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Advocates Petition UN for Action on Jailed Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah · Global Voices
Nani Jansen Reventlow

Alaa Abd El Fattah with his wife and intellectual partner, Manal Hassan. Photo by Lilian Wagdy via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Written by Nani Jansen and Adrian Plevin.
After imprisoned Egyptian blogger and human rights defender Alaa Abd El Fattah went on hunger strike this past Monday, the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) petitioned the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) to take all necessary steps to secure Abd El Fattah’s immediate release.
The 32-year-old award-winning blogger was one of the first netizens to call for political change in Egypt. Working with his wife Manal Hasaan, Abd El Fattah has promoted freedom of expression through the websites Manalaa and Omraneya – the first Arab ‘blog aggregators’ to not restrict inclusion based on content. His online writings have established him as a leading online force for the promotion of and protection of human rights and fundamental freedom in Egyptian society.
On 11 June 2014, Abd El Fattah was supposed to stand trial for allegedly organising a protest in contravention of Egypt's controversial new anti anti-protest laws. Instead, he was convicted without a trial and sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment.
Abd El Fattah has been jailed or investigated under every Egyptian head of state who has served during his lifetime. In 2006, he was arrested for taking part in a peaceful protest. In 2011, he spent two months in prison, missing his first child’s birth. In 2013, he was arrested and detained for 115 days without trial.
Egypt has come under mounting international pressure to address the worsening human rights situation that has accompanied the political turmoil following the 2011 ousting of then President Hosni Mubarak. Some sources speculate the situation is worse now than it was under the Mubarak government, as increasing numbers of journalists and bloggers have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment: the world’s attention has recently been focused on the heavily-criticised trial of three foreign journalists, highlighting the worrying developments in Egypt's justice system. While the military-backed government advances rhetoric of suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood, liberal and secular activists are increasingly falling foul of the regime. The judiciary has cracked down on political dissent and death sentences have been handed out on a large scale: in March of this year, over 500 protestors were sentenced to death. Another 683 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced to the same fate in June.
The case of Alaa Abd El Fattah warrants special attention. He has established himself as a vocal critic and encouraged fellow Egyptians to strive for recognition of their fundamental rights. This has come at a significant personal cost, leading to his detention or investigation under every head of state who has served in his lifetime.
MLDI and EFF have now petitioned the UNWGAD to render an opinion that his detention is arbitrary and in contravention of Egypt’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. They have requested the UNGWAD take urgent action in light of Abd El Fattah’s hunger strike, recognise that his deprivation of liberty results from his exercise of his right to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and to declare that Abd El Fattah has been deprived of his right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal. The petition was drafted with the assistance of Rosa Curling of the UK-based Leigh Day law firm. Curling has been monitoring Abd El Fattah’s trial on behalf of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network. Read the full petition here.
is the Legal Director of the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI). MLDI operates globally to help journalists, bloggers, and independent media outlets defend their rights by offering both financial assistance and substantive litigation support.
is an Associate Legal Officer with the Appeals Chamber of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The views expressed herein are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Tribunal or the United Nations in general.

author: Nani Jansen Reventlow


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Arrests Made in Man’s Fatal Beating Have Not Renewed Faith in Jamaica’s Police · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

Police presence in Jamaica. Photo by Jason Lawrence. CC BY 2.0
Three men have been charged in connection with the death of Mario Deane, a young man who was arrested for marijuana possession and was beaten while in police custody, touching off a round of criticism of the island nation's police.
The men were Deane's cellmates and are accused of beating him to death because of a dispute over sleeping accommodations. One of the men is hearing impaired, while another is, according to his family, schizophrenic. Six police officers have also been suspended, pending further investigations into the incident.
Police say they were alerted to a fight in the lock-up and found Deane with multiple injuries; they then took him to the hospital for treatment, but he later died. Deane's family has already signaled its intentions to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the police.
The case has continued to fuel protests in the streets and online as well as discussions in Jamaica, which has a history of police brutality and other similar forms of violence.
Blogger Annie Paul mentioned, on Facebook, radio station Nationwide's report on reggae star Peter Tosh, who says he was beaten by police in 1972:
Brilliant. Nationwide plays excerpt of Peter Tosh's account of the vicious beating police gave him, showing history of police brutality here. Apparently Herbie Miller [Tosh's then-manager] sent them the clip…v useful to remember how far back police abuse has been going on…and how little anything has changed.
You can listen to the report and Tosh's account of the incident here.
Video-blogger QuitePerry also shared his thoughts in a video titled “I Am Mario Deane”:
Writer Kei Miller sought to provide fuller context to some of the incidents of police brutality that have taken place:
In the last 20 years in Jamaica, at least 200 people have been killed each year by police. This is not an average. 200 is the lowest number killed in any given year. In some years the figure is actually much higher than that.
To put this into another statistical context, let us consider the UK – a country with a population 23 times higher than Jamaica’s. The UK does not report police killings 23 times more than Jamaica’s. Over the last 20 years a total of 1433 people have died after having had some manner of contact with British police. That’s 71 a year. But in fact, only 55 of the 1433 have been police shootings. The others died while in police custody or sometimes as the result of a high speed chase. 2.5 people shot and killed each year by police in Britain. Stop to consider that for a while.
Dennis Chung at Caribbean Journal felt that the case was just another example of the police failing to take responsibility. Their “response was to first deny culpability and then charge two persons, with no apology. It took the ministers of Justice and National Security, the acting commissioner, some politicians, [the Independent Commission of Investigations], and civil society to express outrage and apologise. Still no one from Barnett Street, from what I know, has issued any statement of apology,” he wrote.
Chung added that there can be no meaningful economic development without social justice:
Whenever there is no social justice, it results in lost opportunities and wasted talent. It also results in wasted productive hours, as instead of cleaning up the mess caused by some functionaries of the state, we could be planning how to increase agricultural and other production.
Many Twitter users felt that Mario Deane's death exposed the problems not only within the police force, but in Jamaican society as a whole:
mi ah “young bud” but how many issues in this country have exposed the WEAKNESSES of the police like #MarioDeane death?
— dwayne anderson (@IamDAnderson91) August 15, 2014
There is a knot in the pit of my stomach when I think of my brother/cousin/nephew/male friend being in police custody #MarioDeane
— Krystal Tomlinson (@kryticalmind) August 16, 2014
Is there an economic case for #PrisonReform ? Is it so far outside the imperatives of economic development? #MarioDeane
— Kevin Barker (@DrKevinBarker) August 16, 2014
Where are the church groups over beating of Mario Deane? We as Christians need to take stand against every immorality and not just some.
— Kayon Brown (@KayCamz) August 15, 2014
March for JUSTICE going on now in the US for Mike Brown. When are we going to march for Mario Deane?
— Rohan Perry™ (@QuitePerry) August 14, 2014
The rise of social media has made incidents of police brutality harder to sweep under the rug, and there is pressure on the government to provide justice for Mario Deane and to reform the Jamaican constabulary.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Matthew Hunte


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Beatriz’s War: East Timor’s First Feature Film · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

From Facebook page of East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN)
A Guerra da Beatriz (Beatriz’s War) is the first feature film from East Timor. It is about Indonesia's occupation of East Timor from 1975 to 1999 and its impact on the Timorese society.
According to the producers of the film, it was “made guerrilla style by the men and
women who fought in the armed resistance and the clandestine movement” against Indonesia's occupation.

author: Mong Palatino


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Colombia’s Medellín Metro Says No to Music and Poetry, But Passengers Say Otherwise · Global Voices
Cati Restrepo

Metro station in Medellín. Photo on Flickr from user Omar Uran (CC BY 2.0).
This post is a slightly different version from the original published on Global Voices in Spanish.
Colombians are thinking twice about the treatment of passengers on the Medellín Metro, which almost half a million people ride every day. Recently, several incidents publicized online have raised awareness about the metro's draconian treatment of passengers.
On August 8, for instance, a video appeared of a young man playing the violin aboard a moving train. When police tried to remove him, a struggle ensued:
Five days later, metro officials evacuated an entire station, in response to another, larger musical demonstration aboard a moving train.
Responding to growing dissatisfaction with the city's train system, Medellín's government had this to say on Twitter:
Las normas de nuestro Metro están pensadas para una operación eficiente, segura y agradable para todos. #ElMetroesdeTodos
— Alcaldía de Medellín (@AlcaldiadeMed) agosto 15, 2014
The rules of our Metro are designed so that it can operate efficiently, securely, and enjoyably for everyone.
Internet users, meanwhile, have begun using the word “fascist” to describe the the train system's official rules, which are known as “Metro Culture.” For some online, however, the metro's excessive zeal is no revelation. Rosa Moreno writes:
Ve, a mi me ha parecido la “cultura metro” facha desde antes de que me quitaran la pauta.
— Rosa Moreno (@ismene2) August 14, 2014
See, to me, the “Metro Culture” has seemed fascist since before they removed the music.
The word “facha” that appears in Moreno's tweet derives from the Spanish word for “fascist.” In other words, accusations of “fascism” against the metro system are simultaneously meant as a criticisms of political conservatives, who are widely thought to support the restrictive conduct code aboard public transportation.
Santiago Villegas cautioned that getting emotional about incidents on the metro, even with eyewitness camera footage, can be unproductive.
¿Ya publicaron vídeos de lo sucedido en el Metro desde varios ángulos?¿Podemos ver antes de opinar o estamos siendo solo emotivos?
— Santiago Villegas C. (@medejean) August 14, 2014
Have videos of what happened in the Metro been posted from several angles already? Can we look at that before stating opinions, or are we just being emotional?
On August 13, protesting the violinist's expulsion days earlier, 11 people stood together aboard a train, silently reading poetry. Metro authorities responded to this noiseless demonstration by evacuating the train and halting station traffic.
Sergio Restrepo, one of the protesters, wrote online:
11 personas leyendo poesia en silencio el metro y respuesta evacuar estación pic.twitter.com/Uluf3ODDpX
— Sergio Restrepo (@sergiorestrepoj) agosto 14, 2014
11 people reading poetry in silence on the metro and the response is to evacuate the station.
Writer Héctor Abad Faciolince wrote on his blog about another incident aboard a train car that also reveals the excesses of the Metro's rules of conduct.
Tengo un amigo que iba en el metro de Medellín con una niña de brazos. Durante el viaje el bebé empezó a llorar, seguramente de hambre, y este amigo sacó el tetero que había preparado en la casa, para que se calmara. El bebé empezó a chupar. Casi de inmediato llegó un auxiliar de seguridad del metro y le advirtió con el índice: “En el metro de Medellín está prohibido comer”. Si no es porque la gente del vagón protesta, lo habrían obligado a quitarle el biberón al niño o a bajarse del tren. Así es la rigidez ridícula del metro de Medellín. Me imagino qué hubiera pasado si la esposa de este amigo hubiera sacado no el tetero sino la teta: quién dijo miedo. Además de alimentación, escándalo en lugar público, o mejor dicho, en el impoluto sistema metro de Medellín.
I have a friend who was on the metro in Medellín with a baby girl in his arms. During the trip, the baby began to cry, surely because she was hungry, and this friend took out the bottle he'd prepared at home, in order to calm her down. The baby began to suck on the bottle. Almost immediately, a metro security officer came up to him and informed him of the following: “Eating is prohibited on the Medellín metro.” If it weren't for the people who started to protest in the car, he would have been forced to take the bottle away from the child or get off the train. That is the ridiculous severity of the Medellín metro. I can only imagine what would have happened if this friend's wife began breastfeeding, instead of taking out a bottle: don't be afraid — just do it. In addition to eating, it would have been a scandal in a public place, or in the spotless Medellín metro system, rather.
While the metro system maintains it strict policies against disruptions aboard trains, Medellín passengers are likely to continue their resistance, until the widely unpopular code of conduct is changed.

