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Can’t wait to be married: hundreds of same-sex couples celebrate their weddings in Taiwan · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Same-sex couple waiting to go on stage to receive gifts and congratulations by government officials. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
May 24 is a day to remember for the LGBTQIA+ community in Taiwan: it marks the date from which same-sex couples can get married legally.
Following a historical vote at the national Legislature on May 17, Taiwan has become the first country in Asia to recognize and implement marriage equality.
Across the island, several hundred couples have wed their significant other, and posted pictures on social media with the hashtag #524 (in Chinese, months are named after numbers, thus 5 refers to May, and 24 to the day).
In Taipei, a crowd of newlyweds and supporters gathered at the Xinyi district Household Registration Office, located at the foot of the iconic Taipei 101 tower, to celebrate this legal victory. Twenty couples representing different gender and age categories were congratulated by key figures of the LGBTQIA+ movement, government officials, and representatives of foreign countries.
Chi Chia-wei, a veteran activist of the LGBTQIA+ movement, recalled on stage that thirty years ago, when he started advocating for same-sex marriage, people told him he was suffering from a “mental disorder”. He concluded emotionally that “it has been a very long wait.”
Bellow is a photo gallery showing some of the highlights of the day in Taipei.
This couple had just finished their paperwork and are now officially married. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
The couple pose for a wedding picture. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
Government officials  (on the left) congratulate an older gay couple. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
Veteran activist Chi Chia-wei in his colorful outfit. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
Government officials (on the left) congratulating a younger gay couple. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
One of the many signs and stickers distributed at the event. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.


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Journalists, YouTubers, and politicians join forces in Colombia against the killings of social leaders · Global Voices
Laura Vidal

Screenshot of the video that launched the campaign #ALeaderInMyPlace. Available on YouTube through Daniel Samper Ospina's channel.
Youtubers, journalists, and politicians are joining forces against the extrajudicial killings of social leaders in Colombia with the campaign #ALeaderInMyPlace in which they open their media spaces for a leader under threat to write or speak up.
The campaign began on May 13 when journalist Daniel Samper Ospina posted on his YouTube channel a reggaeton music video featuring social leaders and famous YouTubers.
According to Colombia's Ombudsman Office, over 460 social leaders were murdered since 2016, the year when the Colombia government and the FARC, the country's largest guerrilla group, signed a landmark agreement that put an end to the five-decade conflict.
Many experts attribute the surge in violence to uneven and poor implementation of the agreements, leaving large swathes of former FARC territory vulnerable to paramilitaries and guerilla dissidents.
As the hashtag #ALeaderInMyPlace made the rounds on Twitter, a few journalists opened spaces in their columns in more traditional media outlets for social leaders. For example, Patricia Lara Salive from El Espectador published an article by Afro-Colombian economist and environmentalist Sofía Garzón, about the struggle to protect the Ovejas river from illegal mining.
In Semana, journalist Antonio Caballero gave his space to William Orozco, who works as a defender of peasant's rights, and who has had to remain in hiding away from home for almost a year after he received threats in July 2018.
Journalist Vanessa De La Torre Sanclemente gave her column in the Cali newspaper El País to Diana Jembuel, a social leader from the indigenous Misak people, who works in a local community radio. Jembuel narrates a past confrontation she had seven years ago with FARC members after they kidnapped someone from her community.
Her story shows how the Colombian government for years has left social leaders and minority ethnic communities at the mercy of guerrilla groups:
Decidí pedir ayuda a la comunidad en mi idioma, a través de las emisoras locales. Me escucharon y entre todos, me ayudaron […] los guerrilleros habían amedrentado a nuestra comunidad y no podíamos permitirlo. Mi compañero estaba en poder de ellos. Le apuntaban con un arma y nos gritaban groserías. [Luego] Yo sola, con mi bastón de mando, exigiendo respeto, logré que lo soltaran […] Desde entonces transmito ese mensaje. Ya no somos unas pocas voces aisladas sino muchas unidas para decir: basta ya.
I decided to ask for help in my language, through local radio stations. I was heard and was helped by everyone […] the guerrilla fighters had intimidated our community and we couldn't let them do that. They had my partner. They were pointing a gun at him and they were yelling swearwords to us. [Then] I, single handedly, with my command staff, demanded respect and made them let him go […] Ever since I have passed that message. We're not just a few voices anymore. We're many voices united to say “enough.”
The movement was picked up by officials as well, such as the Attorney General of the Nation who has granted his online space to Goldman Environment Prize Francia Márquez. The Ambassador for the European Union in Colombia did the same with Afro Colombian leader Marino Córdoba, and on May 21 a few senators gave their seats to social leaders in the Senate:
Hoy en desarrollo de la campaña #UnLíderEnMiLugar, nuestras curules en la Comisión Segunda del Senado las ocupan lideresas y líderes sociales. La Comisión es presidida por Mayerlis Robles, lideresa de los Montes de María, quien sufrió recientemente un atentado pic.twitter.com/ATNXzPWUHI
— Iván Cepeda Castro (@IvanCepedaCast) 21 de mayo de 2019
Today with the campaign #ALeaderInMyPlace, our seats in the Second Commission fo the Senate are taken by social leaders. The Commission is being presided by Mayerlis Robles, a leader in Montes de María, who suffered an attack recently.
Bogotá-based human rights organization Dejusticia told Latin America Reports that the campaign was important for the “protection and rejuvenation of the country’s social leaders”. The campaign has generated a lot of conversation and interest, in particular when government representatives responded to it. Some voices remain doubtful, however, as this is only a very small effort in comparison to what is really needed to end the threats against social leaders. Twitter user David Racero summarized it this way:
Y si Congresistas y Concejales de Bogotá sin riesgo extraordinario, ceden camionetas blindadas que utilizan como taxi, a líderes y lideresas sociales y defensoras de DDHH que hoy tienen en riesgo su vida y solo cuentan con un celular y un chaleco antibalas? #UnLíderEnMiLugar
— David Racero ?? (@DavidRacero) 21 de mayo de 2019
What if Congress and Councilpeople in Bogotá that are not particularly under threat give the armoured vans they use as a taxi to social leaders and human right defenders whose lives are in danger and only count on a cellphone and a bulletproof vest?

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Laura Vidal


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Papua New Guinea PM pushes proposal for social media regulation, citing need to stop ‘fake news’ · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Students in IT class at the Hohola Youth Development Centre. Flickr photo by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (CC BY 2.0)
The Papua New Guinea government has set its sights on regulating social media in order to combat the spread of online hoaxes and fake news. Critics and journalists have warned that it could lead to the curtailment of free speech.
Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has instructed the Ministry for Communications and Information Technology to review how the government can regulate social media to protect citizens affected by the circulation of fake news.
“It is destroying our people and destroying our society. We’ve lived in peace and harmony for thousands of years without social media,” he said during a media briefing.
He cited a recent incident in which rumors spread on Facebook that multiple girls and women in the town of Port Moresby had been kidnapped, and that the perpetrators had been apprehended by police. In response, a large crowd of people gathered outside the local police station, clamoring for information and justice for the girls and women. The alleged kidnapping was later confirmed to be a fabrication.
Prime Minister O'Neill seemed particularly interested in finding ways to hold Facebook accountable for its role as a catalyst for the spread of false information. He added in a media interview:
They make revenue in countries like ours, but do not pay a cent in tax, and leave behind a lot of damage to communities.
Facebook does not even have a local office in Papua New Guinea, and that is an indication of how serious they are about making a contribution to our country, and to properly manage the sensitive issues that we are raising.
This is not the first time that the government has threatened to control social media. In 2018, there were reports about a government proposal to ban Facebook for a year because of issues related to fake news and privacy violations. It generated public backlash and authorities later backed away from plans to ban the popular social media platform.
O'Neill’s announcement also coincided with some members of parliament threatening to file a resolution of no-confidence against the prime minister, whom they have accused of exerting too much control over government departments. But a political crisis was averted after O'Neill secured the support of the majority and the parliament was adjourned until 28 May 2019.
The plan to regulate social media was also revealed to be more than just an anti-fake news measure after Minister for Communications and Information Technology Koni Iguan complained about the posting of “indecent graphics” of the prime minister and the attorney general. He said that his office is preparing a measure that will deal with Facebook posts like these.
Governor of Oro province Gary Juffa advised the government not to proceed with its plan:
We are all subject to abuse and gossip and rhetoric and though we maybe upset or hurt by it we need to ensure we protect the rights of our people to express themselves as that's an essential aspect of democracy is about – freedom of speech. If we have issues we can report it to the Police or take civil legal action.
Blogger Sylvester Gawi reminded O'Neill that the violence at the Boroko police station should be attributed to the “undertrained and underresourced police force that continually discharged firearm without any accountability.” He also said that the planned social media regulation is “adopted from Communist China.”
The fact is you can't control platforms were information is circulated, attempts to do such undermines the role of democracy and freedom that is enshrined under the constitution of our country.
Journalist Scott Waide rejected the proposal to restrict Facebook:
There is a general agreement that there are a lot of people who use Facebook to spread fake news. They should be investigated and prosecuted using the cybercrime act if law enforcement has the capacity to do it.
But to ban Facebook has wide-ranging implications including direct government interference on the freedom of speech of Papua New Guineans and their right to hold their leaders to account.
Whether or not these officials are driven by political motivations, the Papua New Guinea government will hardly be alone in its desire to rein in social media. From Germany to Egypt to Singapore and beyond, laws have been approved that seek to curb disinformation and hate speech online. While some of these laws implicate the speakers themselves, others place legal responsibility on social media companies.
Germany's Network Enforcement Law, informally known as NetzDG, imposes a system through which large social platforms (mainly Facebook) are required to remove hateful content from their site within 24 hours of receiving notice, or face monetary fines. But the law has a critical flaw: it does not help companies determine what is — and what is not — actually hateful, often leaving companies to err on the side of censorship. In a similar vein, efforts to curb false information have not put forth systems for determining, by due process, what is and is not false.
Time will tell whether the Papua New Guinea's communications and information technology ministry will devise a unique solution to what has thus far been an intractable problem for governments and societies worldwide.

