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Russian Authorities Are Trying Really Hard to Boost Turnout in the Upcoming Election, Good Taste Be Damned · Global Voices
RuNet Echo

Russians protest against elections that they see as unfair. Photo by Evgeny Feldman for navalny.feldman.photo, CC-BY-NC
This year's electoral campaign is set to be the strangest in Russia’s recent history, all about convincing those Russians who aren't fans of President Vladimir Putin or who just aren't motivated voters to show up at the polls and cast their ballot, no matter the candidate, because doing so would lend legitimacy to what's considered a foregone conclusion: Putin's reelection.
Russian authorities’ concern over turnout has reached almost feverish obsession with anonymous, homophobic propaganda videos and men’s magazines using sexualized imagery to complete their “civic responsibility” to websites like Russian airline Aeroflot urging their visitors to vote.
Putin is expected to win by such a colossal margin (as he’s already done three times since 2000) in the March 18 election that he not only barely, if at all, campaigns, but can’t even be bothered to be filmed for his own campaign video, which had to be stitched together from archival footage. Or even appear in public in the last month before the election date, if only to quench the rumors of a terminal disease or a palace coup.
Путин не явился на свое выдвижение, не пришел за удостоверением кандидата, отказался от дебатов, почти совсем пропал с экранов. Начинаю волноваться за инаугурацию.
— Алекто (@s_eirena) 24 февраля 2018 г.
Putin failed to show up at his own nomination, never collected his candidate’s ID, refused to debate, all but disappeared from the TV screens. Am worried about the swearing in ceremony now.
For the remaining candidates, a single digit race would be an overstatement: Of eight names on the ballot, five look attractive enough to a grand total of 2 per cent of the Russian electorate, according to the latest polls. The two remaining contenders, who aren’t Vladimir Putin or political non-entities, will gladly accept 7 per cent as a major victory.
One, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia isn’t remotely liberal or democratic (in conventional terms, LDPR can be described as a far-right populist party), is running for president for the sixth time since 1991. His best result was 9.35 per cent in 2008, and he can’t hope to break his personal record this time, according to the most generous polls.
The other, Pavel Grudinin, a Communist Party candidate who isn’t a member of the party, is under constant, ferocious attack from state-owned and loyalist media, commentators and countless online bots and trolls for his supposed hypocrisy. Grudinin, the CEO of a successful agricultural business, is famously wealthy, probably beyond what his officially declared income shows.
With the biggest intrigue of this electoral cycle in Russia being Grudinin or Zhirinovsky coming second with 7 per cent (or whether the ultra-liberal Ksenia Sobchak, the only woman on the ballot, can break the 1 per cent barrier), it’s no surprise that Russians are disinterested.
So the focus isn’t one of the persons on the ballot, but the turnout itself. Reports in the media, based on leaks from the Kremlin, name “70/70” as the target — as in 70 per cent votes for Putin at 70 per cent turnout.
Officials on the ground are so anxious to meet the unrealistic expectations forced on them that some are jumping the gun, like the Tula elections committee which published turnout figures three weeks before the election day:
Беспрецедентный загон на “выборы”. Таких “политтехнологий”, в России ещё не наблюдалось. Не знаю как Вы, я цирк с детства не люблю. Обеспечивать кремлю явку, не собираюсь. Тульская ИК по ошибке опубликовала явку на выборы, которые еще не состоялись. Какие ещё нужны аргументы? pic.twitter.com/FRjHuOzkje
— Евдокимов Валентин (@evdok9) 25 февраля 2018 г.
This corralling of voters to these “elections” is unprecedented. We have never seen such “political technologies” in Russia. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never liked the circus. I have no plans to give the kremlin [sic] the turnout they want. The Tula elections committee seems to have mistakenly published the results of elections which are yet to be held. You still need further arguments?
And then there's the reported cases of coercion, like students in Rostov-on-Don threatened with eviction from their dormitories if they fail to turn up at the polls. Or elderly local council workers having to canvass far-flung corners of the Moscow region with a barely working app on iPhones they were told to “borrow from their grandkids”.
But it’s these online campaigns that are causing the most backlash from their target audience, web-savvy and critically minded Russians Uncredited videos depicting them as sexually frustrated teenagers or unkempt, passive slobs are surfacing on social media.
The one below appeared in February 2018 showing a typical abstainee as tormented by homophobic nightmares:
Eugene Kazachkov, a screenwriter from Moscow, wrote on Facebook about another such video allegedly in the works:
Все уже насладились роликом, где “простой народ” пугают геями, пионерами и призывом в армию в 52 года, чтобы загнать на “выборы”. Теперь агитаторы готовятся обрабатывать гнилую интеллигенцию, либерастов и креаклов.
Один мой знакомый иностранец ищет актёрскую подработку, и вот его агент прислала ему предложение сняться за 10 тысяч рублей в ночь с 23 на 24 февраля в «социальном ролике» (см. скриншоты сценария). Он стал расспрашивать, кто заказчик и производитель этой “общественно важной рекламы”, но агент сказала, что они уже нашли другого актёра и перестала отвечать.
Какие выводы мы можем сделать из всего этого?
1. Не нужно сомневаться в важности явки на предстоящих “выборах” и лютой борьбы наверху за её повышение. Они агитируют не за конкретного кандидата (конкретный победит в любом случае), а за легитимность процедуры и результата.2. Деньги на эту агиткампанию разворовываются, потому что ролики придумывают не профессионалы, а хрен знает кто. Первое правило рекламы: не решай проблему, которой нет. “Покупайте наш шампунь, и у вас из жопы перестанет вылезать макака” – это смешной и броский ход. Все поржут, но шампунь не купят.
3. Они верят в пропаганду, которую сами выдумали, а реальность и здравый смысл их вообще не волнуют. Все креаклы знают, что хамон и пармезан исчезли не из-за санкций, а из-за антисанкций, которые ввёл основной кандидат, иностранцы тут ни при чём, митингов никто не боится, и с пустыми полками магазинов всё это могут связать только “восемьдесят шесть процентов”, но для них сняли другой ролик. Но раз эти “стратеги” утверждают, оплачивают и производят такие ролики, значит их представления о людях, об обществе, о нас с вами уже далеко за пределами адекватности. Они живут в мире говорящих фиолетовых грибов.
В общем, снижаем явку и продолжаем наблюдать, как глупость и страх сами себя разоблачают.
Everyone enjoyed that video where they are attempting to scare “a common Joe” into “voting” in these “elections” using gays, Young Pioneers [a Communist youth organization in the USSR] and being conscripted into the army at the age of 52. Now the same agitators are preparing to influence the rotten intelligentsia, liberals and the creative class.
A foreigner I know is looking for an acting job on the side. His agent found an offer to be filmed in a “public service advertisement” video for 10,000 rubles [about 180 US dollars] between February 23 and 24 (see attached screenshots of the script he was sent.) He pressed for further details, like who this ad had been commissioned by, but the agent told him they had already found another actor and went dark.
What conclusions can we draw from this?
1. There's no doubt about the importance they’re attaching to the turnout in these “elections” and the extreme lengths [the Russian authorities] are prepared to go to keep it as high as possible. They aren’t promoting a specific candidate (he’s winning in any case) but his legitimacy and the legitimacy of the procedure in general.
2. The money poured into this campaign is being squandered, because these campaign ads are cooked up by amateurs, not professionals. First rule of the ad business: Don’t fix what’s not broken. “Buy our shampoo and a macaque will stop popping out of your rear end” is an entertaining, catchy move. Everyone’s going to have a good laugh but won’t buy the shampoo.
3. They are falling for their own propaganda and completely ignoring reality and common sense. Every member of the “creative class” they’re targeting is well aware that Spanish ham and parmesan disappeared from the supermarket shelves as the result of Russia’s own counter-sanctions introduced by the main candidate, foreigners have nothing to do with this, no one is afraid of rallies, and the only people who are capable of connecting them with the empty shelves in their heads are the “86 per cent” [Putin’s approval rate] — but they are being targeted by another ad. But if these “strategists” are actually approving, paying for and producing such videos, that means that their concept of the people, of society, of us are too detached from sanity. They are living in a universe populated by talking purple fungi.
So let's keep the turnout low and let stupidity and cowardice expose themselves.
A screenshot of the alleged script of the video was attached to the post. It reads:
This screenshot purportedly depicts the script of a propaganda video promoting the Russian presidential elections. Screenshot by Runet Echo
Social advertisement — “The Seducer”
Scene 1.1-int. Food shop. Daytime.
Protagonist, Shop assistant, Foreigner.
(Protagonist is scanning the shop window, looking for something.)
ON SCREEN CAPTION: March 18, 2018
VOICE (on the radio): The country is voting in the presidential elections. They will define the future of our nation.
(PROTAGONIST approaches the counter and addresses the ASSISTANT.)
PROTAGONIST: Afternoon! Do you happen to have any French cheese left?
ASSISTANT (in a tired voice): No…
FOREIGNER (speaking from behind the PROTAGONIST in an accented voice): You can bring the cheese back…
(PROTAGONIST ignores the FOREIGNER and addresses the ASSISTANT again.)
PROTAGONIST (forlornly): Maybe Spanish or Portuguese ham?
ASSISTANT (annoyed): We don’t have either!
PROTAGONIST: Oh, those damned sanctions…
FOREIGNER (whispering in an accented voice from behind the PROTAGONIST to the right): They can be lifted, you know.
PROTAGONIST (finally acknowledging the FOREIGNER’S presence and turning to him): And how, I’m wondering?
FOREIGNER (in an accented voice): Just ignore the presidential elections and everything’s going to be fine.
(PROTAGONIST is pensive.)
Scene 2.2, Int. Food store.
Protagonist, Shop assistant, Foreigner.
ON-SCREEN CAPTION: A week later.
(PROTAGONIST enters the store, observes empty shelves. ASSISTANT is fidgeting around the counter with a bored look.)
VOICE (on the radio): The turnout at the presidential elections in Russia never reached 20 per cent, which led the Western countries to declare the result illegitimate. Rallies and strikes have gripped the nation.
(PROTAGONIST sees the FOREIGNER in the corner and approaches him.)
PROTAGONIST: Where did all the food go? Didn’t you promise me things were going to get better?
FOREIGNER (in English): Sorry, I don’t understand.
PROTAGONIST: What? It’s because of you that I never voted in these elections!
FOREIGNER: (in English): Can you help me? I’m looking for (heavily accented) Ploschad Revolutsii!
(PROTAGONIST stands paralyzed with sudden realization.)
OUTRO: Elections 2018.
VOICEOVER: March 18. Presidential elections in Russia. The fate of the country is in your hands.
Another election campaign scandal involves MAXIM Russia, a popular men’s magazine. What makes it peculiar is that the editor-in-chief, Alexander Malenkov, is openly critical of the Russian government and has published many piercing satirical pieces about Russian politics.
In October 2017, a video posted on MAXIM’s YouTube channel used provocative sexual imagery to promote the “adult choice” of voting in the March 2018 elections.
MAXIM Russia and Malenkov came under further fire recently, when a set of stickers surfaced on Vkontakte, one of Russia’s most popular social network. These stickers, intended to be used as emojis in Vkontakte’s comments and its messenger service, employ suggestive images of young women to promote voting as a “civic responsibility.”
ВК выкатил к выборам вот такие вот максимально стрёмные стикеры.
Нам кажется, что отвратительные шутки с сексуальным подтекстом – не лучший способ увеличить явку pic.twitter.com/zUUIzOy79t
— Лентач (@oldLentach) 24 февраля 2018 г.
Select stickers in the image read: “I’m waiting for you in the polling booth!”, “Let’s do it together”, “You want to do it the adult way?”, “Can I already?”, and “Can you help me with my absentee ballot?”
Tweet: “Vkontakte unveiled a set of election-themed stickers, creepy as they could be. We really don’t think that disgusting jokes oozing with sexual innuendo are the best way to boost turnout.”
Not only did many users find these stickers crass and manipulative, it was later revealed that they were plagiarized from a non-political set of pin-up illustrations drawn by another artist, Valeria Fortuna, who accused MAXIM of intellectual theft. After back-and-forth arguments on various social media, MAXIM admitted that these stickers were indeed commissioned by the magazine. Vkontakte later removed them.
TJournal.ru, a Russian web and tech news site, also got Malenkov to admit that these stickers, as well as the YouTube video mentioned above and the Vkontakte community Только для взрослых (“For Adults Only”) dedicated to promoting the March 2018 elections, were part of a campaign commissioned by an ad agency. Malenov, however, refused to disclose the name of the agency, as well as the sum of the contract.
The 2018 elections pose a unique challenge for the Russian authorities, and it shows in the anxiety they’re demonstrating: Any alleged vote rigging can’t be too obvious, but a low turnout would undermine Putin’s legitimacy as the president of all Russians, not just those who could be bothered to vote or were coerced by their employers.
It’s unclear if these awkward, unsophisticated measures will be effective at getting people to the polls or end up turning away even the most apolitical of voters. It’s no surprise that Alexey Navalny, who was barred from running for president, is calling for a boycott of these elections — and is meeting fierce backlash from authorities.

