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Despite Not Winning a Single Olympic Medal, Nepalese Have Reasons to Be Proud · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

The Olympic Village #Río2016. Image from Flickr by Mexican Olympic Committee. CC BY NC-ND-2.0
Their country's athletes haven't won a medal at the Olympics in Rio (yet), but Nepalese are smiling nonetheless, thanks to media praise for their national anthem and one swimmer's age-defying performance.
The youngest athlete at the Rio Olympics, Gaurika Singh, is Nepalese. She was 13 years and 255 days old when she competed in the 100-meter backstroke heats.
Though she didn't make it into the final round and wasn't able to break the national record — which she set herself — she beat the other two swimmers in the heat she was competing in.
That's a good record: Nepal's #GaurikaSingh ‘became the youngest person ever to win a heat in the Olympic pool’ https://t.co/JtfIIX3X17
— Ujjwal Acharya (@UjjwalAcharya) August 8, 2016
Altough, she couldn't improve her nat'l record, I am proud that #GaurikaSingh swam to glory for Nepal as youngest athlete in #Rio2016 :-)
— Ujjwal Acharya (@UjjwalAcharya) August 7, 2016
Gaurika singh may have only won the heats; but it feels like she's already won a medal at the Olympics!
— Prasanna KC (@KC_Prasanna) August 7, 2016
Gaurika Singh at women's 100-meter backstroke heat. Image by Al Bello, Getty Images. Used with permission from the Brazilian Olympic Committee.
Adding to the joy of Nepalese was the BBC's decision to include Nepal’s national anthem in its list of the most amazing anthems at this Olympics.
Russia topped the list, followed by Myanmar and Nepal.
BBC listed nepal's national anthem in the top 10 most amazing national anthem of world in rio olympic 2016
— Siddhantha Kc (@KcSiddhantha) August 10, 2016
“[Nepal's national anthem] is so happy it’s somewhat unsettling to learn it was the product of a Maoist revolution.” https://t.co/cwDPXVtawj
— Anup Kaphle (@AnupKaphle) August 10, 2016
Penned by poet Pradeep Rai, also known as Byakul Maila, and composed by the late Amber Gurung, the song was officially declared the national anthem of Nepal on 3 August 2007.
If you haven’t listened to it yet, here’s the beautiful song of praise for unity and sovereignty of Nepal.
And here’s the English translation of the national anthem by Sushma Joshi.
Hundreds of flower bouquets, we are one garland of Nepalis
Sovereign, spread from Mechi to Mahakali.
Nature’s treasures spread out, uncountable
The blood of heroes have made us independent, immovable.
The land of knowledge, land of peace— Tarai, Pahad, Himal
Indivisible, beloved, our motherland Nepal.
The grandeur of many ethnicity, language, faith, culture
Our progressive nation, long live, long live Nepal.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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Global Voices Partners With India-Based Video Volunteers · Global Voices
Rezwan

Community members of Video Volunteers, viewing the world via Camera. Image from Flickr by Video Volunteers. CC BY-SA 2.0
The newest addition to Global Voices’ long list of like-minded partners is Video Volunteers, a community media organization. With a focus on India, it empowers some of the world's poorest citizens with video journalism and data gathering skills so they have a voice in media and can demand their rights.
The organization is represented by a network of more than 200 community correspondents, all of whom belong to disadvantaged communities. These correspondents shoot videos with their video-enabled cell phones to record local instances of discrimination, oppression, negligence, corruption and culture.
These videos are shared through Video Volunteers’ project IndiaUnheard, an alternative news platform which publishes news that is otherwise ignored by mainstream media. The videos are also screened on widescreen projectors to thousands of people in the villages of India to motivate them to take action. About one out of every four videos has motivated authorities and citizens to take action on the issues featured.
TED Fellow Jessica Mayberry founded Video Volunteers in 2003 after spending a year training rural Indian women in filmmaking as a W.J. Clinton Fellow of the American India Foundation. Mayberry works closely with co-director Stalin K, an Indian documentary filmmaker and community radio activist.
Some members of the VideoVolunteers community of citizen journalists. Image courtesy Stalin K.
More than 500 videos on topics like child marriage, temple prostitution, insurgent conflict, atrocities against Dalits and peace between Hindus and Muslims have been produced, and have been seen by more than 300,000 people in live outdoor screenings in slums and villages.
Video Volunteers has worked on several other projects like Videoshala, which trained community members how to produce educational videos, and Videoactive Girls, which taught adolescent girls to use the power of visual media to tell their stories. It also has a partnership with Indian national broadcaster Doordarshan to screen selected citizen videos to an wider audience.
Global Voices has occasionally reported on Video Volunteers videos in the past. With this partnership, we will periodically feature videos, texts and other content produced by Video Volunteers and its community of citizen journalists to bring them to our readers in more than 160 countries and in multiple languages through our Lingua translation sites.
Video Volunteers is also available on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Rezwan


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Israel, One of the World’s Driest Countries, Is Now Overflowing With Water · Global Voices
Ensia

Sorek desalination plant. Photo courtesy of IDE Technologies. CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0
This post by Rowan Jacobsen was originally published on Ensia.com, a magazine that highlights international environmental solutions in action, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.
“Now, that’s a pump!” Edo Bar-Zeev shouts to me over the din of the motors, grinning with undisguised awe at the scene before us. The reservoirs beneath us contain several feet of sand through which the seawater filters before making its way to a vast metal hangar, where it is transformed into enough drinking water to supply 1.5 million people.
We are standing above the new Sorek desalination plant, the largest reverse-osmosis desal facility in the world, and we are staring at Israel’s salvation. Just a few years ago, in the depths of its worst drought in at least 900 years, Israel was running out of water. Now it has a surplus. That remarkable turnaround was accomplished through national campaigns to conserve and reuse Israel’s meager water resources, but the biggest impact came from a new wave of desalination plants.
Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.
Bar-Zeev, who recently joined Israel’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research after completing his postdoc work at Yale University, is an expert on biofouling, which has always been an Achilles’ heel of desalination and one of the reasons it has been considered a last resort. Desal works by pushing saltwater into membranes containing microscopic pores. The water gets through, while the larger salt molecules are left behind. But microorganisms in seawater quickly colonize the membranes and block the pores, and controlling them requires periodic costly and chemical-intensive cleaning. But Bar-Zeev and colleagues developed a chemical-free system using porous lava stone to capture the microorganisms before they reach the membranes. It’s just one of many breakthroughs in membrane technology that have made desalination much more efficient. Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.
Driven by necessity, Israel is learning to squeeze more out of a drop of water than any country on Earth, and much of that learning is happening at the Zuckerberg Institute, where researchers have pioneered new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment and desalination. They have developed resilient well systems for African villages and biological digesters than can halve the water usage of most homes.
The institute’s original mission was to improve life in Israel’s bone-dry Negev Desert, but the lessons look increasingly applicable to the entire Fertile Crescent. “The Middle East is drying up,” says Osnat Gillor, a professor at the Zuckerberg Institute who studies the use of recycled wastewater on crops. “The only country that isn’t suffering acute water stress is Israel.”
That water stress has been a major factor in the turmoil tearing apart the Middle East, but Bar-Zeev believes that Israel’s solutions can help its parched neighbors, too — and in the process, bring together old enemies in common cause.
Bar-Zeev acknowledges that water will likely be a source of conflict in the Middle East in the future. “But I believe water can be a bridge, through joint ventures,” he says. “And one of those ventures is desalination.”
In 2008, Israel teetered on the edge of catastrophe. A decade-long drought had scorched the Fertile Crescent, and Israel’s largest source of freshwater, the Sea of Galilee, had dropped to within inches of the “black line” at which irreversible salt infiltration would flood the lake and ruin it forever. Water restrictions were imposed, and many farmers lost a year’s crops.
Their counterparts in Syria fared much worse. As the drought intensified and the water table plunged, Syria’s farmers chased it, drilling wells 100, 200, then 500 meters (300, 700, then 1,600 feet) down in a literal race to the bottom. Eventually, the wells ran dry and Syria’s farmland collapsed in an epic dust storm. More than a million farmers joined massive shantytowns on the outskirts of Aleppo, Homs, Damascus and other cities in a futile attempt to find work and purpose.
And that, according to the authors of “Climate Change in the Fertile Crescent and Implications of the Recent Syrian Drought,” a 2015 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the tinder that burned Syria to the ground. “The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria,” they wrote, “marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.”
Similar stories are playing out across the Middle East, where drought and agricultural collapse have produced a lost generation with no prospects and simmering resentments. Iran, Iraq and Jordan all face water catastrophes. Water is driving the entire region to desperate acts.
Except Israel. Amazingly, Israel has more water than it needs. The turnaround started in 2007, when low-flow toilets and showerheads were installed nationwide and the national water authority built innovative water treatment systems that recapture 86 percent of the water that goes down the drain and use it for irrigation — vastly more than the second-most-efficient country in the world, Spain, which recycles 19 percent.
But even with those measures, Israel still needed about 1.9 billion cubic meters (2.5 billion cubic yards) of freshwater per year and was getting just 1.4 billion cubic meters (1.8 billion cubic yards) from natural sources. That 500-million-cubic-meter (650-million-cubic-yard) shortfall was why the Sea of Galilee was draining like an unplugged tub and why the country was about to lose its farms.
The country faces a previously unfathomable question: What to do with its extra water?
Enter desalination. The Ashkelon plant, in 2005, provided 127 million cubic meters (166 million cubic yards) of water. Hadera, in 2009, put out another 140 million cubic meters (183 million cubic yards). And now Sorek, 150 million cubic meters (196 million cubic yards). All told, desal plants can provide some 600 million cubic meters (785 million cubic yards) of water a year, and more are on the way.
The Sea of Galilee is fuller. Israel’s farms are thriving. And the country faces a previously unfathomable question: What to do with its extra water?
Inside Sorek, 50,000 membranes enclosed in vertical white cylinders, each 4 feet high and 16 inches wide, are whirring like jet engines. The whole thing feels like a throbbing spaceship about to blast off. The cylinders contain sheets of plastic membranes wrapped around a central pipe, and the membranes are stippled with pores less than a hundredth the diameter of a human hair. Water shoots into the cylinders at a pressure of 70 atmospheres and is pushed through the membranes, while the remaining brine is returned to the sea.
Desalination used to be an expensive energy hog, but the kind of advanced technologies being employed at Sorek have been a game changer. Water produced by desalination costs just a third of what it did in the 1990s. Sorek can produce a thousand liters of drinking water for 58 cents. Israeli households pay about US$30 a month for their water — similar to households in most US cities, and far less than Las Vegas (US$47) or Los Angeles (US$58).
The International Desalination Association claims that 300 million people get water from desalination, and that number is quickly rising. IDE, the Israeli company that built Ashkelon, Hadera and Sorek, recently finished the Carlsbad desalination plant in Southern California, a close cousin of its Israel plants, and it has many more in the works. Worldwide, the equivalent of six additional Sorek plants are coming online every year. The desalination era is here.
What excites Bar-Zeev the most is the opportunity for water diplomacy. Israel supplies the West Bank with water, as required by the 1995 Oslo II Accords, but the Palestinians still receive far less than they need. Water has been entangled with other negotiations in the ill-fated peace process, but now that more is at hand, many observers see the opportunity to depoliticize it. Bar-Zeev has ambitious plans for a Water Knows No Boundaries conference in 2018, which will bring together water scientists from Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza for a meeting of the minds.
Even more ambitious is the US$900 million Red Sea–Dead Sea Canal, a joint venture between Israel and Jordan to build a large desalination plant on the Red Sea, where they share a border, and divide the water among Israelis, Jordanians and the Palestinians. The brine discharge from the plant will be piped 100 miles north through Jordan to replenish the Dead Sea, which has been dropping a meter per year since the two countries began diverting the only river that feeds it in the 1960s. By 2020, these old foes will be drinking from the same tap.
On the far end of the Sorek plant, Bar-Zeev and I get to share a tap as well. Branching off from the main line where the Sorek water enters the Israeli grid is a simple spigot, a paper cup dispenser beside it. I open the tap and drink cup after cup of what was the Mediterranean Sea 40 minutes ago. It tastes cold, clear and miraculous.
The contrasts couldn’t be starker. A few miles from here, water disappeared and civilization crumbled. Here, a galvanized civilization created water from nothingness. As Bar-Zeev and I drink deep, and the climate sizzles, I wonder which of these stories will be the exception, and which the rule.
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author: Ensia


