text:
What Does Hacking Education Mean? · Global Voices
Patricia Carolina Saucedo Añez

Pedro Muller reflects on the lapse of the school system, an institution he says meant for a different historical context. In this regard, he notes the importance of two similar, but at the same time different, concepts: “to study” and “to be educated”:
El educar se va más allá de memorizarse un par de nombres y olvidarlos al siguiente día, consiste en aprender tener la curiosidad de preguntarse qué hay detrás de lo obvio, es adquirir habilidades, ejercitar tu pensamiento lateral un pensamiento divergente o como muchos dicen “fuera de la caja”, educarse también es crear y hacer convertir nada en algo, innovar.
Nosotros aprendemos mejor en grupo es parte de nuestra naturaleza, discutir, pensar y reflexionar sobre un tema en específico sacar conclusiones, como muchos dicen la mejor manera de educarse es aprender.
To be educated goes beyond memorizing a couple of names and forgetting them the next day. It is about having an inquisitive mind and wondering about what hides behind the obvious, it is to acquire skills, to exercise your lateral thinking, a divergent thinking that many call “thinking outside of the box”. To be educated is also about learning to be creative and innovative.
We learn better in groups; it is part of our nature to discuss, think and reflect on a specific topic and draw conclusions. It is said that the best way to became educated is to learn.
Muller invites readers to watch the following English-language video, wherein Logan LaPlante talks about the concept of ”hacking education” or “hackschooling”, which refers to the process of learning as a group experience, based on trial and error and, above all, the importance of creativity.
Continue reading Muller's post here, or follow him on Twitter.

author: Patricia Carolina Saucedo Añez


text:
‘Anonymous International’ Wants You to Think the Kremlin Can Hide Nothing · Global Voices
Will Wright

Image edited by Kevin Rothrock.
International media attention was focused on Vladimir Putin's annual televised question-and-answer show with the nation last week. That same day, however, the shadowy group Anonymous International quietly leaked yet another trove of confidential government correspondence.
Anonymous International, also known by the name of its press arm, Shaltai Boltai, made headlines earlier this month by publishing tens of thousands of text messages allegedly from the phone of Timur Prokopenko, an official in the Putin Administration.
The new leak includes screenshots of several thousand emails supposedly from the personal email account of Alexander Zharov, the head of the Kremlin's media watchdog, Roskomnadzor. Even a senior official such as Zharov uses a personal email account to discuss “official and semi-official matters that are of public interest,” Shaltai Boltai wrote in a blog post announcing the release, saying the group decided not to publish some messages that contained certain personal information.
Роскомнадзор читает вас, а мы читаем Роскомнадзор :) http://t.co/6KIVJMJ5c7
— Shaltay Boltay (@b0ltai2) April 16, 2015
Roskomnadzor is reading [your emails], but we are reading Roskomnadzor's [emails] :)
In an analysis of the leaked emails, the website The Insider highlights the half dozen exchanges of the greatest interest and significance. Perhaps the most scandalous information revealed by the new leak is that Mikhail Demin, who became general director of the prominent radio station Ekho Moskvy in December 2014, allegedly coordinated with Zharov about editorial decisions.
One email supposedly showed Demin checking with Zharov about Ekho Moskvy running promotional material for an opposition rally planned for March 1. In response to this apparent revelation, Leonid Volkov, a long-time critic of Ekho Moskvy chief editor Alexey Venediktov and a close associate of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, who was involved in the planning of the opposition march, tweeted:
Размещением проморолика марша “Весна” занимался Немцов, он говорил, что “Эхо” тянет время – а то было “согласование” https://t.co/nURliEXWJ6
— Leonid Volkov (@leonidvolkov) April 16, 2015
Nemtsov, who was handling distribution of the promotional video for the “Spring” march, said that “Ekho” was taking a long time, but it seems there was “coordination”
As Anonymous International continues to leak confidential government correspondence, the debate surrounding how the group obtains access to so much information, and why the group leaks what it does, when it does, continues to swirl.
In an analysis of the potential legal consequences of Anonymous International's activity, human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov argued that the recent text message leak “reveals the rather nasty working methods of the Presidential Administration, but the correspondence has been so carefully filtered that even if you really wanted to, you’d have trouble finding a convincing criminal offense.” Chikov's commentary suggests that Anonymous International is restrained in some way, aiming more for targeted embarrassment than serious damage.
A recent investigation by Gazeta.ru also considered the “how and why” behind the Anonymous International leaks.
An anonymous expert consulted by Gazeta.ru asserted that the messages released in earlier leaks were most likely accessed from iCloud. This, the expert explained, might have been accomplished in several ways, such as through phishing or the use of a “sniffer,” a program that can intercept and log traffic passing over a digital network, such as a public Wi-Fi network. In short, Gazeta.ru‘s contact concludes that the activities of Anonymous International do not necessarily represent the work of professional hackers, and he even doubts that this is the case. Russia's closed society of serious hackers doesn't even know who is behind Boltai, the contact says.
As for Anonymous International's goals, the Gazeta.ru report first considers the commonly floated theory that some Kremlin insiders are using the leaks to strengthen their own positions and undercut rivals. Many believe the clear target of the leaks is Putin's first deputy chief of staff, Vyacheslav Volodin, and his inner circle. According to another anonymous source, Volodin's enemies within the presidential administration are working with members of the security services, which Gazeta.ru says may explain the alleged breach of the closed domain Gov.ru in an earlier hack of Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's press attache.
Yet another unnamed source told Gazeta.ru that presidential administration officials who have fallen out of favor may be feeding information to Anonymous International. A different anonymous source claimed that the group's primary purpose is to extort tens of thousands of dollars from officials, and information is leaked when targets do not pay up. A final source, who is “close to the Kremlin,” even claimed Medvedev is behind the leaks, using them to exact petty revenge, while hijacking his own Twitter account to deflect suspicion.
Anonymous International did not seem overly impressed with Gazeta.ru's investigation, however, even taking to Twitter to poke fun at the investigation, which found nearly as many explanations as sources:
http://t.co/PqtzUnlcGb Еще несколько версий на наш счет
— Shaltay Boltay (@b0ltai2) April 17, 2015
[link to Gazeta.ru article] We reckon there are a few other versions

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Will Wright


text:
Are Blogs an Endangered Species? · Global Voices
Patricia Carolina Saucedo Añez

This text is part of the 46th #LunesDeBlogsGV (#MondayBlogsOnGlobalVoices) on March 23, 2015.
On #LunesDeBlogsGV (#MondayOfBlogsOnGlobalVoices), we work to preserve blogs as an “endangered species”, confronting the challenges that threaten their existence in today's digital jungle. In a similar effort, the blogger Iván Lasso compiles stories about the future of blogging and the problems bloggers face today, when their content runs the risk of being lost in the abundance of different types and quality levels of information on the Internet. The situation bloggers increasingly find online, Lasso argues, is approaching a “David and Goliath” situation.
Lasso says of the biggest issues for bloggers today:
A raíz de la popularización de la web, de unos años para acá hay mucha más audiencia potencial disponible. Pero sospecho que gran parte de esa audiencia nunca podría ser tuya (tuya, mía… de blogs pequeños, vamos). Es audiencia que acude a la red en busca de simple entretenimiento y que si quiere información más “dura”, acude a los medios tradicionales que ahora ya están en la web.
In recent years, following the popularity of the Web, there is a much larger audience available. But I suspect that much of this audience will never be yours. Its's an audience that comes to the Net looking for simple entertainment and when they want more “hard” information, they go to the traditional mainstream media which is also on the Web.
Lasso also offers some solutions for the challenges bloggers face:
Hoy día, para que un blog independiente alcance un cierto grado de éxito (reconocimiento, reputación y visitas) debe convertirse en un rayo láser que apunte a aquello en lo que quiere destacar:
¿Quieres dar noticias? Tienes que darlas lo antes posible, más rápido que nadie.
¿Quieres hacer análisis u opinión? Tienes que profundizar más que nadie.
¿Quieres ser didáctico? Tienes que explicar mejor que nadie. Y también con más detalle que nadie.
Nowadays, for an independent blog to have a certain degree of success (recognition, reputation, and views), you must become a laser beam focused on what readers want:
Continue reading Ivan Lasso's post here, and follow him on Twitter.


text:
How 8 Prominent Iranians Think a Nuclear Deal Will Impact Human Rights · Global Voices
Center for Human Rights in Iran

