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Literary translation from South Asia lags in international markets · Global Voices
Sangita Swechcha

Covers of books Jenny Bhatt has written and translated. Used with permission.
According to Indian American writer, literary translator and book critic Jenny Bhatt, only a small percentage of books from different South Asian languages find their way to international readers, especially in the United States market.
Bhatt teaches creative writing at Writing Workshops Dallas, leads Desibooks, a global multimedia forum that showcases South Asian literature and connects readers and writers through conversation and community. Her debut story collection, ‘Each of Us Killers’, published by 7.13 Books, won a 2020 Foreword INDIES award in the Short Stories category and was also a finalist in the Multicultural Adult Fiction category.
Her recent literary translation, ‘Ratno Dholi: Dhumketu’s Best Short Stories’, published by HarperCollins India, has been shortlisted for the 2021 PFC-VoW Book Awards for English Translation from Regional Languages.
Global Voices interviewed Bhatt about her most recent literary translation via email, and discussed South Asian literature's prospects in the international market.
Jenny Bhatt. Image via author. Used with permission.
Global Voices (GV): Tell us about the experience of translating Dhumketu’s stories.
Jenny Bhatt (JB): This was my first book-length translation of a writer's work. Before that, I'd translated the odd short story for family members but nothing beyond that. For this project, I read approximately 600 short stories by Dhumketu [the pen name of Gujarati writer Gaurishankar Govardhanram Joshi (1892-1965)] to select the 26 or so for the collection. This was a long process.
I also learned a lot along the way about the craft of literary translation. I'm still learning, I believe. The commercial side of things was a steep learning curve as well, in terms of getting copyright permission, etc. I started the book project in 2017 and the book finally launched in 2020. So, beyond the craft and commercial aspects, I learned the art of patience and self-discipline to stay on course despite setbacks.
GV: How was your publishing journey?
JB: The publishing journey for the translation was educational, for sure. I didn't start out with the idea of doing a book-length translation. I was actually querying an agent in India for my own short story collection [‘Each of Us Killers’ came out in the United States in 2020]. In my email, I'd mentioned how I was also doing a bit of translation work. The agent called me within the hour, keen on the translation.
Then began the long process of getting copyright permission, getting a publisher, actually completing the translation, editing it, etc. The thing that no one had predicted or anticipated was, of course, that the book would launch during a global pandemic. So that added more challenges, as I was in the US while the book was being released in India—and the world was just getting used to going all virtual with book events. So, anyway, as I tell people, all of us who had debuts during the global pandemic are now prepared for pretty much anything as far as book launches go.
GV: Tell us about the podcast you run.
JB: Desi Books focuses on books from or about South Asia. I find that, particularly in the [West], our books are not given their due attention. The desi [a word used to describe the people, cultures, and products of the Indian subcontinent and their diaspora] books that do make it big are often those that check off certain boxes for western gatekeepers and critics, that confirm certain stereotypes and biases people have about South Asia. So my goal is to spotlight the amazing diversity of our literary traditions. And, as I always say, a rising tide lifts all boats. In the end, our literary culture is that much richer and stronger if we all support and uplift each other.
Finally, I want to do and be more of what I'd like to see in the world. So, if I want to see more diverse South Asian books being accepted and read, I need to do my bit of literary citizenship toward that. I find it more productive to put out positive energy through this kind of work than to just complain about the problems I see across the literary landscape. Right now, it's a solo venture because I can't afford to pay anyone, but I'm hoping to find some funding options so I can pay a couple of folks to do interviews and reviews. Let's see.
GV: Are any of your new publications coming out soon? What are you working on currently?
JB: These days, I'm working on a novel as my longer-term project. But I do have ongoing book reviews and short story translations coming out on a regular basis. [My creative writing class] takes up a good part of my working day. And, of course, there's the podcast, which takes a certain amount of time on a weekly basis. But all of this, for me, is part of my writing discipline. I see them all as different and necessary parts of my writing life. And I'm very grateful to be able to do all of these things.
GV: As a South Asian literature campaigner, how do you see its presence in the world market?
JB: It's been getting better over time. But, in general, there's this tokenism that often takes place. Some new writer gets crowned as ‘the’ South Asian writer of our time. And then, all the western literary gatekeepers want more of the same. For the longest time, this was Jhumpa Lahiri. She's a terrific writer, but she does not and should not be held as representative of ALL South Asian literature. Or, the books that get rave reviews are those that exoticize or erase aspects of our cultures that somehow don't fit the generally accepted biases out there. Again, I believe things are getting better but there's definitely more to be done.
GV: What suggestions do you have for translators and writers who want international publishers?
JB: I'll be honest that literary translations in general—and those from South Asia, in particular—are not popular enough in international markets. I believe it's best to start with a publisher in South Asia and, once the book has had a bit of success in this region, then try for international publishers. Mostly, you'll have to research and query with publishers who specifically want to take on translations and have some track record of having published South Asian translations.
In my case, my Indian publisher, HarperCollins India, had global rights for my translation. So they pitched my book, along with a few other titles, to a US publisher. I did not have to get involved with the negotiations and such—and, to be honest, that's all good with me. It takes a lot of time and effort to do all of that on your own. Another option is to translate shorter works and submit them to literary magazines. That can help build a publication history which, especially in the international market, carries some weight.
Bhatt's writing has appeared in various international newspapers and publications. Having lived and worked her way around India, England, Germany, Scotland, and various parts of the US, she now lives in a suburb of Dallas, Texas.

author: Sangita Swechcha


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Hong Kong labels the host of Tiananmen vigil and other civic groups as ‘foreign agents’ to justify clampdown · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Committee members from the HK Alliance in a press conference on September 6. Image via Stand News. Used with permission.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China (HK Alliance), the host of annual vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, is being investigated under Hong Kong's national security law after the police labelled the group a ‘political organization’ and a ‘foreign agent’ on August 25, 2021.
The Alliance rejected the labels and refused to provide information that police officials requested. Citing article 43 of the national security law, the police accused the HK Alliance of being a ‘foreign agent’ and demanded the HK Alliance hand over information about its executive committee members, their identities, the group's income sources, activities and meetings since 2014.
The police specifically demanded details of activities and communications that involved the Canada-based Federation for a Democratic China, Taipei- and Hong Kong-based New School for Democracy, Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, Seoul-based Asia Democracy Network, Apple Daily via Mark Herman Simon, US-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and four other organizations funded by the NED.
The Hong Kong-based New School for Democracy and China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group also received similar requests from the police. Both organizations asked the police a deferment in response to the requests.
On September 8, the police arrested at least four HK Alliance committee members for refusing to turn over the information and failing to comply with the national security investigation request. The news outlet 852 Spirit reported on Twitter:
0800: after refusing to provide data to NSD [National Security Department] yesterday, #HKAlliance multiple committee members have been arrested this morning, including Leung Kam-wai, Chan Tor-wai and Vice President Chow Hang-Tung. #908HK #Hongkong #NationalSecurityLaw @nytimes @BBCBreaking https://t.co/2Q49Oe4Xyc pic.twitter.com/rBqbY1FRDc
— The 852 Spirit (@the852spirit) September 8, 2021
On September 7, the HK Alliance presented a letter to the national security authority, stressing that the group is not a foreign agent and that the police authority’s demand violates the principle of  ‘reasonable doubt‘, a legal standard of proof. On the same day, the HK Alliance also filed a judicial review over the police action. APF Hong Kong co-respondent Xinqi Su reported on Twitter:
It wasn’t long before the HK Alliance reps finished handing in their letter and leaving the police HQs. Chow Hang-tung @zouxingtong said police warned they should follow the law and she told them to do the same. “It only applies to foreign agents, not any random target,” she said pic.twitter.com/0Z255AXYJL
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) September 7, 2021
Barrister Chow Hang Tung, the vice-chairperson of the Alliance, explained the rationale behind the group's decision more thoroughly in an article published by Stand News on September 3. She called the police’s request for the group’s internal documents a ‘fishing expedition‘ to construct stories and conspiracies against civic groups and to invoke fear by labelling the group as ‘foreign agents’, which has a vague and arbitrary definition.
According to National Security Law Article 43 implementation guidelines, the definition of ‘foreign agent’ refers to any person in Hong Kong who is directly or indirectly supervised, controlled, employed, subsidized or funded by a foreign government or foreign political organization. A political organization refers to any political party or organization that ‘pursues political ends’.
Chow expressed her concern that nearly any organization can be categorised as a ‘political organization’ if they are pursuing policy changes:
以維護工人權益為目標的工會算不算有政治目的？追求社會公義的教會呢？推動扶貧呢？教育呢？性別平權呢？法治呢？…會花費大量資源去推動政策改變的科技巨頭呢？商會呢？
What about labour unions that defend workers’ rights, will they be considered pursuing political ends? What about churches that pursue social justice and poverty alleviation? What about groups that work on education, gender equity and rule of law? … And those internet giants and business associations that spend a huge amount of resources to promote policy change?
Chow also pointed out that when a civic group is labelled as political, then it can easily fall into the category of ‘foreign agent’, while international organizations which are based in Hong Kong could easily fall into this legal trap:
那麼最受影響的大概就是各種國際組織的職員 — 只要機構被定性為「政治性組織」，受資者、受薪者的「代理人」身份就跑不掉。難怪國際組織似乎都準備要撤出香港了，它們一日在港運作，一日就有被迫交出整個組織隱私的風險。
Employees of international organizations would be affected the most. Once the organization is labelled as a ‘political organization’, those who are funded or employed by them would be treated as foreign agents. That’s why many international organizations are considering leaving Hong Kong. If they continue operating in Hong Kong, they could be forced to hand over their internal information.
Local organizations which receive funding support or have collaboration with overseas organizations would also be subjected to similar political harassment, Chow noted.
The Security Bureau and the Police Force, however, insisted that their power is in accordance with the principle of the rule of law and vowed to take action against the HK Alliance.
HK Alliance was founded in 1990, one year after the bloody crackdown of the Tiananmen student movement in 1989. It is a coalition of more than a dozen civic groups. The organization's mission is expressed in its name, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China.  Since its establishment, it had organized the annual candle night vigil on June 4 to commemorate those who died during the Tiananmen Massacre. In 2020 police banned the vigil citing concerns about the pandemic.
As pointed out by Chris Yeung, the chief editor of Hong Kong-based CitizenNews, the Alliance has always been a domestic patriotic movement to build a democratic and open China, the ‘foreign agent’ label is at odds with Hongkongers’ experience.
For many Hongkongers who had gone through the journey of the ill-fated pro-democracy movement spearheaded by the Alliance in the past three decades, the police’s accusation of the Alliance being a “foreign agent” has defied their knowledge, understanding and experience.
To say those tens of thousands of people who paid tributes to the June 4 victims on every June 4 as part of a plot by a “foreign agent” aimed to endanger national security is an insult to their conscience, to say the least.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Oiwan Lam


