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Nigeria on defensive after US travel ban casts accusations of security noncompliance · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

U.S. Embassy Abuja Deputy Chief of Mission David Young awaits U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as he deplanes on August 23, 2016, at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, in Abuja, Nigeria, after arriving for meetings with Nigerian President Muhummadu Buhari, Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama, and Governor’s of the country’s Northern region. [State Department Photo/ Public Domain, United States government. Taken on August 23, 2016.
On January 31, 2020, the Trump administration confirmed a travel ban on six additional countries: Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania.
Four of the six countries are in Africa, leading many netizens and critics to call this latest travel ban an “Africa ban” shaped by “racist” and “xenophobic” logic.
#Trumps new #travelbans, includ 4 #African countries, #Nigeria, #Sudan, #Tanzania & #Eritrea,Sen @KamalaHarris former Dem pres candidate, declared on Sunday. “They are, without a doubt, rooted in anti-immigrant, white supremacist ideologies.” https://t.co/Vf9w8cWOBV
— Jehron Muhammad (@JehronMuhammad) February 4, 2020
They join Syria, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Venezuela and Yemen, who have been subjected to a controversial US travel ban since 2017, widely referred to as the “Muslim ban,” because most are Muslim-majority countries.
Citing national security concerns, the United States suspended immigrant visas for citizens of Nigeria and Eritrea while for Sudan and Tanzania, citizens are no longer able to join the US diversity visa program — the “lottery” that grants green cards to immigrants specifically from places with low numbers in the US.
The ban came as a surprise to Nigeria, a major security and trade partner with the US, causing netizens and analysts alike to protest and ponder the ban’s discriminatory nature.
The US could not confirm any verifiable terrorist threat from the African nations listed but they rationalized the ban by citing security concerns regarding “vetting capabilities and processes for detecting attempted entry” under Executive Order 13780 to “protect the nation from foreign terrorist entry” into the US. The ban is predicated on the assessment that these nations have not complied with US security criteria, including “refined performance metrics” and “information-sharing criteria.”
A White House-issued statement said that the government used three criteria to make the controversial decision: 1. “whether a foreign government engages in reliable identity-management practices and shares relevant information; 2. “whether a foreign government shares national security and public-safety information; 3. and whether a country otherwise poses a national security or public-safety risk.
In renewed and tightened protocols, all countries must issue electronic passports for all major classes of travel documents and they must report lost or stolen passports to INTERPOL within 30 days, among other performance criteria.
Based on these criteria, the countries listed in this travel ban “do not comply” when it comes to sharing security-related information and restrictions will be enforced in full effect on February 21, 2020.
Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation and one of its strongest economies — said it was somewhat “blindsided” by the travel ban news as a strategic partner in the global fight against terrorism.
According to US intelligence, Nigeria does not “adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information.” Nigeria was also deemed “high risk” in terms of “terrorist travel” to the US.
President Muhamadu Buhari immediately put together a committee to review the travel ban and address several deficits, affirming its commitment to working with the US as a global partner.
In fact, Nigeria just purchased $500 million worth of 12 US-made A-29 aircraft, according to the US Secretary of State.
Meanwhile, President Buhari faces criticism at home for increasingly complex security challenges, including acts of terrorism claimed by Boko Haram, a militant group, since 2011. But the West African nation has never sponsored state terrorism.
The US Department of State designates four countries as state sponsors of terrorism: North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, — because they “have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” Nigeria is not one of them.
Little wonder that none of the sanctions officially prescribed by the US Congress on state sponsors of terrorism applies to Nigeria.
The isolated incident of the Nigerian suicide bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who unsuccessfully tried to detonate plastic explosives on board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day, 2009, is a case in point where Nigeria has supported the US in its fight against terrorism.
Nigeria worked hard with the US to establish that Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Yemen by Anwar al Awlaki, a radical US-born cleric. Based on this cooperation, then-President Barack Obama ordered a US drone strike in 2011, which killed Awlaki in Yemen.
And Nigeria has recently undergone a major overhaul of its national digital identification system with a focus specifically on ramping up security measures.
If the travel ban was really about deterring terrorists, as claimed, the tourist visa may have been more deserving of restrictions. However, many netizens pointed out that the ban on migrant visas points to Trump’s racist agenda to quell migration from black and brown countries to the US.
With this travel ban, nearly a quarter of the continent will be restricted from immigration to the US. As of 2017,  348,000 Nigerian immigrants currently live in the US, “making Nigeria the top birthplace among African immigrants in the country,” according to Pew Research.
In fact, Nigerians who migrate to the US contribute more than any other immigrant group as the most educated: As of 2016, about six in 10 Nigerians in the US  — about 59% had a bachelor’s degree or higher — “a share roughly double that of the overall American population,” according to Pew Research.
About 17 percent of Nigerian immigrants to the US have a master's degree while 4 percent have a doctorate. Consequently, Nigerian immigrants have higher chances of getting good jobs.
This netizen called out the racism and fear that fueled the decision to include Nigeria in the travel ban:
Trump’s decision to ban Nigerians from being able to settle in the US is the height of his hatred for whatever reason. For a country with statistics that shows it makes up the most educated immigrant group,one would have expected that those are the kind of people America attracts
— HENRY Okelue (@4eyedmonk) February 1, 2020
And this netizen also called the travel ban a “racist policy, period:”
Trump loving Nigerians now claim it’s Nigerians who overstay’s fault. Nigeria overstays are only 15%. Nigerian diaspora in US is one of most educated and prosperous contributing a huge no of Doctor, medical, legal and other professionals. This is a racist policy period!
— Gesare Chife (@gechife) February 1, 2020
Nigerians at home and abroad have railed against the travel ban, but Trump has also received high approval ratings in Nigeria, at least until now.
Yet, the travel ban received very little official resistance from the Buhari administration, due to numerous strategic ties that have kept the Trump-Buhari administrations close.
American companies have invested over $1 billion USD in Nigeria in 2018 alone. Just days after Trump announced the expanded travel ban, the US government also repatriated over $308 stashed in the US by a former Nigerian dictator and announced “an additional $40 million in humanitarian assistance” to Nigeria — a diplomatic means of enforcing good behavior.

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Nigeria’s digital ID scheme may benefit those ‘with access’— but what about everyone else? · Global Voices
Boye Adegoke