author: RuNet Echo


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A Suicide Mentality, on the Precipice of War in Northeast Asia · Global Voices
Jonathan Augustine

“The remains of a Japanese Kamikaze aircraft that crashed on board HMS Formidable off the Sakishima Islands, May 1945.” Image from Wikimedia Commons, Imperial War Museum. This work created by the United Kingdom Government is in the public domain.
There’s a debate intensifying among political analysts on whether North Korea is heading down a suicidal course by continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
On the surface, North Korea and its supreme leader Kim Jong Un seems to be succeeding in its calculated risk of defying UN sanctions and circumventing the oil embargo. In January, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared “Mr. Kim Jong Un has obviously won this round. He has missiles of global reach, up to 13,000 km, which can reach almost any point of the globe.” The Russian authorities seem to believe that this “shrewd and mature” leader will succeed in facing down his “imperialist enemies” by manufacturing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can threaten every major city and military base of the US and its allies.
But these experts are overlooking the self-destructive impulse that underlies North Korean bravado. The question arises as to whether Kim’s regime would be willing to risk annihilation when options for negotiations exist, at least in theory.
Anyone who has studied the North Korean power structure knows that Kim Jong Un himself is being pressured by generals preoccupied with the humiliation of the Korean War. In fact, their views on suicidal attacks in some ways resemble the propaganda that the Japanese military disseminated during WWII. A North Korean defector recently revealed that the military has assembled a brigade of suicide bombers who are ready to attack the enemy with armed “nuclear backpacks” if the situation becomes desperate.
As much as North Korea and Japan despise each other, there are striking parallels in their attitudes toward suicide. Prior to and throughout the war years, all Japanese “subjects” were ideologically primed to sacrifice their lives for the Emperor. Similarly, North Korean “subjects” today are obliged to display fanatical devotion to the Kim dynasty by fighting to the last person. In both nations, the propaganda ministries were— and continue to be—successful in indoctrinating the masses to believe in their national exceptionalism relative to their decadent neighbors.
In Japan, ritual suicide has long been popularized in films about bushido and kamikaze pilots, but the voices of those who were ready to commit suicide, but who through unexpected circumstances survived the war, have often been suppressed. In a culture that fears shame above all else, the line between coercion and a freely chosen death often gets obfuscated. Even the 47 rōnin immortalized in the masterwork Chūshinguraand numerous other films can be seen as victims of the cynical practice ritual suicide known as seppuku or harakiri.
Narratives about the social pressure that was brought to bear on the warrior class to terminate their lives to “preserve honor”, reveal the uncanny resemblance between seppuku and public execution. Conservative Japanese politicians such as Shintaro Ishihara continue to extol the virtue of young soldiers who sacrifice themselves in novels and films, but the truth of the matter is that it was not unknown for kamikaze pilots to be drugged, bolted into their cockpits and given only enough fuel to reach enemy targets.
Despite the scarcity of North Korean statistics on this subject, Japan and South Korea have the highest rates of suicide today in the developed world. As it is well known that both Japanese and Korean societies are rigid and hierarchical, and offer few second chances to minorities or those who have fallen through the cracks. Unless one agrees to follow prescribed conventions and ritualized codes of subservience, one can easily be ostracized or punished.
While any individual death may merit sympathy, the legacy of ritualized suicide is particularly problematic. Korean attitudes towards death and suicide were shaped by three decades of Japanese occupation shaped. As North Korean defectors have reported, there is a possibility that Kim Jong Un’s special forces might employ kamikaze tactics if they see that their country cannot withstand attacks by the American Air Force and Navy.
Suicide often signals an inability to seek creative solutions to seemingly impossible dilemmas. Rather than reviving futile geopolitical struggles that should have ended in the 20th century, political leaders should be focusing addressing more urgent priorities, such as the mass extinction that is now being engendered by the environmental crisis.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Jonathan Augustine


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Here’s What We Learned from the Online Database of Vietnam’s Political Prisoners · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Vietnamese Political Prisoner Database
Launched in January 2018, the Vietnamese Political Prisoner Database provides comprehensive and routinely updated information on the country’s political prisoners.
Built by 88 Project, a group that works to extend assistance to political prisoners and their families,  the website currently lists 113 activists who are in detention, 23 of whom are facing pre-trial investigation.
The website is updated each week, allowing researchers, journalists, policymakers, activists, and others who want to study or support the cause of the prisoners to regularly check on their statuses.
Unlike mainstream news reports, which typically mention the political affiliation of prisoners and not much else, the database includes the gender and ethnic profile of individuals. According to the database, Vietnam has 15 female political prisoners and 46 who belong to an ethnic minority group.
The site currently shows that 49 individuals are facing a prison term of more than 10 years, 33 are Christians, 43 were arrested in 2017, and 83 have cases related to promoting religious freedom.
In sum, this data supports a common sentiment, seen in news reports and on social media that persecution of dissenters increased in 2017, as did the proportion of harsh prison sentences handed out to writers and peaceful activists.
The database also confirmed the high number of individuals charged with the notorious article 88 of the criminal code or the crime of conducting “anti-state propaganda”.
The profile of detained individuals contains complete information about their activism, case history, situation inside the prison facility, and campaign activities pushing for their release.
For example, here’s the profile of Hoang Duc Binh who was arrested for livestreaming a demonstration about environmental protection in 2017. He was charged with violating article 330 or “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State.” He was convicted last month and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Profile of Hoang Duc Binh. Vietnamese Political Prisoner Database
The profile also summarized the case of Hoang Binh:
Binh received one of the harshest prison terms for a known prisoner at this time. At trial, he affirmed that he made comments about police brutality during the livestream, but he also maintained that this was not a criminal act because it was the truth.
The database also sheds light on the impact of the incarceration of activists and writers on their families by providing information about the current situation of their families. Indeed, one of the objectives of setting up the database is to facilitate support for the families of political prisoners.
For example, we know from news reports that blogger Nguyễn Ngọc Như Quỳnh aka Me Nam (Mother Mushroom) is serving a 10-year prison term for writing about environmental pollution and human rights. But in the database we can learn about her family situation:
Quynh’s mother, Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan, is now caring for Quynh’s two young children. Lan has been followed and harassed by authorities since her daughter's arrest.
Profile of Me Nam (Mother Mushroom). Vietnamese Political Prisoner Database
The leaders of 88 Project have vowed that funds generated will not be used for political campaigns, but mainly to give assistance to families of political prisoners.

author: Mong Palatino


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How Movies and TV are Helping Venezuelans Negotiate Their Country’s Collapse · Global Voices
José González Vargas