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In Azerbaijan silence looms as yet another member of LGBTQ+ community is fatally targeted · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

A “Clear legal basis needed to combat violence against women” by the European Parliament is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Azerbaijan's LGBTQ+ community has never had it easy. But these past few weeks, have been especially traumatic. Just a little over a month after attacks against some members of the LGBTQ+ community, the story of a young trans woman killed in August stirred further discussion about deeply rooted homophobia in the country, the lack of protective measures to support LGBTQ+ people, and the government's failure to take action amid violence and hate.
The most recent victim was a 27-year-old trans woman, Nuray. Her burned body was found on August 22, in one of the capital's residential districts. Police identified the killer as 36-year-old Mirshahid Mehdiyev who was arrested along with another man on the grounds of complicity in a committed crime.
Shortly after the victim was identified, a group of LGBTQ+ community members staged a protest outside the district police office and the ombudsman building. They also asked the Ministry of the Interior to take action against a blogger, Huseynova, whose recent videos gained popularity after she openly called for violence against trans community members, including Nuray.
Huseynova quickly dismissed the allegations. According to OC Media, the blogger said she was putting “an end to this shame,” referring to transgender community members, and that those like Nuray should be crushed like flies.
The blogger's videos targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community are common. Most recently, in one of her Instagram live posts, Huseynova asked local law enforcement to look the other way on cases concerning hate crimes. “A sign is enough for us, just tell us, and we, the people, will slowly shove them away.”
So called #blogger and #facist Sevinj Huseynova calls people to shove away #trans community and state agencies to close their eyes to #crimes to be committed group of people in #Azerbaijan. #LGBTQ pic.twitter.com/DUFFN6nCCu
— ☭ Vahid ☭ (@rafaeloghlu) September 2, 2021
In another video, Huseynova vows to destroy trans women if and whenever she meets them and calls on her viewers to do the same. “From here I call on our men, brothers, and women, wherever you see them, beat them up.”
Responding to media inquiries, Elshad Hajiyev, the spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said the ministry is aware of the videos and is investigating.
Incitement to violence, is punishable under the Code of Administrative Offences as well as under the Criminal Code, article 283.1. In an interview with JamNews, lawyer Samed Rahimli explained that if someone is found guilty of inciting hatred and enmity in the media, on ethnic, religious, racial, or social grounds, the perpetrator may face a fine ranging between 8,000–12,000 manats (4,700–7,060 US dollars), correctional labor for up to two years, or imprisonment up to 4 years. And in cases where these crimes are committed using violence, or with threats of violence, the perpetrator can face imprisonment up to 5 years.
At the time of writing this story, Sevinc Huseynova made her Instagram account private but opened a second one (also private) in case the original account where she has 18,000 followers gets shut down.

author: Arzu Geybullayeva


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Kazakhstan news site receives threats after reigniting a child abuse story · Global Voices
Paolo Sorbello

A screengrab from The Village’s YouTube video shows the grandmother of the boy from the southern village of Abai, who denounced the violence being meted out to her grandson, saying she “couldn’t withstand it any longer”.
The Village, a popular internet news outlet in Kazakhstan, was established in 2017 as a light read mostly targeting readers from Almaty, the country's most populous city. It soon turned into a voice for independent journalism, triggering the attention of those who dislike reporters researching thorny issues.
After journalist Assem Zhapisheva wrote a follow-up to a harrowing story about child rape that had been in the headlines since 2018—which reached a readership of 40,000 in just 24 hours, impressive for a long read in Kazakhstan—she started receiving threatening phone calls, allegedly from public officials. Zhapisheva immediately turned off her phone and appealed to the authorities to investigate, while on September 1 The Village wrote a public complaint on its Telegram channel:
Мы вынуждены сообщить, что прямо сейчас на нашу редакцию совершается атака неустановленных лиц, представляющихся различными ведомствами с требованием удалить статью.
Мы требуем прекратить давление на независимых журналистов. Мы не намерены удалять опубликованный материал.
Этим лицам же советуем решать проблемы в стране, а не пытаться заткнуть журналистов.
We inform you that unknown individuals, who introduce themselves as state officials, are attacking us, demanding we remove the article from our website.
We demand that they stop pressuring independent journalists. We do not intend to remove our article.
We suggest they [try and] solve the problems in the country, rather than attempt to shut journalists up.
The Ministry of Information sent a note the following day, saying that its representative had indeed contacted the editorial office of The Village, but only to “provide assistance regarding the accuracy of the information presented,” not to pressure its journalists.
Hours later, the country's Ombudsman for Children, Aruzhan Sain, noted in a Facebook post that Zhapisheva's article falsely stated the child still lives in the Abai village, whereas he had been relocated with his mother years ago. In 2018, over the course of six months, the child had been repeatedly raped by older boys in the village of Abai, in the south of the country.
Erden Zikibay, a local artist, drew an illustration in which he juxtaposed the golden heritage of 19th century poet Abai with the dark reality of rural Kazakhstan under then-president Nursultan Nazarbayev, where violence and rape go unpunished.
A post shared by Erden Zikibay (@zikibay)
Locals—including the victim's parents, as well as school directors and village authorities—tried to cover up the story for as long as possible, until the boy's grandmother managed to catch the attention of journalist Amangeldy Batyrbekov.
Batyrbekov's report uncovered the truth about abuse, laying bare a society all too keen to victim-blame and condone bullying. In Kazakhstan, it is considered better to cover up something as ‘shameful’ as rape, rather than denouncing it and making it public. Despite the case grabbing national headlines, no one was ever punished for the crime.
Rather, Batyrbekov received threats for publishing the article and was ultimately sentenced for libel in 2019, after reports that unveiled cases of corruption in the education sector. His initial sentence of two years and three months in prison was overturned on appeal, and he was freed after serving four months in jail.
Batyrbekov's case was not an isolated one. In June, press freedom watchdog Adil Soz published a report on the many death threats against Ak Zhaiyk's editor-in-chief Azamat Maitanov and his staff. A popular newspaper in the Atyrau region, Ak Zhaiyk is one of the few independent voices in western Kazakhstan.
Another staunch independent outlet, Uralskaya Nedelya, has been the target of harassment for years. On several occasions, its chief editor, Lukpan Akhmediyarov, has withstood threats and police pressure related to stories the paper has published.
According to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Kazakhstan is among the worst-performing countries in terms of press freedom. Just months ago, the Pegasus Project, an investigation of leaked documents, showed how several journalists had been targeted with spyware by the country's security services.
Whether through harassment, threats, or direct violence, journalists in Kazakhstan continue to find themselves under pressure from both the authorities and local elites.

author: Paolo Sorbello


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Artists join activists in protest to save a water reservoir in Kazakhstan’s capital · Global Voices
Paolo Sorbello

Aigerim Ospan, a performance artist, plays the kobyz, a traditional Kazakh instrument, on the drying water reservoir, now a construction site. Screengrab from an Azattyq Radiosy YouTube video.
In the background, cranes erect new buildings in the ever-growing periphery of Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan's capital city. Against that backdrop, on the drying grounds of the water reservoir of Malyi Taldykol, a surprising battle scene takes place: artists dressed in traditional Kazakh clothes and playing traditional Kazakh instruments face off with bulldozers and construction crews.
On September 7, after activists had discovered that the city administration would go ahead with its construction plans at the reservoir, they decided to enact a protest.
Aigerim Ospan and Askhat Akhmedyarov, two renowned contemporary artists, with the help of some of the long-time campaigners of the informal SOS Taldykol organization, staged a symbolic performance, standing with open arms across the path of the bulldozers called in by the construction company.
A post shared by Сохраним Малый Талдыколь (@sos.taldykol)
Ospan played the kobyz, a traditional string instrument, right in front of the blade of a bulldozer, its engine scoffing while her notes resonated around the crowd of workers, activists, and journalists.
A post shared by Сохраним Малый Талдыколь (@sos.taldykol)
For months, activists have tried to draw attention to the worrying decay of water resources around the capital. In March, artist Aisuluu Shaikenova placed dozens of ice figurines of birds in the capital's main boulevard. Their slow melting was supposed to be a metaphor for the progressive depletion of Kazakhstan's bodies of water.
In the summer of 2020, after the government announced it would build a park in the site of Malyi Taldykol lake, activists formed the SOS Taldykol initiative.
In response to public pressure, last December, Altai Kulginov, the mayor of Nur-Sultan, said that the lake would be preserved.
No one will touch the lake. In fact, this is a water accumulation, not a lake. People commonly call it Malyi Taldykol. We will create a recreation zone near Lake Taldykol [the nearby lake] with landscaping and walkways for people.
In the summer of 2021, however, bulldozers came to the Malyi Taldykol and started construction work, triggering more protests from the activists.
The main issue with the reservoir is that its water has been progressively drained, damaging its ecosystem. The growing need for land for real estate in the outskirts of the capital had made Malyi Taldykol a target for new developments.
Ruslan Urazaliyev, a researcher at Kazakhstan's Biodiversity Association, told news channel 24.kz that the real estate development plans will be counterproductive for the environment around the reservoir.
There is an aggressive construction plan for the territory, which used to be wetlands. This goes against both environmental legislation and common sense. New residential complexes, a school, and other facilities will appear here.
The resonance of the protest-performance, which reached high visibility on social media in Kazakhstan, could perhaps push the authorities to review their construction plans. Or so the activists hope.


