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Experts Cast Doubt on Tunisia’s Biometric Identification Bill · Global Voices
Ahmed Medien

Thumbprint image via Pixabay. CC0 public domain.
Civil society advocates and government experts are raising concern about a new bill that would require all Tunisian citizens to carry a national ID card encoded with a rich combination of personal biometric data including one’s photograph, digitized fingerprint, social security number, and home address.
Under the proposed legislation, the ID card will have a public key system according to international standards hence the necessity for change. Although the bill includes no details on the matter, experts suspect that this information will be aggregated under one unique identifier [a multi-functional card that serves as identifier for national ID, health insurance and social security numbers].
The bill would amend a 1993 ID law, passed during the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, under which identification cards listed the occupation of the card holder, and cards belonging to married and widowed women were required to include the name of their husband.
The current bill would eliminate these two requirements, and update language concerning the technical sophistication of the system. It would also lower the age at which citizens are required to carry these IDs, from 18 to just 15 years old, and introduces a 15-day prison sentence against those refusing to show their ID card upon police control.
Several human rights organizations including the Tunisian League for Human Rights and the Tunisian Forum on Social and Economic Rights signed a statement by Access Now urging the Tunisian parliament to reject a new ID bill [AR] (62/2016), set to amend Law No. 27 of 1993 on the national identity card.
Tunisian netizens have also followed it closely, and warily, for years. Tunisian net freedom advocate Dhouha Ben Youssef tweeted about the topic in October 2014:
Souriez vous êtes surveillés! Nouvelles mesures de devlpt du système de communication et de l'information http://t.co/22lMXAi2c7 #Tunisie
— Dhouha Ben Youssef (@_dby_) October 18, 2014
Smile, you are under surveillance! New measures for the development of the information and communication system
Même la carte d'identité serait biométrique, vidéo-surveillance etc… :) Oublions la #Privacy pour la supposée #Sécurité #Tunisie #PT
— Dhouha Ben Youssef (@_dby_) October 18, 2014
Even the new ID card will be biometric, video surveillance etc…let's forget about privacy for the sake of security.
Post-revolution governments in Tunisia have continuously assured the public that they will only seek private information following judicial orders (p 248). That being said, the now-obsolete Tunisian criminal law does not have modified provisions for Information and Communication Technology crimes committed by the government or otherwise.
This makes the bill more worrisome for activists, and even for the data protection authority. The National Authority For the Protection of Personal Data (known by its French acronym, the INPDP) expressed skepticism about the bill at a November 3 press conference in Tunis. INPDP President Chawki Gaddes emphasized the lack of clarity in the bill regarding who would have access to citizens’ data obtained through the system, and how this access would be granted.
He also called for the deletion of the address component from ID cards since this information does not pertain to someone's identity. In the past, address information has been used by police who appear to have targeted youth from poor neighborhoods commuting in other parts of the city or the country.
Tunisia's Assembly of the Representatives of the People. Photo Credit: © European Union 2016 – European Parliament.
In a statement published on 1 November, the data protection authority denounced the fact that the government did not consult with them when drafting the bill. Under Article 76 of the personal data protection law of 2004, the authority is entitled to give its supervisory opinion on matters related to personal data protection, including draft laws.
Established under the ancien regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the INPDP is a commission within the Ministry of Justice. It regulates the use of private information according to Article 7 of Law n°63 of 2004:
Article 7 – Toutes opérations de traitement de données à caractère personnel est soumis à une déclaration préalable au siège de l'instance nationale de protection des données à caractère personnel contre récépissé ou notifiée par leur recommendée avec accusé de réception ou par tout autre moyen laissant une trace écrite.
Article 7 – Any processing of personal data shall be subject to a prior declaration [PDF] from the seat of the national body for the protection of personal data against receipt or notification by their authorized representative with acknowledgment of receipt or by any other means leaving a Written trace.
The same decree includes a punishment of one year in prison and a fine 5,000 Tunisian Dinars ($2,173) for unauthorized processing of personal data by the private sector in Article 90.
But the authority remains powerless when it comes to supervising public authorities’ collection and processing of personal data. In fact, state companies and government agencies are not subject to prior authorization from the national authority. Under the same law, public institutions are not required to obtain verbal and written consent from data subjects when collecting and processing data. Data subjects are also barred from accessing information held about them by public authorities.
The Tunisian Pirate Party released a statement (in Arabic) on 19 October warning of the risks of storing massive amounts of citizen data in a centralized database. The statement argues that the bill does not provide sufficient detail regarding the security of citizens’ data, which once collected could be vulnerable to cyberattacks or breaches. They also raised concern about the bill lacking information about how the cards will be used and what rights, if any, citizens will have to access their own data within the system.
كما يستنكر حزب القراصنة كل ما ورد في نص القانون من عقوبات جزرية بالسجن و يعتبرها نصوص قسرية لا تتماشى مع مناخ الحريات و تكريس لعودة الاستبداد و تناقض مع حق النفاذ الى المعلومة، و يحذر حزب القراصنة من عودة الهرسلة البوليسية من خلال ءاجراء مطابقة البصمة لبيانات الشريحة بواسطة قارءات البصمات الالكترونيّة الجوالة.
The Pirate Party denounces the jail sentences in the bill and consider such verdicts restrictive and unmatching with the new era of liberties as a well a prime precedent for the return of dictatorship and a contradiction to the right to access information. The Pirate Party warns against renewed police harassment through the procedure of verifying fingerprints with data on [biometric ID] chips through electronic mobile ID card readers.
The Pirate Party expressed concern that the bill would make it illegal to decrypt one’s card encryption.The current language of the bill does not explicitly address this issue. However, a proposed provision makes it illegal to “forge” data stored on the card and the ID's electronic chip in accordance with Article 193 of the Penal Code, which criminalizes “fraudulently altering” identification documents with five years’ jail time.
Tunisian human rights activists are not particularly opposed to the biometric ID card in principle; rather, they are concerned about the lack of clarity from the government concerning which data they wish to collect, and the lack of independent supervision of such collection.
Poll conducted on Tunisians’ attitudes toward privacy
77.5% of respondents approve of the government’s plan to introduce biometric IDs
60% do not believe that the use of biometric IDs restricts freedoms
88.7 said they would allow the government to collect more personal information on them to fight terrorism
Source: the Tunisian Data Protection Authority, May 2016
The bill forms part of a 2014 national strategic plan for a “Digital Tunisia“, a partnership program between the government and private sector that aims to digitize numerous pubic services that will cater to citizens’ needs with just a few clicks, and to create 80,000 new jobs in the ICT sector by 2018. While novel for Tunisia, national identification and biometric databases are nothing new — more than 100 countries in the world now issue biometric ID documents to its citizens. Publicly posted invoices indicate that the program will cost a total of 5,200 million dinars. The new law will also cost taxpayers unnecessary expenditures during a third year of economic recession.
The parliamentary Commission on Rights, Liberties and External Relations is currently reviewing the bill — if it receives the Commission’s approval, it will advance to an assembly vote.
Almost three years after the adoption of a constitution that guarantees privacy rights, Tunisia remains without a strong data protection authority that could ensure protection to these rights. The Tunisian constitution protects private life and private data in its 24 article.
The state protects the right to privacy and the inviolability of the home, and the confidentiality of correspondence, communications, and personal information.
Draft amendments to Law n°63 of 2004 on personal data protection, expected to consolidate the authority's independence and reinforce its supervisory role over government authorities’ handling of personal data are yet to be submitted to the parliament.
If approved by the parliament, a provisional commission established by the constitution to review the constitutionality of draft laws (until the future constitutional court is put in place) may find the new ID law to be unconstitutional. However, this can only happen if the president, the prime minister or at least 30 MPs, challenge the law within seven days of its adoption.
In the meantime, the question remains whether Tunisian netizens and civil society will step up their advocacy strategies in opposition to the bill, in a country where awareness about risks to privacy are lacking.

author: Ahmed Medien


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Law Professor Says Trinidad and Tobago’s Education Failures Are an Abuse of Human Rights · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Photo: dcJohn / Flickr / CC 2.0
Trinidad and Tobago boasts of having free universal education for its citizens, despite the stopgap measure of an entrance examination to secondary school that results in children as young as 11 competing for limited places in the better-equipped public schools, known as “prestige” schools.
The reality is that education in Trinidad and Tobago is neither free (while subsidised, there are still costs attached) nor universal (many of the government schools are poorly equipped and inadequately staffed). Now, one educator, Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, the dean at The University of the West Indies’ Faculty of Law, is calling on the state to live up to its responsibilities.
In a guest post at the hard-sitting news site Wired868, Belle Antoine argued that things like education and healthcare are human rights; “rights, not privileges, or handouts”.
Antoine was also careful to make a distinction between the government and the state, which she called “a neutralised concept that goes beyond particular administrations and political timeframes”:
Human Rights have long gone past the limitation that the subject of rights only involves what we call civil and political rights—that is, the right to life, to expression, movement, etc. Rather, the more recent understanding of rights is that they also involve what we call economic, social and cultural rights; namely, the rights to education, to health, to work, the environment and to culture.
Significantly, we have moved away from the self-imposed limitation that economic, social and cultural rights are merely unenforceable ideals. Rather, the international community now accepts that these kinds of bread and butter rights are just as vital, and in some ways more directly important, to the central dignity and equality of mankind.
Accordingly, international conventions and protocols have been signed and developed to ensure that they have tangible and concrete meaning. Ultimately, what this means, is that States now have direct legal obligations to promote and protect such rights.
Referring to the 1999 San Salvador Protocol, which raised the bar for human rights by protecting economic, social, and cultural freedoms, Antoine noted, “The bottom line is that we can no longer turn a blind eye to the State’s duties to promote, provide and protect rights to education, to health, to work, to culture and to the environment. Notably, this jurisprudence calls on States to ‘progressively realise’ these rights. What this also means is that a State cannot regress or go backward in their provision”.
Her point — supported by examples of inadequate pay and lousy working conditions, as well as the recent denial of access to government-subsidised tertiary education for people over the age of 50 — is that Trinidad and Tobago has slipped backwards.
Referring to a news story in which parents were seen petitioning for government intervention to upgrade one particular primary school, Belle Antoine concluded:
We have become so [de]sensitised to suffering, so unaware of and cynical about our place in the world that, on the night that the story of the kneeling parents was aired, the people-meter question was whether it was ‘politically motivated’.
Wondering if the race of the protesters might have had anything to do with the way in which the media house framed the question, she added:
Race and ethnicity should not make any difference to our entitlements and rights as citizens of this nation that we say that we want to build.
Race does not typically factor in to students’ admission to desirable secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago, where — regardless of economic reach — citizens are intended to have access to an education. In fact, says Patrice Cox-Neaves, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, the original concept of universal education was one in which the child was at the centre, supported by the ministry of education, school administration and teachers on one hand, and parents on the other. Just as importantly, because schools across the country were supposed to be of the same high standard, children would attend schools in their catchment area. “The idea was to be able to deal with everybody,” she explains. “It was about equity.”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Mexican Governors on the Run From Embezzlement Scandals · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