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Jalaur Mega Dam in the Philippines Threatens to Displace Indigenous Peoples in Panay Island · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

International Solidarity Mission delegates listen to testimonies by Tumandok men and women in Barangay Agcalaga, Calinog. Photo Credits: Jalaur River for the People Movement.
The Tumandok (Panay-Bukidnon) indigenous peoples of the central Philippine Island of Panay are facing the real possibility of being forced from their homes due to the construction of the Jalaur Mega Dam, which will leave indigenous communities in the municipality of Calinog, Iloilo underwater.
Also known as the Jalaur River Multipurpose Project Phase 2 (JRMP II), the project is expected to displace 17,000 Tumandok individuals, affecting 16 indigenous people’s communities. The building of the dam will submerge houses and agricultural lands of the Tumandok.
These were the findings of the International Solidarity Mission (ISM) from July 16 to 18 organized by the Jalaur River for the People Movement. Delegates representing 26 organizations from five countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy, Philippines, and South Korea, took part in the ISM.
The ISM delegates trekked to the indigenous communities along the Jalaur River in Calinog that are directly affected by the dam construction, talked with local officials, and dialogued with concerned government agencies in Iloilo City.
The Binanog dance performed during the 2016 Tumanduk nga Mangunguma nga Nagapangapin sa Duta kag Kabuhi (TUMANDUK) Assembly held in Tapaz, Capiz earlier this year. Photo Credits: TUMANDUK.
The Jalaur Mega Dam had its groundbreaking ceremony with former President Noynoy Aquino on February 2013 and is mainly funded by a loan from the Export Import Bank of Korea, with subsidies from the Philippine government.
The Philippine government is pushing for the construction of the Jalaur Mega Dam as the solution to providing irrigation and potable water in Panay Island. However, critics assert the same can be achieved without destroying indigenous communities by building smaller dams and rehabilitating existing irrigation systems.
Dr. Ernesto Hofileña, a retired anesthetist and agriculturist from Iloilo, for instance, argues that maximizing the 1,500-square kilometer catchment area that collects rain and run-off water downstream is better than constructing a big dam upstream where the catchment area is only 107 square kilometers. He wrote:
The average annual output of the Jalaur River is 1,197,504,000 cubic meters. If we can save this using a series of small dams, reservoirs, and deep lateral canals crisscrossing the farmlands across the Iloilo plain we won’t need a high dam with a storage capacity of less than a billion.
The Tumandok mapping the destruction and displacement to be caused by the construction of the Jalaur Mega Dam. Photo Credits: Jalaur River for the People Movement.
Contrary to the claims of the national and local government of almost full support by the indigenous peoples for the project, the international mission found out that no real free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) was obtained from the Tumandok for the construction of the Jalaur Mega Dam.
In the first place, the ISM reported that the feasibility study made by the National Irrigation Administration for the dam construction was already tendered to the Korea Eximbank in November 2011. This was before the initiation of the first FPIC process on January 2012.
The ISM also found that the “consultative assemblies” organized by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples only presented the advantages of building the Jalaur Mega Dam while masking the negative effects.
Children playing along the river banks of Jalaur in Barangay Agcalaga, Calinog.
Affected communities were given promises of incentives so that they would support the project, while those who resisted were threatened and intimidated by state forces.
Berna Castor, leader of the indigenous people's group Tumanduk nga Mangunguma nga Nagapangapin sa Duta kag Kabuhi (TUMANDUK), said the elders who consented to the dam were not voted by the entire community and were organized by authorities precisely for the purpose of giving legitimacy to the project. Castor said:
Yes, they are Tumandok. But they are those whose lives and livelihood are not directly affected by the project. The people who will be most affected by the project do not approve of the project.
The Tumandok men and women who spoke to the ISM delegation shared their fears of flooding and landslides that the dam could cause as well as the drowning not only of their homes and villages, but also of their agricultural lands and cultural heritage.
Six Tumandok burial grounds and sacred sites along the Jalaur River will be desecrated with the building of the dam, according to a research study presented during the ISM by University of the Philippines Visayas graduates Mar Anthony Balani and Jude Mangilog.
Delegates of the International Solidarity Mission fording the Jalaur River.
The international mission’s call to actions included an appeal for the Philippine government to respect the right of the Tumandok to their ancestral domain and their processes of decision-making without coercion, bribery and false promises from government agencies and the military.
The mission demanded the stop of the militarization of indigenous communities and the investigation of human rights abuses that were committed to coerce the Tumandok into consenting to the project. It also called for the indemnification of the victims for damages during the project’s implementation.
The international mission moreover urged for the review of all development projects that encroach on the Tumandok people’s ancestral domain and likewise called on the South Korean government, the loan provider, to re-evaluate the issues surrounding the dam.
Finally, the mission recommended the conduct of an independent study assessing the viability of the proposed Jalaur Mega Dam as well as the feasibility of alternatives such as the building of small and micro-dams that are less dangerous while still providing irrigation water for farmlands.