author: Mong Palatino


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This ‘cholita’ drag challenges gender and folklore stereotypes from the Argentine periphery · Global Voices
Romina Navarro

Screen capture from “Ramita Seca,” produced by Elisa Portela via YouTube, featuring choreography and interpretation of “Bartolina Xixa” a drag persona inspired by Andean indigenous aesthetics.
In the middle of a large garbage dump, surrounded by fog, a figure in a wide pastel pink skirt and long braids dances a vidala, a form of traditional poetry accompanied by music typical of Argentinian folklore.
It's Bartolina Xixa, the Andean “drag folk” character created by Maximiliano Mamaní, who reassesses Argentinian northern folklore from a gender perspective and aims to decolonize it with a focus on indigenous peoples.
In their most recent work, “Dry Little Branch, the Permanent Coloniality,” the artist chose the open-air dump setting of Hornillos, located in the Quebrada of Humahuaca, a region declared as a cultural and natural heritage of humanity by UNESCO in 2003.
The vidala has plenty of symbolism. Composed by singer-songwriter Aldana Bello, the lyrics explore the topic of mining exploitation and atrocities perpetrated against Indigenous communities:
Esta vidala que canto / Sangra de pena y dolor / Las injusticias de siglos / Siguen en pie y con ardor […] En zona andina hay mineras / Contaminan la ilusión / El agua, la tierra y todo / Lo que anda a su alrededor
This vidala I'm singing / Is bleeding with grief and pain / The injustices of centuries / Still stand fierce […] In the Andean zone there are mining [companies] / They pollute dreams / Water, land, everything / [everything] that surrounds them.
Mamaní was born in Jujuy, located in far northwest Argentina, and grew up in the neighboring region of Salta. They study Anthropology at the National University of Salta and work as a professor of folk dance.
With Bartolina Xixa, Mamaní challenges stereotypes found in folk art, in which gender roles perpetuate binary structures that leave out a range of identities. As Mamaní points out in an interview with the Argentine site VOS:
Hago danzas folklóricas argentinas, peruanas y bolivianas. Me gusta la música popular, por eso me surgió la necesidad de reflexionar sobre el folklore y pensar que a mí, como marica, se me negaba la posibilidad de mostrarme a la hora de construir una coreografía y armar una pareja de baile…
I perform Argentine, Peruvian and Bolivian folk dances. I like folk music, which is why I had the need to reflect on it and on my position as a gay man in it, as I was being denied the opportunity to express myself when it came to build a choreography and make a partner dance…
And they add:
Me di cuenta de que a muchas personas les pasa lo mismo porque el folklore está pensado desde una lógica heterosexual. Se le dan ciertos atributos a los varones, a los gauchos, como la fuerza, la firmeza y el galanteo. Es el que dirige. Las mujeres, en tanto, son sumisas, complacientes.
I realized that the same thing was happening to many others, because folklore has been designed from a heterosexual point of view. Certain attributes are given to the male figure, to the gauchos [for example], such as strength, firmness, and courtship. He is the one who leads. Women, meanwhile, are submissive, complacent.
Mamaní's social questionings are not limited to the world of folklore — they also address the tendencies that dominate global aesthetics with which “drag” is approached, an aesthetic that the artist says is linked to stereotypes of Western cultures’ notions of the feminine.
Their drag character is a departure from that tendency: Inspired by Bartolina Sisa Vargas, an Aymara leader who rebelled against the Spanish empire and subsequently captured, tortured and murdered in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1782, Mamaní pays tribute to this Andean woman, the “cholita” — “a hardworking woman, head of her household, who goes out to work every day, and who has ties to her family, her community, her ancestors, her traditions.”
Bartolina Xixa during a presentation in Buenos Aires, June 2018. Photo by Elisa Portela, used with permission.
In an episode of the podcast “Relatos Disidentes” or “Dissident Chronicles,” from the Salta-based portal, VóVè, Mamaní describes his character:
Suelo decir que le presto mi cuerpo a Bartolina Xixa. [Un personaje que] nace por la urgencia de poder pensar otras formas de hacer folclore, otra forma de entender identidades que me vienen atravesando y que vienen atravesando a un colectivo.
I usually say that I lend my body to Bartolina Xixa. [A character that] was born from the urgency of being able to think of other ways of doing folklore, another way of understanding identities that cross my own experience and that cross a whole group's experience.
Mamaní's activism and militancy appeal to social networks — especially Facebook and Instagram — through which to convey provocative messages. The best example is a Facebook post that became known as the “gay kiss,” which went viral on the platform in November 2018.
They shared the post during the pre-game soccer match between Boca Juniors and River Plate soccer clubs, featuring images of Mamaní kissing another man in front of the convent, San Bernardo, in Salta, while wearing the shirts of the rival teams. They declared it the “Super Classic Gay Kiss”:
An extract of the text in the post reads:
El super clásico beso Marica, Somos negros, somos villeros, somos del interior de Argentina, somos pobres, no somos el esteriotipo de cuerpo esbelto, somos los rostros negados por la colonialidad, SOMOS MARICAS, empoderadas y subalternas, alejadas del “clásico” gay estereotipado. […] Transitamos nuestra vida en los espacios y en la memoria que siempre son acallados por la heteronorma y la LGBTnorma. […] Un clásico argentino no es un BOCA Y RIVER, un clásico argentino es ver cómo nos estigmatizan, nos insultan, nos expulsan, nos odia, nos matan.
The super classic Gay Kiss. We're black, we're from the slums, we're from the countryside, we're poor. We don't have the stereotypical slim body, we're the face that coloniality refuses to acknowledge. We're fags, empowered and subaltern, away from the steretypical “classic” gay [man] […] We live our lives in spaces and memories that are always silenced by the heteronorm and the LGBTnorm […] An Argentine clssic is not Boca vs River. An Argentinian classic is seeing we're stigmatized, insulted, expelled (from our lands), hated, killed.
The post attracted all kinds of reactions and comments of support, rejection, ridicule, admiration, love, and hate from users. Global Voices spoke with Mamaní about the post via WhatsApp:
Una cosa interesante fue la de atacarnos diciendo que no éramos argentinos. […] Lo que querían decir era que el rostro de la argentinidad es blanco, es heterosexual, y no tiene atributos morenos, indígenas, ni de diversidades sexuales.
An interesting thing was seeing how they were attacking us by saying we were not Argentinian […] What they were trying to say is that the face of Argentina is white, is heterosexual, and has no brown or indigenous attributes, nor it has any sexual diversity.
Mamaní acknowledged that he is cautious when he publishes on social networks, aware of how it exposes them to attacks and intolerance. But they do not let attacks and negative criticism interfere with their main goal to disseminate artistic work through their drag persona, Bartolina, in the spirit of environmental, social, political and gender activism.
Mamaní also stressed how they are constantly challenged within the “drag queen scene” and LGBTQ communities of Argentina. Their way of expressing diversity from a “peripheral perspective” — away from the urban centers of power, Mamaní says, is questioned by choosing, instead, a drag character from the aesthetic of Bolivian indigenous culture:
No es lo mismo ser un gay blanco de una ciudad que un gay moreno, con un cuerpo no estandarizado [según los cánones de belleza dominantes], con rostro indígena, que vive en una comunidad alejada de toda la cultura capitalista. [Ser] gay, pobre, trabajador… todo eso va a diferenciar las construcciones.
It is not the same to be a white gay [man] from the city than a brown gay [man], with body that is not normative [according the dominant idea of beauty], with an indigenous face, who lives in a community far from all capitalist culture. [Being] gay, poor, from the working class… all of that defines and differentiates [our social] structures [and experiences].
A post shared by Bartolina Xixa ?? (@bartolinaxixa) on

author: Romina Navarro


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‘We’re caught in mid-air’: Raising a child with autism in Georgia · Global Voices
OC Media

The following is a version of a partner post by Tamuna Chkareuli that first appeared on the website OC Media.
Keti Nebieridze is a single mother in Georgia. Her son Sandro, who turns 16 this year, was born at a time when there were no basic services for children with autism. Though the government now provides 20 hours of therapy a month, Nebieridze still struggles with the demands of being a single parent.
“My family sold everything they had to buy all the medicine [for Sandro].”
Nebieridze is a hotline operator, working day and night shifts in rotation, with every fifth day free. She does not use her work holidays or sick days.
“I can’t allow myself to do it. I’m constantly thinking about Sandro’s needs,” she says. “No one will give you sick leave just for being a mother, will they?”
Once he turns 16, Sandro will no longer receive free therapy.
“It’s going to hit him hard,” Nebieridze says. “I see how his skills have improved during the last few years and he really has started to communicate with people. We’re caught in mid-air.”
Ever since Mari Korkotadze’s son, Data, was diagnosed with autism, her life has been a constant battle.
In 2015, she founded Families against Discrimination, the only watchdog organisation run by parents of children with autism in Georgia.
One of the biggest battles parents of children with autism have had to fight was for therapy vouchers.
Currently, autism support programmes are provided by each municipality separately. The first such programme was unveiled in 2015 by Tbilisi City Hall; similar programmes in Batumi, Zugdidi, and Kutaisi, and partially in Telavi, followed.
According to the programme in Tbilisi, children between the ages of two and fifteen are entitled to 20 hours a month of Applied Behaviour Analysis. Parents receive a monthly voucher worth 400 lari ($148) to spend on the service.
But those registered in a municipality that does not offer applied behaviour analysis do not receive vouchers, meaning parents must take their child to a neighbouring region and pay for both the therapy and any transportation costs that arise.
One year later, after a series of rallies, hunger strikes, and meetings with the head of the municipal department of Healthcare and Social Services, Gela Chiviashvili, the parents managed to change the requirements.
It was agreed that children who were not born and registered in Tbilisi before 2015 would have to wait one year to receive the benefits of the programme. However, the municipality later changed the period to three years without notifying the parents.
“At that point, some children had weeks left before the start of their therapy. And now they have to wait two more years and lose more precious time.”
Korkotadze has been pressuring the city hall to increase the budget for the autism programme.
“If you don’t push every year, they will forget about our existence,” she says.
Korkotadze says, that in kindergartens, the administrators prefer to redirect children instead of working with them.
“These children are entitled to a personal assistant, it’s the law. Sometimes it’s the directors not knowing about the laws; but more often, they’re probing parents, and if they see the parents are not aware of their child’s rights, directors do everything to expel these children,” Korkotadze says.
Personal assistants help children with special needs in the learning process, acting as mediators between the student and the academic environment. However, the salaries for personal assistants are not fixed, and it is schools that decide how to spend this money.
Apart from personal assistants, there are special education teachers, whose function is to adapt the learning programme for the student. Tamar Gagoshidze, a neuropsychologist and head of Tbilisi State University’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, says that while not every child requires a personal assistant, every special needs student needs a special education teacher.
Special education teachers, however, are more expensive.
According to Gagoshidze, the biggest issue with the programme is diversity.
“Not every child needs these 20 hours, and not every child needs so many hours of [Applied Behaviour Analysis] therapy. There’s a room for diversifying these services.”
The service should include psychological support for parents too, Gagoshidze says.
“Even one hour a week as a part of a municipality programme would be enough to aid the stress, anxiety, depression, and above all, PTSD that parents face. The emotional state of a parent has a direct impact on the child — this is especially hard on children with disabilities, who have strong bonds with their parents.”
Both of these issues are connected to the lack of qualified specialists,” Gagoshidze says, which is a direct result of the absence of relevant academic programmes.
“When the programme was started, these children were little, and there was a high demand for preschool therapies. But teenagers and young adults have different needs, and there are no people to meet these demands. For teenagers that made progress, it would be harmful to drop therapy now.”
As statistics on the number of people with autism rise across the world, Georgia being no exception, Nebieridze stresses that new problems are around the corner: “What I need is support. I need the government to understand that today, my son is 15, and tomorrow it will be someone else’s [child]. They have to find a solution for these children.”