“Justice dances.” Illustration by EDO Ilustrado. Used with the artist's permission.
Recent news headlines in Mexico have been dominated by corruption scandals involving governors and ex-governors — or góbers as they are popularly called — from various political parties who looted government coffers.
Over the past few months, Global Voices has covered corruption in Mexico and the efforts to confront it. The most well-known case is that of Javier Duarte from Veracruz, a former member of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Duarte was suspended from office and subsequently expelled from the party.
In May 2016, the website Animal Político published an investigation revealing how the Duarte administration laundered millions in public funds through the use of fake companies. Months later in October, Duarte appeared on the country's highest-rated morning newscast and announced that he would step down and face the charges against him, then he fled — using a government helicopter according to some sources.
Duarte's escape fueled rage on social media, and Mexicans responded predictably with mocking contempt:
#Duarte se fuga pic.twitter.com/u6fMnkZmLw
— Almudena Ortega (@AlmudenaOrtega) October 20, 2016
Tweet: #Duarte escaped
Image: “Find Duarte”
#Duarte en:
Fuga-Helguera pic.twitter.com/nMqbAS6DAp
— @3ALAMBIQUE (@3ALAMBIQUE) October 19, 2016
Twitter: Runaway #Duarte by Helguera
Image: “Oh! So that's why he was on a weight-loss diet.”
Meanwhile, opting for a more serious tone, journalist and blogger Gilberto Perez said political parties should be responsible for the actions of their members:
Los partidos deberían responder con el dineral que reciben las raterías de los gobernantes que abanderan.#Duarte #Padrés #PAN #PRI pic.twitter.com/5iI5AFgaRZ
— Gilberto Pérez (@gilbertoperez) November 8, 2016
The parties should respond to the fortune of the thieving rulers they represent.
Another Mexican góber facing criminal charges is Guillermo Padrés from Sonora, a member of the National Action Party (PAN), a right-wing opposition party to the PRI. Padrés is being investigated for money laundering, tax evasion, and organized crime, among others. Like Duarte, he also created a media circus by appearing on a morning newscast, where he announced that he would turn himself over to police. Six days later, on November 16, a court ordered him to remain in jail for the duration of his trial for defrauding the treasury, to avoid another fugitive góber.
Padrés’ attorney is Antonio Lozano Gracia, a roguish old-timer of Mexico's political class. Lozano served as Attorney General of the Republic during an era tainted by shady investigations into the most notorious killings of the 1990s. His cases lost all credibility when it emerged that the institution he lead relied on the services of a clairvoyant known as “La Paca” to assist them. Now Lozano is defending Padrés and — according to some journalists — Javier Duarte, as well.
Dos reputados panistas, Lozano Gracia y Diego Fernandez de Ceballos, son los abogados de los corruptos Padrés y Duarte.
— Jairo Rueda (@elchaparueda) 15 de noviembre de 2016
Two reputed members of the PAN, Lozano Gracia and Diego Fernandez de Ceballos, are the lawyers of the corrupt Padrés and Duarte.
Twitter user Eugenia Domínguez suggested that Lozano himself should be investigated due to his shady history as a public servant:
Neta Antonio Lozano es abogado de Guillermo Padrés y de Javier Duarte??? Creo que habría que investigarlo también a él!!
— Eugenia Dominguez (@genydominguez) 16 de noviembre de 2016
Seriously Antonio Lozano is Guillermo Padrés and Javier Duarte's attorney??? I think he should be investigated too!!
Of course, Lozano claims that Padrés is innocent:
Antonio Lozano, abogado de @guillermopadres , confía que su cliente sea declarado inocente pic.twitter.com/2DqHQH8wxR
— Noticias MVS (@NoticiasMVS) 16 de noviembre de 2016
Antonio Lozano, attorney for @guillermopadres, is confident his client will be declared innocent.
Roberto Borge Angulo is another góber who left his state government virtually bankrupt. Before Borge stepped down, an investigative report titled “Borge's Pirates” exposed corruption in his administration, including how Borge owned an airline and used it to transport the governor, his family and friends in private jets at the state's expense.
@cantonzetina Que No se escape el sapo Borge y devuelva todo lo que se robó, apropió, despojó!!! Y también que pague por ecocidio Tajamar!?
— Ignacio Dector (@ignacio_dector) June 21, 2016
Tweet by Carlos Cantón Zetina: CITIZENS PROTEST IN CONGRESS AGAINST BORGE'S PROTECTION
Tweet by Ignacio Dector: Do not let the toad Borge escape and let's make him return everything that was stolen, appropriated, stripped!!! And also make him pay for Tajamar ecocide!
The cases of corrupt Mexican góbers keep piling up; however, sentences against them are non-existent. To date no one at this level has been sentenced by a judge, paid restitution or been imprisoned.
The lack of convictions has not gone unnoticed by civil society. María Amparo Casar stated in regards to Javier Duarte:
Lo que pasó en Veracruz fue un desastre político perfectamente evitable y tiene responsables: unos directos y otros indirectos. Todos con nombre y apellido. Algunos conocidos, otros no. Todos merecen un juicio. De ser culpables, la sanción que dicta la ley.
El primer responsable, jefe de la banda de los presuntos saqueadores, es el gobernador en fuga: Javier Duarte.
What happened in Veracruz was a completely avoidable political disaster and there are responsible parties: some directly responsible and others indirectly. All of them have first and last names. Some are known, and others are not. All deserve a trial. If they are found guilty, the law hands down the penalty.
The primary responsible party, the ringleader of the alleged looters, is the fugitive governor, Javier Duarte.
In this political landscape marred by corruption, the fundamental role of the political class, especially those responsible for the administration of justice, remains to be seen. Will they rise to the occasion or will they be unable to bring the góbers to justice and repair the damage they have caused?

author: J. Tadeo


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Mixed Reactions to Kyiv’s New ‘Theater on Podil’ · Global Voices
Isaac Webb

Source: Aleksandr Kozachenko, YouTube.
On Tuesday, construction workers unveiled the new “Kyiv Dramatic Theater on Podil” on Andriyivskyy Descent, one of the oldest streets in the city. Onlookers greeted the reconstructed theater, which had been fallen into disrepair over the last two decades, with mixed reactions: some applauded and cheered the design while others criticized its modern appearance and chanted “shame!” as workers lifted a screen covering the building's facade.
The unveiling of Kyiv's newest drama theater pic.twitter.com/EnrjAXSgwU
— Isaac Webb (@isaacdwebb) November 29, 2016
The reconstruction project, which began in 2015 and is being financed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's Roshen company, started as a charitable cause for the president's wife, Marina. Yuriy Sak, a public relations officer and one of the theater's actors, told journalists at the unveiling that a member of the theater's acting company is “on good terms” with Marina Petroshenko: “They were able to arrange a deal. They just explained to them straightforwardly: unless a private investor comes, it's never going to be finished. Never, because people will keep stealing money. This is the reality of our times. Once a private investor comes in, you get a fence, you get security, things are getting done, nobody's stealing nothing. A year and a half later [it's done].”
The old theater had become dilapidated and exposed to the elements; though the inside structure of the building remained intact, construction workers rebuilt much of the rest of the theater, Sak said: “For 20 years, it's been crumbling down. It was shit,” Sak said. “And now we have something to be proud of.”
The theater was originally supposed to be built in the style of other buildings on Andriyivskyy Descent, but Oleg Drozdov, the project's Kharkiv-born architect, ultimately took the building in a different direction. The theater's supporters say it's time to take Kyiv's architecture into the 21st century.  Sak told journalists that the building, which is equipped with infrastructure for people with disabilities, will have a modern stage and state-of-the art lighting equipment. “If you're building a theater in 2016, let's build a cool one. Build something so that when people come to Ukraine, they say ‘you gotta go and see that.'”
But critics say the building's modern style, including its light brown brick and black metal split-level facade, is incongruous with the street's historical architecture. Kyiv resident Yaroslav Emelyanenko told TV station 112:
Пока шло строительство, все были убеждены, что фасад временный, “монтажный”. Но подходит время открытия и занавес приподняли. Оказалось, что здание театра, расположенного в сердце старинного Киева после реконструкции планируется запустить в таком виде. То, что мы сегодня увидели – это дизайн крематория, промышленной вентиляционной системы. Или 1-2 блоков ЧАЭС, которые советские инженеры и архитекторы также реализовали с помощью чёрных кубических строений.
While it was under construction, everyone was sure that the facade was temporary, for “assembly.” But the opening is here and the curtain has been lifted. As it turns out, the theater building, positioned in the heart of old Kyiv, was supposed to be built in this style. What we saw today – it's the design of a crematorium, of an industrial ventilation system. Or the first and second blocks of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, which Soviet engineers and architects also built with the help of black cubic structures.
Critics took to social media, using the hashtag #ТеатрНаПодолі to express their discontent.
Саркофаг над чернобыльским реактором выглядит симпатичнее #театрНаПодолі https://t.co/32DvQbxkZc
— Virina (@Virina_Vi) November 29, 2016
The sarcophagus over the Chernobyl reactor looks nicer than #Theater on Podil.
A “Theater on Podil” parody Twitter account, tweeted out images comparing the theater to other structures.
Хочу познайомити вас з моїм молодшим братом. Він ще не театр, але у нього ще все попереду#театрНаПодолі pic.twitter.com/CyX2IVsPbL
— Театр на Подолі (@podiltheatre) November 29, 2016
I want to introduce you to my younger brother. It's not a theater, but everything's still ahead of him
А це мій родич, який мешкає в США#театрНаПодолі pic.twitter.com/F0frMCogrw
— Театр на Подолі (@podiltheatre) November 29, 2016
And this is my cousin, who lives in the U.S.
A similar parody account on Instagram posted photoshopped pictures of the theater.
A photo posted by Театр на Подолі (@podiltheeatre) on
A photo posted by Театр на Подолі (@podiltheeatre) on
“The unique original” vs. “the pathetic copy”
The theater is scheduled to open in time for “Kyiv Day,” the capital city's titular holiday that is celebrated on the last weekend in May.