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The origins of ‘liming’ in Trinidad and Tobago · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The writing underneath the window reads, ‘No Limers,’ meaning no ‘liming,’ or hanging about, allowed. Photo by shanelkalicharan on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
It's been more than four years since history buff Angelo Bissessarsingh, fondly known as “the people's historian,” died from pancreatic cancer, but his legacy lives on—perhaps most accessibly through the Facebook page he started in 2010, in what he described as “a fit of boredom.” His Virtual Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, an active public group with about 33,000 members, has become a platform for sharing knowledge of the country's history, traditions and memories of days gone by, often complete with photographs and a healthy dose of humour.
On September 6, group member Frank Best posted information on the origins of the term “liming”–a colloquialism believed to have originated in Trinidad and now used throughout the region to describe hanging out with friends. According to an anthropologist friend of his father's, the word was birthed—“probably in the 1920s”—at Queen's Royal College (QRC), still one of the country's most prestigious secondary schools, whose graduates include writers C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul, West Indies cricketer Deryck Murray, economist Lloyd Best, carnival designer Peter Minshall, actor Geoffrey Holder, and Eric Williams, the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago:
A group of students who were lounging under a tree and appeared to be engaged in idle conversation, were approached by the principal and asked why they were not in their classrooms. Their excuse was that they were out because they were liming.
Liming was their commonly used term for the act of painting the lower portion of tree trunks. It was white and done both for aesthetic appeal and as a form of protection for the trees.
Many of the trees around the college were painted this way, as can still be witnessed today. Liming was itself a shortened form of the word limewashing, which gets its name from its main ingredient, lime or limestone; its chemical name – calcium carbonate (CaCO3).
Having been spared any disciplinary action for their explanation, the tale soon spread among the students. The word liming thus took on its new meaning, and with time, it spread beyond the boundaries of the college, becoming a colloquial term in the Trinidad dialect.
In response, Facebook user William J Carter posted excerpts from lexicographer Lise Winer's book “Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago,” in which the term is linked to British soldiers—“limeys”—commenting:
A most interesting ‘thread’ bringing out all kinds of intriguing prejudices (positive and negative) and biases. A lot of the contributions are entertaining though hardly illuminating. I would respectfully suggest to everyone if one wished to approach the matter seriously, one should refer to a serious source.
It would soon become clear, however, that—in keeping with the lighthearted banter that is the hallmark of proper liming—seriousness was not high on anyone's agenda, especially given the local penchant for competitiveness among schools, with QRC “old boys” reputed to be among the most proud of their alma mater. Best's declaration prompted lots of hilarious responses, far beyond the Virtual Museum of Trinidad and Tobago's Facebook group. Attorney Emir Crowne was off the blocks quickly, retorting:
If all yuh believe QRC men coined the term ‘liming’, then back in 1842 a group of Naps men fell asleep after a long hike from the College to Harris Promenade during an icy winter.
The principal drove by in his Audi R8 and said ‘NAPS! Back to naps!’. And that's where the term ‘naps’ comes from; meaning to sleep, albeit briefly, especially during the day.
[This story was told to me by someone who knew someone who was an anthropologist, therefore it might be true].
He continued:
PowerPoint presentations gets its name from Presentation College. In 1812, Brother Michael gave a lecture using his powerful pointing technique. Thereafter, it became known as the PowerPoint presentation.
In terms of prominence, it could be said that Naparima and Presentation Colleges are to south Trinidad what QRC is to Port of Spain.
Crowne went on:
Also, the first eggs benedict was made at St. Benedict's College in 1912.
Commenter Kevin Ramnarine added:
Legend has it that the term used to describe a piece of land that rises higher than everything surrounding it has its origins with Hillview College.
Comedian Simmy De Trini soon chimed in on a Facebook thread of her own:
Believe it or not, QRC men are behind many other origin stories besides discovering the word ‘liming'… Did YOU know…
It was also a QRC man behind the local delicacy [doubles]. After school, the tenacious QRC lad would walk home every day from Port of Spain to Penal. Upon his arrival, he would be so hungry from his journey that he would ask the Single bara [a type of flatbread] seller, a random man of no noble QRC origin, to double his order – thus coining the term doubles.
Other things QRC men invented that you might not be aware of:
1. Soca
2. KFC
3. Horn
“Horn” is the local term for cuckoldry.
So what are the origins of liming? Local historian Gerard Besson, in a telephone interview with Global Voices, says there are a few possibilities. The one he's most familiar with is the connection to British sailors, but in Thomas Hardy's “Tess of the d'Urbervilles,” first published in 1891, he remembers the word lime being associated with a husband never coming home when he's expected because he's lingering at the pub.
In a project that Besson's Paria Publishing Company worked on with local rum manufacturer Angostura, the term was also linked to a punch that British sailors would make—a mix of rum, sugar and lime—after which they would get drunk and become unruly.
There are several other origin stories, including one about sugar cane farmers in southern and central Trinidad who would sit and “ole talk” while waiting for the “lime” to soak into the fields, and another that says it comes from the relaxation men working in the limestone quarry in east Port of Spain took after a hard day's work—accompanied by a few drinks, no doubt.
Whatever you choose to believe about its origins, liming remains a cherished Caribbean pastime, and one that is sorely missed in the midst of COVID-19 restrictions.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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‘You are more than good enough’ · Global Voices
Shivanee Ramlochan

Classroom desks; photo on Flickr by Jack Sem, CC BY 2.0.
Editor's Note: On September 9, students across Trinidad and Tobago who recently sat the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination—a high-stakes placement test that determines which secondary school they attend—received their results. Approximately 19,645 students sat the 2021 exam, but as places in “prestige” schools are limited, the competition is fierce. In addition, as many of these schools are run by religious boards, there is an agreement—the Concordat—that gives them the right to hand-pick 20 per cent of new students entering denominational schools, regardless of their performance.
The system has long been hailed as inequitable and counterintuitive to how children learn. Writer Shivanee Ramlochan, who has had her own struggles with the country's education system, shared her thoughts about the exam on Facebook. She has graciously allowed us to republish them, below:
I was a rebellious student.
Though I had aptitude and inclination in the language arts, many things about my primary and secondary school experiences frustrated and stymied me, utterly. This wasn't helped by the punitive, shame-oriented discipline methods of many of my educators, and school administration. I was, quite naturally, a precocious and perhaps arrogant young person, but nearly without exception, my worst academic memories have to do with teachers—older, wiser, more experienced—reducing me ruthlessly to tears.
This is to say: there are a handful of passions that were crushed in my body and mind before they could bloom, as a direct result of how I was educated. I am not ascribing “fault” here; on the contrary, being deterred from certain pursuits in the past has only strengthened my desire to invest myself in them now. Still, as is my custom on the day S.E.A./Common Entrance exam results are released, I find I cannot be silent about the expectations, dim and punitive and repressive, we place on our nation's youth.
The newspapers will be strewn today with “top performers,” bespectacled and beaming girls and boys clutching their results slips, flanked by two supportive parents, a vision of nuclear domestic bliss. The achievers will speak of long, frustrating nights glued to textbooks, of the importance of God, of badminton and swimming alongside equations and composition. They will be praised, and I don't seek to take a single thing away from them.
There are many more children today who will feel wretched, holding a slip that announces they didn't pass for their first, second, third, or fourth choice. Perhaps, indeed, they “failed.” Their parents will weep, or shout, or beat them til they don't know whether they're crying from the licks or the lack of love they feel. Their friends will regard them with pity and relief that they aren't in such pathetic shoes. Their lives will seem so bleak that some might be tempted to hurt themselves, to rid the world of the embarrassment they've caused. And these are the children I wish I could give everything to, every assurance, every confidence, every faith in their power and promise.
Today and every Results Day, I wish there were awards and front-page spotlights for the girl who's proud she actually finished her exam paper this time, or the boy who, finally, understood the most difficult comprehension question even though he didn't ace the section. For the pupil who thought they'd fail, only to burst with joy at being selected for a “non-prestige,” yet heartily holistic college. For the twins who never had designs on prestige schools at all, and only wanted to go to secondary school somewhere close to home, with a big grassy field in which they could play cricket and football. All these children deserve praise. Not one of them merits shaming.
The rigid, neo-colonial demands of Trinidad and Tobago's academic hierarchy prescribes one way—one narrow and cruel way—for a child to “succeed.” It posits that unless you go to the “right” preschool, the correct primary institution, the ideal secondary setting, “win” a scholarship and emerge on the other side of this exhausting gauntlet a medical doctor, lawyer, or—barring those two—an engineer, unless that has been your path, then you don't deserve the most praise at the family table come Christmas. I don't need to tell any of you that this is wrong. Yet for many of us, this is how we were raised, whether we grasped the brass ring or let it fall away entirely.
I long for an education system that truly prizes multiple intelligences, and a society supported by media houses and non-governmental organizations that actually actions that praise. I want to tell the children who feel dejected and overwrought with grief, witnessing their cohorts go on to convents and colleges of presentation, that the best thing they can do with their lives is the thing that gives them the most incandescent satisfaction, and that this does not need to be the plumbing of the human body; it can, in fact, be the plumbing of toilets, faucets and sinks. That a life devoid of tort textbooks and lawyer's silk isn't superior, smarter or better than one in which you make superhero-themed cakes for a living, or design postal stamps, or drive big-rig trucks round our island's perilous corners and potholed roads with deftness and precision, or create pointillist-perfect styles on lacquered nailbeds.
Of all these skills is our country made. From garbage collecting to gardening to geriatric surgery, we need them all. Or would we prefer a T&T where 1.3 million doctorlawyerengineers stare blankly at each other, come time to fix a carburetor, visit the theatre, read a novel, install an AC unit, fly to Tobago, or cut stone from the earth?
To the children who feel they have failed:
You have not failed. Even if you have not passed this exam.
You are no less worthy. No less capable. No less anything.
The world is still as much yours as it is anyone's.
You are still, and always will be, a radiant being, capable of infinite possibilities.
And yes, I promise, you are more than good enough.