Taking fingerprints for Aadhaar, photo by Kannanshanmugham, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
Editor's note: This piece was written by Adeboye Adegoke, the digital rights program manager at Paradigm Initiative Nigeria. It is part of our series on digital ID systems, produced in partnership with The Engine Room. Visit the Digital ID microsite to read a full research report on this global trend, and case studies on five countries that have deployed digital ID systems, including Nigeria.
Can Nigeria’s digital identification (ID) scheme truly serve the public? Or is it yet another venture that will only benefit “those with access”?
This question is likely at top of mind for youths across Nigeria, who learned earlier this month — to the relief of many — that they would not be required to present digital ID numbers in order to register for upcoming university matriculation exams.
On January 11, 2020, Nigeria’s Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board announced that it would walk back the relatively new requirement, despite having instituted it in October 2019.
While it may seem like an innocuous policy change to an outsider, this reversal marked an embarrassing acknowledgment of the flaws in Nigeria’s nationwide digital identification system, which attempts to streamline the country’s complex patchwork of identity information systems pertaining to various financial and public service entities.
My organization, Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, has been following the development of the system and advocating for lawmakers to establish comprehensive data protection and privacy laws in Nigeria before continuing to collect citizens’ data as part of the digital ID system.
The National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) intends to make National Identification Numbers (NIN) a mandatory requirement for passport applications, voter registration, the opening of bank accounts and tax payments, alongside transactions relating to everything from consumer credit and health insurance and social security matters, to land ownership and pensions. That is a lot of data.
Naturally, challenges with the system hit on public policy: The initiative collects several new forms of personal data — including all ten of one's fingerprints — that are not protected or even addressed by Nigerian law. The system also faces more practical issues related to registration processes. Although the system was first conceived in 2014, only 19 percent of Nigerians have registered for National NIN. In order to serve the entire population, the Director-General of the Commission has said it would need to establish an additional 9,000 registration centers, on top of the 1,000 centers currently in operation.
Thus far, in many circumstances, the system has proven to further complicate these processes, and in some cases, to alienate citizens from participation.
Students who did attempt to register for NIN ahead of exams reported that the process was marred by extortion, bribery and other corrupt practices. One student group published a statement asserting that the exercise subjected students to undue stress.
Winifred Mark, the mother of a student seeking to matriculate, alleged that she went to three separate registration centers in Lagos. In each case, officials demanded bribes ranging from 5,000 nairas to 7,000 NGN (about $12-$20 United States dollars) from people seeking to register. As per its establishing act, the NIN registration process is meant to be free of charge.
A graduation ceremony in a private university in Nigeria. Photo by Rajmund Dabrowski/ANN, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Research by The Engine Room has highlighted how many of the NIN registration locations were not accessible for people with physical impairments. Several people with physical disabilities described their attempts to register as humiliating.
As we were conducting our own research on the NIN system, Nigeria’s Immigration Service set a requirement that all passport applicants present a NIN. When a colleague needed to renew her international passport in August 2019, she flew into Abuja from Lagos and went straight to immigration headquarters, only to be turned away for lack of a NIN. She dashed to the office of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) so she could obtain her NIN, but on arrival, she was told they had run out of forms and she would have to come back another day.
In this case, I personally intervened on her behalf, having just met a top officer of the identity commission as part of my work. The officer obliged my request and my colleague was able to get the NIN the same day.
Many would argue that I should at least be glad that I have access to people who have some power. But this is exactly the problem. If essential services in Nigeria are only truly available to people who “have access,” what should the rest of the population do?
This is a problem that has always existed in Nigeria, and one that authorities have never invested sufficient effort in addressing. The government seeks to implement policies with claims of benefiting “the people,” when in reality, it is another venture that will benefit only “those with access.”
Voting in progress at Presidential election March 28, 2015, in Abuja, Nigeria. Photo by U.S. Embassy / Idika Onyukwu, CC BY-NC 2.0.
At least two officials of the NIMC have told me anonymously that the commission is so poorly funded that it does not have the required budgetary provision to be able to deliver on its mandate. But this is not the only obstacle to its success. Some institutional problems even money will not solve. There is a very legitimate concern among the public that the digital identity system in Nigeria will not serve the interests of the people, and that it cannot be trusted. Citizens who have faced discrimination, humiliation and extortion on attempting to register have proven this point.
This is not to say that digital identity systems are inherently useless. Secure identification methods could become a key element in the design of economic and social policies and could even help the government better address poverty reduction, education, health, and governance.
But in order to institute a system that actually satisfies these needs and respects citizens’ rights, policymakers must start by considering individual and collective privacy, security and inclusion in addition to the other issues highlighted above.
Our organization called for the suspension of mandatory requirements of NIN for essential services, given the current challenges of registration and Nigeria’s lack of a comprehensive data protection law that would secure citizens’ rights to their data before an institution like the NIMC could enforce its collection.
We are not the only ones raising this point. In a 2017 exchange, Twitter user Tọ̀míwá Ilọ̀rí called out the NIMC on its claim that it “owns” the data of Nigerian citizens. On their Twitter bio, the agency had said that its mandate was to “establish, own, operate, maintain and manage the National Identity Database in Nigeria.” This claim is not supported by its establishing Act.
“You don’t own Nigerians’ data,” Ilọ̀rí wrote on Twitter.
This excludes every Nigerians’ right to own their personal information, especially those given to you. Kindly revise your bio as appropriate
— Tọ̀míwá Ilọ̀rí (@tomiwa_ilori) May 16, 2017
Claims like this are only a symptom of a larger problem: the lack of data protection and recognition of data privacy rights in Nigeria. The digital identity ecosystem must respect the rights of individuals and communities and should have prioritized the enactment of a data protection law as a prerequisite to its implementation.
Without an adequate data privacy or protection law, how can we safeguard against some of the greatest risks that such a system could incur? And authorities have not even mentioned the dangers of state surveillance or the potential exploitation of data by private companies. These and other risks appear to be only concerns for civil society.
A joint report by Paradigm Initiative and Privacy International, “The Right to Privacy in Nigeria,” identified troubling surveillance activities conducted in Nigeria, including government surveillance of mobile phone activity in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.
The UN and World Bank ID4D initiatives set a goal of providing everyone on the planet with a legal identity by 2030. The question we must ask is whether legal identity needs to come in the form of digital identity, especially for developing countries like Nigeria, where such processes are often poorly managed and citizens have low trust in government agencies.
For many citizens in rural Nigeria, using digital ID systems to access essential services may be their first interaction with digital technologies. At present, some people risk being denied services essential to their existence for reasons completely beyond them. People accessed services, including banking, immigration, education, voting and property ownership in the past without digital ID.
Must digital ID be required for each of these services in the digital age?
The enforcement of digital ID in Nigeria needs real introspection. Failing this, digital IDs will soon be required for accessing basic needs — yet only those “with access” will be able to fully utilize the system.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Boye Adegoke


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Will Venezuela exclude Haiti from the PetroCaribe relaunch? · Global Voices
Bob Duval

A demonstration by the PetroCaribe Challengers. Photo by Medyalokal, Wikimedia Commons, via CC BY-SA 4.0.
According to multiple reports, Venezuela will relaunch its PetroCaribe energy cooperation agreement with Caribbean nations sometime in 2020, prompting Haitians to wonder if Haiti stands a chance to get included this time around.
PetroCaribe, a generous deal with long-term payment plans meant to benefit the Haitian people, was suspended in 2018 following Venezuela's presidential crisis. When Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro announced the PetroCaribe relaunch, he warned that the deal would not be “extended to countries that are ‘at war’ with Venezuela,” which could include Haiti, according to Haiti Liberte media.
That's because, at a January 2019 vote at the Organization of American States (OAS), the Haitian government, under President Jovenel Moïse, sided with the United States in rejecting the legitimacy of Maduro as president. Instead, Haiti endorsed Juan Guaidó, an opposition politician who continues to contest Maduro's presidency.
“Haiti doesn’t recognize us, so we haven’t excluded Haiti,” a high-ranking Venezuelan government told Haïti Liberté. “Haiti has excluded itself,” he said.
Interestingly, former senator Jean-Charles Moïse, who chairs the opposition party Pitit Desalin, recently met with President Maduro to apologize for Haiti's vote at the OAS, hoping to smooth things over so that Haiti may actually benefit from the PetroCaribe deal.
But Haitians wonder if the apology will be enough.
PetroCaribe has been a hugely contentious issue in Haiti, thanks to a corruption scandal that sparked violent street protests nearly a year ago on February 7, 2019, and continued for months.
The Haitian government allegedly squandered PetroCaribe funds meant to develop its economy and aid social programs. More than $3 billion United States dollars were embezzled by government officials through opaque contracts — including one with a company called Agritrans, owned by President Moïse.
As a result, few Haitians saw any benefits promised from the PetroCaribe deal and demonstrations calling for Moïse's resignation have plagued the president's term of office.
Meanwhile, Haitian taxpayers are stuck with at least a $2 billion USD debt to Venezuela, which was siphoned off the PetroCaribe endowment.
According to Haiti Liberte:
Jovenel Moïse’s betrayal of Venezuela has been one of the motive forces behind the massive nationwide insurrection calling for his resignation since July 2018, when his government tried to raise fuel prices following PetroCaribe’s cut-off.
The first incarnation of PetroCaribe happened in 2005, under then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The regional energy program was intended to provide petroleum products to member states under preferential terms.
Haiti did not join right away — it was only after Chavez “actively courted” newly elected, then-president René Préval, that the country was included in the deal — which further complicated Venezuela's already strained relationship with the United States.
The United States and Haiti have had a complicated history that includes, among other things, occupation and US interventions, questionable humanitarian initiatives and the United States President Donald Trump's dismissal of it as a “shithole country.”
Yet, on January 30, 2020, Haiti joined the US-backed Lima Group, comprised of 12 Latin American countries, aimed at seeking an end to the Venezuela crisis, who have urged global pressure on Maduro to “re-establish democracy” since 2017, when the presidential crisis began.
Today, the questions remain — with Preident Moïse still holding onto power, will Venezuela ultimately include Haiti in the relaunch of PetroCaribe? If so, would it have to be under a new government in order to win the trust of both Maduro and Haitian citizens? Or will Haiti lose a second chance to benefit?

author: Bob Duval


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What happened during the deadly land dispute clash in Dong Tam, Vietnam? · Global Voices
Loa