Browsing Facebook and Twitter, it's easy to find memes comparing the opacity and abuses of the Maduro government to the court intrigue in Game of Thrones. Image by José González Vargas. Used with permission.
The original version of this article was published on Zócalo.
Last March, I was teaching twice a week at the Universidad Bicentenaria de Aragua, 75 miles west of Caracas, Venezuela. While protests were breaking out in the streets around the country, I would go to the campus not knowing whether I would be teaching a group of five to 45 students or—as was the case for most of the term—I’d have to postpone class without knowing whether the country would fall into frenzied anarchy.
My subjects were “Introduction to Cinema” and “Basics of Scriptwriting.” In the context, they might seem shallow, a poor attempt to hold on to normalcy in a country falling apart, but I found the experience to be a welcome distraction from my other job, which was reporting on current events in Venezuela. Talking with my students, I realized that I wasn’t alone in seeking to forget, if only for a while, our daily tragedy.
The first thing I asked my students was about what kind of movies they watched. Less than a decade separated us, and it was easy to see generational trends that were no different from those of our demographic counterparts in other countries. You had your fans of Marvel and Harry Potter, users of Reddit and Tumblr, viewers of 13 Reasons Why or Game of Thrones, and even readers of literature ranging from Jane Austen to 50 Shades of Grey.
It’s all too easy to dismiss this as pure escapism: a release from inflation, food shortages, and one of the highest crime rates in the world. While normal life is a struggle, finding foreign movies and TV shows is relatively easy and nearly free, as long as your internet connection allows it. Piracy is commonplace in Latin America, but what makes Venezuela stand out is the increasing inaccessibility of legal media. Even before the country was caught in quadruple-digit inflation, getting new books or going to the cinema regularly was something of a luxury. Most of my students read their books not from paperbacks or on Kindle, but on Wattpad or as PDFs in their phones or laptops.
Looking deeper, though, you can see there’s also another kind of release involved—the one you get when you’re finally able to put into words and images the things you don’t have any other way to express. Browsing Facebook and Twitter, you find memes comparing the opacity and abuses of the Maduro government to the court intrigue in Game of Thrones’ Westeros. Or juxtaposing the violent survivalism of The Walking Dead with daily life here—food shortages, failing infrastructure, and a very limited supply of medicine.
Earlier this year, people followed the death of renegade security official Óscar Pérez closely on social media—including videos he uploaded himself on Instagram. It was a scene that wouldn’t have been out of place in The Hunger Games or V for Vendetta, both of which younger Venezuelans reference in comparisons to their own situations—sometimes as a joke, other times more seriously.
It’s ironic, really, that we’ve ended up defining our struggles through foreign media. When Hugo Chávez became president in 1999, he was seen as a nationalist, a military commander, a common man. But above all, he was a llanero, a plainsman, a Venezuelan cowboy who would lead not only a social or economic revolution but also a cultural one. He was seen by many as a return to our roots, a U-turn to a “real Venezuela”—a country that, incidentally, had been defined by the rule of charismatic strongmen.
A few artists and intellectuals soon adapted to this new situation, some because of political affinity, others for the money. Román Chalbaud, arguably the Bolivarian Revolution’s most prominent artist, used to be a filmmaker well-known for his realistic—if lurid—social dramas. Today, he mostly directs 19-century historical epics featuring llaneros reading Karl Marx.
For 15 years there was a boom in Venezuelan cinema, in no small part thanks to heavy investment and promotion by the government. That period managed to produce some terrific, thought-provoking, and award-winning films, along with the occasional piece of propaganda, mostly from the hand of Chalbaud and his kind. Yet my students still disparage Venezuelan movies as “snoozefests about Simón Bolívar” or “filled with thugs and prostitutes.”
The success of “Papita, Maní, Tostón” a couple of years ago—a bland, cheap, gag-filled romantic comedy set in the world of baseball fandom—is proof that Venezuelans do appreciate Venezuelan movies, but probably appreciate less those that dwell too deeply on the state of the country.
In any case, most Venezuelan movies are hard to find, since there’s very little market for home media or streaming here, which means that bootlegs aren’t easy to get. To watch Venezuelan cinema, your best option is YouTube, where you can find the 1949 film “La Balandra Isabel”—one of the two Venezuelan productions to win at Cannes—and “Papita, Maní, Tostón. But once those pixelated videos are deleted due to copyright infringement, your chance to watch the movie is gone, probably for good.
On a top 10 list of the highest-grossing Venezuelan movies, you’ll find three comedies, two action movies, two-period pieces, one horror film, and two LGBT dramas. With the exception of these last two and the action movies, which invariably focus on crime and corruption but never explore the reasons behind them, none of them expresses any sort of insight about today’s Venezuela.
So it made sense that when I asked my students to develop a story outline for class, most of them set their stories either in the United States or Western Europe. These were places they didn’t know, and their stories were filled with obvious bloopers—one thought Minnesota was a city; another that Manhattan was outside New York City; another that Rome was a country. The few sets in Venezuela were revenge stories or overflowing with embarrassing levels of nationalism.
These kids, born around the time Hugo Chávez took power, couldn’t imagine stories of love, comedy, adventure, or people’s difficulties set in their own society. Despite the government’s communications machinery—made up of several television channels, dozens of radio stations, and a handful of newspapers—and Chavismo’s cultural revolution, younger generations don’t see any images of themselves beyond despair and disillusionment. But at the same time, the opposition never managed to conceive a credible alternative to this situation.
In many ways, Venezuela has been rediscovering itself. As the country sinks into the deepest crisis within living memory, we question supposedly inalterable facts that once defined ourselves and our nation. For 40 years Venezuela was a bipartisan democracy, made prosperous by spectacular oil revenues. One of the goals of the architects of what was dubbed “Saudi Venezuela” was to modernize the country or, at very least, to appear modern. This meant creating contemporary art museums, an international literary contest, and state-of-the-art performance centers: The face of democratic Venezuela was Niemeyer-inspired architecture and art installations by Carlos Cruz-Diez.
But from the perspective of many people, especially those impoverished by the economic catastrophe of the 1980s, the leaders were disconnected, elitist, more attentive to what was going on in Miami or Bern than to the rural states or the slums of Caracas. It’s no surprise that “apátrida”, literally meaning “stateless,” was one of Chávez’s most used insults for his enemies. In his eyes, those who were against him weren’t “real Venezuelans.” Artists and intellectuals, meanwhile, were baffled by how a man who had staged a coup against a democratic government could be voted in as president. For them, the question became: “Where did we go wrong?”
For most of the Chávez years, when you walked into any bookstore, it seemed that 90 percent of the books written and published in Venezuela was trying to answer this question. From journalists to college professors to former ministers, every kind of armchair expert offered their own national diagnosis and prescribed vague formulas for steering the country back on course.
This is no longer the case. As Chavismo solidified into the new establishment, those experts faded from the spotlight. This is partly due to the government quietly taking over media, but it also reflects the younger generation’s lack of interest in restoring a flawed country they never lived in.
Today, the bookstores that haven’t closed fill their spare bookshelves with remaindered books, some of which date as far back as the ’70s. (Did you know there were Happy Days novelizations in Spanish?) Some have a few newish books that easily cost a month’s salary. But lately, even the trade in used books, which used to be healthy because so many people were leaving the country and trying to make quick money, has fallen off as inflation has risen.
As Venezuelans scatter themselves around the globe, a new question gains relevancy: “What is Venezuela?” Is it a place? A memory? An ideal? Gone forever? This question dogs the visceral, heartfelt stories of Héctor Torres as well the reflective, melancholy songs of the indie band La Vida Bohème. To so many Venezuelans, including those who have left, never to look back, those who look back from all directions, and those of us still remaining in the country without knowing what the future will bring, this question hovers around, impossible to ignore.
At the moment, it doesn’t have an answer. But I can’t wait to see the books and movies that we will create to answer it.

author: José González Vargas


text:
Idrissa Diallo: From an Unmarked Grave to the Symbol of Migrant Struggle in Spain · Global Voices
Elisa Marvena