author: Shivanee Ramlochan


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China’s unfulfilled promise to develop Venezuela’s mines · Global Voices
Alessandra Soler

Background photo of mining activities in the Orinoco Mining Arc, edited by Giovana Fleck | Global Voices
At the turn of the century, China and Venezuela signed several agreements worth millions of dollars for the development of the Venezuelan mining sector, which both countries promoted as an alternative to Caracas’ over-reliance on oil. Expectations were high. Yet years later, investments have not come to fruition and the mining sector is mired in lawlessness, sanctioned by the U.S., and subjected to widespread criticism.
According to a report by the Venezuelan Chapter of Transparency International, between 2000 and 2020 Venezuela and China signed over 470 agreements for bilateral cooperation. Venezuela became the main recipient of Chinese financing in Latin America by receiving 45 percent of the total funds destined to the region, which amounts to more than $68 billion. Ninety-one percent of the funds were delivered in the form of loans.
Venezuela had become one of China’s closest partners in the region. The strategic partnership was founded on ideological similarities, such as the goal of contesting U.S. power by promoting a multi-polar world order, as well as a rigid interpretation of the principle of non-intervention — as long as it worked in their favor.
It was also founded on mutual economic interests. China was on the lookout for commodities to sustain its economic boom, new markets for its products, and a door to Latin America and the Caribbean; Venezuela desired to break away from its traditional main trade partner, the U.S. Although the oil industry took the front seat for years, according to Transparency’s report, there were at least 17 agreements pertaining to the mining sector for the exploitation of iron ore, steel, coal, gold, and coltan.
In 2012 the late President Hugo Chávez signed an agreement with China to prospect, explore and map out Venezuela’s mining resources, which received criticism from experts and the opposition for willfully delivering critical information on strategic resources, ignoring local expertise, and for its lack of transparency. That same year, Venezuela handed the Chinese CITIC Group the concession to operate in Las Cristinas, home to one of the largest gold reserves in the world.
When the collapse of oil prices between 2014 and 2016 accelerated an economic crisis that was already brewing in the country, Maduro put the mining sector at the forefront of his strategy to diversify and transform the economy. In need of foreign investment to carry out this enterprise, government officials have sought to promote it as a strategy that emulates the development model that ultimately made China a booming economy. Chinese investment and participation in the projects are also constantly lauded as a sign of their future success.
In February 2016, Maduro decreed the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc (OMA), an area that spans 12 percent of the national territory destined for the exploitation of mineral resources for Venezuela’s strategic development. That same day, Maduro announced that 150 mining companies from 35 different countries had expressed their interest in operating in the OMA. Among them were large Chinese companies interested in exploiting gold, coltan, and other minerals.
The ambitious mining project received widespread condemnation from several sectors of society, from Indigenous and environmental organizations to scholars, experts, and political leaders, who would rather see it taken down and who have taken mostly to social media to express their discontent.
The main reasons cited by critics to reverse the OMA are environmental degradation, including of areas protected for their biodiversity and of water sources critical to the country; impact on the health, livelihoods, and even physical security of Indigenous communities; proliferation of illegal mining operations; and lack of public consultations and of approval by the National Assembly, as mandated by the Constitution.
Of the supposedly 35 countries interested in the OMA, the participation of Chinese companies has been singled out by some critics as being particularly damaging to the environment. China’s hunger for gold is perceived as predatory of Venezuela and its resources, but also as an important element that helps sustain Maduro’s government in power by providing it with more resources. Others, however, note that government corruption is to blame for the failures of the OMA and not the ambitions of China's global infrastructure project known as the Belt and Road Initiative, contrasting the former with other successful projects funded by China in other parts of the world.
In 2017, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro broadcasted the inauguration ceremony of the expansion of the Port of Palua on the Orinoco River in southern Venezuela during his weekly TV show. The project aimed to increase the “mobilization capacity” (particularly the export capacity) of iron ore, a raw material used to make steel.
The use of the expansion of the Port of Palua by Venezuela’s and China’s propaganda apparatus to promote the success of their strategic cooperation, even though it did not achieve its goal of increasing exports of iron ore, helps to tell a larger story about big promises and big investments with no accountability and little to show.
According to the Venezuelan Ministry for Industries and National Production, the expansion is “the first national project completed with financing from the China-Venezuela Large Volume Long Term Fund,” one of the two funds that channeled the majority of the Chinese loans to Venezuela.
The robust Venezuelan state-affiliated media reported on the completion of the project as a great success that would help the country generate income by increasing exports. Echoing the Venezuelan government, Chinese state-run media also touted the project as a successful outcome of the “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership“ between China and Venezuela.
In broader terms, both governments sought to portray the expansion of the port as an example of China’s contribution to the economic and social development of Venezuela and to the ever-elusive diversification of its oil-based economy.
Although public official information on bilateral agreements between China and Venezuela is scarce, independent journalists and non-governmental organizations have pieced together the puzzle of this and previous deals in an effort to increase accountability of public-funded projects. Their findings paint a different picture. To begin with, the Port of Palua was delivered four years behind schedule. It was set to be finished by the end of 2012, but it was inaugurated in 2017.
It was also the only project to be completed out of an agreement signed between the Venezuelan state-owned iron company Ferrominera and three large Chinese state-owned construction companies that outlined two other projects to improve the infrastructure of the iron industry. Amid the crumbling of its production capacity, Ferrominera desperately needed the investment in infrastructure to be able to comply with another agreement signed with China in 2009.
Following the same cash-for-commodities scheme of the oil sector, Venezuela received at least 1 billion USD from China to invest in mining infrastructure, payable with iron ore shipments to China that, considering international prices at the time, implied a large discount.
Ferrominera’s production capacity did not increase. On the contrary, it kept contracting and is nowadays only a fraction of what it was when the 2009 agreement was signed. Yet even by Venezuela’s standards of today, Ferrominera seems to be faring better than other heavy industries.
Four years after the Port of Palua project was inaugurated, most of the large mining projects funded with foreign investment that the government envisioned have not materialized. The lucrative business of gold and minerals exploitation in southern Venezuela is controlled by — and disputed between — local criminal armed gangs, armed paramilitary groups, and powerful factions within the military. Violence has erupted in the region, and the government’s control over the territory has been put into question. Moreover, in 2019 the U.S. government sanctioned the Venezuelan state-owned gold company Minerven for backing the Maduro government.
Recently, a guide to investors published by the Chinese embassy to Venezuela warned Chinese companies about the many challenges of Venezuela’s mining sector: sanctions, political instability, financial hardships. In contrast with the initial optimism expressed in previous years, lately Chinese media has also caught up with Venezuela’s shortcomings, including challenges to Maduro’s legitimacy.
Maduro, however, has not acknowledged this reality. Faced with a protracted economic and financial crisis, government officials still promote mining as an investment opportunity — one that was successful in the past, in China.
This story is part of a Civic Media Observatory investigation into competing narratives about China’s Belt and Road Initiative and explores how societies and communities hold differing perceptions of potential benefits and harms of Chinese-led development. To learn more about this project and its methods, click here.

author: Alessandra Soler


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In Turkey, religious cleric joins calls to censor social media · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

“Turkey Flag” by Jeremy Vandel is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Turkey's digital freedoms are under threat after Ali Erbas, the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate in Turkey, suggested that citizens’ social media usage should be controlled to align with Islamic values. After Turkey's opposition parties and bar associations criticized the leading government for mixing religion and law, Erbas fanned the flames by suggesting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tighten the government's control of social media — a move that aligns with Erdoğan's previous policy positions.
He shared his remarks during a prayer ceremony to mark the start of the judicial year on September 1. His name has dominated the news cycle ever since.
Erbas's thoughts on social media are not new. Earlier this year, the Religious Affairs Directorate published a book titled, “Social Media Ethics” (“Sosyal Medya Ahlakı“). In the foreword to the book, the religious cleric wrote,
It is essential to build a strong awareness, as well as the legal mechanism that determines the legal framework for the use of social media. In particular, it is necessary to develop a self-control system shaped by the awareness that God is watching over us everywhere, and at all times.
Sometimes, continued Erbas in his foreword, laws may not be enough to regulate social media, therefore the cleric suggested resorting to “fiqh” or Islamic jurisprudence. “Fiqh, which imposes both worldly and otherworldly responsibilities on individuals for the behaviors they display, and has the direction of appealing to their conscience, is effective,” wrote Erbas.
The cleric repeated the need for religiously centered regulation in an online meeting on September 5.
Social media, which overflows the virtual and digital world and affects real life, may cause a departure from the moral principles, values, and virtues that religion aims at the level of the individual and society. Therefore there is a need to create a legal mechanism that will determine the legal framework regarding the use of social media as well as the construction of a strong consciousness to counter corruption of values.
Experts fear that the religious cleric's calls for controlling social media platforms may prompt the government to use Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code to prosecute critics of Islamic values. Article 216 criminalizes “publicly degrading the religious values of a section of the public” and is already widely used in Turkey. In an interview with PEN International, writer Sevan Nişanyan discussed how he was targeted because of the law and how it encroaches on religious freedom in the state:
This article has been criticised for affording different levels of protection to different religions or beliefs and for being applied in a discriminatory manner, particularly towards unorthodox, non-religious or anti-religious beliefs.  These concerns have been highlighted in the cases of renowned concert pianist and composer Fazil Say, and journalists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya.
In July of last year, Turkey passed a restrictive social media law (the Law on the Regulation of Publications on The Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed By Means of Such Publications) that creates a series of requirements that will have a lasting impact on digital rights and freedom of expression in Turkey.
A year later, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) expressed interest in rolling out further regulations to combat what Erdoğan described as “a terror of lies,” referring to fake news shared on social media platforms. The draft bill defines spreading “disinformation” as a criminal activity, and if found guilty, the perpetrator could face up to five years in jail for sharing false news on social media platforms.
Yaman Akdeniz, a prominent Turkish academic and cyber-rights expert who spoke with Gazete Duvar shortly after the AKP announced the new bill, told the newspaper that the upcoming bill will further restrict media freedom in a country where restrictions on the media have reached an unprecedented level. “An upcoming regulation will likely cause even more dire picture for information freedom in 2022,” Akdeniz said.
Erbas enjoys the support of the president and members of the ruling party, and it is not clear whether the ruling party will cede to his recent suggestions.