author: Cati Restrepo


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Indian Broadcaster NDTV’s Report on Gaza Rocket Launch Becomes Fodder for Propaganda · Global Voices
Rezwan

Screenshot of the NDTV special video report
A video report from NDTV showing Gazan militants firing a rocket towards Israel from within a residential area earned the Indian broadcaster attention around the world earlier this month. It was one of the first times throughout the now six-week-long bombardment of Gaza that a major news outlet had captured the assembly of a rocket launch site on film, and the footage was quickly touted by the Israeli government and its supporters.
Journalist Sreenivasan Jain and his crew, who happened to be staying at a hotel next to where the three men began to set up the launch site, published the report on Aug. 5 after they had left the strip. Two days later, Jain offered more backstory on the network's website and lamented how the story was being “distorted by the twin forces of internet virality and the Israel-Palestinian spin machine”:
Fairly soon after it aired, it was distressing to find that the story had become Israel's ‘I told you so’ moment, an independent endorsement proof. In their eyes, that the media has finally acknowledged Hamas's dubious military tactics (the video was shared on the Israel Defence Force's social media platforms; it was also featured as a brief clip at a Netanyahu press conference). In turn this provoked sharp reactions from (some of) those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, who accused us of ‘betrayal’. Just four days back, they praised us for our report from Rafah in south Gaza where the hunt for a so-called missing Israeli soldier had unleashed carnage. (The IDF did not re-tweet or ‘like’ that report).
At least 2,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 10,500 injured, and 520,000 displaced since Israel launched a massive offensive called Protective Edge against the 40-kilometer-long congested strip on July 8. Israel says the assault is targeting Hamas, a group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 under a seven-year blockade from Israel, for firing rockets across the border. Since the offensive started, three civilians have been killed in rocket attacks on Israel and 64 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in Gaza.
NDTV's report made international headlines for filming what is a rare sight for journalists on the ground. There are conflicting reports of Hamas members intimidating journalists to prevent them from capturing scenes such as these, but New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks said after reporting for the first two weeks of the offensive in Gaza that this is “a war fought largely behind the scenes.” “If they were to even step a foot on the street they would be spotted by an Israeli drone and immediately blown up,” he said. “We don’t see those fighters. They are operating out of buildings and homes and at night.”
It also purportedly showed what Israel has long complained of — that Hamas fires rockets from civilian areas, putting innocent people in the line of Israeli retaliation. NDTV reported that the men assembling the rocket were members of Hamas, but Jain admitted in his follow-up that “absolute certainty is always hard to establish” in determining if the men were indeed Hamas militants. He said the rocket was one of many launched just before a 72-hour ceasefire came into effect, “suggesting the handiwork of the biggest, most-organized and well-stocked group on the Gaza Strip- Hamas.”
Other armed factions are operating in Gaza, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, and have claimed responsibility for rocket attacks against Israel.
Jain emphasized that the report “in no way absolves the IDF from taking responsibility for the appalling toll its offensive has taken on civilian lives” and “in no way implies proportionality.” Seventy-two percent of Palestinians killed in this offensive have been civilians, according to the UN:
We know that compared to Israel's firepower, Hamas's rockets are a minor threat. Of the almost 3,600 fired so far, only 10% have posed a serious risk to Israel's cities and have been taken down by its Iron Dome response system. The rocket we saw, in all probability, must have been the one of the 1000s that landed in open areas. But by firing these rockets from civilian areas, they threaten the people of Gaza more than anyone else: that was the simple point of this report.
Srinivasan also took part in a live chat answering some of the questions from viewers.
In India, public sympathy is high for the heavy casualties in Gaza, but there is also a feeling that a country has the right to protect itself. The country's government has balanced its stance of supporting the Palestinian cause with maintaining good diplomatic relations with Israel. The NDTV report generated much discussion on India's social networks, especially in Twitter.
@smitabarooah @ndtv Balanced view? Precision guided missiles from air to burn sleeping children, sharpnels to blow their scalps of infants..
— Nancy Jha (@NancyJha) August 5, 2014
@rsarvesh12 @pritiriyer Hamas is a terror organisation. Interestingly out of all news channel it was NDTV which exposed them. #AccheDin
— Varun Sharma (@varun_sharma07) August 14, 2014
The sham that is Indian News is brought out by the fact that no channel, Hindi or English, has spoken of @ndtv‘s Hamas rocket launch story.
— Anand Ranganathan (@ARangarajan1972) August 6, 2014
Intriguing that NDTV has blurred the face of Hamas terrorists who have been captured firing rockets on Israel. Wonder why? @SreenivasanJain
— Akhilesh Mishra (@amishra77) August 6, 2014
An all-out information war has accompanied the actual war raging on the ground in Gaza and across Israeli skies, but as Jain himself wrote, just because a journalist fears their reporting could be used by propagandists doesn't mean they should self-censor it:
To let this fear cripple our work would amount to erasing the difference between journalism and propaganda.

author: Rezwan


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Inuit Filmmakers Are Documenting Their Traditional Way of Life in the Small Canadian Hamlet of Arviat · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

The shore of Arviat. Photo by Paul Aningat (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Just think what the next generation will be able to do…
Those words of wisdom were shared by the late Inuit elder Mark Kalluak, who marveled at the possibilities provided by digital technologies in the hands of young people in the community of Arviat, which sits on the western shore of Hudson Bay in the Nunavut Territory in Canada. Much of Kalluak's life was devoted to passing along traditional Inuit knowledge to the next generations through the creation of educational curricula.
Kalluak was also the subject of a short film created by filmmaker Eric Anoee, Jr., a lifelong resident of Arviat and one of the founders of the Arviat Film Society. The collective has been embracing the use of digital video technologies to create films that document and share Inuit language and culture, and is the embodiment of what Kalluak had been supporting prior to his passing.
In the video titled “Tunngavik & Uqaujjiji”, Kalluak shares his thoughts about being a community leader and advisor explaining his role using the Inuit tools ulu and a snow knife to illustrate his ideas.
Since 2010, the Film Society has been engaging the youth that live in the Inuit community of Arviat. Through video training and mentoring, the Film Society hopes to encourage a new generation of videomakers with a special emphasis on providing opportunities for professional development. Many of the topics explored by the filmmakers directly relate to the honoring traditional way of life, as a way to document and share their culture with local and global audiences.
The Film Society has also recently collaborated with Isuma TV to create a local television station to help distribute these works.
Recently, Rising Voices interviewed Anoee to learn about why he started to create videos about his community, and his hopes for their impact.
Rising Voices (RV): What inspired you to begin making videos?
Eric Anoee, Jr. (EA): There are good Nunavummiut filmmakers such as Zacharias Kunuk who helped me realize that Inuit can be filmmakers and films can be done in Inuktitut. Inuit Broadcasting Corporation producers such as Peter Tapatai also gave me inspiration as a youth that it is okay to do films and have confidence in one’s self while in and out of front of a camera.
My brother also exposed me to a camcorder, he owned one when I was a youth and it showed me that he had many chores or work revolving around making films such as planning for a shoot, reviewing footage and showing his work to my family.
Elders may be the most important inspiration as they have told me to keep doing my work, that the work is important. They have said they will not always be around and their knowledge will be lost if we do not document and share it in film. Elders give me drive to keep on working in films also.
RV: What has been the most challenging aspect of making videos?
EA: Challenges include being technically sound and putting idea into filming technique. There are also not many avid filmmakers in the north to share interest, but that is starting to change as local youth start to get exposed to it and getting interest. Also, trying to make a living out of filmmaking is challenging especially for one who is emerging and one who has limited exposure and experience in dealing with broadcast realm and distribution.
RV: What has been the most rewarding aspect of making videos?
EA: One of the reward aspects include sharing your work to others in your community. Engaging youth to filmmaking is another rewarding aspect, especially when you are engaged and have interest, then seeing their work in film. In my day job also, I have the opportunity to help produce educational resources in film where my contributions are used in schools in Nunavut. Another reward is that filmmaking gives you opportunity for continual learning to be better and being more aware of making work that is important.
This video produced by Anoee explores the work of Search and Rescue team members. Here Anoee interviews Daniel Alareak, who shares information about the tools that they use in their work.
RV: What message do you hope to send with your videos?
EA: I hope to send many messages. Some message include: the importance to be proud of your own identity and culture. I also hope that film can be a tool to enhance and make awareness of our dying culture and language as we are exposed to external forces in modern media/tv that is driving our own ways into extinction.
RV: What advice do you have for aspiring indigenous videomakers?
EA: Some advice I can share to aspiring video makers include: to think about making films as often as possible and keep shooting films when opportunity comes and that way, you will grow and improve as a filmmaker. Video can be a form of entertainment, education, and a way to portray your story to others. It is okay to make mistakes as it is often the only way to learn. Keep at it and talk about it with others, show your work and ask for feedback, both good and bad. Use the web to seek help and learn online, there are many sites that can keep your interest going and give you ideas to make good films and continually learn and improve. The web is also the best mode to broadcast your work.