The photo was mixed by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
This post first appeared on iranhumanrights.org and is published here in collaboration with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
“Our next agreement will be on our civil rights!” was one of the slogans people chanted in Tehran during their street celebrations only hours after a nuclear agreement was reached on April 2.
During his election campaign, President Hassan Rouhani repeatedly pledged to observe citizens’ rights, end the house arrest of the Green Movement leaders, and release all political prisoners. However, almost two years after he took office, most of these promises have not been realized.
Some of the president’s supporters believe that following a resolution to the nuclear standoff, the atmosphere will shift to allow delivery of those promises, while some of his critics believe that the president’s performance indicates that despite his earlier statements, human rights are not on the administration’s agenda.
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has interviewed several prominent Iranians representing different professions, such as lawyers, writers, directors, analysts, university professors, and artists, about the effects of the nuclear agreement on the state of basic rights and freedoms inside the country.
Like many other citizens, I, too, wait for the nuclear agreement so that the conditions change a little inside the country. In his speeches and election campaign pledges, Hassan Rouhani had indicated that he would pay attention to cultural issues. We should now assume that if he finds a chance, he would probably pay attention to them. There is no choice but to be hopeful.
If the nuclear agreement is reached in June, Iran’s economic conditions will improve. Economic improvement would naturally affect political freedom. Even so, it will be an error to expect doors to be opened to Iranians, and for freedom, the way it existed in the early days of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, to be reinstated. The conditions of Iranian society today must be measured within its own characteristics. I believe that after the [nuclear] agreement, certain solutions for going towards freedom in some areas will definitely be shaped and the situation of civil rights or what has been referred to as “the rights of the people” in the Iranian constitution would improve at least a little.
It would be impossible not [to expect] effects or improvements in the country’s artistic and cultural atmosphere following a nuclear agreement. For example, after the nuclear agreement, the relationship between Iranian theater groups with groups from other countries would definitely improve. Our current problem is translating Iranian plays into other languages and being in touch with other theatrical groups in other countries, and performing there. Regardless of what the government wants to do, I think after the nuclear agreement and improvement in Iran’s relations with the West, these things would automatically happen for professional and student theater groups in Iran, and the work atmosphere would get better. Another point is that after the nuclear agreement, the country’s economic situation would improve, which would naturally affect the cultural situation.
I doubt the nuclear agreement will have a positive impact on solving human rights issues inside the country, because there are several reasons for the situation of human rights in Iran. One part of it is a difference of ideological views, for example, [views on] such as torture and Qisas [death sentences in retaliation for murder] that are referred to in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are seen by Iranian officials as contradictory to our laws. Another point is that there are no true monitoring mechanisms in Iran to oversee enforcement of human rights.
When Hassan Rouhani became president, it was expected that human rights would be better observed in the society, but the number of executions indicates that there are many more instances of executions carried out in the country. Not too long ago, Ali Younesi, Rouhani’s special assistant, and former Tehran prosecutor and minister of intelligence, told the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) that human rights violations occur in the country’s prisons and courtrooms. For all these reasons, I am not optimistic that a finalized nuclear agreement would have a huge impact on improving the human rights situation inside Iran.
Before Mr. Khamenei’s April 9 speech, I couldn’t have a clear view about this subject, but in his speech, he mentioned a key factor that settled everything. While he took issue with the work of the nuclear negotiators, mentioning that the agreement is still in draft phase, and that a complete agreement has not been reached yet, he said that if the agreement is finally reached and Iran walks out of the negotiations satisfied and the other side shows their honesty, it is possible to talk about other issues with the U.S. and western countries later. My understanding of this part of the Supreme Leader’s talk is that after a nuclear agreement, there will definitely be openings in other areas in society, and this will definitely have an impact on civil liberties, as well.
I think creating change in the country’s artistic and cultural structures is not among the Rouhani administration’s priorities. Nevertheless, when Iran reaches a nuclear agreement, the country’s economic situation will improve, and naturally, improvement of the economic situation would cause more investment for making more films. But generally, it is not possible to give a definitive opinion about whether or not the cultural atmosphere in the country would open up. I can only say definitively that after the nuclear agreement things would be better than now, and at least artists would continue their work with more peace about the economy.
There will definitely be a limited economic improvement, and a section of the middle class will experience a moderate improvement, but this improvement will not mean that the country’s poor will be saved. Currently we have 5.5 million unemployed individuals, and the minimum monthly wage for workers is almost 50% below the poverty line. These problems won’t be solved by a nuclear agreement and an agreement with the U.S. and other countries. Even before the nuclear issue became significant, we had a lot of poverty and unemployment in our country. Currently, 70% of the country’s disposable income is in the hands of 5% of the population. Is the country’s political and economic structure going to change after the nuclear agreement? Iran’s economic structure is in the hands of two powerful factions, each of whom controls a section of the economic power and they wrestle over it. As far as the low income [segment of society], laborers, and female heads of household are concerned, this nuclear agreement is not going to change anything for them.
Regarding expression [and] social, ethnic, and religious rights, nothing much will change, because the Rouhani administration does not believe in allowing labor organizations and [political] parties to be active, and does not tolerate intellectuals to speak freely and to question the ideological and power fundamentals, and to defend their human rights. Has our problem always been the issue of sanctions and relations with the U.S.? For example, the Iranian Writers Association was suppressed during years when Mr. Rouhani himself was the head of the Supreme National Security Council. I believe that human rights in the form of freedom of association, freedom of expression, women’s rights, and removal of gender, ethnic, and religious discrimination is not compatible with the ruling ideology. For example, in the case of women’s rights, after all this time we are still talking about whether or not women should attend sports stadiums. They say this is because the police can’t take responsibility for looking after women’s safety [in sports stadiums]. How is it that the same police can crack down on a woman whose Islamic covering [hijab] is a little imperfect?
I believe that the nuclear agreement will be influential in improving the conditions inside the country, but not in the short-term; rather, it will show its impact over the long-term. This is for the simple reason that the nuclear agreement will lead to improved relations and a reduction of tension between Iran and western countries and the U.S., and this will indirectly help improvement of many issues in Iran. Conversely, when there is a tension-ridden relationship full of hatred between Iran and other countries, the energy required for changes inside is sapped.
Regarding the [potential] opening of the artistic and cultural atmosphere in the country and freedom of expression, I believe that if intellectuals, the elite, university students, and artists don’t demand Hassan Rouhani to pursue this issues, nothing will happen. He must be pushed in this direction. If he is put under pressure, he would definitely be forced to pay attention to creating change in the cultural and artistic situation, too.

author: Center for Human Rights in Iran


text:
In Taiwan and on Facebook, the Nipple is Not Yet Free · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