Lamine Sarr, a member of the Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes (Union of Street Vendors) in Barcelona, speaking in favour of the #PlaçaIdrissa campaign in front of the statue of Antonio López on 13 January 2018. Photo by Fotomovimiento (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Until recently, the lifeless body of a young Guinean man named Idrissa Diallo lay in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in Barcelona — the police file about his death was closed and locked. However, his memory is being kept alive by his loved ones and also by many people and groups in Barcelona who never knew him with a proposal to name a city square in his honour.
Idrissa Diallo was one of the migrants who managed to arrive on the continent alive. At 21, he overcame the enormous obstacle of crossing borders as he headed north — despite the ever increasing numbers of traps, walls, concertina wires and armed guards. After a long journey from Guinea, Idrissa arrived on European soil after crossing the fence around the North African city of Melilla, a Spanish overseas territory.
However, Idrissa's journey tragically ended with his death on 6 January 2012 in a migration detention centre (CIE) in Barcelona. He was a prisoner there after having been detained for his “irregular administrative situation”, like so many other unfortunate migrants in Europe, and was waiting to be forcibly repatriated.
After his death in police custody, the Spanish justice system archived the case without holding any of the authorities responsible. The police file was locked and has been inaccessible ever since, so the cause of his death remains unknown, although local human rights groups suspect possible medical negligence. On top of this mountain of institutional negligence, Idrissa's family were never officially told about his death, which violates the established protocols for these cases. Until a year ago, the location of his body was unknown.
As part of the documentary “Idrissa, crónica de una muerte cualquiera” (Idrissa: the story of just another death), independent producer Metromunster, together with Guinean artist Nakany Kanté, travelled to Idrissa's birthplace Tindila, Guinea, to find his family. For them, this visit was confirmation of Idrissa's death in Barcelona. In 2012, Idrissa's brother in Guinea had received a call from a lawyer telling them of Idrissa's death, but the Spanish state never contacted them officially. In a conversation with the producer Idrissa's mother Yasi said:
Fins ara, no han tornat a trucar, no ha arribat el cos i no n'hem tingut cap notícia més. Van tapar la seva mort com si no hagués passat res. Això fa mal. És com si no hagués mort ningú. Que no arribés el cos em va causar molt dolor. Dic a la policia i al govern que em va fer molt mal.
They hadn't called until now. His body hasn't been sent and we haven't had any more news. They covered up his death as if nothing had happened. It hurts. It's as if no one had died. It's so painful for me that his body hasn't come home yet. Tell the police and the government how much they've hurt me.
In December 2016, five years after Idrissa's death, an investigation lead by La Directa finally managed to locate the unmarked grave where his remains were buried. This just a few months before the Montjuic cemetery in Barcelona prepared to move them to a mass grave to make more space.
As it tends to happen in Spain, many migrants, homeless people and those unable to pay for burying services are taken to collective graves, of difficult access and with the minimum sanitary requirements from the municipality. After five years the remains are moved to ossuaries in other parts of the cemetery:
#INVESTIGACIÓ | Descobrim on és el cos d'Idrissa Diallo, mort al #CIE fa 5 anys: en un nínxol anònim a Montjuïc https://t.co/bTQNkke3Rupic.twitter.com/QpqsmNaC7x
— Directa (@La_Directa) January 5, 2017
We found out the location of Idrissa Diallo's body, a man who died in the CIE 5 years ago: an unmarked grave in Montjuic.
As a result of this discovery, and continuing with the documentary in Idrissa's memory, the producer Metromunster is preparing to travel to Guinea again next month, this time along with Idrissa's body.
The death of Idrissa Diallo gave rise to the creation of the platform Tanquem els CIEs (Close the CIEs) in 2012. Since then, Tanquem els CIEs is one of the leading activism platforms in the fight against the procedures of the Spanish, and also European, migration control systems.
In June 2017, after Idrissa's remains were located, Tanquem els CIEs organised a meeting in the Montjuic cemetery, Barcelona to place a gravestone with Idrissa's name on the grave where he is buried.
.@TanquemElsCIEs col·loca una làpida al nínxol on està inhumat el jove guineà des de la seva mort al #CIE l'any 2012 https://t.co/S4ri2Lb2MEpic.twitter.com/LXc8YsMrTT
— Directa (@La_Directa) June 15, 2017
Tanquem els CIEs place a gravestone in the grave where the young Guinean has been buried since his death in the CIE in 2012.
Six years after his death, Idrissa has become a symbol of migrants’ struggle for rights in Spain. Today, the city in which he died is mobilising to pay tribute to his life and the lives of so many others like him through a citizen campaign promoted by Tanquem els CIEs and Metromunster, aiming to name one of its squares after Idrissa Diallo.
The pinnacle of this historical correction attempt is the choice of square. The square which currently holds the name of a known slave owner from the 19th century: Antonio López.
Estem recollint signatures per realitzar un acte de reparació i memòria amb l'Idrissa i amb totes les persones migrants que pateixen i han patit el racisme i la violència institucional.
Apropa't a algun dels punts i signa. Diem #AdéuAntonio!#PlaçaIdrissapic.twitter.com/g1jNy6c0In
— Tanquem els CIEs! (@TanquemElsCIEs) February 11, 2018
We are collecting signatures to carry out a corrective act in memory of Idrissa and every other migrant who suffers and has suffered from racism and institutional violence. Come to one of the points and sign. Goodbye Antonio, hello Plaza Idrissa!
On its website, the platform explains the reasons behind the campaign:
El seu, és un cas oblidat més entre el de tants africans i africanes anònims que són i han estat víctimes de les polítiques colonials practicades pel nostre país des de fa segles i que han desembocat en el sistema de control migratori actual. Idrissa, però, no va morir al mediterrani ni travessant la tanca de Melilla com tants d'altres, va morir a Barcelona. Com a veïns i veïnes de la ciutat li devem una explicació a la seva família i un acte de reparació. Un homenatge, en definitiva, que es faci extensiu a totes les persones que, des de fa més de 500 anys són víctimes dels negocis que han enriquit Occident gràcies a l'espoli de les ex-colònies.
His is just one forgotten case among those of so many anonymous Africans who are and have been victims of colonial policies practised in our country for centuries and which have led to the current migration control system. Idrissa, however, did not die in the Mediterranean, nor crossing the valleys of Melilla like so many before him. He died in Barcelona. As residents of this city, we owe his family an explanation and a corrective act. A tribute which extends to everyone who has been a victim of the dealings that have made the West rich for more than 500 years, thanks to the pillaging of the ex-colonies.
It continues:
Si Antonio López és un símbol d'aquests negocis, Idrissa Diallo podria convertir-se en el símbol de les incomptables víctimes anònimes que porten segles patint el racisme institucional.
If Antonio López is a symbol of these dealings, Idrissa Diallo could become a symbol of the numerous anonymous victims who have been suffering this institutional racism for centuries.
Signatures are currently still being collected at various points in the city of Barcelona and all sorts of acts are being carried out in memory of Idrissa and in favour of the initiative. You can follow the campaign activities on Twitter by using the hashtags #AdéuAntonio and #PlaçaIdrissa, or on the Tanquem els CIEs website.
A plaque dedicated to Idrissa Diallo in the place where his remains are buried, placed there during a tribute on 14 June 2017 in Montjuic cemetry, Barcelona. Photo by Fotomovimiento (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

author: Elisa Marvena


text:
Morocco-EU Fisheries Deal Ignores Occupation of Western Sahara · Global Voices
Ivar Fersters

A manifestation of support for the ECJ court ruling in Smara refugee camp, February 27.
Photo credit: Saharawi Campaign Against the Plunder (SCAP)
February 27th was the 42anniversary of the Western Saharan declaration of independence from Spain. Although, as of now, there is no independence to celebrate for most of the territory that remains under Moroccan occupation, a little triumph could be felt throughout the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, where a majority of the population resides.
The very same morning a court ruling from the European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) was issued in favor of decolonization. To be more precise, the ruling concerns an agreement between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco regulating the European fishing industry’s access to Moroccan waters.
This so-called Fisheries Partnership Agreement has been in place since 2006 and will expire in July 2018, while a process of renewal is underway. The ruling from the ECJ clearly states that any such agreement with Morocco could not include the waters off Western Sahara, over which Morocco claims sovereignty.
The statement was anticipated, consistent as it was with previous rulings and hardly controversial from an international legal standpoint. Still, it is but the last development in a conflict that is brewing between various branches of EU governance over the union’s trade with Morocco. The controversy being, of course, Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara that is listed by the UN as a ‘non-self governing territory’.
This currently concerns two separate negotiations that the EU commission and Morocco will be having throughout the spring of 2018: The Fisheries Partnership Agreement that allows European vessels to fish in Moroccan waters and a trade agreement concerning agricultural and fishery products. The fisheries agreement will expire in July and the trade agreement in April.
Although the ECJ clearly ruled back in 2016 to invalidate any bilateral agreement with Morocco if it concerns the occupied territories, the EU trade commission seems insistent on renewing the deals anyway as they concluded a new trade agreement with Morocco in January 2018. This came as a surprise and has caused for condemnations from the Western Saharan government-in-exile, activist groups, as well as from within the EU parliament.
Last week a number of EU parliamentarians addressed their colleagues in a statement expressing that they:
…feel alarmed about the way that the Commission is managing the process, the lack of transparency and possibilities for scrutiny for members of the European Parliament, and the Commission’s attempts to circumvent the ECJ ruling from December 2016.
One of the signatories is Jytte Guteland, belonging to the social democratic parliamentary group who last year was among a group of European MEPs that was declared persona non grata by Moroccan authorities upon trying to enter Western Sahara.
On the conduct of the trade commission, she expresses concern that goes beyond this particular case. Speaking to Global Voices, Guteland noted that the commission's actions were worrisome.
It has got me very worried the way the commission handled the first court ruling [2016]. They chose to negotiate a new trade agreement that includes Western Sahara in spite of the ruling. In a time when the principle of rule of law is constantly challenged it is a matter of EU's credibility. The EU must live up to its’ own rulings and international law.
In an open letter of protest, 89 Sahrawi civil society organizations stated:
The Sahrawi people, do not benefit, economically or otherwise, from the illegal exploitation of their natural resources and trade with the European Union; nor has the Saharawi people’s consent been credibly sought. Any economic gains and development as a result of the exploitation of our natural resources and their illegal trade with the EU, are selectively distributed with the sole intent of further entrenching Morocco’s illegal occupation and systematically discriminating further against the Sahrawi people it occupies.
Being a non-self-governing territory, international law requires that the people of Western Sahara get a say in any economic activity taking place in the territory and that it should come to their benefit. To complicate the matter further, a majority of the population in the occupied territories today consist of Moroccan settlers, while the majority of the Sahrawi people are exiled from Western Sahara, predominately to refugee camps in neighboring Algeria. It is from these camps that the internationally recognized body of Western Sahara, the Polisario Front, operates.
In the same letter of protest, the civil society groups accuse the commission of trying to circumvent the law by means of a subtle shift in terminology.
We also observe with frustration that the Commission replaces the deliberate terminology of ‘Saharawi people’, with ‘population’. These concepts are fundamentally different. Consulting Moroccan organizations, parliamentarians and businesses about Western Sahara can never replace the consent of the Sahrawi people.
In a similar denouncement, the international monitoring network Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) turned down an inquiry of consultation by the commission.
From what we understand, the negotiations with the Government of Morocco are now finished, and the agreed text has been initialed. The Government of Morocco does not represent the people of the territory. It is clear that no consent has been received, as the Court required. We do not see the point of any consultation on a deal that lacks the approval of the people of the territory.
In response to Tuesday’s ruling, the Polisario Front announced that they are ready to carry on negotiations with the EU over access to the waters that are not allowed to be included in the current fishery agreement with Morocco. According to Guteland:
That would be more legally justified since the UN consider Polisario as the representative of Western Sahara. To further establish an agreement with the people the Sahrawi civil society should also be consulted.
As its biggest trading partner, the Moroccan economy is highly dependent on the EU for exports. At the same time, many of the European member states face domestic pressure and strong lobbying from their respective fishing industries to get access to the Western Saharan resources.
As the stock of fish and sea creatures are rapidly being depleted throughout the world’s oceans, the importance of Western Sahara’s territorial waters in the Atlantic is expected to grow. Today, these waters are considered to be the richest in all the African continent, and due to the occupation, places Morocco first among the fish and seafood exporters on the continent. Official numbers suggest that some 70% percent of the total Moroccan catch is landed at ports in Western Sahara while around half of the remaining catch landed goes to Tan-Tan and Agadir in close proximity to the occupied territories. It is estimated that foreign vessels in these waters pick up more than 90% of their catch from Western Saharan waters.
Most of this fish will not end up on your plate directly but is rather the first step in a production chain. In Morocco and elsewhere, fish are being processed into meal or oil which is, in turn, exported as animal fodder for the meat industries and fish farms elsewhere. Similarly, the main sector of Western Saharan economy is the mining of phosphate rock, a resource that Morocco is already the world-leading exporter of. Phosphate is the main component in synthetic fertilizer on which the world’s agricultural industry depends. As such Western Sahara, often referred to as Africa’s last colony, is a very important territory to global food supply.
The trade agreement between EU and Morocco concerning fishery and agricultural products is, in its current shape, an important part of turning the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara into a profitable one.