author: Eduardo Avila


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Iranian Minister Says Government ‘Never Promised’ to End Web Censorship · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Screenshot of Hassan Rouhani Facebook page.
“The Rouhani government never promised to open things that were filtered in the past,” Iran's Minister of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Mahmoud Vaezi told reporters at an Aug. 21 press conference. Vaezi's statement comes after more than a year of discussions and debates within Iran's media and government on unfiltering popular social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“At the moment private companies and universities should try to create social media networks within the country for citizens to use,” said Vaezi, responding to questions about whether Iranians would soon gain access to Facebook and Twitter, both of which are blocked in the country.
“The Government is trying to eliminate those things that the people of this country are opposed to, and within our nation, which is a Islamic nation, families pay special attention to ethical matters and they are not happy with accessibility of these non permitted websites.” Vaezi went on to explain that the decision ultimately lies outside of the Ministry of ICT, and is in the hands of the Judiciary's Committee Charged with Determining Offensive Content (CCDOC).
Vaezi's words contradict many general, if promising, statements President Hassan Rouhani made about liberalizing Internet controls when coming into office. Rouhani criticized the state of Iran’s Internet throughout his election campaign, noting in June of 2013: “We are living in a world in which limiting information is impossible. Youth are faced with bombardment of information and we must prepare to handle it.”
Rouhani underlined this sentiment at a conference on Information and Communication Technologies in May 2014, where he spoke on the importance of giving Iranians access to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
In a January 2014 interview with Al Jazeera English, Rouhani's Culture Minister Ali Jannati stated, “All Iranians are using Facebook. Based on our figures, 4 million are members, so sooner or later the restrictions on it must be lifted.” But contradictions within Rouhani's cabinet emerged in January 2014 when a CCDOC meeting indicated indecision among authorities about state control over social networks. At the time, Vaezi stated that the Committee had agreed that “anti-religious and immoral sites” would be blocked, while those that “do not instigate corruption” and increase public knowledge would freely be accessible.
At the moment, Rouhani's government does not seem to have a coherent policy on access to information. Despite the fact that Facebook is filtered in the country, President Hassan Rouhani and many in his cabinet, particularly Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, are among the most savvy and popular Facebook users within Iran.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


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Iranian Photojournalist Arrested Alongside Washington Post Reporter Is Released · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

An unidentified female Iranian-American photojournalist was released on Thursday, Aug. 21 after being held in police custody at an unidentified location since July 22.
The photojournalist had official accreditation from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and was arrested alongside her husband and on the same day that Iranian-American Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his wife Yeganeh Salehi were arrested.
Since then, the husband of the photojournalist has been released. Rezaian and Salehi remain in the custody of the Iranian Judiciary in an unknown location and have yet to be issued formal charges.


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Massive Leak Opens New Investigation of FinFisher Surveillance Tools in Pakistan · Global Voices
Digital Rights Foundation

Screen capture of FinFisher homepage.
Written by Sohail Abid, Digital Rights Foundation. The original version of this post was published on the Digital Rights Foundation website.
An unknown technical expert hacked into the servers of FinFisher, the notorious surveillance software maker, earlier this month. The hacker(s) captured all the data they could find on the server and leaked it as a torrent. The 40Gb torrent contains the entire FinFisher support portal including correspondence between customers and the company staff. It also contains all the software that the company sells, as well as the accompanying documentation and release material. Last year, security researchers uncovered evidence that there are two command and control servers inside Pakistan.
Part of the UK-based corporation Gamma International, FinFisher is a company that sells a host of surveillance and monitoring software to government departments. The primary software, FinSpy, is used to remotely access and control the computers or mobile phones belonging to individuals being spied upon. The company offers several methods to install FinSpy, which range from a simple USB that can infect a computer to attaching the malicious software to legitimate files so that it can infect a computer when files are downloaded. The FinFisher toolset is designed to give the people buying these software access to emails, web browsing history, and any other activity performed by the “targets”, their term for those who are being spied upon.
Screen capture of FinFisher license page.
“For Their Eyes Only,” Citizen Lab.
Apparently, yes. University of Toronto-based research group Citizen Lab released a report last year identifying two FinFisher command and control servers on the network of the Pakistan Telecommunications Company (PTCL), the country’s leading Internet service provider. But this recent leak gives us a more complete and conclusive picture. The leaked support portal tells us that someone from Pakistan in fact licensed three software from FinFisher for a period of three years. The systems Citizen Lab identified were probably the computers hosting the FinSpy server program and were merely using a PTCL Internet connection. We have reason to believe that PTCL was not involved. If not PTCL, then who? It could be anyone but FinFisher only sells these software to government and spy agencies — thus, it was most likely one of the many intelligence agencies operating within the Pakistani government.
We have extracted from the FinFisher support portal a request for technical support sent to the company by a person (referred to as “Customer 32”) in Pakistan, who complains that their problems are not being addressed through Skype. We presume Skype was the primary way FinFisher provided technical support to its customers.
Screen capture of FinFisher support request message.
Working from this clue, we looked further into the purchase history of Customer 32 and their correspondence with FinFisher staff and found out that they have licensed not one but three software products from the spy software maker. The primary software, FinSpy, is used to target people who “change location, use encrypted and anonymous communication channels and reside in foreign countries.” After FinSpy is installed on a computer or a mobile phone, it can be—according to the product brochure—“remotely controlled and accessed as soon as it is connected to the internet/network.”
In addition to FinSpy, Customer 32 also purchased another software called FinIntrusionKit to hack into hotel, airport, and other wifi networks to catch “close-by WLAN devices and records traffic and passwords”, extract “usernames and passwords (even for TLS/SSL encrypted sessions),” and “capture SSL encrypted data like webmail, video portals, online banking and more.” The third software product is built to infect USB devices so that whoever uses them becomes a target of surveillance.
Screen capture of FinFisher support request response.
From the support requestss filed by Customer 32, we also learned that whoever in Pakistan purchased FinFisher used it, for instance, to infect harmless MS office documents, particularly PowerPoint files. The person then sent the files to people they wanted to spy on. When the unsuspecting recipients  opened the infected files,their computers were automatically put under constant surveillance, with all details of their emails, chats, and other activity being sent back to Customer 32.
Customer 32 also used FinFisher to covertly steal files from “target” computers. All the files of those who were targeted were readily available but Customer 32 wanted more, as outlined in another request for support, which read: “the agent be able to select files to download even when the target is offline and whenever the target comes online, those selected files may be downloaded without the interaction required from user.”
While we know that FinFisher is deployed in Pakistan, many questions remain unanswered. As citizens of a democratic state, it is our right to know who is using surveillance software in Pakistan, how much public money is being spent on these licenses, and what laws and regulations are being followed for deploying these software tools.
Sohail Abid researches security, surveillance, and censorship issues for Digital Rights Foundation. Before joining DRF, he was CTO at Jumpshare, a file sharing startup from Pakistan.

author: Digital Rights Foundation


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Crowdsourcing the Investigation of Eastern Ukraine’s Russian Ghosts · Global Voices
Aric Toler