author: Isaac Webb


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The Botched Affair of India’s Demonetization Drive Against Black Money · Global Voices
Vishal Yashoda Manve

Image from Flickr by SS & SS. From public domain.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who rose to power in 2014 with a promise he would ‘battle against black money’, has made good of his word — or so it seemed on the surface. On November 8, India withdrew 500 (US $7.50) and 1,000 (US $15.00) Indian rupee banknotes from circulation to stop the flow of black money and wipe out counterfeit currency from the system.
When we dig deeper into the consequences of this move, however, we find upsetting stories. People have been forced to stand in huge serpentine queues outside banks in India's metropolitan areas and villages in a bid to exchange their money, and numerous people have supposedly died while waiting in line or when health services refused to accept the old notes.
The lack of systematic implementation has created a wider network of chaos, especially in a country that is extremely cash reliant.
Implementation of #demonetization has been poor. While the buck stops with PM, real blame for execution lies with the usual suspects in MoF
— Minhaz Merchant (@MinhazMerchant) November 27, 2016
Modi's strategy is a part of various other steps he's undertaken to curb the black money menace in India, including the impending Goods and Services (GST) tax roll-out next year and a tax window and new amnesty schemes for tax evaders.
If demonetisation was meant to punish black money hoarders as per PM, why another amnesty scheme? Wasn't last scheme the absolute final one?
— Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) November 29, 2016
Let's try to dissect the politics and problems and understand the positives and negatives of the black money issue and India's demonetization drive that has left many poor Indians in a lurch with no access to medicines and daily essentials.
Nearly 86 percent of India's cash reserve was in the form of recently banned denominations — Rs 500 ($7.5) and Rs 1000 ($15) notes. This left the Indian economy hurting for cash as traders, workers, and lower strata of society heavily relies on cash transactions. The number of unbanked in India is at a staggering 233 million (around 20% of the population), according to a 2015 PeW research report. So, even if India's right-wing government wanted to clear the system of black money and get India to go cashless, analysts claim there was lack of pre-planning that created problems for citizens.
For example, Indians stood in huge queues to withdraw their money, but the Automated Teller Machines (ATM) lacked calibration in the early days of demonetization to dispense the latest currency notes because of differences in the dimensions of old and new currencies.
Found an ATM with cash and absolutely no crowd. The ATM has only 2000 notes hence no one wants ??
— مفلس Muflis (@xtahzy) November 19, 2016
Majority of people asking for ATMs are looking for Rs. 100 notes, if ATM has only Rs 2000 it's of no use https://t.co/0JO9nGh6ew
— Chandru (@ChandrusWeb) November 20, 2016
According to reports, more than 33 Indians have died either standing in long queues, facing shock or because of a lack of cash for emergency purposes including hospitalization and transport.
One heartbreaking example is that of a sick newborn who was refused treatment in India's financial capital, Mumbai, after parents couldn't provide money in new currency bills. The infant later died.
Meanwhile, Modi had said concessions would be allowed for use of the notes in government-run and private hospitals, chemists and petrol pumps until 11 November. This was then extended to 24 November, but numerous deaths were reported in the same period as people thronged to banks, post offices and ATM's to withdraw cash in long queues.
Prime Minister Modi, in a bid to come clean on various allegations that his party members were tipped off about the currency ban, asked top ministers from his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to submit details of bank account transactions between November to December 2016 by January 1, 2017.
Modi has made promises about bringing back black money stashed by corrupt Indians in Swiss banks. While this has not materialized, a slew of measures undertaken by the government has tried unearthing the menace of black money that plagues India's highly complex economy. The government hopes to crack down on illicit funds earned from corruption or tax evasion in the form of cash and also to tackle fake currency.
Meanwhile, only 2 to 3 percent of Indians actually pay taxes and India loses hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes every year, and nearly 90 percent of transactions in India are conducted in cash.
Many Indians on social media and economists too are critical of demonetization, claiming it could block India's fast-rising gross domestic product (GDP) figures and slow down manufacturing in Asia's second-largest economy.
Meanwhile, a 19-year-old student and a self-claimed Right to Information Act activist named Abhishek Mishra was arrested by the Madhya Pradesh police for his social media posts, which attacked Modi and other politicians on the subject of demonetization.
India's former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week called demonetization a monumental mismanagement that might dent India's GDP by 2 percent. He said the deaths of people and distress among the poor, farmers and small traders had convinced him that demonetization had led to organised loot and legalized plunder by the government.
Indian civil rights activist and journalist Teesta Setalvad wrote on alternet.org:
Demand and supply is the basics of any system, legal or illegal, and unless the government seriously tackles the supply side of black money corruption, the unofficial economy will continue to flourish. This corruption can only double with the newly introduced Rs 2,000 crore notes.
India's former Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan commented on Huffington Post India that focusing on widening the tax regime is the way to go:
There is no reason why everybody who should pay taxes is not paying taxes. I would focus more on tracking data and better tax administration to get at where money is not being declared. I think it is very hard in this modern economy to hide your money that easily.
Demonetization has also opened up debates about nationalism in India with critics being panned as anti-nationals. A senior army officer was criticized for his Facebook post condemning the currency ban while awaiting his turn in an ATM line.
The actual verdict on the demonetisation will be out only after December ends as aptly put forth by political analyst Devdan Chaudhuri:
The fall-out of the policy is unfolding now. So the next month will be critical to determine what people finally think of this move.

author: Vishal Yashoda Manve


text:
“The End is Near”. “Remember What We Sacrificed”. Dispatches from Eastern Aleppo. · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