author: Ivar Fersters


text:
10,000 Belgians March for Migrants’ Rights in Brussels · Global Voices
Melissa Vida

Demonstrator in Brussels brandishes a placard which says “refugees welcome,” on February 25, 2018. Photo credit: Melissa Vida.
On February 25, 2018, 10,000 demonstrators marched down the streets of Brussels to show solidarity with undocumented migrants and demand a more humane legislation towards migration. They protested, in particular, against a proposed law that allows police to raid homes in their search for undocumented people:
A human wave of #solidarity for a migration policy that respects #HumanRights in #Brussels today. #MigrAction #Humanity #BXLrefugees #MigrationEU pic.twitter.com/QjnWU3Qncb
— Elias De Keyser (@EliasDeKeyser) February 25, 2018
Many of Belgium’s undocumented migrants are asylum seekers whose requests have been denied, or former Calais Jungle residents who try to enter the United Kingdom through either the Port of Calais or the Eurotunnel.
The would-be law authorizes an investigative judge to order home searches and arrest undocumented migrants. The police raids, which target people who received an order to leave the country, could also happen in a third party’s home. This worries the 40,000 Belgians who help and house migrants for humanitarian reasons.
Since undocumented migrants do not receive any governmental help, they sleep on Brussels’ streets, often in freezing temperatures. To save them from this fate, a group of Belgians come and pick them up every night and organize sleepovers at volunteers’ homes; each morning, the hosts drop the migrants off before going to work, and so the cycle continues:
As the influx of migrants in #Belgium increased, its citizens have been providing shelter to #Refugees. Belgian law allows its citizens to take in refugees. But that may be about to change. https://t.co/gssmTi1RgV#MigrAction, #HumanWave, #brussels, #solidarity, #RefugeesWelcome pic.twitter.com/MBJAywqdtX
— InfoMigrants (@InfoMigrants) March 1, 2018
This group is part of a “citizen platform for the housing of migrants”, which won Brussels’ 2018 Person of the Year award:
« On partage ce prix bruxellois avec toute la Belgique et ces 40.000 personnes qui se mobilisent. Théo si tu vois ceci… » Mehdi Kassou de la plateforme citoyenne #bruxelloisdelannee2018 @lesoir
— patrice leprince (@patriceleprince) February 27, 2018
“We share this Brussels award with all of Belgium and the 40,000 people that are making things happen. Théo, if you see this…” Mehdi Kassou, from the Citizen Platform #brusselspersonoftheyear2018
The citizen platform, along with other groups and associations, deplore the government’s inaction regarding street dwellers and criticizes what they see as an emerging police state and criminalization of migrants. They target, specifically, Theo Francken, the state secretary of migration and asylum.
Belgians protested against the raids, the detention centers that are already on the way and the resources being put into the deportation process. Alexis Deswaef, president of the Human Rights’ League association, explained that the New Flemish Alliance, a far right national party in government, is leading the crackdown on immigrants. He expressed his frustration on Europe1 radio:
Si un deuxième Calais ne s'est pas créé à Bruxelles, c'est uniquement grâce aux citoyens et non à ce gouvernement. Ce gouvernement se laisse emporter par un parti identitaire et nationaliste, mais l'opposition se renforce.
If a second Calais did not form in Brussels, it's only thanks to citizens and not the government. This government is letting itself being carried away by an identity-led and nationalist party, but the opposition is getting stronger.
The country is building three new detention centers to hold undocumented migrants until they are deported. One of these centers will receive families with children, which rings an alarm for many activists. In 2008, Belgium was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for the inhumane treatment of four detained children. Belgium had to close the center.
Sometimes, scandals happen even after deportation. In December 2017, Sudanese asylum seekers were sent back to South Sudan; once back in Khartoum, they reported that they had been tortured. Although the veracity of their statements hasn’t been confirmed, the Belgian Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons has admitted that Belgium did not follow due process before deporting them.
Belgians also worry that police raids on undocumented immigrants are becoming commonplace. On February 9, 2018, 25 policemen entered Globe Aroma, a non-profit migrants’ arts center, and detained seven undocumented immigrants.
The center’s director, Koen Verbert, was furious. He explained his perspective to local media:
If this was a routine inspection of the management of a non-profit organization, then we live in a police state. The people we work with were beaten up and handcuffed for no reason whatsoever. That cannot be allowed.
Arrestations chez Globe Aroma: 29 associations déploient une bannière de soutien aux sans-papiers https://t.co/plCUbTvVQH
— RTBF info (@RTBFinfo) March 2, 2018
Arrests at Globe Aroma: 29 associations lay out a banner to support undocumented migrants
During the march, demonstrators demanded the release of some key figures who were arrested at the arts center:
Ajd'h, comme tous les jours, les jeunes se manifestent à Bruxelles en solidarité avec les sans-papiers et réclament la liberation du syndicalist #MounirTahri et de l'artiste Jiyed, arrêté à l'ASBL #GlobeAroma et toujours enfermé.@FranckenTheo @JanJambon #begov pic.twitter.com/wIkSfIhUmT
— Jamie Osborn (@jajo_osborn) February 23, 2018
Today, like every day, youth are demonstrating in Brussels to show solidarity with undocumented migrants and demand the liberation of trade unionist #MounirTahri and the artist Jiyed, arrested at the association #GlobeAroma and still locked up. @FranckenTheo @JanJambon
This march is the third one in 2018 alone. On January 13, 8,000 Belgians demonstrated for Theo Francken's resignation and for Sudanese migrants’ rights; on January 21, more than 2,000 formed a human chain to prevent a police raid. As Belgium's government continues to define its migration policies, Belgians voice their opinion by the numbers.

author: Melissa Vida


text:
An Interactive ‘Garden’ Lets You Travel the World Through Radio Broadcasts · Global Voices
Thalita Alves

Screenshot of the Radio Garden, an online platform that, since 2016, is enabling listeners to access thousands of radio stations from across the globe.
There’s a world of sounds out there to explore, and one online project out of the Netherlands lets you do just that.
Since late 2016, Radio Garden has since been connecting listeners to an ever-growing list of broadcasts from across the globe.
The interface is as simple as its vision: an interactive map composed of green dots that represent different cities. Click on it, and you'll be tuned into one of the chosen area's radio stations. You might stumble upon a news bulletin stream from Tonga; a traditional tune that's soothing its Iranian audience into slumber during the late hours of the night; or one of the few radio stations that continue to fill the airwaves in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Click on the “History” option on Radio Garden to be transported to an important part of a country's radio broadcasting history.
Other noteworthy features include a “History” function which showcases a country's traditional music and historic broadcasts; a “Jingles” section that, as its name suggests, offers a glimpse of a city's iconic radio jingles; and a “Story” option that offers first-hand accounts of people's involvement with community radio. Once again, all of these will take you to a different part of the world, be it the Taiwanese capital of Taipei or the down-under metropolis that is Sydney, Australia.
Here's a YouTube video that showcases the Radio.Garden in action:
The initiative was masterminded by the Institute for Sound and Vision in the Netherlands, under the direction of Golo Föllmer of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. It relied on the expertise of two local design companies, Studio Puckey and Moniker, who decided that the best way to tackle the task was to create a comprehensive map without borders or city names.
When it originally launch, Radio Garden garnered widespread attention on social media. One of its designers, Jonathan Puckey, told The Guardian he was pleasantly surprised by the discussions he had seen about this project:
On Reddit, it prompted a really sweet discussion, with people talking about their first contact with radio, or grandparents who had worked in radio during the second world war.
The project's own Facebook page is also filled with words of encouragement and support, with users from all walks of life giving it rave reviews.
Aside from the website, Radio Garden has an app for iOS and Android devices, enabling users to listen to their selected broadcasts at their convenience – even if their smartphones drop into sleep/idle mode.

author: Thalita Alves


text:
Iran’s Ahwazis Continue to Suffer as Two More Disappeared Activists are Executed · Global Voices
Rahim Hamid