author: OC Media


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‘Conservation or community rights’? Bangladesh bans fishing for 65 days · Global Voices
Rezwan

Traditional fishing in Bangladesh. Image via Wikipedia by Michael Foley, World Bank. CC BY 3.0
The government of Bangladesh has imposed a ban on all types of fishing off its coastal region from 20 May to 23 July 2019 to ensure the safe and sustainable accumulation of fish reserves. The coast guard and navy will be patrolling the Bay of Bengal to enforce the ban. However, for the fishing communities, most of whom depend on fishing for their daily subsistence, the decision is a big blow. Although the government has promised to provide monthly rations to affected fishers, the latter are voicing out their frustrations and the challenges they will be facing for the next two months.
Traditionally, Bangladesh relies on fishing to feed its estimated population of 163 million. More than 60 percent of the animal protein intake in the Bangladeshi diet comes from fish. The country has an exclusive economic zone of 41,000 square miles in the Bay of Bengal which is 73% of the country's total land and maritime areas. There are approximately 475 species of fish, 36 species of shrimp, 15 species of crab, and 301 species of snail and oyster in the Bay of Bengal among others; and around 100 species are fished commercially. There is an estimated two million fisherfolk across the country and around 18.2 million people are employed in fisheries and aquaculture industries. Around half a million fisherfolk earn their livelihood from the coastal region.
The fish market in central Sylhet, Bangladesh. Image from Flickr by David Stanley. CC BY 2.0
In recent years fish stocks worldwide have started declining because of overfishing and due to the effects of climate change. This is also the case in Bangladesh. Short-term bans on commercial fishing in limited areas had been enforced in the past few years, but this is the first time that all fishing boats have been banned for a lengthy period. This includes local fisherfolk who work in the rivers and in the seas. Authorities said that this ban will be continually enforced in the succeeding years during the breeding season to boost fish stocks.
The State Minister For Fisheries and Livestock Ashraf Ali Khan Khasru told the media:
These resources will deplete one day if we do not use them sustainably. We should let fish grow and breed. Otherwise, we will have to suffer in the future.
Last October 2018, the government banned the fishing of the national fish Hilsa (Ilish) for 22 days to allow the fish to lay their eggs and migrate from the Bay of Bengal to the Meghna and other river systems. Data collected by WorldFish from Hilsa sanctuaries showed that the total Hilsa catch increased by 28 percent, from 387,211 metric tons to 496,417 metric tons in the 2015 and 2016 harvest seasons due to similar bans.
Last March 2019, the government has imposed a 60-day ban on the fishing of all sorts of fish in Padma, Meghna and their tributary rivers adjacent to different areas of Chandpur, Bhola and Lakshmipur. The government also banned fishing in Kaptai lake, the largest man-made lake in Bangladesh for three months.
The old dilemma of #conservation rules vs community rights: Fishermen & #fish traders bring out a boat procession on #Khakdhon #River in the coastal district Barguna, #Bangladesh, demanding cancellation of the 65-day blanket ban on #Hilsa netting. Photo: Daily Star, April 29th. pic.twitter.com/D4WLEPHpRJ
— Sheikh Rokon (@skrokon) April 29, 2019
The local fishing communities have long been protesting these bans. They also protested the current ban carrying out angry demonstrations and street protests in the coastal region. According to the Bangladesh Fishing Boat Owners Association (BFBOA), many small-scale fisherfolk are day laborers who need to borrow money or their families will face starvation if no compensation is provided by the government.
The government has earmarked 36,000 metric tons of rice for distribution to affected communities. It plans to ration 40 kilograms of rice per month to 414,784 fishers and their families in 12 districts, However, the fishers reminded authorities that allotting only one type of food subsistence is not enough to sustain their families adequately.
Anwar Hossain Sikder, a member secretary of BFBOA, added that the ban will give undue advantage to the fishing companies of Bangladesh's neighbors:
The ban on fishing in 200 nautical miles of the sea is only benefiting Indian and Myanmar traders and fishermen.
On social media, some netizens favored the conservation of fish resources while others highlighted the need to save the livelihood of struggling fisherfolk. IT professional Asif Saif Uddin called for the creation of alternative jobs for displaced fishers:
ভাল উদ্যোগ …। তবে জেলেদের বিকল্প আয়ের বাবস্থা করা উচিৎ… https://t.co/u91QlYQT9D
— Asif Saif Uddin (@auvipy) May 20, 2019
It's a good move. But there should be efforts to create alternative job opportunities for the affected fishermen
Expat Bangladeshi Md Osman Ghani writes on Facebook about the issue of compensation for fishers:
সরকারের দাবী, এই সময় মাছ ধরা বন্ধ রাখলে মাছের সংখ্যা বাড়ে।
কিন্তু কথা হলো, যদি মাছের সংখ্যা না বাড়ে তখন কি হবে ?
তখন কি সরকার দরিদ্র জেলেদের এর জন্য ভতুর্কি দেবে ?
আপনি একটা গরিব মানুষের কাজ বন্ধ রাখলেন, বললেন- এর মাধ্যমে আপনার বাকি সময় আয় বাড়বে।
কিন্তু যদি না বাড়ে, তখন এর দায় কে নেবে ?
The government says that the fishing ban (during breeding season) increases fish stock.
But what if that does not turn out to be true?
Will the poor fishermen receive any compensation?
You enforce a ban on the work of poor people saying your future earnings will increase.
If that doesn't happen who will take the responsibility?
Many comments shared a similar concern about implementing measures to assist the fisherfolk:
Not endorsing Bangladesh’s temporary fishing ban b/c only the poor will suffer.
Still, it’s never those who cause global market collapse/systemic failure who seek solutions, whether the solutions are good/bad. It’s only ever those at risk who make change. https://t.co/itO9s79eaW
— Khal Khanté (@uhreeb) May 20, 2019
The issue is how will the government sustain the people who rely on fishing during the ban. You cannot save one without saving the other or both will ultimately fail. And one ban will not save either.
Bangladesh bans fishing for 65 days to save fish https://t.co/v1LcUfP3vE
— TheTraceTaylor (@TheOneTrace) May 20, 2019

author: Rezwan


text:
China arrests filmmaker for retweeting an image of a liquor bottle referencing Tiananmen Massacre · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

