studios:
So I hear you're asking for another dub. Here is #Masicka representing for Babsy Grange #StrongerTeam #JLPstronger #Babsy #CentralStCatherine #VoteJLP pic.twitter.com/jmv2JSWqym
— Hon.Olivia Grange (@Babsy_grange) August 17, 2020
It's dub time. Which one shall I start with? Hmmm Let's start with I-Octane #StrongerTeam #JLPstronger #Babsy #CentralStCatherine #VoteJLP pic.twitter.com/EKKtR2Rc5f
— Hon.Olivia Grange (@Babsy_grange) August 16, 2020
While the dubplates provided some much-needed income for entertainers and livened up campaigns, they inspired a mixed reaction.
Some Jamaicans, particularly younger ones, were not amused:
we have a short election period, i want to hear less jingles and dub plates and more policy discussions, but that’s just me
— Captain Stay Home (@_lessismaur) August 12, 2020
Broadcast journalist Sanjay Lewis added:
Why am I seeing both sides putting out so many dub plates, yes I understand that with the election you will have political jabs but I want to hear the message, this is not a dance, what we are looking at is the running of the country &shaping the lives of Jamaicans.
— Sanjay Lewis (@Sanjayolewis) August 14, 2020
Meanwhile, in a YouTube discussion, video commentator Akeen Lawrence questioned whether politicians’ dubplates detract from the authenticity of dancehall music.
Although the two main political parties contesting the election have not yet produced their manifestoes, the Jamaican public hopes to be enlightened on policy positions when the private sector-led Jamaica Debates Commission holds three televised debates — without a studio audience. The commission made sure both parties signed off on dates for the debates.
The darkening clouds of COVID-19 overwhelm most Jamaicans, however. One young social media user commented on Twitter:
So excited to see our politicians put us at risk by trying to campaign in communities and conduct elections in a pandemic. Yay.
— ?? Actinomagnificent (@JamaicanLabrat) August 5, 2020
On August 17, a somewhat gloomy emergency press conference announced further quarantine measures for two neighbourhoods experiencing local spread. Several communities in and around the capital city are also being monitored.
Many Jamaicans feel that the country's politicians are not setting a good example. The government has repeatedly reminded Jamaicans of the COVID-19 protocols, yet, Prime Minister Holness shared a video in which he appeared to be campaigning amid a crowd of supporters, with no social distancing measures. After netizens criticised the post, the tweet was deleted.
Another politician also came up for harsh criticism after she was caught surrounded by enthusiastic supporters with very few wearing masks:
https://t.co/tbVxstwndJ Coronavirus nuh select by color… “a vibe, not planned” is our culture. So what illusion did JLPNP have when they agreed on elections? Every citizen will fall under 1 or other: asymptomatic, symptomatic, mild, moderate or seriously ill. #notplanned
— JCW+ (@JCWadvocacyhope) August 18, 2020
The Office of the Political Ombudsman has posted the Code of Conduct governing the September 3 election on its website, but voting procedures during a pandemic have still not been ironed out and it is unclear how politicians and supporters will stick to COVID-19 measures on the campaign trails.
Concerns also linger over whether citizens who have tested positive should be allowed to vote. While health officials are opposed to the idea, candidates from both sides of the political aisle agree that the 28,381 Jamaicans who have returned from overseas travel and have been in quarantine as of August 17, should be afforded that right.
It's a tricky issue, as there are currently no online voting arrangements in place. To securely set up such a system prior to election day is likely beyond the capabilities of Jamaica's electoral office, so those who have tested positive for COVID-19 would theoretically need to vote in person. Jamaica currently has about 29,000 people in a two-week, at-home quarantine — enough to make a difference to politicians’ numbers — but health officials are adamant that anyone who has been confirmed COVID-19 positive should not be able to visit polling stations.
Blogger Dennis Jones observed:
As we’re finding with the daily management of the pandemic, the weak links are not absence of protocols or advice but people’s willingness to apply them. The frenzy that often accompanies elections in Jamaica has to be curtailed and that’s down to candidates and the parties.
The next two weeks will likely be full of twists and turns, as Jamaicans struggle with growing fears over COVID-19 just as the political rivalry is heating up.

author: Emma Lewis


text:
In eastern Sudan, a bloody intercommunal conflict raises national security concerns · Global Voices
Khattab Hamad

A shopping area in Port Sudan, eastern Sudan, November 2008. Photo by Bertramz via Wikimedia CC BY 3.0.
Last year, the Sudanese people held a revolution under the slogan of “freedom, peace and justice.” But until now, no peace agreement has been signed and blood continues to spill — most recently in Port Sudan, a port city in eastern Sudan.
On August 9, violence erupted in Port Sudan, allegedly along ethnic and tribal lines, exposing the nation’s fragile security situation.