The online search for traces of Russian invaders and fascist nationalists continues in Eastern Ukraine. Images mixed by Kevin Rothrock.
An abandoned wallet is again at the center of a scandal in eastern Ukraine, where the army claims to have seized two Russian armored personnel carriers (APCs) near Luhansk. The Ukrainian government says it found a number of identifying materials inside: a pile of Russian driver’s licenses, a night club entrance card, credit cards, and other documents. Kyiv has argued that the discovery provides the smoking gun proving Russia’s involvement in eastern Ukraine.
In April, the pro-Kremlin news network LifeNews ran a similar story, claiming that separatists discovered evidence of a right-wing group's involvement in an attack on a rebel outpost. The supposed proof was an artifact recovered from the site of a burned car: an intact business card belonging to Dmytro Yarosh, the Pravyi Sektor's leader.
The Russian media treated the business card as evidence that Ukrainian paramilitary groups were responsible for what was then the beginnings of Eastern Ukraine's bloodshed. The evidence was so flimsy that it immediately spawned a widely popular Internet meme. The APC-document discovery hasn't produced the same explosion of memes as Yarosh's business card, probably because of the overabundance of news coming out of eastern Ukraine today. With lots of detective work, however, many online have tried to debunk (and others have tried to prove) Ukraine's assertion about the APCs. Indeed, crowdsourced efforts to identify military hardware are similar to the work done in Russia and the West to piece together what downed Malaysian Airlines Flight 17.
As with the discovery of a business card at the scene of a gunfight, many on the RuNet find the unearthing of documents inside the captured APCs to be a little too convenient to believe. In the same vein, the Russian Defense Ministry has flatly denied Ukraine's claim. One Russian Twitter user thought the evidence all too tidy:
@XS_71 Десантники с паспортами, картами гламурных клубов и кредитками вместо военных билетов. Корана не хватает, да. pic.twitter.com/nYqfHzGeZV
— Военные Фото (@RuPhotoMilitary) August 21, 2014
Paratroopers with their passports, cards for glamorous clubs, and credit cards instead of military IDs. All that’s missing is a Koran.
Russian user @XS_71 (who runs the popular VVV-IG LiveJournal community blog) has helped lead the charge in debunking Ukraine's claims. He says the documents found in the APC would not normally be found in such a location:
@KevinRothrock “Журнал увольнительных” – хранится у дежурного по батальону, но ни в БМД, он не мог туда попасть
— XS (@XS_71) August 21, 2014
The “Military Leave Log” is kept with the battalion’s officer on duty—not in the APC. It could not have gotten there.
In another tweet, he claims that the APC seized by the Ukrainian military does not match the models used by the 76 Pskov Airborne Division:
БМД с номером 275 в 76й псковской дивизии есть. Только это БМД-4 (1фото), а не БМД-2(2 фото), которое показывают укры pic.twitter.com/wBZZdhg0Jb
— XS (@XS_71) August 21, 2014
There is an APC with the number 275 in the 7th Pskov division. It’s just that this is a APC-4 (photo 1), and not the APC-2 (photo 2), which the dumb Ukrainians showed us.
On the other side of the conflict, social media users are also busy performing detective work to prove the authenticity of what the Ukrainian military says it's discovered. In English, as well, the anti-Kremlin website The Interpreter has compiled evidence supporting Ukraine’s claim. Pro-Ukrainian Twitter user @forest_brother worked as hard as @XS_71, but Forest has tried to identify the soldiers whose documents were left behind. Forest says he's managed to link one passport to a Russian soldier named Nikolai Krygin, who posted “100 dbh (days before home)” on his VKontakte page, a day before the APCs were found in Ukraine.
http://t.co/fnfqMU9N8w Один из экипажа захваченной БМД №275 Крыгин Николай, все. Срочник. #АТО #Украина #бмд #Россия pic.twitter.com/D8h5ZWObq6
— Лiсовий брат (@forest_brother) August 21, 2014
One of the crew-members of the captured APC No.275 is Nikolai Krygin, he's gone. A conscript. #ATO #Ukraine #bmd [APC] #Russia
The largest Euromaidan Twitter account also helped out with the investigation, finding a VKontakte page belonging to Ilya Maksimov, another Russian soldier identified in the discovered documents:
В захваченном российском БМД-2 были найдены документы Ильи Максимова. Заходил в ВК 16 августа https://t.co/FmFN4L9bhs pic.twitter.com/oCwXGe5EeQ
— ЄВРОМАЙДАН (@euromaidan) August 20, 2014
The documents of Ilya Maksimov were found in a seized Russian APC-2. He last logged into VK on August 16.
The story of the mysterious APCs is in some ways like the Internet investigations into the MH17 disaster. Armchair military experts, social-media archive spelunkers, and ideologues all work together in creating conflicting versions of events, making disinterested analysis and verification very difficult. This incident will likely be remembered as one of numerous other Ukrainian discoveries of the traces of Russia's military intrusion. Or maybe someone will later prove definitively that it was a Ukrainian disinformation campaign. Whatever the truth of this incident, the specter of misplaced documents—be it a business card or a badge—continues to haunt the Eastern Ukrainian countryside.

author: Aric Toler


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Tens of Thousands of Pakistanis Breach Security Barrier Around Prime Minister’s House Asking Him to Step Down · Global Voices
Faisal Kapadia

PTI protesters at the Aabpara Chowk in Islamabad on 16 Aug. 2014. Photo by Asadwarraich. CC BY-SA 4.0
Following days of protests, tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators led by two populist politicians, Imran Khan and Dr. Tahirul Qadri, peacefully breached the capital of Pakistan's no-go ‘red zone’ manned by thousands of police and paramilitary troops.
Protesters were seen handing flowers to police and military security, who have orders to show restraint while handling protesters.
Usually, only people with security clearance are able to enter Islamabad's red zone, which is a designated high security area around the country's key government buildings including the prime minister's secretariat.
On Aug. 19, protesters removed shipping containers barricading the red zone, which also houses foreign embassies in its diplomatic enclave; both parties have vouched not to violate it.
Popular cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan leads the party Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) is led by a Pakistani-Canadian Sufi scholar-turned-politician Tahirul Qadri. Both allege that the May 2013 general election, which brought current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party to power in a landslide victory, was rigged. They are marching to the capital to demand that he step down.
Initially, the government led by Sharif's party PML-N took extraordinary measures to prevent the two opposition parties from launching their massive anti-government marches to the capital, some 300 kilometers from Lahore city, on Pakistan's independence day Aug. 14.
In the first days of the protests, the crowds were at a few thousand, but they have since swelled to almost 100,000, according to some estimates.
Authorities attempts to place more containers to block off the area hasn't stopped the flow of protesters. Police were reportedly allowing most people to enter the area and only “half-heartedly” checking vehicles.
Inqilab March – 21st August Night Photos #RevolutionWithDrQadri #Pakistan #AwamiParliament pic.twitter.com/dp3bXZS2qg
— Ch Farakh Shahzad (@ChFarakh1) August 20, 2014
PAT and PTI activists may have jointly breached the red zone, but they are fundamentally two different parties. Shyema Sajjid writes in a blog on newspaper Dawn:
The PTI has once again done what no other political party could do (without threatening or buying them out): charge the previously apolitical and get them to rally for a cause, which quite possibly could rid us of a very corrupt government.
The PTI are disciplined enough to follow their leader Imran Khan’s call for peaceful protest but rowdy enough to flip a container or two without really causing harm to public property (leave aside the fact that they’ve taken over the capital city at the moment).
Alongside the PTI, march the angry man PAT’s Tahir-ul-Qadri and his chanters. His followers are very different from Khan’s supporters.
They will sit when he tells them to sit and stand when he wants them to rise. While Khan’s protest revolves around rigging and corruption the PML-N’s involved in, Qadri’s beef goes beyond.
Two months ago, several followers of TuQ lost their lives in a scuffle with the police outside his residence in Lahore. Those killed included women and children. The tragic incident was strongly protested against and in any other country, it would have been reason enough for members of the provincial if not federal, government to step down.
The difference was evident in each leader's statements. Khan tweeted defiantly:
“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” Yesterday we took a giant step 4 Naya Pakistan & democracy..
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) August 20, 2014
While Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri demanded power for himself, reported Murtuza Ali Shah, a London reporter for several Pakistani news outlets:
Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri says he will not allow Pakistani PM come out alive from the parliament if he doesnt resign and hand over power to him — Murtaza Ali Shah (@MurtazaGeoNews) August 20, 2014
Supporters at Hyderabad Bypass, Hyderabad, Pakistan, stage a sit-in in support of Islamabad's “inqalab” (revolution) sit-in. Image by Rajput Yasir. Copyright Demotix (19/8/2014)
Military breaks silence
Meanwhile, the army, Pakistan's strongest institution, finally broke its silence on the protests. The military, which has ruled Pakistan for half its life, has increasingly been trying to distance itself from politics since General Musharraf stepped down as president in 2008.
After protesters breached the red zone, the army asked for talks between the government and the protesters of both parties. The committee formed by the government met the leadership of PTI, which made six demands, the first being the resignation of the prime minister. Talks broke down on Thursday.
Amidst this deadlock, some feared that a military coup may happen. Based on a comparative study of the three major coups of Pakistan history, Tahir Mehdi at Dawn opined that there is no possibility for a coup-de-tat.
Senior journalist Hamid Mir pointed out the essence of democracy present in protests:
Like it or not but this is the difference between democracy and dictatorship Musharraf never allowed public protest in front of parliament — Hamid Mir (@HamidMirGEO) August 20, 2014
Media pushes a revolution
The “I broke the news first” media culture has been seen in full effect throughout the coverage of the protests by local news channels in Pakistan. Outlets have often focused on what could happen rather than what is happening.
Adnan Rehmat, a media and political analyst, argued for Dawn that the media coverage given to the two political leaders behind the protest was disproportionate:
“Qadri may have hundreds of thousands of followers but his party is not an electoral stakeholder, so the disproportionately high media coverage of his demands on this subject seems unjust,” he says, adding: “Coverage of Imran’s grievance on this subject is more understandable, but considering that his party garnered only a little above 20% of the 2013 vote, the media is being dubious in granting him so much coverage while letting the views and narratives of 75% voters of other parties on the subject unrepresented.”
In newspaper The Express Tribune, Chris Cork said the media hype was distorting the reality of the protests:
Viewing the media over the last week, particularly the electronic media, it would not be difficult to convince oneself that Pakistan is gripped by revolutionary fervour. It is not. Something less than 60,000 people are currently camped on Constitution Avenue with who-knows-what in mind beyond a set of increasingly unlikely demands from their leaders. That is not a revolution. It is undoubtedly an expression of discontent, and the protesters may be voicing what many think or feel, but a revolution it aint.
Meanwhile, another PTI protest began at the historic Teen Talwar monument in the city of Karachi.
Protesters have camped out in the capital for nearly a week. With mounting pressure from local traders suffering economically due to the besieging of the capital as well as the residents of Islamabad stuck in increasing traffic jams due to route blockages, the government has to find a solution soon to avoid total chaos.