One of the many destroyed neighborhoods of Aleppo. Photo taken and sent by Abdelrazzak Zakzouk to Global Voices on November 29, 2016.
As forces loyal to the Assad regime make their advances in rebel-held and besieged Eastern Aleppo, human rights groups as well as the UN are sounding the alarm.
At the time of writing, over 50,000 have been displaced by the Syrian regime's advance, according to the UN. Whereas the number of casualties is hard to determine due to the sheer scale of bombings, it is estimated that it is in the hundreds. Hundreds more are being caught by regime forces as they try to flee and at least 500 men have so far been forcibly disappeared.
Others have warned that many of the over than 250,000 civilians trapped in Eastern Aleppo are already facing desperate conditions due to the effects of the siege as well as the continuous targeting of hospitals and other civilian infrastructures by the air forces of the Assad regime and of the Russian government.
Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders reported on November 15, 2016:
Renewed intense conflict through late November in besieged areas near Damascus and Homs has led to significant increases in mass casualty influxes, says Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Multiple airstrikes hit east Ghouta again today; medics in the area are reporting many casualties, including women and children, but the tally of today’s war-wounded and war-dead is not yet complete.
On Friday November 18, 2016, the Eastern Aleppo Health Directorate announced that all remaining hospitals were out of service:
لقد خرجت كل المشافي العاملة بمدينة حلب الحرة عن الخدمة نتيجة القصف الممنهج والمستمر لهذه المشافي خلال اليومين الماضيين من قبل قوات النظام والطيران الروسي. وهذا التدمير المتعمد للبنى التحتية الأساسية للحياة جعل الشعب الصامد والمحاصر بكل أطفاله وشيوخه ورجاله ونسائه بدون أي مرفق صحي  يقدم لهم العلاج وفرص إنقاذ أرواحهم ويتركهم للموت الذي يسعى له النظام ولم ينفك يبحث عن وسيلة للقضاء على شعبنا الصامد.
مديرية صحة محافظة حلب
الدكتور عبد الباسط ابراهيم
All hospitals operating in Free [east] Aleppo are now out of service due to the systematic and continuous bombardment by the regime and Russian air forces over the last two days.
This deliberate targeting of vital infrastructure has left the besieged and tenacious people of Aleppo, children, women, men and elderly, without any facilities providing healthcare or a change to save their lives. They now face death which has all along been the aim of the regime that left no method untried to eliminate our resolute people.
Dr. Abdul-Baset Ibrahim
Aleppo Governorate Health Directorate
The evidence in this statement was confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday November 19, 2016.
The dire situation lead to Jan Egeland of the UN task force on humanitarian access in Syria saying that the UN Security Council has “utterly failed” to protect civilians.
Syria: I tell @abcnews 193 nations now witnessing worst war in our generation. @UN SecCo created to protect civilians. It has utterly failed
— Jan Egeland (@NRC_Egeland) November 28, 2016
Human Rights Watch (HRW) listed a number of methods used by the Syrian-Russian air force without denying that many children have also been killed by opposition groups using mortars, rockets, or other attacks. Among the methods used by the Syrian regime and Russian government are the infamous ‘double tap’ method which put in practice looks like:
They are killed by Syrian-Russian airstrikes in East Aleppo. We occasionally glimpse the results, like the two young boys filmed in an East Aleppo suburb, grieving after the death of their brother after an airstrike in August. Days later, Syrian aircraft bombed the funeral procession. And then they bombed people who came to the rescue.
‘Double tap’, in other words, means bombing a site, waiting for rescue units to arrive, and then bombing it again. Other methods of killing used by the Syrian and Russian air forces include internationally banned weapons such as cluster bombs and chemical weapons:
They are killed and injured by weapons used in air attacks by the Syrian-Russian coalition. Children have been hurt by cluster bombs, which are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and by their explosive remnants – like the four-year-old girl, killed when she picked one up thinking it was a toy. Children are victims of chemical weapons, used in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. They suffer incendiary weapons attacks that have started raging fires and cause excruciatingly painful burns.
The regime and Russian government have even dropped leaflets over the city with the following threat:
Assad army dropped leaflets this morning in E. #Aleppo: Leave or You Will be Destroyed..No One Will Aid You.
last part is, tragically, true pic.twitter.com/V6zOYiRfXD
— Fadi Al-Qadi (@fqadi) 29 November 2016
“This is your last hope….Save yourselves. If you do not leave these areas urgently, you will be annihilated” and they end by saying “You know that everyone has given up on you. They left you alone to face your doom and nobody will give you any help”
One media activist reported that corpses fill the streets, often staying there for long periods of time due to continuous bombings:
عمرو حلبي
لمن يسأل عن حلب الآن … جثث الشهداء النساء و الأطفال و الشيوخ بالشوارع و لا أحد يقدر على انتشالها او دفنها بسبب القصف العنيف pic.twitter.com/sHYXgdGSbN
— تنسيقية مدينة سلقين (@salqin) 29 November 2016
Those asking about Aleppo now: corpses of women, children & elderly fill the streets and no one can get near them due to intense bombings
The White Helmets, Syria's Civil Defense Force, have uploaded a video showing one of the most recent massacres by government forces:
BEYOND HORRIFIC @SyriaCivilDef footage shows shredded bodies of displaced #Aleppo civilians following today's regime targeting Jub Al-Qubeh pic.twitter.com/bnmqrKqNu2
— Riam Dalati (@Dalatrm) 30 November 2016
Activists inside Eastern Aleppo are having a hard time updating the outside world regularly due to repeated power cuts. One Syrian, a 24-year-old media activist who chose to remain anonymous, told Global Voices:
I won't lie to you. I gave up. I hate myself for it, they [the regime] killed my daughter and several friends of mine, but I can't go on. The end is near.
Another media activist, 23-year-old Abdelrazzak Zakzouk who works as a videographer, was asked by Global Voices if he had a message to activists and to the international community.
He said:
مقيم في حي الأنصاري الشرقي الذي يقع بحلب المحاصرة
وضعي بشكل شخصي جيد حتى الآن
أما الوضع بشكل عام هو سيء جداً ، تعرض الحي للقصف اليوم مثل كل أحياء حلب ، أصبح القصف جزء من نمط حياتنا ، مشاهد الجثث بالشوارع و الأشلاء الناجمة عن الغارات و القصف المدفعي و المروحي الذي يعود مصدره لقوات النظام السوري و حلفاءه أصبحت اعتيادية .
اليوم بظل هذا القصف و الحصار علينا بوجه رسالتي للناشطين السوريين و للمهتمين بالثورة السورية و أطلب منهم إيصال رسالة الإعلام يلي ضحينا من أجلها و مستمرين بالتضحية ، أطلب منهم الحديث للأجانب عن الثورة السورية ، أولاً بحكم وجودهم ضمن المجتمع الغربي و ثانياً بسبب وجود وقت عندهم ليقوموا بذلك ، و أيضاً أطلب من الناشطين السوريين التأكيد ع مبادئ ثورتنا و صمودنا للاستمرار فيها .
للأسف لم يعد لدينا ثقة بالأشخاص المسؤولين ، أو من يسمّون صنّاع القرار ، بعد 6 سنوات من عمر الثورة و التي تضمنت مساعدتهم لنظام بشار الأسد بتقديم مساعدات لضمان بقاءه لم نعد نستطيع حتى توجيه الكلام لهم .
أقل شيء ممكن طلبه من الأمم المتحدة و حكومات العالم مراعات 300 ألف مدني متواجدين في حلب المحاصرة ، لم يعد اهتمامنا الاكل و الشرب رغم الحصار ، أصبح السؤال الذي يراودنا هل سنعود للمنزل لو خرجنا منه ؟ و لو بقينا فيه هل سنبقى أحياء؟ .
الصورة المرفقة قمت بتصويرها اليوم ، بعد سقوط 13 برميل على حي الأنصاري الشرقي – و الذي أسكن فيه – و تزامن سقوط البراميل مع قصف مدفعي على المنطقة
I live in the Eastern Ansari neighborhood, in besieged Aleppo. Personally, I am in good condition so far. However, the situation in general is dire. The neighborhood has been subjected to bombings like all neighborhoods in Aleppo. Bombing has become a part of life. Scenes of corpses on the streets and of body parts caused by the bombings and artillery shelling and airstrikes, by the regime and its allies, have become common.
Today, under the bombings and the siege, I direct my message to the Syrian activists and those concerned with the revolution, and I ask them to send out our message that we have sacrificed for and keep on sacrificing. I ask of them to talk to foreigners about the Syrian revolution, given that many of them live in Western societies with the time to do so. And I also ask of Syrian activists to assert the principles of our revolution and our perseverance so that it can continue.
Unfortunately we don’t trust those in charge, or those so-called decision makers. After 6 years of the revolution, which included their assistance to the regime of Bashar Al Assad by offering support to ensure his stay, we are no longer able to even look them in the eye.
The least we ask of the United Nations and the world governments is not to forget the 300,000 civilians present in besieged Aleppo. Our worry is no longer food and water. In spite of the siege, the main question on our mind is “will we be able to go back to our homes after leaving them?” And “if we remained, will we stay alive?”
I have taken the attached picture [above] today [November 29], after 13 barrels fell on the Eastern Ansari neighborhood, where I live. The barrel bombs were accompanied with artillery shelling on the area.
The tweets of seven year old Bana and her mother Fatemah, an English teacher in Eastern Aleppo, have gone viral. These are some of their tweets from November 27.
The army got in, this could be our last days sincerely talking. No Internet. Please please please pray for us.- Fatemah #Aleppo
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 27 November 2016
Last message – under heavy bombardments now, can't be alive anymore. When we die, keep talking for 200,000 still inside. BYE.- Fatemah
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 27 November 2016
Tonight we have no house, it's bombed & I got in rubble. I saw deaths and I almost died. – Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/arGYZaZqjg
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 27 November 2016
Under heavy bombardments now. In between death and life now, please keep praying for us. #Aleppo
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 28 November 2016
Message – we are on the run as many people killed right now in heavy bombardments. We are fighting for our lives. still with you.- Fatemah
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 28 November 2016
We have no home now. I got minor injury. I didn't sleep since yesterday, I am hungry. I want to live, I don't want to die. – Bana #Aleppo
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 28 November 2016
This is our house, My beloved dolls died in the bombing of our house. I am very sad but happy to be alive.- Bana pic.twitter.com/9i0xxJrQtD
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 29 November 2016
This is my reading place where I wanted to start reading Harry Potter but it's bombed. I will never forget. – Bana pic.twitter.com/6fXX2Me8ZB
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 29 November 2016
APPEAL to the world – I & Bana received death threats & we are convinced Syrian Army will target us soon because of our account and messages
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 30 November 2016
We are today appealing to the world, to everyone to do something for me, Bana, my family & the remaining people inside East Aleppo to make
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 30 November 2016
Sure we get out of Aleppo safe and unharmed by the advancing Syrian Army forces. – Fatemah #Aleppo
— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) 30 November 2016
Bana was sent ebooks of ‘Harry Potter’ by author JK Rowling a few days prior. Rowling has since endorsed a petition urging the British Parliament to air-drop life saving aid into besieged cities in Syria.
#StandWithAleppohttps://t.co/KHtFyPOhFb pic.twitter.com/oid6Sn6KBJ
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) 29 November 2016
Abdulkafi Alhamdo, a media activist and teacher in Eastern Aleppo, tweeted a short periscope video of him giving an English lesson to his students, stressing that they want to keep on learning despite the siege.
مباشر على #Periscope Amazing studentslive from Aleppo#StandWithAleppo https://t.co/uFVZZPI7XF
— @Mr.Alhamdo (@Mr_Alhamdo) 28 November 2016
Another media activist, Ahmad Alkhatib, tweeted a photo of a man fleeing with his child:
Run, Try to survive
It doesn't matter if you wear clothes or not, The important you still alive #Aleppo today after the massacre pic.twitter.com/4vXsLqVoUW
— Ahmad Alkhatib (@AhmadAlkhtiib) 30 November 2016
He also announced that his friend, Anas, who worked as a clown, was killed by the Assad regime:
Another friend who was making the children's of East #Aleppo smile, Just died today by #Assad bombs in #Almashhad neighborhood ?
RIP Anas pic.twitter.com/eKsq1gnSo8
— Ahmad Alkhatib (@AhmadAlkhtiib) 29 November 2016
British-Syrian author and Global Voices contributor Leila Al Shami tweeted:
Aleppans flee fascist and imperialist onslaught
may never return to their homes pic.twitter.com/pNcG52wT93
— Leila Al-Shami (@LeilaShami) 29 November 2016
Meanwhile, many activists outside of Syria have been using social media not just to highlight the suffering on the ground but to remind their followers how the Syrian Revolution started.
American Artist and Writer Molly Crabapple tweeted:
For East Aleppo, and for the original Syrian revolution pic.twitter.com/DCHmbtuSiZ
— Molly Crabapple (@mollycrabapple) 28 November 2016
Syrian activist and writer @DarthNader tweeted a series of videos of early protests from 2011 to 2013. Here are some of them:
Flashback to a different time: December 30, 2011. Huge protest in the central square of Homs, Syria. https://t.co/K1jdtrxDzS
— Nader (@DarthNader) 28 November 2016
May 2012: Kurdish and Free Syrian flags at this protest in the Kobane region https://t.co/IGEm3wAfs6
— Nader (@DarthNader) 28 November 2016
April 2013: Raqqa (after Assad, before ISIS) puts on a revolutionary rap show https://t.co/SXMvXEKzHZ
— Nader (@DarthNader) 28 November 2016
June 2012: Fiery nighttime protest in Kafrsouseh, Damascus https://t.co/fwXHKowfhi
— Nader (@DarthNader) 28 November 2016
The reason for this, he explains, is:
Walter Benjamin informs us why we must remember and archive the Syrian revolution even after its defeat: pic.twitter.com/pyVXmHHCNJ
— Nader (@DarthNader) 28 November 2016
Elias Abou Jaoude and Sarmad Al Jilane contributed to this post.

author: Elia J. Ayoub


text:
These East African Countries Show How Teamwork and Technology Can Thwart Illegal Fishing · Global Voices
Ensia