Port Sudan is home to the Nuba people of Sudan, and the Beni Amir, a group of people whose origins span western Eritrea and eastern Sudan. To some, the Beni Amir people are considered “foreigners” from Eritrea, who were granted citizenship in Sudan under the former Omar al-Bashir government.
The violence allegedly emerged out of tensions from previous homicides among the two groups, who have been clashing since at least 2019. A Nuba-Beni-Amir peace agreement was signed by tribal leaders in March but has not held.
The recent fighting in Port Sudan ended after Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdock sent in the Central Reserve Forces and Red Sea State governor Abdallah Shangrai enforced a strict curfew.
The Ministry of the Interior released a statement about the four-day period of violence that left at least 98 people injured and 32 dead. At least 72 suspects were arrested and criminal cases were opened against them.
بيان صحفي حول أحداث مدينة بورتسودان، ولاية البحر الأحمر.
وزارة الداخلية pic.twitter.com/MiR17DQK6G
— وزارة الداخلية السودانية (@SMOI_2020) August 12, 2020
Press release about the events of Port Sudan, Red Sea State.
The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD), described the clashes as having a “tribal character.” In another statement, the committee offered more details on the violence in an attempt to “prevent the spread of rumors”:
لجنة أطباء السودان المركزية
فرعية ولاية البحر الأحمر
((تقرير حول مستجدات الأحداث بالولاية))
فى يومها الثالث تتواصل الأحداث الدموية المؤسفة فى مدينة بورتسودان، التى راح ضحيتها الكثير من الأرواح البريئة من أبناء وبنات الولاية، وإننا إذ يؤلمنا أن نُعلن عن أعداد الضحايا ولكن واجبنا pic.twitter.com/MWYmzz0WjX
— لجنة أطباء السودان المركزية-CCSD (@SD_DOCTORS) August 11, 2020
[Tweet 1]: On its third day, the unfortunate bloody events continue in the city of Port Sudan, in which many innocent lives, sons and daughters of the state, have been lost. It hurts us to announce the numbers of victims, but it is our professional duty to do. [Tweet 2]: So, in order to prevent the spread of rumors that benefit the owners of the political agenda alone. The total number of injuries reached (87) cases of varying severity. The number of deaths has reached (25) since the outbreak of the events until the moment. We hold the Security Committee and the state government fully responsible for protecting the citizens and the security stability [Tweet 3]: and we denounce the position of the federal government, which stands by watching what is happening in the state without moving. May God protect the state and the citizens from the evil of seditions. Urgent recovery for the sick, mercy and forgiveness for the deceased.
Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok tweeted about his pledge to uphold human rights in Sudan, with apparent disregard for the clashes:
I was pleased to speak today in a virtual meeting with human rights and civil society organisations from around the world, who remain strong allies of the Sudanese people in the path to change and democratisation. pic.twitter.com/fwj6MbYnX7
— Abdalla Hamdok (@SudanPMHamdok) August 11, 2020
Citizens directed their discontent by insulting the federal government for its blatant inaction.
Netizen Munta retorted:
هل تعلم سيدي في نفس الوقت الذي كنت تتكلم فيه اسفيريا مع منظمات اجنبية كانت هناك مدينة سودانية اسمها بورتسودان تسيل دماءها جراء فتنة قبلية?? و انه كان الاولى تخصيص هذا الوقت الذي قضيته اسفيريا ان تقضيه واقعيا تبحث و تتقصى و تحاول وقف النزيف.?? انت تضيع وقتا نحن في امس الحوجة له
— Munta (@proud_111) August 11, 2020
Did you know, sir, at the same time that you were speaking foreign organizations, there was a Sudanese city called Port Sudan whose blood flowed due to tribal sedition? I think it’s better to devote the time that you spent on a video conference to spend it realistically searching, investigating, and trying to stop the bleeding. ?? You waste time we badly need.
Khalid Omer wrote:
السيد رئيس الوزراء د. حمدوك
بعد السلام عليكم
هل تعلم أن لديك مدنا تنزق في الشرق والغرب ولايوجد بسط أمن ولاهيبة دولة
الحقو البلد قبل الإنفجار
اللهم بلغت اللهم فاشهد
— Khalid Omer (@KhalidO40086283) August 12, 2020
Mr. Prime Minister Dr. Hamdok, Peace be upon you. Did you know that we have cities bleeding in the East and the West, and there is no security or state prestige? Please stabilize the country.
A day later, Hamdak responded with a letter explaining that he had met with tribal leaders and politicians and decided to: Send a team from the Central Reserve Forces (CRF) to Port Sudan; create a quad committee from the council of security and defense to investigate; request that Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) participate in making a proposal to solve the conflict, and support the strict curfew implemented by the Red Sea State governor to help quell the violence.
