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Political Propaganda in the New Panamanian Passports? · Global Voices
Ariel Moreno

The release of a new electronic passport in Panama has been accompanied by chaos and many user complaints. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was the images included in the passport to advertise the accomplishments of the government of Ricardo Martinelli.
The new electronic passport, announced with much fanfare a year ago, went into circulation at the beginning of 2014 after several delays. The passport has 30 security measures, including a polycarbonate sheet with a built-in chip and biometric system. La Prensa [es] reports that people have to endure interminable lines and are even sleeping outside the passport authority to get new passports. In addition, the price has gone from 50 to 100 dollars.
Carmen Bernárdez, the administrator of the Passport Authority, has confirmed that the introduction of this new travel document [es] seeks to sell the country’s image internationally, and in particular, the development that has taken place during the past four years with the Martinelli government.
Juan Amado comments that there are better ways to promote the country, for instance, through the magazine published by  Copa, the Panamanian airline:
Si el plan es vender Panamá, muestren las obras en la revista de Copa, que la ve to'el mundo El pasaporte solo lo lee el agente de migración
— Juan Amado (@JuanJAmado) January 16, 2014
If the plan is to sell Panama, show its accomplishments in the Copa magazine, which the whole world sees. The only one who sees the passports is the customs officer.
Lucas Castrellon jokes about the image that appears in the passport about the “100 at 70” iniciative, that gives 100 dollars a month to people over 70 years old who have no income:
“Mire, en Panamá tenemos 100 a los 70. Póngale el sello encima a la señora” – yo al agente de migración con mi nuevo pasaporte.
— Lucas Castrellon (@lucascas82) January 17, 2014
“Look, in Panama we have 100 at 70. Put the stamp right on top of the lady”—me to the customs officer with my new passport.
Carlos V. Ho Diéguez shares the photo of “100 at 70″:
No puedo creer que el nuevo pasaporte de Panamá tenga imágenes como esta en sus páginas. pic.twitter.com/jJX9M6ToGV
— Carlos V. Ho Diéguez (@elchiners) January 16, 2014
I can’t believe the new Panamanian passport has images like this on its pages.
Alejandra Mata doesn’t understand how it’s possible that with so many options, they chose the achievements of the government.
@edunar54 Tanta historia y paisajes hermosos que tiene mi Panamá para que el pasaporte tenga tanta #basura en sus páginas #QueEsEsto ???
— ALEJANDRA (@ALEMATA05) January 17, 2014
There’s so much history and beautiful scenery in my Panama, why should the passport have so much garbage on its pages??
Jay Cardu is upset about what appear to be a series of measures aimed at promoting the current government:
Esto es el colmo de RM, imprimir el pasaporte con ese bullshit! Solo falta q cambien l nombre Panama a Rep de Martinelli.
— JayCardu (@jaycardu) January 17, 2014
This just tops it all for Ricardo Martinelli, printing the passport with that bullshit! Only thing left is to change the name from Panama to the Republic of Martinelli.
A. Batista comments that the only photo missing was the President’s, and adds a cartoon showing what a person has to go through if they want a new passport:
“@edunar54: En el nuevo pasaporte de #Panama solo faltó la foto del Sr. Presidente… pic.twitter.com/Tl8SraMLJi“
— @.abatista15 (@abatista15) January 17, 2014
Panama’s new passport only lacks the President’s photo… [cartoon caption: “Look how they line up so they can get the best passport they’ve had in 40 years”]
La Prensa shares some of the images from the new passport on its Twitter account:
En http://t.co/HS7NBFUpEi vea las fotos del nuevo pasaporte, con los detalles que provocan polémica. #Panamá pic.twitter.com/PFyxkOZCA0
— La Prensa Panamá (@prensacom) January 17, 2014
At http://t.co/HS7NBFUpEi [es] there are photos of the new passport, with the specifics that are causing the controversy.
Thus, those Panamanians who want to travel must not only pay twice as much, but must also carry with them political propaganda for the ruling party.


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Rule of Law Overturned in Nauru · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Democracy in the tiny pacific island Republic of Nauru has been imploding with the sacking of its Resident Magistrate, aptly named Peter Law, the exiling of Chief Justice Geoffrey Eames and the resignation of solicitor-general Steven Bliim in protest. All three are Australians.
A protester at the Refugee Action Coalition rally holds a sign reading: ‘Close Manus and Nauru – No offshore detention gulags’. Photo by Richard Milnes © Demotix (22 November 2013)
Nauru has been the focus of political controversy over the Australian government’s use of the country as an offshore processing centre for asylum seekers who arrive by boat. Currently the detention centre has approximately 900 detainees. Mr. Law was due to hear charges against dozens of asylum seekers who allegedly rioted in July 2013.
The Australian government has been slow to react with some on twitter accusing it of complicity, citing Ben Saul, professor of international law at the University of Sydney, in Guardian Australia’s ‘Comment is free’:
"Aust’s dirty fingerprints are all over Nauru’s legal system & Aus actions have eroded the culture of legality there" http://t.co/4VYkXfFphc
— Jess White (@iamsiwas) January 22, 2014
Legal academics have been busy online. Kevin Boreham blogged at The Conversation: Australia owes obligations to the asylum seekers we have transferred to Nauru and we have a legal interest in the maintenance of the rule of law in Nauru.
Barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside also took to the web, criticising several recent governments who have supported the Pacific Solution, the ‘policy of transporting asylum seekers to detention centres on island nations in the Pacific Ocean, rather than allowing them to land on the Australian mainland’:
…both governments – in Nauru and Australia – have an interest in seeing the rule of law fail in Nauru.
Australia is Nauru's paymaster. It will do pretty much anything we tell it to, because we are its main source of income. That is very convenient for Australia. Howard recognised this; Gillard and Rudd recognised it; Abbott recognises it.
Many on twitter have been calling on the Australian government and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to take strong action such as boycotts imposed on Fiji in similar circumstances:
#auspol #commonwealth Aus government should call for Nauru to be suspended from the Commonwealth now. Bishop?
— Terry Walls (@TerryWalls7) January 22, 2014
Where are the Fiji-style protests and official sanctions following the President of Nauru's unconstitutional dismissal of the Chief Justice?
— Chris Westinghouse (@DocProdigi) January 21, 2014
The Nauru legal system is apparently funded through New Zealand’s aid program:
On Monday RNZI interviewed New Zealand's Foreign Minister Murray McCully about Nauru's legal crisis. http://t.co/RFyHRrCyfh
— Boogeyman (@TehBoogeyman) January 21, 2014
Meanwhile, in its annual report Human Rights Watch has criticised Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers for its:
…pernicious policies designed to deter asylum seekers at the expense of their rights, including mandatory offshore processing of asylum seekers arriving by boat, “enhanced screening” or fast-tracked deportations after cursory interviews, and withdrawing government-provided legal assistance to asylum seekers.
There is a new twist to this unfolding story:
Controversial Nauru New Deportation Law Could Also Be Applied to Asylum Seekers Sent by Australia http://t.co/2RrZzT7n2h RT @radioaustralia
— Prison_Health (@Prison_Health) January 21, 2014
On its Facebook page, ‘representing independant Members of Parliament in Nauru’, Nauru Eko Dogin warns:
The fact that the New Zealand Government is considering this action [terminating funding] is a significant statement that they condemn the actions of the Waqa/Adeang government and will not continue to support such blatant abuse of power and disregard for democracy, good governance and the rule of law.
Nauru simply cannot afford to risk the support of our neighbours and friends. Whilst our economy is stronger than it was 10 years ago, it remains incredibly fragile and just as quickly as this Government have destroyed our Judiciary, they can also ruin our economy in a flash.
The Nauruan government has made a range of accusations against Peter Law who has threatened to sue.
@NObservers, an ‘independent political observer in Nauru’ tweeted:
Hell is soon to be unleashed in Nauru. https://t.co/cDuW908PON
— Nauru Observers (@NObservers) January 22, 2014
For further developments, please follow the twitter hashtag #Nauru. On this island with only 10,000 locals and an area of just 21 square kilometres (8.1 sq miles), not much else is making news.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Kevin Rennie