author: Karlo Mongaya


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Russia’s Parliamentary Race Gets Another Erotic Tabloid Scoop · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Polina Nemirovsky (left) and Maria Baronova. Photo: Facebook
Life.ru, the cream of the crop (or bottom of the barrel, as it were) of Russian tabloid attacks on political figures, has published hacked photographs featuring Maria Baronova, an opposition candidate for the State Duma, in an intimate setting with another young woman.
The website says merely that the images were sent by an anonymous user of its news-crowdsourcing app “LifeCorr.” The photographs show Baronova and her current campaign manager, Polina Nemirovskaya, posing topless and kissing. Baronova has refused to comment publicly about the leaked pictures, but she did apparently tell Life.ru that she'll be happy to “take up the discussion about her chest” just as soon as she's completed her campaign for a seat in Russia's parliament.
Baronova overcame considerable odds earlier this month to register her candidacy, collecting nearly 15,000 signatures to join the ballot as an independent. She is one of 18 candidates supported by the political movement “Open Russia,” which was launched by former oil tycoon, turned political dissident, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. To collect the signatures needed to register her candidacy, Baronova mobilized an army of roughly 400 campaign workers. She has also reportedly taken out a personal loan of 2 million rubles (more than $31,000) to fund her campaign.
Baronova is running for a seat in Moscow's central voting district, where she'll square off against Nikolai Gonchar, a candidate from the ruling party “United Russia,” and Andrei Zubov, who is endorsed by the democratic parties “Yabloko” and “Parnas.” (In March 2014, following Russia's annexation of Crimea, Zubov gained some celebrity among the Kremlin's critics for losing his job after penning an op-ed comparing Moscow's land grab to the Nazi seizure of the Sudetenland.)
The presence of two liberal democrats on the same Moscow ballot has led some of Zubov's supporters to accuse Baronova of being a “spoiler” candidate, allowed into the race by the Kremlin, in order to split the opposition vote. The well-known anti-corruption activist, Alexey Navalny, for instance, suggested on Twitter today that the leaked photos with Nemirovskaya make it “obvious” that Baronova is a “spoiler” sent to keep Zubov from the Duma. (Petr Verzilov, the husband of Pussy Riot frontwoman Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, promptly mocked Navalny for demanding that Baronova drop out of the race.)
While Baronova has remained mostly silent about the leaked pictures, Nemirovskaya hasn't shied from discussing the matter on social media. On Twitter, she revealed that Life.ru contacted her earlier, asking for a comment about the images it received. Nemirovskaya says all her social-media accounts and instant messengers were hacked a couple of months ago. In one tweet today, she posed for a photo beside Parnas chairman and former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who early this summer was targeted in a hidden-camera scheme that exposed his extramarital affair with a Parnas staffer.
На всякий случай свои фотографии с Касьяновым выложу сама pic.twitter.com/BRXTC1j0mq
— ядерный потанцевал (@polinanem) August 16, 2016
Just in case, I'll upload my photos with Kasyanov on my own.
The photographs with Baronova, Life.ru apparently told Nemirovskaya, were pulled from an iPhone 4—a smartphone Nemirovskaya says she hasn't used for roughly four years. According to Olga Borisova, one of Nemirovskaya's close friends and another member of Baronova's campaign staff, the photos were taken a year ago. Borisova, who has written for RuNet Echo in the past, declined to elaborate further.
Elsewhere on social media, the Internet's typically sophomoric humor has kicked into overdrive. By a strange coincidence, two other divisive women in Moscow's political culture—Ksenia Sokolova, the new chief editor of Russian Esquire, and Lesya Ryabtseva, a former top aide at the radio station Echo of Moscow—announced that they will be working together in the former's Duma campaign this election. The sudden news about these four women—all of whom are active in public life and have, at one time or another, foregrounded their sense of fashion and physical appearance—has activated all the usual commentary from men on the Russian Internet, who have largely alternated between ogling observations about attractive young women posing for photos together, and generally misogynist jokes about the women in Russia's public spotlight.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Syria’s ‘White Helmets’ Have Saved Thousands of Lives. Now, They’re Nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

White Helmets volunteers. Source: White Helmets.
The Syrian Civil Defence Units, also known as the White Helmets, have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Credited with saving over 56,000 lives and comprising about 3000 volunteers, the group of rescue workers may now receive the world's most recognizable ‘peace prize’ for their work.
In a recent interview with Public Radio International, 29-year-old White Helmet Ishmael Alabdullah gave from Aleppo what could be seen as the White Helmets’ philosophy:
When you see human beings suffering, you need to do something to help them. I consider everyone who is staying in Aleppo, all of them, are heroes.
On their website, the White Helmets explain “what it takes to save a life”:
In the deadliest conflict of our era an unlikely group of heroes has emerged. Former tailors, bakers, teachers and other ordinary Syrians have banded together to save lives from the rubble of bombardment and the violence of war in Syria. Forming the Syria Civil Defence, their distinctive uniform of a white helmet now symbolises hope for millions.
When the bombs rain down, the White Helmets rush in. In a place where public services no longer function these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need, regardless of their religion or politics. These volunteer rescue workers have saved over 60,000 lives.
The White Helmets motto is taken from the Quran: ‘to save a life is to save all of humanity‘. In a conflict where too many have chosen violence, the White Helmets wake up everyday to save the lives others are trying so hard to take.
Their bravery has inspired people across the planet — from the children in Syria who play at being rescue workers, to the students in Norway who awarded them their town’s peace prize, and to their nomination now for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The ‘Nobel Peace Prize for the White Helmets’ campaign is being supported by over 120 organizations. Syrian organizations include:
International organizations include:
The White Helmets were nominated by, among others, Jo Cox, the UK Labour member of parliament who was brutally murdered by a 52-year-old man on June 16, 2016. Following Cox's death, her husband Brendan launched a memorial fund set to raise money for causes supported by the late MP. The three causes chosen were the ‘Royal Voluntary Service‘, an NGO which assists the elderly, ‘HOPE Not Hate‘, the movement ‘fighting for a modern, inclusive Britain’ and, finally, the White Helmets.
In just five days, the campaign managed to raise close to £1.35 million (1.7 million US dollars) with over 41,000 contributions and has since surpassed the £1.5 million goal (1.9 million US dollars). Cox's family was even presented with an honorary white helmet by the head of the White Helmets, Raed Saleh, a highly symbolic award as it is “normally reserved for volunteers who have lost their lives rescuing civilians in Syria”. Saleh also released the following video on behalf of the White Helmets.
In March 2016, Amnesty International accused the Syrian and Russian governments of targeting hospitals as a strategy of war, saying that they “appear to have deliberately and systematically targeted hospitals and other medical facilities over the last three months to pave the way for ground forces to advance on northern Aleppo”. In June 2016, The New Yorker's Ben Taub published a harrowing account of what he called ‘the shadow doctors’. He wrote:
In the past five years, the Syrian government has assassinated, bombed, and tortured to death almost seven hundred medical personnel, according to Physicians for Human Rights, an organization that documents attacks on medical care in war zones. (Non-state actors, including ISIS, have killed twenty-seven.) Recent headlines announced the death of the last pediatrician in Aleppo, the last cardiologist in Hama. A United Nations commission concluded that “government forces deliberately target medical personnel to gain military advantage,” denying treatment to wounded fighters and civilians “as a matter of policy.”
Many more hospitals have since been bombed. At least 375 strikes on medical facilities have been documented since the start of the Syrian Revolution, according to Physicians for Human Rights. Under such conditions, many of the men and women treating the wounded in makeshift underground hospitals can range from first year medical students to people with no medical training at all.
Similarly, the first responders comprising the bulk of the White Helmets are ordinary civilians, from bakers to nurses, painters to tailors, which is why supporters of the campaign are asking the public to sign a statement in support of the White Helmets receiving the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.

author: Elia J. Ayoub


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The City of Mariupol, Ukraine’s Line in the Sand · Global Voices
Ivan Sigal

Tetrapods, normally used to build piers, have been used in Mariupol’s defense, and today are found around the city decorated with Ukrainian folk symbols. Mariupol, Ukraine, July 4, 2016. Photo: Ivan Sigal
The Ukrainian city of Mariupol sits 20 km from the front line between the Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian military. It is a city at peace, but close enough to hear the war. Fighting between the separatists and the Ukrainian military has escalated in recent months, and Mariupol residents can hear mortars and rocket fire when the wind blows from the east, from the front-line towns of Shyrokyne and Novotroitske.
The Ukrainians have made the defense of Mariupol their line in the sand: it is a port city with crucial transport infrastructure, access to the Sea of Azov, and two huge steel plants, as well as assorted other heavy industries. It is also the city the Russians would need to capture in order to build a land bridge to Crimea, which would secure the strategic viability of their claim to that territory.
Wall-size map of Mariupol, Mariupol, Ukraine, July 4, 2016. Photo: Ivan Sigal
I am spending a long week in Mariupol, walking the city, taking photos, and gauging people’s attitude toward the conflict, their own circumstances, and their understanding of the nature of the threat. I want to see if I can explain and depict the psychological pressure and uncertainty generated by proximity to the front, and how those pressures might be visible in the landscape.
This is a war in which the interplay of informational conflict and physical violence is especially evident, in which disinformation and propaganda muddle motives, deny unmistakable violence, and seek to confuse both fighting forces and key populations. This unusual war has witnessed a flourishing of evidentiary traces from online sources, as well as the possible manipulation of that evidence. It is a war in which confusion is clearly a strategic element, rather than just an effect. The rhetoric of the fog of war, in other words, is intended to legitimate the idea of information warfare. In just this way, the rhetoric of a “hybrid war” as a new form of war—even though it is not new—creates an environment in which the international norms and laws of war can themselves be challenged.
Before the war, residents of Mariupol largely supported Russian culture and language, and briefly participated in the separatist effort in 2014 and 2015. This part of Ukraine overwhelmingly supported Viktor Yanukovych in elections, and local police participated in his bid to hold power. At the same time, the effects of the war and politics on the lives of people is hard to conceal. Being part of Russia might have been attractive, but affiliation with a pariah semi-state? Not so much.
Camouflage netting along Mariupol’s city beach obscures tank traps and a training area for Ukrainian military and civil defense forces. Mariupol, Ukraine, July 4, 2016. Photo: Ivan Sigal
The result is a weariness, a fugitive state of concealment, and reticence. Many residents now recognize the dangers of associating with the separatist movement, and the conflict and isolation that would result. Ukrainian troops, together with militias, control the city and the airport, and the military has reinforced the front. The Russians still have a much stronger military, but there is no guarantee that they would have the support of the population, or an easy victory over a Ukrainian force that has had time to learn how to fight.
Advertisements for ride sharing to Crimea dominate local posting boards. Mariupol, Ukraine, July 4, 2016. Photo: Ivan Sigal
Mariupol is calm; its streets are quiet. It might be hyperbolic to say that the city is holding its breath. Lately, however, Moscow has reportedly increased weapons transfers into the separatist enclaves and it has been peddling a rhetorical line about the ceasefire being functionally dead. These moves create an atmosphere of moral permissiveness that makes renewed conflict a distinct possibility.
And whether or not Russia does decide to invade, the Kremlin's rhetoric creates tactical space. With this room to maneuver, it could theoretically prepare for and even justify an invasion, or it could simply wield more power at the negotiating table, the next time leaders sit down for peace talks. With this behavior, Moscow is again testing resistance to its assertion of regional dominance in Ukraine.
Bus stop on Lunina Ave. Mariupol, Ukraine, July 4, 2016. Photo: Ivan Sigal
A version of this post was published previously at ivansigal.net.