تصريح صحفي بخصوص الأوضاع في شرق السودان. pic.twitter.com/uUbRYP3Oui
— مكتب رئيس الوزراء – السودان (@SudanPMO) August 12, 2020
A press release regarding the situation in eastern Sudan.
Some say these clashes stem from chronic conflict between the Nuba and Beni Amir people that flares from time to time. Recently, netizens have raised the question of “hidden hands” playing with Sudanese security.
Eritreans rely on eastern Sudan as a source of goods, usually through smuggling and, therefore, have a stake in the region’s peace and security. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates has had its eye on Sudan's main port, Port Sudan. Analyst Ahmed Shekay, a Sudanese activist from eastern Sudan, speculates that Emiratis may be trying to extort the government through these conflicts — but there is currently no evidence of this.
Hanadi Siddig, a Sudanese journalist, writes that the recent conflict has less to do with tribal or ethnic identities and more to do with foreign interference and their political agendas.
The authorities have not yet acknowledged the reality of the ferocious conflict between the components of the eastern community, which clearly shows the hands of the intelligence services of foreign countries, while it is clear to some that it is a tribal conflict — that reeks of racism.
Siddiq says that that the “heavy foreign presence in eastern Sudan raises serious concerns and puts the country in a volcano…”
Under the Bashir regime, “most of the foreigners [who live in eastern Sudan] were granted Sudanese nationalities and passports by the former Ministry Interior of the ousted government.” When the transitional government took power, Hamdok’s government did not “pay any attention” to this matter, writes Siddiq.
She continues, “Hamdok's government is required to [take] quick [actions] to this crisis, educate citizens about what is going on, and calm them as much as possible until the crisis is over … before our beloved east turns into another Darfur.”
The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) organized a march on Monday, August 17, calling for an urgent evaluation of the government.
According to the SPA’s statement on Twitter, protesters arrived in front of the prime minister’s office in Khartoum and requested a meeting with Hamdok, but his office sent a representative instead, whom the protesters refused to meet.
Soon after, police used tear gas to scatter the gathering. Several protesters were arrested and detained. Some witnesses said protesters burned tires in front of Hamdok's office. Several protesters suffered injuries related to fractures, wounds and suffocation, according to a CCSD field report.
The new governor of Khartoum, Ayim Nimir, went to the police station a day after the march and demanded the release of detained protesters. He also published an apology.
It is clear to many Sudanese people that Hamdok’s popularity is dwindling daily due to Sudan’s fragile security and economic situation. Without guaranteed security, Sudan’s economy will continue to careen toward disaster and foreign investors may flee.

author: Khattab Hamad


text:
Islamophobic post on Facebook leads to deadly violence in Bangalore · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

Image via Pexels by Pixabay. Free to use (CC0)
An inflammatory Facebook post provoked violent clashes between protesters and police in Bangalore on August 11, leaving three dead and dozens injured.
The post alleged sexual offenses against a minor and was considered to be a smear of the Prophet Muhammad. It was shared by P Naveen, nephew of Srinivas Murthy, a politician by the opposition party Indian National Congress (INC). The post has since been deleted.
Shortly after it was shared, a mob protested outside Murthy's house, located in the village of Devarajeevanahalli, in a rural area of Bangalore (officially known as Bengaluru).
The mob also attempted to burn down two police stations. Around 60 police officers were injured in the episode along with several protesters.
The images of the destruction were widely shared on social media, sparking reactions such as the one below by Twitter user Jiten:
https://t.co/GMXqHVXNRY what is happening … how can they destroy public property. why india cant be strict on these gundas.
— jiten (@royaljiten) August 12, 2020
(“Gundas” means goons in Kannada and Hindi)
The clash escalated to large-scale protests in two other villagers in Bangalore, KG Halli, and DG Halli (Halli means “village” in Kannada). Soon afterward, the state government imposed a curfew in the area. Police arrested over 100 people.
Media reports claim some of the protesters belonged to the Social Democratic Party of India, an Islamic political outfit.
One of those arrested was Sayyad Nadeem, a 24-year-old mechanic who died of COVID-19 while in custody. Following the arrest, he was admitted to Bowring hospital in the city of Bangalore after complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. He died a few days later, according to the police. His COVID-19 test came back positive.
The chief minister of the state of Karnataka, where Bangalore is located, BS. Yeddyurappa urged authorities to take strict action against those partaking in the protests. He added that his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government would “not tolerate such provocations and rumors”.
While India's constitution is democratic and secular, violence between its Hindu and Muslim communities have long plagued the country. In recent years, the problem has worsened with online misinformation and harassment campaigns.
Earlier this year, over 50 people were killed during riots in the capital New Delhi following protests against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The majority of the victims were Muslim.