author: Faisal Kapadia


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Ukrainian Daredevil Climber Admits to Painting the Moscow Star in Ukraine’s Colors  · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Ukrainian Mustang Wanted, who has become an Internet celebrity for his high-altitude stunts around the world, admitted to painting the star in Moscow. Image from Mustang Wanted on Facebook.
The story of Russia's colour revolution in the form of a star atop one of the Seven Sisters buildings in Moscow has taken a new turn: a famous Ukrainian roofer nicknamed Mustang Wanted has come forth admitting he was the one who turned the star yellow and blue, and hoisted a Ukrainian flag atop the building.
Слава Україні! #SaveSavchenko pic.twitter.com/IoWLNLJcOp
— Гришка (@MustangWanted8) August 22, 2014
Glory to Ukraine! #SaveSavchenko
Mustang Wanted (whose real name is Grigory) allegedly contacted the Russian LifeNews channel and sold them his video and photo containing proof of him climbing atop the building. Although they agreed to buy the content in order to have the exclusive scoop, hours later Mustang published one of the photos on his Facebook page for all to see (no video has been posted yet, although HromadskeTV has a few other images). He also attached a lengthy explanation in which he admitted his role.
Screenshot of the photo proof from Mustang Wanted's Facebook page.
Я и есть тот самый человек, который в порыве искренних патриотических чувств забрался на крышу высотки на Котельнической набережной, и перекрасил украшающую ее звезду в цвета нашего родного украинского флага, а затем там же поднял флаг независимой Украины, о чем у меня имеются фото и видео доказательства.
I am that very person who, guided by sincere patriotic feelings climbed atop the high-rise roof on Kotelnicheskaya embankment and painted the star adorning it with the colors of our dear Ukrainian flag. I then also raised the flag of independent Ukraine, for which I have photo and video proof.
LifeNews, incensed at losing its exclusive story, said they would make sure Mustang returned the money, according to its director Aram Gabrelyan on Twitter.
@KSHN @pruzavin Арам Ашотович как раз видео и фото купил. Только мустанг оказался сивым мерином и выложил проданный им эксклюзив в фейсбук.
— АрамАшотыч (@AramAshotich) August 22, 2014
Aram Ashotovych did buy the video and the photo. Only the Mustang proved to be a jackass and posted his exclusives sold to us to Facebook.
@pruzavin @kshn Вернет в десять раз больше.
— АрамАшотыч (@AramAshotich) August 22, 2014
He'll return ten times [what we paid].
In his Facebook post Mustang Wanted acknowledged he was the offender and asked for the release of the four citizens who were earlier held on suspicion of hooliganism. He also said he was ready to appear in the Russian court instead of them, but only if Russia agreed to release the pilot Nadia Savchenko, who Mustang said was “innocent.”
Признаю себя виновным в «хулиганстве» и готов предстать перед этим самым судом в обмен на освобождение прекрасной смелой украинской девушки – Надежды Савченко.
Она точно ни в чем невиновна, а я-то хоть звезду покрасил
I recognise myself guilty of “hooliganism” and am ready to face the same court in exchange for the release of the amazing, brave Ukrainian woman–Nadezhda Savchenko.
She's definitely not guilty of anything, I at least painted the star.
For now it remains unclear what the Russian authorities will do with this shocking revelation, and whether the four suspects, who are now under house arrest, will be released. But it's clear the story of the painted star is not over yet. In fact, it just got that much more interesting.

author: Tanya Lokot


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Why Bahrain’s Largest Opposition Bloc Wants People to Have More Babies · Global Voices
Noor Mattar

Clashes with police in February 2014 marked the third anniversary of the Bahrain uprising. Photo by Eman Redha. Copyright Demotix.
In Bahrain, where protests continue three years after a popular uprising was brutally suppressed, the island's largest political opposition bloc says that the government is naturalising people of foreign origin at a rapid pace, putting native Bahrainis at risk of becoming a minority in their own country.
A total of 95,000 people were “unjustifiably” given citizenship between 2002 and 2014, representing a 17.4 percent change to the country's demographics, according to opposition society Al Wefaq. Bahrain's official census shows non-Bahrainis make up 54 percent of the population, numbering 666,172 in 2010.
Al Wefaq's solution? Have more babies.
Ali Salman, the leader of Al Wefaq, put out the call on Twitter:
أدعو البحريني الأصيل السني والشيعي إلى تحمل عبء إنجاب طفل زيادة لمواجهة مشروع التجنيس الكارثي #نكبة_التجنيس #ReplacingBHpeople
— علي سلمان -البحرين- (@WefaqGS) August 17, 2014
I call on native Bahrainis, Sunnis and Shia, to withstand the burden of having one more child to face this catastrophic naturalisation project
لكي لا يتحول البحرينيون السنة والشيعة إلى أقلية في بلدهم أدعوهم سنة وشيعة لزيادة الإنجاب من أجل البحرين #نكبة_التجنيس #ReplacingBHpeople
— علي سلمان -البحرين- (@WefaqGS) August 17, 2014
So that Bahrainis Sunnis and Shia don't become a minority in their own country I call on them to have more children for Bahrain
Bahrain's fertility rate has dropped from 7.09 per woman to 2.09 per woman between 1960 and 2012, according to the World Bank. But critics of the government point out that the naturalisation push isn't simply to shore up the island's population.
Bahrain's Sunni Muslim monarchy has been accused of naturalising foreigners as a way to insure their own rule of the Shia Muslim-majority country. A 2010 report from the conflict prevention NGO International Crises Group notes that the government “reportedly is pursuing policies to alter the island's demographic balance”:
These include granting citizenship to non-Bahrainis – mainly Sunni Arabs from around the region – to mitigate Shiite dominance. Although there are no published figures for the number of “politically naturalized”, some suggest that as many as 50,000 to 60,000 have been extended citizenship in this way. Exceptional measures appear to have been taken to grant citizenship to Jordanians, Syrians, and Yemenis recruited by the security services and, demographic impact aside, the heavy presence of foreigners in the military and police has provoked sharp anger from locals who consider them ‘mercenaries’
In 2005, a former consultant of the country's king published a report that came to be known as Bandargate, which highlighted that high officials were purposefully trying to marginalize Shia by naturalising foreigners. It also included documents that showed a minister paid five main operatives a total of more than $2.7 million to run a secret intelligence cell spying on Shia Muslims, set up bogus NGOs and create Internet forums and websites that foment sectarian hatred.
Interestingly, the campaign against the government's naturalisation comes at a time when the government is stripping nationalities from political dissidents and pushing to stop Sunni families from acquiring Qatari nationalities.
Despite pledges from the king to curb the naturalisation of foreigners, Bahrain has still witnessed a high increase in naturalisation, according to Khalil Almarzooq, the deputy head of Al Wefaq:
تصحيح: وفقا للاحصاء الرسمي البحريني والجداول البحرينيون في نهاية 2011 قفز من 510274 الى 584688 اي بزيادة غير طبيعية 74414 #نكبة_التجنيس
— Khalil Almarzooq (@KhalilAlmarzooq) August 18, 2014
Correction: According to official surveys and documents, the number of Bahrainis increased from 510274 to 584688 in 2011 which means there is an abnormal increase of 74414
Not everyone agreed with Al Wefaq's suggested solution. On Twitter, @FreedomPrayers replied:
الشعب زهقان من الجهال. نبي حل لا يتضمن قناة طه في الخطة الخمسية. @SMohsinAlalawi @WefaqGS
— Free Shawqi Radhi (@FreedomPrayers) August 17, 2014
We are fed up with kids. We need a solution that doesn't include Cartoon Network in its five-year plan
She also added:
@WefaqGS المشكلة الجاهل من يكبر ويفهم الورطة اللي هو فيها بيهاجر وش يقعده.
— Free Shawqi Radhi (@FreedomPrayers) August 17, 2014
Once the kid grows up he will understand the predicament he is in and will migrate, why would he stay?
@Amalness wrote that having more children is unrealistic, given the reality of Bahrain's economy:
@WefaqGS في ظل الظروف الاقتصادية الراهنة تشقى الأسر البحرينية لتوفير قوت يومها، هل حقاً إنجاب المزيد من الأطفال حل عملي؟ نحتاج الى حل سياسي.
— Amal (@Amalness) August 18, 2014
In the current economic circumstances the Bahraini family struggles to provide its day's bread. Is bringing more children into the world a practical solution? We need a political solution
Unemployment in the country has reached a level of 15 to 20 percent, according to Bahrain's ally the United States, a figure much higher than the single-digit percentage offered by the country's government. Discrimination in the workforce is linked to the problem, according to Al Wefaq.
To add insult to injury, the government might be unable to pay the salaries of its employees in 2017. Adding a high birth rate as suggested by Al Wefaq to an already high rate of naturalisation would mean more spending on public services and projects such as healthcare and education and will have a devastating effect on the economy in the long run.
Bahraini youth, like others who rose up across the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring, protested for the hope of creating a better future. A “chicken race” toward the economic cliff will not create better job opportunities nor protect freedoms. This existential struggle for identity deviates from the struggle for a better tomorrow.
The fact that the suggestion of having more babies comes from a veteran politician like Ali Salman who is a former law maker shows how ineffective the political process is in Bahrain and suggests a deep problem in the structure of the system.

author: Noor Mattar


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Why Protesters in Trinidad & Tobago Are Against the Proposed Constitutional Reform Bill  · Global Voices
Matthew Hunte

The Red House, the former seat of parliament in Trinidad and Tobago. Parliamentary sittings have been moved because of renovations to the building. Photo by David Stanley, used under a CC BY 2.0 license.
Demonstrators gathered outside of Trinidad and Tobago's parliament in Port-of-Spain to protest a proposed Constitutional Reform Bill that would among other things place a ten-year term limit on the office of prime minister, create the right to recall members of Parliament, and require automatic run-offs when no candidate has more than 50 percent of the vote.
With general elections due next year, some suggest that it is an attempt to boost the government's approval ratings before citizens go to the polls, while others see more sinister motives. There is growing skepticism over the run-off vote amendment in particular, with concerns that it could make tribal voting more entrenched and allow the two-party system to thrive. The country's Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) has already stated that any run-off votes would also add to the expense of a national election.
The controversy became further entangled when Dr. Merle Hodge, who was a member of the Constitutional Reform Committee, denied that the run-off provision had been part of the discussions, which led to a back-and-forth with Attorney General Anand Ramlogan. Ramlogan challenged Hodge's change of heart, considering she had already signed off on the bill, but Hodge maintained that the run-off clause had not been included in the public consultations on constitutional reform. The EBC also said that it had not been consulted about the run-off amendment.
The bill was passed in the Lower House of the Parliament, despite the fact that two members of the government, Foreign Minister Winston Dookeran and Minister of Public Administration Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan, voted against it. On Tuesday, it went to the Senate as a tabled item, but it was not debated. The debate is scheduled for the following Tuesday, Aug. 26.
To convolute the situation even further, President of the Senate Timothy Hamel-Smith was privately lobbying for the bill to pass. Once this came to light, he was called upon to recuse himself from the proceedings. Instead, Hamel-Smith left the country on vacation, making his judicial disqualification a moot point. A government senator will take his place at Tuesday's Senate hearing, which leaves the government with one less vote of support — it will therefore need at least two independent votes of the bill is to be approved by the Senate. Those independent senators have therefore been the target of many of the protesters, who are pleading with them to block the bill in its current form.
Blogger and activist Attilah Springer was among those who gathered in front of the Parliament. She promised to continue protesting:
In as much as I am anti-establishment and mostly uninterested in displays of nationalism, it was telling that as we sang the anthem at the adjournment of the sitting of the Lower House at which the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2014 was passed just after 4.00 this morning, the UNCites [supporters of the United National Congress, the main political party in the current People's Partnership coalition government] didn’t see it necessary to stop their exit from the building to stand at attention. They kept walking, as if we needed any more proof of utter lack of respect for the country and the people.
Anyway, we’ll be back out in front of Parliament […] every day until the Senate sitting next Tuesday. Everyone needs to petition the independent senators. A document is being prepared that outlines why this Bill must not be made law to be distributed to people who want more information.
Political blogger Rhoda Bharath watched the debates in Parliament on television and gave a rundown of her observations, criticising the government for not adopting the system it seeks to enshrine in the Constitution:
Proportional Representation was raised often last evening, notably on the side of the Government. MP [Minister of Parliament] after MP from the COP [Congress of the People, a political party that comprises the current coalition government] and the UNC mouthed the words. They want to bring Proportional Representation to the country, to the electorate […] Has anyone noticed that neither of these parties use Proportional Representation for their internal elections?
The PNM [People's National Movement, which currently occupies the opposition bench in Parliament] internally implemented One Man One Vote, which fits in better with a First Part the Post System that they advocate at the national level. Yet both the UNC and the COP want PR, and won’t implement at the micro level, so that we can see how it will work for us at the macro level. Isn’t that weird?
When the bill is debated in the Senate of Trinidad & Tobago this coming Tuesday, it is expected that both protesters and supporters will be there in full force.