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Team Azerbaijan returns from Paralympics with 19 gold medals · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

“Paralympic flag flying outside Eland House” by Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Govt is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
As the 16th Summer Paralympic Games wrapped up in Tokyo, one of the 86 competing countries returned home, especially proud: Azerbaijan. The team scored a total of 19 medals, including 14 gold, 1 silver and 4 bronze. Their success secured them a 10th place ranking in the global medal tally at this year's games.
Remarkable medal haul for China at the #Paralympics — more than double the number of golds than even second place Britain.
(Also Azerbaijan punching well above its weight in making the top ten!) pic.twitter.com/TpcYI0EXtB
— Jerome Taylor (@JeromeTaylor) September 6, 2021
It was a story of success for the national team as 35 athletes represented the country in six sports — track and field, judo, taekwondo, powerlifting, shooting, and swimming.
According to Azeridaily, the team picked up more medals at the Paralympics this year than they had at the previous five Paralympics combined. Azerbaijan first entered the games in Atlanta in 1996 with two athletes. The team also beat four Paralympic records this time around.
The first Para athletics competition was held in 1952 according to the competition's website. Eight years later, Rome held the first Paralympic Game featuring 31 athletes in total. The sport has come a long way since. In 2020, more than 1,000 athletes competed in the games representing some 160 countries in total.
After its debut in Atlanta in 1996, Azerbaijan set up the National Paralympic Committee the same year. The committee set up a children's division in 2014.
Lamiya Valiyeva of Team #AZE celebrates winning #gold and setting a new Paralympic record of 55.00s in the Women's 400m T13 final. #Tokyo2020 #Paralympics #ParaAthletics ?: Lintao Zhang pic.twitter.com/lPpLOTMvX0
— Getty Images Sport (@GettySport) September 4, 2021
In an interview to local media, upon her arrival from Tokyo, gold and silver medalist, Lamiya Valiyeva told reporters this was not her final word. “I am going to prepare very well for the Paris 2024 games. I intend to break not just Paralympics record but the world record,” said the 19-year-old athlete who broke Paralympic record in Women's 400m – T13 category (vision impairment).


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Turkey and China in the eastern Mediterranean: Partners or competitors? · Global Voices
Emre Demir

Illustration by Giovana Fleck, used with permission
China is a latecomer to the eastern Mediterranean development boom but has used its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a gateway to enter the area. Turkey is also developing its own trans-regional strategy for economic and strategic cooperation, most notably the Middle Corridor Initiative. In their efforts to influence this region, are Beijing and Ankara allies or opponents?
Centrally located in between Asia, Africa, and Europe, the eastern Mediterranean has been an important strategic junction for global trade throughout its history.
The eastern Mediterranean also provides the shortest maritime route between Asian and European markets, thanks to the Suez Canal that connects the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Almost 12 percent of global commerce and over 1 trillion US dollars worth of goods pass through the Canal annually. The region also serves as an important route for transporting petroleum and gas from the Gulf to the European markets. Approximately 70 percent of Europe’s energy demands are transported through the Mediterranean annually.
Home to regional power holders such as Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean’s geo-economic and geopolitical significance has historically attracted non-regional major powers to the region: the US, together with NATO allies; Russia which has reinforced its influence since the civil war in Syria; and now China which only started to build roots in late 2013, once the BRI was initiated in Turkey.
So far, China is mostly present via infrastructure investments including the China-Central Asia-West Asia economic corridor and the Maritime Silk Road, such as the Piraeus Port in Greece, Kumport in Turkey, El Dekheila and Alexandria ports in Egypt, and Haifa and Ashdod ports in Israel.
In Egypt, China has invested in the Suez Canal industrial zone and is building parts of the New Administrative Capital as well as financing approximately 85 percent of the 3 billion US dollar project as part of its Silk Road Economic Belt. Similarly, since 2016 China has invested in numerous clean energy projects in Greece. And in Israel, it has invested in transportation, technology, and other industries. China’s largest investment in Turkey so far is the Emba Hunutlu power station, a coal-based power plant. The country is also in talks with Turkey to finance the Kanal Istanbul project, a shipping canal aiming to connect the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. China's private sector is also getting involved in a wild set of activities – over 1,000 Chinese companies have invested in Turkish sectors from tourism and finance to transportation, mining, and energy.
In recent years, China has also sought to increase its military presence in the region. In May 2015, Beijing conducted its first-ever military exercise in the Mediterranean alongside Russia. Two years later, it conducted a live-fire drill. China's increased economic relations in this part of the Mediterranean can be traced to a turning point in 2011 when it had to evacuate its citizens from Libya following instability in the country, and realized it needed more efforts to protect its investments in the region.
In November 2015, Turkey and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding to align Turkey’s Middle Corridor Initiative with the BRI.
Through the Middle Corridor, Turkey aims to use its geographic advantage as a gateway between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to become a hub for East-West trade. These plans were highlighted by Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoğlu, who said in a statement in June, “with the Middle Corridor, Turkey will turn into a new global logistics base.”
In 2015, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s main opposition party, proposed the Centre Turkey (Merkez Türkiye) project, which aims to center Turkey as a logistics and production hub connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa. This project extends the Middle Corridor to Africa via the Middle East while maintaining its compatibility with the BRI. It is also an indication of shared interest between Turkey's leading government and the opposition parties.
If Turkey can position itself as an economic zone between Europe, Asia, and the MENA region, the Middle Corridor could become more attractive to China and other regional partners, thus increasing Turkey’s economic and political gains.
A working paper published by the Asian Development Bank in May 2021 suggests that an intra-regional trade zone and extra-regional economic integration policies developed as part of the Middle Corridor could facilitate engagement between the EU and China. Such a trade zone, led by Turkey and supported by trans-regional trade, could also strengthen Turkey’s role for regional states, the EU, and China.
However, unlike China’s BRI, Turkey’s regional integration vision does not include a maritime corridor. Instead, from 2015 onwards, Turkey has implemented an assertive eastern Mediterranean policy relying on military capabilities, rather than diplomatic talks, to enforce its maritime jurisdiction claims vis-a-vis regional states like Greece, Southern Cyprus, and Egypt. Still, Turkey’s latest Eastern Mediterranean policies can also be considered defensive.
In January 2019, Southern Cyprus (Republic of Cyprus), Egypt, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, and Palestine established the East Med Gas Forum to create an energy hub in the region. Turkey’s exclusion from the group caused tension in Ankara, promoting Turkey to launch a unilateral gas exploration and drilling effort supported by warships. In November 2019, Turkey and Libya delineated their maritime border, which partially overlapped with the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of Greece and Egypt, triggering strong reactions from both.
Local experts, such as researcher İlhan Uzgel, say Turkey’s current assertive naval policies in the eastern Mediterranean, encapsulated by the Blue Homeland doctrine of 2013, are similar to the neo-Ottomanist policies promoted by Turkey’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Turkey’s offensive policies have triggered strong reactions from other regional powers and exacerbated tensions in some cases. In May 2020, foreign ministers of Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, and the UAE denounced Turkey’s activities in the Southern Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone, “an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources.” In September 2020, then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed US support for Greece, as did Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in November. The following month, the European Council imposed sanctions on Turkey.
China typically stays silent on tensions within the Mediterranean in an effort to maintain positive relations in the region and maximize its benefits. However, this position might change depending on future developments.
According to Gu Zhenglong and Zou Zhiqiang from Shanghai International Studies University and Zhang Lin from Zhejiang International Studies University, Turkey’s policies in the eastern Mediterranean are causing instability. If continued, China might reevaluate Turkey’s role in the BRI.
Currently, China seems to favor Greece for its trade relations with Europe. Piraeus Port is located closer to European markets and provides a shorter and more cost-effective route than Turkey’s Kumport. However, as the six-day blockage of the Suez Canal in March 2021 has shown, the development of alternative trade routes is essential. According to Minister Karaismailoğlu, the Middle Corridor is the most suitable alternative East-West trade route.
Due to these developments, China and Turkey are expected to continue to collaborate to align their distinct but overlapping visions for trans-continental integration, as was reinforced by Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan. Should Ankara's political and military ambitions in the region increase, Beijing might reconsider Turkey's role as a reliable partner in the BRI.
This story is part of a Civic Media Observatory investigation into competing narratives about China’s Belt and Road Initiative and explores how societies and communities hold differing perceptions of potential benefits and harms of Chinese-led development. To learn more about this project and its methods, click here.