During the recent riots in Bangalore, at least five reporters were attacked by protesters and the police, as chronicled by NewsLaundry.
Journalist Nolan Pinto highlighted reports of police brutality:
@CPBlr your police hit my head with a pole even though we kept yelling we are reporters. @prajwalmanipal was hit on the back. We had to run from your police to save ourselves when there was no mob present!!
Thanks @path2shah for the first-aid. pic.twitter.com/GI8QLp36Vo
— Nolan Pinto (@nolanentreeo) August 11, 2020
Journalist Arun Dev reported how the violence impacted the common citizenry of Bangalore who had no connection to either the rioters or the Congress MLA's nephew:
Even though close to the house of Naveen, who posted the derogatory content, the bar wasn't owned by anyone related to him. It was an act of vandalism. The occupants of the bar were chased out before burning the bar. #Bengalururiots pic.twitter.com/Ld1EjY1Kpe
— Arun Dev (@ArunDev1) August 12, 2020
In the aftermath of the violence, numerous right-wing groups on social media claimed that P Naveen's post was a response to someone called Adyar Basheer Adyar who had allegedly posted derogatory comments against the Hindu goddess Lakshmi.
But an investigation by the fact-checking organization AltNews established these claims as false. AltNews proved that Basheer's anti-Hindu post was from 2018, and P Naveen had never replied to it; the two images had been morphed to sustain the false claim.
Basheer's post, in fact, had resulted in police action against him at the time it was posted, in 2018.
Many condemned the violence perpetrated by Muslim groups, including journalist Anusha Ravi Sood:
Violence in Bengaluru on Tuesday night is quickly being given a ‘Dalit v/s Muslim’ colour while inflammatory posts that sparked d violence is being sidelined. This narrative being pushed at a time d country has witnessed both communities come together on many issues like NRC-CAA
— Anusha Ravi Sood (@anusharavi10) August 12, 2020
Swara Bhaskar, a Bollywood actor, tweeted condemning the violence:
No excuses for violence and arson! No, hurt sentiments are not an excuse!! Highly condemnable, the violence by Muslim hooligans in #Bangalore Just proves religious fanaticism is a scourge in all communities. Guilty must be brought to book as per law. Shameful! #bangaloreriots
— Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) August 12, 2020
Indian Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor highlighted a tweet by Indian Twitter user Muhammad Nuammir showing Muslims protecting a temple in Bangalore with a human chain:
Those who incited and perpetrated the #bangaloreriots must be found, arrested & given exemplary punishment. But they are not to be equated with an entire community any more than thugs & vigilantes represent all Hindus. This also happened in Bangalore: https://t.co/TCrfo6kU7k
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) August 12, 2020
Still, right-wing accounts still peddled a false narrative:
#bengaluruviolence U muslims did riots because of prophet mohammed insult. Now what can we do with U. U made insult of our MATA [Mata means mother in Hindi] . This was a preplanned riots by muslims. Ur muslim man first did insult & then to reply Naveen posted prophet's photo. pic.twitter.com/rDmiFPIqWy
— Aniruddha Ghadge (@AniruddhaGhadg1) August 13, 2020
Expat Indian Sandhya Subedi demanded punishment for the rioters:
Dear Prime Minister of India @PMOIndia please punish the Banglore rioters in the strictest way possible!A facebook post should be replied with facebook post,no one has the right to create riot and kill people for a facebook post! This intolerance should be condemned!
— Sandhya Subedi (@HAMROCHANNEL_NP) August 12, 2020
Taking note of the situation, Bangalore Parliament member Tejasvi Surya from BJP advised the Karnataka government to follow Uttar Pradesh's Yogi Adityanath model and confiscate the properties of rioters as a way to compensate for the loss to public property. This is a measure Indian activists see as biased against minorities, and one that contributes to suppressing protests against legitimate issues.

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


text:
‘Lukashenka’s time is over’: a Belarusian writer urges solidarity from afar · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Max Ščur leading the August 15 anti-Lukashenka demonstration which started from the Clementium in Prague. Photo (c): Filip Noubel, used with permission.
While one of the smallest minorities in the Czech Republic, they have played a major role advocating for domestic changes in their homeland. When protests broke out in Minsk against electoral fraud, prompted by an attempt by President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to stay in office for a sixth consecutive term, they organised demonstrations in solidarity, lobbying Czech politicians and raising awareness in the media.
Belarus has a total population of nearly 10 million people, yet another two to three million people claiming Belarusian ancestry live outside of their home country. Throughout the maelstrom of history, Belarusians have left their country primarily for religious and economic reasons. Czechs and Belarusians are no strangers: in the 16th century the scholar and early book printer Francysk Skaryna lived and worked in Prague, where he laid the foundations of the literary Belarusian language. Later, Belarusian writers and artists moved to Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution in 1917. Today, new generations of Belarusians have migrated to the Czech Republic for economic and educational reasons. In July 2013, the Czech government added Belarusians to the official list of 14 ethnic minorities who are guaranteed political representation and special educational, cultural, and media rights.