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The Worrisome Job Market Projection in Burkina Faso · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

The AFDB published its country report for Burkina Faso in which it highlights the worrisome job market trend [fr] for the next decade :
Sept burkinabè sur dix ont moins de 30 ans. Le nombre de jeunes (15-24 ans), primo demandeurs d’emplois, doublera entre 2010 et 2030, passant de trois à six millions ce qui va créer une tension sur le marché du travail. Les opportunités de travail se limitent à celles qui ont une faible productivité ou qui génèrent peu de revenus : environ 80 % des travailleurs dépendent de la production agricole ; seuls 5 % des travailleurs sont salariés dans le secteur formel (public ou privé).
In Burkina Faso, 7 put of 10 citizens are less than 30 years old. The number of young people (15-24 years), primary job seekers will double between 2010 and 2030, from 3 to 6 millions,  which in turn will create tension on the labor market. Employment opportunities are limited to those with low productivity outlet or those that will generate little revenue: about 80% of workers depend on agricultural production and 95% of workers are employed in the informal sector.
GDP sectorial distribution in Burkina faso in 2011 via AFDB Report – Public Domain

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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Traditional Puerto Rican Saint Sebastian Street Festival Fills Every Corner of Old San Juan  · Global Voices
Ángel Carrión

San Sebastián Street, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Every third weekend of January the legendary San Sebastián (Saint Sebastian) Street Festival is celebrated in the old part of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. For many people, this definitively marks the end of the Christmas season. Those who aren’t familiar with this Puerto Rican tradition may think that it deals with a festival only celebrated in San Sebastián Street. The reality is that as time has passed, the celebrations have gained an impressive boom, overtaking the limits of the street and now including practically all of Old San Juan, as this video demonstrates:
The Festival began originally as a celebration in honor of Saint Sebastian, born in Narbonne, France and who, during the 3rd Century CE, was martyred for not renouncing the Christian faith. In Catholic imagery, he is commonly represented as pierced by several arrows and tied to a tree.
In the 1950s, the tradition of celebrating the festivals in honor of Saint Sebastian began as a way of collecting funds for repairing the buildings of the church of San José in Old San Juan. After several years, the tradition was discontinued until 1970, when the archeologist, historian, and anthropologist Ricardo Alegría suggested to Rafaela Balladares, a resident of San Sebastián Street, that they resume the tradition. This is how the Festival was born, and this year it celebrated its 44th edition.
Currently, the festival has lost much of its religious character, and has transformed more into a city festivity that attracts more than 300,000 people annually.
Here I’m sharing some of the photos that I took during my visit to this year's Festival:
This is Calle del Cristo (Christ Street), where many people pass on the way to San Sebastián Street.
Front of the Center for Advanced Studies on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean in Calle del Cristo, headquarters of the Organizing Committee for the San Sebastián Street Festival, and where books, handicrafts, food, and different activities can be found.
Cabezudos (Big Heads) are a type of mask used in the traditional processions of the San Sebastián Street Festival. These cabezudos were made by the theater collective Agua, Sol y Sereno (Water, Sun and Calm), who offered a presentation in the Plaza de la Barandilla.
These are pieces of sugar cane recently cut in one of the kiosks located in the Center for Advanced Studies on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.
Guarapo is a refreshing drink made from sugar cane juice. It is difficult to attain, since squeezing the canes takes a lot of time.
La Plaza Colón (Columbus Square) was one of the places where people gathered to collect signatures for the release of political prisoner Oscar López Rivera.

author: Ángel Carrión


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Trinidad & Tobago: Hair You Have It  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

As my hair started to emerge in all its mad curly glory I became overwhelmed by a sense of how completely we have been made to hate ourselves.
Tillah Willah says farewell to her dreadlocks and explains how “your hair can teach you a lot about your own complexities.”

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Trinidad & Tobago: Little Things Make a Difference  · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

ban-d-wagonist posts a video that offers “simple suggestions on how ordinary citizens can create a better T&T.”


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Who Bears the Cost of Russia’s Olympics? · Global Voices
Nina Jobe

A photoshopped logo of the Sochi games with a saw mascot. In Russian, the verb “to saw” can mean “embezzlement.” Anonymous image distributed online.
Accusations of corruption continue to plague Sochi Olympic preparations. And with only two weeks to go before the opening ceremony, concerns are mounting. The stadium where the opening ceremony is set to take place is rumored to still be under construction, and journalists who are already there have complained about roads damaged by rain and mudslides. Additionally, Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak told President Vladimir Putin on January 9 that the power grid was still not operational (though he claimed that it would be completed by 25 January). Meanwhile, the International Skiing Federation president said that the high cost of the Olympics in Sochi (allegedly $55 billion) set a “bad example” for future host cities.
The Kremlin has been quick to defend its pet project. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who is responsible for overseeing the preparations, stated that the International Olympic Committee had not had a single complaint about the preparatory work. He also claimed that the total cost of Sochi [ru] was less than the cost of last summer’s Universiade in Kazan, Tatarstan.
President Putin also decided to go on a charm offensive [ru], meeting with journalists from the Britain, the United States, Chinese, and Russian television for a group interview. During this interview American journalist George Stephanopoulos addressed the rumors of corruption. Putin cleverly deflected the question, first saying that the media had deliberately misinterpreted the statement by the ISF president accusing Russia, to sell more papers. Further, he opined that he had seen no evidence of corruption or embezzlement:
[…] если у кого-то есть конкретные данные о коррупционных проявлениях в связи с реализацией сочинского олимпийского проекта, мы просим предоставить нам эти объективные данные. Мы будем рады и благодарны и используем эту информацию для того, чтобы наводить порядок в этой сфере.
[…] if anybody has concrete evidence about corruption in connection with the implementation of the Sochi Olympic project, we ask for this objective data. We will be glad and thankful and will use the information in order to restore order in this sphere.
Opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who had previously written a white paper [ru] on corruption in Sochi, and has alleged that more than half of the budget for the Olympics has been embezzled, shot back:
Надо помнить, что главным инвестором в Олимпиаду стали российские пенсионеры, учителя, врачи и военные. Именно они заплатили за всю эту аферу и фестиваль воровства.
We must remember that the main investors in the Olympics are Russian pensioners, teachers, doctors, and soldiers. They paid for all this fraud and the festival of theft.
A Russian pensioner — the “General sponsor of the 2014 Olympics.” Anonymous image distributed online.
Putin’s charm offensive may be too little, too late.  Nemtsov’s Facebook post spread across [ru] Russia's own social network, VKontakte. An impromptu poll at the bottom of the page asked: “What is [Deputy PM] Kozak hoping for?” Nearly 80% answered that Kozak is hoping that people are brainless idiots.

author: Nina Jobe


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Kyrgyz Woman Abducted for Marriage Tells Her Story on Twitter · Global Voices
Mahina Shodizoda