A Free the Nipple poster designed by 吳珮羽.
What does Internet have against women's nipples? Five young women in Taiwan are now facing repercussions after posting a series of topless photographs on Facebook, in a statement of defiance against the site's community standards. Their images have been censored on Facebook and disparaged by local media.
The women posted these photos in support of the global campaign to “Free the Nipple”, launched in 2013 by Lina Esco to address gender inequality in the censorship of female nipples.
Not long before the incident, Facebook had suspended the accounts of users who had shared and liked articles about the #FreeTheNipple campaign, including blogger Liu Meiyu, who is one of the five. After her account was suspended, she criticized Facebook's community reporting rules on her blog and argued that Taiwanese society needed to change its perception on human body. Later, she and four of her friends carried out their experiment:
前幾天，我和鏡子、林郁璇、宋晉儀、王立柔做了一個小小的攝影計劃，算是對Facebook莫名的檢舉制度和禁止裸露的荒謬條款做出回應。身體是什麼？在把「色情」、「猥褻」等字詞強加上女體之前，身體只是身體，只是我們自我的一部份。情欲與身體相關，但裸露的身體便象徵情欲嗎？反之，不裸露的身體就不帶情欲嗎？（再說，有情欲又如何呢？誰沒有情欲？）
更多時候，身體只是自然地存在著，會痛、會哭、會笑、會放鬆、緊繃、作態、玩耍、呼吸、行走、吃睡。如此而已。
A few days ago, “Jing Zi” [or Mirror], Lin Yu-hsuan, Sung Chin-yi, Wang Li-Jou and myself carried out a small photography project as a response to Facebook's ridiculous reporting and censorship rule. What is the meaning of [female body]? Before we label it as “indecent” and “obscene”, a body is just a body, a part of the human self. Sexual desire is related with body, but does nudity have to be equated with sexual desire? Can't we express sexual desire without being nude? (And even if it stirs sexual desire, there is nothing wrong with such desire.)
The body exists naturally, it can feel pain, it can cries, laughs, eases, tenses up, plays, breathes, walks, eats and sleeps. That's all.
The photos were widely reported by local media, but many of these reports distorted the story. One article said that they were student activists from the Sunflower Movement (they are not). Another suggested that they felt embarrassed while taking the photos. In most of the reports, newspapers hid the nipples using a mosaic effect when republishing their photos. Liu said she found this ironic.
Independent journalist Liao Yun-chieh pointed out that the mosaic photos in mainstream media had reproduced people's impression of the nipple as an indecent body part. The photographs became a consumptive piece of news rather than a reflection on gender politics.
Facebook meanwhile has continued to delete female topless photos and suspend user accounts that post said photos, in compliance with their Community Standards, which specifically address women's nipples as follows:
We restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures. Restrictions on the display of both nudity and sexual activity also apply to digitally created content unless the content is posted for educational, humorous, or satirical purposes.
Clearly, the female nipple resides in a grey area for Facebook.
In addition to this systematic form of censorship, the five women have also faced online harassment as well as pressure coming from family and romantic partners. Another woman who has joined #FreetheNipple campaign wrote about the issue of family pressure in a post entitled a-letter-to-mother:
你打電話來罵我，怎麼上傳了「不檢點」的照片[…] 你說，「全世界都看到，這樣你一輩子不就毀了嗎」。又說，「這樣你以後要是跟對方分手，還有誰會要你」。[…] 我是一個女生，很需要努力把自己銷出去，很需要擔心有誰會要我，很需要害怕我沒有人要。我的一輩子很容易毀，不管我作了多少努力，幾張照片就可以毀了。作為一個母親，你必須為我操更多心，因為我的人生很脆弱，因為我是女生。[…]我不相信我的身體。只要我一天還是女生我就一定是個賤貨，我這麼胖、臉上斑點這麼多、腿這麼粗、個性這麼乖辟，不會有人愛我的。
我花了很久的時間抵抗這件事。說服自己是個很好的人，很可愛，值得被愛 […]你看著我的照片。你看著你女兒人生這麼多年來難得這麼自在地與自己身體相處的一刻。你還可以看著我與我的好朋友一起拍的照片。請你指著我們這些自在笑著的照片，說這些照片讓我的一輩子毀了。說像我們這樣美好的身體沒有人要。[…] 我希望你不止是一個反對我的行動的人，你是我媽媽，你是一個女人，你有跟我一樣的壓迫經驗。
You called and yelled at me. Asked why I uploaded such “indecent” photos. […] You said, “the whole world saw it, you have ruined your whole life.” You said, “If you broke up with your current partner, who else would want you.” […]
As a girl, I have to promote myself and worry about who would want me, what if nobody wants me. My life can be ruined easily. No matter how hard I have tried, a few photos could ruin me. As a mother, you care about me because you know that my life is fragile because I am a girl. […]
I don't believe in my body. As a girl, I will be viewed as a slut. I am too fat, have too many freckles on my face, my tights look like trunks, my personality is too introverted, no one will love me.
It took me so long to convince myself that I am all right, I am adorable, and I am worthy of others’ love and that I can walk freely in this world. […] When you look at the photos, looking at your daughter feeling at ease with her body, looking at me and my friends talking the picture together, please point at our laughing face and say these photos would ruin your whole lives, say no one would want such beautiful bodies. […]
I wish you would be not only a person who stands against me. You are my mother, a woman who shares so much of the same experience as me.
Several stories about men breaking up with their girlfriends who joined #FreeTheNipple campaign have surfaced. Queerology, a columnist from online news portal The News Lens, was furious about the break-up stories:
面對陸續聽到男生因為女朋友解了衣扣而分手的故事，我覺得在氣憤之餘，除了怒吼一句「老娘的身體是老娘自己的」以外，我們或許還有一些把這些男性的不滿、憤恨、糾結….更結構化看待的可能。[…] 今天是男朋友不願你加入解放乳頭，明天是家務與育兒工作的分配。
Stories about boys breaking up with their girlfriends because of their topless photos keep popping up. Aside from being angry and yelling out “my body belongs to me”, we can address men's discontent and frustration over the photos from a more structural perspective. […] Today, boyfriends can stop you from joining the free nipple campaign, tomorrow they can do opposite for the sharing of housework and child-rearing.
The columnist further explained that the same set of power of relations has trapped the nipple and confined women to a private sphere called “home” and that the struggle to free the nipple should be about more than just posting photos in a public timeline.
Despite the controversy and negative attention in the media, women continue to join the #FreeTheNipple campaign to make a statement about women's autonomy over their own bodies. Campaign photos are collected by Sister Saying's Twitter account with #TaiwanFreeTheNipple as hashtag. Below is one of the collection showing a girl's surgical scar on her chest:
小時候動過離心臟很近的切骨手術，手術完後在胸口留下一個倒U字型的疤痕，因此小時候很討厭這樣的缺陷，但現在非常自豪，因為這疤痕是我，戰勝死神後，努力活下來的證明 #TaiwanFreeTheNipple #FreeTheNipple pic.twitter.com/m4yDgPY5Hr
— 性解放の學姊 (@sisterssaying) April 18, 2015
I went through a surgery near my heart when I was little. A bone had taken away leaving a U-shaped scar. I hated my deformed body when I was small, but now I am proud of it. The scar defines me. It is a proof that I have defeated death and survived. #TaiwanFreeTheNipple #FreeTheNipple.
The group also called for a poster and sticker competition for future advocacy efforts.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
Iran Hardline Media React to End of Saudi Airstrikes on Yemen · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Kayhan reacts on its Thursday, April 23, 2015 front page to the end of Saudi airstrikes.
Two prominent hardline newspapers published front pages boasting of a Saudi Arabian defeat today. These covers were reactions to the Saudi Arabian announcement of the end of airstrikes on Yemen this past Tuesday.
This is not a complete analysis of Iran's media landscape. Looking at a hardline news sources such as Kayhan or Vatan Emrooz in Iran can be likened to looking at Fox News in the United States.
Kayhan, a newspaper associated with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's office, published their frontpage with the photo of a young Houthi Yemeni boy sitting on what seems to be rocket that remains from the Saudi Arabian airstrikes against Houthi fighters. The title reads, “Yemen's Ansar Hezbollah humiliate Israel and America.” The Houthi's are often identified as “Yemen's Ansar Hezbollah” inside Iran.
Vatan Emrooz, another hardline newspaper tied to the Peydari Front, a political party associated with the Revolutionary Guards and Basij forces, published a front page cover depicting a framed portrait of the Saudi king fallen across the rubble of destroyed building with the exclamation, “Saudi's air dies!”. Describing someone's air as ‘dying’ is a popular Persian idiom for someone's defeat. A sub-caption states, “Operation ‘Hurricane Certainty’ ends after 27 days of crime and infanticide without achieving any of its goals.”
Vatan Emrooz reactons on its Thursday, April 23, 2015 front page to the end of Saudi airstrikes.
Follow Global Voice's Yemen coverage here.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


text:
Japanese Women Push Back Against Leaning In · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Haruko Arimura, Japanese Minister Responsible for Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality and Minister of State for Measures for Declining Birthrate. Arimura's ministerial portfolio does not include a webpage. Screencap taken from Kyodo News footage, YouTube.
The Japanese government wants more women to participate in the workforce. In fact, following December 2014 elections, one the new government's slogans has become “Women Will Revitalize Japan (女性が輝く日本).”
While this may seem like a victory for gender equity in what has traditionally been a male-dominated society, many Japanese women are worried they are simply being asked to do more for less.
Just 65% of women aged 15 to 64 are employed in Japan, compared to nearly 85% of Japanese men. According to an August 2014 U.S. Congressional Research Service report that investigated Japan's gender gap:
In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2013, which measures and tracks gender-based disparities on a number of dimensions, such as labor force participation and compensation, Japan ranked 105th out of 135 countries, just below Cambodia and above Nigeria.
In comparison, the United States ranked 23rd. Several low- and middle-income countries ranked above Japan, such as Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, China, India, Malaysia, and Russia. The only high-income countries ranked lower than Japan include South Korea and some countries in the Middle East.
In most OECD countries, the participation rate of university-educated women stood between 70% and 90% in 2013.
Besides the implication that Japan lags far behind its peers in terms of gender equity in the workplace and society in general, an ongoing demographic shift means Japan is running out of workers to support an ageing population.
Japan's total population is projected to shrink by around 30% by 2055 as the number of births falls to 40% of the 2005 level. The proportion of elderly doubles, and the working age population halves.
A 2010 Goldman Sachs report estimated that if women in Japan were employed at the same rate as men (about 80% of working age-men in Japan are employed, according to Goldman Sachs’ research) Japan's economic output would grow by up to 15%.
The Japanese government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is making the promotion of women's empowerment (女性活躍推進, joseikatsuyakusuishin) and “womenomics” a priority to not only increase tax revenues, but also to spur consumer demand and ignite inflation.
But is there a genuine will to improve the status of women in the workplace?
In a recent column Kotaro Tamura, a former (male) member of Japan's national Diet and parliamentary secretary to Japanese Prime Minister Abe, writes in business magazine Mag2 News about the need to provide women with adequate childcare if they are to enter the workforce:
安倍政権の女性の社会進出の支援は素晴らしいが、「子育てしながらキャリアアップできる環境」を、日本は口だけでなく本当にそうなるように整備すべきだろう。家事支援がもっと簡単に受けられ、優れた幼児教育にふんだんにアクセスできるようにすべきではないか。
While the efforts of the Abe government to advance the role of women in society is wonderful, talk of creating an environment where women can raise children while pursuing a career has to end up being more than paying mere lip service to the issue.
It has to become easier to get support for families, and provide easy access to quality childcare.
Japanese women, however, are not so sure that being asked to join the workforce is such a good thing.
The fear expressed by Japanese women is that on top of childcare, running a household and caring for aging parents, Japanese women will also be expected to work full-time.
Maiko Kissaka, a noted (female) designer and freelance columnist, writes:
安倍政権の成長戦略のひとつが「女性が輝く日本へ」です。首相官邸のホームページには「待機児童の解消」「職場復帰・再就職の支援」「女性役員・管理職の増加」の３つの政が掲げられていて、要するに「子供を産んだら保育所に預け、職場復帰して企業の幹部になったり起業する。」それが女性が輝く社会なんだそうです。
One of the Abe government's key strategies is based [on the slogan] “Women Will Revitalize Japan.”
According to the prime minister's home page, to help women enter the workforce and revitalize Japan, waiting lists for preschool childcare will be eliminated, and there will be greater support for mothers wishing to return to work. There will be efforts to increase the number of women in management and leadership positions.
So, women will give birth, place their children in daycare, and return to work, playing a greater role in the business world.
According to Kissaka, this may be unrealistic:
出産したら役員になれとかベンチャーしろと来ました。最近の輝く女性像は過労死寸前な気がします…
…考えてみれば男性こそ昔から「仕事と家庭」の間で相当ミンチになってきたはずです。
So, we're being asked to leap into management after giving birth to start wheeling and dealing at the office. This entire “Women Will Revitalize Japan” movement may actually be a harbinger of karoshi (death by overwork) for the female half of the population…
…If you think about it, until now men have always been ground up into mincemeat between work and the home.
For Japanese women, “womenomics” simply means more work and even less free time than they already have at present.
Others are asking if Japan even has enough quality work right now for woman who wish to enter the workforce.
In an online interview, researcher Daisuke Suzuki, author of the Japanese-language book “The Poorest Girls” (最貧困女子), says that one in three single women in Japan earn less than ¥1.14 million (US$9,000), below Japan's poverty threshold of ¥1.22 million (US$10,000).
One reason is because fewer than half of female high school graduates in Japan can obtain full-time work. As well, 80% of single mothers in Japan live in poverty.
Because of high female poverty rates in Japan, Suzuki and others say, a considerable amount of young woman must rely on the sex trade to earn a living (a Japanese-language documentary of the phenomenon can be viewed here).
Skepticism of the Abe government's push for womenomics, along with the slogan “Women Will Revitalize Japan” has erupted into the mainstream.
A recent feature story in the Mainichi newspaper reports on what a variety of glossy women's weekly tabloid-style magazines are actually saying about the Abe government's plans for women in Japan:
芸能ゴシップや美容情報などで華やかな女性週刊誌で、安倍政権をストレートに批判する記事が目立っています。俎上に載せるのは安全保障法制の見直しや憲法改正、アベノミクス、そして女性活躍推進など。この怒りがどこから湧いてくるのか探ってみました http://t.co/qc14SMrqV5
— 毎日新聞・デジタル編集部 (@mainichijpedit) April 22, 2015
Glossy weeklies usually devoted to celebrity gossip and beauty tips have been standing out recently for their sharp criticism of the Abe government.
What is the target of their wrath? The Abe government's core policies of revising Article 9 of the constitution, Abenomics, and empowering women.
We take a look at the source of all this anger.
- Mainichi Shimbun Digital Edition
Mainichi writer Yoshiaki Kobayashi starts off his article by examining three leading weekly magazines aimed primarily at Japanese women: Josei7 (女性セブン, “Women's Weekly”), Josei Jishin (女性自身, “Women's Own”) and Shukan Josei (週刊女性, “Weekly Woman”).
Kobayashi notes they carry a strong anti-Abe sentiment:
＜安倍さんは世界で“女性蔑視”だと思われている！＞＜安倍政権は女の涙ぐましい努力をわかっちゃいない＞ などと普段女性誌を読まないオジサン記者にはびっくりの率直さ。
For a middle-aged man who never reads women's glossy weeklies, headlines like “The whole world thinks Abe is a sexist pig!” and “Abe has no idea of women's backbreaking struggles” are totally surprising.
Kobayashi suggests that ever since the March 2011 “Triple Disaster” in Tohoku, when a massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident ravaged Japan's northeast coastline, there has been an upswell in criticism of the Japanese government.
But even if the government manages to win over the women of the nation, Japan's society itself must change.
As HR consultant Junko Tanaka tweets:
女性活躍推進を本気で考えるなら、こんな風に「女性のトリセツ」みたいな特別扱い自体を辞めなはれ。 ここに書いてあることは男性でも通じることなのでは？ https://t.co/VXvxKeu3kT
— 田中 淳子 (@TanakaLaJunko) April 16, 2015
If we're really going to take “women's empowerment” seriously, we have to ditch the whole concept of a “rulebook” for handling female employees. Would you say the same thing about a male employee?
(Tanaka linked to this tweet):
【｢初めての女性部下｣に動揺しないための心得】 営業女子たちのホンネから実態を検証！： http://t.co/djJNxeqzRp pic.twitter.com/bVZNPY5SML
— 東洋経済オンライン (@Toyokeizai) April 16, 2015
Toyo Keizai Online: “First time managing a female junior? Learn how to avoid upsetting her.” Get inside the head and heart of your new biz dev gal!