Security footage showing numerous riot police marching through Dong Tam, early on the morning of January 9. Source: Trinh Ba Tu's Facebook
This article was originally published on Loa, a news website and podcast on Vietnamese news by Viet Tan. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement. Reporting by Chris Lê and Kiên Trịnh.
On January 9, 2020, Vietnamese authorities deployed thousands of police to Đồng Tâm village on the outskirts of the capital Hanoi to solve a land dispute. A clash between residents and authorities followed, and three police officers and two civilians were killed.
The government has barred all independent media from entering the area, leaving state media and social media as the main sources of information. Many netizens are trying to piece together what happened. The Loa team also got together to make sense of what went down. Here's what we have:
As 5,000 police and armed forces stormed the village of Hoành in Đồng Tâm commune in the middle of the night of January 9, loudspeakers blared messages to residents — which it referred to as “retaliating forces” — warning them not to “go over the limit with their actions.”
The police's first stop was the home of Lê Đình Kình, referred to as cụ Kình in his community, a respected 84-year-old village member who long led a local protest movement against corruption. According to the South China Morning Post, a live stream recorded by land rights activist Trinh Ba Tu reported that “[Kinh] was shot twice in the head, once in the heart, and once in the foot. He was shot in front of his wife.”
Police raided Dong Tam village on 9 January 2020. Photo from Twitter post of @AnhChiVN
Things weren’t always strained between the government and the people of Đồng Tâm, but tensions began to with the construction of a military airport near their village in 2017 by Viettel, Vietnam's military-owned telecom company.
All land in communist Vietnam belongs to the state, so technically the government can use it for whatever purposes it wants. But locals say they have farmed the land for generations and were not being properly compensated, the BBC reports.
Even during this contentious time, locals of Đồng Tâm still continued to show support for the government. A photo featured on BBC Vietnamese shows signage created by the community that read “The people of Dong Tam completely trust and believe in the Party vision.”
In fact, cụ Kình, the elder who was killed by the police, has been a Communist Party member for more than 50 years, and also served as the head of the village’s police force.
However, in April 2017, the relationship took a turn for the worse after local authorities started to section off 59 hectares of land for the Viettel project. In a confrontation, the police attacked and broke cụ Kình’s leg which resulted in local residents converging and holding 38 officials and police officers hostage for a week.
The chairman of the People’s Committee of Hà Nội, Nguyễn Đức Chung met with local residents to promise no reprisals and to resolve the land dispute peacefully.
However, in December 2019, Chung issued an order further pressuring the people of Đồng Tâm to relinquish the land.
Residents of Đồng Tâm organized a town hall meeting in late December 2019 and accused Nguyễn Đức Chung of dishonesty and corruption. During the meeting, cụ Kình declared that the people would stand their ground and protect their land.
I’d like to inform everyone: Nguyễn Đức Chung is two-faced, a person who distorts the truth, and because of this we the people of the Đồng Tâm commune must be strong and determined. Even if Nguyễn Đức Chung is lying, the people must still consider the land of Sênh to be the agricultural land of the region, and we must protect it to the end. Anyone who purposely threatens or violates this — any dishonest people who comes to steal this land, we must be determined to fight, even if we bleed, we will be ready. Though 59 acres of land is not a lot, but the integrity, the honor of our Dong Tam people as a heroic community is much larger than the land.
Lề Đình Kình was deeply respected by the members of the community. After he was killed on the January 9 raid and his body returned to the commune, hundreds of people gathered to grieve him.
In a video published at 3 a.m. on the night of the clash, three village leaders, including Lê Đình Công, the son of Lê Đình Kình, helped paint a picture of what was happening. In it, they called for the attention and support of the Vietnamese people.
The Hanoi government has sent in so many troops, police forces, vehicles carrying barbed wire and fencing to Ba Thạ, which is three kilometers from Đồng Tâm. It is 3 a.m here. We want to let everyone in the country know to be ready to fight against invaders — the invaders have repeatedly attempted to seize our land and failed, but now they have deliberately sent troops in to oppress us and rob our land. We hope that the people of our country are watching, are concerned, and will support us.
Công and 19 other villagers were arrested and charged with murder.
#DongTam, suburb of Hanoi, #Vietnam: Hundreds of riot policemen in full gear raided and attacked the village at early morning when Tet holiday is coming. 1 villager was killed, another injured, 3 policemen died. Village is under heavy siege now. pic.twitter.com/g7C8nrzQdI
— Anh Chí (@AnhChiVN) January 9, 2020
Authorities shut off the internet and phone connections in Đồng Tâm and blocked roads leading to the village. As a result, there has been a media blackout surrounding the events of January 9, and most information remains unverified, including how three officers were killed during the raids.
Radio Free Asia reported that YouTube issued a strike against its channel regarding a webcast that included news about Đồng Tâm for unspecified violations of the video-sharing platform's community guidelines.
State media outlet Hanoi Mới quoted a Ministry of Information official stating that Google and Facebook were responsive in government requests to take down content deemed as “fake or inciteful” over the past two weeks. The three Vietnamese policemen who died have been buried with honors in Hanoi. The government blamed the officers’ deaths on “rioters.”
In the end, outlets across the board have extremely restricted access to what happened in Đồng Tâm, leaving more questions than answers.
Listen to the podcast to learn more about the issue:

author: Loa


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Coronavirus death of whistleblower Li Wenliang sets Chinese social media on fire · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Viral image online. Via Twitter
Ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was one of the eight Wuhan-based doctors who alerted peers and friends online on December 30, 2019 about the outbreak of a new coronavirus. He disregarded a ban on sharing sensitive information on social media and was investigated by the police, who accused him of spreading rumors. He eventually contracted the new coronavirus, and died on February 6. News of his death has since spread like wildfire on Chinese social media, as netizens display messages and images expressing anger, frustration and grief, and pointing fingers at the government.
The world received conflicting reports about the timing of Li's death, as state censors intervened in an attempt to control the news, and ordered Wuhan Central Hospital to freeze the announcement of his death. The Hong-Kong-based news outlet The Initium has detailed the attempt to manipulate the news:
The news about the death of Li Wenliang appeared in a number of news outlets at around 9:30 pm on February 6. In less than two hours, the topic ‘Dr. Li Wenliang passed away’ became a top search with 20 million search records, 540 million views and 73,000 posts on Weibo, the main Chinese social media platform. But after leading news outlets withdrew their posts, and Caixin magazine published a report stating that the medical team was still attempting to rescue Li, the search record had lowered to 1.9 million at around 11:30 pm, before disappearing altogether.
One hour later, at around 12:20 am on February 7, a reporter from a business news outlet who was standing outside the ICU ward of Li wrote on his Weibo that Li's heart beat has stopped at 9:30pm, but that he was attached to an oxygenation machine. At 12:40 am, the Wuhan Central Hospital posted a message on Weibo urging netizens to “pray for Li” as the medical team was still attempting to save his life. Multiple Weibo outlets then published positive comments urging netizens to let Dr. Li “rest in peace”.
At the same time, unverified claims citing screen-capture and sources from a medical staff chatroom alleged that the medical team from the hospital had been instructed to “buy time” and refrain from announcing Li's death without approval from the authorities.
At this point, Chinese citizens could no longer withhold their anger. Weibo was flooded with comments and images slamming the authorities for manipulating Li's death (comments via the Initium):
心跳停止，卻不讓人死，用時間換維穩，極其可恥
His heart has stopped beating and you don't let him die. To buy time in exchange of maintaining stability. This is extremely shameless.
君要臣死，臣不得不死；君不要臣死，臣不得好死。
If the emperor wants his official to die, the official must then die; if the emperor does not allow his official to die, the official will have a miserable death.
拖延幾分鐘，說還在搶救，這是輿論控制的老手段，這叫延宕情緒，直接公佈死訊公眾憤怒太大，要把憤怒轉化為對奇跡的失望。現在大家不就覺得憤怒少了很多嘛。
You can say that it is a rescue attempt if it lasted for a few minutes. For those who are familiar with the manipulation of public opinion, this is called ‘emotional managing’. Brutally announcing his death would trigger an outburst of grief and anger. By shifting the news to a possible miracle, the emotion evolves from anger to disappointment. Don't we see now that anger has diminished significantly?
The comments mentioned above point at a usual practice applied in the case of sensitive topics that could lead to online protests: the authorities order social media platforms to censor, delete or spin content to change trends into the desired direction, meaning less critical of the government's action, as seen in this message shared in Chinese chat rooms:
关於武汉市中心医院李文亮医生去世一事，要严格规范稿源，严禁使用自媒体稿件擅自报导，不得弹窗 push，不评论、不炒作。互动环节稳妥控制热度，不设话题，逐步撤出热搜，严管有害信息。
About the death of doctor Li Wenliang from Wuhan Central Hospital, control the source of information. News outlets should not accept and take information sources and reports from independent bloggers. Do not use pop-up window to push the news. No commentary, no hype are allowed. Control the ‘temperature’ [of the discussion] with the comment function. Do not generate topics, gradually make the news disappear from the “hot search” section, strictly control harmful information.
This time, the attempt to manage emotions failed as the manipulation of the timing of his death became obvious. Li Wenliang quickly became an icon, an ordinary hero, as many people have come to see his life and death as a reflection of their own fate.
A poem attached to Li Wenliang's portrait circulating online captures widespread public sentiment:
生受訓戒
死受輿控
夜深雪重
悲憤無言
When alive, threaten with disciplinary measures
When dead, use propaganda policy to control
Snow is heavy and darkness deep at night
Grievance and anger are beyond words
When Li and the other seven doctors were questioned by the police for spreading rumors, they were forced to sign a letter to “admit” their wrongdoings and promise that they would not commit similar crimes again, or else face legal prosecution. Their alleged crime: informing relatives, friends and colleagues within a chat room about a SARS-like outbreak in Wuhan. When the matter was taken to court, the judge criticized police for their abusive definition of rumor. On January 31, the news outlet Caixin interviewed Li, who said: “What is more important is that people know the truth, compared to my own vindication. A healthy society should have more than one voice.”
Li's statement indicates that he does not see himself as heroic, but aspires for a healthy society that can only be sustained if people know the truth.
Li is survived by his two parents and his pregnant wife. None of them were able to say farewell to him, as his body was cremated, according to an update by Radio Free Asia.
Mainland Chinese journalist Jia Jia commented on the implications of casting Li as a hero:
请在一个普通人的意义上悼念李医生，因为我们任何一个普通人，都可能重蹈他的悲剧。没有什么英雄，当所有人都怯懦的时候，那个稍微不那么怯懦的人就会成为英雄。如果只是说了一句正常的话而成为英雄，那么他妈的这个世界就全是谎言。这种荒诞不经的事每天都在发生。有一天，当你稍微勇敢一点点，危险就会逼近。所以，丧钟为每个人而鸣。你明白了吗？
Please commemorate Dr. Li as an ordinary person because all of us who are ordinary people might share his tragic fate. There are no heroes as such but people who, in a time of cowardice, can for a short moment lift that cowardice and become heroes. If a person becomes a hero just by saying something ordinary, this world is a fxxking sack of lies. But such ridiculous things happen every day. One day, when you show some signs of being brave, just a bit, you step into a dangerous zone. The bell of Li's death is ringing for all of us. Do you get it?
Chinese citizens anger and grievance have quickly evolved into variations of “five demands,” which have become a form of political of political statement that evolved out of the 2019 Hong Kong's protests. Below is one set of five demands circulating online:
五大诉求，缺一不可：撤回对李文亮的训诫；撤回所有删帖命令；撤销所有因言获罪的指控；成立独立调查委员会，彻底追究涉事官员责任；立即归还人民言论自由。
Five demands, not one less: withdraw the police's warning of disciplinary measures; withdraw all censorship orders; drop all charges; establish an independent investigation commission to punish officials involved [in the cover-up of outbreak]; return the right to freedom of speech to the people.
Young people are also using the video platform Douyin to express their demands for free speech. Twitter user @yingyi8798 puts together short clips from Douyin and posts them on Twitter:
“让大家知道真相比自己平反更重要， 一个健康的社会不应该只有一种声音。” ——李文亮 pic.twitter.com/9XbAFFfvn5
— yingyi (@yingyi8798) February 7, 2020
What is more important is that people know the truth, compared to my own vindication. A healthy society should have more than one voice. — Li Wenliang
Not surprisingly, demands for free speech are being labelled as a color revolution by pro-government patriots. The same label was attached to Hong Kong's anti-government protests. Below are two typical comments copied from WeChat.
不知道什么是“阿拉伯之春”、什么是“颜色革命”的网友们，好好感受一下今晚的微博吧！某些势力某些人，你们要发起总攻了吗？你们真的是在担忧和哀伤吗？不!李医生只是你们用来挑拨煽动的幌子!
For those who don't know what is the “Arab spring” and “color revolution,” you can experience it on Weibo tonight! Specific forces, specific people, are you launching a grand attack? Are you really grieving? No You just use doctor Li to incite the public to cause trouble!
颜色革命的节奏一波又一波，还记得去年十一发朋友圈的自己吗？zf固然有错，就错到要推翻它的地步？疫情如此严重，不能仅仅看见当初的错误，一个医生的去世能被上升为国家，体制，香港，台湾问题等等层面，还是你们义愤填膺的理由吗？
Waves and waves of color revolution are being orchestrated. Do you still remember your [patriotic pride] on national day last year? The government may have made mistakes, but have we reached the point to overthrow it? The pandemic is so serious now, and we can't just focus on the mistake made at the very beginning. The death of a doctor is now turned into criticism of the state and of the political system, and it is all being connected to what happened in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Don't you see how your anger is being channeled?
the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
How Russia influences Serbian media · Global Voices
Jovana Presić