author: Ivan Sigal


text:
‘Disappointed’ Activists Criticize India’s ‘Iron Lady’ for Daring to End Her 16-Year-Long Hunger Strike · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

Screenshot from The Quint's video showing Irom Sharmilla breaking her 16-year-long fast.
Activist Irom Chanu Sharmila recently decided to end her 16-year-long hunger strike against a controversial draconian law in order to join politics in India's north-eastern state of Manipur and settle down with her boyfriend. While many have cheered her decision and courage (hers was often called the world's longest fast), some of her supporters and fellow activists are not pleased.
Sharmila, 44, had intended to stay in a local Manipur colony after being discharged from the hospital, where she had been kept detained and force-fed through a tube in her nose on the basis of a law that prohibits suicide. But community members rejected her, as did a local Iskcon temple. Police then brought her back to the hospital to stay in the meantime.
Activists from the group Sharmila Kanba Lup (Protect Sharmila Organisation) complain that Sharmila did not consult them before deciding to stop her hunger strike and feel “disappointed” and “let down”. Another group, the Manipuri separatist organization Alliance for Socialist Unity, Kangleipak, urged her not to marry her boyfriend, a British-Indian man, deeming his Indian descent suspicious; some supporters felt that her relationship might have “misled” her into taking this decision.
The cruelty shown to Irom Sharmila is staggering. Like she cant own her own life or choices. Very Opposite of human rights she fought for
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) August 11, 2016
Sharmila, also known as the ‘Iron Lady’ of Manipur, started her non-violent protest in November 2000. Her main demand was the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), which grants government forces de facto impunity in their bid to rein in militants and separatists working in the region.
Many consider her to be a Manipuri icon, and say ending her fast and entering politics could sully that image. Another organization, the Sharmila Kanba Lup (Save Sharmila Campaign), was dissolved after she announced she was going to stop her hunger strike, although it appears to have happened with Sharmila's blessing.
Those who saying that #IromSharmila should have continued her fast are always welcome to take over from her. Any takers?
— Vikram Chandra (@vikramchandra) August 9, 2016
Addressing the criticism and local rejection she experienced, a pained Sharmila told the press:
At that moment, I felt the best thing for them would have been beating me to death. What is the difference between being beaten to death or dying from fasting. Not much. They want me to remain a martyr forever. But I can’t always be a martyr.
Manu Joseph summarized the situation in the newspaper Hindustan Times:
They said she had betrayed their cause. They had promoted her as “iron lady”, but now she was not behaving like one. Fair-weather friends and family isolated her. People who had made her a deity, now abused her. At least one group threatened her.
Irshad Ahmed reacted to the news on Facebook:
India has lost humanity. India is slowly losing hearts of people of North East and Kashmir.
For a better India we must speak up for rights of one and all, we cannot allow the politicians to divide us further.
Shashikumar Velath criticized on Facebook those who had “exploited” Sharmila:
All human rights organizations – national and international – are responsible for creating an icon without thinking through a focused exit strategy. All exploited her struggle to raise the mast of their narrow campaign narratives, forgetting about the suffering of a real human being. They lulled the society to believe that Irom's hunger strike would be a never ending reality show. This is what happens when human rights bureaucracies elevate everything to clinical assessment of violations vis a vis national and international law standards. […]
Zenith of moral bankruptcy.
Indian actor Renuka Shahane offered up his own home and praised Sharmila's efforts:
Irom Sharmila if you have no place that is willing to accept you please stay with me in Mumbai, it will be an honour! All those human rights & anti AFSPA “activists” who were happy & supportive only when you had a tube attached to your nose for force-feeding or only when you were facing the wrath of the State with courage, are not worth a second thought. You are still fighting against AFSPA; you are going to do that with a person whom you have chosen to love & in a manner that you & only you should choose to do. You are so used to dissent. Now, its from within the people you consideted your own. That is more difficult & painful.
Writing on “infotainment” website Arre, Shoma Chaudhury described the injustices that Sharmila is facing on all sides:
Sharmila’s protest should have become a lightning rod in India’s public life. The media should have given it life breath. The State should have acknowledged its moral force and entered a dialogue. Instead, the media has tired of her and the State has worn Sharmila down and leached her protest of its magnetism.
The situation might be different if Sharmila's former supporters would only trust her commitment to repealing the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which she has emphasized:
Nobody told me to start fasting then (November 2000). And I dissuaded others from joining me because I knew how hard it can be on a woman with multiple responsibilities in a conflict-torn land. Why can’t they understand I have not deviated from the goal of getting AFSPA repealed?
And besides that, what Sharmila does in her personal life is purely her choice.

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


text:
Ice Cold and Up to Your Knees: Russian Pensioner Has Spent 5 Years Living in a Flooded Home · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Image: YouTube / News.ykt.ru, adapted by RuNet Echo.
There is a 71-year-old retired man in Yakutsk who has spent the past five years living in a flooded apartment. The water, which nearly reaches his knees, is black and ice cold. Even in the summer, when the weather can be quite warm in the city, the flood water is freezing. Valery Tereshchenko, the man living in this “swamp,” as he puts it, says he sleeps in his boots and a thick sweater, to shield himself from the cold.
Earlier this week, reporting for the local news portal News.Ykt.Ru, Maria Alexeeva met Mr. Tereshchenko, who granted her a tour of his home that's been half underwater for the last five years. He made Alexeeva put on special waterproof boots before he invited her inside.
“The main thing is not to fall,” he warns her. “It's pretty deep in parts, and the water is as cold as ice.”
Tereshchenko spent 15 years working as a driver and then as a mechanic for a local motor depot. The home he now occupies was built in the 1970s. Tereshchenko moved in when it was still new, having first arrived in Yakutsk in 1969 from Irkutsk. He used to share the apartment with his wife, Nina, who died two years ago, when she stumbled during a heart attack and drowned in the water that still floods their home today. Tereshchenko's health isn't stellar, either. Alexeeva says he often coughs whenever he moves.
Tereshchenko says all his furniture is constantly damp. “The bed on which I sleep is wet,” he explains, saying that he tries to leave the apartment to be outside, in order to warm up, though his old age and respiratory problems make this a difficult feat.
The indoor “swamp” is deeper in some parts than others. Walking around the apartment, Tereshchenko measures the water's depth in different spots: 17 centimeters (more than 6 inches) in one place, and as much as 25 centimeters (almost 10 inches) in another. “Just don't go near the window,” he says, explaining that the floor has rotted away to the basement there, exposing a 1.5-meter (5-foot) drop. To demonstrate the danger, he lowers a broom into the muck, and it disappears all the way to the handle.
The flooding first began five years ago, as a result of construction on nearby homes and stores. Ever since, that new real estate's waste waters have pooled in Tereshchenko's apartment.
It was one of Tereshchenko's neighbors who contacted News.Ykt.Ru, hoping local media coverage might prompt the city to help the elderly man. The neighbor has also been active on social media, trying to rally support.
Tereshchenko has appealed to the regional authorities many times, never managing to get a direct meeting with Aisen Nikolaev, the local mayor. Tereshchenko says he gets the same answer every time he appeals for help: there are no other apartments available now. He used to pay a private pumping service to siphon out the flood water—a temporary solution. Now he says he can't afford it. Local officials say they don't have any pumping equipment. “Why don't you go complain to Barack Obama,” they once told him.
Vitaly Sorochan, a local state official, told News.Ykt.Ru that he would study the situation and take all necessary measures, though he says Tereshchenko must first appeal to the authorities himself “and bring all the required documents.” Igor Tkachenko, a housing official, also promised to address Tereshchenko's living conditions, though he warned News.Ykt.Ru that some people in the neighborhood are living there without the proper registration.
Last year, incidentally, housing department officials did visit Tereshchenko at his home. They looked around and told him, “You can't live like this, gramps.” He says they promised to find him new housing, if only a room in a home, but nobody ever called him back.
Today, there is no calling Valery Tereshchenko; he recently dropped his telephone in the water, and he says it's lost for good.


text:
It’s ‘No Mean Feat’ Being a Female Human Rights Activist in Timbuktu, Says Psychologist Fatoumata Harber · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