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Kenyan Lives Matter, African Students Say at Garissa Vigil in Beijing · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Participants wrote messages and sealed them in envelopes for the families of the Garissa victims. Photo by Filip Noubel
A group of students, mostly from Kenya, gathered in Beijing on April 18 to hold an unofficial candlelight vigil to honor the memory of the 147 people killed at Garissa University College on April 2 in northern Kenya.
While the global media, including Chinese media, initially covered the news of Garissa massacre widely, the interest rapidly faded. As many pointed out, worldwide reactions have generally been much less noticeable in comparison to recent incidents of similarly large losses of lives.
This combined lack of visibility in the news landscape prompted Kenyan and other African students to react in Beijing, despite being thousands of kilometers away from their home countries. Thus, on April 18 a vigil was organized in Chaoyang park in central Beijing to pay tribute to the victims and their families.
Beijing is home to one of the largest communities of African students, who often live in dorms on campuses and create their own tight-knit communities that cross countries of origin and language. The idea of holding a vigil for Kenyan victims came from Brand South Africa country manager for China Tebogo Lefifi. The site is set up to promote that country's image.
Lefifi tells Global Voices that she was inspired “by many people posting on WeChat [the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp] complaining that the world is not taking a stand on the 147.”
In addition, she says an email from Africa2.0 Kenya Chapter, a foundation for African initiatives, commenting on the Garissa violence reminded her that she belongs to the generation that Africa has been waiting for to implement positive change. She is not satisfied with the Twitter-based awareness campaign #147isnotjustanumber, as she says the naming of victims is inadequate to bring about a positive outcome. She believes it is more important to organize the African communities to voice support for their Kenya friends.
In the end, the vigil was organized by Lefifi and three other Kenyan female students. One of them, Tina Kinuthia, explains how the idea eventually took shape:
We think African and Kenyan lives matter, this cannot fall into oblivion so we created a WeChat group where very rapidly we had about 100 people who also shared the poster we made for the vigil in their own circles. Some even used the WeChat to send messages to be later written on paper cards and sent to the families of the victims. But we had also a lot of people trying to sabotage the event, saying we shouldn't do something that has no official permission.
We had no money, no sponsor so we decide to organize ourselves limit to one hour to avoid problems and went for it.
While organizing a public vigil may sound like a rather simple idea to implement, there is very little tolerance for manifestations of public sentiment, even grief, in China's public space without a long and complicated process of securing official authorizations. In this case, the students decided to be creative and design an event that would allow for their feelings and concerns to be expressed without causing unnecessary trouble for the participants.
Poster for Garissa vigil in Beijing. Photo by Filip Noubel
The organizers spread the word on WeChat  and through offline conversations for people to gather discreetly in Chaoyang park, one of the largest in the business part of Beijing. Technically, gatherings of less than 500 people do not need a permit in that park, while having a vigil even in front of the Kenyan embassy or in another commercial place would require cumbersome bureaucracy. One of the instructions shared on the WeChat group says:
The optics should look like a normal picnic in a park. Bring some blankets.
Another participant reminded that:
There is usually a gathering of 50 yoga practitionners in the park, and they don't have a permit.
As Tina Kinuthia explains:
We wanted a gathering in an open space, because this is also where vigils were organized in Garissa and Nairobi and we wanted something spontaneous.
The event included a reading of original poetry, a candlelight mini-memorial with a minute of silence and also the creation of cards addressed to the families of the 147 victims to be mailed to Kenya later.
Around 70 African students gather near an entrance of the park to join the vigil. Photo by Filip Noubel
Fortunately, the weather was good on April 18 in the late afternoon, as the students started to gather at one entrance of Chaoyang park to commemorate the victims. Nearly 70 people, including students from Africa and China, sat in a remote corner of the park in front of a make-shift altar with candles. Soon, Kenyan students began to deliver short speeches expressing grief but also concern at the future of Kenyan society. Several speakers insisted that Kenya must overcome its differences and learn to live together despite differences in culture, ethnicity and religion.
This was followed by a reading of several poems written in English specifically for the vigil. One poem by Amina Jarso, a Kenyan student based in Beijing, reads:
Her soul wanted to speak,
To ask of her accused crime,
She wanted to reason with him,
If only he'd give her more time.
His eyes bloodshot with anger,
Her eyes teary with fear,
He fights to silence his conscience,
She struggles not to shed a tear.
They pause and inhale together,
Two heartbeats synchronizing ,
the gun between has no pulse,
An intruder in their first meeting.
Let's listen much more closely,
To the gaps of words unsaid,
And give the 147 back their names,
So their memories won't just fade.
While another poem said:
Face down helplessly I stand,
Tears hitting hard the unarmed ground,
147 the number lingering in my mind,
Remembering they will they will not be around.
After a rather emotional part, participants were asked to write messages and seal them in envelopes that would be mailed to the families of the victims to carry messages of hope and demonstrate that the world — even in Beijing — would not forget them.
At this point of the vigil, a security officer for the park came to announce that all candles should be blown out and that the people should vacate the corner of the park. One student tried to negotiate and buy some time to allow for the completion of the vigil, but the guard remained standing by, informing her superiors by walkie-talkie and urging everyone to leave.
There were around 10 Chinese participants at the vigil, a mix of students, professors and friends of Kenya. Tina Kinuthia explains how some got involved:
We got great support. A person who runs a travel agency saw a posting in Jinru Feizhou, volunteered to translate the poster and shared in her community, this is how we got Chinese people coming.
One participant is a former student of Nairobi who still remembers a few words of Swahili and said she came because she felt that:
Nairobi is part of my home, and I care about Kenya.
Another Chinese participant explained that:
Most of the people around me are shocked, we even had a discussion in our class on how to avoid such things happening, and what should be the role of government, universities and students?
As one of the African organizers points out:
Chinese people seem well aware, but without a platform to mourn and support Africa, there is no place for them to express themselves.
While the WeChat group is still active, the event is also taking on a second life in the offline world. The Africa 2.0 Kenya office will distribute the cards to the families of the victims and has requested the framed picture used for the makeshift altar to hang in their Nairobi office as a tangible sign of worldwide solidarity.

author: Filip Noubel


text:
Mexico’s Escalating Labor Strike in San Quentin · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