Baijiu bottles commemorating the Tiananmen massacre.
The following post is originally written by Jennifer Creery and published by Hong Kong Free Press on May 24, 2019. The following edited version is republished on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement.
Chinese authorities have reportedly detained documentary filmmaker Deng Chuanbin after he tweeted an image of a liquor bottle labelled “64” – a reference to the date of the Tiananmen Square Massacre which occurred on June 4, 1989.
The massacre ended months of student-led demonstrations in China. The Chinese Red Cross estimated that 2,700 civilians were killed, but other sources point to a much higher toll. A confidential US government document unveiled in 2014 reported that a Chinese internal assessment estimated that at least 10,454 civilians were killed.
64 liquor bottle
The liquor bottle was designed in 2016 to commemorate the 27th anniversary of June 4. The liquor was called “8 wine 64″. The pronunciation of the word “wine” in Putonghua is the same with the word “9”. The bottle label carries the image of “Tank Man” with the description “Never forget, never give up”. It also specifies that the wine comes from Beijing, with 64% alcohol and has been stored for 27 years.
Four Chinese men, Fu Hailu, Zhang Jinyong, Luo Fuyu and Chen Bing, were arrested in 2016 for the liquor bottle incident charged with “inciting subversion of state power”.
Fu, Zhang and Luo's trial took place at the Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court in April. They were respectively handed a three-year prison term with four to five years in suspension. Chen is still under arrest as he refused to plead guilty.
Despite the suspended sentence, the three are still under surveillance:
#ChengduWineBottleCase: Fu Hailu, Zhang Junyong & Luo Fuyu fitted w electronic bracelets after release on suspended sentences which can track location, record voice/video & has SIM card so can transmit all info, images & video in real time to police server https://t.co/4QGGZBBuat pic.twitter.com/AVF0bttMys
— CHRD人权捍卫者 (@CHRDnet) April 22, 2019
Arrest for a retweet
Ahead of the 30th anniversary of June 4, filmmaker Deng Chuabin has become the latest victim related to the 64 liquor bottle. Sichuan police arrested Deng at his home in Yibin last Friday, hours after he retweeted a Twitter photo of 64 liquor bottle, according to the NGO coalition, Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
The filmmaker received a phone call from police 30 minutes after tweeting the image despite quickly deleting the post, said CHRD. Police seized three mobile phones, a computer, laptop, iPad, memory cards and compact camera while at his home. Deng is reportedly being held in Nanxi District Detention Centre for “picking quarrels” – a charge frequently leveled against critics of the government.
CHRD said police returned to raid Deng’s home for an hour, taking a range of electronic equipment:
林浩波：#邓传彬 案件更新：
2019年5月20日，有人通知邓的父亲去裴石镇派出所，邓父回来时还跟着几个人，在邓父母家里录像、拍照，在邓传彬的房间翻箱倒柜一个多小时，拿了二十件物品，包括多种电子设备的充电线，甚至把电饭煲的线也拿走了。21日，镇派出所长到邓父母家讲：不用为邓传彬请律师。 pic.twitter.com/8tVZz0WGPa
— CHRD人权捍卫者 (@CHRDnet) May 22, 2019
Update on #Deng Chuabin: On May 20, 2019: Deng's father was summoned to the police station at Peizhi town. A few men followed him back home and took video and photos in their house. They search Deng Chuabin's room for more than an hour and took away 20 electronic items including battery chargers. They even took away the electronic wire of their rice cooker. On 21, the police station told Deng's parent not to employ lawyer for Deng.
Deng, also known as Huang Huang, is an independent filmmaker who has collaborated with Beijing artist Ai Weiwei. He claims to have previously faced intimidation by authorities, including detention in 2015 to prevent him from attending a human rights seminar in Geneva.
Next month marks 30 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Each year, Chinese authorities clamp down on references to the crackdown in the lead up to the anniversary, by placing outspoken dissidents on house arrest or in detention.

author: Hong Kong Free Press


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How Chinese tech workers are organizing the online #996 labor movement, despite risks of censorship · Global Voices
88 Bar

Anonymous selfie of person giving Ant Financial/Alibaba a booklet of China’s labor laws. Source: 996action GitHub repo.
This story by Jason Li was originally published on the blog 88 Bar and is republished here with permission.
Among the millions of people employed in China's booming technology industry, a growing number are expressing discontent with the long hours that major companies like Alibaba and Tencent require of their workers.
The issue recently made headlines around the world in April 2019 after a group of Chinese tech workers published 996.ICU: an online letter and GitHub repository decrying a practice known as “996”, a shorthand for having to work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Although it has grown in size recently, the #996 notion and associated memes have been making the rounds online since 2015 (TechNode published a mini-history of the term) and usually refers to the long working hours at tech companies in China.
The letter read: “If you continue to tolerate the ‘996’ work schedule, you will risk your own health and might need to stay in an Intensive Care Unit someday.”
In response to the letter, the CEOs of Alibaba, JD.com and Sogou all rose to publicly defend the practice, which only furthered its popularity worldwide.
Internet memes about social issues have a spotty history on China’s internet, where they have often been subject to censorship. Netizens have become adept at evading, obfuscating and masking their posts in an evolving game of censorship cat-and-mouse. This was the case with the infamous grass mud horse meme of the late 2000s, as it was with last year’s much-reported #MeToo sexual harassment meme, which netizens temporarily evaded by re-naming it or rice bunny ( ??), which sounds similar to “me too” when spoken in Chinese.
In contrast, 996 workplace protest memes have been given some room to run on the Chinese internet, unfettered by the powers that be, for the most part.
In contrast to other social movements and memes on the Chinese internet, #996 has taken shape largely on GitHub, the popular web-based hosting service where millions of web and software developers share code and exchange information and ideas about their work.
In May 2019, more than 242,000 users starred (favorited) the #996 GitHub repository where the letter, memes and other documentation about the movement are hosted, expressing solidarity with China’s tech workers
When the 996 meme first made headlines abroad, many worried that the Chinese government would step in and force Microsoft, owner of GitHub, to block access to 996.ICU within China. Western press outlets even began lionizing Microsoft employees as protectors of free speech after a group of them published an online letter asking their company not to censor itself. Luckily for the company’s executives, it never came to that.
The 996.ICU project on GitHub also has 500+ contributors and has been forked (remixed, loosely speaking) more than 20,000 times. These high figures indicate that the 996.ICU creators skillfully leveraged GitHub’s open collaboration features to attract people’s attention and to create a space for building an online movement and series of memes together.
Here are a few of the more popular memes tied to the movement:
一周文案 (“One Week Copywriter”) that was widely circulated on the social network:
Poster caption: “My dad’s dark eye bags/circles are this big.” “What a coincidence, same with my dad.” (Daily Life of a 996 Fighter)
Poster caption: Let uncle shave you bald. Besides, when you grow up and join 996 you will lose it all anyway.
While these posters were squarely anti-996, Sina Weibo user 少年不打太极 (“Teenager does no Tai Chi”) captured a wider spectrum of the debate in their post, which includes the following images:
Image caption: If you don’t do it, I’m sure someone else will.
Image caption: Not resentful about 996, but resentful about the profit
Image caption: Not defending 996, but respect to those in the struggle
Discussion about 996 was similarly vibrant on media social networking site Douban. One forum thread, 我们该如何对抗“996”？(How should we fight 996), was seen by over 2.5 million people and followed by 1500+ users.
Within that thread, one image set grew so popular that it spilled over onto Sina Weibo, where it appeared on many posts related to 996:
A partial excerpt of the image series. “Let’s not just talk about the post-90s generation. Even me, a post-60s generation wouldn’t accept it.”
The image set comprises TV screen captures of a speech given by Guoqing Li, the CEO of e-commerce giant Dangdang, in which he criticized 996 work culture. In it, he plays the kindly, wise patriarch, in stark contrast to his tech CEO peers at Alibaba, JD.com and Sogou who defended the practice.
The images and discussion above are still readily accessible a month after the 996 meme became an international news story. That they survived this long and are still easy to find suggests that the authorities in China decided to let the discussion play out rather than stifle it through censorship.
In fact, the government seems to be publicly denouncing 996 as well – major government-controlled newspapers China Daily and Xinhua News have both published editorials to that effect.
Though the government didn’t step in to interfere, China’s tech companies jumped in to defend their honor. To begin with, there are at least several instances where Sina Weibo stepped in to moderate the conversation – not to kill it, but just to tone it down a little. For example, the original post with the remixed PSA posters above was taken down, according to the creator, on grounds that it a) contained sensitive elements from its use of propaganda posters, and b) had become too popular and controversial. One screen capture of the post indicates that it had at least 3400 shares, 400 comments and 2300 likes.
Yet Weibo did not ban all instances of the image on its platform, and the images can still be found on many other, albeit less popular, posts. Outside of Weibo, the images have not provoked the ire of any larger powers that be and can be found on the websites of multiple online publications.
Chinese tech giants also fought back in one other obvious if perhaps half-hearted way. As Abacus and the Economist report, Alibaba, Tencent, Qihoo 360 and Xiaomi blocked access to 996.ICU on web browsers that they had control over. The block, however, seems to have been limited to the online letter and/or GitHub repository, and was not applied to the rest of GitHub.
Instead of stifling the movement altogether, China’s tech companies, government newspapers and kindly CEO patriarchs have instead worked together (wittingly or not) to limit the furor, steer the discussion, and create just enough room so that a workplace protest meme may survive on the Chinese internet of 2019.

author: 88 Bar


text:
Meeting a male carpet weaver from Armenia · Global Voices
Chaikhana.media

A carpet. For illustration purposes only. Photo by Chai-Khana.org, used with permission.
The following is a story by Chai-Khana.org and is republished by Global Voices under a partnership agreement. Text and video by Lilit Mkhitaryan.
As a boy Samvel Mikayelyan was mesmerized by his neighbour’s fingers as they flew over the large loom as she weaved threads and crossed knots. He decided then to become a rug weaver — no matter if tradition in Armenia has it set in stone as a woman’s job.
Mikayelyan remained loyal to his dream when he grew up and, now 53, as one of the very few male weavers in Armenia, he is adamant that carpets know no gender.
Three days a week he joins his two fellow villagers and work companions, Srbuhi Martirosyan and Marta Gasparyan, in the House of Culture in Sasunik, a village about 30 kilometers from the capital, Yerevan, where his family moved in the early 1970s from then-Soviet Azerbaijan. He was seven and has lived in Sasunik ever since. His grandmother, an Armenian from Turkey, was a carpet weaver too but none of her rugs made it to Armenia.
The rest of the week Mikayelyan multitasks: he bakes lavash, Armenia’s typical soft, thin unleavened bread baked in a tandoor-like oven, and does tailoring at home. A single father, he also raises his two sons.


text:
North Macedonia to hold first-ever pride parade in June 2019 · Global Voices
Ardi Pulaj