Truck is set on fire in conflict-ridden northern Mali. Photo by F. Harber. Used with her permission.
The attacks that have recently struck the Western world have dominated the front pages of the media. Attacks on less wealthy countries do not often receive the same level of media coverage, as though a life lost in the Sahel or Iraq will inspire less compassion than a life lost elsewhere.
However, fear and loss are felt just as strongly within countries living under the threat of extremists. This is what it’s like for people living in the centre and north of Mali.
Fatoumata Harber has been part of the Global Voices community since 2014. She lives in Timbuktu in the north of Mali, a city that was under militant jihadist occupation for many long months until it was liberated in January 2013. Global Voices interviewed her to give a better understanding of the conditions in which her people are living and the challenges they face in order to survive under the constant threat of conflict. Her unlimited positive energy is contagious as she tells her story of Mali.
Global Voices (GV): Fatoumata Harber, tell us a little about yourself.
Fatoumata Harber (FH): Je m’appelle Fatoumata Harber, je suis psychologue de formation, j’enseigne la psychopédagogie dans un institut de formation des maîtres bilingue à Tombouctou, au nord du Mali. Je suis également activiste, je suis blogueuse et je suis basée à Tombouctou. Mon nom de plume est Faty.
Fatoumata Harber (FH): My name is Fatoumata Harber, I’m a professional psychologist, I teach educational psychology in a bilingual teacher training institute in Timbuktu, northern Mali. I’m also a human rights activist and a blogger based in Timbuktu. My pseudonym is Faty.
GV: Describe your daily life like as a female activist in Timbuktu.
FH: Le quotidien d’une militante dans une zone en proie à l’insécurité n’est pas de tout repos. C’est d’ailleurs cette situation qui m’a motivée à militer pour les droits de l’homme.
Le travail que je fais consiste justement à rendre publique et à dénoncer les exactions de ces groupes armés contre la population de la zone. Le nord du Mali n’a pas de route digne de ce nom qui le relie au reste du Mali. Nous sommes comme en vase clos avec ces brigands des groupes armés qui se font passer pour des indépendantistes et des défenseurs de la population. Quand ils ont besoin de quelque chose, ils se contentent de piller les villages reculés. L’information ne passe même pas dans la presse nationale, à force parler de la presse internationale.
Nous autres utilisateurs des réseaux sociaux pouvons faire connaitre ces actes criminels très rapidement, même si les interventions de sauvetage sont rares pour ne pas dire inexistantes.
À cause de mes activités ou pour avoir eu des joutes verbales avec leurs représentants sur les réseaux sociaux, je sais que certains groupes armés me suivent, mais je ne me sens pas plus en danger qu’un autre habitant de Tombouctou. Je suis convaincue que mon travail est important. Il faut faire savoir la réalité: la majorité de la population du nord du Mali n’est pas liée à ces groupes armés, elle n’est pas indépendantiste, mais ce n’est pas une raison pour ne pas dénoncer les limites de l’état dans le cadre de la réalisation des infrastructures de base dans le septentrion malien. Parfois les menaces viennent du côté des autorités.
FH: The daily life of a female human rights activist in an area plagued by insecurity is no mean feat. It was this situation that motivated me to campaign for human rights.
The work that I do is all about drawing attention to and publicly speaking out against the acts of violence undertaken by armed groups against the local people. There is no road worth speaking of to connect the north of Mali to the rest of the country. It’s as though we are trapped in a vacuum with these thieves, these armed gangs, posing as supporters of independence and defenders of the people. If ever they are in need of anything, they simply steal from the remote villages. This information doesn’t even make it into the national media, let alone the international press.
We social media users are able to spread awareness of these crimes very quickly, however, people rarely come to our aid, if ever.
Because of the things I’ve been doing, and the verbal battles I’ve been having with their representatives on social media, I know that some armed groups follow me, but I don’t feel in any more danger than anyone else living in Timbuktu. I know the work I do is important. We’ve got to make people aware of the reality: that the majority of people living in northern Mali are not in any way connected to these armed groups, they are not advocates of independence, but that’s no reason not to publicly criticise the state for its failure to provide basic facilities to the north Malian. Sometimes the threats come from the inside.
GV: Can you tell us about how women are contributing to the region’s development?
FH: Pour la participation des femmes au développement de ma région, j’ai créé le Centre Flag des Femmes, une structure financée par la Compagnie américaine Flag International LLT avec notamment un programme de formation en leadership pour les femmes des groupements féminins que nous avons regroupés en un grand réseau de plus de 200 associations.
Nous apportons également notre aide à ces associations en aidant les femmes qui ont des activités génératrices de revenus de les reprendre en leur fournissant le fonds nécessaire. C’est ainsi que 10 femmes boulangères ont pu bénéficier de fours neufs et de matériel pour reprendre la fabrication du pain qui est traditionnelle à Tombouctou. Nous disposons également d’une salle informatique connectée à Internet – c’est un exploit- pour former les femmes et les jeunes à l’informatique gratuitement. De notre ouverture en janvier 2015 à aujourd’hui, nous avons formé une centaine de femmes et 15 jeunes. Mais malheureusement, nous venons de perdre notre partenaire à cause de l’insécurité récurrente.
FH: To get women involved in the development of my region, I created the Women’s Centre, a structure funded by the American company Flag International LLT, which most importantly offers a leadership training programme to women from various female groups that we have brought together, building a network of more than 200 members.
We can also help by providing the funds necessary to allow women to resume their normal income-generating activities. This is how 10 female bakers have been able to buy new ovens and other materials to enable them to continue making the type of bread that is traditional in Timbuktu. The centre also has an internet room for use – and this was quite an achievement — which allows women and young people to access information freely. From the time we started in January 2015 to today, we’ve trained about a hundred women and 15 young people. Unfortunately, due to the recent troubles we have just lost our sponsor.
GV: You were involved in the PAT-Mali and the #Mali100Mega programmes. Where are they now?
FH: PAT-Mali est un programme de L’USAID qui a été d’une aide inqualifiable – selon moi- pour la région de Tombouctou à travers les différents projets qu’ils ont réalisé dans la ville. Le projet est malheureusement fermé début 2016.
L’initiative #Mali100Mega est née d’un constat. Le domaine de l’internet fait l’objet d’une hégémonie de la part des 2 compagnies de téléphonie qui sont presents au Mali. Des activistes travaillant dans le secteur des TIC se sont réunis pour former ce collectif pour réclamer un changement du tarif et une hausse du débit minable qui est pratiqué au Mali. Nous avons ainsi déposé des dossiers au niveau de l’AMRTP – agence malienne de régulation des télécommunications et des postes-, à l’assemblée nationale, au Ministère de tutelle avec une étude comparative des prix pratiqués par ces compagnies. Cela a été aussi suivi d’une campagne médiatique notamment sur Twitter et Facebook, mais aussi à la télévision et dans certaines radios nationales et internationales. Nous continuerons à être mobilisés sur les réseaux sociaux tant que cela ne changera pas. Les TIC ne sont pas un luxe, nous maliens y avons droit, aussi bien pour notre bien que pour notre développement.
FH: PAT-Mali [PAT stands for Support Programme for the Transition from Mali, a programme co-founded by the Malian administration and the US Aid agency to support the transition to democracy and long-term development] is a USAID programme that had an immeasurable impact, in my opinion, on the region of Timbuktu across all the different projects happening in the city. Unfortunately, the project was closed at the start of 2016.
The #Mali100Mega initiative was inspired by this simple fact: the broadband provision in Mali was at the mercy of its two internet service providers. So, activists working in Mali’s ICT sector got together to work on the initiative, which called for price changes and an increase to the pathetic broadband speed that we had in Mali. So we took it to the AMRTP — the postal and telecommunications regulation agency of Mali – and we presented a document comparing the prices charged by the companies to the line ministry at the National Assembly. This was followed by a media campaign, via Twitter and Facebook in particular, but also on TV and some national and international radio stations. We’ll continue to have a visible presence on social media networks for as long it takes to bring about change. Information and communications technology is not a luxury, we Malians have the right to use it, both for our own well-being and our future development.
GV: In a region where the people have so many problems just to get internet access, how do you manage to maintain such a strong internet presence?
FH: Comment je réussis à être présente alors que l’accès aux services tels que l’électricité et l’internet posent toujours problème ? Je contourne tout simplement les difficultés en utilisant les moyens que m’offrent les progrès technologiques : j’ai toujours 2 smartphones performant pour échapper à la menace de la panne subite, par manque d'électricité ou manque de couverture du réseau. J’utilise plus la connexion mobile, qui même si elle est mauvaise, je peux au moins envoyer des mails à d’autres membres de la communauté des blogueurs du Mali qui publient les articles de mon blog à ma place.
Je recharge mes appareils – téléphone, ordinateurs, batteries- avec une plaque solaire spécifique. J'en profite pour dire un grand merci au Réseau des Citoyens Actifs Mali RECAM, qui me soutient financièrement pour que je ne sois jamais à cours de forfait Internet malgré le coût d'abonnement élevé au Mali. Un forfait  2G mobile coûte 13500 FCFA et le service 2G s'épuise rapidement quand on est connecté en permanence.
FH: How do I maintain a presence while access to services such as electricity and internet are always such a problem? I get around it simply by clever use of technology: I always have two functioning smartphones so I’ve got a backup in case one stops working due to power cuts or loss of network coverage. I rely mainly on my mobile connection because even when it’s not so good I can at least manage to send emails to other members of the blogging community of Mali, who then repost items from my blog on my behalf.
I recharge all my devices – mobiles, computers, batteries – using a solar panel. I must say a big thank you to the Network of Active Citizens of Mali (RECAM), who support me financially so that I am never without internet in spite of the high contract costs in Mali. A 2G mobile package costs 13,500 FCFA [23 euros/month] and the 2G service doesn’t last very long when you’re permanently connected.
GV: Any last words for the young people?
FH: Mon mot pour la jeunesse africaine ? L’Afrique a besoin d’une jeunesse engagée pour gagner le défi du développement !
FH: Any words for the young Africans? Africa needs young people who are committed to winning the battle of change!