Serbian tabloids. Photo by Zoran Drekalović/Istinomer, used with permission.
This article is made possible through a partnership with Transitions, a Prague-based publishing and media training organisation.
An opinion poll conducted by the Institute for European Affairs in September 2019 shows that 23 percent of Serbian citizens believe Russia is Serbia's largest aid donor. In reality, Russia hasn't made the top 10 of Serbia's largest donors since 2000, according to the data by the Ministry of European Integration. The EU tops the list with 2.96 billion euros in aid, followed by USA with 696 million.
What is generally believed to be the reason for such perception is the prevalence of Russian-sponsored media in Serbia, whose coverage not just aligns with the Kremlin's geopolitical interests, but also frequently promotes misleading and out-and-out wrong information. Dr Precious N. Chatterje-Doody of Manchester University explained this approach in a statement for Ukrainian fact-checking service StopFake:
By mixing fact and fiction, playing on popular sentiments among foreign audiences and trying to sway public opinion in a particular direction that serves Moscow’s interests, they systematically pursue the Kremlin’s geopolitical goals, while discrediting journalistic principles in the process.
Disinformation in Serbian media is particularly alarming when considering the influence it holds over the Balkans. Zoran Andonovski, editor-in-chief of Skopje-based Meta.mk News Agency, explains:
The geographic proximity, the long common history in the former Yugoslavia and cultural similarities all contribute to the elevated image of Serbia, resulting in the perception that any information (or disinformation) coming from there should be accepted at face value, without need for verification. The Serbian media market is much larger than the Macedonian, for example, its media companies are much more developed and economically powerful, so they can afford high volume of original production which “impresses” the less confident Macedonian media workers, in particular from small or startup online portals.
One example is Moscow-founded news portal and radio station Sputnik Serbia. It reaches large Serbian-speaking audiences in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. It usually provides mixes neutral news with analysis aligned with pro-Kremlin interests, but according to a report by the Bosnian fact-checking organization Raskrinkavanje.ba, it is a major hub of a disinformation network in the Balkans.
In most cases, Sputinik columns and analyses adopt an anti-EU instance — for example, a recent article argued that the Western Balkan countries will “never” join the EU. Another says that Western alliances are gradually “dissolving” due to discordance between its members. Sometimes, they will boost the conspiracy theory that NATO wants to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church — citing the freedom of religion law passed in Montenegro, a NATO member, as proof.
According to Gemius Audience rating, in December 2019, Sputnik had 1,132,547 website visitors. It was ranked the 21st most-read media portal in Serbia, while it also broadcasts content in Serbian via Sputnik radio.
In 2019, pro-Kremlin content targeting Serbian audiences was mainly distributed through Russian media platforms such as Sputnik Serbia or lesser-known web portals such as News Front and Geopolitica.
Serbia's print press also promotes similar content — two examples are daily newspapers Politika and Večernje Novosti, with the latter regularly republishing Sputnik content. According to Gemius Audience, Vecernje Novosti online is the 5th most-read media portal in Serbia — it received almost 15 million visitors in December 2019.
A newspaper kiosk in Belgrade, Serbia. Photo by Zoran Drekalović/Istinomer, used with permission.
B92, a former liberal-oriented news portal recently flipped its editorial line to pro-Russian after it changed owners.
News agencies such as Tanjug, owned by the Serbian government, as well as SRNA, owned by the government of the Republic of Srpska, the Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), also publish pro-Kremlin content.
According to the Serbian fact-checking portal Raskrikavanje, more than 700 false or unsubstantiated news stories were published on the front pages of three Serbian tabloids (Informer, Alo and Srpski Telegraf) in 2018. These false or unfounded news articles usually describe Russian President Vladimir Putin in a positive light, for example claiming he will “defend Serbia from the West,” or that he will “save Kosovo for Serbia”.
Front pages of Serbian tabloid Srpski Telegraf. Two of the headlines say: “Putin is ready to enter Kosovo with the Army” and “America's horror plan for Kosovo.” Photo by Zoran Drekalović/Istinomer.
Pro-government tabloids cultivate the president's image of a self-sacrificing martyr. Headline screams “The West gives 100 million euros for toppling Vučić!” Photo by Zoran Drekalović/Istinomer.
Raskrikavanje's annual analysis indicated that the four tabloids with the highest circulation have published over 917 “false or unfounded claims” on political issues in 2019, while entertainment and sports topics were not analyzed.
Najviše laži je izrečeno na račun opozicije i njihovih lidera, dok se u isključivo pozitivnom svetlu predstavljao Aleksandar Vučić, ali i ruski predsednik Vladimir Putin.
„Riznica” laži je tokom cele godine bila i spoljna politika – pohvalno se pisalo o Rusiji i saradnji sa njom, dok su dežurni neprijatelji, kao i uvek, bili Albanci, kosovski lideri i NATO. Najave specijalnih ratova protiv Vučića, udari na njega, lažne tvrdnje o špijunskim aferama i aferi Krušik, takođe su bile dominantne teme.
Most of the lies concern opposition parties and their leaders, while the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and the Russian President Vladimir Putin were presented in an extremely positive light.
Foreign politics was a fountain of lies throughout the year — with praises to cooperation between Russia and Serbia while Albanians, Kosovo leaders, and NATO playing the role of villains. Dominant themes included Vučić as the victim of attacks, false claims about spying affairs, and the Krušik affair.
Serbian online media serve as a source of news and entertainment content for media in neighboring countries. In North Macedonia, Serbian content is translated (often poorly) into Macedonian and sometimes into Albanian.
Another example is Russian-branded alternative medicine magazines, which are printed in Serbia and sold in newstands in all the former Yugoslav countries. Some of them also publish local editions in Macedonian, Croatian, and Slovenian languages. Some of those publications use health-related content to promote the image of Vladimir Putin.
A study by the Belgrade-based Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA) showed that the EU, U.S., and China were presented neutrally in all types of media in Serbia in 2019, while NATO was portrayed negatively and Russia positively.
The research results were made available to Global Voices prior to their official publication as part of a content-sharing partnership.
Results of the CRTA research. Used with permission.
CRTA's research monitored Serbian daily newspapers (Blic, Informer, Kurir, Vecernje Novosti), news portals (Blic, B92, Kurir, Telegraf) and TV news and morning shows (RTS1, Pink, TV Happy, Prva).
The methodology considered not just the tone of the text and headline, but also the angle, the photographs, and the ascribed importance and space to each article or story.
The research also found that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was the most quoted Serbian official in 2019, but was never quoted in stories that were negative towards Russia or China. Vučić was quoted mostly in a neutral manner in articles about the EU and the U.S.
Results of the CRTA research. Used with permission.
Raša Nedeljkov, program director at CRTA, in a statement for Global Voices, pointed to the seeming contradiction between the over-representation of Serbian officials in pro-Russian content and the Serbian government's efforts to join the EU:
Our monitoring of the most influential media in Serbia shows that the highest officials, such as the country's president, the minister of foreign affairs, the minister of defense, and the prime minister have not been quoted negatively about Russia or China. Still, their quotes with a negative tone about the EU, U.S. and NATO are widely present. This is not in line with the program of work of the Serbian government which states that Serbia's main strategic goal is accession to the European Union.
CRTA monitoring identified that privately-owned media with a wide reach, such as the newspaper Blic and the television station TV Pink, produced negative reporting only about the EU and U.S. There was no negative reporting on Russia and China.
Serbia's Public Service Broadcaster (RTS) had more positive articles on Russia than on the EU, and did not publish any negative pieces on Russia and China.
Results of the CRTA research. Used with permission.
Russian and Chinese officials are dominantly quoted in pieces that were positive to their countries, while the US, EU and NATO officials in neutral pieces.
The bias present in the Serbian media sphere can adversely affects the ability of Serbian citizens to participate in the democratic process in an informed and rational manner, while unprofessional media practices contribute to spread of cross-border disinformation.