Read more: Meet the artist embroidering Belarus’ protests
Max Ščur is one of these Belarusians. The poet, novelist, translator, literary and environmental activist has spent over two decades in the Czech Republic. He now writes in both Belarusian and Czech, and in 2016 won the Giedroyc Prize, a prestigious Belarusian literary award, for the best Belarusian novel of the year. He is also the founding editor of Litrazh, an online Belarusian-language literary magazine.
Ščur has been particularly active in organising Prague's Belarusian community in the aftermath of the August 9 presidential elections. He has coordinated several demonstrations in the Czech capital, such as one on August 15 which began in the city's historical centre, next to Skaryna's memorial plaque on the walls of the Clementinium, a former Jesuit college which hosts a Slavonic library. I spoke to Ščur to learn more about Belarusian diaspora activism and his hopes for change. The interview has been edited for style and brevity.
Participants to the August 15 anti-Lukashenka demonstration in Prague. Photo (c): Filip Noubel, used with permission.
Filip Noubel (FN): How would you describe what is happening in Belarus today? This is not the first time there have been anti-Lukashenka demonstrations, but what's different this time?
Max Ščur (MŠ): This time, it is a people’s uprising. The protest is peaceful, but it is so unanimous that you could use the revolutionary term “levée en masse”, in other words, a total mobilisation.
FN: Fear and hope are two words often used to describe Belarusian society. How do you explain this sudden resistance after so many years of political apathy? Would you say that society is divided over Lukashenka or does one camp dominate?
MŠ: I think that Belarusian people, without even knowing it, act according to what the Chinese call the “wu wei” (無為) principle of non-action. According to Taoist philosophy, an action should be in harmony with the spirit of the time. When the spirit of the time changes, everybody knows it. In the same way, anyone knows when summer eventually becomes autumn: people just feel it, they know time for harvest has come. Trying to do something before the right time comes would be unfortunate. This was my case some 20 years ago, when I was young and wanted things to be different for everybody, while in fact caring but mostly about myself. In the end, I had to leave Belarus. Now everybody wants things to be different for everyone, and that makes a big difference. Belarusian society is not divided, because the issue is not about politics, but rights and the humane way of doing things.
FN: You are a writer in Belarusian and Czech, a publisher and translator, and a Belarusian literary activist. What is the social role of Belarusian writers today?
MŠ: There are so many different characters… Writers in general do their best to be “intellectuals”, this is why they trust their intellect too much. Sometimes it misleads them and makes them choose wrong answers to simple questions. Which in turn often leads to disagreements. We all have different tastes and preferences, we all want to be “interesting”. But right now, all the Belarusian intellectuals are united and one with the Belarusian people. This may sound like an empty phrase from the Communist times, but it’s true. Only ideological fundamentalists, by which I mean nationalists, keep their distance from what’s going on, because they can’t recognise that they were wrong about their own people for all these years under Lukashenka's regime. All the others, where liberals, anarchists, avant-gardists or traditionalists, stay united.
The role of writers in the times to come will be that of peacemakers and interpreters; those who can understand and reconcile different parts of society: workers and businessmen, Belarusian and Russian speakers, and so on. I’m afraid that not many of them will be able to fulfil this role. I expect that their egoistic ambitions will prevail over the common needs of the people, because such is the nature of an “author” in the West. So, there will still be lots of disagreement and discussions in the future.
FN: Many Belarusians, such as yourself, live abroad for political or economic reasons. Can the diaspora play a role? And what do you make of Czech public opinion? Do you see support from Czech public opinion, even though the Czech president has kept silent on the use of violence against protesters in Belarus? Especially considering that riot police in Minsk have used Czech-made weapons?
MŠ: The diaspora does its best to help the people of Belarus. Some of us, myself included, feel quite ashamed that we can't be there in person. That makes us all the more committed to trying to help from abroad by appealing to the international community. Lukashenka has said that Belarusians living abroad are controlled by “puppet-masters”. But it is actually the other way round: in the last weeks and months, all of us, emigrants, have entirely changed our lives in response to what is going on in Belarus. It is the Belarusians in Belarus who are the masters of the situation, and we, the diaspora, are just their puppets. And I’m happy to be such a puppet. I was waiting for 20 years for this to happen, and I did everything I could, including through my literary work, to make it possible. So, I am a very happy puppet right now.