Activists protest for LGBTQ+ rights at the March of Tolerance 15 Nov 2014 in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. Photo by Coalition Margins, used with permission.
The LGBTQ+ community in North Macedonia announced the country will hold its first pride parade ever on June 29, 2019, in the capital Skopje.
North #Macedonia To Hold First #Gay-Pride Parade Next Month: The event will be "a form of protest for affirmation, support, and protection of human rights" of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (#LGBT) community https://t.co/uMwIdmzTAD
— Aleksej Demjanski (@ADemjanski) May 21, 2019
North Macedonia will join a group of Balkan countries that have recently announced or held their first gay pride parades. Earlier this month, Bosnia and Herzegovina said it'll hold its first pride march in September 2019, while Kosovo held its second-ever march in October 2018.
North Macedonia's march was made public by the National Network on Fight Against Homophobia and Transphobia in a press conference on May 20. Irena Cvetkovic, an activist with the group, said:
A very difficult period has passed for the LGBT community and we consider that now is the moment for a Pride Parade, because we passed the worst. North Macedonia is the last country in the region that organizes a Pride Parade.
Cvetkovic was referring to the 2006-2017 rule of the conservative VMRO-DPMNE party, a period when homophobic violence was markedly tolerated by government officials
During the 11-year period, Skopje witnessed a spate of violent attacks against LGBTQ+ organizations and people, and right-wing politicians and pro-government media were openly hostile to this population.
In the summer of 2013, what would have been the North Macedonia's first pride march was canceled ahead of schedule after authorities said they could not guarantee the security of attendees. Shortly beforehand, the building of an LGBTQ+ support center was set on fire. In 2014, the same building was attacked by a mob of men throwing rocks and glass bottles. A police investigation ensued, but no one was arrested.
The new, pro-Western government of North Macedonia has so far shown a different approach to LGBTQ+ rights in comparison to its predecessor.
For instance, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski used to take great pains in order to avoid meeting with openly gay foreign dignitaries on camera: when German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle visited Skopje in an official mission in 2012, Gruevski only spoke on the phone.
In contrast, current Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has participated in public events by the same LGBT support center that was attacked five years ago.
In March 2019, a parliamentary majority voted to include sexual orientation as grounds for discrimination in the Law Against Discrimination, in accordance with recommendations by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Venice Commission.
Another activist with the National Network on Fight Against Homophobia and Transphobia, Antonio Mihajlov, said about the upcoming parade during the press conference:
The gay parade will be a form of protest for affirmation, support and protection of human rights of the LGBTQ people.
He added that the event will be open for all to attend, no matter their nationality, faith, gender or sexual orientation.
When the LGBTQ+ community in Bosnia and Herzegovina announced it will hold the country's first pride parade on September 8, it attracted mixed responses on social media and virtually no acknowledgment from government officials.
In the past, authorities in the capital Sarajevo have denied permission for similar marches and protests.
Sarajevo will host Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first gay pride parade on September 8, according to the country’s LGBTQ activists.https://t.co/b6MsuENgjz
— euronews (@euronews) April 1, 2019
Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, had its first pride parade on May 17, 2019. This day was designated by a number of LGBTQ+ organizations worldwide as the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOT).
But episodes of intolerance were recorded. The director of the LGBTI Equal Rights Association for the Western Balkans and Turkey (ERA) and her partner were threatened with violence and with homophobic speech by a group of men after the march in Novi Sad.
Dragana Todorovic, Executive Co-Director of #ERA, and her partner have been attacked today, following the first Pride Parade in Novi Sad. Dragana and her partner have been verbally attacked with homophobic hate speech and threatened with violence by a group of men. The incident has been reported to the police, and we will monitor the process. #NoviSadPride #novosadskiprajd
A post shared by  LGBTI Equal Rights Association (@lgbtiera) on
Gay parades have taken place in Belgrade, Serbia's capital, for years. Since 2014, there have been no serious incidents as the marches are heavily guarded by police. Before 2014, gay pride marches used to be marred by violence.
Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, the first openly gay prime minister in the Balkan region, and the first Serbian woman in the country's top job, was among the participants in the 2017 and 2018 marches.
Serbia's first openly gay prime minister Ana Brnabic is on a gay pride march in Belgrade. Police have cordoned off the city centre. pic.twitter.com/WugxURB2KU
— Global's Newsroom (@GlobalsNewsroom) September 17, 2017
In October 2018, Kosovo staged its second pride parade under heavy security after a political party that espouses Islamic values urged the government to scrap the event, calling it “a parade of shame”. About 90 percent of Kosovo's population is Muslim and, like most of the Balkan region, socially conservative.
Still, the march carried on as scheduled:
Just a taste of the atmosphere in Pristina for Kosovo #Pride. ?? ?? ?? pic.twitter.com/jnBOOTZlpq
— Rainbow Rose (@RainbowRose_PES) October 10, 2018
Montenegro announced on May 17, that the country's seventh pride will take place on September 21, 2019. Despite recent improvements for LGBTQ+ persons in recent years, discrimination and violence are still present, according to the march's organizers.
In Tirana, Albania’s capital, a pride parade happened on May 18. A manifesto by the organizers said:
“Today we marched for those who live a double life, for those brave people who came out of the closet and live with their true identity… We marched for their parents and families, telling them that an important part of the society supports them in their long way of accepting their kids. We marched for the thousands of individuals that receive the necessary assistance through SOS LGBT service”.
This Twitter user in Tirana couldn’t have rounded up better the weekend of the march:
First #Tirana Pride, then #Eurovision with #Madonna as the guest singer and a drag queen party later
This day couldn't get any more queer! ?
— Kevin (@kevxn13) May 18, 2019

author: Ardi Pulaj


text:
Right to Information: With its new law in place, will Ghana go the way of Nigeria? · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

On May 21, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana gave accent to the Right to Information Act (RTI) that was passed by parliament on March 26.
A media panel discussion at the Club Suisse de La Presse. Image by U.S. Mission Photo by Eric Bridiers. [Creative Commons Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) via Flickr, March 5, 2013]
This law grants citizens the right to seek, access and receive information from public bodies. It is intended to enable citizens to easily access information about public programs and services, while also promoting transparency in government and in fighting corruption.
UNESCO asserts that freedom of information is an “integral part of the right of freedom of expression.” In the region, the right to free expression is enshrined in the African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa.
The legislation is an important check on government power that allows citizens, media outlets and human rights advocates to hold government actors to account for their duties as public servants. In the absence of such laws, violations of national law and human rights laws may be more likely to occur.
Programme officers at the Open Society Foundations have written that the biggest challenge to implementing freedom of information legislation on the continent lies in fears over national security, which governments have used as an excuse to curtail transparency:
Perhaps the biggest single constraint to the effective implementation of access to information in Africa is the regional challenge of insecurity and mass-casualty terrorism. Negotiating the balance between guaranteeing public safety and security on the one hand and open and transparent government on the other has not been easy.
The passage of the RTI Act in Ghana marked the end of a two-decades-old road for a bill drafted in 1999, and underwent reviews in 2003, 2005 and 2007.
The bill was finally sent to the parliament in 2010, but the thrust to get the bill passed swelled in 2017. This was due to the formation of the Media Coalition on RTI which, with “support from other civil society organisations in the past 11 months, piled pressure on Parliament to get the Bill passed,” according to Ghanaian media outlet MyJoyOnline.
Ghana will join 22 other African countries that have adopted RTI laws (AFEX has a complete list through 2017), but as others have seen, the law's existence does not guarantee its robust implementation.
Nigeria, Ghana's close neighbour, went through a similarly slow legislative process before the Freedom of Information (FOI) was signed into law in May 2011, by then-President Goodluck Jonathan. In the case of Nigeria, the FOI Act was preceded with a decade of activism which included three trips through and fro Nigeria's parliament, the National Assembly.
While civil society and the press struggled to make government business more transparent and open, the government resisted these moves.
Ayobami Ojebode, a professor of communication, wrote that the reasons behind the “reluctance” to pass the bill were a manifestation of “the age-long struggle in Nigeria (and elsewhere) between the press, citizens and civil society on the one hand and the government on the other.”
Nigeria's law gives everyone the right to request information “in the custody or possession of any public official, agency or institution.” In principle, making an FOI request in Nigeria can be done orally to an authorised government or public official “who must then reduce the application into writing and provide a copy of the written application to the applicant.” A request may also be made in writing or through a third party for illiterate applicants.
But in practice, this freedom has not been so easy to exercise. In a 2014 survey study, Ifeoma Dunu and Gregory Obinna Ugbo found that most Nigerian journalists were underutilising the act because it is difficult to take advantage of in practice. Despite being aware of the existence of the FOI, most of the journalists who participated in the study had “never made use of the law in the discharge of their journalistic responsibilities.” More than 80% of respondents said that some government authorities were not compliant with principles of the law, and that they had challenges using the law.
This study was conducted just three years after FOI became law in Nigeria. Today, many more journalists and civil society groups have kept tabs on the government through FOI applications. One project, known as the FOI Vault, tracks the number of requests made and to which government agency.
Abayomi Akinbo, a development professional, described for Global Voices some of the limitations of FOI requests in Nigeria: The FOI Act still clashes with the Official Secrets Act, which remains binding for Nigerian public officers. Thus, since most Nigerian civil servants “think that everything is a secret,” most FOI requests are either “ignored or answered superficially.”
This shows that Nigerian civil servants still need capacity-building on the true workings of an FOI request. It also suggests that the Official Secrets Act should be amended to eliminate clashes with the FOI.
The passage of RTI in Ghana is being watched with muted breath. As the Nigerian experience has shown, the passage of a law is one thing, but its implementation is another.