author: Jovana Presić


text:
Tanzania slapped with US travel ban, individual sanctions amid deteriorating human rights situation · Global Voices
GV Sub-Saharan Africa

Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Photo by Roland via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
Tanzanian officials said they had not been officially notified of the United States’ decision to add Tanzania to their latest travel ban list.
On January 31, 2020, the Trump administration confirmed an extended travel ban on six additional countries, citing global security concerns: Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania. While the US could not confirm any verifiable terrorist threats, the US singled out these countries for their alleged lack of cooperation when it comes to “information-sharing” and “identity management.” Restrictions vary according to the country's ability to comply with US protocols on vetting and security measures and will go into full effect on February 21, 2020.
Tanzania's inclusion in the latest US travel ban speaks to the intensifying diplomatic strain between the two countries — which have historically enjoyed a strong partnership as longtime allies and friends — due to Tanzania's rapid decline of human rights.
According to US intelligence, Tanzania does not comply with “established identity-management and information-sharing criteria,” and therefore, its citizens have been suspended from participation in the US diversity visa program — or “lottery.” The US accused Tanzania of not sharing terrorism-related information in particular and also withholding information about possible Ebola cases.
In renewed and tightened protocols, all countries must issue electronic passports for all major classes of travel documents and they must report lost or stolen passports to INTERPOL within 30 days, among other performance criteria.
However, Tanzania has cooperated with the US on taking measures against terrorism in the region governed by its Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2002 and its National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) — especially after a series of suspected terrorism attacks in the Pwani region in 2017.
The US did acknowledge that Tanzania now issues electronic passports and complies with reporting lost and stolen documents on a monthly basis. But the US also called Tanzania’s process “slow,” “overly bureaucratic,” and “complicated by limited technical capability,” according to the White House statement.
The use of “temporary or emergency identity and travel documents” has complicated immigration-related security in Tanzania. However, the nation recently went through a long and complex process to update its national identification system and streamline its biometric identification registration for SIM card users. While the rollout has been riddled with challenges, the government has been adamant about its strict enforcement.
The travel ban decision left many Tanzanian netizens bewildered:
#Tanzania is known as one of Africa’s most low-key under-the-radar peaceful countries. Granted, many of the elites have multiple passports so this only hurts the little guy..again. But why on earth are we on this list? #travelban https://t.co/It8XW4AzUZ
— Nako Mbelle ? (@NakoMbelle) January 31, 2020
Just as some Tanzanian citizens were questioning why the peaceful East African nation landed on the travel ban list, some were also applauding the US decision to place a specific travel ban on Paul Makonda, the Dar es Salaam regional commissioner.
The “top Tanzanian official who launched a surveillance squad dedicated to hunting down gay people has been banned by the US from entering the country,” according to the BBC.
Human rights activist Maria Sarungi Tsehai thanked the United States for placing individual sanctions on Makonda:
Thank you! Human rights violations have been on the rise and the decline has been rapid, catching an otherwise peaceful Nation by surprise!
With increased detention and harassment of journalists, activists and members of opposition parties people of #Tanzania welcome the ban https://t.co/RmUwtXwluj
— Maria Sarungi Tsehai (@MariaSTsehai) February 1, 2020
According to an official White House statement, Makonda and his wife, Mary Felix Massenge, were targeted with sanctions based on Makonda's “involvement in gross violations of human rights, which include the flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons.”
In his role as regional commissioner, he “has been implicated in the oppression of the political opposition, crackdowns on freedom of expression and association, and the targeting of marginalized individuals,” the statement read.
While the reasons given for the travel ban on Tanzania were not directly tied to human rights, it is possible that the White House move is as much as a diplomatic, political signal to Tanzania regarding its declining human rights situation as it is about security and vetting in the fight against global terrorism:
These actions against Paul Christian Makonda underscore our concern with human rights violations and abuses in Tanzania, as well as our support for accountability for those who engage in such violations and abuses.
Netizen Jeffrey Smith, with Vanguard Africa, warned Tanzanian human rights activists not to conflate celebration over the individual travel ban against Makonda with the overall, blanket suspension of all Tanzanian citizens from participating in the diversity visa program, seen to many as “racist” and “xenophobic”:
The visa ban on Paul Makonda due to serious human rights violations and Trump's ‘travel ban’ on six other nations, including Tanzania, are entirely separate policies — it's very important to not conflate them.
— Jeffrey Smith (@Smith_JeffreyT) February 1, 2020
The deterioration of human rights in Tanzania has reached a boiling point in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential elections.
In late January, opposition leader Zitto Kabwe of the Alliance for Change and Transparency Party (ACT) wrote an urgent letter to the World Bank urging them to withhold a proposed $500 million United States dollars loan earmarked for education, citing serious concerns over deteriorating human rights under the Magfuli administration — particularly for girls, who are currently banned from attending school if pregnant or parenting.
In the letter, Kabwe stated that “he feared the money would be used by the ruling party ‘to distort our electoral processes’ and ensure an easy victory in an election year,” according to The Guardian. For writing this letter, seen as ‘treasonous” by members of the ruling Revolutionary Party, Kabwe said he has received death threats, according to the BBC.
In the runup to 2020 elections in October, a series of human rights violations and blatant disregard for civil society concerns have activists sounding the alarm — despite reasonable fear of retaliation.
Under the Magfuli administration, journalists, human rights activists and lawyers have been abducted, detained, imprisoned on trumped-up charges and targeted under increasingly draconian laws and measures to quell dissent.
In a scathing op-ed for African Arguments, Kabwe stated that Tanzania, once a “beacon of peace and stability in a region characterized by civil unrest,” was now on the brink of crisis — unless the international community acts soon.

author: GV Sub-Saharan Africa


text:
The battle of numbers in the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