Yes, it is a pity, that some people abroad don’t understand the situation and even support Mr. Lukashenka. For me, this Mr. stands for “murderer,” not “mister”. But what can we do about it? There are few important players in the world today, and I’m glad that the European Union is one of them. It may not be the strongest player, but it is strong enough to make its voice heard. There’s no time to pay attention to the voices of “useful idiots” such as xenophobes, supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, conspiracy theorists and so on. Their time was Lukashenka’s time, and it will be over sooner than they think.


text:
Lukashenka or Lukashenko? Why Anglophone media use different spellings for the embattled Belarusian leader · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

A selection of headlines from Anglophone media showing diverse editorial practices with the surname of Belarus’ longtime ruler. Belarus provinces map by Golbez (CC BY-SA 3.0). Image of Alexander Lukashenko by Serge Serebro, Vitebsk Popular News (CC BY-SA 4.0). Graphic remixed by Georgia Popplewell (CC BY 3.0)
As Belarus is making worldwide headlines since the controversial August 9 presidential elections, different spellings of the surname of the longtime president have emerged in the international press. Lukashenka or Lukashenko: Which is correct?
The answer is both. The name Lukashenko has two different spellings: In Belarusian, it is written Аляксандр Лукашэнка , and in Russian, Александр Лукашенко. Consequently, the English transliteration based on the Belarusian original will be Alyaksandr Lukashenka, while the one based on the Russian spelling will be Aleksandr (or the English equivalent Alexander) Lukashenko.
Both Russian and Belarusian have official language status in the Republic of Belarus, where the population is mostly bilingual to varying degrees. While the two languages are often mutually intelligible, as both belong to the eastern branch of Slavonic languages, they are nevertheless distinct. Today, Belarusian can be seen and heard ceremonially at state functions and on street signs and government ministries across the country. However, much of daily life in the large cities is conducted in Russian, and the presence of Belarusian has waned in recent years, in part due to its declining role in the state educational system.
While media outlets such as The Guardian, The New York Times, and the BBC have been using the Russian-based romanisation, (Lukashenko), Radio Free Europe, which also broadcasts in Belarusian, uses the Belarusian version (Lukashenka). Interestingly, we've found one story by the New York Times from 2006 that used the Belarusian name Lukashenka.
A similar distinction can be observed with the surname of the leader of the opposition: her name is Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in English, romanised from the Belarusian Святлана Ціханоўская. But she becomes Svetlana Tikhanovskaya when transcribed from the Russian spelling, Светлана Тихановская.
As protests have spread across the country, we might also ask about the spelling of various Belarusian cities. Did workers strike in Grodno (Russian) or Hrodna (Belarusian), did protesters demonstrate in Gomel or Homyel? International media have at times spelled Belarusian place names inconsistently.
To complicate things, Belarusian, while now written in Cyrillic, does also have its own Latin alphabet that was used in the 19th and early 20th century, called Łacinka, as well as during the Nazi occupation of Belarus in the early 1940s. A further spelling standard known as Taraškevica is used by some Belarusian speakers abroad; it uses much the same Cyrillic alphabet as standard Belarusian today, but rejects some of the Soviet government's linguistic reforms of Belarusian in 1933.
Furthermore, from the 15th century, the Tatar Muslim minority living in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that included today’s Belarus also wrote Belarusian using an adapted form of the Arabic script , called Кітаб [Kitab] or ارابیصا [Arabitsa] as they gradually abandoned their mother Turkic language and adapted the Slavonic Belarusian language, while remaining faithful to Islam.
This debate may remind some readers of Ukraine, Belarus’ neighbour to the South. After the events of 2014 and subsequent war in the country's East, the country occupied ever more column inches in international newspapers. Heated debate has led to several publications declaring that they would spell the country's capital, previously Kiev, with the Ukrainian transliteration as Kyiv. Russian is spoken fluently by millions in Ukraine, many of whom are ethnic Ukrainians, but it is not an official language — hence the eastern cities of Kharkiv and Luhansk are by convention spelled in their Ukrainian forms, rather than Kharkov and Lugansk, as many of their inhabitants would call them.
Belarus’ political and sociolinguistic situation is very different from Ukraine. But these issues will continue to bedevil editors across the world. Some of the German press continues to refer to the country as Weißrussland (literally “White Russia”) rather than Belarus, as Belarusians prefer. The country is widely called Белороссия (Byelorussia) in the Russian press, despite Belarusians’ objections.
Moments such as these will continue to force editors across the world to consider to whom they are accountable — to state language policy, to the linguistic practices of a country's inhabitants, or to foreign readers who often know faraway places by entirely different, sometimes archaic, names? There are not always easy answers. But when the world's attention is fixed on a country which is unfamiliar, transparency is the best policy — allowing readers to understand how a single letter can matter.