author: Emre Demir


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Crimean Tatar leader’s arrest latest in crackdown on political activism in Crimea · Global Voices
openDemocracy Russia

Nariman Dzhelyal in Kyiv, September 2020. Photo from president.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0.
This article by David Axelrod appeared on Open Democracy on September 8, 2021. It is republished as part of a content-sharing partnership and has been edited to fit the GV style.
When Nariman Dzhelyal was detained by Russian security forces on September 4, the Crimean Tatar leader spent the next day “in a basement, in handcuffs and with a bag on his head”, according to his lawyer.
This treatment is, sadly, par for the course since Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Since then, the Crimean Tatar community has faced wave upon wave of arrests – often on terrorism and sabotage charges. Dzhelyal, a deputy leader of the Crimean Tatar Meijlis, a representative body banned by Russia, had only recently returned from an international summit devoted to Crimea when he was arrested at his home on Sunday.
The Crimean branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claims that a group including Dzhelyal is responsible for damaging a gas pipeline close to a Russian military base outside the city of Simferopol.
In response to the arrest of Dzhelyal and others, dozens of people gathered outside the FSB headquarters in Simferopol to demand information about Dzhelyal and the other people detained inside – their friends and relatives. Within a matter of minutes, Russian security forces had detained over 40 people, with some escorted to the nearby police wagons, and others roughed up and beaten, according to eyewitnesses.
This is not the first case connected to alleged sabotage and espionage in Crimea. Members of alleged sabotage groups have been detained by the FSB in recent years – and these arrests have been accompanied by allegations of torture. Earlier this year, a journalist for Radio Liberty, Vladislav Esipenko, was detained on espionage charges in Crimea – and claimed that he was tortured by the FSB.
After graduating from university, Dzhelyal worked in local newspapers and television, and then, according to friends, decided to run as a delegate to the Qurultay, the national parliament of the Crimean Tatars.
Dzhelyal rose to public prominence after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. In the aftermath, the local authorities banned Crimean Tatar leaders Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov from entering the peninsula and opened a number of criminal investigations against them.
As a result, Dzhelyal – who regularly spoke about the situation of the Crimean Tatars to journalists and international human rights organisations – became one of the most prominent activists on the peninsula. Online, Dzhelyal regularly published information about the actions of the Russian security forces against Crimean Tatars – as he had done on the day of his arrest.
“He never concealed the fact he did not recognise the annexation of Crimea”, said Nikolai Polozov, Dzhelyal’s lawyer, “but at the same time he always spoke very calmly, diplomatically, and in a balanced way. He never sounded any sharp calls for radical action. Nariman has always insisted on exclusively peaceful methods for his struggle”.
In a letter published by his lawyer on September 8, Dzhelyal wrote:
All the searches, interrogations and prison cells don’t particularly worry me. I expected this to happen for a long time. What surprised me was that they chose ‘Sabotage’. I never thought about doing that kind of thing. That’s not my method. But that’s how it turned out.
Crimean lawyer Emil Kurbedinov, who specialises in political cases, said he was perhaps the last person who spoke to Dzhelyal before the FSB searched his home.
On the night of September 3, the activist had called Kurbedinov to say that the security forces had begun a search at the homes of his neighbours, Aziz and Asan Akhtemov. A few hours later, the FSB began searching Dzhelyal’s home too.
At that time, Dzhelyal was formally only a witness in the FSB’s investigation into the gas pipeline incident. Nevertheless, he was removed from his home with a bag over his head, Polozov said, and was only able to speak to his lawyer after he was declared a suspect in the case.
The FSB alleges that Dzhelyal is an accomplice in carrying out sabotage on a gas pipeline in the village of Perevalnoye, located a few kilometres southwest of Simferopol. According to the security services, the group that organised the explosion included at least two more people: Aziz and Asan Akhtemov, Dzhelyal’s neighbours working as a mechanic and a driver.
In a video published by the FSB, the Akhtemov brothers say on camera that they were instructed to blow up the gas pipeline by a Ukrainian military intelligence officer, whom they met in the city of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, in June this year. Similar confession videos followed an FSB investigation into another alleged sabotage plot in Crimea in 2016.
Dzhelyal, according to the FSB, was the link between the Akhtemovs and Ukrainian military intelligence. It was Dzhelyal, the FSB claims, who gave the phone number of the Ukrainian intelligence officer to the Akhtetovs – and, allegedly, he did so knowingly.
Russian authorities in Crimea arrested Nariman Dzhelyal, Crimean Tatar leader, on bogus criminal charges. Dzhelyal and others held on politically motivated charges should be immediately released.
Lawlessness in Crimea needs to stop. @hrw https://t.co/zTqeN5gpyF pic.twitter.com/QumtgL3i7M
— Yulia Gorbunova (@yuliagorbunova_) September 7, 2021
Dzhelyal’s defence has decided not to testify, and declined to comment on information about whether the activist had passed the phone number of a Ukrainian intelligence officer to his neighbours.
The Crimean authorities have already expressed support for the investigation into the gas pipeline incident.
“All this proves once again that the activities of agent provocateurs from the [Crimean Tatar] Meijlis and their supporters are part of a hybrid war launched against Russia”, head of the Republic of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, said.
Like Nariman Dzhelyal, Aziz and Asan Akhtemov were detained immediately after their homes were searched on the morning of September 4. Throughout the day, lawyers who had signed an agreement with their relatives attempted to find their clients in holding prisons across Crimea, but without success.
Kurbedinov is sure that the Akhtemov brothers were tortured throughout the day, and that the result of this torture is the FSB’s now published video of their confession. Prior to the detention hearing, the brothers refused independent legal counsel.
Safie Shabanova, a lawyer who managed to see the Akhtemov brothers, claims that they were frightened when she visited them, though she was able to communicate with them only in the presence of an FSB investigator, Vitaly Vlasov – coincidentally, the same investigator responsible for the case against journalist Vladislav Esipenko. Shabanova and the Akhmetovs were not given time and space for confidential communication.
The FSB has not commented on the suspicion that the Akhtemov brothers were tortured.
In addition, the FSB also detained two other men: Shevket Useinov, a resident of Yevpatoria, and Eldar Odamanov of Simferopol. The latter was arrested on September 3, and no information was received about him for more than a day.
Lawyers, citing the two men’s relatives, said that the searches in their homes were also carried out as part of an investigation into the sabotage of the gas pipeline. As a result, Odamanov and Useinov were sentenced to 14 and 15 days of arrest, respectively, for resisting police officers.
“Frankly, I’m not sure that [Odamanov and Useinov] will be released”, said Kurbedinov. “Security officials have two weeks of uncontrolled access to them, so I would not be surprised if they eventually also become involved in this case”.
The gas pipeline near the village of Perevalnoye military base was damaged at the end of August, according to media reports. According to the Crimean authorities, this pipeline was not used to supply Perevalnoye itself.
Crimea’s Ministry of Internal Affairs reported on August 23 that experts inspecting the pipe had drawn conclusions that the damage “may have occurred as a result of the unlawful actions of unidentified persons”. Initially, police opened a criminal case into “deliberate destruction or damage to property”, without any reference to sabotage.
The local authorities in Perevalnoye refrained from categorical statements. “I am not an expert in what could cause damage to the pipe”, village head Oleg Litvinenko told local media at the time.
According to Nikolai Polozov, Dzhelyal’s lawyer, an analysis of news published around August 23 indirectly indicates that there might not have been an explosion at the gas pipeline at all. “The damage, in theory, could have arisen from a variety of reasons, including heavy wear and tear”, he said.
openDemocracy's analysis of posts and comments in 11 local social media groups in Perevalnoye and surrounding villages for August 22-24 found no mention of the gas pipe explosion, which, hypothetically, could have been heard by local residents.
Dzhelyal’s associates believe the case against him could be linked to his recent participation in the Crimea Platform summit, an official Ukrainian diplomatic initiative held in Kyiv in late August. In the words of its organisers, it is designed “to return the Crimean issue to the international agenda and to facilitate the return of Ukrainian control over Crimea”.
In particular, Dzhelyal’s friends refer to the reaction of Georgy Muradov, Crimea’s deputy prime minister, on the eve of the summit. The summit, Muradov said at the time, “will, like a boomerang, come back to hit the people who thought it up and who will try to implement it”. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the summit “a Russophobic, artificially created action”, as well as “an empty propaganda undertaking that has no prospects”.
According to activists, Dzhelyal was not the only Crimean Tatar politician who visited the Crimea Platform summit – he travelled to Kyiv as part of a group of several people. Zair Smedlya, Dzhelyal’s friend, said he believes that one of the goals of the Russian security forces is to “behead” the Crimean Tatar movement, and that all those who were present at the summit “are also expecting to be arrested”.
“Nariman is both the brains and the mouthpiece of the [Crimean Tatar] national movement, and the person who is able to rally people around him”, Smedlya said.

author: openDemocracy Russia


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Hong Kong set to dismantle Tiananmen vigil host ahead of China’s National Day · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