Photo courtesy of FISH-i Africa — an endeavor working to halt large-scale illegal fishing.
This post by Emma Bryce 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.
Early in December 2012, a South Korean vessel called the Premier entered the Indian Ocean to fish. In West Africa, authorities knew that the boat had been fishing illegally in Liberian waters before it made its way to Africa’s other coast. That raised the ire of East African countries, which weren’t keen to welcome a lawbreaker into their seas. Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritius, the Comoros, Mozambique, and the Seychelles rapidly mobilized against the vessel, shutting it out of their ports and refusing to grant it a fishing license.
“All of a sudden, the Premier was surrounded by countries that were saying no to everything,” recalls Benedict Kiilu, a Kenyan principal fisheries officer who was part of the team that tracked the vessel at the time. In 2013, unable to land its catch, the disgraced ship was finally driven out of the region. Ultimately, it was forced to pay US$2 million to Liberia for plundering its fish.
The beating heart of this crime-busting, resource-conserving effort was FISH-i Africa, a network of countries committed to sharing fisheries intelligence that was established in 2012 by the not-for-profit Stop Illegal Fishing. Composed of the six countries that drove out the Premier, along with Madagascar and Somalia, FISH-i Africa seeks to form a united front against illegal — or “pirate” — fishing.
“It’s eight like-minded countries working together to share information and stand shoulder to shoulder where illegal fishing is concerned,” says Tony Long, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Ending Illegal Fishing Project, which provides technical support to aid FISH-i’s efforts.
Because illegal fishing is unregulated — meaning catch is concealed and almost impossible to trace — it has become a major driver of overfishing. By flouting the rules designed to protect certain habitats and species, it can also undermine vulnerable ecosystems and threaten marine species. But, where attempts to fight it were once hampered by bureaucracy and snail’s-pace information sharing between countries, now they’re happening in real-time on FISH-i’s digital communications platform. Here, member countries exchange vessel license lists, news about suspect activities and details obtained during port inspections to build up a record of the vessels entering their waters.
FISH-i also closely tracks vessels’ activities on the high seas using satellite data and shares that information via the platform. This helps authorities flag vessels that may be fishing in off-limits areas, or those that betray unusual travel patterns that suggest they’re transferring fish illegally between boats.
Ideally, these investigations can reveal whether vessels have appropriate licenses, where they’ve been fishing and perhaps if they have a criminal record. Countries that wise up to illegal fishers’ transgressions then have grounds to shut their ports to these vessels so they can’t sell their catch or even to force them to pay fines, as in the case of the Premier.
“It’s a real financial loss to the [vessel’s] owner, which means illegal fishing isn’t profitable anymore. That’s really what we want to achieve,” says Per Erik Bergh, managing director of NFDS Africa, a consultancy that works to combat illegal fishing in Africa and provides support to FISH-i.
The platform was created to reclaim the estimated US$200 million in revenue that the eight FISH-i countries lose annually to illegal fishers invading East African waters. Home to the world’s second-most productive tuna fishery, this region attracts commercial fishing vessels from around the world, including illegal fishers — whose activities range from using false flags, fake licenses and fictitious names to fishing prohibited species and fishing in protected waters.
“They’ll exploit the lack of international collaboration and take advantage of a patchy system,” says Long. “In the past a vessel might be fishing illegally, and one country might say, ‘You can’t come to my port,’ whereas the next country would say, ‘Come to mine.’” This loophole is exactly what FISH-i is now trying to close.
So far, the united front is working. Since it was founded, FISH-i has been involved in more than 30 investigations of suspect ships. It has identified criminal networks distributing fake fishing licenses in Tanzania, exposed vessels using multiple fraudulent identities and tracked down fugitive ships. Its relationship with INTERPOL, the international crime investigation agency, also enables FISH-i to widely share and receive information about pirate fishing.
“Some of the investigations we are doing are going into quite substantial organized crime networks,” says Bergh.
Trygg Mat Tracking analyst Duncan Copeland is building a system to help FISH-i more precisely pinpoint suspect boats. Photo courtesy of FISH-i Africa.
FISH-i’s evolving satellite detection system is also helping it get around the hurdle of illegal vessels that try to avoid discovery.
“There are very sophisticated structures illegal fishers are using to hide their operations and their locations, which is what we’re trying to deconstruct,” says Duncan Copeland, chief analyst of Trygg Mat Tracking, a not-for-profit fisheries intelligence resource that provides technical support to FISH-i. Some ships turn off their automatic identification systems, for instance, which makes them impervious to satellite tracking. Copeland is helping to build a system that combines multiple layers of information to help FISH-i pinpoint criminal ships with greater precision.
But can FISH-i’s team of African nations have an impact on the decidedly global problem of illegal fishing? John Amos, president of the nonprofit SkyTruth, thinks so. Recently SkyTruth, Google and the marine advocacy group Oceana launched Global Fishing Watch, an open-access satellite platform that reveals the location of any trackable ship in the world.
“Teaming up with your neighbors to get a better operating picture of who’s doing what, where, just makes sense,” he says. “This is an opportunity for countries to get together and pool their intelligence resources, and we should be doing that at a global scale.” (The Pew Charitable Trusts has a similar global vessel-tracking project, called Eyes on the Seas, that plans to start assisting FISH-i by spring 2017.)
In addition to earmarking criminals, there’s evidence that FISH-i’s activities deter crime, too. Whereas vessels used to fish without a license and face few consequences, now they know they’re being watched. According to Kiilu, some FISH-i countries have seen a 33 percent rise in fishing revenue as vessels purchase more licenses.
After FISH-i helped Somalia home in on the Greko 1, inspectors found banned trawl nets on board. Photo courtesy of FISH-i Africa.
Other countries are taking note of this success. “The impact is so great that other parts of Africa are copying what we do,” says Kiilu. “We’re a specimen for study.” In West Africa, where illegal fishing usurps several hundred million dollars a year, the West Africa Task Force was formed in 2015 by six nations to combat illegal fishing — and it’s based entirely on FISH-i’s model. “There is certainly the goal to eventually see more of these task force type structures set up in other regions,” Copeland says.
Recently, FISH-i’s newest member, Somalia, had its first major triumph when in October it cornered the Greko 1 — a fake-flagged vessel that not only was fishing without a license using banned trawl nets, but also had invaded an off-limits area reserved for Somali fishers. “By taking action against the Greko 1, [Somalis] are sending a strong signal that they will act against illegal fishing,” says Bergh.
For FISH-i, it’s yet another sign of its success — proof that its unique, collaborative approach really works to protect the ocean’s natural resources across its range.
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author: Ensia


text:
Award-Winning Chinese Citizen News Site Founder Detained Amid Crackdown on Human Right Defenders · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

Huang Qi. Photo via Radio Free Asia.
This post was written by Catherine Lai and originally published on Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) on November 30, 2016. The version below is published on Global Voices under a partnership agreement.
The founder of a Chinese citizen news site has been detained after police searched his home. Huang Qi is the third well-known rights defence figure in China to disappear or be detained in a fortnight, after the disappearances of lawyer Jiang Tianyong and citizen journalist Liu Feiyue, who activists believe to be in police custody.
Police in Sichuan burst into the home of the 64 Tianwang founder, searching it and detaining Huang on Monday night, a local activist told US-backed Radio Free Asia (RFA). They had a search warrant, she said.
News of his disappearance was posted on Twitter by Pu Fei, a volunteer at the 64 Tianwang site, but the tweet was deleted and Pu has been unable to be contacted since then, according to information posted by Hong Kong-based rights watch website Weiquanwang. A call made to Pu appeared to suggest that his phone was turned off.
Huang’s mother told RFA that the police took photos and looked through Huang’s possessions.
According to the two witnesses, officers from Mianyang and Neijiang — areas hit by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake — were present. Huang was jailed in November 2011 after he investigated allegations that poor construction contributed to the deaths of schoolchildren in the disaster.
Huang was recently detained during a major meeting of Communist Party elite in October. Photos showed that his home had been searched, with items scattered on the floor. His computer was also taken by authorities.
HKFP’s calls to Huang Qi’s mobile phone went unanswered.
Tianwang is an independent news site that posts articles and information about human rights incidents in China, including detentions by police, forced demolitions, petitioner activism and demonstrations. It recently received the 2016 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize. Nine citizen journalists who have contributed to the site are currently detained, and five are on bail, according to Tianwang.
On Wednesday, Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), a network of Chinese and international human rights NGOs, released a statement urging the Chinese government to release Huang, lawyer Jiang Tianyong and citizen journalist Liu Feiyue.
Jiang Tianyong and Liu Feiyue. Photo via Radio Free Asia.
Jiang Tianyong is a disbarred lawyer who recently worked to publicize China’s crackdown on lawyers. He has not been heard from since last Monday. Liu Feiyue, the founder of a rights watch website, was reportedly taken by police last Thursday. A family member said he was being criminally detained for inciting subversion of state power, but the family has not received any formal notification from police.
CHRD said:
From information CHRD has received, police are believed to be holding the men in unknown locations, raising fears that they are at risk of torture […] The detention and disappearance in quick succession of these well-known leading figures of China’s rights defense movement further signal the escalation of President Xi Jinping’s relentless crackdown on civil society.