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Words From a Patient Who Got a Second Chance · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

“Mammograms hurt, but not having them hurts more.” Image on Flickr by user Zumaques (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Some months ago, on her blog Anchas Alamedas, blogger Solentiname started to share the different stages she's gone through, since the moment she found a lump in her breast. On her latest blogpost, she writes to someone she calls Mimí and she tells her how she felt after the surgery she experienced few weeks ago. She tells Mimi about her feelings, doubts, pains and joys:
No te preocupés porque no me ha dolido nada. Ha sido incómodo, pero cuando uno se salva de una cosa de esas, entrega endosado el derecho de quejarse, ¿verdad? Me siento casi obligada a la felicidad absoluta, a la perspectiva, al esto es preferible a un cáncer. […] Y resulta, además, que yo no sé bien cómo sentirme. No me siento sobreviviente de cáncer, no siento que tengo derecho a ese título. […] He pensado en tomarle la palabra a todas las personas que me han dicho que les dejara saber si podían hacer algo por mí y decirles que sÍ: que le paguen a todas sus empleadas una mamografía, que hagan una campaña, que salven así aunque sea una vida.
Don't worry, this didn't hurt at all. It has been uncomfortable, but when you manage to overcome something like this, you give up the right to complain, right? I feel almost forced to absolute happiness, to perspective, to the this is better than cancer. […] And besides that, I don't know how to feel anymore. I don't feel as if I survived cancer, I don't feel entitled to the label of survivor. […] I've thought of taking at their word to everyone that asked me to let them know if they could do something for me and I will tell them yes: pay a mammogram to each of your female workers, make a campaign, save at least one life.
She ends up saying:
No sobreviví a nada Mimí. No siento que la vida me esté dando una segunda oportunidad de nada. No me siento con una misión en la vida. No me siento especial, diferente, escogida. No me siento distinta.
I am not survivor at all, Mimí. I don't feel life is giving me a second chance of anything. I don't feel I have a mission in life. I don't feel special, different nor chosen. I don't feel I'm distinct.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Analysts Warn about Fragility of Peace in Macedonia · Global Voices
Danica Radisic

Protests erupted in Skopje in July 2014, after the sentencing of six ethnic Albanian men for what authorities labeled “terrorist killings”. Photo by Sinisa Jakov Marusic. Courtesy of BIRN © 2014, used with permission.
Austrian political scientist and blogger Florian Bieber recently provided an overview of the troubling inter-ethnic situation in Macedonia in article titled “Macedonia on the Brink”. Bieber's in-depth piece provides a window into the aftermath of the recent series of initially violent ethnic clashes in Macedonia and peaceful protests.
The protests were sparked by ethnic tension due to the sentencing of six Albanian Macedonian men for what authorities called the “terrorist killing” of five people in 2012. In his article, Bieber emphasizes:
Authoritarian tendencies, ethno-nationalist state-building and segregation of the two largest communities make for a combustible mix. Even if the protests have died down, Macedonia is probably the only country of the former Yugoslavia where ethnic violence remains a real risk.
Decision-makers in the region continue to use sporadic incidents as incitement for what is often clearly hate speech, as well as for propaganda against several civil society organizations that have publicly warned about the use of xenophobic fear as a smokescreen for other issues in the country, such as government corruption.
Local political analyst Mersel Bilalli provided a gloomy projection for Macedonia's troubles shortly after the 2014 anniversary of signing the Ohrid Framework Agreement, an agreement signed between the Macedonian government and representatives of the country's Albanian minority in 2001 to end the armed conflict between the militant National Liberation Army and the Macedonian security forces, also setting the groundwork for improving the rights of ethnic Albanians in the country. As Bilalli pointed out:
The Ohrid Framework Agreement successfully extinguished the fire of 2001, but even after 13 years it failed to create any micron of what is called – tolerance, coexistence, civic equality, equal opportunities, democratic governance, rule of law and general development. On the contrary, we have demotion. So now instead of lasting reconciliation we have naked hatred. Instead of tolerance we have fights on buses and streets. Instead of cohesion we have demolition of houses and bars. Instead of the rule of law we have the rule of parties. Instead of general development, we have the top position in the list of world poverty. Instead of independent judiciary, we have party ruled verdicts and rigged trials. Everything is in free fall. Only organized crime is upwards. We have made a society without laws, without morals, without a curtain and shame.

author: Danica Radisic


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From Cats to Military Parades: Photoblogger in Sevastopol Reflects Crimea’s Patriotic Euphoria · Global Voices
Daniel Alan Kennedy

Natalya Golovan's LiveJournal avatar.
This article is part of an extensive RuNet Echo study of Russian-language blogosphere in Eastern Ukraine. Explore the complete interview series on the Eastern Ukraine Unfiltered page.
One Ukrainian-born revolutionary is often quoted as coining the aphorism, “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Trotsky's words have proved surprisingly applicable to Eastern Ukraine's blogosphere, where numerous personal blogs have become increasingly political and military in theme, influenced by events in the bloggers’ own areas.
Sevastopol based photoblogger Natalya Golovan, who blogs on LiveJournal as Black_Drago, is a good example of this process. Though her blog previously focused mostly on nature photography and personal musings, it has taken a much more military turn since February 2014. These days, Golovan is more likely to document a military ceremony or a celebratory fireworks display than the cats she photographed before. To a large extent, this is a reflection of what's happening in Sevastopol itself.
Может это и пафосно, но я бы хотела думать, что мой дневник о Севастополе. Я давно и прочно влюблена в свой Город. Политизированность это больше признак крайнего времени.
Maybe it's kind of pathetic but I like to think that my journal is about Sevastopol. I long ago completely and utterly fell in love with my city. The politicization is mostly a sign of extraordinary times.
As with many other bloggers RuNet Echo has profiled, an important motivation for Golovan is combatting what she sees as false or misleading representation of her own region.
Сейчас много людей, которые, идя на поводу СМИ, считают что тут очень плохо и волнуются за нас. Чаще всего это родственники, живущие в другх странах. Для них я стараюсь иногда писать короткие заметки об окружающей ситуации.
There are a lot of people now who are misled by the [mainstream] media and think that things here are really bad, so they worry about us. Most often it's relatives living in over countries. I occasionally try to write short notes for them about out situation here.
Golovan is an enthusiastic supporter of Crimea's “reunification” with Russia and deeply opposed to Kyiv's current government. But like many Crimean and Eastern Ukrainian bloggers of all political stripes, Golovan is skeptical and rather cynical about the mainstream media, both Russian and Ukrainian.
К сожалению, украинская журналистика показала свою крайнюю заангажированность с самого начала событий в Киеве и надеяться на честную информацию от них не приходится. С российской журналистикой, увы, по большей части то же самое. Только подача информаци с другими акцентами.
Unfortunately, Ukrainian journalism has unfortunately shown its extreme bias from the very start of events in Kyiv and there's no point expecting honest information from them. In Russian journalism, alas, for the most part it's the same, only the information is given with different accents.
Like many bloggers, Golovan prefers to use social media sources she trusts, timestamped videos and other resources to make sense of events in Ukraine. As for television, Golovan admits she hasn't owned a TV in years. She does, however, place faith in the actions of ordinary internet users, despite conceding that “there is too much fake information going around the internet and social networks.”
Пользователям можно было бы играть роль микроскопа, переносящего картину личностных бед (погибшие родственники, друзья, разрушенные дома) и разрушений ближе к общественности.
Users can play the role of a microscope, bringing a picture of individual pain (dead relatives and friends, destroyed houses) and of the devastation closer to the public.
Golovan goes as far as to say that
Интернет это очень мощное оружие и его надо использовать. В конце концов, победа Русской Весны была во многой мере завоевана в интернете.
The internet is a very powerful weapon and needs to be used. At the end of the day, to a large degree the victory of the Russian Spring [events in Crimea] was won on the internet.
Golovan's blog reflects the genuine support of many in Crimea for what they see as a return to historic justice and documents the fireworks displays, military parades, and patriotic bike shows that have characterized this euphoria. But with mobile phone service being cut off and no diplomatic solution to Crimea's status in sight, one wonders if and when this wave of patriotic enthusiasm will subside. Watching blogs like Golovan's is a good way to gauge the mood in Sevastopol.

author: Daniel Alan Kennedy


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Google Docs in Amharic: A Security Tool for Ethiopian Bloggers · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Cyber Ethiopia explains why Google Docs in Amharic is an important internet security tool for Ethiopian bloggers and how to enable it:
The Ethiopian government uses many methods to spy on bloggers, but by far the most invasive involves the covert installation of malware on their computers, which captures keystrokes, stores passwords, takes screen shots, and can record audio and video in the room where the computer is located. This malware is usually spread by downloading and opening infected documents. For users who are concerned about Ethiopian government surveillance (but not US government surveillance, or surveillance by governments to whom Google supplies user datain response to court orders), one easy work-around is to open documents in Google Docs instead of downloading and opening them on your computer in Microsoft Word or some other word processing program.
Until recently, Ethiopian bloggers were unable to make full use of this advice because Google Docs did not support Amharic, the national language of Ethiopia. Now Google has added support for Amharic to Google products, giving a vulnerable population a powerful tool that they can use to protect themselves from state-sponsored malware and surveillance.