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


text:
Russia: Kommersant staff walk out in protest of censorship, triggering journalism ethics debate · Global Voices
RuNet Echo

Vladimir Putin meets the top editors of major Russian news outlets. Most of them are now either directly controlled by the state or owned by one of its loyal oligarchs // kremlin.ru under CC2.0
On May 20, 2019, the management of Kommersant, one of post-Soviet Russia’s oldest and most respected business newspapers, forced its two star reporters, Ivan Safronov and Maxim Ivanov, to resign.
The incident was triggered by an April 2019 article that Safronov and Ivanov co-wrote, along with three other staff reporters, about the possible resignation of Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia's upper chamber of parliament, the Council of the Federation.
Citing anonymous sources, the article alleged that Matviyenko, a veteran politician who was the governor of St. Petersburg before taking the job in the parliament, was considering another top government position.
This was nothing out of the ordinary: well-respected publications in Russia often publish articles based on nothing but anonymous sources, as the country’s notoriously secretive ruling circles are reluctant to go on record about even the most trivial matters of bureaucratic musical chairs.
Sometimes these anonymous scoops do play out, but this particular one did not. One month has gone by since the story ran and Matviyenko has still not resigned. Perhaps the article spooked her plans, or perhaps it was simply wrong.
What came next was shocking to many, though not unprecedented: both reporters were forced to resign.
Maxim Ivanov announced the news on his Facebook page:
С завтрашнего дня я больше не работаю в ИД «Коммерсантъ».
Если без лирики: уход из Ъ оформлен по соглашению сторон, а решение о необходимости прекратить трудовые отношения принято акционером ИД. Поводом стала заметка «Спикеров делать из этих людей», в которой сказано о возможном уходе Валентины Матвиенко с поста председателя Совета федерации.
As of today, I’m no longer employed at the Kommersant publishing house. To avoid waxing lyrical: formally, my resignation from Kommersant is a mutual agreement between parties, but the decision to terminate my employment was made by the publishing house’s stakeholder. The reason is an article […] about the alleged resignation of Valentina Matviyenko from the position of the speaker of the Council of the Federation.
Kommersant has only one true “stakeholder” in Alisher Usmanov, one of the wealthiest people in the world, and the owner of  a vast media empire which includes Kommersant, Megafon, one of the top four mobile providers in the country, and the Mail.Ru Group which owns stakes in two of the most popular social networks in the Russian-speaking world, Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki.
Kommersant is a tiny speck among Usmanov’s other assets but its political coverage seems to have caused him significant problems. In March this year, another Kommersant reporter, Maria Karpenko, was forced to resign over the Telegram channel she administered.
Several former and current employees told Runet Echo that Usmanov’s interference in the newspaper’s editorial affairs has been constant over the years, whenever he felt the coverage threatened his business interests or angered his patrons in the Kremlin.
In 2011, Maxim Kovalsky, the editor of Kommersant’s political magazine Vlast (Power) was fired for the magazine’s issue covering the mass fraud during the parliamentary elections.
Печально, что к таким чисткам в СМИ начинаешь привыкать. Газета.ру, Лента, Деловой Петербург, теперь Коммерсант. Это список можно продолжать. Крупных независимых СМИ все меньше.
— Andrey Pivovarov (@brewerov) 20 мая 2019 г.
It’s sad that we’re getting used to these purges in the media. Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru, Delovoy Peterburg, now Kommersant. The list could go on. There are fewer and fewer large independent media outlets.
In an interview with Vedomosti, a competing business newspaper, Kommersant editor-in-chief Vladimir Zhelonkin said that Ivanov and Safronov had to resign because their article did not comply with editorial standards. He did not specify which standards exactly and skirted around the fact that he, as the top editor, had run the story on the newspaper's front page story when it came out. He also denied the allegations of Usmanov's involvement.
Just hours after Ivanov and Safronov were made to leave, the entire politics desk of Kommersant, several dozen people in total, resigned in protest and in solidarity with their colleagues.
One of the reporters, Vsevolod Inyutin, posted on his Facebook page a stack of signed notices saying: “I hereby resign from my position due to my disagreement with the stakeholder’s decision to dismiss two employees of the politics desk, Ivan Safronov and Maxim Ivanov.”
Screen capture of Vsevolod Inutin Facebook post.
К этому давно шло. Всё остальное написал Глеб Черкасов
It has been brewing for quite a while. Gleb Cherkasov [editor of Kommersant's politics desk] said the rest.
Crippled by mass resignations, Kommersant seemed unable to cover a crisis in its own ranks:
Just got Kommersant newspaper's daily “Most important stories of the day” newsletter in my inbox
Guess what it doesn't mention https://t.co/l7Wg7E8f78
— Polina Ivanova (@polinaivanovva) 20 мая 2019 г.
StalinGulag, a previously anonymous political blogger who became the focus of media attention when his true identity was revealed by investigative reporters, wondered why a newspaper in today’s Russia even needed a politics desk:
“The publication's shareholders decided wisely — ‘Why would you need the political desk in Kommersant newspaper if there's no politics in the country,'” quipped @StalinGulag, a prominent anti-Kremlin blogger. Our latest on the @kommersant uproarhttps://t.co/rvyGYEbBRq
— Anna Smolchenko (@Annaafp) 20 мая 2019 г.
However, not all were sympathetic to Kommersant reporters’ plight.
On Telegram, some have wagered that the fired reporters’ public posturing was part of an attempt to promote the news outlet they were launching.
Meduza editor (and former RuNet Echo editor) Kevin Rothrock tweeted about the rumors:
Heard the rumors that the former politics desk from @kommersant is developing their own new media outlet? @sssmirnov says it’s a bullshit story planted to generate sympathy for the newspaper’s management. https://t.co/JXpBqMtrh1
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) 21 мая 2019 г.
Alexey Navalny, a prominent opposition politician, tweeted:
Дело, конечно, прошлое, но когда Усманов подал меня в суд за фразу «Усманов проводит цензуру в газете «Коммерсант» никто из журналистов Ъ (прошлых и нынешних)не выступил свидетелем в мою пользу. Все струсили. pic.twitter.com/Omy5MkWsBN
— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) 20 мая 2019 г.
It’s all water under the bridge, of course, but when Usmanov sued me for saying that “Usmanov censors the Kommersant newspaper,” none of its reporters (former or current) stepped forward to be my witness. They all chickened out.
Navalny then wrote a lengthy post on his website accusing Kommersant’s reporters and editors of cowardice and acquiescence, and while still offering them legal support. He also called everyone who still hasn’t resigned a strikebreaker who should be ostracized.
But alongside Navalny’s public spat with journalists — one of many in his political career — there were others who echoed his statements.
RBC, another business news outlet competing with Kommersant and facing many of the same problems — its top editors were forced to step down after an investigation of Vladimir Putin’s wealth — wrote about the historical roots of today’s political crisis in Russian media:
Looking at the Kommersant scandal, Andrei Kolesnikov has some interesting thoughts about the “sham economics” of contemporary Russian journalism. https://t.co/MwJtW1dvpZ pic.twitter.com/EV2iIPASYu
— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) 22 мая 2019 г.
Given that Russia’s top publications are either directly state-owned or belong to oligarchs loyal to the Kremlin, it’s unlikely that the crisis will be resolved anytime soon.

author: RuNet Echo


text:
‘I don’t want to be hacked to death!’: Kenyans speak out against a spike in murders of women · Global Voices
Susie Berya

On October 24, 2017, Fanis Lisiagali, executive director of Healthcare Assistance Kenya, leads the White Ribbon Campaign march and promotes their rapid response call center hotline, which responds to violence against women in elections, Nairobi, Kenya. Photo by Carla Chianese, IFES, via Flickr / Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0.
Over a month has passed since the Kenyan young woman, Ivy Wangechi, was murdered on April 9, 2019, in broad daylight, allegedly by Naftali Kinuthia, a childhood acquaintance.
When Wangechi wouldn't take Kinuthia's calls following a recent reunion, he drove to Moi University, in Eldoret, Kenya, where Wangechi studied medicine — and killed her.
In the past five months alone, at least 60 femicide cases have been reported in Kenya, according to “The She Word,” a women’s Pan-African TV programme.
Nearly 40 percent of girls and women between 15 to 49 in Kenya have experienced physical violence at least once in their lifetime, and 24 percent experienced physical violence in 2017, according to the report “Global Study on Homicide: Gender-related killings of women and girls 2018,” conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
"I wish Ivy's death could be just a sacrifice so that no other girls die."
Ivy Wangechi's mother Winfred is one of many mothers mourning their daughters this year in Kenya, where femicide – the killing of a female on account of her gender – is said to be on the rise. #Factfinder pic.twitter.com/3UGvHLTQjx
— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) May 18, 2019
And the numbers keep climbing. Parliamentary police officer Helen Kwamboka is the latest victim, who was found brutally murdered inside her locked home in Nairobi. Police suspect her boyfriend, who is now on the run.
Despite the spike in gender-based murders, the issue has been met with indifference. Some have even blamed the murders on women:
Shame on everyone who is using the murder of that Moi University student as "a lesson to the ladies". Shame on all of you who try to find a justification every time a woman is murdered. Shame on anyone who reserves blame for the victim and not the murderer.
— M (@_kuki_sanban) April 9, 2019
But on May 27, 20 female members of parliament in Kenya launched a campaign against femicide called “Her Life Matters,” to raise national consciousness on killings that occur within relationships. The MPs also called for research into the cause of rampant killings among partners in relationships.
While there are laws and guidelines to prevent gender-based violence in Kenya, including the Protection Against Domestic Violence (PADV) Act (2015) and the National Guidelines on the Management of Sexual Violence (2014), they are rarely implemented.
Last month, on April 15, 2019, the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) released a statement calling for decisive action against femicide. FIDA offers mediation and psychosocial support to families and partners in attempts to ensure the safety of women.
The group requested Kenyans to identify, report and testify against perpetrators of violence.
Enough is enough. Femicide must stop. @citizentvkenya @RadioCitizenFM @ntvkenya @KTNKenya @KBCChannel1 @KBCTelevision @K24Tv @switchtvkenya @YvonneOkwara @BettyMKyallo @MarkMasai @KenMijungu @SmritiVidyarthi @JamilaMohamed @LinusKaikai @Fchurii @DCI_Kenya @DPPS_KE @FredMatiangi pic.twitter.com/8ZMPkMuoyG
— FIDA Kenya (@fidakenya) April 15, 2019
Global Voices spoke with two Kenyan women, Joyce Nawiri, and Patty Mwangi, who offered their insights on the recent spike in femicides. The interviews took place via WhatsApp on April 23, 2019. Patty Mwangi's name was changed upon her request to protect her identity.
It has given me a phobia for relationships because there's a risk of me dating such kind of a man.
I was at work when I heard about Wangechi, I was really scared that day. I had to run errands, I was in a haze, I don’t even know how I crossed the road. This guy stopped me from nowhere, I just stood still. It was “flight or faint” moment. But of course, I couldn’t run. In my head, I was wondering if the man wanted to attack me. But he just wanted to ask for directions.
No, I don't. I don't know if an ex or rejected admirer is gonna appear from nowhere and slash me in the middle of the road during the day or at night. I've never felt safe at any time because of fear of being robbed or raped but now I have to add this kind of fear, too.
Yes. How do I tell if a man I'm rejecting won't come back for my neck? How do I tell apart a genuine admirer from a psycho? How do I accept gifts or dates from a man? Personally, I don't accept anything from a man I don't have an interest in. But now I keep thinking, what if I do [because] I'm interested and later on, find out I actually don't like something about him? I'm a bisexual. I don't worry about these kinds of things when I'm dating a girl or when a girl is wooing me.
I'm a sucker for love, but … my feelings have become heightened. If you don't feel safe, run! Trust your gut, it's always right. The red flags are always there if you are careful enough to see. I do my due diligence, I am that kind of person who seeks out information. I research the person I date. It’s not enough to just know someone’s last name.
To a very little extent. Most of the government is male-dominated. However, I'd like to commend one government official, Mr. Ezekiel Mutua [of the Kenya Film Commission Board], because he recently banned a song called “Pigwa Shoka,” where two men [encourage] their fellow men to brutally attack women who rejected them or played them for their money. This goes a long way in sensitizing the general public about the need to respect women's choices. The police only act when they're bribed or there's a public demand for justice. So they’re also not responsible in any way.
I just think our government is incompetent.
I have threatened to take pictures of men who woo me and post them on social media so that these men stop. I get harassed a lot because of my body. I even carry ginger spray. I'm staying away from male admirers. When they ask for my number I give them my father's number. I've even shouted at male strangers in public places: “sitaki shoka!” [I don’t want to be hacked [to death!] whenever they begin asking for my number.
Kenyan netizens have taken to social media to call for the end of femicide and violence against women.
Twitter user Rayal George addressed the role that men can play in putting an end to the trend.
As men we shouldn't express our anger by taking someone's life. Let's be tolerant and think wisely by respecting the sanctity of LIFE. #StopDomesticViolence #EndFemicideNow #HerLifeMatters https://t.co/NA6x5HI7cM
— Rayal George (@RayalGeorge) May 26, 2019
And Twitizen Anonymous Kenya agrees:
We need to do something about our brothers problem with handling rejection & the macho culture we have allowed to grow in Kenya. Its part of the roots to this femicide wave we witness. If a woman rejects you, it is not the end of the world my brothers. Move on… a hurt ego heals https://t.co/OdKuUfPjZi
— Anonymous Kenya (@Anon1KENYA) May 25, 2019
Hashtags like #HerLifeMatters and #EndFemicideNow have been making rounds on Twitter.
Last month, Siasa Place, a youth-based non-governmental organization, hosted a Twitter chat to discuss the issues surrounding GBV in Kenya and FIDA members were guest speakers.
Join us, and @siasaplace right now as we delve into the unspoken issues surrounding GBV in Kenya. https://t.co/CxbWgEyDxJ
— FIDA Kenya (@fidakenya) April 17, 2019
On May 30, the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) will hold a vigil where Kenyans are invited to meet at the University of Nairobi, to show solidarity to the victims of femicide.
Note change of date #HerLifeMatters #EndFemicideNow pic.twitter.com/VxfJIpZ5zj
— Hon. Joyce Lay (@joycew_lay) May 27, 2019