author: Hong Kong Free Press


text:
Netizen Report: China’s New Cybersecurity Law Hardcodes Surveillance Practices Into Law (And Technology) · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Downtown Shanghai. Photos released to public domain.
China's new cybersecurity law will ban Internet users from publishing information that damages “national honor”, “disturbs economic or social order” or is aimed at “overthrowing the socialist system”. It will codify previously scattered Internet regulations and practices of unique government agencies, and elevate the powers held by the country's Cyberspace Administration, the leading government body making and enforcing policy for the Internet.
The law requires Internet companies to verify users’ identities and to store users’ “personal information and other important business data” in China, effectively making anonymity illegal. The legislation has drawn criticism for its infringement on users’ rights to freedom of expression, privacy and anonymity, and for placing stringent requirements on businesses operating in the country.
In what appears to be one example of the cybercrime law in action, security firm Kryptowire recently identified several models of Android mobile devices that have pre-installed permanent software (firmware) that collects sensitive personal data, including text messages, geolocations, contact lists, and call logs and transmits them to a third-party server in Shanghai, creating backdoor access to user data for law enforcement and other authorities.
Without users’ consent, the code can bypass Android's permission model. This could allow anyone interested in a mobile user's data — from government officials to malicious hackers — to execute remote commands with system privileges and even reprogram the devices.
In addition to the surveillance of private data as required by law, Chinese Android phone users regularly download Android apps from unofficial third party app markets since Google left China in 2010. These Android markets are flooded with apps containing malware that can steal and manipulate personal data.
The company that developed the firmware, ADUPS, said the software was designed to help phone manufacturers “identify junk texts” and “improve mobile phone experience”. The devices were sold by the US-based online retailers Amazon and BestBuy, among others.
Meanwhile, reports that Facebook has developed software allowing it to suppress posts from users’ feeds based on their geographic area also drew criticism this week. The company is reportedly developing the tool to hand over to a China-based third party in order to fulfill the necessary requirements to operate in the country. The New York Times said of the reports, “the project illustrates the extent to which Facebook may be willing to compromise one of its core mission statements, ‘to make the world more open and connected,’ to gain access to a market of 1.4 billion Chinese people. The implications of the cybersecurity law for Facebook's existence in China remain to be seen.
On the eve of elections, which were preceded by a fierce campaign, authorities have shut down the Internet and some telephone networks, according to a local journalist. Independent candidate Adama Barrow, backed by a coalition of at least seven political parties, along with Mamma Kandeh of the newly formed Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC), are challenging Jammeh in what analysts say is the most crucial vote in more than two decades. Kemo Cham, a Gambian journalist living in exile, posted on Facebook about the shutdown:
Clearly he has lost, even before the votes are cast. Yaya jammeh is reported to have declared a state of emergency, shutting down the internet, international calls and even electricity supply, just hours before Gambians vote. He knows he will lose in a free and fair elections.
The founder of a Chinese citizen news site was detained after police searched his home. Huang Qi is the third well-known rights defender in China to disappear or be detained in a fortnight, after the disappearances of lawyer Jiang Tianyong and citizen journalist Liu Feiyue, who activists believe to be in police custody.
Police in Sichuan burst into the home of the 64 Tianwang founder, searching it and detaining Huang on Monday night, a local activist told US-backed Radio Free Asia (RFA). They had a search warrant, she said.
Tianwang is an independent news site that posts articles and information about human rights incidents in China, including detentions by police, forced demolitions, petitioner activism and demonstrations. It recently received the 2016 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Prize. Nine citizen journalists who have contributed to the site are currently detained, and five are on bail, according to Tianwang.
Bahraini human rights defender Hussain Radhi was charged with “inciting hatred against the regime, threatening civil peace and publishing false news” for several tweets and retweets intended to document protests in Bahraini villages and their suppression by police. Radhi has denied the charges brought against him.
Photojournalist Hussein Baydoun was recently banned from the home of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, where formal meetings and events frequently take place. Baydoun, who works with The New Arab and as an independent photographer, is well known for  photos  documenting political protests in Lebanon, among them the 2015 ‘you stink’ protests against government corruption were featured in numerous outlets.
Brazil's Superior Court of Justice (STJ) decided unanimously that the “right to be forgotten” cannot be imposed upon Google or other search engines, reasoning that this would give search engines too much responsibility, effectively making them into digital censors. The decision goes against that of the European Court of Justice which decided in 2014 that search engines do bear responsibility for de-indexing search results when an individual could successfully claim a right to have “old or irrelevant” information about them removed from search engine results. The rule has been hotly disputed in the EU and elsewhere, particularly in cases where public figures have sought to have information removed from search results, in what appears to be an effort to improve their public image.
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Oiwan Lam, Weiping Li, Elizabeth Rivera, Taisa Sganzerla and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


text:
Polls Open Amid Communications Blackout in The Gambia · Global Voices
Demba Kandeh

A voter with a t-shirt carrying a political message in the Gambia. Creative Commons photo by Wikipedia user Ikiwaner.
Voting is underway today in the tiny West African nation of The Gambia, where incumbent president Yahya Jammeh is seeking a fifth term. On the eve of elections, which were preceded by a fierce campaign, authorities have shut down the internet and other essential telecommunications. Independent candidate Adama Barrow, backed by a coalition of at least seven political parties, along with Mamma Kandeh of the newly formed Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC), are challenging Jammeh in what analysts say is the most crucial vote in more than two decades.
According to the electoral commission, in a country which has a population of about two million, up to 886,578 are registered voters. Polls opened at 7:00 am and will close at 5:00 pm (1700 hrs GMT).
Kemo Cham, a Gambian journalist living in exile, posted on Facebook about the shutdown:
Clearly he has lost, even before the votes are cast. Yaya jammeh is reported to have declared a state of emergency, shutting down the internet, international calls and even electricity supply, just hours before Gambians vote. He knows he will lose in a free and fair elections.
The shutdown started on the evening of Wednesday November 30, 2016, barely hours after a coalition of non-governmental organisations, led by Access Now, issued a letter calling on Gambian authorities not to block internet access.
“We implore you to keep the internet on,” the letter noted, adding that internet has enabled significant advances in health, education and creativity, and is now essential to fully realise human rights — including participation in elections and access to information.
Fatu Camara, a Gambian journalist and former press secretary of president Jammeh, who now hosts the country's most popular television show, tweeted about the shutdown:
Total information black out in #Gambia, no phone calls going through, no internet access Help us spread the word, dictators can't be trusted
— Fatu Camara (@Fatushow) November 30, 2016
Farou Jaw Manneh, a US-based Gambian, wrote:
Allahuakbar @HUBRIS!! Yaya Jammeh the Gambian God has ” closed/ shut down ” the internet & phone lines. Yaya Jammeh You will soon KNOW who the real God is. Hope God twists your treacherous and malicious plans in our favour. Go ahead and EAT the internet and phone lines. Arrogance is so blinding. Ndeysaan. Subhaanalaa.God bless Gambia. It will be OKAY. INSHALLAH. The real GOD the all knowing is in control. Not Jammeh.
In the 2015 “Freedom on the Net” report, Freedom House, a US-based organisation promoting freedom and democracy around the world, scored up to 65 countries on the real-world rights and freedoms enjoyed by their citizens. The Gambia was ranked the second worst out of 12 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Jammeh has said that any post-election protests will not be tolerated. He maintains that his leadership has improved the country, and says that the majority of tertiary-level students in The Gambia attend university on government scholarships.
Vote counting is conducted at the polling stations, where all candidates can be represented by at least two agents. Election results will start to trickle in by late this evening, but final counts are expected on Friday December 2, 2016.