San Quintin's laborers protesting for labor improvement conditions. Image shared on social networks.
The coastal region of San Quentin in Baja California has been in international headlines since mid-March, due to a labor dispute by agricultural workers.
The Russian news network RT reports that 50,000 laborers are protesting unfair working conditions, leading to some violence. According to the Canadian Centre for Research on Globalization, the strike has disrupted the harvesting, packing, and shipping of zucchini, tomatoes, berries, and other products to shops and restaurants in the United States. Workers demand salary increases and benefits required by law, including social security.
The conflict now seems to be spreading beyond a mere labor dispute, fast growing into a conflict over migratory and indigenous issues. Andrew Selee, the executive vice president of the Wilson Center in the United States, says the dispute has taken on new dimensions:
En su mayoría los trabajadores son de origen indígena mixteco de Oaxaca y Guerrero.
Este movimiento ha cobrado dimensiones trasnacionales con la marcha de los huelguistas a la frontera México-EU la semana pasada, en donde se encontraron con otros trabajadores agrícolas indígenas que se dirigieron a la frontera desde el otro lado para apoyarlos. Se reunieron en un parque cerca de la playa para tener un mitin binacional, con manifestantes de ambos de la frontera, dividido por el cerco que separa los dos países pero une sus esperanzadas para un futuro mejor.
The vast majority of the workers are people from Mixtec indigenous origin from Oaxaca and Guerrero.
This movement has taken on transnational dimensions with the strikers marching to the Mexico-US border in April 2015, where they met with other indigenous farm workers, who went to the border from the other side to support them. They met in a park near the beach to have a bilateral meeting with protesters from both sides of the border, divided by the fence that separates the two countries, but joined by their hopes for a better future.
The states of Oaxaca and Guerrero are located in the southern part of Mexico, which means there is some internal migration at work, if workers from these regions are amassing in Mexico's northern-most territory.
The website Animal Politico has gone even further, comparing the issue to slavery, citing the Global Slavery Index, an annual report published by the Walk Free Foundation. Animal Politico, however, reports that Mexico's ranking on this index is 18th, though it is in fact 111th. The report on Mexico is still alarming, regardless, as it estimates that 266,900 people in Mexico today live in “modern slavery.” The Walk Free Foundation says the most vulnerable groups are women, children, and indigenous people.
As alarming as the San Quentin protests have been, reactions online have also raised questions. Accordng tot he website Sopitas, Facebook users created a page that where people posted hate speech aimed at the workers on strike:
“Son peor que las cucarachas”, dicen en la fanpage llamada “Exterminio de Oaxacos en B.C.”.
“They're worse than cockroaches” says the [Facebook] page, called “Oaxacos Extermination in Baja California.”
“Oaxaco” is a pejorative word used by people in the north to refer to people from the country's south (not necessarily from Oaxaca) and the center. A large number of these people are ethnically close to the Native Americans, consisting of many differing tribes with a wide variety of dialects.
Mexican society faces serious problems of inequality and social classism, which are only exacerbated by low average salaries. The minimum wage, for instance, is just five dollars a day.

author: J. Tadeo


text:
Remembering Armenian Genocide’s 1.5 Million Victims ‘Is a Moral Obligation’ · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan giving his speech. Source: Presidential Website
Global Voices attended the conference dedicated to the Centenary of the Armenian genocide on April 22, held in Yerevan's Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concerts Complex. The conference, titled “International Social and Political Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide”, invited genocide scholars, historians, journalists, politicians and religious leaders to talk about the Armenian genocide, its legacy as well as its current and future consequences vis-a-vis international law.
The forum was initiated by the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, who highlighted the importance of memory and remembrance in the experience of all Armenians. “Remembrance is a moral obligation,” he said. “It is our moral duty and right to commemorate the one-and-a-half million victims.” He then celebrated the conscientious objectors throughout history, those who stood up against genocide from within. He cited Irena Sendler and Raoul Wallenberg during the Holocaust, Paul Rusesabagina during the Rwandan genocide and Van Chhuon during the Cambodian genocide.
As for the Armenian genocide, he said that “the Armenian people has not forgotten and is grateful to those Kurds and Turks who covertly saved the lives of their Armenian neighbors.” He also thanked the “Arab people, who gave shelter to those who had narrowly escaped the Turkish yatagan, as well as the Russians, Americans and Europeans, who took care of the Armenian orphans or partook in the humanitarian efforts.”
President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan giving his speech. Source: Presidential Website
Following his speech came remarks by Karekin II, ‘Catholicos of All Armenians’ and the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, on the need for Christians to remain united in the Middle East and the world in the face of oppression, citing the current persecution suffering by those at the hands of the Islamic State radical group. He also spoke of the burden that the Armenian genocide poses on Armenians today and how the Turkish government’s official policy of denial is adding to the suffering.
Karekin II. Source: Screenshot of the live broadcast.
Then came a stimulating talk by Thorbjørn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe. Jagland highlighted, several times, the importance of working together to move away from nationalism and instead ‘embrace internationalism’. He spoke of his meeting with then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during which he met a leading Palestinian-Armenian priest who was still in possession of a ‘Nansen Passport’, named after Fridtjof Nansen, the then-high commissioner for refugees and Nobel Peace laureate known for his work with refugees.
Nansen worked to create internationally recognized refugee travel documents, the Nansen Passports, first issued by the predecessor to the United Nations — the League of Nations — which helped many refugees, including Armenians, find shelter in neighboring countries. Jagland praised Nansen while underscoring that the world is still facing challenges as great, if not greater, than those of the past, citing the Libyan and Syrian civil wars as well as the recent Lampedusa disaster.
Torbon Jagland. Source: Screenshot of the live broadcast.
This was followed by Professor Daniel Feierstein, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He reaffirmed the commitment of the community of genocide scholars to the recognition of the genocide committed against the Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians of the Ottoman Empire. He spoke of how genocides typically included the “destruction of the national identity of the oppressed and the imposition of the national identity of the oppressor.” He repeated Jagland’s warnings concerning the dangers of nationalisms by citing the cases of Pan-Turkism, Pan-Germanism and Pan-Serbianism in the Ottoman Empire, Nazi Germany and Yugoslavia, respectively, and of the need to include genocide scholars in the efforts to prevent further genocide.
During a ten-minute interval, delegates to the conference were shown scenes and images of several genocides, from the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek to the Cambodian and Rwandan, passing by the Holocaust and a few others. Also acknowledged was Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer, who, moved by the Armenians’ situation, famously coined the term ‘genocide’.
Daniel Feierstein. Source: Screenshot of the live broadcast.
The second part of the conference began with the theme “The Issue of Accountability and Elimination of the Consequences of Genocide.” It was initiated by Roger W. Smith, an internationally renowned genocide scholar who studied the Turkish government's policy of denial. He noted that besides the usual lawsuits and lobbying methods, the Turkish government has been attempting to downplay the Armenian genocide by promoting an “equal pain” strategy in which it claims that both Turks and Armenians suffered equally during the chaos of World War I. Explaining his presence at the conference, he quoted Milan Kundera, the Franco-Czech writer who wrote: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
Then came the turn of Henry Theriault from the Armenian Genocide Reparation Study Group. Theriault wanted to dispel the myth that the 100th anniversary of the genocide could be seen as a climax. On the contrary, he affirms, it is a transition towards a future of recognition. He also reminded the room, to great applause, that the Armenians aren't the only people demanding recognition of genocide. He cited the Assyrian and Greek genocide but also the Herero and Namaqua people who suffered the crime of genocide by the government of German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) and the Native Americans.
When Theriault finished, the conference had its first Turkish speaker of the day. Cengiz Aktar is a political scientist, writer and journalist who is best known for his “I Apologize” campaign calling for an apology of the Turks towards the Armenians for the Armenian genocide, which was signed by 32,000 people.
Cengiz Aktar. Source: Screenshot of the live broadcast.
Aktar reported on the increasingly vocal movement for recognition of genocidal crimes within Turkish society. Every major publishing house in Turkey has published at least one book on the Armenian genocide in Turkish and the ‘G Word’ is becoming more acceptable in academic circles. Some descendants of the Armenians who had to convert to Islam to save their lives — the so-called Islamized Armenians, or Hidden Armenians — have re-converted to Christianity, while other Armenian Muslims have decided to remain Muslim all the while reclaiming their ‘Armenianity’. The first public commemoration of the genocide was held in Taksim Suqare in 2010 and, more importantly, citizens in at least 28 Turkish towns are planning on commemorating the Genocide this Friday.
Finally, Esther Mujawayo took the stage. Mujawayo is a survivor of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda and currently works with genocide survivors as a sociologist. Her speech was emotionally charged and she stopped to take a breath every now and then. Standing before the audience, she wore traditional Tutsi clothes. Why?
“Because our mothers were stripped naked. I'm wearing my clothes for my mothers as well as your mothers.”
Esther Mujawayo. Source: Screenshot of the live broadcast.