Although bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan is a criminal offence punishable by up to seven years in prison, the practice remains a common occurrence throughout the country. Many Kyrgyz, particularly rural men, view the practice of ala kachuu as a national ‘tradition’ and a birth-rite. Therefore, witnesses and victims rarely report the practice to police, and many police officers are reluctant to punish perpetrators.
Screenshot from video, ‘Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan’, uploaded on January 17, 2012, by YouTube user Vice.
Yet the situation is changing in Kyrgyzstan, with individual victories gradually helping to root out the practice of bride kidnapping. A young woman, Roza, was recently kidnapped in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, by a group of men who tried to force her to marry their friend. The woman was saved after a person who had witnessed the kidnapping called police. Following her release, Roza told the story on Twitter (@katale_ya). Below are some of her tweets that rapidly went viral in Kyrgyzstan.
Вчера впервые поучавствовала в старинном обычае Воровство невесты, и разумеется в качестве невесты-барана была я!..
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
Yesterday I took part in an ancient ritual of bride kidnapping for the first time; obviously, I was the bride, or a sheep, that they tried to kidnap!..
Шла я значит домой после работы, никого не трогала, и вдруг бац, хватают сзади и говорят: Не бойся мы тебя не обидим…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
I was walking home after work and then suddenly they grabbed me from behind and said, “Don't be afraid, we will not hurt you”…
Думаю: Ну все Роза, прощайся с жизнью! Сейчас увезут хрен знает куда, изнасилуют и убьют…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
I thought to myself, “This is the end, Roza, say farewell to your life! They will now drive you devil knows where, rape you, and then kill you…”
Я конечно же сопротивлялась! Одному заехала в глаз зарядкой, которая так кстати выпала, другому еще куда-то, кого-то покусала…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
Obviously I put up the resistance. I hit one of the men in the eye with a [mobile phone] charger which fell out [of a bag]; I then hit another one and bit someone…
Стояла до конца, пока не поняла, что я не Ума Турман, против семерых не выстою… Когда силы закончились, начала кричать…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
I fought till the end, but then I understood that I was no Uma Thurman [Hollywood actress starring in action movie Kill Bill] and could not fight with seven men… When I became too weak to fight, I started shouting…
Затащили в машину, приехали на квартиру, тащили меня туда разумеется на руках, чтоб не сбежала…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
They pushed me into a car, then drove somewhere, and then carried me in their hands to an apartment to make sure I didn't escape…
Зашли в квартиру, смотрю, соседка моя стоит и улыбается! А дальше еще какие-то тетки и парни. И все смотрят, как на обезьяну в зоопарке…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
When we entered the apartment, I saw a female neighbor of mine who stood there smiling. There were also other women and men, all staring at me as if I were a monkey at a zoo…
Завели в комнату и давай мне заливать какой “жених” хороший, выходи за него, не протився, все равно ведь выйдешь замуж, потом жалеть будешь.
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
They took me to one of the rooms and started telling me about how good my “fiance” was, that I should marry him, that I would get married anyway and might then regret [not marrying him].
А я после работы, уставшая, спать хочу, их не слышу… И думаю, если я им щас дам надеть платок, то они успокоятся, а утром я сбегу!..
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
I was tired and sleepy after work, I could not really hear what they were saying…. So I decided to let them put a scarf on my head [a gesture symbolizing an agreement to wed the kidnapper] to calm them down so that I could then run away in the morning.
Легла я спать, и через 5 минут заходит жених и говорит, что мы пойдем к твоим родителям, скажи, что ты остаешься, чтобы они не были против..
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
So I went to bed, but five minutes later, my fiance-to-be entered the room and told me that they were going to my parents’ place; he asked me to tell my parents [over the phone] that I was staying so that they agreed [to the wedding]..
Я говорю, я расскажу маме так как есть, замуж я не хочу, забери меня деп…И тут звонок в дверь! Все подумали, что это гости(в 4 часа утра!)
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
But I told him that I would tell my mother the truth, that I didn't want to marry, and that I wanted [my mother] to save me from there… And then someone rang a door bell! They thought guests came (at 4 am!)
А это оказалась милиция! Боже, вы даже не представляете, как я была счастлива их увидеть!!!
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
But this was police! Gosh, you can't imagine how happy I was to see them!!!
Они спросили:Удерживают ли меня здесь против своей воли?Разумеется,я сказала, что удерживают! И они забрали меня,”жениха” и его друга в РОВД
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
They asked me whether I was held there against my will. Obviously I said that was the case. Police then took me, the “fiance” and his friend to a [local police department].
Оказывается, какой-то мужик с соседнего дома видел, как меня похищали (он вовремя захотел покурить)), позвонил в 102 и назвал марку машины..
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
It turned out that a man living in a nearby house saw them abducting me (he went out for a smoke just at the right time), called [police], and informed them about the car [in which they drove me away].
Милиция меня 4 часа искала, весь Бишкек объездила, в поисках этой машины…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
Police spent four hours looking for me, they were all over Bishkek, searching for the car…
Приехали в РОВД. Я написала заявление. Парням-дебилам на заметку: За похищение сейчас дают от 5 до 7 лет!!!
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
When we arrived at the [police department], I filed a complaint. For the reference of guys-idiots: [bride] kidnapping is now punishable by a prison term of five to seven years!!
But Roza afterwards decided not to take to court the men who had abducted her. Although many Twitter users disapproved of Roza's decision to let her abductors go unpunished, she said she did not want to “ruin the men's lives”. She tweeted later:
Жизнь продолжается… Так или иначе…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
Life goes on, one way or another…
И я хочу поскорее забыть это все, как страшный сон…
— Miss Don't Care (@katale_ya) January 17, 2014
And I want to forget this all as a nightmare…