author: Abdoulaye Bah


text:
Some Japanese Find the ‘Dangerous’ Giant Hornet Cute, Inspiring—Even Delicious. · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Japanese giant hornet. Image by Yasunori Koide. GNU Free Documentation License.
Japan has a morbid fascination with the Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica). These giant insects can be found all over Japan, and are especially active in the month of August. Their bites are painful, and a single sting can result in hospitalization. Multiple stings can result in death.
The summer months in Japan sometimes are accompanied by stories of hapless hikers or farmers being swarmed by the giant hornets and stung to death. One blogger has compiled a list of do's and don'ts when encountering giant hornets in Japan. The best advice? Stay away from their nests, especially in August.
There is actually quite a variety of bees, wasps and hornets native to Japan. Hornets are generally referred to as “suzume-bachi” (literally “sparrow-wasp”, likely due to their size) and include the Japanese yellow hornet (Vespa simillima), similar to a yellow jacket in Europe and North America.
Two species of giant hornet in Japan: at left, Japanese yellow hornet (Vespa simillima xanthoptera Cameron) queen with female worker and male drone; at right Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica) queen with female worker and male drone. Image widely shared on social media.
However, the Japanese giant hornet (“oh-suzume-bachi,” Vespa mandarinia japonica) is a different beast. Related to the “yak-killer” Asian giant hornet, the female workers of the Japanese giant hornet species can grow to 3 centimeters in length, and are large and strong enough to carry the other insects that serve as its prey back to its hive.
The giant hornets fill many Japanese people with a special kind of dreaded wonder.
帰宅してすぐ荷物の整理をして
「アニマルプラネット・スズメバチとの闘い」を視聴(‘ε'*)
中学生時代に刺された事がありますが、ハチはトラウマになります。
※文章に様々な生き物が交ざりすみません。
スズメバチに気をつけましょう。 pic.twitter.com/xbGp686irl
— 新土裕二(大日本プロレス所属) (@bjw_shindo) August 11, 2016
As soon as I got home I put away my groceries, and started watching…
“Hornets from Hell” on TV.  (‘ε'*)
Ever since I was stung in junior high I've been afraid of bees (I realize I am getting mixed up with bees and hornets). So let's all take the time to remind ourselves to be careful of hornets!
The Japanese giant hornet is most active in August and early September, as thousands of larvae in the nest have matured to become not only new male and female drones ready to take off, mate and find a new colony, but the workers that support and feed them. Anyone out walking in the woods, or even having a barbecue in the park, needs to be careful.
From early August until the beginning of September (horizontal axis) the danger from Japanese giant hornets skyrockets as the number of active wasps (vertical axis) dramatically increases within each nest. Image from grapee.
Hornets and humans can live in close proximity. While giant wasps prefer wooded areas for their nests, the Japanese giant hornet can be found in the city.
While not a giant Japanese hornet's nest, this Twitter user, with a photo of a yellow hornet's nest, shows just how easy it can be to come face to face with a less-than-friendly insect:
すげぇ！！！家の窓に蜂の巣が！！！初めて間近でスズメバチ見た！！ pic.twitter.com/U2dNf6tV3C
— 増尾勇哉 (@masuiku46) August 17, 2016
Holy crap! There's a wasp nest on our window! This is the first time I've seen a hornet up close!
Giant Japanese hornets can be very dangerous, and in the summer months it's not uncommon to come across signs and cordoned-off areas warning people away.
赤城山全山冷房ちうの皆さん注意点喚起です！籠山にスズメバチの巣、近づかないようにお願いします。 pic.twitter.com/Rq6ebvX1sZ
— 赤城山頂BBQホール (@kofpop23) August 13, 2016
Anyone coming to the picnic area, but warned! Don't come near the wasp nest!
And, unfortunately for giant hornets, there is not a “live-and-let-live” mentality in Japan:
地下にスズメバチの巣が出来てて
殺虫剤でなんとかした pic.twitter.com/p6UPag07Of
— めるっそ＠暁提督 (@merunanoka) August 6, 2016
I found a hornet's nest underground. I sprayed some bug-killer on it.
Still, Japan, like many other parts of the world, has long had a complicated fascination with the giant Japanese hornet.
ひっさびさ♡
はよくーちゃんの妹か弟欲しいんですm(_ _)m
赤ちゃんができて欲しいす♡
昆虫館でくーちゃんがスズメバチの模型を操作する写真載っけて明日も暑いけど現場にバイトに頑張りましょか^_^ pic.twitter.com/rREWzZQsWD
— yu_dai (@yudai13028211) August 7, 2016
This is the first time I've been to the bug museum in a while… Here's a model of a giant Japanese hornet my friend made. It's going to be hot tomorrow so I'll just try to do my best at my part-time job.  ^_^
Some people actually stick up for what is really an amazing insect:
危険害虫扱いされ怖がられるオオスズメバチだが、樹液をおいしそうに食べる姿はなんともかわいらしい。食事に夢中なときは少々近寄っても攻撃はしてこない。いいやつだよスズメバチ。巣には近寄らないように注意。（2008年8月撮影） pic.twitter.com/bkhyVL7g2u
— もも (@momodog22) August 11, 2016
While everyone is afraid of giant hornets, when you see them eating sap from a tree they're actually kind of cute. It's easy to get close to them while they're focusing on eating, and they won't attack. Giant hornets are kind of cool. Just be careful to never go near their nests.
It's also often said that the Japanese giant hornet is considered a delicacy by some people, but it's more likely the insect is considered an exotic food you might only ever try on a dare.
未来ちゃんがお土産にプレゼントしてくれたオオスズメバチが2匹入った(しかもはちみつ入りの)焼酎
それを1匹とりだしてロシアンたこ焼きに…
蜂は糖尿病に効くらしい
ロシアンたこ焼き5回やったうち4回がしおみさんに当たりました💦 pic.twitter.com/pVre3dixm2
— 松野井 雅 (@MIYAVI_MATSUNOI) August 12, 2016
Look at this delicious souvenir I got: a bottle of shochu (a distilled spirit similar to vodka) with two giant hornets inside (the shochu was distilled from honey). We then dared each other to eat it. Apparently giant hornets are an effective medicine against diabetes??? […]
今回の虫食。蚕のかきたま汁、クマゼミだし巻き、スズメバチのかき揚げ。 pic.twitter.com/3feNLsshBg
— 伊東憲二 (@ken2_g) August 7, 2016
Today's edible insects: silkworm soup, cicada rolls, and deep-fried giant hornets.
Others have found beauty in the hornet, such as this potter who specializes in some pretty amazing creations inspired by insects and other animals.
こんな立派な巣を作られたのも、スズメバチのマグカップとか作っているご利益かな？ pic.twitter.com/hgCFYdha4q
— 工房うむき@進化学会８/25〜28 (@kobo_umuki) August 11, 2016
I wonder if anyone will be interested in buying this hornet's nest (with giant hornet) ceramic mug?

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
A Nepalese Version of Humans of New York Tells the Stories of Individuals From All Walks of Life · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

“I have travelled to 71 out of the 75 districts and all the way from Mechi to Mahakali, alone in my wheelchair, to raise my voice for equal rights for people with disabilities in the new constitution.” Surya Bahadur Ranabhat Yatri, Pokhara. January 1, 2016.
Photo by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
As a child, Jay Poudyal enjoyed listening to his grandma tell folk stories. As an adult, he became interested in reading, travelling and taking photos. He also began to drink heavily, turning into a severe alcoholic.
After Poudyal completed rehab with his wife's help, he discovered Humans of New York (HONY), a blog in which Brandon Stanton photographs and interviews random people on the street. Poudyal was inspired to start a Nepalese version, so he created a page on Facebook, posted a story and began sharing it with friends.
Thus, began the journey of Stories of Nepal.
Photographer Jay Poudyal. Image by Yasodha Gauchan.
On his photo blog, he writes:
[…] I am on a journey to discover and share stories of the everyday Nepali. Over the past couple of years, I have roamed the streets of Kathmandu and travelled my country to talk to people, hear what they have to say and listen to their tales of sorrow and happiness. I started off as a photographer, capturing moments and people, but inspired by Humans of New York I started sharing these pictures along with the conversations I had with individuals. After all, a picture may say a thousand words, but a few words can change the story. That was how Stories of Nepal Facebook page was born, and its community has come a long way. […]
With around 265,000 followers on Facebook, Stories of Nepal features tales of individuals from all parts of Nepal – the mountains, the mid hills and the southern plains.
Let’s take a look at some of his photo stories.
The legacy of Bara. Photo by by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
As a kid, I have watched my grandfather and then my father make Bara Aloo from the exact spot you are taking my pictures. I’m the third generation to continue in this legacy.
We have been running and serving Bara’s for the last 80 years. My grandfather, Krishna Raj Shrestha, opened this shop so that travelers/porters heading Bhaktapur from Kathmandu could stop en route for a protein enriched snack. It was then passed on to my father Ramsharan Shrestha. After his demise I took over and we are still going strong.
Bara is a light and spongy lentil patty that resemble a small flat pancake.
What makes your Bara special?
“My passion for making perfect Baras. Also, I only use local home made sunflower oil for the Bara and it’s cooked in wood-fire and served in leaves.”
Mukesh Shrestha, runs a small Bara Pasa (Bara Shop) at 7 Pahakha Bazaar Madyapur Thimi.
Fishes tonight. Photo by by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
“We have to eat, no matter what. No matter how happy, how sad. No matter how rich, how poor. Fish tonight, hopefully, if you let me fish (laughs).” (Rapti River near Patiyani, Chitwan)
Violence against women. Photo by by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
“Burnt alive. Beaten and forced to eat human faeces for being a ‘witch.’ Raped. Molested. Abused, physically and psychologically, in public spaces, in front of mute bystanders. The news about violence against women in our immediate and distant communities is brutal and consistently shocking. As an artist, I believe they deserves an equally shocking reflection and response – at least enough to provoke a sense of discomfort with what we allow and accept in our society where female deities are revered, in the country of the living virgin goddess Kumari, a world built by mothers, sisters, wives. Kumari is a living goddess and some of our biggest festivals are based around her. But why is reverence of women reserved to the gods, and not their mortal counterparts on whom the deities are in fact based?”
– Aditya Aryal, Gairidhara, Kathmandu
It costs Rs. 1 lac. Photo by by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
“There are around 50 horses in my stud. Sometimes it goes up to 75 if someone asks me to take their horses out with mine. This one’s called Sete and is very obedient but shy. It can carry up to 100 kilos at a time.
It costs Rs. 1 lac.”
– Subash Subedi, Met in Syangboche, Mustang.
I was mad. Photo by by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
“We were Shamans from old times. When father died, it became my responsibility to follow in his footsteps. But I really didn’t want to become a shaman. I wanted to do something normal. Maybe just become a farmer and go to school. But every time I brought up school, father would start playing his drums and chanting his spells. He would say I was possessed. So I became depressed and I became mad. I did not recognise people and places and sometimes I walked around the river banks without clothes. One day a girl came to me and gave me Mug-wort to eat and some water. She asked me to chew on the Mug-wort and drink the water. I did and I was cured. I put on my clothes and went home and told my father, I will obey him. That day there was a big celebration at home. Father sacrificed a goat and a chicken and I ate full stomach after a long time.”
– Lakpa Dorje Sherpa, Gadi, Sankhuwasabha
Everything will be fine. Photo by by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
“We were both the same age when we got married. Maybe 17. We spent almost 50 years together. Cried together and laughed together. But last year she passed away and left me alone. She would come and sit next to me and help me make baskets and we would talk for hours. When lunch was ready she would bring it to me. She was happy woman. Today, I feel she is somewhere around. Every once in a while I feel her presence and turn around to see if she is at her spot. Sometimes I hear her whisper and say, ‘Don’t worry, everything will be fine.’”
– Nati Kazi Maharjan, Chapagaun, Lalitpur
Tattoos for afterlife. Photo by by Jay Poudyal. Used with permission.
“In the old days, when girls of my age were young, a man from India would come and do these tattoos in our bodies. When my friend was being pierced, I could see tears in her eyes because of the pain and I remember being afraid as I was next. That night I couldn't sleep. The next day I asked my mother why I had to get the tattoo. She said, “Who will marry a girl without a tattoo? No one will take you unless you have them.” I never understood that. Later I also learnt that in our culture tattoos were also a worship to nature. We don't take anything with us when we die, but I will take these tattoos. It is like a gift of this life and this nature for me to take to my afterlife.”
– Thagani Mahato, Meghauli, Chitwan