author: Susie Berya


text:
‘End of an era’ as Jamaica’s former prime minister, Edward Seaga, dies · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

Former Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga, who died on May 28, 2019. Screenshot taken from a YouTube video titled, “PICTURE THIS: Remembering Edward Seaga”, published by the Jamaica Gleaner.
On May 28, 2019 — his 89th birthday — Edward Seaga, one of the most influential political leaders in Jamaican post-colonial history, died in a hospital bed in Miami, Florida. He had been ailing with cancer for some time.
Seaga was Jamaica’s fifth prime minister since the country's independence from Great Britain in 1962. Born in 1930 in Boston, Massachusetts, Seaga returned to Jamaica as an infant but was often seen as an outsider by political opponents, possibly due, in part, to the fact that he was a racial minority. His father was of Lebanese descent, while his mother boasted African, Scottish and Indian ethnicity.
A dominating figure, Seaga proved to be a strong-willed (some would say stubborn) leader for the conservative Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The island's other main political party, the People's National Party (PNP), was led at the time by Michael Manley, a democratic socialist.
Seaga and Manley were always seen in juxtaposition to each other. Journalist Cliff Hughes described Seaga as a motivator and builder, while Manley was the inspiring visionary. The two politicians were fierce rivals during the turbulent 1970s, culminating in a difficult period of political strife between 1978 and Jamaica's violent 1980 elections. During this bitter period of ideological division, disillusioned Jamaicans nicknamed Seaga “Spy-aga” (for his alleged association with the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency) and Manley was called “Man-lie.”
Seaga was well known for creating the most notorious political garrison in Jamaica: Tivoli Gardens, a constituency of West Kingston, which has its own violent history. In 2010, after the JLP government could no longer resist the US’ calls for extradition of drug don Christopher Coke, who controlled the garrison, residents clashed with state security forces, leaving at least 72 Jamaicans dead.
It was a grey, rainy day in the island's capital city when news of Seaga's death broke, and Jamaicans were not in the mood for antagonism. While local radio stations went live with reactions to Seaga’s passing, with many callers recognised him as a towering, but often divisive figure in Jamaican politics, most social media posts acknowledged the politician's achievements, not his flaws.
The current prime minister and Seaga's protégé, Andrew Holness, who visited him in the hospital just days before his death, tweeted:
It is with great sadness that I inform the nation of the passing of the Most Honourable Edward Phillip George Seaga, the fifth Prime Minister of Jamaica.
He transitioned today at approximately 1:00 pm Jamaica time. #RIPMrSeaga pic.twitter.com/ciElv8GUXP
— Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) May 28, 2019
Prime Minister Holness continued:
I consider Mr. Seaga my political father. He has been a great mentor, friend and guide in imparting the skills on strategic leadership and in building a nation. I owe him & indeed Jamaica owes him a debt of gratitude.
He will forever remain in our hearts and minds. #RIPMrSeaga pic.twitter.com/nyECtP0Dne
— Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) May 28, 2019
On radio, Bruce Golding, a former prime minister who had inherited Seaga's West Kingston constituency, described him as a long-term thinker, an exceptional leader and “a hard man to disagree with.” In Jamaican parlance, Mr. Seaga was “nuh easy” (“not easy”).
One socia media user who shares Seaga's birthday posted a thread of the politician's achievements:
Ever since I have been a little girl, it was always a pleasure to share a birthday with The Most Hon. Edward Seaga. He has contributed so much to the development of our beautiful country. I hope he enjoys many more birthdays & be with us to see #Jamaica become truly properous! pic.twitter.com/ShN4St4x0w
— Kerry-Ann Morgan (@patrioticjam) May 28, 2019
Members of the Jamaican diaspora had a more nuanced view, perhaps, of Seaga's legacy, focusing primarily on those troubled years:
Edward Seaga is dead. Jamaica mourns as well it should. Seaga and Michael Manley slaughtered Jamaica's future, both with the best personal intent.
Manley embracing our communist neighbor Cuba with hubris and Seaga embracing American imperialism in an effort to ‘save’ Jamaica from communism.
We can all look back with our subjective opinions but this is the reality that has lead to a foreign debt from which I see no complete recovery.
Now, both Seaga and Manley are gone and we will remember both their positive and negative contributions to our country but at the end of the day, both were great men with Jamaica first and foremost in their hearts.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, in a timely response to Seaga's passing, tweeted a video message, in which she noted that during a recent conversation with Seaga, “In his frank observation, trickle-down economics has not worked.”
REMEMBERING SEAGA: WATCH – Prime Minister Mia Mottley issues condolences to the Seaga family & the Government of Jamaica on behalf of the Government & people of Barbados from the halls of Parliament (BGIS) pic.twitter.com/xIuXf2vtKf
— Kevz Politics (@KevzPolitics) May 29, 2019
The launch of a book of Michael Manley interviews written by his widow, originally scheduled for May 29, has been postponed out of respect for Seaga, who continued to play a part in public life up until last year and is now regarded as  a patriotic figure.
The scope of Seaga’s contribution to Jamaica’s national life cannot be underestimated. The last surviving framer of the constitution, he was the country's longest-serving parliamentarian, for over 40 years. Seaga established many financial institutions, including the now-thriving Jamaica Stock Exchange and the first Jamaican majority-owned commercial bank, as well as other important social institutions like the National Training Agency.
Achievements aside, Jamaicans shared fond memories on social media:
Saw Edward Seaga earlier this year at the Reggae Gold Awards. He briefly stood at my bistro table and I said thank you.
That was enough. #RIPMrSeaga pic.twitter.com/BQS7QJ7LLl
— Alethia Lambert (@lethiaa) May 28, 2019
On Facebook, Jamaican environmentalist Wendy Ann Lee shared a photograph of Seaga presenting her with an award, and remembered him as “a true patriot and promoter of the arts, history and culture of Jamaica.”
One Twitter user, noting Seaga's love of patties and juice, both Jamaican staples, summed up his legacy:
It's officially the end of an era. Whatever you may have thought of his political policies and ideas, it is undeniable that Edward Seaga helped shape the culture of Jamaica. Alright sir, walk good.
Gonna drop a thread of some things I learned over the years about him
— Boogie (@nnboogie) May 28, 2019
In a recent radio interview, Seaga described his major achievement as “justice for the people” through his contribution as one of the architects of Jamaica's constitution, his creation of the country’s Charter of Rights and his work as a public defender.
In tribute, on a gloomy afternoon in Kingston, a radio station played Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way”.

author: Emma Lewis


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In Myanmar, Buddhists offer white roses to Muslims during Ramadan · Global Voices
Juan Cebu