author: Mahina Shodizoda


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China Arrests Ilham Tohti, Peaceful Advocate for Uyghur Minority · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Free Ilham Tohti! by political cartoonist ＠HisOvalness from Twitter
Uyghur scholar and advocate for ethnic reconciliation Ilham Tohti was arrested on January 15 and accused by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mouthpiece Global Times of being a separatist. While many Chinese intellectuals have been campaigning for him, people from outside China, even among Chinese communities abroad, know little about him. Fewer understand why his prosecution could irreparably damage relations between the country's Uyghur Muslim minority and the Han Chinese majority.
Global Times claimed in a January 18 editorial that Ilham was connected to the World Uyghur Congress, an overseas group which has been labelled as an extreme separatist group by the CCP. The report also accused him of inciting students in his class and spreading rumors and dissent via Uyghur Online, a website he founded to address ethnic conflicts in China from the Uyghur perspective.
The Uyghur people, who mostly live in China's western Xinjiang region, and the Chinese government have had a tumultuous relationship. Ethnic tensions have at times resulted in deadly clashes between Uyghur activists and authorities.
According to an online petition to free Ilham, which had more than 1,200 signatures as of January 22, he is against violence and does not support independence for Xinjiang.
Since his arrest, Ilham's website has been inaccessible and background information on him has been purged. Wen Yunchao, who helped to set up the online petition, reposted his autobiography, written in 2011 as a reference. According to the post, Ilham was born in 1969, and his father was an educated Chinese Communist Party member. However, his father died at the age of 28 in 1971 because of the Cultural Revolution. Both his elder brothers work in the Public Security Bureau.
He received his university degree from Dongbei Normal University and a master's degree from Central Minzhu University, majoring in economics. He started his research on issues related to ethnic minority education and economic development at the Economic Development Center at Minzhu University, while at the same time he invested in the stock market and industrial joint ventures.
In February 1997, a peaceful demonstration that broke out in Yining city in the northwest of Xinjiang ended in brutal police crackdown. Since then, government policy has sought to destroy the “three forces” of separatism, religion and violent crime there. Uyghur intellectuals who criticized the heavy-handed policy were marginalized, including Ilham, who found that he could no longer publish his research papers in 1999. Between 1999 and 2003, his university teaching position was suspended and he spent time traveling in the Middle East, Russia and South Asia to help Chinese companies develop their businesses and to study the ethnic relations in those regions. He witnessed the bloody consequences of ethnic conflicts and wanted to prevent something similar from happening in China.
Believing that social, economic and cultural development, as well as effective communications among different ethnic groups, will bring harmony to society, he founded Uyghur Online at the end of 2005 as an online platform for Han Chinese and Uyghur to exchange opinions.
However, the July 5 riot in the region's capital of Urumqi in 2009 further politicized the conflict between Han Chinese and Uyghur, and in order to break the vicious cycle of hatred, he launched a “ethnic reconciliation” campaign to commemorate July 5 on its anniversary and organized a cultural exchange program for children between Han and Uyghur families. Uyghur Online also serves as a platform for addressing social problems such as locating missing Uyghur children.
In his autobiography, Ilham openly denounced the separatist movement:
今天的新疆，以及其他的地方，民族问题在特殊的时代成为前所未有的特殊考验。无论是基于情感还是基于理性，我都很难接受其中的任何一部分被分离出去。
Today's Xinjiang, as well as other regions, is facing a distinctive challenge related to ethnicity. Taking into account both rational consideration and emotional attachment, I can't accept any part of the region separate [from China].
解决民族问题，只能从探索民族自治之路的方向着眼，使中国成为一个多民族多元文化的、具有强大吸引力的国家。
The exploration of ethnic autonomy should be the direction of resolving ethnic problems. It can facilitate China to become a multi-ethnic and culturally diversified country.
中国宪法中关于民族自治的规定，为多民族多元文化的并存和发展提供了良好的框架，但在实践层面，还需要逐渐摸索探讨，在法律法规上逐步落实。我们应当勇于借鉴国外各种成功经验中的规律，总结出适合中国的办法。
The Chinese constitution has protected ethnic autonomy and provided a good framework the development of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic community. We need to slowly explore the possibility in practice and enact the idea in legal terms. We should be courageous to borrow experiences from other countries and work out a path for China.
To rebuked the Global Times accusations against Ilham for inciting his students in class, a Han student posted a long post in image format on popular microblogging site Sina Weibo. The post was deleted quickly, but its backup can be found on Flickr:
大三的時候吧，我上了他的選修課，新疆可持續發展戰略與研究。[…] 課堂上我是唯一一個漢族學生，每次進教室的時候，我都覺得格各不入，但是他非常和善並且讓我感受到一種格外的尊重。後來他說，那是一個維族老師對一個在新疆經濟發展課題上願意真正思考的漢族學生的尊重。
再後來他辦了維吾爾在綫，做學術研究，建救助站，幫很多被誘拐在全國各地當小偷的維族孩子回家。我們有時候會聯擊一下 […] 我不相信任何媒體對他的描述定義和評價。
When I was in my third year, I elected to take his course on a sustainable development strategy in Xinjiang […] I was the only Han student in class and whenever I stepped into the classroom, I felt detached. But he was particularly friendly to me and I felt respected. Later, he explained [his attitude to me] that as a Uyghur professor, he respected a Han student who was thoughtful on issues related to Xinjiang's economic development.
Later on, he founded Uyghur Online, conducted research, built a community help station and helped kidnapped Uyghur kids to return home. I contacted him occasionally […] I don't believe anything the media has said about him.
他是我的老師，是我認識的，最有人格魅力的人。如果非要我說，他當不了政治家，也不是一個革命者。他是一個勇士。
He is my teacher, someone I know, a charismatic person. If I have to label him, he is not a politician, he is not a revolutionist. He is a courageous person.
The online petition demands that authorities release Ilham or otherwise announce the details of his alleged crimes and allow his family and an appointed lawyer to meet with him. Ilham's wife also issued a statement on January 20 demanding the release of four students who were also arrested on January 15.
For more on this story from Global Voices Advocacy, check out China: Free Ilham Tohti — Support Ethnic Reconciliation.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Goodbye Alexandros Petersen, Prodigious Guide to China in Central Asia · Global Voices
Chris Rickleton

With a sprinkle of humor, Alex slipped seamlessly and gracefully into a region of stories and storytellers, abundance and poverty, toasts and toast-makers.
The 29 year-old go-to-scholar and commentator was eloquent and big-hearted in everything he did.
It was with great shock that I comprehended the loss of Alexandros Petersen, co-author of the excellent Eurasian affairs blog ChinainCentralAsia.com, in a suicide bomb attack carried out by the Taliban at a restaurant in central Kabul on January 17, 2014.
Alexandros Petersen at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
This is not an obituary.
Alex was so well-traveled and well-affiliated that compiling his biography would probably be a task beyond any single person, and certainly the author of this post. A great number of people knew Alex in a great number of capacities, all of whom lost something in this brutal, highly coordinated and premeditated attack.
America-born to a Greek mother and a Danish father, he had friends and admirers across the world, with a notable concentration of both in lands sandwiched between the shores of the Black Sea and the sands of the Taklamakan desert.
As an occasional journalist, I had known ‘Alex the source’ – always reliable for an astute and erudite quote – for some time before I knew Alex the person.
While the first Alex will leave a gaping hole in the rolodex of many analysts and reporters covering Central Asia and the Caucasus, it is the second Alex, known by family, friends, colleagues and students, that will be missed even more.
As a noted expert in energy politics, Alex's scope was global, yet like many that have traveled through, lived and worked in, or wrote about the states of Central Asia and the Caucasus, there was a specific set of countries he found infectious. As he emphasized in his book The World Island: Eurasian Geopolitics and the Fate of the West, and later through the ChinainCentralAsia blog and book project, this is a region that western policy-makers ignore at their peril.
Many people that knew Alex, even as briefly as I knew him, will know that he had an aptitude for anecdotes. Through the warm fuzzy memory of one of several excellent dinner evenings at a well-known Georgian restaurant in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (a dash of the Caucasus in Central Asia) I can still hear his tale of the duplicitous Azerbaijani ambassador that summoned him for a dressing down after he had written a critical article about that country, only to promptly stop, smile, and break out a teapot and tea cups. The dressing down, it emerged, had been recorded for the benefit of a political high-up in Baku, while the teapot and tea cups were symbols of the perennial hospitality with which any visitor to the region rapidly becomes familiar.
On a good night, Alex could reel off a dozen such recollections from his years traveling through countries in Europe and Asia, nearly all of which were outrageously funny. A Petersen punch line could leave your ribs hurting from laughter, a potent and particular gift that the Taliban stole from the world.
China in Central Asia
Through ChinainCentralAsia.com, one of the most readable English-language blogs covering geopolitics in the Eurasian region, Alex had begun in combination with co-writer Raffaello Pantucci and photojournalist Sue Anne Tay, to document what he was convinced, with good reason, would be one of the stories of the 21st century, namely China's giant economic push through the countries lying west of its own restive Xinjiang province. These countries, cobbled together as “the stans” by the western media, lie at the historical heart of some of the greatest land empires the world has known, but are now isolated states increasingly shorn of options. Hamstrung by geography, corruption and various other internal problems, they have few reasons to reject Chinese largesse, and even fewer means to resist it.
Belatedly the chronicle of exponentially increasing Chinese trade and investment in Central Asia has started to turn heads beyond the region and its regular gaggle of foreign observers. Last September, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping's whirlwind tour through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan raised eyebrows across the world by virtue of the sheer size of the deals struck for oil, gas and other giant infrastructure projects in the region. For Petersen, Pantucci and others, this is a plot that has been bubbling for some time, and one that is increasingly central to the epic that is China's rise towards superpower status.
While Alex diligently tracked every stretch of pipeline built by the Chinese in the region, he also knew that China's influence in Central Asia could not be measured in kilometers of road, barrels of oil, and cubic meters of gas alone. Many of the articles on ChinainCentralAsia.com are enjoyable to read precisely because they gather the testimonies of ordinary Central Asians being affected by the changes that have accompanied China's expanding clout; from university teachers observing the installation of Confucius Institutes in their places of work, to local businessmen whose bank accounts have been swelled by trade with China, and villagers who believe the roads Chinese companies are building in their country – paid for by cheap Chinese credit – are designed to support the weight of Chinese tanks in a future military invasion.
The practitioners of Beijing's westward pivot, and the protagonists in the emergence of what ChinainCentral Asia.com has labelled China's “inadvertant empire” are also human beings rather than mere pawns on a chessboard, a fact Petersen captured in an October article in the Atlantic:
These actors include Chinese owners of market stalls in Central Asia’s largest bazaars. One I spoke to had lived for years in a shipping container he shared with four other men at the back of a clothes market in Kazakhstan’s largest bazaar. A multi-millionaire, he provided for his children’s Western education, multiple apartments in Shanghai, and even overseas property investments. To him, Central Asia is the land of opportunity. These actors also include Chinese teachers sent to staff the many Confucius Institutes sprouting up around the region. Some I spoke with missed home, but many said they preferred the exciting “frontier life.” CNPC engineers across the region know that they are in for the long haul, as their company and its many subsidiaries build imposing structures in every Eurasian capital. The immense pipeline network CNPC is threading through the region consists of infrastructure set to last half a century.
Alex the Guide
Beyond his writing Alex also inspired as a teacher, and it was during his semester-long stint at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, that I got to know him on a personal level. Among the juniors and seniors in the International and Comparative Politics department (many of whom have written articles for Global Voices) that took his elective courses, and freshmen of all departments undertaking the First Year Seminar, Alex was a universally admired guide and friend, as well as a teller of fantastic stories. To both students and colleagues at the university, he was open, approachable, and a great person to bounce ideas off.
We are thinking of his family.
A man of many temporary homes, Alex was in Kabul to embark on another research and teaching stint at the American University of Afghanistan. Writing to him a few days before he died I told him I was looking forward to a new series of dispatches on the nature and shape of Chinese influence in this fascinating, beautiful, tortured country. Now those dispatches will never be written and the students he was teaching will miss out on the tremendous wealth of knowledge, experience and color he brought to a classroom. When the Taliban cut his life short so brutally, it was fellow Afghans they punished.
As his friend and writing partner Raffaello Pantucci communicated via email, “a bright light has gone out.”
Chris Rickleton manages the GV Central Asia Interns Project at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