author: Elia J. Ayoub


text:
A Response to the Kremlin-Bot Skeptics · Global Voices
Lawrence Alexander

Image by Kevin Rothrock.
Earlier this month, Internet researcher Lawrence Alexander published a network analysis on thousands of seemingly automated Twitter accounts, pointing to extensive information manipulation attempts on the RuNet. After the analysis garnered massive attention from Russian media and social networks, Alexander now addresses some of the skepticism about the bot networks and their provenance.
My social network analysis of over 20,000 bots posting identical sets of pro-Kremlin statements on Twitter, apparently in reaction to recent news and events, attracted quite a bit of media attention and proved to be the fodder for some contentious discussion on the RuNet, so I'd now like to address some of the criticisms.
Some Russian media commentators have downplayed the pro-Kremlin manipulation of the Twittersphere, claiming the automated bots and human-run accounts are created merely for marketing or spamming purposes. Sputnik News, for example, takes this stance:
…the goal [of the trolling] appears to be not to convert public opinion, but rather search engine optimization (SEO): search engines such as Google crawl the web for keywords and links, which are then used to give weight to certain web pages when search terms are entered.
However, this fails to explain the trolls’ apparent bias towards pro-Kremlin sentiment, and offers no suggestions as to who exactly might gain from running the accounts besides a vague “political consultancy firm.” It also doesn't consider that a deliberate disinformation campaign might employ tactics similar to spammers, both for convenience and for added ‘plausible deniability.’
In my analysis, I found little evidence of any commercial purpose behind the bot networks. Most tweets didn't link to premium sites or share dubious-looking links. And because I was able to establish that few of the accounts were genuine (i.e., run by real humans), it didn't seem likely they were part of a paid followers scheme, which would follow plenty of real people and organisations.
Other critics have questioned how much impact the bot networks could have, considering they rarely interacted with others.
The answer, I believe, lies in Twitter's Search and Trending features. A good way to illustrate this is to look at the way bots have been shown to spread news stories in their tweets.
In March 2015, Keir Giles, director of Chatham House's Conflict Studies and Research Centre and a fellow Russia and Eurasia Programme, noted repeated sharing of this RT article. In it, several interviewees attempt to cast doubt on evidence that flight MH-17 was downed by a Buk missile.
Su-25 designer goes off message on MH17 shootdown; triggers more Russian troll farm overdrive http://t.co/I5YvoJgV1D pic.twitter.com/nhYoHeoZYl
— Keir Giles (@KeirGiles) March 11, 2015
I used NodeXL to collect a Twitter Search network sample for the headline seen in the tweets: “Could SU-25 fighter jet down a Boeing? Former pilots speak out on MH17 claims.”
The resulting graph (below) shows the accounts sharing the article as circular ‘nodes.’ Those that are closely interconnected by follows or mentions are grouped into color-coded clusters. (Their size is based on their relative connectedness with others in the network.)
Network of Twitter accounts sharing Russia Today's story on MH17. Image by Lawrence Alexander.
Prominent in the center—for obvious reasons—are RT (Russia Today's) accounts, @rt_america and @rt_com. The strongly connected upper green cluster shows a number of pro-Russian tweeters following or interacting: for example, @gbabeuf and @novorossiyan. But the anonymous bots are found mostly in the outer ring, indicating their characteristic lack of interaction and lack of following real users.
Just because the bots are isolated, though, doesn't mean they lack impact. Their repeated use of key words, phrases, and headlines affects Twitter's search results and trending topics, so anyone looking for tweets about MH17, for example, would have seen multiple instances of RT's story, boosting its perceived popularity. (There is no evidence that RT themselves have anything to do with the bots).
These strategies are explicitly prohibited in Twitter's rules—though this hasn't stopped large-scale bot networks from encroaching on Twitter news narratives, potentially influencing trending topics. Unless social networking sites strengthen their protections against mass account registration, it seems likely these manipulation efforts will continue.

author: Lawrence Alexander


text:
A Year After Their Arrest, Ethiopia’s Zone9 Bloggers Remain Strong and Determined · Global Voices
Advox

Founding members of Zone9. Left to right: Endalk Chala, Soliana Shimeles, Natnael Feleke, Abel Wabela. Befeqadu Hailu, Mahlet Fantahun, Zelalem Kiberet, Atnaf Berahane.
Written by Ellery Roberts Biddle & Ethan Zuckerman
Last April, late on a Friday, an email came over the Global Voices community list with the subject line: “Shocking”. A group of our authors and their fellow bloggers had been arrested earlier that day in Addis Ababa. Six of these men and women had worked with Zone9, a collective blog that covered social and political issues in Ethiopia and promoted human rights and government accountability. We quickly learned that they had been arrested because of their work as bloggers.
The Zone9 bloggers were working to foster political debate and discussion in a country where most media outlets fall under heavy control by government authorities. They wanted to help fellow citizens better understand their rights, as guaranteed by the constitution. They wanted more Ethiopians to have some say in how their country is run.
Horn of Africa. Map by UN, released to public domain.
It’s not easy to talk about these issues in Ethiopia. As Africa's second most populous country, Ethiopia is the beneficiary of enormous flows of foreign military and humanitarian aid, largely intended to bolster and maintain the nation as a security stronghold in the Horn of Africa, where levels of ethnic tension, corruption and crime are high. The government faces threats from armed militant groups in the country’s northern region and in neighboring Somalia, and it has ample support from Western governments, including the US, to preserve stability in the region. But fear about this precarious situation has bled into critical areas of public life, leaving little room for civil society activity and democratic debate. In recent years, the government has developed a disturbing tendency to label anyone who expresses dissent as a terrorist.
Consider journalist Eskinder Nega. Nega’s crime was to report on the Arab Spring protests and to point out that Ethiopia could face similar protests if the government did not reform and open up. He was charged with “planning, preparation, conspiracy, incitement and attempt” of terrorist acts and is now serving an 18-year prison sentence.
In 2013, fearful that they might suffer the same fate, the Zone9ers let their blog go dark for over a year. But last spring, they decided they could not remain silent any longer. On April 25, 2014, the government responded by arresting six members of the blogging team, along with three journalists the government saw as “affiliated” with the bloggers.
Natnael Feleke with John Kerry, 2013.
Though they have yet to be brought to trial, the bloggers have been charged under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation. This provides a sense of what the Ethiopian government is fighting: dissent, not terror. Much of the charge sheet focuses on accusations that the bloggers received training in encrypting their communications, specifically through using Security in a Box, a digital security toolkit intended to help human rights groups protect themselves from surveillance, widely available online. The Ethiopian government accuses the Zone9 bloggers of using these tools in an attempt to “overthrow, modify or suspend the Federal or State Constitution; or by violence, threats, or conspiracy.” In fact, the bloggers were using such tools to coordinate their reporting work, hoping to avoid detection and arrest by a paranoid government.
We are humbled by the degree to which these bloggers have remained strong, determined, and vocal since their imprisonment. In August of 2014, Befeqadu Hailu, a founding member of Zone9 and Global Voices author, wrote a detailed account of his experiences behind bars, a text that was smuggled out of the prison and published on our site. His words have left our community both inspired and haunted ever since. “No matter what,” he wrote, “boundaries exist in this country. People who write about Ethiopia’s political reality will face the threat of incarceration as long as they live here.”
More recently, friends were able to smuggle out a letter from Natnael Feleke, a founding member of the Zone9 blogging collective who studied economics before his arrest. Natnael's letter is addressed to US Secretary of State John Kerry. Natnael spoke with Kerry at a public event at Addis Ababa University in 2013, a meeting that has now become part of the case against him. In the letter, Natnael asks the US government to reconsider its support for the Ethiopian government. He writes:
…[the amount of] time I will be spending in prison is not the most pressing issue on my mind right now. Rather, I am worried about the amount of additional sacrifice required until the international community, specifically your government, will assume a firm pragmatic stance in demanding fundamental progress in the democratization process of the country against the billions of dollars pouring the regime's way.
I don't want you to get me wrong here. It is not that I don't appreciate the earnest assistance being forwarded to the development process in my country. It is just that I strongly believe effective monitoring of such assistance can only be employed where there is a government accountable to its people. It is ironic that the world's top recipient of development assistance is without effective monitoring and accountability.
[…]
In his book the Audacity of Hope, President Obama states that the true test of what we really value is where we invest the time, energy and money that we have. I understand the difficulty you face in striking a balance between maintaining security and stability and promoting democratization in your foreign policy. But sustainable stability can only be achieved through a democratically elected government and a state institution trusted by the people. As US national interests are built on core values of liberty and democracy, I have hope and confidence that you will adopt a new stance that forges a clearer relationship between any form of assistance and the democratization process.
The letter does not only make a political argument. Natnael also talks about his own experience in prison, describing torture, poor conditions, and the criminal investigation that the bloggers have undergone, which he calls “ridiculous.”
It is eery the degree to which the bloggers seemed to anticipate their current fate. The Zone9ers in fact take their name from Kality, a prison on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, where Eskinder Nega has lived since 2011. Kality is divided into eight different zones, the last of which — Zone Eight — is dedicated to journalists, human rights activists and dissidents. Endalk, one of the three Zone9ers who remains free today, explained that when the group formed, “we decided to create a blog for the proverbial prison in which all Ethiopians live: this is Zone Nine.”
The Zone9 bloggers are expected to face trial late this spring. If convicted, they will find themselves in the company of at least eighteen other journalists who have suffered the same fate.

author: Advox


text:
Colombia’s Festival on the Value of Data in Development · Global Voices
Estefanía Salazar

The Cartagena Data Festival has just wrapped up in Cartagena, Colombia. The festival is an international event committed to discussing data deployment for human development and related topics, like open data, data journalism, big data, and other analysis tools.
The festival, which ran from April 20 to April 22 and took place in downtown Cartagena, attracted more than 500 participants and reporters from around the world. Several groups played an organizing role, including the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Population Fund, the ODI Development Progress, Centro Europeo de Pensamiento Estratégico Internacional, Africa Gathering, and others.
Archived webcast footage from the event is available online, and social media content about the festival can be found searching for the hashtag #data2015.
Cartagena Data Festival, Day 1. Photo: Helkin René Díaz CEPEI, used permission