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Indian News Portal Says Thomson Reuters Has ‘Unethical’ Understanding of Copyright  · Global Voices
Rezwan

Thomson Reuters in Times Square, New York. Photo by Flickr user m01229. CC BY 2.0
Thomson Reuters is usually in the business of writing headlines about others, but the New York-based global media and information firm has found itself making headlines in India after digital media portal MediaNama received an email from the company seeking consent to use and redistribute its content.
The email read:
We are aware that you will be receiving numerous requests of this nature and that asking you to give a response in each case would be burdensome for you. We would ask, therefore, that you respond either to the address or e-mail address given below within 14 days of the date at the head of this letter only if you wish to refuse your consent. Otherwise, Thomson Reuters will presume that your consent has been given for the purposes set out in this letter.
Nikhil Pahwa, the founder of MediaNama, replied on the website in a post titled “Thomson Reuters: we’ll take your articles if you don’t tell us not to.” He called the letter “unprofessional and unethical” and stressed:
A lack of refusal to consent does not amount to giving consent, and I doubt that this rationale will hold up in the court of law.
And “just for the fun,” Pahwa sent a similar letter back to Thomson Reuters.
The behavior is strange for a multi-billion-dollar company, according to Saptarishi Dutta at Quartz India, who spun the situation into a more relatable one for readers: “Imagine being told by someone that she plans to take your car if you don’t respond to an email expressly stating she can’t actually take your car. Now imagine that assertion is made by a huge company.”
On Aug. 22, Pahwa wrote that he had received another email from Reuters, saying that the first message had been sent “in error” and promising that none of MediaNama's content would be used without their “express permission.”
The publication of MediaNama's letter garnered many reactions, especially on Twitter:
Can someone like @ThomsonReuters force a @medianama into authorising content use by default? Ominous, serious issue http://t.co/gHShsSDcyk
— Madhavan Narayanan (@madversity) August 22, 2014
I would love to hear what the lawyers have to say about this one. http://t.co/156Oz0okIx via @medianama
— Jaskirat Singh Bawa (@JaskiratSB) August 22, 2014
I think @nixxin ought not to have denied Thomson-Reuters’ outrageous “request” to steal his content. Then, sued them! http://t.co/XLBYtTAbhv
— Rohin Dharmakumar (@r0h1n) August 21, 2014
How long until Thomson Reuters starts backtracking and spinning this? http://t.co/ZqXvwMEKJO
— Joseph Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) August 21, 2014
Wow I just heard that Thomson Reuters is offering free content backup of blogs and websites? Great news.
— EthanolDefenceLeague (@sidin) August 21, 2014
One commenter on MediaNama's post doubted the authenticity of the letter:
It's very unlikely for a big company to issue a non-directed email seeking a legal contract. And, that too one of the world's largest media companies asking for articles from a little-known entity (no disrespect to any one). And surely, the letter signature would have matched the email id :P For technology reporters, email ID masking should be a known thing #justsaying
Thomson Reuters’ subsequent email suggests that the original note was indeed real. Although it appears that MediaNama's content is safe for now, the incident begs the question: What other media outlets have received notices like this? Global Voices urges readers to share similar stories in our comments section.


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A “Liter of Light” to Brighten the Poorest Homes · Global Voices
Alka

The logo of the Liter of Light project.
After downing a bottle of water, most people are probably inclined to toss it in the trash. Those people, however, don't realize that they're throwing away an ingenious means of lighting a home. Thanks to the ideas of a mechanic in Brazil, such “garbage” can bring light to homes in poor communities around the world.
How does a plastic bottle turn into a source of light? The answer is both simple and brilliant. A small hole is cut in the roof of a house and a transparent, plastic bottle with clear water is fitted in. During the day, the sunlight is refracted by the water bottle and spreads 360 degrees around the room. These “lights” are usually installed in urban slums and narrow alleys, where lighting is typically poor or absent entirely. When necessary, some residents do use electric lights during the daytime, but money is tight and a water bottle in the sunlight has the power of a 60-watt bulb. Adding bleach to the water makes it cleaner and clearer, and each bottle can last up to five years before corrosion finally claims it for the scrapheap.
The invention belongs to Brazilian mechanic Alfredo Moser, and the “Liter of Light” project later adopted it on a large scale in Manila, where it used water bottles to provide sustainable, environmentally clean lighting to impoverished homes. Within a year of its inception, Liter of Light installed over 200,000 bottle lights. The organization aims to brighten up a million homes by 2015. The project is also working on a solar-powered, battery-attached version to provide lighting at night. It has also designed a mobile app that gives installation instructions.
Back in 2011, when the Green Cupboards blog ran an article on Liter of Light, a reader commented that this idea would make a great difference in India.
This is the most ingenious invention ever and surely needs great acclaim. I live in India where the villages have no electricity and the people have to rely upon kerosene lamps, many time staying in the dark because kerosene is usually in short supply. Hopefully some NGOs will latch on to this and make the life of the villagers less grim.
It took a few years, but Liter of Light is now active in 15 countries, including Bangladesh and Kenya, as well as India. Liter of Light’s India chapter engages volunteers in larger cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. A message on the “Liter of Light – Bangalore” Facebook page urges people to donate their used plastic bottles to the organization, rather than throw them in the garbage.
Please don't throw those Cola bottles away. Do contact us and we will try to find ways to pick it up from the nearest possible place
Writing on Twitter, Pollinate Energy, another non-profit organization that develops clean-energy products for India's urban slums, recently congratulated the Liter of Light team for their good work.
@literoflighthq you're doing great work!
— Pollinate Energy (@PollinateEnergy) May 6, 2014
Other NGOs, such as the Sanskar India Foundation and Labour Education and Research Network (LEARN), are working with Liter of Light India to amplify the impact these bottles have on users’ lives.
Screenshot from the Facebook page of Litter of Light India showing installation in Hyderabad.
Volunteer efforts are the heart of Liter of Light. A volunteer in Bangalore, Tripti, explains what drives the group:
We are eager to touch many more lives and lighten up the city in collaboration with like-minded organizations who want to take up this green movement with us.
Facts About India reports that 288 million Indians have no access to electricity. An innovative solution like Liter of Light could mitigate the consequences of powerlessness, while putting to good use what was previously just plastic waste.

author: Alka


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Over 300 Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants Condemn Israel’s ‘Massacre of Palestinians in Gaza’ · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip continued on Aug. 20, 2014, targeting a home in the city of Deir al-Balah. Photo by Hussain Abdel Jawwad. Copyright Demotix
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) has released an open letter signed by 327 Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide “unequivocally” condemning the “massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine.”
The letter was written in response to Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel’s “manipulation of the Nazi Genocide to attempt to justify the attacks on Gaza.” The accusation that Elie Wiesel manipulates the memory of the Holocaust is an old one. In this case, it refers to his New York Times advertisement in which he claimed that “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn,” using biblical imagery by comparing Gazan parents to the Molochites (ancient Canaanites who sacrificed children to their God, Moloch).
Besides his controversial positions supporting Israel's illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, Wiesel was chairman of the IR David Foundation, which aims to “strengthen the Jewish connection to Jerusalem” (Hebrew) and create a Jewish majority in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. He was notably accused by Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein in his book “The Holocaust Industry” of promoting the “uniqueness doctrines” whereas all genocides besides the Jewish Holocaust are downplayed.
The letter reads:
As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and Western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.
We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch. In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians and right-wing Israelis are adopting Neo-Nazi insignia.
Furthermore, we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza and the murder of more than 2,000 Palestinians, including many hundreds of children. Nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water.
We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!
Take a look at the letter on the IJAN's website to see the complete list of signatories.
Andrew Stroehlein, the European media director for Human Rights Watch, tweeted the news to his nearly 17,000 followers:
“‘Never again’ must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!” – Holocaust survivors slam #Israel on #Gaza http://t.co/OLOXUVrqCa pic.twitter.com/HNRyYqxhCk
— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) agosto 23, 2014
IJAN also recently announced that their letter will be posted in The New York Times as a half-page ad. Lee Gargagliano of IJAN wrote on Facebook:
We did it! We are placing the letter from survivors of the Nazi genocide and descendants of survivors and victims as a half-page ad in tomorrow's (Saturday 8/23) New York Times! Please spread it far and wide to help maximize the impact and please pass it on to journalists who you think might pick up the story. Thank you to those who signed; thank you to those who contributed; thank you to everyone who will help circulate!
At the time of writing, the death toll in Gaza stood at 2,039, including 540 children and 75 families. Seventy-two percent of Palestinians killed in this offensive are civilians, according to the UN. The death toll for Israel stood at 68, including one child. The percentage of civilians killed is 5 percent, with the majority of deaths being IDF soldiers.
Follow our in-depth coverage: #Gaza: Civilian Death Toll Mounts in Israeli Offensive

author: Elia J. Ayoub


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The Heroic Everyday Work of Lab Scientists in the Fight Against Ebola in Liberia · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