author: Chris Rickleton


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On Love, Politics and the Francophone Culture   · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

Julie Gayet at the Deauville Film Festival via Wikipedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
The global community is now well aware of the tumultuous love life of French President François Hollande. Hollande's affair with French actress Julie Gayet and the ensuing illness of his current partner and still-considered French First Lady Valérie Trierweiler have made the cover of newspapers worldwide over the past week. Hollande is also a father of four with former partner Ségolène Royal, a politician who came in second during the 2007 presidential elections in France.
So his love life is a tad complicated, but he is hardly the first French president to have an unorthodox family structure (François Mitterand and Felix Faure come to mind). By most accounts, French voters do not factor in the private lives of their politicians when it comes down to the ballot. In fact, a survey by the Pew Research Center suggested that French voters may be more lenient towards infidelity than others:
Just 47% of the French say it is morally unacceptable for married people to have an affair, the lowest percentage among 39 nations surveyed in 2013 by the Pew Research Center. In fact, France was the only country where less than 50% of respondents described infidelity as unacceptable. Instead, four-in-ten think it is not a moral issue, while 12% say it is actually morally acceptable.
The French perspective on infidelity and politics has often puzzled many of its English-speaking neighbors. Adam Gopnik in the United Kingdom articulated the cultural dissonance between the two cultures that sprung from the Hollande's affair going public:
France is not a puritanical society – it accepts that human appetites for sex and food are normal, or “normale”, to use a word much prized there, and that attempts to suppress either, will make men and women nervous wrecks at least […]
Puritans are the least buttoned-up people in the world. They can't wait to pin a scarlet A for adultery on someone's clothing, or hold a public humiliation ritual. Nothing could be more illustrative of this than the tone of outraged indignation directed by British tabloid journalists at their reluctant French press equivalents in the past week.
A few readers disagreed with Gopnik's take. “Sean in Belgium” argued that one needs only to look at the recent mass protests in favor of family values and the ban on prostitution in France to see that the theory does not compute:
It is a caricature of the complexities of French attitudes simply to say that desire is accepted. This, after all, is the country that has just banned prostitution.
Love and privacy in other French-speaking countries
Given the cultural impact that France has had on the countries within its former empire, one cannot help but wonder: Do the relaxed views on the issue extend to France's former colonies?
At first glance, it would seem that the French laissez-faire attitude did not extend to other Francophone countries. The aforementioned survey by the Pew Research Center noted that a large majority of polled citizens in Senegal, Lebanon, Tunisia and Canada viewed extramarital affairs as morally unacceptable. In Côte d'Ivoire, citizens are often puzzled by France's choice when it comes to matters of love and relationship.
Elsewhere, reactions were more diverse. In Morocco, prominent author Tahar Ben Jelloun empathized with the privacy that public figures ask for when it comes to their love life. Here is his open letter to Hollande's partner Valérie Treilweiler [fr]:
Je pense à vous en ce moment où votre vie intime, la vôtre et celle de votre compagnon, est sujet de curiosité malsaine, une espèce de cambriolage en plein jour où l'on saccage tout sans penser aux conséquences non seulement sur votre existence, mais aussi celle de vos enfants.[..] Je pense à vous parce que je sais la douleur et la violence, je sais aussi l'attente et l'espoir. Une histoire d'amour est née entre vous et celui qui allait devenir président. Les gens sont durs et s'imaginent que la vie de ceux et celles qui sont sous les lumières de l'actualité ne mérite que des claques. [..] À présent, il vous faudra choisir : continuer à vivre à côté d'un homme qui est ce qu'il est et qui ne changera pas, ou bien tourner cette page douloureuse et trouver votre place
These days I think of you a lot, now that your intimate life, yours and your companion's is being subjected to morbid curiosity, a kind of robbery in broad daylight where your life is being destroyed without a thought for the consequences to not only your life, but that of your children. […] I think of you because I know that suffering and that violence, as I also know the expectation and hope [of love]. A love story was born between you and the man who would become president. People are cruel and they think that the life of those who are in the spotlight of the news cycle only deserves punishment […] Now you must make a decision to either continue to live next to a man who is who he is and will not change, or turn this painful page and find your own place.
In other former colonies, citizens are not shy about discussing matters of the heart. In fact, some seem to relish the use of the word “love”. In Madagascar, former transitional President Andry Rajoelina changed the motto of the country to include the word: “Fitiavana, Tanindrazana, Fandrosoana” (Love, Homeland, Progress). The former First Lady Mialy Rajoelina is in charge of an Association called FITIA (Love), a charity that helps the education of disenfranchised children.
Mialy Rajoelina: First Lady of Madagascar pic.twitter.com/xy2WDYjPhX
— CurateZAR | Frank (@CurateZAR) November 5, 2013
Her emphasis on sharing compassion seems to have resonated with many Malagasy people, as shown by Twitter user @tagnam:
Qui a signé la pétition pour garder #MialyRajoelina comme première dame? #MDG2013 #MG261
— tagman (@tagman_namgat) January 21, 2014
Who has not signed the petition to keep #MialyRajoelina as the first lady yet ?
In Cameroon, the 237 Online community blog reflected on the rights to privacy for their public figures. Maximilien Ombé wondered how such an affair would be covered [fr]:
On se demande si c'est possible qu'au Cameroun les médias aient le droit de publier des informations relatives aux loves stories des hommes publics notamment du Chef de l'Etat Paul Biya.
One wonders whether Cameroon media would have the right to publish information on public figures’ loves stories such as Head of State Paul Biya.
Dieudonné Mveng added [fr]:
Dès lors qu'on est politique qu'on est une personnalité on est la boussole de la société. La population prend exemple sur nous. C'est aux personnes publiques de bien se tenir.
As soon as a person goes into politics and becomes a public figure, they by default becomes a moral compass for society. The general population takes its cue from them. It is therefore a responsibility of public figures to behave as role model.
Ampère Simo concluded [fr]:
La règle qui doit guider les médias et les professionnels de l'information dans le traitement des affaires touchant à la vie privée des individus consiste à ne révéler que ce qui est d'intérêt public.
The rule that should guide the media and any news writers in the treatment of cases involving the privacy of individuals is to only reveal what is relevant to the public interest.
It seems that while Francophone countries have not embraced the laid back attitude of France towards the love lives of their elite, they are also more willing to move past affairs and love stories to focus on the more pressing public issues.