author: Estefanía Salazar


text:
Guyana’s Health Minister Assails Women’s Activist, Says He Would ‘Slap Her Ass’ · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Workers in Guyana say no to violence against women: Clerical and Commercial workers’ union mark 2014 UN international day of the elimination of violence against women. Photo by International Transport Workers’ Federation, used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.
An audio recording of a disturbing exchange between a women's activist and Guyana's health minister was making the rounds on social media earlier this week, leaving many netizens scratching their heads over the region's attitude to women and politicians’ posture towards the people they have been elected to serve.
Dr. Bheri Ramsarran, who belongs to the ruling People’s Progressive Party, was verbally abusive to women's rights advocate Sherlina Nageer, who challenged him on his performance, based on her opinion that under the current administration, maternal and child mortality rates have been too high. Ramsarran retorted by telling her to “shut up”, calling her an “idiot” and a “piece of shit”. After the minister summoned police to remove Nageer, he continued his tirade, telling reporters that he “would slap her ass […] just for the fun” — a threat that did not go down well with many Guyanese, especially in the context of the high level of sexual and domestic violence against women in the country. Women's groups have recently been very outspoken about the issue, and Nageer is widely recognised as one of the more active and vocal advocates for women's rights.
This account of the incident on news website News Source noted that despite the minister's attempts to humiliate her, Nageer stood her ground:
She continued to challenge him on his record and when she reminded him that taxpayers like her pay his salary, Ramsarran could be heard telling the woman to ‘eff off’ as he called her a ‘piece of sh%t’ and said she should not be interrupting his private interview on the roadside to two Berbice based reporters.
Ironically, the Health Minister was outside the Whim Magistrates court to lend support to former President Bharrat Jagdeo who is facing private criminal charges for an alleged racially divisive speech that he made at Babu John back in March. Jagdeo had been accused by his ex-partner and former first lady Varshnie Singh of domestic abuse. He has always denied those allegations.
The post also found it interesting that the current government has put forward a woman as its Prime Ministerial candidate:
Ms. Elisabeth Harper has been calling for more respect for women and promising that a new PPP government would do more to fight domestic violence and clamp down on abuses against women.
Code Red, which dedicates itself to highlighting feminist issues in the Caribbean, was not convinced about any intention to further the cause of women; the blog was stunned at the position that the minister continued to take, even after the story broke:
A statement sent to the press by the Minister of Health subsequently claims that he was provoked to such misogynist violence after Sherlina Nageer interrupted a press interview. Sherlina can be heard demanding state accountability for Guyana’s high maternal mortality rate, which is the highest in the English-speaking Caribbean.
The minister, in his altercation with Nageer, insisted that “less women and children dying than under the PNC [People's National Congress, the other major political party in Guyana]”. Code Red pulled apart the minister's defense by saying:
The Minister invoked the language of ‘provocation’ to justify his act of violence. The invocation of ‘provocation’ is frequently used to justify and rationalise men’s fatal violence against women and has crept into state and activist responses to violence. The language of provocation, just like the denigrating language and threats the Minister directed at Sherlina, is the language of misogyny.
Code Red named several instances of women's rights being trampled upon throughout the region, calling on “state managers to denounce acts of violence wherever they occur” and “politicians throughout the region [to realise] that their silence on these offences against its citizens speaks volumes to their commitment to gender justice and the rights of women”:
Women are 51% of the population and our governments must be accountable to us.
We will not be intimidated into silence as silence means death. Literally.
The blog started an online petition in solidarity with Sherlina Nageer and all women's human rights defenders.
Nageer eventually spoke out about the incident, saying that she has “never been cursed in such a manner” and bringing up several instances of the Ministry of Health's failings when it comes to public healthcare:
I was truly taken aback. All I was trying to do was get some answers to what I believe are legitimate issues, from a public official, in a public setting. This is election time and we the citizens of Guyana are being encouraged to engage with the politicians, to ask questions, and to share our ideas and views with them. It seems as if this cannot be done in a civil manner in Guyana and that only those who do not challenge the status quo are acceptable. It is truly a sad state of affairs we are in when ex-presidents, current ministers of government, and others holding positions of authority feel free to spew racist rhetoric, encourage hatemongering, curse and abuse the citizens of the nation, instead of calmly, rationally, and respectfully engaging with them. […] As citizens we deserve better.
The minister's apology, in which he stated that he regretted his actions (which he claimed were provoked), did not go over well. Protests have been happening both on the ground and online in support of Sherlina Nageer.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
Hong Kong Politician Wants More Headlines About Filipina Maids Seducing Their Bosses · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Foreign migrant worker communities demand Regina Ip apologize for what they see as racist, sexist and anti-migrant remarks. Photo from Twitter user: @emancv
About 40 migrant domestic workers protested outside the office of Executive Council member Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee's office on Thursday, demanding an apology for her comments accusing Filipino maids of sleeping with their foreign bosses.
Regina Ip's remarks appeared on her website as commentary on the suicide of a teenage girl, whose father is British and mother is Filipina. Ip criticized foreign media for depicting Hong Kong as a exploitative city while neglecting the sexual relationships between maids and their expat employers:
外媒除報道本地僱主的不當行為外，是否亦應多加留意大量菲籍女傭在港淪為外籍男士的性資源的問題？
Apart from reporting on the inappropriate behavior of employers, shouldn't the foreign press also keep a closer eye on why a great number of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong have become sexual resources?
In response to her comment, the Philippine Consulate General issued a statement on April 20, expressing concern on her “unfortunate choice of words” and stressing that “discrimination should have no place in any society, most especially Hong Kong”.
The politician refused to apologize and insisted that she had actually received complaints from wives of foreigners about migrant maids stealing their husbands while she headed the Security Bureau (she resigned in 2003).
Eman Villanueva, one of the protest organizers, posted protest photos on Twitter and said:
On Regina Ip: Intentional or not, her statements reek of racism and sexism, so unbecoming of a public authority. pic.twitter.com/6mUaCH7JeN
— Eman Villanueva (@emancv) April 23, 2015
Another protester wrote on Twitter:
Protest against big-mouthed small-brained no-heart Regina Ip for her comments on ‘domestic help stealing our men’. https://t.co/Mp1udgRN5J
— daaitoulaam (@daaitoulaam) April 23, 2015
Migrant worker communities’ protest poster via Twitter user: stegersaurus
While local migrant communities called her “racist, anti-women and anti-migrants”, Ip received backing from a pro-Beijing current affairs commentator Lau Nai-keung. He hit back on her behalf in Chinese government mouthpiece China Daily, calling her critics “politically correct bigots“.
Blessed by Beijing, Regina Ip is a potential candidate for chief executive, Hong Kong's top leader, in 2017. In an interview with South China Morning Post in February, she hinted that she would run for the position and believed that “she has an edge over men as a politician because women are more used to taking a ‘soft’ approach.”
There are about 300,000 migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong, mainly from Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand. Many don't believe that Ip “meant no offense” as this is not the first time she made discriminatory remarks about them. WK News, a labour news site, compiled her comments on working conditions of foreign maids in Hong Kong since 2011, including:
Ah Lei, a columnist at citizen media platform inmediahk.net, theorized that Ip's comments on foreign maids are meant to project an image of statist feminist in defense of family values. She called such a political orientation as “good-wife authoritarianism”:
回顧葉劉氏一貫的說法與行為，可推論出她對「良婦女性主義」和「國家女性主義」的傾向，然而筆者認為，她的主張與行徑，充分顯示出一種「良婦專制主義」，在宣稱男女（生理性別）平等從而獲得更大權力與資本的同時，對情慾自主、種族平等、資源均等分配等運動暗藏負面態度，並且排斥一個更普及平等公開的選舉制度，主張以法律統治人民。這種主張，令筆者想到在奉行社會主義的年代，中國共產黨如何以「男女平等」的榥子，一邊利用女性的勞動力推動各種經濟政策，另一邊卻對女性在家庭、宗族、和社會文化各個層面的壓迫視而不見。
Reviewing Ms. Ip's previous comments and behavior, we can deduce that she is in favor of “good-wife feminism” and “statist feminism”. However, the way how she comments on current affairs betrays a kind of “good-wife authoritarianism”. On the one hand, she establishes her authority and [political] capital by supporting equality between man and woman (physically defined), while on the other hand, her attitude towards woman's sexual autonomy, racial equality and equal distribution of resources has been rather negative. Moreover, she is not supportive of a more equal and open election system. On the contrary, she advocates for “rule by law”. Her position reminds me of the Chinese Communist Party's socialist doctrine on “equality between men and women” in order to mobilize women to join the labour force in accordance with its economic policy. But it did not address the oppression of women in other domains including family, society and culture.
Given the protest over Ip's latest remarks, more than a few Hong Kongers would likely share this sentiment expressed in newspaper The Manila Times’ editorial (via media worker Galileo Cheng):
The Manila Times：We hope Mrs. Regina Ip does not become HK SAR’s Chief Executive http://t.co/vNKPd2Hcfz
— Galileo Cheng (@galileo44) April 22, 2015