Ahwazi Arabs protest Iran’s oil exploitation and human rights abuses outside the London offices of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) on July 3, 2016. Image from Peter Tatchell Foundation, used with permission
Stories of unlawful, unjust arrests and even deaths in prison have been making headlines on the heels of Iran's winter protest movement. Demonstrators initially railed against the country's stalled economy and the massive price hikes on the cost of basic food items, but the movement soon snowballed into outspoken criticism of Iran's leadership.
The recent, mysterious death of Dr. Kavvous Seyed Emami, a non-political academic and environmental activist, caused much uproar. While such tragedies are shocking to many, similar incidents have been occurring amongst Iran's Ahwazi Arab population, with much less attention, for years.
Over 5 million Ahwazis exist in the provinces of Khuzestan, Bushehr, Hormozgan and Qeshm Island, a region they call “Ahwaz”. Despite living in the area which holds over 95% of Iran's oil and gas resources, Ahwazi Arabs live under discrimination and poverty. Viewed as inferior because of their ethnicity, most exist below the poverty line, with limited or no access to employment, education, healthcare, or basic utilities.
The community has suffered in silence, persecuted by Iran for almost a century. Compounding this problem is the media blackout surrounding events in Ahwaz. Ethnic cleansing is routine, with hundreds of thousands forced from their homes without warning or compensation.
Several people involved in peaceful human rights work for Iran's Ahwazis have been killed recently, including Sayed Habib Rahmani Moussawi and Mahdi Haradani, two imprisoned Ahwazi Arab dissidents who died at the hands of Iran's intelligence services.
Now, according to statements from the families, officials are refusing to hand over the young men’s bodies or even to tell them where they are buried. Their family members are also being threatened with imprisonment if they hold traditional funeral rites for their loved ones, who are suspected to have died from the torture that was meted out to them during their detainment.
Moussawi was a political, cultural and human rights activist, popular and well-respected in his Al-Thawra neighborhood of the regional capital, Ahwaz, because of his tireless campaign for the freedom of the Ahwazi people. He promoted the Arabic language and educated the youth about the region’s rich Arab heritage. Moussawi had previously been arrested — in 2005 and 2007 — on account of his activism.
Haradani, who hailed from the city’s Mandali neighborhood and did similar work, disappeared last October. Their peaceful activism roused the ire of the authorities, which forbid Arabic-language education, despite it being the native language of the Ahwaz region’s indigenous Arab peoples. Traditional Arab dress is also banned.
The men were both seized by agents of the Revolutionary Guard in 2017. For months, they were prevented from contacting their families. Authorities were vague about the charges laid against them, withheld information about their whereabouts, and only disclosed that the men had been executed when they summoned the activists’ families to Ahwaz for a February 14, 2018 meeting.
In a heartbreaking phone call, the widow of Sayed Rahmani Moussawi told Global Voices that the torment began when her husband was abducted by regime forces in mid-June 2017, during the observance of Ramadan. His family received no notice that he had been arrested, but they felt sure that Rahmani — the father of three young children — was being targeted because of his advocacy for Ahwazi rights. Mrs. Moussawi said that not knowing whether her husband was alive or dead was “agony”:
We searched for him at all the relevant government agencies, but we were unable to get any information. On Thursday, we were summoned by the regime intelligence services, and they informed us that he had been executed.
Despite knowing that she and her children might be targeted in retaliation, she lamented the Iranian authorities’ cruel persecution of her husband in the years before his death:
My husband was innocent — all he did was to raise awareness of the regime’s policies aimed at eradicating Ahwazi people from our homeland by every means, including wiping out our language.
As she spoke, she regularly stopped to regain her composure as her grief, still fresh, overwhelmed her:
He organized various Arab celebrations in our home to teach people about the importance of protecting our Arabic language and identity. These cultural and civic activities led to regime agents having him dismissed from his job at many places, and blacklisted so that when he applied for job positions in many areas, the recruitment staff would tell him, ‘Sorry, we’re unable to hire you for security reasons.’
This persecution caused us great suffering — sometimes we couldn’t provide bread for our children or ourselves. Last Ramadan, I was fasting. It was just after our third baby was born. Our children told him, ‘Dad, Dad, we need you to make us happy, to buy sweets for us — you promised to make us happy and buy sweets for us, you promised to make us happy.’
I still remember when he heard those words, his tears came rolling down his cheeks and he said, ‘Sure, I’m going to do that.’
Then he came to me and asked me, ‘Do we have dinner to break our fast?’
I told him, ‘We have tea and bread.’  He wept a lot and he gently hit his head against the wall in frustration, then he went out, saying ‘I’ll borrow money from my friend and I’ll come back.’
Those were his last words to me, and the last time I and my children saw him. We waited for hours, days, weeks, months, and we searched everywhere, but no news and no trace of him was found.
She also talked about the moment she learned that her husband had been executed in regime detention:
They didn’t tell us what he did, what the charges against him were, where his trial was, why they kept us in the dark about his detention. It’s very likely that they killed him under torture when they were trying to get false confessions to try to link him to something — when they couldn’t, they killed him, and to cover that up, they say he was hanged.
Mahdi Haradani's family was given a similar peremptory notification of his death in regime custody, with intelligence officials refusing to disclose the charges on which he had been tried, or to release his body.
Such horrific cases have become the norm rather than the exception for the people of Ahwaz, with activists routinely “disappearing”, only for their families to discover, months later, that they have been seized and held in the regime’s infamous secret prisons — either killed under torture, or sentenced to death and quickly executed following  farcical “trials” on false charges such as “Moharebeh” (“enmity to God”). Such “trials” meet no standards of international law; they are staged simply for the sake of appearance, with the accused denied access to lawyers and the verdicts already decided.

author: Rahim Hamid


text:
María Roa Borja: A Voice in the Fight for Labor, Ethnic and Gender Rights in Colombia · Global Voices
Shirley Campbell Barr

María Roa Borja started the fight for Afro-descendant domestic workers rights and continues to demand the expansion of the Afro-Colombian Women Workers Union which includes workers of diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. Screenshot of the video with María Roa Borja, which has been shared on the YouTube channel of the El Espectador newspaper.
Antes, el tema de las empleadas domésticas se hablaba entre empleadores en reuniones sociales, ahora se habla en el ministerio de trabajo, en la corte constitucional, en el Congreso de la República y en los medios de comunicación […] Los temas relacionados con las empleadas domésticas eran de nuestro carácter, la raza, lo ágiles que éramos para cocinar […] Hoy el tema principal son nuestros derechos laborales.
In the past, the topic of domestic workers was discussed among employers in social gatherings, now it is discussed at the labor ministry, in the constitutional court, in the Congress of the Republic and in the media. […] In the past, the topics related to the domestic employees were those of character, race, our cooking abilities […] Today, the main issue is our labor rights.
This is how María Roa Borja sums up some of the achievements of the Union of Afro-Colombian Domestic Service Workers (UTRASD), founded in 2013, now with just over 150 women as active members. The general objective of the UTRASD is to defend the rights of almost one million women who work as domestic workers and who largely come from the most vulnerable social strata of Colombian society.
Roa Borja, founder and current president of UTRASD, argues that the struggle of Colombian domestic workers is not only a labor issue but also extends to the issue of gender and of Afro-descendant Colombians.
The organization began its work in Medellín with 28 women and focused on the rights of Afro-descendant domestic workers. This objective was in response to the social and historical conditions faced by the women of this group who are generally discriminated against because of their gender and race.
The location of the UTRASD in the city of Medellín is also important. Because of its proximity to El Chocó—which is one of the regions with the highest density of Afro-descendant populations in Colombia—Medellín receives an important migratory flow of people displaced by the Colombian armed conflict which has affected almost 7 million people over a period of 50 years.
However, membership and the causes associated with UTRASD appeal to women from diverse ethnic groups without any exclusion.
In an article published by the Colombian website El Malpensante, María Roa recounts some of the forced conditions of domestic workers in her country — at the heart of her mission:
De los casi 53 millones de trabajadores domésticos que hay en el mundo, cerca de un millón se encuentran en Colombia. Vivimos en los cordones de pobreza, la gran parte hemos sido víctimas del conflicto armado, la mayoría desconocen nuestros derechos, y el ámbito privado en el que esta labor se desarrolla suele obstaculizar el acceso a la justicia. Muchos empleadores dicen desconocer la ley o camuflan su incumplimiento con el pretexto de compensar a las trabajadoras con intangibles como el cariño o el buen trato
Of the almost 53 million domestic workers in the world, almost one million are in Colombia. We live in poverty, most of us have been victims of the armed conflict, most of us are unaware of our rights, and the private sphere in which this work is carried out often hinders access to justice. Many employers say they ignore the law or camouflage their breach under the pretext of compensating workers with intangibles, such as affection or good treatment.
Roa Borja's mission has spread and her message has been recognized inside and outside of Colombia via interviews, conferences and awards. In 2015, she was a panelist at the “Women and Work for Peace Building” conference at Harvard University. At the end of that same year, she was recognized as one of the 20 Best Leaders of Colombia and as Person of the Year by the El Espectador newspaper.
But Roa Borja is also among those displaced by the conflict. She arrived in Medellín at the age of 18 from Apartadó in the municipality of Antioquia, a region heavily affected by the decades of war that have dominated the recent history of Colombia.
She fled to Medellín after her sister was murdered and one of her brothers was the victim of an attack. With little academic training and the urgent need to earn money, the only work that was available for her to survive in Medellín was that of a domestic employee.
During those years, she had to live and be a witness to the abuses, the mistreatments and the poor working conditions that affected her colleagues. The majority of them were also Afro-Colombians displaced by the war who had to work up to 16 hours standing, without even receiving a recognized minimum wage.
In domestic work, abuses by the employers are rampant and those who are more strongly affected are Afro-descendant women. These women often have their rights disregarded and they suffer from discrimination, not only because they engage in a historically stigmatized profession but also because of their gender and their social and ethnic origin.
Studies of the Carabantú Corporation and the ENS (National Trade Union School) revealed that the majority of the 182 black domestic workers in homes in Medellin receive less than the minimum wage per month (at the time of the survey, 737,717 pesos – which is approximately 260 US dollars). 85.7% of contracts are verbal and employees are unaware of their rights while many employers take advantage of this situation and limit their rights even more.
In an interview by the Afrofeminas website, Roa Borja illustrates an aspect of this problem:
Los empleadores dicen “Tú eres negra, no te duele. Tú eres negra, no te cansas”. Claro, nosotras demostrábamos que sabíamos hacer el trabajo, pese a tener que estar muchas horas [trabajando]. Lo normal era levantarse a las [cuatro] de la mañana y acostarse a las diez, las once o [a] medianoche para volver a comenzar temprano. Esto significaba que podíamos llegar a dormir tres o cuatro horas, cuando había eventos como fiestas, matrimonios o cumpleaños. Veíamos a nuestros hijos sólo el fin de semana, y ni siquiera completo. El sábado salíamos en la tarde, llegábamos a nuestras casas en la noche y el domingo a mediodía teníamos que regresar al trabajo.
The employers say “You're black, it won't hurt you. You're black, you do not get tired. ” Of course, we showed that we knew how to do the job, despite having to spend many hours [working]. It was normal to get up at [four] in the morning and go to bed at ten, eleven or [at] midnight to start again early [the next day]. This meant that we could get only three or four hours of sleep, when there were events such as parties, weddings or birthdays. We saw our children only on weekends, but we didn't even have a full weekend. On Saturdays we would leave [the house we worked in] in the afternoon and arrive home in the evening, and on Sundays at noon we would have to go back to work.
Since its founding in 2013, and under the leadership of Roa Borja, the UTRASD has worked hard for the regulation of domestic work in Colombia. As a result, the Law 1788 (or “the bonus law”) was approved in 2016.
This law establishes a social benefit payable by the employer that corresponds to the payment of 30 days of service per year or proportionally to the time worked and that is given directly to the worker. The law also provides other benefits such as transportation assistance, severance payments, vacations, compensation fund, health contributions, pension and labor risks.
The union continues to grow and to seek the affiliation of more and more women with the intention of educating them about their rights. Through this union, María Roa Borja and her colleagues have tasked themselves with sharing the information and thus empowering more and more female domestic workers to demand a more humane and dignified treatment.