author: Demba Kandeh


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Talking to Hooman Majd, a Bridge Between Iran and the US Mainstream · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Hooman Majd has been called the “voice of Iran” to the western world. Portrait of Majd by Ken Browar, used with permission.
This is the sixth in a series of interviews with Iranian journalists and writers who have dedicated their careers to communicating Iran's complexities and contradictions to those outside of the country. Read the full series here.
I started this series of interviews in March 2015, around the time the Iranian nuclear deal was receiving considerable attention in the international media. While the world discussed negotiations and relations between Iran and the rest of the world over its nuclear program, the alternative was often considered to be aggression, if not war, between Iran and western nations such as the United States. In the midst of these geopolitical considerations, I sat down with an assortment of writers and journalists. Some worked for US-funded media outlets such as RFE/RL; others were with independent English-language media such as The Guardian. What these writers all had in common was the fact that — amidst much misrepresentation — they had dedicated their careers to capturing and explaining Iranian culture, politics and society to the rest of the world.
We are now at a turning point in US foreign policy. Weeks away from the end of the Obama presidency, there is a strong possibility that the US is moving away from the defining project of rapprochement with its long-time foe, the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the dawn of the Donald Trump presidency, which is slated to be a peculiar shade of hardline and hawkish Republicanism, I thought it a timely moment to sit down with journalist and author Hooman Majd.
While some critics have come to view Majd as an apologist for the Iranian government's more inhumane aspects, his perspectives on Iran came to the fore during the Bush era, when hawkish rhetoric against the Iranian government became a hallmark of the early 2000s’ foreign policy and media depictions of Iran. Iran was amongst one of the members of Bush's post-9/11 ‘axis of evil‘, despite the country having no ties to the tragic events.
Hooman Majd on The Daily Show with host Jon Stewart in 2008. Screenshot from Comedy Central's Daily Show archives.
During an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2008, Majd would tell Stewart that Americans “don't have [a] clear perception of what Iran and the Iranian people are”. In keeping with the mood of the era, Stewart would jokingly respond, “But we would like to bomb them…how much do we need to get to know a people before we bomb them?”
While often critical of certain Iranian absurdities, such as President Ahmadinejad's denials of the Holocaust, Majd cemented a unique role during that period by humanizing the people and culture of Iran. This occurred in an environment prone to ‘regime-change’ paeans that saw Iran as the next battleground in the American ‘war on terror.’
Most interesting man in the world @hmajd simultaneously drafting the Iran deal & emailing his tailor #IranTalksVienna pic.twitter.com/jxMVAIGi2H
— Reza Marashi (@rezamarashi) June 29, 2015
Our series of interviews thus resumes here, with Majd, an Iranian-American darling of mainstream media, in the post-Trump era. He is one of the few Iranian commentators and analysts with bylines in Vanity Fair, and features in GQ magazine. A relative of the former reformist president Mahmoud Khatami, he became renowned as the ‘English-speaking voice‘ of Iranian officials. He was translator and advisor to both President Khatami and Ahmadinejad on their visits to the United Nations in New York — anglophone audiences heard Majd's American accent when both presidents spoke at the UN General Assembly. Majd would later arrange and produce with NBC some of the US media's first interviews with the current moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, after his 2013 election.
The last time I was in Iran was 2013, when I worked with NBC and Ann Curry, and arranged for their interview. Ann and I worked together in 2009 right before the election, for a documentary for Dateline. Rouhani ended up doing two interviews with Ann, [the] second interview in 2014 was when I couldn’t personally go to Iran, so I worked on it from Dubai.
Majd has made a name for himself predominantly as an Iranian. However, he identifies as one of the handful of pre-revolution members of the Iranian diaspora.
I am unique in the Iranian diaspora. I'm almost 60 years old. Most Iranians my age emigrated after the revolution with an intimate attachment to the culture of Iran. I grew up in the west prior to the Islamic Revolution. There are only a handful like me –Baha'i who lived abroad as missionaries, some students, and small number of doctors, and that was it. The revolution changed that. My parents were both Iranian, so I had a close taste of Iranian culture, but much of it's alien to me…which makes it difficult for me to live there permanently. I went for my last book, and it was the first time as an adult that I experienced Iran as a place to live day to day. I would like to go back, but not to live.
Majd's position as a ‘bridge’ figure to Iran likely rests on this unique identity that is simultaneously connected to Iran, yet decidedly American in upbringing and experience. Iranian analysts and commentators come from a variety of backgrounds and political persuasions, but none of them have occupied the pop culture space the way Majd has.
My writing career happened after my career in the entertainment and music business. I'm not an academic…the popular culture aspect of my writing is because of my background and also what I tend to be interested in.
When I was in the music business…I was at Island records until 1998. The founder of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, started a film, audio and visual company, and wasn't able to get financing, so I decided from college onwards to do what I liked to do best, which is write. I was publishing short stories, but I abandoned writing while in the industry. Because of my contacts in the entertainment side of journalism I was able to get published…the Iran thing started when the editors of GQ asked me to write about Iran…and ever since then I was pigeonholed with writing about Iran.
Given his presence in positions typically held by academics or policy wonks, I asked if his entertainment background ever affected the way he was perceived by Iranians.
That doesn’t really come up. Particularly in the Iranian-American community, if it comes up, it's because they are curious about it. Inside of Iran, the government had this weird assumption, and even among ordinary Iranians in the country, that I’m an academic and I have a PhD, and I have to correct them. People assume that because I’m an analyst and a author. Most Iranians inside Iran haven't read my books, except for the security services, of course. The things anyone in Iran has noticed are op-eds in the New York Times, or articles in Foreign Policy — you know, the drier stuff I wrote on the nuclear negotiations which could have easily been written by an academic.
While Majd has spent the majority of life in the US, he has cultivated his connections to influential people and networks within Iran's elite. It was through these channels that he was warned not to go back to Iran after 2013, for reasons he prefers not to discuss.
His connections are the strongest with Iran's reformists, a political faction that formed during former President Mohamad Khatami's administration. These are the people who believe in the 1979 Revolution and the system of the Islamic Republic, but favour progressive ideals of freedom and democracy within the Islamic system. When asked if, despite his secular American background, he considers himself a reformist, Majd had this to say:
A wide swath of conservatives are opposed to the ‘reform movement’ because they don’t want to move the revolution forward with civil rights and human rights…. Now Rouhani is not part of the reform movement — he's a moderate — but he's adopted those policies, and taken them on his government. And it's natural for someone who doesn’t live in Iran to look to the values of the reformists. Their politics, which I support, tend to be close to what I believe in western democracies, with the understanding that there are many differences in cultural democracy, and western democracy is not possible given Iran's demographics, with adjustments for people who don’t want to be like the west. For me the reformists are people who don’t like the status quo on women’s rights, freedoms, political reforms, and want to make Iran a more transparent political system.
It's often hard to navigate the different political factions within Iran, and placing the current moderate President Rouhani within this matrix can be a difficult task. Majd considers Rouhani as a significant improvement on his predecessor Ahmadinejad, but believes that:
…there’s a long way to go, and I think apart from his words, he's chosen to not battle hardliners, and you can seen how they undermine his presidency through arrests, blocking freedoms in the arts. And he’s chosen not to go head to head on this. He’s up for re-election next spring. If he's successful, which most likely will happen, he will have more room to try to move some of these things ahead, including getting prisoners released.
Regarding the outcome of the May 2017 presidential elections, Majd says it's too early to make predictions:
…if you look at the history of presidential elections, you have to get really close to know anything. During the last elections, nine months before the date Rouhani wasn’t even a factor. What we do know is that Rouhani will run, and Ahmadinejad won’t. I don’t know at the moment, but it depends on so many factors between now and after Nowruz [the Persian New Year, celebrated on March 21]. If there are brand new Boeing 777's sitting in Imam Khomeini [Tehran's international airport], this will be a huge psychological benefit for how Iranians view Rouhani. New cars, new buses, while they will not affect everyday lives, it will benefit Rouhani's image. It's unlikely there will a candidate on the left or right as popular as this president.
I pressed him on his celebratory tone towards the Rouhani administration, and in particular the foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who became a hero of Iran's reformists after concluding the nuclear negotiations.
@JZarif should put his Tehran tailor on call for tails. You know, just in case….https://t.co/UEOfGJOzb9
— Hooman Majd (@hmajd) October 5, 2016
I do think if there were a peace prize for the nuclear negotiations they would both [Zarif and US Sec. of State John Kerry] be contenders. They both put a lot on the line, their careers, particularly Zarif who has people who want to kill him for being buddy-buddy with Kerry. They were rather tough but friendly with each other, and the deal wouldn’t have happened without them coming together at that time. I would agree with some of the premises of [the] website [Iran Diplomacy], that if there were no deal, eventually it would have come to military action. I don’t think it’s a far-fetched notion. What is the alternative? The alternative was war, the alternative was more sanctions. Iran has suffered through the harshest of sanctions over the last five years. On that basis, sanctions were going to make the country crumble. If you base the peace prize on the promotion of peace over conflict…they should be considered.
While Majd tends to view the policies and intentions of the current administration in a generally favourable light, when pressed on its poor performance on human rights and support of the brutal Assad government, he has to concede there is still much to be desired:
It is a bit of cop out, potentially a calculation, since [Rouhani is] an absolute insider in the system, and knows people on the right and left. You could almost say it's a Machiavellian calculation — maybe he can go after [human rights] after the election. He probably has an influence on human rights and Syria — potentially. He and Zarif are unified on Syria, there isn’t much of a difference of opinion — in general the Iranian regime, for better or worse, is united on that matter, which is distressing to hear. But there is a logic they apply geopolitically. In terms of human rights, that’s an issue that affects Iranians directly, and I think Zarif has virtually no ability to affect that, not with the brief he has. Domestic human rights he has virtually no control over. Rouhani could probably do more, but the chances of his being successful will be more likely after he's elected for a second term, but that's just speculation.
Asked whether he's been accused of peddling certain ideologies, Majd says that he receives criticism from both ends of the Iranian spectrum:
Very pro-Islamic Republic supporters don’t like my stuff and say I give fodder to anti-Iranians…. Liberals and critics say my writing and opinions are prolonging the Islamic Republic and putting a prettier face on the reality. My opinion is, ‘Sorry if I've offended you…a lot of my writing is observational.’ It's the way I see things, as someone without an agenda…I’m not an activist and I don’t believe it’s my job to be an activist while I'm contributing to NBC news or working as a freelancer. I don’t have a dog in the fight. In the end, I am fond of Iran and it's my heritage. If there are outsiders who can bring change, good for them, but I'm not one of them.
On whether misconceptions on Iran have lessened in recent years, Majd sounds hopeful:
Ahmadinejad was the first to make himself available to the media, which is the source of a lot of the negativity. But Iranian-Americans and Iranian-Europeans have written a lot about the culture in the recent years, and there's a lot more travel between Iran and the US, among both Iranian-Americans and Iranians themselves. They are understanding it a little bit better and there have been a number of books. Iran is not uniquely paradoxical: what's unique is that most people don’t know about Iran.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


text:
Attack on NGO Fighting for Rights of Textile Workers in Macedonia Highlights Dangers to Civil Society · Global Voices
Anastasija Petrеvska

Unknown attackers threw rocks on the small Culture center for textile workers called “Tekstil” (Textile). Photo by Meta.mk, used with permission.
Macedonian civil society has raised an alarm after an attack on the premises of a small non-governmental organization (NGO). This incident adds to the already high tensions surrounding the country's upcoming elections on December 11, 2016.
The attack in the city of Štip, which — along with smaller towns from this eastern region — is home to Macedonia’s textile industry, seriously undermined the efforts of a small group of activists who have been trying to raise their voice against the appalling working conditions for garment industry workers in Macedonia. This area houses the better part of the country's textile and leather industries, which in 2012 employed 7.75% (or 37,217) of Macedonia’s citizens.
The small Arts and Culture Centre, “Tekstil” (“Textile”), which was opened in July 2015 by a group of activists, was subjected to stoning on the morning of November 26, 2016, and the panel bearing the logo of a red sewing machine was partially torn down.
This centre was the meeting place for activists from “Glasno — Tivkoto mnozinstvo” (“Loud — The silent majority”), an organization formed in early 2016, with the sole aim of fighting for textile worker rights. The organization has been touring textile towns in the eastern parts of the country, holding educational conferences and workskops on workers’ rights, and trying to educate workers on their right to strike, protest and to unionize. At the moment, there are no unions defending the rights of textile workers, although they form such a large, marginalized and oppressed group.
“Tekstil” provides space for art events and discussions about workers’ rights, but because of employers’ fears — and the ruling party which protects their interests — the workers who participate ask for their identities to be concealed.
When publishing information about their activities regarding worker's rights, Glasno sometimes hides the identities of the participants who fear for their livelihoods or worse. Photo from their Facebook page.
According to a news report by local television station Kanal Plus, the police have started an investigation into the incident:
After the attack, “Glasno” published a reaction — co-signed by 74 organizations — condemning it as an attack on workers’ will to demand their rights:
Земајќи предвид дека овој простор во изминатите месеци е слободна зона на среќавање и организрање на работниците и работничките од текстилната и кожарската индустрија, сметаме дека ова е напад врз работниците поради волјата за промени на нивниот статус и конечно остварување на нивните права.
Taking into account that in the past several months, this has been a free zone for textile and leather workers to meet and organize, we take it as an assault against their will for change in their status and  the realization of their rights.
According to Goran Trajkov, a member of the organization who spoke in the video:
Најнапред се закануваа на наши волонтери по пораки и по социјалните мрежи, потоа ни го оштетуваа пропагандниот материјал, кој се диструбуираше по градот и по цела Источна Македонија, додека во последно време во неколку наврати непознати лица се обидоа насилно да го разбијат здружението и како кулминација е сабајлешниот напад, кога со камења е искршено стаклото од влезната врата и таблата на која стои КУЦ „Текстил“.
They first threatened some of our volunteers on social networks, then our promotional materials that we distributed around the city and in the region were getting damaged, and unknown persons have tried to violently break into the Centre on several occasions, all this reaching its peak with this morning’s assault when the windows were broken by rocks and the panel reading ‘KUC — Tekstil’ (‘Culture and Art Centre — Textile’) was damaged.
These workers face precarious conditions. The large, state-owned textile companies of socialist times gave way to a growing number of smaller scale private holdings during the transition period of Macedonia’s first years of independence from Yugoslavia. In a city such as Štip or the neighboring towns of Probištip, Vinica or Kriva Palanka, where job opportunities are scarce, these industries are the primary employers.
By law, the minimal wage in the textile sector is 9,000 denars (156 dollars) lower than the legally agreed upon minimal wage for all other sectors (10,080 denars or 175 dollars). But the reality is that textile and leather workers sometimes work for even less than that — for ridiculously low wages of 100 euros or 107 dollars per month — while their working hours at times exceed 50 per week.
According to the Clean Clothes campaign and their 2014 report “Stiched Up: Poverty wages for garment workers in Eastern Europe and Turkey“, for garment workers in Eastern Europe, “the legal minimum wage is often the ceiling instead of the bottom line for wages”. Textile workers in Macedonia are predominantly women, whose plight was recently documented by the late filmmaker Biljana Garvanlieva.
At the moment, Glasno is in the process of organizing a textile worker protest that will take place in Štip on December 8, 2016. In the words of Kristina Ampeva, the president of the organization and a textile worker herself:
„Овој напад не е напад на некоја обична просторија, сето тоа е надоместливо и неважно, ова е напад врз работникот, кој со децении е угнетуван и искористуван, нападот врз здружението го разбираме исклучиво како напад врз работникот. Наша определба се работниците и ние никогаш нема да се откажеме од идејата работникот да го направиме достоинствен граѓанин на Македонија.“
This attack is not merely an attack on the premises, the material damage can be compensated; this is an attack on the worker, who has been oppressed and exploited for decades. We are dedicated to him, and we will never give up the idea to make the worker a dignified citizen of Macedonia .