text:
Japanese University Turns a Blind Eye to the Plight of Campus Cats · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Pongo and Sebastian, two cats Charles Januzzi rescued and now live with him at home. Photo courtesy Charles Januzzi. Copyright and all rights reserved to Charles Januzzi.
After nearly 25 years working to help control the cat colony on his campus in regional Japan, Charles Januzzi is running into stiff opposition from university administration.
After being forbidden from feeding or otherwise care for a large colony of stray cats at his university, Januzzi has launched an online petition. The petition is titled “To University of Fukui: Stop starving the cats who live on campus” and has so far collected just over 2,300 signatures.
Januzzi is a longtime associate professor at the University of Fukui‘s Bunkyo campus in rural Fukui Prefecture, about seven hours by train from Tokyo.
“I have been helping outdoor cats since I was a child,” says Januzzi, who is originally from Pennsylvania. “I can remember I got started helping cats in Fukui as soon as I got here because there were so many feral, stray and abandoned cats around the city.”
Januzzi practices a technique called “TNR”, or Trap, Neuter and Release. The purpose of TNR is control the population of feral cat colonies over time.
“For the past 6 months, I have been spaying and neutering all the cats on campus and also at a near-by colony just southeast of campus,” says Januzzi. “There are still 3 cats that need to be spayed or neutered.”
Januzzi says that the irony is that it's university staff and instructors who feed the cats without practicing TNR, which then resulted in the current population explosion he is trying to combat.
“Now [the administration] says feeding cats on their part of campus is banned, and that I must stop everything that I am doing,” says Januzzi. “I only started feeding them because the people over there had stopped. And TNR is almost 100% complete.”
The problem of large colonies of feral cats in urban settings is due in part to the fact that pets are a big business in Japan.
Reporting for Japan Today, Jessica Kozuka notes:
The number of pets in Japan (is about) 21.3 million, far exceeding the number of children under 15 in the country. About 35% of households have a pet and many of them live lives of luxury as pampered members of the family, with Japanese spending about 3.8 trillion yen a year to keep them happy.
While pets are popular in Japan, Charles Januzzi says, many people purchase cats without fully understanding the implications of pet ownership.
“People dump cats (and dogs) on campus, hoping someone else will find and take in the animal,” Januzzi says. “One variation of this is when a student living in a nearby apartment takes in a kitten, raises it secretly in their apartment until they find out what having a bored, adult, sexually mature cat is like, or their landlord tells them to get rid of the cat.”
Still yet another variation of abandonment is when an animal-keeping elderly person dies or is put in a home.
“The son or son-in-law might take the cat and dump it on campus, since it is easier to do it there than many other places,” says Januzzi. “Instead of throwing broken TVs or old tires over the wall, they simply toss the cat.”
A key factor in the relatively large population of abandoned animals in Japan is that “gassing” or euthanasia is used for population control, rather than the more proactive strategy of encouraging sterilization.
“Instead of taking the cat to an animal shelter where it will probably be gassed,” says Januzzi, “They figure it is better to abandon it on campus.”
Activities in other parts of Japan have shown that Trap, Neuter, Release techniques are an effective way to control animal populations.
Kobe and the surrounding region experienced a massive earthquake in 1995. Homeless pets were left to roam freely in the chaotic earthquake disaster zone following the earthquake.
The number of homeless strays combined with lack of resources and awareness of the effectiveness of TNR caused a huge explosion of stray animals in the region for more than a decade.
Animal Rescue System launched a TNR clinic in the region 2006. Data from for the next six years shows the number of feral kittens being caught and euthanized in Kobe dropped considerably.
Image courtesy Fukushima Spay Clinic.
Back in Fukui, Charles Januzzi says that his efforts at trapping, neutering, and releasing cats has almost paid off. He also suspects that the edict preventing feeding of strays is not official university policy.
So, Januzzi launched his Avaaz petition, which has almost reached its goal of 2,500 signatures.
His efforts have not gone unnoticed in Japan. Freelance journalist Akiko Katori, who often writes about issues affecting animals in Japan, writes:
福井大学がキャンパス内の猫たちの不妊・去勢手術も餌やりも止めさせ、飢えさせようとしているとは！　キャンパス内での地域猫活動は時代の流れ。これに逆行するようなことを主張するとはナンセンスです。北陸新幹線が開通してこれから発展しようという福井県のイメージダウンにもつながると思います。
How can Fukui University prohibit efforts to spay and neuter these cats, and just leave them to starve? This marks a total change in the way cats are treated on campus, and a backwards approach to dealing with the issue. And to think that Fukui Prefecture is trying to attract the Hokuriku Shinkansen!


text:
Malawian Film Helps Farmers Cope With Climate Change · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

“Mbeu Yosintha” was made to help farmers and rural communities cope with the effects of climate change, in particular the ever changing rain patterns in South East Africa. The film is a drama using local actors and was devised with Malawian writer Jonathan Mbuna following extensive research with various agricultural NGOs in Malawi.

author: Ndesanjo Macha


text:
Pakistani Activist Sabeen Mahmud Shot Dead After Hosting an Event on Balochistan · Global Voices
Sahar Habib Ghazi

Photo of Sabeen Mahmud posted on Facebook by Abro Khuda Bux on February 9. Shared with public.
On the evening of April 24, one of Karachi's most prominent social activists Sabeen Mahmud was shot dead after leaving an event called “Unsilencing Balochistan” that her organization The Second Floor had arranged. Her mother was also injured in the drive-by shooting and is in critical condition.
The event featured two of Pakistan's most vilified human rights activists: Mama Qadeer and Farzana Majeed, who have worked to raise awareness about the southwestern province Balochistan's “missing people.”  Qadeer and Majeed are frequent targets of “traitor and terrorist” smear campaigns on social media, and both were recently barred from traveling to a human rights conference in the US.
Sabeen posted this screenshot on Facebook a night before the event:
Sabeen arranged this event, after a previous roundtable on the same topic, also scheduled to include Qadeer and Majeed as panelists, was cancelled at a leading private university called LUMS. Faculty there said they had to cancel the talk because of threats received from Pakistan's top spy agency the ISI.
Also read: Did Pakistani Spies Just Kill a University Debate on Balochistan?
Photo of the Balochistan event posted on Instagram by Sabeen. She was killed less than an hour after she posted this.
On Twitter Pakistani activists drew connections between the event and her murder:
When you ask us to put our trust in this state, this is why we fucking can't.
— Sadaf Baig (@nuqsh) April 24, 2015
Karachi-based journalist Shaheryar Mirza tweeted:
Tonight before the talk on #Balochistan Sabeen said while smilinf, “thankfullt we have not been told by anyone to not hold this talk”.
— Shaheryar Mirza (@mirza9) April 24, 2015
Traumatising beyond belief. We were always scared for her, but didn't think we'd actually see this say. https://t.co/JxJCnbKAJ4 — Raheel Khursheed (@Raheelk) April 24, 2015
Balochistan, Pakistan's largest, least populated and poorest province is witnessing its fifth separatist movement since 1947. Public discussions on Balochistan's war are rare and reporting from there in thin.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, since 2010, the bodies of hundreds of Balochistan’s “missing people” have turned up dead bearing torture marks. In 2013 alone, 116 bodies were found across the province, 87 of which were identified by families who accused Pakistan’s security agencies of abducting their loved ones.
Watch: GV Face: Breaking Pakistan's Silence on Balochistan
Opposition politician and human rights activist Alizeh Haider tweeted:
You speak you die. ISI ‘s message, loud and clear to all those speaking up for Balochistan. #UnsilencingBalochistan #SabeenMahmud. — Alizeh Iqbal Haider (@AlizehIHaider) April 24, 2015
A follower responded to her by saying she could have been silenced by the Balochistan Liberation Army, an armed faction fighting for the province's independence from Pakistan. The BLA is banned in Pakistan.
@Adil_A93 @omar_quraishi clamp down on LUMS initial seminar was also BLA? — Alizeh Iqbal Haider (@AlizehIHaider) April 24, 2015
Our wonderful, friend heroine and fallen soldier @sabeen May you rest in peace but we will not until your killers are found and prosecuted — Fifi Haroon (@fifiharoon) April 24, 2015
Sabeen's The Second Floor, commonly known as T2F, was a community space for open dialogue that wanted to bring about social change in Pakistan's largest city Karachi.
According to their website, since it was founded in 2007: “T2F has hosted hundreds of events, ranging from poetry readings and film screenings, to vibrant debates on critical issues. With the support and participation of musicians, artists, writers, film makers, scientists, comedians, thought leaders, and engaged audiences, T2F has contributed to revitalizing Karachi’s cultural landscape and has provided an alternative, independent, safe space for discourse.”
RIP. Activist @sabeen behind Pakistan's first hackathon reportedly shot in Karachi today. Profile from @LoisParshley http://t.co/Eb8u8wC2Wj
— WIRED (@WIRED) April 24, 2015
Sabeen was like titanium. So strong. So dignified. In every way. A huge supporter of all voiceless people. A voice. Ya Allah. — Mosharraf Zaidi (@mosharrafzaidi) April 24, 2015
Wajahat Ali, a Pakistani-American journalist and activist posted on Facebook:
The privileged among us suffer name-calling, petty insults, hurt feelings for principled positions and critical dissent. The truly brave, like Karachi's Sabeen Mahmud, pay for it with their lives. She was shot and killed tonight leaving her cafe T2F (The Second Floor).
Her alleged crimes are numerous, scandalous and note-worthy: With T2F, she created and sustained a remarkable safe space and community that housed, nourished and celebrated diverse, critical Pakistani intellectuals, artists, entrepreneurs, tech geeks and colorful personalities. As Sabahat Ashraf eloquently writes, she was a “‘qutub’, a pole–in networking parlance, a hub, a connector. very critical to civil society in Pakistan. To say she was an institution in herself is putting it mildly.”
Saad Hamid, a community mobilizer and techie from Islamabad tweeted:
Here's in remembrance of @sabeen – the beautiful, the crazy, the genius who transformed the concept of open dialogue. pic.twitter.com/UowdEjjaUU — Saad Hamid (@SaadGH) April 24, 2015
Award-winning British-Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie tweeted:
Two summers ago in london i told @sabeen to be careful and she said, ‘someone has to fight.’ Goodbye, my friend. You were the best of us.
— Kamila Shamsie (@kamilashamsie) April 24, 2015
Tributes to Sabeen are pouring in on her Facebook page and Twitter account @sabeen.

author: Sahar Habib Ghazi


text:
Relive New York City’s Persian Parade · Global Voices
Abdulfattoh Shafiev

Last weekend, New York City was wrapped up in the colorful dress of the Persian peoples.
For the 12th time the Big Apple hosed the Persian Parade, where different nations with ties to Persian civilization wowed spectators with a full-blown spectacle of Persian culture and heritage. The parade participants dressed in national clothes and walked and danced to national music in New York's streets.
Central Asia, where Turkic and Persian influence fuse (Tajiks are the only geneaologically Persian people in the region but all five countries celebrate the holiday of Nowruz) was well represented. Tajik women sported fantastically pretty chakans and Tajik gentlemen donned the national joma winning the hearts of onlookers. Uzbeks and Tajiks from the ancient citadel of Samarqand showed off the vivid colours of the atlas and the adras (Central Asian versions of the ikat).
Thanks to Somon Qurbonali, who participated in the event and sent Global Voices these vibrant photos, readers can experience the colour and warmth of the Persian Parade from afar.

author: Abdulfattoh Shafiev