author: Shirley Campbell Barr


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The 2018 Lebanese Elections: What Led to Them? · Global Voices
Megaghone News

Screenshot from Megaphone's video on Lebanon's post-2005 political scene. Picture, in a distorted way, the so-called ‘Christian marriage’, when Samir Geagea endorsed Michel Aoun for presidency. Source: Megaphone.
The following is the first in a series of articles offering context on the 2018 Lebanese elections, due to be held on May 6, 2018. The articles are prepared by alternative media platform Megaphone and edited for Global Voices by Middle East and North Africa editor Joey Ayoub and author Elias Abou Jaoudeh.
The last few years in Lebanon have seen some potentially paradigm-shifting developments in the country’s political arena.
The two coalitions that have dominated the landscape for more than a decade, known as March 14 and March 8, have suffered internal chaos and a number of parties that are secular or non-aligned have emerged, challenging a system based on religious and ethnic quotas.
In addition, the parliament finally ratified a long-discussed electoral law, doing away with the previous “winner-takes-all” set-up in favor of proportional representation, but within the context of sectarianism where each sect is assigned a number of seats in parliament and positions in government.
With elections approaching in May 2018, many in Lebanon are now wondering whether Lebanese politics is on the brink of something new or whether the situation will, despite everything, largely remain unchanged.
To understand the current state of Lebanese politics, you first have to understand why Michel Aoun’s election as president in 2016 could have marked the beginning of a new era in Lebanese politics.
Ultimately, it appeared to be the end of the political binary between the March 8 and March 14 alliances that has gripped the country since 2005, but first…
On February 14, 2005, Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, along with twenty-one other victims, was assassinated in an explosion. This event triggered large-scale popular protests referred to as the Independence Intifada or Cedar Revolution, which led to the resignation of the then-cabinet and the withdrawal of tens of thousands of Syrian troops and security forces from the country, present in Lebanon since the end of the country's civil war in 1990.
Consequently, the political scene was divided into the pro-Syrian regime March 8 Alliance and the anti-Syrian regime March 14 Alliance, each named for when their large demonstrations took place in 2005. The characterization of ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ here refers to their positions on the presence of Syrian troops on Lebanese territory since 1990.
Prior to the 2005 parliamentary elections, Michel Aoun returned from exile in France, where he fled the Syrian regime in 1990 following an unsuccessful mutiny, and his party, the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), won most of the country’s Christian votes.
However, it was the March 14 Alliance, led by Saad Hariri, Rafik Hariri's son, that received the overall parliamentary majority.
Things immediately got more complicated as Aoun's FPM signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hezbollah only nine months after the elections, marking the party’s first step towards joining the March 8 Alliance.
Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, Left, with the Free Patriotic Movement's Michel Aoun, Right, when they signed the Memorandum of Understanding on February 6, 2006 at the Mar Mikhael Church. Source: Megaphone
By the end of 2005, the two camps were more clearly defined. The March 14 Alliance is dominated by the Sunni “Future Movement” and the Christian “Lebanese Forces” and “Kataeb”, while the March 8 Alliance is dominated by the Shia “Hezbollah” and “Amal”, and the Christian FPM. A number of smaller parties from all sects are part of each alliance as well.
Occupying its own spectrum but mostly aligned with the March 14 Alliance, the largest Druze party, the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), took part in the anti-Syrian regime demonstrations. It formally left March 14 in 2009.
Following the 2006 July War between Hezbollah and Israel, the divisions between the two opposing sides increased.
There were many points of contention, but three in particular: the reign of President Emile Lahoud, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and Hezbollah's military weapons:
“There will be no Lebanese-Syrian relations as long as Assad is in power” – Prime Minister Saad Hariri at a conference in December of 2017. Source: Megaphone.
These political disputes all took place within the tense context of bombings, assassinations, and official sit-ins. The situation was further exacerbated when, in 2008, the March 14-led government dismantled Hizbollah’s communications network following an official consideration of its illegality.
By May 7, 2008, confrontations erupted in Beirut and Mount Lebanon after Hezbollah and its allies responded with armed attacks on the offices of Future Movement and the PSP. Nearly 100 people, including civilians, were killed between May 7 and May 14.
These intense clashes only came to an end with the signing of the Doha Agreement on May 21, 2008, which resulted in another “national unity government” and the election of former Commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Michel Suleiman, as president.
In the 2009 elections, March 14 again won the parliamentary majority, and Amal's Nabih Berri was appointed as the speaker of parliament, a position he has held since 1992. After those elections, Saad Hariri was made prime minister on November 9, 2009, forming yet another “national unity government”, but by 2011, it had already broken down.
On May 31, 2013, most political forces agreed to extend the parliament's mandate under the pretext of security conditions and again in 2014, after the failure of an agreement on a new electoral law.
As a result, there have been no parliamentary elections in Lebanon since 2009. Megaphone provided a more detailed breakdown (turn on English captions) on post-2005 Lebanese politics:
By 2015, there was growing dissatisfaction with the situation, manifested by the abysmal waste crisis engulfing Beirut and parts of Mount Lebanon. Public anger pushed the ruling political class closer, and solidified their approach to suppress civil society-led movements.
In the summer of 2015, the popular “You Stink” protest movement gained momentum, calling for immediate elections, sustainable waste disposal solutions and the resignation of ministers responsible for the waste crisis. This momentum would be transformed into the 2016 Beirut municipal elections, which saw the rise of the anti-sectarian, independent “Beirut Madinati” campaign, but other collectives were also formed, some of which are now focusing on the upcoming elections.
This threatened both the March 14 and March 8 factions and so, on January 16, 2016, March 14's Samir Geagea endorsed his historical opponent, March 8's Michel Aoun, for the presidency. The two alliances formed a unified coalition against Beirut Madinati to ensure an election win, and the move paid off. Beirut Madinati’s loss was partly made possible by the “winner-takes-all” system, whereby parties with the majority of votes get all the seats. This was changed in the summer of 2017, but it was too late for Beirut Madinati.
On June 16, 2017, the parliament finally ratified the long-discussed electoral law, based on the system of proportional representation. This video by Megaphone (turn on English captions) explained the new electoral system:
While many are now wondering whether the non-aligned, secular parties have a chance in the upcoming Lebanese elections, this brief and simplified historiography illustrates that nothing can be certain when it comes to the March 14 and March 8 coalitions — especially their ability to shift alliances to stay in power.

author: Megaghone News


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Black In Tokyo: a Documentary About Life in Japan · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Screencap from Black in Tokyo (YouTube video).
A short documentary from 2017 takes a look at the lives of black residents in Tokyo. Directed by Nigerian-American artist Amarachi Nwosu, the film follows five subjects, with origins ranging from West Africa to the U.S., narrating the different cultural challenges and opportunities of living in Tokyo, Japan. The subjects of the documentary include the owner of a barbershop, an artist, a DJ and a member of the U.S. Air Force stationed at a base just outside of Tokyo.
My debut documentary Black In Tokyo just premiered on @thefader via. My platform @MelaninUnscript ! Watch Below✨????https://t.co/yr0rGO5wew pic.twitter.com/1o2r8ozEaS
— Amarachi Nwosu (@AmaraWorldWide) November 20, 2017
The interviewees talk about why they have decided to live in Tokyo, and what it means to be black in Japan. The documentary is the first instalment of Melanin Unscripted, the first in a series of films by Nwosu aimed at “uncovering the complex identities that are not generally projected in mainstream media.

author: Nevin Thompson


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Lantern Festival Riddles Outwit and Enrage Chinese Censorship Authorities · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Dragon Lantern via Wikipedia. CC-BY 2.0
浮世三千，
吾愛有三。
日，月與卿。
日為朝，月為暮，
卿為朝朝暮暮。
I love three things in this world.
Sun, Moon and You.
Sun for morning, Moon for night,
And you forever.
The above poem was circulated on one of my WeChat groups during the Lantern Festival on March 2, 2018, and was immediately viewed as a Lantern Riddle for people to decode. Everyone in the group knows that it is a mockery of the recent constitutional amendment proposal put forward by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regarding the abolition of the two-term limit on the state’s presidency.
Of course, no one posts the answer, knowing that it would trigger the webcensor. They just give a thumbs up. This Lantern riddle is just one of the many examples of Chinese netizens’ recent attempts to circumvent censorship on the constitutional amendment. Here's how: The answer to the riddle is a new term — “Xi forever” (習到永遠) — which, ever since the constitutional amendment proposal was made public on February 25, 2018, replaces the common expression of “Forever and ever” (直到永遠).
The announcement was made on February 25. The Central Committee of the CCP suggested deleting a line from the country's constitution which states that the president and vice-president “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms”. The proposal would pave the way for Chinese President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely.
In order to stop people from commenting on and criticizing the abolition of two-term presidency limit, the Chinese webcensor has imposed a ridiculously long list of censored terms and expressions. China Digital Times has, thus far, recorded about 60 censored terms, which include the following:
Riddles have become a common way to avoid such traps. The lion's share of such clever wordplay is being circulated on chatrooms, although some netizens have dared to venture out to the public domain, using the most popular mainland Chinese question and answer platform, Zhihu, to outwit the webcensor. People believe that such courageous acts are what eventually led to a seven-day suspension of Zhihu’s app from all application stores.
According to the Cyberspace Administration's notice on March 2, 2018 (via China Digital Times):
Due to lax supervision and the spread of illegal information, the ‘Zhihu’ app is to be removed from app stores for seven days in accordance with relevant laws and regulations. Specifically, the suspension period begins at 15:00 today, and ends at 15:00 on March 9.
The notice did not specify what exactly the illegal information was, or why such a severe punishment was being imposed on a platform which had claimed loyalty to the CCP by setting up party branches in the company. Since the announcement was flagged as urgent during the Lantern Festival, some netizens pointed to one of the relevant question and answer threads:
問：客車司機連續疲勞駕駛不換班，作為乘客應該怎樣做？
Question: If the driver keeps going in spite of fatigue, without changing shifts, what should the passengers do?
This response, written with common expressions that appear in political propaganda, was the most “liked” of all the suggested answers:
答：在重大事項上堅決與司機保持高度一致，這是實踐反復證明了的根本利益之所在，司機無疑最有能力把握全局，在立足現實的基礎上展望未來，帶領我們建設安全和美好…
Answer: In a crucial incident, we have to be determined and stick with the driver; this is a fundamental interest that has been proven through practice. The driver, without doubt, is the most capable person who is in control of the game. Position[ing] ourselves in the reality of anticipating the future, [the driver] would lead us to construct a safe and bright…
Though the link between the driver and Chinese president Xi Jinping is not a direct one, the majority of Chinese readers have managed to decode the riddle and have a good laugh about it. Of course, this sense of humor is not shared by the Cyberspace Administration.
In response to the suspension, Zhihu vowed that it would further strengthen its self-censorship measure. In fact, in the few days since the constitutional amendment proposal was announced, it has deleted more than 40,000 harmful bits of information and suspended 1,200 user accounts.
Nevertheless, the seven-day suspension notice indicates that even the self-censored loyalist has failed the expectations of the new era.