text:
‘Uyghur pop music humanizes and amplifies their hopes’: Interview with musicologist Elise Anderson · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Concert with Uyghur musician (the one holding the guitar) Perhat Khadiq from the group Qetiq. Screenshot from YouTube video.
In many societies living under oppression and cultural denial, music is often the only space and form of resistance. This is particularly true for the 11 million Uyghurs in Western China, and the many thousands now forced to flee their homeland.
To understand how music has become an essential source of visibility, I spoke to Elise Anderson, an expert on Uyghur language and music who spent years in Xinjiang, and now works as a Senior Program Officer with the Uyghur Human Rights Project.
This interview has been edited for brevity.
Filip Noubel (FN): Music and dance have become a cultural battleground between Uyghurs and the state. Could you explain why?
Elise Anderson (EA): Over the past few decades, Uyghur music has been a means of political resistance as much as it has also been a form of entertainment and artistic expression, a well of spiritual nourishment, and an object of state institutionalization. To some extent, the Chinese state has been central in shaping Uyghur music: for the past seven decades, Uyghur artists and producers have had to work within the strict confines of what the censors allow.
Still, Uyghur musicians have long used metaphor and symbolism to make political messages through their music. Whereas these messages could be more explicit in the 1990s, when Kuresh Kusen sang “Don’t sell your land” to Uyghur farmers, increasingly hard-line state responses to political dissent from the late ‘90s on meant that Uyghur artists had to be more creative. Even as recently as 2015 and 2016 these messages appeared onstage and in recordings, where Uyghurs performers sang of “the homeland” and “my people.” These coded messages seem to have disappeared since 2016.
The Chinese state has long stereotyped non-Han peoples like the Uyghurs as “musical.” A positive of the stereotyping is that it has allowed musical spaces to flourish as a forum for expression, making performance events a rare civil society-like space for Uyghurs. A negative outcome of this stereotyping is that it has often served to reduce Uyghur music to flat, sketchy versions of itself, and to erase Uyghurs from their own music-making to an extent. We’ve been seeing this lately in videos from state-run social-media accounts sharing videos of singing, dancing Uyghurs–as if singing and dancing are inherently Uyghur or somehow disprove the fact of China’s oppression. Many diaspora Uyghurs find these depictions deeply problematic and offensive.
FN: Your focus is on Uyghur pop music. Could you explain its origins and the way it is performed and circulated?
EA From the start, my academic research and performance focus were on what we could think of as “traditional” or “classical” music, the genre known as the “on ikki muqam” [The twelve muqams]. Yet, from my earliest encounters with Uyghur music, I found myself drawn to popular idioms as well. Uyghur pop has diverse influences, some of which link it to the broader whole of Uyghur music. For instance, the folk repertoire, which boasts thousands of songs with often playful and rhyme-driven lyrics, remains a source of content for the pop-style music performed and beloved at wedding celebrations and nightclubs. The technical aspects and melodic characteristics of muqam are similarly an influence in the melodic lines of some pop, and there is a lot of crossover between musicians who perform across genres and styles.
But “international” pop musics have long been sources of inspiration for Uyghur pop, with influences from Uzbekistan, Turkey, and other lands to the West of the Uyghur Region. Other sources of influence are perhaps less intuitive: flamenco, reggae, diva ballads, K-pop, jazz, rap. These borrowings and fusions began in earnest with the arrival of cassette technologies to the region in the 1990s and then accelerated in the 2000s and 2010s, particularly as the internet helped sound and video to make their way around the world with speed and ease. We could say that Uyghur pop is, for at least some of its practitioners, a cosmopolitan practice.
Here is an example of an Uyghur rock singer, Perhat Khaliq, who sings under the band name of Qetiq, in Uyghur but also Kazakh and mixes different styles on music:
FN: Some of the Uyghur singers and musicians have cult status. While some are allowed to perform and sell their music officially, others are in exile, have self-censored, or have been detained. Could you give us some examples and what they come to represent in the eyes of the Uyghur public?
EA Undoubtedly, Abdulla Abdurehim has the highest cult status among all performers of Uyghur pop. Abdulla, who is a master of puraq, the melodic ornamentation central to Uyghur musical aesthetics, has been performing since the 1990s. While he doesn’t appear to have performed much over the past few years, he has released some new music and recently even livestreamed an entire concert via Douyin, the domestic Chinese version of TikTok.
Abdurehim Heyit, a singer-songwriter and performer of the dutar (a two-stringed long-necked lute), is not quite as beloved but is perhaps held in even higher regard. Abdurehim was detained by authorities in early 2017. In February 2019, after a rumor spread from Turkey that he had died in detention, Chinese authorities responded to international outcry by circulating a proof-of-life video.