Photo from White Rose Campaign Facebook Page. Used with permission.
On 16 May 2019, a group of Buddhists in Myanmar's former capital, Yangon, launched a ‘White Rose’ campaign which offers roses to Muslims who are fasting during Ramadan. The campaign was organized to show solidarity with Muslims after Buddhist mobs gathered around a number of temporary Muslim prayer houses and demanded that prayer services be suspended.
On the evenings of 14 and 15 May, mobs of more than 100 Buddhist extremists attempted to prevent Muslim prayers, demanding that three prayer houses set up for Ramadan observance in the South Dagon area of Yangon be closed down.
In response, Buddhist monk Bandatta Seidatta, more famously known as Asia Light Sayardaw, created the White Rose campaign. Bandatta Seidatta visited the South Dagon Muslim community on the evening of 16 May to offer them white roses as a way of providing encouragement and support. The campaign has been joined by interfaith activists, and in just one week, it has spread to other cities across Myanmar, including Mandalay, Sagaing, and Mawlamyine — even reaching Myanmar communities in Malaysia. The campaign continues to urge citizens in Myanmar to offer a white rose to their friends regardless of ethnicity or religion.
The campaign also urged Internet users to share posts on social media of people offering white roses to Muslims using the hashtag #WhiteRose4Peace.
A statement from the campaign's official page reads:
[…] ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးအတွက် နှင်းဆီဖြူလှုပ်ရှားမှုသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်း ဖြစ်ပွားနေသည့် ဘာသာရေး ၊ လူမျိုးရေး မတည်ငြိမ်စေရန် ၊ အမုန်းပွားစေရန် တမင်ကြံစည်လုပ်ဆောင်မှုများကို ပြည်သူလူထုက ကြံကြံ့ခံ၍ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး၊ လူမှု သဟဇာတ ဖြစ်ရေးနှင့် တန်းတူညီမျှရေးကို တန်ဖိုးထားသော ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးကို ချစ်မြတ်နိုးသူ မြန်မာပြည်သူ၊ ပြည်သားများ၏ လှုပ်ရှားမှု ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ […]
White rose for peace movement is the movement of the citizens of Myanmar who love peace and value equality and social harmony, by resisting those who intentionally spread hatred and provoke ethnic and religious instability in Myanmar right now.
White Rose Campaign in Yangon. May 27, 2019. From White Rose Campaign Facebook Page. Used with Permission.
Meanwhile, some netizens responded to the harassment of Muslims by changing their profile pictures with this frame endorsed by the Yangon Youth Network:
ဘာသာရေးအစွန်းရောက်များအတွက် ငါတို့နိုင်ငံမှာ နေရာမရှိ
There is no place for religious extremists in our country.
Profile frame developed by Yangon Youth Network.
Myanmar has a predominantly Buddhist population. Current Buddhist extremist movements in Myanmar were started by a radical group called MaBaTha in 2014. Although MaBaTha was declared unlawful by state bodies, the 969 movement initiated by the group and its leader Wirathu has inspired widespread discriminatory extremist movements and pervasive online hate-speech against Muslim minorities in the country. Since 2012, Myanmar has experienced several instances of religious conflicts across the country, including the large scale communal violence between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists.
To rebuild social cohesion among Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar, civil society leader Thet Swe Win believes that government leaders must step up to speak about social harmony. He said during a recent interview by Irrawaddy News Agency that:
I attach greater importance to the moral leadership of political leaders. […] Frankly speaking, our leaders fail to provide moral leadership. Millions of Rohingya fled and many people died. […] They should at least acknowledge on humanitarian grounds that they had been living in the country, and are now in trouble after they left the country. Muslims have suffered, and Arakanese people are suffering now, and so are Kachin and Shan people. Only when a leader defines the norms and values of [a] society will people be able to follow. […] One day when we have leaders who dare to say the country has no place for people with such amoral attitudes, and define clear moral standards for the society, then, hopefully there will be some changes to our society.

author: Juan Cebu


text:
Recent troubles rock the historical Kano Kingdom in northern Nigeria · Global Voices
Bala Muhammmad Makosa

The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, at Durbar Festival celebrating Eid in June 2018, Kano, Nigeria. Photo by Don Camillo via Wikimedia: CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Kingdom of Kano in northern Nigeria is in trouble.
Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State in northwestern Nigeria, has decided to split Kano Emirate into five distinct territories, breaking up a kingdom that has existed before the age of governors for nearly 1,000 years.
Dating back to the year 999 as one of Nigeria’s largest kingdoms, Kano played a central role in trans-Sahara commercial routes. Kano is home to a remarkable museum that holds ancient relics in a prominent palace, and Nigerians often gather for festivals and exhibitions.
Ganduje’s decision to split this ancient kingdom under his governance is tied to a political tug-of-war between himself, Kano’s former governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso and the current king, 57-year-old Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, the 58th Emir (King) to date — appointed by Kwankwaso before his term ended.
Once political allies, Ganduje and Kwankwaso became rivals after Ganduje took office in 2015, and now his decision to split Sanusi’s kingdom is, according to some, an act of revenge against the emir, his rival Kwankwaso's pick.
This adverse situation has disturbed the unity among Kano Kingdom households who have gotten along for centuries.
Counting from the unification in 927, the British Monarchy is about 1,092 years old. Kano Kingdom was founded in 999, 1,020 years old.
While the Brits will do all to uphold the dignity of their royal heritage, Nigeria is dismantling its own heritage over petty politics. Thread.
— Ayò Bánkólé (@AyoBankole) May 8, 2019
On May 10, the courts instructed Ganduje to halt the appointment ceremony of the new kings, but he defied the court and executed the division anyway, claiming he was carrying out the orders of the state legislature.
Several palace officials decried Governor Ganduje’s actions, calling it a distortion of a working model for governance in Kano and northern Nigeria. Ganduje said he did not obey the court order because it came after the appointment of the new emirs in each of the five distinct sub-kingdoms: Kano, Rano, Karaye, Gaya and Bichi.
However, on May 15, the court ordered a return to the status quo pending the hearing of the suit against the appointment of the new emirs.
Many Kano residents, depressed by the division, said Governor Ganduje is playing politics in diminishing the famous Kano Kingdom.
The Emir of Kano on his throne, September 2016. Photo by Don Camillo via Wikimedia:  CC BY-SA 4.0.
Current Governor Ganduje worked as deputy governor to Kwankwaso twice between 2011 and 2015.
When Kwankwaso was about to leave office, he called on Ganduje as his deputy to run in the 2015 election. But since Ganduje took office, Kwankwaso has accused him of not being loyal, although Ganduje denies these charges.
During Nigeria’s 2019 presidential election, Kwankwaso strategized to prevent Ganduje from taking on a second term, but Ganduje prevailed.
Ganduje has expressed hostility toward Sanusi for supporting Kwankwaso’s favored candidate, Abba Kabir, of the People’s Democratic Party, during the 2019 election.
The two rivals have challenged each other with political blackmail through their supporters. Ganduje has revoked all Kwankwaso’s projects that he started as governor.
Ganduje’s move to split the kingdom is revenge against Sanusi’s partisanship and another way to show disdain for Kwankwaso.
He says the five new territories would operate as Kano’s sub-domains within Kano State. Jurisdiction for these territories would fall under Ganduje — instead of King Sanusi.
Before 1903, kingmakers determined the pick of Kano kings through family lineage. But with Europe’s widening influence in West Africa, ruling governors were given the power to choose kings beginning in 1903. Even though a prevailing democratic governor oversees Kano’s Emirate Council, it usually complies with ancestral customs of the kingdom.
Present-day Kano State in northwestern Nigeria was established in 1967 and remains a major economic hub in northern Nigeria, governed by Nigeria’s military and civilian governors.
1850 postcard reproduction of an engraving of Kano Kingdom via Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons.
Ado Bayero became the 57th Emir in 1963, holding sway for 50 years until his death in 2014. After his demise, Emirate families expected Governor Kwankwaso to appoint a descendant of the Bayero family as the next king.
But that year, Kwankwaso, Kano governor, wielded his power granted by the constitution to appoint Muhammad Sanusi as the monarch, instead. Ado Bayero had a tense relationship with Kwankwaso, thus it was “practically impossible” for Kwankwaso to appoint Bayero’s son as emir.
On the other hand, Sanusi has always harbored the ambition to return his lineage to the throne of Kano, which was lost when his grandfather, Emir Muhammadu Sanusi I, was deposed fifty years ago.
Sanusi was Nigeria’s Central Bank governor when Kwankwaso named him as the new king in 2014 and he resigned to accept the mantle as the 58th Emir of Kano Kingdom. That same year, however, BBC reports that Sanusi was ousted by the Central Bank for alleged fraud and mismanagement of millions of dollars in oil revenue.
Sanusi hails from the Sanusi Emirate folk, yet choosing him as the Emir of Kano tore apart Emirate households — most initially rejected Sanusi. The Bayero family also declined to pay homage to the new emir, and pandemonium broke out in Kano city.
But since 2014, Sanusi has contributed to an abundance of reforms in the kingdom and many say he has improved the well being of Emirate families and the Kano community at large — a king ushering in modernity to the ancient kingdom.
Others say Sanusi used monetary influence to win over those who initially defied him.
Kano Emirate families pay their respect to the King Sanusi, 2016. Photo by Don Camillo via Wikimedia: CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Kano State House of Assembly Speaker, Alasan Rurum, backs the Ganduje division of the Emirate:
The four emirate councils [Rano, Gaya, Karaye and Bichi] have existed for more than 300 years. It is not a new creation. So, as far as the laws that we passed are concerned, we simply re-introduced what we had on the ground between 300 and 500 years ago.
Meanwhile, some members of Kano State House of Assembly, who oppose Ganduje, petitioned the State government in court, challenging it to oblige the governor to reverse Kano Emirate to its former status.
In the same week that the High Court halted Ganduje along with eight others in splitting the kingdom, a youth group went to Bichi — one of the sub-kingdoms — to pay allegiance to the new king  — the son of the late Ado Bayero.
Now, the historical Kano Emirate faces turbulent times by an eager politician attempting with urgency to baffle his political adversary.
What are the consequences? Time will tell.
An edited version of the Kano Wall in the Kano Kingdom. Photo by Cepit via Wikimedia: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Editor's note: Nwachukwu Egbunike contributed to this report.

author: Bala Muhammmad Makosa