From left to right: Lee Check-yan, Albert Ho and Chow Hang-tung, leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance. Image crop from the Stand News. Used with permission.
After imprisoning the core members of a group of activists, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China (HK Alliance), Hong Kong's national security police are now set to dismantle the organization that hosts the annual vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.
Su Xinqi, a journalist from the AFP news agency based in Hong Kong published on Twitter a letter from Chris Tang, head of Hong Kong Security Bureau, recommending that Chief Executive Carrie Lam remove the HK Alliance from the Companies Registry:
#JUSTIN Dismantling of HK Alliance goes on without a gasp – security minister Chris Tang, advices by police chief Raymond Siu, is set to recommend CE Carrie Lam and ExCo to strike HKA off Companies Register. HKA has it till 5pm on Sep 24 to argue while all leaders behind bars. pic.twitter.com/mvjxeVd8DC
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) September 10, 2021
The deadline for removal, September 24, is just one week before October 1, China's National Day. In a similar manner, the Apple Daily newspaper, after its management were arrested and charged with conspiring to engage in foreign collusion, was forced to shut down on June 24, one week before July 1, a date that marks both the foundation of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the date of Hong Kong’s handover to China.
The move to dismantle the HK Alliance came right after police pressed charges against its top three leaders, Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho and Chow Hang-tung, accusing them of incitement to subversion under the National Security Law (NSL). The three were accused of inciting others to participate in unlawful acts to subvert state power from July 1, 2020, to September 8, 2021. Journalist Alvin Lum of the Hong Kong- based CitizenNews revealed further details on Twitter:
Exclusive: prosecution has accused Hong Kong Alliance’s “end one-party dictatorship” operational goal being subversive, while candle light vigils of portraying Chinese Communist Party as a “totalitarian regime” with “oppressive leaders” to be overthrown. https://t.co/CJDQsYm27d
— Alvin Lum (@alvinllum) September 11, 2021
The charges could lead to a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment. Albert Ho and Lee Cheuck-yan are already serving separate sentences for participating in authorized protests in 2019.
In the same court, five committee members of the Alliance, including Simon Leung Kam-wai, Tang Ngok-kwan, Chan To-wai, Tsui Hon-kwong and Chow Hang-tung, were charged with breaching the implementation rules of the NSL after they declined to comply with police requests. The non-compliance charge can lead to a fine of HK$100,000 (approximately US $13,000) and six months behind bars.
The core members of the HK Alliance, along with activists from other civic groups, also face separate charges for organizing, inciting, or participating in the banned Tiananmen candlelight vigil on June 4, 2020. Albert Ho together with 11 activists pleaded guilty on September 9 to taking part in the vigil last year. Others, including Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, pleaded not guilty and will stand trial in November.
The HK Alliance has been organizing massive gatherings on June 4 in Hong Kong since 1990 to commemorate the Tiananmen crackdown on students’ anti-corruption and pro-democratic reform protests in 1989. For 30 years tens of thousands have been attending the annual event, but in 2020 the police banned the public gathering for the first time, citing health concerns.
As stressed by the former chair of the group, Albert Ho, in his mitigation plea, the HK Alliance has taken it as a patriotic duty to remember history and to voice people’s desire for an open and democratic political system in China:
…we were driven by our consciences and moral commitment to make our best endeavours to maintain this historic tradition of commemorating June 4, remembering the lesson of history and speaking truth to power.
The police initially accused the HK Alliance of being a ‘foreign agent’ and requested its assistance in providing a list of internal documents for its investigation. The group declined to comply on September 8. Within 24 hours, the police had arrested five executive committee members, raided the organization’s warehouse and its historical museum about the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, and froze HK$2.2 million (US dollars: 283,000) of its assets.
Tom Grundy from the Hong Kong Free Press tweeted about the police’s crackdown:
Historical exhibits taken away by security police. Photos: Isaac Lawrence/AFP.
Meanwhile, Alliance director Tsui Hong-kwong arrested: https://t.co/suNUk6emdM
And Albert Ho's speech in court this morning in full: https://t.co/rCy1uZKOFS pic.twitter.com/chp82vpf1a
— Tom Grundy (@tomgrundy) September 9, 2021
Barrister Chow Hang-tung, who at 36 is the youngest among the three, had anticipated her arrest before she handed-in the HK Alliance letter of non-compliance, as journalist Xinqi Su highlighted:
Asked ystd what she would like to say to HK people in case of arrest, Chow Hang-tung said, “I would like to say to HK people: do not give up your fight, not so fast…do not surrender to the unreasonable power, do not surrender to a life that demands you to lie day to day… pic.twitter.com/G5TC0IIuLG
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) September 8, 2021
Upon acknowledging that the police would charge her with ‘incitement to subversion’ instead of being a ‘foreign agent’, the human rights lawyer said she was ‘relieved,’ as she hoped the trial could set the stage for an open debate over responsibility for the June 4 massacre and China’s political system:
A message from Chow Hang-tung @zouxintong via her lawyer, after HKPF changed the allegation against Chow: “When I heard the words “incitement to subversion”, I took a pause, and felt relieved instead. If that's how the cards are dealt, let's have an open and honest debate.” pic.twitter.com/MpyWqFDxAj
— K Tse (@ktse852) September 9, 2021
As expressed in political cartoonist Ah To's latest work, the crackdown on the HK Alliance amounts to the suppression of the people's aspiration for democracy and its replacement by nationalism.
Doodle titled “Surgery”, mourning the HK Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, founded in 1989.
She's stood tall for 30 years, but now the Goddess of Democracy's torch of enlightenment is replaced by a red flag of nationalism.?
Source: TG/ IG ah_to_hk https://t.co/sEsstL09gW pic.twitter.com/ScA1TOnKGq
— Niao Collective ?? (@NiaoCollective) September 9, 2021


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‘If you thirst for freedom, seize it!’: The songs of the Belarusian uprising · Global Voices
Transitions Online