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From Barcelona to Madrid for the Love of a Candidate · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Blogger Denise Duncan makes a confession [es] on her blog:
¿Por qué voy a viajar 1400 kilómetros para votar por Luis Guillermo Solís? ¿Por qué ir y volver de Barcelona a Madrid en 24 horas? ¡Pero es un voto, nada más!, podría pensarse. ¿Qué diferencia hay? Una: estoy enamorada.
Why am I going to travel 1400 kilometers to vote for Luis Guillermo Solís? Why am I going from Barcelona to Madrid and back in 24 hours? But it's just a vote, nothing else!, you could think. What's the difference? One: I'm in love.
Denise is a Barcelona-based Costa Rican citizen and she'll have to travel from there to Madrid to cast her vote for Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera [es], a candidate running for president in the upcoming elections on February 2, 2014.
She remembers an earlier experience, when she spent 24 hours in a train to meet the man who is now her husband. She ends her confession saying:
Entonces brindaré por lo que viene, por un cambio que hará que mi corazón diga: yo recorrí 1400 kilómetros por dos hombres decentes en mi vida. Uno es mi marido. El otro el Presidente de la República.
Then I'll make a toast for what's yet to come, for a change that will make my heart say: I traveled 1400 kilometers because of two men in my life. One is my husband. The other one is the President of the Republic.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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A Growing Job Market for Young People in Senegal: The Fishing Sector · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

To combat rampant youth unemployment in Senegal, a new initiative geared toward job creation in the fishing industry was created. Ibrahima Lô, one of the lead on the project, explains [fr] :
fishermen return to the beach at Soumbedioun, Dakar via wikimedia commons  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
Nous avons un déficit de personnel. Tous les deux ans, il peut y avoir un recrutement de volontaires. Rien n'est garanti mais on fait le nécessaire pour leur recrutement dans la Fonction publique.
We have a glaring need in human ressources (in the sector). Every two years, there is a new wave of recruitment. No permanent job is guaranteed but we tried as best as we can to integrate new recruits into public service.
The fishing sector has replaced the groundnut sector as Senegal's export leader. 17% of the workforce (600,000 workers) already belongs to this sector.


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It’s Slash and Burn for Russia’s Indigenous · Global Voices
350.org

This article was written by Yulia Makliuk for 350.org in Russian and was translated to English by Kateryna Boyko and Roman Horbyk. It is published on Global Voices as part of a content sharing agreement.
Aleksandr Aypin holds the reindeer moss that burned in wildfires. Photo credit: Aleksandr Aypin for 350.org
Russia’s indigenous people stand up for their land rights in a quarrel with oil companies and raise issues of environmental and economic justice. Could this move other Russians to rethink the real costs of a resource-based economy?
When I first contacted Aleksandr Aypin, he was just back from a deer camp that belongs to his family. “The situation is getting serious,” he said, “the oilmen put us under pressure, they are trying to force us to consent to drilling. So far we’re strong enough to resist, but our future is unclear.”
Sasha (a short form of the name Aleksandr in Russian) and I agree to speak again when he arrives at the city of Surgut to take his exams, and then we hang up.
Sasha is a 30-year-old entrepreneur who is trying to develop green ethnic tourism in the land where he was born. And besides that, Sasha is a Khanty. This is perhaps why he understands, unlike most Russians, that one of the world’s largest economies can’t be based for long on just draining natural resources.
Yet today he and his family are spending most of their time defending their right to the familial pasture grounds. The Aypins, also known as the Clan of the Beaver, belong to the indigenous Khanty people that inhabit Russia’s North-Western Siberia. This small indigenous group numbers around 30,000 men and women, many of whom still practice traditional crafts like reindeer farming, hunting, and fishing. The Aypins revere a local goddess, the Patroness of Agan, and ward many sites that the Khanty deem sacred, in the woods and on the banks of the river Agan. Unfortunately for the Khanty, their sacred sites are located right by a “shrine” of another kind. This part of Siberia provides around one half of the Russian overall oil extraction output, and oil is the principal resource that keeps the country’s ruling class afloat.
Sasha’s parents, Semion and Liubov, at the nomad camp Enel Uri near the Agan river. Photo credit: Aleksandr Aypin for 350.org
“Khanty people can’t exist without their deer, and the deer can’t exist without the moss,” Sasha explains the origins of the conflict. During Sasha’s father Semion’s lifetime, their family had to leave their home and camp sites and move to another place no less than five times, because of oil drilling and fires. They will leave no more, and they can leave no more.
Last spring, Lukoil West Siberia decided to build a road for further oil drilling precisely through this last spot. The road could effectively destroy the fragile reindeer moss ecosystem while oil drilling and spills will pollute the remaining woods and rivers, once a Khanty microcosm. On top of that, oil extraction and its continued use entail further global climate change, which will likely make large-scale forest wildfires even more frequent.
The company does have a public drilling license but the existing procedure also requires it to reach an agreement with the indigenous peoples. Grotesque as it may seem, they say the compensation would often amount to a case of vodka in the past.
Yet the Aypin family decided they will stipulate their own conditions for Lukoil. They hired a lawyer, required to be paid $150,000 in return for the road, and demanded an obligation that there be no oil wells in the sacred sites which make up half of the area of the suggested oil production site. The company showed its commitment to dialogue in a peculiar way. One night they deployed construction equipment and started working at the site. Apparently, they decided not to waste money even on vodka.
Fire destroys a Khanty reindeer moss pasture. Photo credit: Aleksandr Aypin for 350.org
The Aypins are not the only ones who have seen enough of oil spills and fires.
Altogether, around 60 families in the district are unhappy with the situation and have recently addressed the country’s human rights ombudsman for help.
Sasha Aypin at a symbolic educational protest during the indigenous peoples conference. Screenshot from local TV.
Similar processes are under way in other parts of the Russian Federation, too. A statement initiated by Greenpeace and signed by some 10 big indigenous peoples’ organizations says:
The peoples of the North will not tolerate the barbaric way in which oil companies destroy our land; we will not fling ourselves at their mercy. We urge for a ban on oil extraction on the Arctic sea shelf and declare a moratorium on the developing on-ground sites in the North until the companies assume responsibility for the damage they have already incurred to the nature.
Thanks to the Aypin family’s activism and the arrival of Greenpeace, information about this tiny conflict 1,500 miles from Russia's capital actually made national news. Many started thinking about the current situation: the history of the relations of the state with small indigenous peoples, the real price paid for oil, the distribution of the revenues, and the stability of the national economy. But so far the local state attorney office decided in favor of Lukoil and it’s hardly known if Sasha’s dream of ethnic green tourism and oil-independent Russia will ever come true.
This photo was taken in the summer but the trees at the Aypin ground were already brown because of the wildfires and pollution. Photo credit: Aleksandr Aypin for 350.org
You can read the full version of this story, including an economic analysis of Russia’s dependency on oil and the corporate attack on Russian environmental law at 350.org.


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New Year’s Eve is Past but Debates Continue in Tajikistan · Global Voices
Mahina Shodizoda

Although the New Year's Eve is past, social media users in Tajikistan continue debating over the appropriateness of the holiday which many Tajiks see as a remnant of the “alien” Russian culture. On NewEurasia.net, Loki suggests that the very discussion about whether the New Year's Eve should or should not be celebrated has in itself become an annual “tradition” in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan became independent 22 years ago. Since then, Islam has come to play a much more important role in the everyday life of Tajikistani society, and there has been a greater emphasis on the “national” cultural heritage. Yet the continuing disputes about holidays (both old and new), monuments, and national symbols demonstrate that there is still little agreement in society about what it means to be “Tajik” and what role religion has to play in the country.