Sanubar Tursun, also a highly regarded singer-songwriter and master dutar player, disappeared into detention as well. She went silent in 2018, when she was slated to perform a series of concerts in Europe. Authorities in China neither confirmed nor denied her detention, however, despite international pressure. Sanubar, who studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and collaborated widely with Chinese and international artists, resurfaced in public performances in Urumchi in late 2019. Countless other beloved musicians, including but not limited to Parida Mamut, Rashida Dawut, and Ablajan Awut Ayup, have disappeared at one point or another.
Self-censorship has been heart-breaking to see. I have seen examples of Uyghur musicians “performing loyalty” by setting political lyrics in Chinese language to Uyghur-style melodies, singing entire songs in praise of Xi Jinping, and penning pro-Party essays. Live concerts, which had already decreased drastically in frequency after 2014, appear almost non-existent.
Of course, Uyghur musicians in the diaspora have long been performing outside China. Prominent examples include Kuresh Kusen, who lived in Sweden, and Sultan Memet, a Uyghur who grew up in Uzbekistan and moved to the United States. In recent years, musicians have formed ensembles in Australia and Europe, and Uyghur youths are performing rap and other styles of music across the globe. Performers are also active in Central Asia, where there have long been large Uyghur communities: Saniyam Ismail (Kazakhstan) and Nazugum Ayupova (Uzbekistan) immediately come to mind.
FN: As Uyghur culture and language are coming under systematic attack by the Chinese state, what role can Uyghur pop music play today?
EA  Uyghur pop can play several roles as the culture continues to be under attack: as a vehicle for expression and production in the Uyghur language. While the space for Uyghur language in formal schooling has been so drastically reduced that it remains only as a token gesture, musicians do appear to have continued making music in Uyghur. The environment in which they make that music is changed, and the circumstances of censorship I mention above pose difficulties, yet the language remains alive.
Pop can also continue to play roles as a source of both entertainment and rich inner life. These are deeply important for the millions of Uyghurs who are experiencing unimaginable trauma. And this point holds for Uyghurs in the diaspora as much as for Uyghurs in the homeland.
Another role pop music can play is in humanizing and amplifying Uyghur hopes, aspirations, and lives. Increasingly, I’m convinced that we get so caught up in arguing about the precise number of the detained that we forget about the human lives being destroyed in this crisis. Pop music can give us ways to understand those lives, to see who Uyghurs are and how they aspire to be part of the world. Similarly, pop can also help us to see that Uyghurs are so much more than the happy-go-lucky song-and-dance people of Chinese stereotypes. To be Uyghur can mean many different things, and the diverse influences and content of Uyghur pop give voice to some of those differences.


text:
Devastated hilltop in Myanmar’s jade mining region remains home for scores of families despite danger · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

Scores of residents are still living near the scene of last month’s deadly landslide in Kachin State’s Hpakant jade mining region. Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy
This article by Nan Lwin Hnin Pwint and Zaw Zaw is from The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar, edited and republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Following last month’s deadly landslide in the Hpakant jade mining region of Kachin State that killed nearly 200 prospectors, local authorities issued a warning to all households located near the collapsed mine, urging them to move as soon as possible.
But 77 households have ignored the warning and stayed in the area. They form the Hka Kyan Village, which is located just atop the slope where the landslide occurred on July 2 near a former jade mine in Hpakant’s Waikhar Village.
According to witnesses, an approximately 30-meter-high mound of waste soil collapsed into a lake below formed by water that had filled a disused pit. A huge wave triggered by the landslide cascaded over other nearby slopes, sweeping away the informal prospectors working on them. The Irrawaddy witnessed a number of subsequent landslides at the jade mine that were a result of the initial collapse.
Ten years ago, Hka Kyan and its surroundings were hilly, forested areas. But today, the area is denuded of trees and rather resembles a moonscape with barren slopes as tall as 1,000 feet (300 meters).
Despite the danger of further landslides, scores of residents are still living in Kachin State’s Hpakant jade mining area. Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy.
Hpakant Township General Administration officials conducted a survey following the recent disaster and asked 77 households in Hka Kyan to relocate as soon as possible, warning that their houses were at risk of being destroyed in landslides.
The residents now live in fear and anxiety after losing nearly 200 of their neighbors overnight. They told The Irrawaddy they are unable to sleep properly, fearing they will be swept away in a landslide if it rains at night.
However, they cannot afford to move to another location or buy new houses elsewhere. They hope the government and mining companies will take responsibility and evacuate them in time.
Many residents living in Kachin State’s Hpakant jade mining area said they cannot afford to relocate despite the landslide tragedy in their community last July. Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy.
The jade mining operation has transformed Hka Kyan and its surroundings which were once covered with forests. Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy.
The July landslide tragedy has killed almost 200 local prospectors. Photo by Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

author: The Irrawaddy