author: Anastasija Petrеvska


text:
Caribbean Women Take Their Power Back by Sharing Stories of Sexual Abuse Via the #LifeinLeggings Hashtag · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

“Woman behind bars”, from a series of anti-catcalling, pro-respect posters. Photo by flickr user Wendy, CC BY-NC 2.0.
A powerful hashtag, #lifeinleggings, geared towards giving Caribbean women the space and support to share their stories of sexual harassment, is exploding on Facebook and Twitter. Created by two Barbadian women who wanted to demonstrate the disturbing degree to which sexual harassment is part of Caribbean culture, the hashtag has now gained regional traction.
The stories that women of every age, ethnicity and economic background have been sharing are alarming — from posts about victim-shaming and being forced into silence, to tales of intimidation, misguided expressions of admiration, the rampant sexual abuse of minors and the proclivity of their guardians for sweeping it under the rug.
Crystal Roslyn Mary Granado remembered her childhood trauma:
#LifeInLeggings He was asked to watch the kids while Mom went to the store. I was three. He told me to come sit on his knee. I said no. You smell. He made me sit on his knee. Pulled apart my baby legs and ripped my panties off and stuck his fat calloused fingers inside of my vagina. I cried. He said he would make my mother beat me. I was afraid. I hate you.
Women also talked about the lifelong burden of living with the abuse and the ways in which the daily fear of being assaulted informs their behaviour.
Cho Sundari said she is constantly on the alert:
#lifeinleggings Walking with my key in my hand, ready at all times to be used in self defence. Looking behind me at least 3 times before I reach my car. Checking the back seat before I open the door. Opening the door quickly, slamming myself on the seat. Shut the door and lock doors immediately. Sigh. Start ignition. Drive.
One Twitter user had a difficult time reading through all the posts:
#LifeInLeggings is utterly soul-crushing to just read. There have been points when I had to stop because I could not stomach any more.
— Fleetwood Macklemore (@ConnorBlades) November 27, 2016
Many talked about being abused when they were very young, often by close friends and family members. Others talked about harassment in the workplace and the corresponding sense of male privilege.
Trinidadian attorney Justin Phelps noted that the stories flooding social media were way more than a hashtag, and challenged people to think more deeply about its societal implications:
#LifeinLeggings is the story of women AND girl children btw. A large number of the stories are of childhood events. Add the stories of our male children. Add the stories of our dead children. Measure the country's level of civilization against that. Hold that up to the debates you hear in Parliament […] the disrespect and contempt meted out on top of that. Match it against ‘civil society’ who is about ‘country first’, the police service which features negatively in many of the stories, the parents who watch and stay silent, the parents who just stupid, the deviants, the pretenders. Maybe we can muster enough energy for something other than money and vanity to ‘riot’ after all. Nah, too risky.
The stories, interwoven so strongly through the hashtag, begin to paint a picture of rape culture in the Caribbean. One social media user, posting on the Facebook page of the feminist group Womantra, offered advice on how to counteract this attitude:
Be gross. Today a man in the maxi [a minivan-type taxi in Trinidad] had the audacity to tell me that my p*ussy must be fat […] I LOUDLY and NAIVELY explained that it is not indeed fat, I have my period and it is soooooo heavy that I have to layer my pads creating the illusion of a hefty p*ssy. “I doh want to hear bout dat!!!” He was disgusted
Again, I had to educate him, “thats what p*ssies do!!! Thats how it prepares us to have your babies!!!” […]
The maxi is extremely quiet. It starts with a giggle. Then the entire maxi is laughing at the man's discomfort. #LifeInLeggings
Be gross. Pick up space. Attack using any and all weapons in your arsenal: cussing, humour, disgustingness, anger, shyness, needing a friend, tears…. I the Feminist Fairy grant you the power….
Female netizens were overwhelmingly vocal in their support for the brave women who were sharing their stories. As the testimonies poured out, a sisterhood was being formed — so many women could identify with the experiences; had been through something similar themselves.
Whitney Francois shared #lifeinleggings Watching a friend trying to be strong after being called a sellout and a traitor and even threatened for “snitching” on her bf after he raped her. Who really betrayed whose trust a few harrowing experiences:
#LifeInLeggings
Having a female friend in primary school who tried to kiss on lips and touch your V because she loved you.
And thats how ‘love’ was shown in her home.
To everybody.
Mind you she was 5.
#lifeinleggings
Watching a friend trying to be strong after being called a sellout and a traitor and even threatened for ‘snitching’ on her bf after he raped her.
Who really betrayed whose trust?
Christine Sankar shared an example of the kind of street harassment most Caribbean women have faced at some time or another:
Ignoring men when they're cat-calling and calling out to you as ‘Beautiful’ ‘Sexy’ ‘Family’, and as soon as you pass them, they further disrespect you by telling you that ‘You not that nice anyways’ or ‘One day someone would f*ck that stink attitude out of you’ with some of them even going to the extent of yanking on your shoulder or following you #lifeinleggings
Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe said that the inappropriate behaviour knows no bounds:
#lifeinleggings is having to tell a group of grown ass men to stop harassing me while I teach children in an outdoor yoga class.
Antonya Pierre agreed:
#Lifeinleggings. When ‘Good morning beautiful’ is no longer a pleasant greeting or compliment because it is usually the preamble for some form of harassment.
While most netizens were full of praise for the hashtag's creators, saying it was “time for this taboo to get broken”, one young woman was curious as to why the discussion — under the theme “leggings” — was gendered, arguing that men were also victims of sexual abuse.
As the hashtag spread, there were calls for men to express support for the cause. Many did — but others tried to make light of the situation and invalidate women's testimonies. The backlash was harsh and immediate, especially when men used the narrative of women's attire as justification for sexual abuse.
Denica Shute made it very clear:
‘Women are deserving of respect regardless of what we wear and we refuse to subscribe to the notion that men simply cannot help themselves to sexually harass or abuse a woman because of what she is wearing.’
#lifeinleggings
Raeesa Francis-Ochoa added:
Men who have an issue with the hashtag #LifeInLeggings are the reason why this hashtag exists.
In 2016, why is it still not okay for a woman to vent about the abuse at experienced from childhood to adulthood which still affect her daily and she may never be fully healed?
Additionally, why are women also finding issues with the hashtag? Just because you don't have an experience or feel like sharing your own, doesn't mean you can be Petty Patty and stop others from participating in the trend.
Indeed, it was widely agreed that the machismo with which Caribbean boys are socialised is part of the problem.
The situation escalated when one Trinidadian man attempted to create a #lifeinpants hashtag, based on his perception that #lifeinleggings was “implicating all men in a social atrocity”. His posts with the hashtag were subsequently removed. Women lashed out in astonishment and disgust.
Rhoda Bharath commented:
#LifeInLeggings: When from hairless babies to balding grannies get raped, but you feel attacked by a hashtag.
Carima Nemai posted:
#lifeinleggings made it as easy and common to demonize men as it has been easy and common over the years to objectify and sexually assault women. #whenthetablesareturned yes feel uncomfortable, and feel attacked and feel responsible even if you aren't, most importantly FEEL!
Obviously not every man is guilty and not every woman would have been a victim, but the rape culture is bigger than every one of us! See and feel that!
Dion Boucaud said:
You cannot decry a legitimate movement by making the issue somehow about yourself and then, when you are called on your bullshit, berate and chastise everyone […] who disagrees with you. Then today you're crying oppression, stating that you're attacked by perceived feminist because they don't agree with your useless opinion. All that makes you is a special kind of stupid.
Photographer Mark Lyndersay added:
The #lifeinleggings hashtag is a challenge for men. Some to confront the horror of these stories, others to know their place and to understand that these are women's stories to tell, whatever their tone and sentiment. […]
These stories are about a line ignored, crossed and trampled on.
If you are a man, read them without making it about you.
The hashtag has helped to jump start a long overdue regional conversation, and there have already been some important takeaways — that the region's rape culture has been handed down over generations; that victims’ silence only makes predators more powerful; and most importantly, that through education and legislation, more girls and women could be spared the trauma of sexual abuse.