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PHOTOS: Over 5,000 Children Break Guinness Record Painting Panama Canal · Global Voices
Ariel Moreno

Photo taken by Shoonit Khoshen. Used with permission.
Panama broke the record of people painting simultaneously [es] by getting 5,084 children to paint a mural for the Canal locks.
This activity, held on Saturday, January 18, 2014, was named “Pintemos los 100 años del canal” [Let's paint the Canal's centennial] and marks the start of the centennial celebration of the interoceanic route.
The event was carried out in an atmosphere far from the debate about the possible halt of a project to widen the Canal. The celebration took place within the Canal and on social networks as well, where diverse users shared photos and opinions of the activity.
The Twitter account ‘Ponte en algo’ shared an air image of the event.
Un siglo uniendo al mundo es el mensaje del lienzo creado hoy por los niños panameños junto a @FOSinclair pic.twitter.com/vajWUW0q7M
— Ponteenalgo (@Ponteenalgo) January 18, 2014
A hundred years bringing the world together is the message on the canvas created today by Panamanian children along with the Olga Sinclair Foundation
The Canal's administrator, Jorge Quijano, also posted a picture featuring the 5,084 children that participated in the activity:
Una belleza, el futuro de Panamá pinta el Centenario del Canal. pic.twitter.com/F57UD7OLD0
— Jorge Luis Quijano (@jorgelquijano) January 18, 2014
How beautiful, Panama's future paints the Canal's centenary.
CNN journalist Ismael Cala shared a picture of the event, where we can see the Canal administrator and artist Olga Sinclair, the main driving force behind this initiative.
Viva #PANAMA !!! Feliz de disfrutar un Record Guiness 5,084 niños pintando 100 años @canaldepanama @OlgaSinclair pic.twitter.com/t6fLOUDQZB
— Ismael Cala (@CALACNN) January 18, 2014
Cheers for Panama!!! I'm happy to enjoy a Guiness Record, 5,084 children painting a hundred years.
Panama's National Institute of Culture (INAC, for its initials in Spanish) shared an image of the Guinness record certificate:
Felicidades por este #RecordPanamá y gracias @FOSinclair y @OlgaSinclair por hacerlo realidad junto a todos los niños pic.twitter.com/zhHN7JgPlE
— INAC Panama (@INACPanama) January 19, 2014
Congratulations for this record Panama, and thanks Olga Sinclair Foundation and Olga Sinclair for making it a reality with all these children.
Lineth Rodriguez posts a picture of her triplets participating in the record:
Nuestros trillizos SD participando en el taller pintura @canaldepanama @OlgaSinclair Gracias! pic.twitter.com/CV4ZqMI02S
— Lineth Rodriguez (@lineth_rod) January 18, 2014
Our triplets participating in the painting workshop.
The activity reached its goal of breaking the record, kicking off the centennial celebration and making Panamanians feel they are part of the Canal's festivity.
Photo taken by Shoonit Khoshen. Used with permission.

author: Ariel Moreno


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South Korea: I Would Rather Sell My Personal Info · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

Personal information of about 20 million people, which amounts to two fifth of the entire South Korean population, has been compromised in the country's worst identity theft. Customers of the affected three major credit card firms gasped at the sheer extensiveness of the breach; it is not just the user's real name, home/work address, cellphone/home/work phone number, social security number, but in many cases, even user's credit limit, credit history, credit card expiration date, and credit records have been stolen. Korean online venues flooded with angry users’ comments and one net user even set up a fake website entitled ‘Trade My Info; the No. 1 Online Personal Info Trading Venue’ [ko]. Its intro sarcastically proclaims that instead of letting the identity thief sell your personal info, users should rather trade their info by themselves and make a a modicum of money out of it. Most of the site's links lead to related news articles on the breach. An extensive post on Korean reactions to the country's worst ID breach will soon be posted on Global Voices.

author: Lee Yoo Eun


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The Online Presence of Puerto Rican Women: Gender, Creativity, and Equality · Global Voices
Ángel Carrión

In 2013, the Movimiento Amplio de Mujeres (Women's Broad Movement) painted a mural with the intention of creating awareness of gender-based violence. In 2010, the municipal government of San Juan, then under the administration of mayor Jorge Santini, ordered the work to be stopped and imposed fines on some of the women. With the recent change in administration, the municipal government has accepted that the prohibition was unconstitutional, thereby permitting the completion of the mural. Image taken from the blog Movimiento Amplio de Mujeres.
All links lead to Spanish language pages unless otherwise specified.
Many people today still don't understand why it is necessary to talk about women's (hi)stories. The short answer is that only by studying, acknowledging, and valuing women's experiences and contributions to society in all of their diversity can we really talk about the history of humankind. This is why the focus of this post will be on some of the online spaces Puerto Rican women have created to express ideas, creativity, exchange information, or provide resources that further education on women's issues and equality.
Culture and History
The history of the women of Puerto Rico is long and complex, making it impossible to get into here with detail, suffice it to say that it is full of many hard-won conquests that continue to be contested in a still patriarchal society such as Puerto Rico. The following video offers the views of different women about gender-based violence, labor rights, and health in an electoral context.
To learn more, one can check out the online compilation of articles that focus on women found in the social sciences journal Homines, published by the Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico, which contains many excellent pieces about women in Puerto Rico. Feminist scholar and journalist Norma Valle Ferrer also published a brief history of women in Puerto Rico “Las mujeres en Puerto Rico” that offers a wealth of information.
Puerto Rican women have a rich legacy in many fields, but we will focus on the arts, particularly literature. From the poet Julia de Burgos (whose 100th anniversary is celebrated this year) to authors working today such as Mayra Santos-Febres and Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, to authors in the diaspora such as poet María Teresa Hernández, better known by her artistic name, Mariposa [en], women have made an enormous contribution to Puerto Rican letters that been studied in depth mostly since the advent of the feminist movement.
In order to encourage more women to find their voices as writers, the blog Ovarios de Acero (Steel Ovaries) was set up to provide a place where women could publish their poems, short stories and essays in a safe and supportive environment. They also have a very active Facebook page. The about section of the blog states:
Es un espacio que no juzga o requiere que seas una escritora profesional, solo debes ser mujer y tener el genuino deseo de crear y compartir. El concepto del blog, mayormente recoge una sola voz, pero Ovarios de Acero propone recoger todas las voces posibles. De esta forma creamos una antología de lecturas maravillosas y una diversidad sin límites.
It is a space that doesn't judge or requires that you be a professional writer, only that you be a woman and have the genuine desire to create and share. The concept of the blog mainly deals with just one voice, but Ovarios de Acero proposes to gather as many voices as possible. This way we create an anthology of wonderful readings and limitless diversity.
Empowering Women
The blog Mujeres en Puerto Rico (Women in Puerto Rico), by VeronicaRT (@MujeresenPR), offers news, commentary, and links to other content on the web that create awareness about feminism and to empower women. It also has a YouTube channel with content that complements what is posted on the blog. In a similar vein, the blog Poder, Cuerpo y Género (Power, Body, and Gender) by Nahomi Galindo also offers news, commentary, and content from around the web. The blog of the feminist coalition Movimiento Amplio de Mujeres is also an important online resource.
An important effort that has greatly contributed to the empowerment of women is Proyecto Matria, which seeks to help women survivors of gender-based violence and women who are the head of a family with very little income become financially independent and self-sufficient individuals. This non-profit organization operates an array of services in Puerto Rico that include psychosocial services, assistance in starting a microenterprise, and help in getting an education, among others. Its innovative approach transcends the still prevalent notion of casting women as passive victims that receive charity, focusing instead on helping women become not just successful entrepreneurs, but fully accomplished human beings.
Stoping Gender-Based Violence
Gender-based violence is still, sadly, something that costs many women their emotional and psychic wellbeing, and their lives every year. That is why Ada M. Álvarez Conde decided to start an organization that would help educate teenagers and college-age women and men about dating violence, something rarely discussed in Puerto Rico. The Fundación Alto al Silencio (Stop Silence Foundation) organizes group talks in schools all over Puerto Rico to create awareness and gathers resources from around the web on its webpage, blog, and Facebook page that not only provide information on the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship and how to get help, but also statistics, news, and a training program for other people interested in getting involved. Álvarez Conde shares how the Foundation started:
Comenzó la inauguración de la fundación con un entrenamiento a más de 150 personas en la Convención Anual de la Coalición Nacional en Contra de la Violencia Doméstica, en donde hay personas de los 50 estados que trabajan con víctimas y están encargados de los refugios a mujeres entre otros programas comunitarios. Alto al Silencio es la primera organización dedicada a tratar el tema de la violencia en el noviazgo (señales, relaciones saludables, autoestima, organización comunitaria)  en español y para la comunidad latina como enfoque principal.
The foundation got its start with over 150 people getting trained at the Annual Convention of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, where there are people from all 50 states [of the U. S.] that work with victims and are in charge of shelters, among other community programs. Alto al Silencio is the first organization that deals with dating violence (signs, healthy relationships, self-esteem, community organization) in Spanish and with the Latino community as its primary focus.
One of the talks offered by Fundación Alto al Silencio in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, to 200 students. Image taken from Fundación Alto al Silencio's Facebook page.
Some Parting Words on Feminism
Though the women of Puerto Rico share a rich and fascinating history, full of many contributions and victories in the endeavor to forge a more equitable society, much work still needs to be done. More men and boys need to take responsibility and understand that they are necessary components in these efforts and to feel that they, too, can also be considered part of the feminist movement. Because ultimately, feminism is not just about liberating women, but also about creating the awareness that men must also work against patriarchy and sexism. Human rights activist Amárilis Pagán, in one of the posts from her blog Brujas y Rebeldes (Witches and Rebels), says:
Cuando las mujeres que trabajamos por derechos humanos hablamos del machismo, lo hacemos con plena conciencia de qué implica el término y quiénes son los que mueven la rueda de la violencia.  Reconocemos, inclusive, cómo el machismo también oprime a los hombres al castrar su capacidad de sentir emociones, de amar libremente, de elegir qué hacer con su vida sin ser estigmatizados por renunciar a los privilegios que su sexo les otorga al nacer. También reconocemos las implicaciones económicas del pensamiento machista y cómo esa rueda de violencia tritura a hombres y mujeres que viven en pobreza, en desigualdad racial y de orientación e identidad sexual.  Por eso seguimos apostando a la educación, al activismo, pero muy en especial al amor que nos sostiene en tiempos de pérdida o cuando se recrudece la violencia institucional y social hacia nuestros grupos más vulnerables.
When we the women who work on behalf of human rights talk about machismo, we do it fully conscious of what the term implies and who are the ones that move the wheel of violence. We acknowledge, in fact, how machismo also oppresses men by castrating their capacity to feel emotions, to love freely, to choose what to do with their lives without being stigmatized for renouncing the privileges given by their sex at birth. We also acknowledge the economic implications of male chauvinist thought and how that wheel of violence crushes the men and women who live in poverty, in racial and sexual identity inequality. This is why we keep our hopes in education, activism, but most especially in the love that sustains us in times of loss or when institutional and social violence flare up towards our most vulnerable groups.