During the current crisis of the Ebola virus disease (EVD), many reports showcased stories about patients, medical staff, vaccines and the consequences of the disease on the affected countries. But rare are the reports about the daily work of laboratory technicians and of those who care for their daily needs. In a post on buzzfeed.com entitled The Hidden Heroes Of Liberia’s Ebola Crisis, Jina Moore tells the story of these key people in fighting the Ebola virus in Liberia:
Catherine Jeejuah starts so early these days that she doesn’t know the time. It’s irrelevant. She rises when it’s dark, lights a fire, and boils rice and greens for her two kids. By about 6:30 a.m., when light begins leaking through the windows, she leaves for a nearby school.
Here, she does it all again, at a greater scale. Jeejuah, 30, and two other women, all volunteers, are cooking for 12 of the most important, but invisible, people in Liberia right now.
The dozen meals are meant for the team of technicians that tests the blood of suspected Ebola patients. They visit sick peoples’ homes and overwhelmed Ebola treatment centers, sticking needles in the veins of physically unpredictable, highly contagious people. They then drive their blood back to Liberia’s only medical lab, more than an hour from the capital of Monrovia.
Follow our in-depth coverage: The Struggle to #StopEbola in West Africa

author: Abdoulaye Bah


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‘Behind the Wheel’: A Look at the Women Tajikistan’s Russia-Bound Men Leave Behind · Global Voices
Chris Rickleton

Behind the Wheel won Best Student Film at the Women's Voices Now festival in July. Image by Elise Laker.
“Behind the Wheel”, a short film by British filmmaker Elise Laker, highlights the difficult lives of women and families who are left to cope in the wake of the seemingly never-ending flow of male labor migrants from Tajikistan to Russia. Currently the film is winning praise in festivals across Europe and on July 30 claimed the Best Student Film award at the Women's Voices Now Film Festival.
A short description of the film, released in 2013, is as follows:
Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers leave Tajikistan in search of employment. The money sent back provides a huge boost to the economy; in fact, Tajikistan is the most remittance-dependent country in the world. The vast majority of these migrants are male, which means the Tajik population is becoming ever-more female. So what happens to the women who are left behind? Behind the Wheel explores the moral and emotional turmoil of Nigora, an [ethnic] Uzbek woman whose traditional life of being a housewife is turned upside down after her migrant husband fails to send back enough money and she finds out he has been having an affair. No longer able to rely on her husband, Nigora defies prevailing gender norms and sets to work fixing car tires.
Despite being only 20 minutes long, the film's portrayal of Nigora and her family is at once upsetting and inspiring. It can be watched below, shared via citizen.tv:
A photo essay by Ksenia Diodorova, featured by RFE/RL, offers another window onto the experiences of migration-affected Tajik families.

author: Chris Rickleton


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Critics Fear Bangladesh’s New Media Monitoring Policy Will Stifle Free Expression · Global Voices
পান্থ রহমান রেজা (Pantha)

BNP and its alliance parties protesting in a rally against the National Broadcasting Policy in Dhaka. Image by Indrajit Ghosh. Copyright Demotix (19/8/2014)
A new policy for broadcast media in Bangladesh is raising questions about controls on free expression in the country. The draft National Broadcasting Policy for the Bangladesh television and radio media, approved by Bangladesh's cabinet early this month, mandates the formation of an independent commission that will monitor TV and radio news and programmes and a broadcasting law, to be enacted in the future.
A large political party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has dubbed the National Broadcasting Policy as “regressive and intended to gag the media” and organized protest rallies against it.
In Bangladesh, there are approximately 24 privately-owned TV stations, 14 private radio stations and a number of community radio stations. The government owns one radio station and one television station. Bangladesh media is generally free although its ranked at 120th out of 178 countries on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. The private media is owned by media houses financed by business conglomerates who backs different political parties. In absence of adequate policy and regulatory framework, influential media can sometimes get away with publishing propaganda materials, plagiarism, and even libelous content. This is rarely controlled by authorities, as the judicial process is lengthy, influenced by politics and in some cases corrupt.
According to Section 39 of the Bangladesh Constitution, every citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression and press freedom is protected. The Daily Prothom Alo, a large Bangla daily, mentions in an editorial that this new policy is contrary to people's constitutional rights:
[…] সম্প্রচার নীতিমালায় প্রতিষ্ঠানবিশেষের খবর প্রকাশের ওপর বিধিনিষেধ জারির কথা বলা হয়েছে। গণমাধ্যম কী প্রচার করবে, কী প্রচার করবে না, সেটি সরকার বা তথ্য মন্ত্রণালয় নীতিমালা জারি করে বলে দিতে পারে না।
The broadcast policy talks about restrictions on dissemination of news. The information ministry or any other body of the government cannot dictate what the media will publish, or not publish.
Blogger Sakkhi Satyananda, however, thinks that the new broadcasting policy does not contradict the rights laid out in the Section 39 of the constitution, noting that the section makes an exception for
…any reasonable restrictions imposed by law in the interests of the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.
The blogger says that the policy deals with the above areas of exception which dictates a plan for forming an independent broadcasting commission. The commission will confer with all media sectors, including consumers, to audit unjust and unfair broadcasts and provide remedies for breaches of the law.
Journalist, blogger and leftwing activist Arifuzzaman Tuhin writes in the Bangla daily Kaler Kontho why this kind of policy became necessary in Bangladesh:
এখন প্রশ্নবিদ্ধ নির্বাচনের মাধ্যমে এমন একটি সরকার ক্ষমতায় যাদের অনির্বাচিত বলাই শ্রেয়। এরকম সরকারের জন্য এ ধরনের নিয়ন্ত্রণমূলক আইন ও নীতিমালা খুব দরকার। [..] সম্ভাব্য সমালোচনা আসতে পারে এমন সব বিষয়ের বিরুদ্ধে তারা অস্ত্র শান দিয়ে রাখে। এই নীতিমালা হলো সে ধরনের অস্ত্র।
The current government was reelected in a questionable election and there are concerns about its legitimacy. So this government needs more such laws and policies to control situation. [..] They keep their weapons ready to confront all kinds of negative criticisms. This policy is one of such weapons.
Journalist Mizanur Rahman also suggests in the Bangla daily Prothom Alo that the policy is intended to shield certain authorities from hard criticism and condemnation. However, Information Minister Hasanul Haque Inu differed, arguing that the budding broadcast media in Bangladesh is not properly regulated due to outdated laws, rules and regulations. He believes the policy will help to update and modernise the regulation of the industry.
Blogger Firoz Zaman Chowdhury reminded readers in an old post that private TV stations have been operating largely without regulation since their rise.
After the approval of this draft policy in the cabinet, heavy debate ensued on social media. Those with connections to the media industry mostly expressed their concerns. On Facebook, journalist Amin Al Rashid wondered why this draft policy was not widely publicised and debated by media before approval.
সম্প্রচার নীতিমালা নিয়া সম্প্রচারকর্মীরা খুবই উদ্বিগ্ন….তো এইটা মন্ত্রিসভায় অনুমোদনের আগে এর ধারা উপধারা নিয়ে সিরিজ রিপোর্ট করলেন না কেন?…তাহলে তো সরকার একটা চাপে থাকত এবং এটা অনুমোদনের আগে আরও হয়তো পরীক্ষা নিরীক্ষা করত…বন্দুক থেকে গুলি বের হয়ে যাবার আগে শিকারি যাতে ট্রিগারে চাপ দিতে না পারে, সেই চেষ্টাটা উত্তম…
The media industry is now very concerned about the draft policy.. so why didn't they publish series of reports dissecting every section of the policy before it was approved?.. That would put the government under some pressure and they would analyse and revise before the approval…It is better to prevent pulling the trigger rather than trying to retrieve the shot bullet.
Here are some Twitter reactions:
National Broadcast Policy: End of history? http://t.co/JnGKhYXxaD
— TIB (@tib1971bd) August 18, 2014
Restrictive broadcast policy in #Bangladesh raises concerns despite plans to form independent broadcast commission http://t.co/Urv2I4Iidh
— CPJ (@pressfreedom) August 6, 2014
Journalist Provash Amin commented on Facebook that the Ministry of Information has already started implementing the policy:
আগামীকাল ৯ আগস্ট জাতিসংঘ ঘোষিত আদিবাসী দিবস। তথ্য মন্ত্রণালয়ের পাঠানো তথ্যবিবরণীতে আদিবাসী দিবসের বিভিন্ন আয়োজনে ‘আদিবাসী’ শব্দটি পরিহার করার অনুরোধ করা হয়েছে। কি অদ্ভুত অনুরোধ, আদিবাসী দিবসে আদিবাসী বলা যাবে না। বলতে হবে ক্ষুদ্র নৃ-গোষ্ঠি বা উপজাতি।
Tomorrow 9th of August is the UN observed International Day of the World's Indigenous People. A directive sent from the ministry of Information instructed to avoid the word ‘indigenous’ for the small ethnic communities of Bangladesh in different districts. What a strange request! You cannot call them indigenous on the International Day of the World's Indigenous People but small ethnic community or minorities.
There have been several efforts to control the media in recent Bangladeshi history. In 1974, all but four of the country's newspapers were shut down. A number of media organisations were shut down on several occasions for different reasons – Ekushey TV in 2002, Channel one in 2010, Diganta TV in 2013 and Bangla Daily Dainik Amar Desh in 2013. In 2013, the government passed a series of controversial amendments to the nation's Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act that increased criminal penalties for Internet-based media under the law. The law now codifies arbitrary, warrantless arrests and detentions of suspected offenders.
According to recent reports, a draft of the National Online Media Policy 2014 is largely in line with the broadcast policy. Under this policy, online media will be required to obtain a licence from the government for a hefty fee. It will also prohibit reports and write-ups that mock or demean persons of the armed forces or other law enforcement agencies. The policy may also place a ban on reporting incidents involving politically-motivated rebellion, anarchy and other such harmful activities.
Supreme Court lawyer Yunus Ali Akand filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on Aug. 18 to annul the said broadcast policy.

author: পান্থ রহমান রেজা (Pantha)


text:
Digital Reconstruction of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The Smithsonian Channel has uploaded a video showing a digital reconstruction of Cambodia's Angkor Wat using 3D image technology. Angkor Wat (Temple City) is a popular tourism destination in Cambodia which used to be the capital of the Khmer Empire in the 12th century. It is also a massive religious monument, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9plvrHnOLA&feature=youtu.be

author: Mong Palatino