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Endangered Tigers Versus Endangered People · Global Voices
Ensia

Photo by Moushumi Basu. CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0
This post by Moushumi Basu was originally published on Ensia.com, a magazine that highlights international environmental solutions in action, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
The wild hillocks and the forests of Central India are a world of their own. Nestled on lush green foothills are intermittent clusters of villages, scarcely touched by modern civilization. They are the ancestral home of an ancient indigenous tribe, the Baiga, which has had a symbiotic relationship with these jungles and their biodiversity, preserving them with their knowledge for generations.
These forests are also a part of the Central Indian Landscape, which hosts nearly 40 percent of India’s big cats.
Tigers are classified as endangered Schedule I species under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, which offers them a high degree of protection from human activities, such as hunting and poaching. The Baiga, for their part, are categorized as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group by the Indian government, a designation that safeguards the community’s traditional rights with respect to identity, habitat, sources of subsistence and culture in natural surroundings. Further, the Forest Rights Act, passed by the Indian parliament in 2006, guarantees traditional forest dwellers such as the Baiga rights of habitat and livelihood on jungles they had been living in or using before December 13, 2005.
In short, the government has guaranteed both tigers and the Baiga protection to live in their native forest habitat.
Representatives of the Baiga community, however, say they are getting uprooted for the sake of the tiger. They contend that government agencies and certain conservation groups see them as obstacles to efforts to save the big cats. In some cases, they say, they are banned from customary use of forest products or arrested under false charges of hunting. They are also lured by the state forest department from the tiger reserves with compensation for leaving and promises of better life outside the forest.
What can be done to help vulnerable Baigas and endangered tigers co-exist? Lessons from elsewhere in India offer some promising insights — not only for the Baigas and tigers, but for indigenous communities around the world that find their own survival at odds with the survival of endangered species.
The Bhoramdeo Wildlife Sanctuary in the Central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, a 164-square-kilometer (63-square-mile), richly biodiverse forest, sustains pockets of Baiga. It also connects with the sprawling 942-square-kilometer (364-square-mile) Kanha Tiger Reserve in the neighboring state of Madhya Pradesh.
Home to some 85 to 100 tigers, Kanha is one of the largest habitats of big cats in Central India. It inspired Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book in the 19th century, and today it is a favorite destination of tourists looking to spot a tiger. They enter the reserve in queues of safari jeeps armed with cameras to catch a sight of the charismatic cat. If they do manage to see one, often pandemonium ensues — with jeeps and noisy, excited crowds jostling their way to the scene. Distressed by the hubbub, many of the tigers migrate into the more peaceful forests inhabited by the Baiga, adding to migrations already occurring as a growing tiger population makes Kanha more crowded with cats. There they draw the attention of government and nongovernmental conservation entities. Although there is no legal provision allowing government officials to force the relocation of villages from wildlife sanctuaries, such as Bhoram Deo, local people say they’re being coerced to leave in order to accommodate the tigers and other wildlife.
“Tigers, leopards, or forests have never scared us,” says Phul Singh Baiga, a resident of Bijadhaap, a village with 28 Baiga hutments on the outskirts of Bhoram Deo sanctuary. “But today, we are indeed frightened of the forest department and conservationists. […] In the name of tiger protection, we are being harassed on several pretexts to scare us out of our jungles.”
According to B.N. Dwivedi, the principal chief conservator of forests and chief wildlife warden of Chhattisgarh, “There are plans on our part to relocate villages from within sanctuaries and protected areas, as this would make the forest more inviolate for tigers and wildlife. […] But no force is being used to displace settlements. As per the government norms, evacuation of villagers is done with their prior consent — this cannot be done without their acceptance.”
But Indu Netam, the convenor of the non-governmental organization Adiwasi Samta Manch, which works with the Baiga and other tribal communities to secure indigenous rights, substantiates the elder’s claims.
“[The] Baiga community, despite being categorized as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group in India, is being denied the provisions of Forest Rights Act, in most parts of the state, which guarantee them habitat and livelihood rights within their jungles,” Netam says. “As a result, many Baigas are struggling hard to survive.”
But does it have to be either/or? Recent government data on the status of the tiger population in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple (BRT) Tiger Reserve in the South Indian state of Karnataka suggests not.
In this reserve, the Soliga indigenous community made history in 2011 as the only tribe in India to get its traditional forest rights formally recognized in the core area of a tiger reserve under the Forest Rights Act. The tigers and Soligas are flourishing together at BRT. In fact, the number of big cats in BRT nearly doubled from 35 in 2010 to 68 in 2014.
Historically a cave-dwelling, nomadic tribe of shifting cultivators and forest gatherers, the Soligas had been living in the BRT forests for generations. However, in 1974, when BRT was declared wildlife sanctuary, they were relocated in small settlements called porus in and around the forests. Some got small plots of land for sustenance; others took to manual labor. Gathering non-timber forest produce from the BRT (including honey, gooseberry, and lichen) continued to remain the main source of their native food system and their rudimentary economy.
Then, in 2006, the state government took away the Soliga’s rights to collect forest produce under the Wildlife Protection Act, impoverishing thousands of Soligas. And to make matters tougher for them, the BRT Wildlife Sanctuary was converted into the BRT Tiger Reserve in January 2011. This brought into question the fate of about 6,000 Soligas living in the core area of the reserve and another 10,000 acres of “buffer zone” (forest fringing the core area).
“The forest department initially coaxed and coerced our people, especially the youths, for relocation from the reserve,” says C. Made Gowda, the secretary of the Zilla Budakattu Girijana Abhivrudhi Sangh (Soliga People’s Collective). “But we resisted.”
What makes it possible for the Soligas and tigers to co-exist? For one thing, forest conservation ethics are interwoven with the ethos and religion of the tribe.
Protest marches and rallies led to months-long consultations and discussions with the government administration and forest department. In October 2011, the tribe succeeded in formally securing its right to collect habitat and non-timber forest produce in its ancestral land in the tiger reserve under the Forest Rights Act. Today, Soliga settlements are spread across all the five ranges of the reserve.
What makes it possible for the Soligas and tigers to co-exist? For one thing, forest conservation ethics are interwoven with the ethos and religion of the tribe. Soligas worship the tiger and consider it a sin to fell trees.
The tribe and its elders also collaborate with the state forest department in conservation, bringing traditional solutions to bear on various challenges of conservation in the BRT. These include the growth of invasive weeds such as Lantana camara, forest fires during summer months, relocation of animals that venture into human settlements, poaching, granite quarrying and timber smuggling.
Further, the Soligas are also working out area-specific conservation plans for the tiger reserve based on their traditional knowledge, which they hope to put into practice with the cooperation of the forest department and non-governmental organizations.
If the Soligas and tigers can mutually coexist in their battle for survival, can other indigenous communities such as Baigas take a page from their book?
“It is time we relook at our conservation policies and strategies.” – S. Faizi
On an international basis, there is much interest in finding out.
“It is time we relook at our conservation policies and strategies,” says ecologist S. Faizi, the first chairperson of Convention on Biological Diversity Alliance and current member of the CBD Expert Group on Biodiversity for Poverty Eradication. “The whole tragedy is that we are displacing and disenfranchising the historical custodians of biodiversity, who have lived in our forests and nurtured its wildlife for centuries.” Even the 12th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Korea in October 2014, emphasized the value of reinstating traditional knowledge in forest and biodiversity conservation.
“What is happening in Kanha Tiger Reserve epitomizes the ugly side of the conservation industry — thousands of tourists career through the park in noisy jeeps, clamoring to take photos of the beleaguered tigers,” says Stephen Corry, director of the not-for-profit organization Survival, which advocates for indigenous peoples worldwide. “Meanwhile, Baiga communities that have carefully managed the tiger’s habitat over generations are annihilated by forced evictions. The irony appears to be lost on the conservationists. If India doesn’t allow the Baiga and other tribals to return, and prevent further villagers being kicked out, these communities will be completely destroyed. Evicting tribes won’t save the tiger.”  Code Embed v2.2.1
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Exposing Discrimination or Unfair Trial by Social Media? The Case of a Workplace Hairdo in Trinidad & Tobago · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Black Power fist; image by Paul Sableman, used under a CC BY 2.0 license.
The COLFIRE controversy continues to heat up in Trinidad and Tobago. In correspondence dated August 11, 2016, the insurance company's human resources manager signed a letter asking employee Maurice Ramirez, who is black, to adopt a more professional hairstyle. Ramirez posted a photo of the letter — and his ‘do — to Facebook. Although he thereafter deleted the post, it had already gone viral, sending the local blogosphere into a tizzy over the perceived discrimination against natural hair.
Four days later, it was revealed that COLFIRE's management had sent Ramirez on paid leave, pending an internal investigation on the matter. In a statement over the weekend, the company said that it couldn’t publicly discuss the case of an employee and that it “denies the damning allegations that have resulted from the publication of an internal document”. In an update on the matter posted by Facebook user Pearce Robinson (who supports Ramirez), he states:
The company thought that it was necessary to enforce ‘administrative leave’, because he caused the company great ‘public embarrassment’.
Staff have been told to use their social media accounts to boost the company's image online and any employee found to be bad talking the company on social media or entertaining such talk will face disciplinary action.
On the same Facebook thread, commenter Arun Ballie suggested:
He [Ramirez] is wrong to light up his employer so on a public forum … It would have been smarter to comply and then complain.
Robinson replied:
Sometimes we have to shatter the status-quo to make fundamental changes. its how things have happened for centuries. There is always a spark that ignites the change.
Change is what netizens are agitating for. Many interpret the company's conservatism as racial discrimination and believe that this has been the status quo for far too long. University lecturer Amilcar Sanatan quoted an excerpt from the 1971 report of the Commission of Enquiry into Racial and Colour Discrimination in the Private Sector:
We are impressed generally in the case of the banks that a state of racial and colour imbalance exists because of the inheritance of institutionalized forms of discrimination which have not been completely changed…some banks have been more radical and progressive than others, but in general the older the bank, the more conservative its policy appeared…Even though active discrimination in new appointments may have ceased, the social effects of past discrimination still remain highly visible…this requires in the interest of social justice and public confidence that deliberate institutional measures be taken…to see that this situation brought to an end.
Nearly 50 years later, the country appears to be fighting the same battle, albeit virtually this time. Netizens began to hit back, some in very creative ways. Artist Darren Trinity Cheewah posted two new anti-COLFIRE images on Facebook, which were being widely shared — the first portraying a silhouette of an employee shackled to his desk and the other comparing the insurance firm's stance to United States Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's controversial election campaign:
Image by Darren Trinity Cheewah, used with permission.
Image by Darren Trinity Cheewah, used with permission.
There was even a quiz — the link to which social media users were liberally posting — to determine who had what to took to be a COLFIRE hire.
A screenshot of the “FIRED” result of the COLFIRE quiz that is being widely shared on social media.
On Twitter, Livewired Group commented:
That #Colfire quiz. No chill 😂😂 Brands need to remember that consumers are better at content creation than some marketers.
— Livewired Group (@LivewiredGroup) August 16, 2016
Even Trinidadian calypsonian David Rudder put in his two cents’ worth, posting a photo of the Jamaican athlete who won gold in the Men's 110m hurdles in Rio and commenting on his Facebook page:
A Jamaican, Omar Mc Leod, sporting a ‘Colfire’ wins the 110 m hurdles gold in Rio.
And in case yuh don't know what a Colfire is, it's a now controversial Trinidadian hairstyle.
Humour aside, there is the serious question of possible legal consequences. Some lawyers are telling the media that the employee “doesn't have a legal leg to stand on” if he were to bring a discrimination suit against the company or the company were to take him to court. But one netizen, Tshai S White, said that she spoke to a lawyer in the industrial court who disagreed, saying that the header of the letter Ramirez posted “did not state Private and Confidential”. In Trinidad and Tobago, some companies may ask employees to sign confidentiality agreements pertaining to sensitive operations or client information — but it is debatable whether such agreements would extend to workers’ rights issues.
Given the numbers of netizens accusing the company of racism, there's also defamation to think about. In a recent blog post, lawyer and Global Voices author Jason Nathu, who recently won a groundbreaking discrimination case in Trinidad and Tobago, talked about the potential legal ramifications of posting content on social media networks:
The internet has created a new class of publishers: ordinary, everyday people who are posting comments about each other on public forums.
An online comment is potentially libellous in Trinidad and Tobago if it damages someone’s reputation […] These include letters to the editor of local newspapers, public comments on media websites, blogs and comments to blog postings, social media posts and chat rooms. […]
The main defence to a libel action is ‘truth’, that is being able to prove that the defamatory allegation is substantially true.
Nathu spoke about the issue in a recent television interview:
This knowledge has not stopped social media users — and now, even COLFIRE employees — from speaking out. Some staffers have been contacting activists like Pearce Robinson to share their experiences. On Facebook, he recounted some of them, posting another update with scans of letters the company has issued to former employees:
Employees are threatened with their jobs if they take ‘Sick Leave’.
Staff sick leave has been reduced from 14 to 12 days without consultation.
Members of the finance department confirm that Mr Ramirez seems to be unfairly targeted. […]
The company generally tries to be ‘all inclusive’ but that its not always reflected in how they speak & treat certain people in the company, often with dual standards.
Rhoda Bharath shared similar complaints on Twitter:
Imagine getting caution letters for leave that you are entitled to? #ColfireWithTheGoodHair
— rhoda bharath (@rhodabharath) August 16, 2016
Imagine having a manager walk around to check that employee shoes are appropriate? #ColfireWithTheGoodHair
— rhoda bharath (@rhodabharath) August 16, 2016
Robinson explained:
This reality is not only a reality at COLFIRE but many corporate institutions right across Trinidad & Tobago. But it doesn't have to be that way, especially if we are mobilised to stand up against this behaviour. The sheer racism and bullying of #COLFIRE must not be tolerated, but also the general attitude of oppress, intimidate and bully employees needs to be stamped out. Employees must not feel that there is no recourse to dismantling the systems of empire.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
Snapchat Filters Allow Sexual Assault Survivors in India to Share Their Stories Anonymously · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