Snapshot taken on February 6 of a map by Johns Hopkins University capturing global data for the outbreak of the 2019n-CoV coronavirus.
Since the 2019n-CoV virus, better known as the Wuhan coronavirus, became front-page news around the world in late January, one key question has yet to be answered: how many people are infected or have been killed by the coronavirus? While the Chinese government claims to be transparent in sharing real-time information, there are many reasons to doubt the official figures.
In China, controlling the official narrative concerning crises is considered paramount under the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While this is primarily achieved by muzzling media outlets and heavily censoring social media, keeping casualty figures low for the public is yet another tool often used in times of emergency.
There is a term in Chinese administrative language called 突发事件, which can be translated as “sudden incident” “unforeseen event” or “emergency”. This can include natural, health, man-made disaster, transportation accidents, and also social protests.
Depending on the number of victims – both injured or killed – each level of the administration is legally bound to inform the next echelon: from local to provincial, from provincial to central. If an incident has a lower number of victims than defined by the administrative category and doesn’t meet the threshold of a serious incident, it can be managed locally. The administration in charge will then more likely escape any blame, penalty or inspection.
As detailed in this article, here are the parameters defining the different types of ‘incidents':
A particularly serious accident refers to an accident that caused more than 30 deaths, or more than 100 serious injuries, or a direct economic loss of more than 100 million yuan; a major accident refers to an accident that caused more than 10 deaths, or injured between 50 and 100 people. General accidents refer to accidents that cause the death of less than 3 people, or seriously injured less than 10 people.
This has created a mindset among bureaucrats to instinctively lower the number of victims in reports, thus allowing the government to later modify the official discourse accordingly.
As China scholar Kingsley Edney explains in his book “The Globalization of Chinese Propaganda”:
The Party-State response has moved toward engaging in a battle over the public’s understanding of those [sudden] events: defining the truth of an incident, setting the media’s agenda, defining the limits of the debate, and shutting down the ability of those who violate those limits to have their voices heard.
The SARS outbreak in 2003 saw similar patterns when patients were hidden from a WHO inspection to keep the figures low. It seems the same mindset is in place: on January 30th, the head of the health commission of the city of Huanggang, near Wuhan, was sacked after she was unable to provide figures about the medical situation. While the official might not have known numbers, it is also very likely that she didn’t know what to say for fear of giving a too high figure.
According to Huang Yanzhong, a China health expert author of Governing Health in Contemporary China:
If you look at the way [Wuhan] reported the disease, after January 5, they cease to provide reports, and that was not resumed until January 11. In that period, there was no information from the government about the disease. But there were two important political meetings going on [between January 5 and 11]: the city People’s Congress meeting and the political consultative conference. These are considered important meetings to appoint new leaders, make personnel changes, all at the local level. [Wuhan officials] didn’t want the bad news to ruin the meetings.
Epidemiologists use modeling research in cases of transmission of viruses, a method that depends highly on the quality and reliability of data. Several medical and academic institutions have run models on the Wuhan coronavirus, and all conclude that the real figures – of infected and killed victims – is anything from 3 to 10 times higher than the official figure provided by the Chinese government. Quoting the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, this article states that:
New modeling research estimates that up to 75,800 individuals in the Chinese city of Wuhan may have been infected with 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) as of Jan. 25, 2020. The authors caution that given the lack of a robust and detailed timeline of records of suspected, probable, and confirmed cases and close contacts, the true size of the epidemic and its pandemic potential remains unclear.
On February 6, the official figure of infected patients, based on Chinese data, indicates just over 28,000 reported cases.
Independent journalism hasn’t completely disappeared in China: some outlets, such as financial news organization Caixin, as well as citizen journalists have covered the outbreak of the virus, and all have pointed to a cover-up by authorities – indeed a substantial number of patients who died of pneumonia have not been categorized as coronavirus patients. Such manipulation has lead to the lowering of the death rate by about 2 percents.
According to China expert Maria Repnikova, who was recently interviewed by Global Voices:
The [Caixin] article shows how the local authorities enabled a cover-up that lasted nearly a month by threatening or silencing whistle-blower doctors, downplaying the epidemic’s reach and concealing the fact that the virus could be transmitted between people.
She also explains why the central authorities have tolerated coverage critical of the authorities:
With social stability as their ultimate aim, the authorities try to strike a fragile balance between political control and curated transparency, alternating between censorship or propaganda and allowing the media, or its surrogates, to press for accountability.
Much more daring is the coverage made by citizen journalists who are not covered by a large media. Taking extreme personal risks, and forced to work in disguise, they also paint a very different picture than the one presented by the authorities.
An example is coverage conducted by Chen Qiushi, who is sharing videos of hospitals and morgues in order to question the real figures provided by the Wuhan authorities:
我们搜集到了足够多的证据，证明武汉的医疗、急救和殡葬已经超负荷运转。今后我不会再去拍摄和追踪死亡与火化的信息。因为大家心中应该已经有了判断，我也真的不忍心一次次去打扰逝者。请您安息吧~~ pic.twitter.com/nZoeYGt86m
— 陈秋实（陳秋實） (@chenqiushi404) February 4, 2020
We have collected enough evidence that medical, emergency and morgue services in Wuhan are unable to cope. I will no longer shoot or track death and cremation. Because everyone should already have made up their minds, I really don't have the heart to disturb the deceased again and again. Please rest in peace ~~
Interestingly, on February 1, the Chinese social media platform Tencent presented figures that are closer to the scientific extrapolations mentioned above, albeit briefly, as noticed by netizens:
On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), the Tencent webpage showed confirmed cases of the Wuhan virus in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.
As epidemiologists wait for credible data to continue their work, it's important to remember that behind every number is a human life in danger, an exhausted medical staff person, and a worried and often grieving family.
the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus

author: Filip Noubel


text:
‘L Japan’: Kobe couple vlogs about lesbian life · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

L Japan  is a YouTube vlog by an “International Lesbian Couple Living in the Kansai region of Japan, Miho (Japanese) and Clare (American)”.
“Making videos has been a fun, creative outlet for us and is also a rewarding way to be ‘out’ and proud,” says Clare, who with her partner Miho, produce “L Japan”, a YouTube vlog about lesbian life in Japan. Miho and Clare self-identify as lesbians.
“We decided to start our YouTube channel one because, while we found other Japanese-Japanese lesbian couples, we couldn’t find anyone like us,” says Clare in an interview with Global Voices. “And I personally wanted to create a resource for other women like myself who wanted to date women in Japan but always thought it was impossible.”
Clare is originally from Florida in the United States, while Miho is from Nara Prefecture. Both now live in the Japanese port city of Kobe, to the west of Osaka, and have been together for a year and a half.
“We have videos where the two of us talk in Japanese about various topics, do some fun activities, or go on dates,” says Clare to Global Voices. “I also have videos that I make alone, in English, about lesbian dating in Japan.”
Miho and Clare started the channel in November 2019, and so far have produced nearly thirty videos. In the video below, Clare and Miho return to Nara to meet Miho's parents, and also reflect on the year ahead. While the video is in Japanese, YouTube provides English subtitles.
“Miho's family (in Nara) have all been very accepting of her and me, including her grandparents, aged 87 and 91,” says Clare, who also says notes in general, life is comfortable for her as a lesbian living in Japan.
“Japanese people seem to have little to no opinion on LGBT people, which on one hand makes activism, (such as getting the laws around same-sex marriage changed) difficult, but going out very easy,” she says. “We comfortably hold hands and tell others we are a couple. It is confusing for some, but we have never had any negative reactions.”
Marriage equality and legalization of same-sex partnerships remains a key issue for LGBTQ+ people living in Japan. In early February, Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo rejected calls to legalize same-sex marriage. In the absence of national leadership on the issue, local authorities and municipalities across Japan are increasingly recognizing same-sex partnerships, which has important implications for shared ownership of assets, estate planning and retirement planning.
“Same-sex partnerships are not yet recognized where we live (in Kobe), but areas around us which do are increasing and I believe it’s only a matter of time until Kobe also implements the “partnership” system,” says Clare. “We do plan to marry abroad though, even though it won’t be recognized here.”
At the end of the day, however, Clare says their goal is to provide a fun and informative look at life in Japan.
“Although we promote our videos with tags like ‘lesbian couple’ or ‘international couple’, we really just want people to see that we are not so different from other couples,” says Clare.
Watch videos by Miho and Clare on L Japan on YouTube, including this introduction to Japanese lesbian slang:

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Australians capture the devastating impact of ‘black summer’ fires on photos · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Storm Sparks’ partner Al and son Zeke at their burnt-out property – Photo courtesy of Storm, used with permission
Australia has experienced one of its worst disasters from September 2019 to February 2020 as large parts of the country have been engulfed in flames. By the end of January 2020, approximately 20 million hectares [50 million acres] have burnt since June 2019, 3,000 homes have been lost, and 34 people died. While widely reported by the media, the bushfire catastrophe has been captured in an even more powerful way by Australians who have witnessed in person the extent of the fires, the destruction and the aftermath.
The images below highlight just some of the ten of thousands who have used social media to share the impact of the climate emergency. Some photos have gone viral both at home and abroad, and been taken up by mainstream media.
Back in early November the New South Wales small town of Wytaliba was devastated by fire. As a result, three people died, seventy homes and the primary school were destroyed. The home of the appropriately named Storm Sparks, her partner Al and recently-born son Zeke was among those lost. Al was seriously burned while fighting to save a neighbour’s place. The photo above from Stormy’s Facebook page was taken on 5 January.
Storm has since appeared in television interviews and in a number of stories about issues related to the aftermath.
The coastal town of Mallacoota in Victoria's East Gippsland received international attention when hundreds of locals and holidaymakers took refuge on the beach on New Year’s Eve. Many were later evacuated by the Navy. One of the locals has tweeted and photographed throughout the disaster, which claimed up to 100 houses in the area. Despite the media attention he has received, he prefers to be just called Brendan. This is a family pic taken on New Year's Eve:
Brendan's sister at Mallacoota fire – Photo courtesy of Brendan, used with permission
A common concern has been the effects of poor air quality from the smoke. As well as the fire areas themselves, Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne have been dramatically impacted by smoke haze during the summer. This photo was tweeted by well-known Sydneysider [Sydney resident], Dr Kerryn Phelps, in her local area of Rushcutters Bay in inner-city Sydney on 19 November 2019:
Sydney bushfire smoke haze November 2019 – Courtesy of Dr Kerryn Phelps, used with permission
This snap of Melbourne’s Station Pier was taken by the author on 14 January 2020:
Smoke haze over Melbourne's Station Pier January 2020 – author's photo
Elisabeth Goh is a volunteer firefighter with the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) who has shared her experiences extensively on Twitter. This quote from another firefighter accompanied one of the images in her thread on 1 February 2020, “I go home and hug my kids tight. But they don't know why.”
Rural Fire Service volunteers fight New South Wales blaze – Photo courtesy Elisabeth Goh
The following day Elisabeth uploaded these skylines to Twitter after being without communications during the day:
Firefighting skylines in New South Wales 2 February 2020 – Photo courtesy Elisabeth Goh
Late on 30 December Anthony Olssen evacuated his house and relocated to nearby Cobargo where the main street was devastated by fires the next day. He moved on to Bermagui and eventually sought shelter on the beach there. He estimates that there were thousands of people present. Fortunately, his own house was spared, though everything else around it was burnt. His father and brother lost their homes nearby. Anthony is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). He wrote this piece to thank the union for its help and support. He took this photo of one of the houses:
Burnt-out home near Cobargo New South Wales – Photo courtesy of Anthony Olssen
South Australia has not escaped the ferocity of the fires. Australia’s third largest island, Kangaroo Island, was ravaged by bushfires in January 2020, burning over 2 million hectares [500,000 acres]. A father and son were killed on their way home from fighting a nearby fire. Kailas Wild lives in Sydney. He has been on the island since the end of January rescuing koalas. He has been regularly posting photos and videos on his Facebook page and Twitter. He posted this video on 4 February:
If you’d like to get an idea of what it can be like on the ground here leading up to a rescue, I made this little video beforehand. Ideally you’ll have at least two people but I was alone, help was far away and she was in poor condition. #koalas #kangarooisland #wildliferescue pic.twitter.com/vUcBknFl6l
— Kailas Wild (@kailaswild) February 4, 2020
Unfortunately, it’s not all good news as Kailas’ photo from 7 February shows:
Koala starvation death on Kangaroo Island – Photo courtesy of Kailas Wild
Volunteer Melina Budden is an ecologist working not only with wildlife rescue but on multiple management programs to assist with the wildlife recovery such as establishment of species specific feed stations and water stations, mange treatment for wombats and undertaking assessment of threatened species habitat post fire. She posted a series of photos to Facebook on 8 February from the Wolgan valley, which was part of the Gospers Mountain mega-fire in the Blue Mountains north-west of Sydney. This photo shows a wallaroo, which had been darted, having his condition assessed:
Wallaroo having his condition assessed – Photo taken by Josephine Ki
Melina points out that the worst is not over yet:
The unfortunate reality is that things aren't necessarily getting better, in some areas it's getting worse with the contamination of the dams and creeks from algae blooms and black sludge full of sediment and ash. These water holes are likely to become a whole new crisis for our wildlife if they don't get clean water.
This mural appeared in the author’s local Black Rock (Victoria) shopping centre in late January as a tribute to the the volunteers and others who have selflessly helped those in need including Australia’s wildlife. It was undertaken by Melbourne’s Murals to coincide with Australia Day on 26 January:
Aussie Spirit mural – Black Rock, Victoria – author's photo
Local photographer and resident of the nation's capital Canberra, Charles Dingo, took this panorama from his Canberra house just after daybreak on 2 February. The Australian Capital Territory had declared a state of emergency on 31 January:
View of Canberra bushfire front 2 February 2020 – photo courtesy Charles Dingo
Finally, this viral video was taken by members of Fire and Rescue NSW Station 509 Wyoming in New South Wales on New Year's Eve. They had travelled over 250 kilometres [155 miles] to give assistance near Nowra:
The crew from Fire and Rescue NSW Station 509 Wyoming recorded this video showing the moment their truck was overrun by the bushfire burning South of Nowra. The crew was forced to shelter in their truck as the fire front passed through. #NSWFires #ProtectTheIrreplaceable pic.twitter.com/Hb0yVrefi9
— Fire and Rescue NSW (@FRNSW) December 31, 2019
The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) TV’s Four Corners program on 3 February, Black Summer, is compelling viewing. It presents some startling videos from the fire season so far with follow-up interviews. It can be viewed online until 31 December 2020, and includes extra footage taken by the Wyoming crew.
Meanwhile, welcome rains have brought relief to the south eastern Coast. However, the bushfire season and the severe drought across the country are far from over yet despite this lull.

author: Kevin Rennie


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Controversy in Malaysia: Do Facebook posts about the coronavirus amount to ‘circulating rumors’? · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Screenshot of Wan Noor Hayati Wan Alias from video report of Kini TV. Source: YouTube
A Facebook user in Malaysia who published controversial content related to the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) could face up to two years in prison if found guilty of violating Section 505 (b) of the country's Penal Code, which prohibits the publishing and circulating of rumors ‘likely to cause fear or alarm to the public.’
Wan Noor Hayati Wan Alias was accused of publishing three Facebook posts on 26 January, which allegedly contained rumors and racist content related to the global outbreak of the virus. Hayati pleaded not guilty on 5 February, when she appeared before a court in Kuala Lumpur, the nation’s capital.
Several media groups have called for the dropping of charges, describing the action of authorities as punitive.
What complicates the case is that Hayati is an award-winning journalist who has written for Berita Harian and New Straits Times. She is also the general treasurer of the National Union of Journalists Peninsular Malaysia (NUJM).
While Attorney-General Tan Sri Tommy Thomas didn’t mention any particular case, his office released on 5 February a statement explaining why the government will punish those who spread disinformation about the virus:
Lies about the origins, scale and magnitude of the disease must not be permitted because they endanger public safety. That rumour mongering is repugnant to common decency is most pronounced at such times in our national life. The credibility of the internet as the pre-eminent source of news and information is therefore vital.
The NUJM defended Hayati and urged the government not to restrict free speech:
We believe that as a journalist she had the right to voice out her concerns to the members of the public … who are mainly not well informed by the government over the situation of the coronavirus outbreak.
Some commented that the NUJM’s defense was misguided, while some have described her posts as irresponsible.
For its part, the Centre for Independent Journalism reminded authorities that there are other options in countering statements that do not reflect the information provided by government agencies:
We stress that legal remedies are just part of the many tools that can be employed to counter disinformation and misleading statements. A holistic and proportionate response would include having efficient and broad channels of information from the government and media, accessible and reliable means for the public to verify information and use of reporting facilities within social media applications for misinformation to be removed.
2/ My quick personal opinion is that while I agree some restrictions are necessary in times of crisis, dragging someone under the Penal Code is unjustified. Restrictions need not be through punitive measures in this case.
— Gayathry V (@gayathry) February 8, 2020
In a Twitter thread, Malaysian media scholar Gayathry Venkiteswaran weighed on the issue and expressed concern about the ‘disproportionate’ response of officials
…we also need to look at the charges in the broader context – did all those who were arrested really bring about harm and were they influential enough to incite actions/panic? Maybe building confidence is more important than trying to nab people who share their content, even when some of these can be considered irresponsible. Let's not be too quick to validate sending people to prisons when there are real speech concerns that could be more harmful, and we need to find solutions for those.
Hayati has posted bail and will return to court on 11 March.
the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus

author: Mong Palatino


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No justice in Nepal as politician accused of murder gets elected speaker of parliament · Global Voices
GV South Asia