author: Oiwan Lam


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‘May It Be a Quick Death!’ The Testimony of East Ghouta Dentist Aous Al Mubarak · Global Voices
Act For Ghouta

Photo by Samir Al Doumy. Used with permission. Source.
The following is a testimony by Aous Al Mubarak, a dentist in the city of Harasta in the besieged Syrian district of Eastern Ghouta, where the Syrian regime and its allies have been waging an intense bombing campaign. Controlled by anti-regime rebels, Eastern Ghouta has been under siege by the Syrian regime and its allies since the end of 2013.
Over 120 people were killed this year between February 6 and February 8 alone, and February 19 saw the death of over 110 people in a single day. Some estimates put the total number of civilians killed at over 1,000 in the past three months. Since February 18, 650 people have been killed, more than 150 of them children. Civilian infrastructure has also been severely damaged, with more than 25 hospitals and health centers hit, some more than once in four days.
This story was originally published in Arabic on March 1, 2018.
I write this after ten days of the worst suffering I have witnessed in the last seven years. I hold my breath, as does everyone else here, and my chest is filled with sorrow due to the continuing horrors I have witnessed, as the shelling has not ceased. The shelling on civilians has decreased, but overall it has intensified and clashes continue all day, on all the fronts of Ghouta that Assad’s forces and their supporters are trying to storm.
I do not wish my readers to think I am avoiding the truth with what I say, especially after Security Council Resolution 2401, which was approved by all Security Council members including the Russian government, and after the Russian government announced a five-hour daily ceasefire to evacuate civilians in contradiction of the Security Council resolution. We have grown used to statements from major powers that contradict their actions. The reality is that we have not witnessed a ceasefire of even five minutes over the past ten days.
It is difficult for me to describe the exhaustion, the disaster and the horrors, and their cumulative effect over the past seven years, but in order to put my description of today’s reality in context, it is necessary to summarize.
The Syrian revolution began in the spring of 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring revolutions that preceded it, which sought to end tyranny and dictatorship and to give power back to the people. Peaceful protests erupted across most of Syria’s cities and villages. These protests were met by Assad, who inherited the republic’s rule from his father, with repression and killing and imprisonment and torture to death, as he refused to give any rights to the people.
Roughly a year after the start of the revolution, thousands of martyrs and tens of thousands of imprisonments later, after the regime’s lack of response to any of the demands, no matter how small, and its continuation of its brutal crackdown, protesters began to carry weapons. The revolution headed towards militarization. Radical groups, facilitated by the Assad regime, exploited this situation under the auspices of protecting civilians and the legitimate right to self-defence, obfuscating their radical agendas and pretending, rather, to take these steps out of altruism and self-sacrifice. As their forces increased in number, they flaunted their radical ideology and human rights violations, without anyone daring to defy them so as not to legitimize the regime’s indiscriminate campaign against all. For the regime never stopped bombing areas no longer under its control, targeting civilians in these areas daily.
This was the situation in most of the areas that were no longer under the regime’s control after the first three years, including East Ghouta, close to Damascus. In 2013, however, East Ghouta, experienced two major events that had a great effect on the area.
The first is the second largest chemical weapons massacre since World War II (second only to Saddam Hussein's 1988 Halabja Massacre). 1,500 were killed, most of them women and children, and tens of thousands of others injured. It was a horrific day, compared by witnesses to descriptions they have read about the Day of Judgement. The Assad regime got away unpunished after agreeing to give up the weapons. But in reality, the regime did not surrender the entirety of its chemical weapons arsenal, as it has used them tens of times since, the largest case being Khan Sheikhoun which the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism has attributed to the Assad regime.
The second event is the siege imposed by the Assad regime on East Ghouta, which has led to starvation and cut off the supply of medication, fuel, electricity, water and other necessities, forcing residents to resort to primitive methods to meet their needs. Hundreds have died from starvation and lack of medication, in addition to the thousands that have died in the daily bombings of civilians. The siege continues today, as the regime allows few supplies to reach the area, available at prices ten times those in Damascus, and blocks goods for months on ends, making prices in Ghouta the highest in the world.
After five years, the area's 450,000 residents have forgotten what it was like not to live under siege, and children have been born who have never seen a fruit, who do not know playgrounds, electricity, or television— who do not know what it is to live in security.
Clashes have erupted between radical groups and between more moderate and more radical groups, causing East Ghouta to become divided unto itself. But the radicalism has decreased with the withering of ISIS and the dwindling of Nusra to fewer than 1,000.
I do not wish to say that all we have witnessed is horrific, as society has managed to make great strides in democratic self-governance, the most important being the election of local councils in which all, including women, can participate—something that had not occurred under the 50 years of rule by both Assads. We have also witnessed the development of many civil initiatives to reinforce the idea of human rights and societal development.
But all of this is continuously undermined by the attacks on civilians by the Assad regime. The number of dead in Ghouta has reached the tens of thousands, among them those whose requests for medical evacuation were denied by the Assad regime. Despite all the rhetoric about de-escalation and truce agreements, the regime’s crimes have never stopped. Ghouta’s residents hear the news and statements then look at their reality only to find nothing has changed.
No one believed us when we said the regime did not know anything about politics except how to regurgitate its propaganda in international fora and apply its military solution, rejecting the idea of negotiations about rights for the people. No political solution can be reached because the regime refuses to relinquish any part of its “ownership” of the country, and perhaps is unable to do so.
In a continuation of this policy, the regime launched a campaign of unparalleled brutality on Ghouta on the night of February 18, 2018. We have lived through hundreds of massacres and bombing campaigns, but we had never seen anything like this.
Every day tens of thousands of bombs and shells and barrel bombs are dropped. At any given moment, fighter jets and helicopters could begin swarming over Ghouta at any given moment, and artillery fire and rocket launchers bombing residential areas continuously. Ghouta is now completely paralyzed, and residents have been forced to seek shelter underground. The streets are deserted and stores are closed.
The jets use a type of highly explosive bomb that we have not seen before; a single one of them is capable of bringing down a six-story building. Dozens of buildings have fallen in on their occupants, and underground shelters have collapsed on women and children, the rubble crushing them to death.
The bombing surrounds us from every direction, the rockets deafen us and make us fear we are next. Something we all agree on: if it must be, make it a quick death for us and our children. Let it be a death without pain, not a slow death beneath the rubble.
Underground field hospitals are overflowing with the dead and the injured and doctors can no longer manage to work around the clock. Hospitals are continuously bombed to prevent the injured from being treated, as the regime did to the protesters in 2011, preventing them from being treated and arresting them immediately as the hospital entrance.
As for the White Helmets, they are the noblest people I have met since the beginning of the revolution. They are true heroes, rushing immediately towards bombed areas, despite the density and intensity of the bombing, to save the injured and pull victims out from under the rubble. Collapsed underground shelters are a new phenomenon for the White Helmets, but this has not stopped them from digging underground tunnels from neighboring streets to reach them.
Some of them have been martyred performing their noble duty, and their centers have not been spared the concentrated bombing that seeks to put them out of service and kill the maximum number of people possible. It is not surprising that the Assad regime and its supporters would hate them and spread lies about them. The latest of these is that they are preparing a chemical attack on civilians and plan to blame it on Assad.
Despite the great efforts by civil groups to lessen the suffering and horrors, the disaster is simply too great for its impact to be lessened by much. Many underground shelters are not equipped with bathrooms or the most basic of amenities. People spend most of their days in complete darkness, waiting for the unstoppable bombing to cease. Many of them have lost their homes in the bombing. They cannot find anything to buy outside and don't have the money required to leave the area, because they are living day-to-day, and work is very hard to come by.
Even though the bombing has lessened in the past couple of days, as it has intensified on Ghouta's front lines, which are stormed from every direction by the regime, things remain paralyzed, with no one daring to return to normal life because of the possibility of being killed in the bombing.
I want to remind everyone that there are countries fighting in Syria via their proxies in the regime and opposition, leaving civilians to pay the price; and that these same governments have apologized for the massacres their ancestors perpetrated against Native Americans, Africans, and Jews. Perhaps they expect their grandchildren to apologize for what they are doing to us today.
There is, however, a positive aspect that we must keep in mind, and that is the solidarity we have experienced from people from across the world. To all who have stood with us and stood for our freedom and dignity, we are thankful and grateful. They are also defending themselves, for a victory by the tyrannical and brutal regimes over those who called for freedom and democracy in a world poses a serious threat to the fundamental values of freedom, justice, human rights, and democracy.

author: Act For Ghouta