Protest rally in Minsk, Belarus, on August 30, 2020. Photo by Natallia Rak on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.
This article by Elena Govor and Raphael Kabo appeared on Transitions Online on September 9, 2021. It is republished as part of a content-sharing partnership and has been abridged and edited to fit the GV style.
Protest, opposition, and revolution always have brought songs in their wake. Even after the revolutions themselves recede into the past, these songs continue to sound. The generations who came of age in the Soviet Union grew up on such songs, taking as fact that lyrics from the Russian revolutions of the 20th century were statements of a clearly delineated polarity set out in “The Internationale”:
We will build a new world, our world,
Those who had nothing will become all.
The songs of protest that have become among the most vital symbols of the 2020 Belarusian revolution are far less simple. The forerunner of these songs is the late Soviet-era rock hit “Khochu Peremen” (“I Want Changes”) by Viktor Tsoi, now more commonly known simply as “Peremen!” Tsoi, wrote the song with his underground rock group Kino in 1986, on the eve of the Gorbachev-era perestroika. The lyrics have a modernist, layered quality, reinforced by a shifting rhythm and use of internal rhyme (sadly not replicated in this translation), which make the song unusual as a rock hit:
Instead of warmth – the green of glass,
Instead of flame – smoke,
A day torn from the calendar’s net.
These lyrics suggest that “Changes!” was written as an expression of self, and as a recognition of a shared feeling among Tsoi’s circle of young friends, who stood on the verge of being drawn into the routine and alienation of adult life.
Cigarette in hand, tea on the table – so the circle closes,
And suddenly we are too frightened to change a thing.
These words are so coded with personal significance that it seems impossible for the song to have become a crowd sing-along. However, its mass appeal lies in its chorus, which transcends the moody lyricism of the verses:
“Changes!” demand our hearts.
“Changes!” demand our eyes.
In our laughter and our tears,
In the beat of the pulse,
“Changes!”
“We wait for changes!”
The chorus describes the moment when the subject, drawn into self-reflexive rumination, breaks free of shackles and forms a demand that is collective rather than individual. The subject – not “them” but “we” – is significant in that it does not present an outside force the protagonist must combat to achieve change; as the line reminds the listener, “everything is in us.”
It could be that “Changes!” reached its mass popularity precisely because the revolutions of the last decades have emerged from a desire for an abstract sense of freedom, or, in Russian, volya, with imprecisely defined programs for change, but with a powerful collective yearning to live without falsehood. These political revolutions, including the 2013 Turkish Gezi Park protests, the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution, and the 2011-2012 Occupy movement, seek – beyond their equally important, more localized demands – to escape from a world where stability and success are the consequence of living within the unwritten, unspoken rules of the dominant system: being like everyone else, staying in one’s lane.
The 2020 Belarus protests are the most recent manifestation of this 21st century revolutionary lineage. A deeply symbolic trigger for public support for the protests became the state’s press ganging of two young DJs, Kirill Galanov and Vladislav Sokolovsky, into entertaining the audience at a government event hastily organized to prevent a pre-vote rally by then-opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Forced to do the state’s bidding, the young men resisted this latest misuse of power by playing Tsoi’s “Changes!”
The song lasted only a minute before the event manager cut the sound system and the DJs were summarily loaded into a police van, but the song, or rather the heavy-handed treatment of the DJs, acted as a catalyst for the crowd. Images of the DJs, hands outstretched and throwing victory signs, captured on hundreds of phones, quickly became a memetic symbol of the dignity and integrity of the “little man.” Meanwhile, the song continued to blare from the speakers of hundreds of cars cruising around Minsk.
In the wake of the DJs’ arrests, as in the time of perestroika, “Changes!” was taken up by Belarusian society as a song of liberation – primarily individual, personal liberation, as intended by its author.
Belarusian opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski popularized another song, “Walls,” which after his arrest also served as a soundtrack for the rallies of his wife, Sviatlana. Its origins lie in a 1968 song by the Catalan singer-songwriter Lluis Llach called “L’Estaca” (“The Stake”). A Russian-language variant of the song by Kirill Medvedev called “Steny” (“Walls”) sounded during protests outside the Belarusian embassy in Moscow after the 2020 August elections in Belarus. The text of the Russian song is close to Llach’s original; however, the symbolic stake to which the unfree are tied is replaced by the more readily understandable symbol of walls; this transformation was likely abetted by earlier metamorphoses into Polish and Belarusian.
The Polish version “Mury” (“Walls”) was written in 1978 by Jacek Kaczmarski, who reworked the text and its philosophical and political message. This song became the hymn of the Polish Solidarity trade union movement. In 2010, during a wave of protests in Belarus, Andrei Khadanovich, a Belarusian poet, translated the Polish variant into Belarusian; the song was titled “Razbury Turmy Mury” (“Break the Prison Walls”). During Tsikhanouski’s presidential campaign (until he was thrown in jail), the complex final stanzas were replaced with more direct, forceful verses.
All versions of the song are united by the melody and the powerful chorus, which calls on listeners to destroy the vertical structures of power through the repetition of “will fall, will fall, will fall.” In the Catalan original, injustice is symbolized by the stake; “l’estaca” is similar in sound to “estat” (government). In the Russian variant the symbol becomes the “long-decaying” walls of prison. Prison walls also feature in the Polish variant, albeit through indirect references. The Belarusian variant returns the prison to center stage.
Destroy the prison walls!
If you thirst for freedom, seize it!
The walls soon will fall, will fall, will fall
And bury beneath them the world of old.
In these lines, the original concept of the song is brought to its clearest realization. The lyrics are so sparse and dynamic that space is made for a new line added by Khadanovich during the 2010 protests on Independence Square in Minsk, which becomes key to his performance: “If you thirst for freedom, seize it!”
Despite the destructive tenor of the chorus, the overall mood of the song is tragic; the walls ultimately remain standing. In the Catalan and Russian versions this seems to be an objective fact: “the walls will never wear down.” In the Polish and Belarusian versions, the reasons for the continuance of the walls are presented metaphorically:
So a movement of thousands surged up,
A legion of warriors
To topple statues and break the pavement
Into stones.
Each felt that time had come for them
To lend the battle their strength.
Those not with us are against us.
But at this moment, the victorious beat of the Polish song is interrupted by an unexpected conclusion:
… The singer found himself alone.
He watched as the marching rows
Walked to the beat of his song,
And the song was fading, fading, fading …
And the walls were growing, growing, growing …
The 2020 Belarusian variant, at the initiative of Tsikhanouski, was fashioned to be more optimistic: The final tragic stanzas were removed, and two new life-affirming couplets reflecting on contemporary Belarus were added by Alexander Kiss and Sergey Kosmas:
From all Belarus the people rose
To defend their freedom.
Our spirits are moved by one goal:
To dispel the darkness with light.
The song then calls on Belarusians to join the singer in a peaceful march for the eternal ideals of truth and goodness, transforming Belarus into a “land for living.”
Given these changes, Tsikhanouski’s variant of “Walls,” to the tune of which the “people’s president” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya won her victory, seems at first glance to have become self-contradictory. It retains its core sense – a celebratory destruction of injustice – and the stirring image of the singer leading the people by the thousands, but the new stanzas address the crowd as a whole, in the third person plural, already assuming that their unity is beyond question. In one of the added stanzas, the authors address the state security forces directly:
Brother-officers, we are one people.
We live in this world together.
Let your conscience make your choice.
We do not want this war.
Despite these apparent contradictions in subject and tone, this version of the song has become wildly successful. No small part of this success, it seems, must be attributed to Khadanovich’s brilliantly simple line “If you thirst for freedom, seize it!”
The women dressed in white with flowers in their arms, who stood in 2020 along the streets of Minsk in silent protest against the overreaches of state power, became a turning point in the Belarusian people’s revolution. They represented victory over fear, individual liberation, a sense of unity, and the birth of a new, free nation. Political scientists and commentators, analyzing the Belarusian protests, have tended to criticize the actions of this period for their lack of a political program and absence of leadership. But precisely these might have been the point of the Belarusian protests: to peacefully and symbolically claim victory over untruth and fear, so that “a bright and sunlit path” would bring them, as Tsikhanouski’s variant puts it, “into a land for living.” One is reminded of the classic words of another Russian bard, Bulat Okudzhava: “Oh, let our aspirations be pure, and the rest will come.”
The final song heard continually throughout the Belarusian protests was “Warriors of Light,” written by Belarusian poet and musician Sergey Mikhalok for his rock band Lyapis Trubetskoy. Written in Russian about a fantasy world unrelated to political events, the song was unexpectedly taken up by the Ukrainian Maidan protests in 2013 and became their unofficial anthem. It was translated into Belarusian by Dmitri Sosnovsky and found its place in the Belarusian protests. Like the other, aforementioned songs, it centers on an explicitly allegorical, symbolic battle between the forces of darkness and light, which “extinguishes fear.”
In August of 2020, Belarus was full of darkness and light, courage and fear, joy and cruelty. The forces of light were bolstered by the songs they heard and sung – in Minsk as well as in every corner of the country.
A year has passed since those eventful days in Belarus when, it seemed, a peaceful nation could, united, withstand injustice and the dictatorship and win. They did not win and incurred profound losses. One of the most tragic was the death at the hands of the security forces of Raman Bondarenka, a young activist who came out to defend a mural of the rebellious DJs in a suburban Minsk courtyard known as the “Square of Changes.” Occasionally daredevils still organize flash mobs performing “Walls” or Belarusian folk songs and prayers, despite ongoing state repression.
Still, the Belarusian revolution of 2020 has not been completely lost. The Belarusian people today do not long for blood and destruction. Their enemies are altogether different: personal inertia, fear, and alienation. One wants only to believe that the walls soon will fall, and that Tsoi’s magnetic words, “everything is in us,” will at last help the Belarusian people build their “land for living.”

author: Transitions Online


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Myanmar LGBTQ makeup artist swaps beauty salon for border hideout and revolution · Global Voices
The Irrawaddy

May Oo, a gay celebrity makeup artist, at an anti-regime protest in Yangon in February 2021. Photo and caption from The Irrawaddy, used with permission.
This article was originally published in The Irrawaddy, an independent news website in Myanmar. This edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Until the military takeover on Feb. 1, cosmetics, fashion and beauty design were the most important aspects of May Oo’s daily life.
For more than a decade, he used his skills and passion to transform people’s visual appearance, an activity that turned him into one of Yangon’s most highly sought-after makeup artists. May Oo's customers included celebrities and family members of high-ranking military officials.
“It’s the profession I really love and I see it as a creative art,” said May Oo, who is gay.
But the military takeover that toppled the elected government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) turned his life upside down.
As a supporter of the NLD government, the 33-year-old opposed the coup.
We can’t accept it. The military stole power from the elected civilian government, which we voted for.
Like millions of others, he joined the anti-coup campaigns that sprung up across the country, and which have ranged from banging pots and pans at night to marching in daily street protests to calling on civil servants to strike. At the same time, he disseminated information on the anti-regime protest movement known as Myanmar’s Spring Revolution through his own social media page, which has 770,000 followers, impressing his customers with pictures of himself with a bullhorn shouting anti-regime slogans at the front of a protest column.
In March, May Oo refused to provide makeup services to well-to-do families planning to attend a junta-organized religious ceremony in Naypyitaw, at which the junta was to confer titles on wealthy persons.
But he has ended up paying a price for his activism.
The regime issued an arrest warrant against him, citing incitement. Soldiers raided his apartment and took everything, including his computer and makeup boxes. “They also destroyed everything in the whole room,” May Oo said. Luckily, he managed to evade arrest.
After the junta’s crackdown against protesters intensified in late March, May Oo was forced to go into hiding in April, because of his involvement in the protests and having provided support to crackdown victims and their families.
As of September 2, the junta had killed 1,043 civilians and arrested a total of 7,768, of whom 6,132 are still detained. In addition, during their raids, junta troops have looted and destroyed property.
While in lockdown during the first and second waves of COVID-19 in 2020, May Oo was able to continue his work, including providing training to amateur artists. He had trained amateurs and young talents in his profession since 2017, when he opened the May Oo Magic Beauty school, as well as leading a makeup team. His salon employed 12 full-time staff and some 60 part-time artists before the coup.
May Oo took to the streets to join the anti-regime protest movement, calling for the restoration of democracy and the release of detained civilian leader State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, in Yangon in February 2021. Photo and caption from The Irrawaddy, used with permission.
Now May Oo lives a very different life in border area where he feels safe. (He declined to provide details for security reasons.) He once received weapons training, like other young people determined to topple the regime through armed resistance, but he found that his hands, familiar only with makeup brushes, were not good with guns. Since then, May Oo has devoted his time and energy to other activities, like raising funds for the movement.
I know my strength is not [in military activities], so I choose to support this revolution in whatever way I can. I just see myself as a pillar to help the revolution be victorious.
May Oo admitted that he can’t help but take off his hat to the young women he has seen seriously engaging in military training, adding that seeing them left him with mixed feelings.
I’m sure they never thought they would go through such a hard life. But they see that nothing is more important than ousting the regime. So, they feel immune to all the misery and difficulties they are facing. I feel sad for them but at the same time I feel happy [for the country].
As a gay man who is open about his sexuality, his hopes when voting for the NLD in the November 2020 election were simple: He wanted a government that would respect human rights, including those of the LGBTQ community, which has long faced discrimination in Myanmar.
He told The Irrawaddy that from his point of view, physical and verbal abuse of LGBTQ people decreased under the civilian government.
For a long time, we were insulted for our sexual orientation; but after 2015, we felt less discriminated against, and there were opportunities for makeup artists to choose the path they want.
LGBTQ people are subject to official persecution and discrimination under Section 377 of the Penal Code as well as the Police Act. People who engage in same-sex acts can be punished with up to 10 years in prison. The push for legislative change started under the NLD government, and the LGBTQ community had high hopes for it.
I have suffered discrimination as a gay person since my younger days. I don’t want to experience it again.
It is now nearly five months since May Oo went into hiding. He said sometimes he feels regret, especially when he sees people having fun on Facebook.
That feeling doesn’t last long, though, because I comfort myself with knowing I have done nothing wrong and am taking a stand on the right side.
Asked if he missed his former life as a makeup artist, he said yes and no. He misses it when he thinks of what his life was like in the past.
But when I think about tomorrow under this current situation, I no longer miss it at all, because you can’t guess what will happen next. It’s exciting [to see] what the future will hold for me.

author: The Irrawaddy