Agni Prasad Sapkota. Screenshot from Youtube video by Nepal News
In Nepal, top politicians have become highly skilled at escaping justice: nothing exemplifies this better than the fact that the post of Speaker of the House of Representatives is now occupied by a candidate accused of murder, as Agni Prasad Sapkota replaced the former speaker – himself accused of rape – on the 26th of January. Fourteen years after Nepal ended a decade-long civil war, access to justice for the majority of the conflict's victims looks impossible.
For over a decade, human rights groups have pushed for Sapkota, a presently standing committee member of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) to face an independent investigation to be led by Nepal's Supreme Court for the ongoing murder case pending against him in relation to the death of Arjun Lama, a school principal.
But despite the gravity of the accusation, Sapkota has continued to rise within his party. On 26 January 2020, he was elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives, delivering a massive blow to the prospect of justice and truth promised to the country’s thousands of human rights victims and human rights watchdogs.
With the election of Agni Sapkota as Speaker, Nepal essentially gives two middle fingers to human rights groups and victims of Maoist conflict https://t.co/iCuUM3jsg3
— Anup Kaphle (@AnupKaphle) January 26, 2020
This move indeed ignored the joint statement issued on 25 January by Amnesty International, The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International urging the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) to reconsider their nomination of Sapkota until a thorough and independent investigation would be completed.
On January 27, the day following Sapkota's appointment, the police arrested more than a dozen activists including members and staff of Amnesty International Nepal. They were eventually released later that day.
Our colleagues in Nepal, including Amnesty Nepal Director and two former board members, were arrested during a protest against the appointment of Agni Sapkota as Speaker of the Federal Parliament.
Peaceful protest is not a crime.https://t.co/zwQxnffNsn
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) January 27, 2020
Sapkota stands accused of ordering the abduction and murder of Arjun Lama, a principal at a local school in June 2005. At the time, Sapkota was a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, the man regarded as having initiated the civil war, and a key figure in Nepali politics.
Having served twice as Prime Minister, Prachanda is now the co-chairman of Nepal's ruling party, the Nepal Communist Party, that strongly advocated for the election of Sapkota. It seems that Sapkota has indeed been the protege of Prachanda: despite complaints lodged by the human rights community, he was able to lead a successful political career, serving as Minister of Information and Communications (2011) and later as Minister of Forests and Soil Conservation (2015-2016).
But life has been a nightmare for Arjun Lama's widow, Purnimaya Lama: since 2005, she has been struggling to understand what happened to her husband. It is only with the backing of local and international human rights organizations, along with an order of the Supreme Court that she was able to pressure the police in the district where her husband was taken to register a First Information Report (FIR), which finally happened in August 2008. At this point, her husband had already been missing for three years.
To add insult to injury, the case of Arjun Lama was again stalled, during the speaker election, allowing Sapkota to ascend to his new position, much to the cries of human rights groups:
Election of Agni Sapkota as parliament speaker in Nepal shows why a credible transitional justice process is necessary in Nepal. Nine years later, our message is still the same: https://t.co/o5Awk6Lidk
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) January 28, 2020
According to Amnesty International Nepal, the next hearing is set to take place in February 2020.
Although the media spotlight is on him, Sapkota is just a cog in a system made of people with equally dubious human rights records.
From the rape-accused former Speaker of Parliament, Krishna Bahadur to Prachanda's flippantly provocative statements and pressure on competent women to resign, it is clear that Nepal's top politicians are further entrenching a culture of impunity to their benefit.
Indeed, Prachanda announced in a tweet that he was willing to take responsibility for 5000 deaths out of 12,000. This comes after his comment last year, where he challenged his detractors to take him to to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, from where he provocatively stated he would return as ‘a hero.’
And because Sapkota was Prachanda's choice for speaker, this meant that one of the country's prime contenders, Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe, a woman from the same party as Sapkota albeit a formerly separate faction (CPN-UML), was forced to resign, leaving the way for Sapkota to win unopposed. This is a reminder that in Nepal, patriarchy trumps competence:
Once again, leaders at CPN have proved that they are just here for their party and not the country. Agni Sapkota, a man charged with murder, has been proposed for the speaker. An insult to conflict victims and an insult to women. #Nepal https://t.co/vqlJ9JcrrK
— Subina Shrestha (@ShresthaSubina) January 19, 2020
Disheartening as it may be, the reality of a pervasive culture of impunity can no longer be contested. Although the Maoists signed the 2006 comprehensive peace plan containing a critical provision to investigate their share of extrajudicial killings, that promise more than ever seems disingenuous. Indeed, it took eight long years for two commissions – the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and the Commission of Inquiry on the Disappearance of Persons (COID) to be established in 2015. Prior to that, the government passed in 2013 an ordinance that sought to provide the commissions with broad-ranging discretionary powers to recommend amnesties for perpetrators of serious human rights violations.
Despite being struck down by the Supreme court for being illegal and in violation of international standards, the final text that established the two commissions nevertheless reinstated very similar provisions. And making matters worse, behind closed doors, the two political parties are the ones appointing their own commissioners.
The disregard for victims of this violent conflict is painfully clear in the words of this human rights activist.
There is no witness protection policy. It is clearly a perpetrator-led process that serves the interests of the perpetrators, not the victims.
For the thousands of victims of Nepal's war who have been struggling for truth and justice for their families and loved ones, the future is bleak.
As of today, Purnimaya Lama, portrayed in this video, still does not know what happened to her husband or why, and where his body is:
And it looks like she never will.

author: GV South Asia


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Jordan’s online censorship decisions: Non-transparent and — at times — arbitrary · Global Voices
Global Voices MENA

Anti-austerity protesters in Amman, Jordan on June 2, 2018. Photo credit: Ali Saadi, CC BY-SA.
The Jordanian government is increasingly monitoring and restricting access to online content, possibly as a direct result of the Arab Spring protests, during which protesters made use of online platforms to organize and disseminate news about events on the ground.
At times, this moderation leads to censorship that comes in the form of blocking websites, citing failure to obtain a press and publications law license. Other times, it manifests through the restriction of entire services, from access to messaging apps like WhatsApp during Tawjihi (university) exams to blocking an online LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) magazine.
In Jordan, online censorship has become almost normalized and, at times, arbitrary.
During the late 2018 anti-austerity protests, Jordanians reported being unable to access Facebook Live videos. When probed, government officials stated that they placed no restrictions on the internet in the area where the protests took place, blaming instead the disruption on a ‘’technical error’’ from Facebook’s part. This claim has since been disproved by independent research conducted by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) and the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA), which concluded that “Facebook Live Stream was temporarily interfered with during the protests.” The report demonstrated that the blocking was a cunning move — users were barred access to Facebook Live only, while the rest of Facebook’s platform ran normally.
Technical prowess aside, Jordan's legal framework enables blocking of online content in a methodical manner. The 2012 amendments to the press and publication law accorded Jordan's Media Commission the ability to block websites that categorize themselves as “news websites,” and do not comply with strict licensing conditions such as having an editor-in-chief who is a member of the Jordan Press Association (JPA) for at least four years. The government promptly blocked 291 websites as a result of the amendment. Authorities have continued to use the amended law to block access to websites without granting citizens the right to appeal decisions.
Arab LGBTQ magazine, MyKali, has been blocked in Jordan since July 2016, although the Media Commission only made its blocking decision public a year after MyKali became a target following an interview with Dima Tahboub, a member of parliament and representative of the conservative Islamic Action Front party, on Deutsche Welle. During the interview, Tahboub blatantly declared that homosexuality does not align with “Jordan’s ideals and morals.” Following that interview, Tahboub continued to attack Jordan’s LGBTQ community — singling out MyKali for criticism. The Commission said it blocked the website because it had no publication license.
To bypass censorship, MyKali started publishing its content through Medium.com for a while. The Jordanian authorities’ disruptive efforts, however, did not stop there. In 2018, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) requested that Jordanian internet service providers block MyKali on Medium.com. While Zain and Orange failed to comply with the request, Umniah blocked the entire Medium.com domain for a few weeks before they lifted the block.
This was not the first time Jordanians were denied access to a major international platform or website. From September 2016 until January 2017, archive.org was blocked.  Archive.org is the internet’s archive, providing not only free and open access to almost half a trillion archived web pages, but also digitized books, movies, and music. CitizenLab, 7iber and the Jordan Open Source Association investigated the matter but to no avail: the Media Commission “stressed that the blocking decision had not been issued by [them]” and that the website did not experience downtime. When pushed even further about the technical reports that proved the website had indeed been blocked, the director of the Media Commission replied that he “cannot answer.” The reason behind the blocking remains unclear.
According to a 2017 report by Citizen Lab, the process for blocking access to websites usually involves the following three entities, the Media Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, and telecoms to activate it.
However, as the cases mentioned above illustrate, these decisions are often arbitrary and non-transparent, and usually, once a blocking decision has been made, users cannot appeal.
In an increasingly digital age, the digital space has become instrumental to the mobilization of activists, and for users to express themselves and access information. Maintaining uninterrupted and uncensored access to online information and channels, therefore, is crucial.
The Jordanian government should take steps to ensure that rights to online freedom of expression and information are protected, including clarifying which authorities hold the regulatory power to block content and providing citizens with the necessary means to appeal the blocking of content. Additionally, authorities should amend online filtration and censorship regulations in accordance with international standards on freedom of expression.

author: Global Voices MENA