Screenshot of victims of sexual abuse using snapchat to tell their stories.
An Indian journalist has recently started using popular social media app Snapchat in an innovative way to enable victims of sexual violence to tell their stories without revealing their identities.
Like in many other countries, violence against women is a serious problem in India. It has led authorities to enact numerous stringent laws against perpetrators. Despite this, not many victims come forward to register complaints or report attacks to police due to insensitive questioning and social stigmas that come with being a survivor of sexual violence in India's highly patriarchal society.
To try to change this, journalist and self-titled Snapchat-storyteller Yusuf Omar provides his subjects with a wide variety of ‘filter’ options that disguise their face so they can speak on-camera about their tumultuous journeys anonymously. It's a creative and powerful method that allows survivors to change the narrative and let their voices be heard.
Omar's use of Snapchat has attracted national and international media attention. In an interview with Global Voices, Omar, who is the mobile editor for newspaper Hindustan Times, explained:
Yusuf Omar's Snapcode
The filters were the only reason they shared their story. In India it’s both illegal to show the identity of rape survivors in the media, but there’s also the question of stigma- a society where they risked being alienated from friends of family and banished from their communities for making their stories public.
How has the public reaction been to the story?
My biggest fear was people thinking Snapchat was making a serious topic trivial. Quite the opposite happened. The story got people taking about rape culture, sexual abuse in India and women’s issues in a broader way. But that conversation started with the innovative use of tech. The global Climb Against Sexual Abuse organisation have borrowed the idea and are calling on survivors around the world to Snapchat their stories. I’m really happy about that.
Omar, meanwhile, used traditional journalism methods to make the survivors comfortable with the tools before recording the project.
Snapchat, primarily a messaging app, has more than 150 million daily active users and is gaining popularity in India. A YouTube video uploaded by Yellowbulbs.com shares the result of a survey done in 2016 amongst 100 students from New Delhi, which describes the use of Snapchat among India's millennials:
Omar harnesses this popularity to address a huge problem: in 2014 alone, India witnessed 36,735 reported rapes, while many others that went unregistered. Incidents of rape have risen 9 percent since 2010, according to news reports.
Here's what makes the whole experience extremely personal for the survivors, according to Omar:
It wasn’t difficult because even though they weren’t too familiar with Snapchat, any millennial around the world knows how to take a selfie, and that’s all this was. First I tried the filters on myself. They laughed. Then they tried a few. We giggled. Finally they hit the red button, shared their story and the world cried.
On social media, Omar's efforts have won praise for giving deeper meaning to what was before just a fun app:
Praise be to HT's mobile editor Yusuf Omar for turning a pointless innovation into a powerful upliftment tool. https://t.co/prQYqwv3tB
— Samrat Chowdhery (@samrat) July 18, 2016
Others have used Snapchat for important work as well. Avani Parekh, Nida Sheriff and Rajshekar Patil from India have set up a domestic abuse advice account called lovedoctordotin on Snapchat for Indian teenagers who feel they may be in abusive relationships.
Omar's offered advice to journalists who use digital tools for reporting extremely sensitive stories:
Look beyond the gimmicks. Snapchat at face value is about funny self portraits and emojis, but behind the filters are phenomenal algorithms. Use the technology as a tool to tell better stories. See the potential to hack anything. Right now I’m looking at Pokemon Go and saying, how can we tell news stories like this. Maybe we direct people with smartphone cameras to breaking news events like gamers are flocking to animated creatures.
However, the legal implications of this innovative storytelling remain to be seen, such as whether the stories will be admissible in court. Only a couple of months ago, Indian right-wing political parties armed with police complaints threatened comedian Tanmay Bhat for posting a parody video using Snapchat filters of two prominent Indian celebrities.