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Things to Love about Kyrgyzstan’s Capital · Global Voices
Mahina Shodizoda

While social media users in Kyrgyzstan often discuss what they don't like about the country's capital, they seldom talk of what they do like about Bishkek. Breaking up with the tradition, blogger Amina Suleyeva offers [ru] a list of qualities that make the Kyrgyz capital a city she loves. These include public parks and tree-lined roads, busy clothes bazaars, cheap and healthy foods, comfortable taxis, barrels with maksym [local drink] on the city's streets, as well as supermarkets and pharmacies that stay open 24/7. The blogger also mentions greater tolerance towards people from other ethnic backgrounds, political freedoms, and respect for women as attributes that she thinks distinguish Bishkek from other Central Asian capitals.
Osh bazaar in Bishkek. Image by Flickr user neiljs, uploaded on May 9, 2009 (CC BY 2.0)
Commenting on Suleyeva's blog post, other social media users discuss additional reasons for loving the city.


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East Timor: ‘Australia Spied on Us for Oil Secrets’ · Global Voices
Marisa Gonçalves

[The original version of this post in Portuguese was published on December 28, 2013]
Battle began this week in a case at the International Court of Justice at The Hague pitting East Timor against Australia, with the former accusing the latter of spying and interfering with Timorese natural resources and sovereignty.
Graffiti stencil by Alfe Tutuala shared on Wikimedia (public domain)
At stake is the accusation of Australia's illicit access to confidential information about oil and gas in the Timor Sea, which may have hampered the Timorese during their negotiations of the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) with Australia in 2004.
On December 17, 2013, East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, filed an international lawsuit against Australia in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the highest court of the United Nations. East Timor requested the return of documents seized in a raid earlier in December of the office of an attorney who represents Timor-Leste in the dispute over the treaty and accused Australia of violating the country's sovereignty.
“A luta kontinua”
In the month of December 2013, a wave of protests set the agenda in the streets of capital city Dili and on Timorese social networks.
The Movimentu Kontra Okupasaun Tasi Timor (Movement against the occupation of the Timor Sea) and NGO La’o Hamutuk, a well-known advocate of the rights of East Timor, have mobilized dozens of Timorese, mostly young people, to protest for the sovereignty rights of the country.
The motto “a luta kontinua” (the struggle continues), which was widely used during the 24 years of Indonesian occupation until the independence of the country after the referendum of 1999, was also the closing remark of a press release [PDF] that circulated in early December calling the government of Australia to:
1. Stop stealing and occupying the Timor Sea, but show your good will as a large nation which
follows democratic prniciples to accept a maritime boundary which follows international law
principles.
2. Australia should set an example as a sovereign nation which respects and recognizes the
rights of Timor-Leste’s people.
3. Australia should not promote or continue neocolonialism against Timor-Leste’s people, who
have suffered this for centuries. We will no longer be your slaves.
4. The Abbott government should apologize to the Maubere people, who have been hugely
discriminated against by Australia from the past to the present. If not, we will continue to
demonstrate at the Australian Embassy for the indefinite future.
Photo from a demonstration in front of Australia's embassy in Dili on December 20, 2013. By Veronica Fernandes on Facebook (used with permission)
On December 20, 2013, one more demonstration took place in front of the Australian embassy in Dili, in which several members of East Timor's national parliament participated [pt] in solidarity with the Timorese people.
The first demonstrations in the beginning of December followed news reports from the Australian media claiming that spy agency the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) raided the office of the lawyer that defends the Timorese government in the international arbitration proceedings in The Hague.
During the raid, documentary and electronic evidence that the lawyer would have presented at the first hearing were seized.
On the same day, ASIO seized the passport of an alleged Australian whistleblower, a former employee of the ASIS (Australian Secret Service) involved in intelligence activities in East Timor, who would be willing to testify in court about the installation of recording devices in the offices of the Timorese prime minister during treaty negotiations. This former spy for the Australian government, whose identity was not revealed, was the key witness for East Timor in court. The Australian action aimed to prevent his travel to the Netherlands in order to be present in court.
Certain maritime arrangements
In April 2013, the Timorese government notified Australia that it would initiate a process of international arbitration, arguing that the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS), signed in 2006, should be made invalid because it was not negotiated in good faith.
According to the Timorese government, the issue at stake is the spying that was carried out by the Australian government with commercial interests, which calls into question the prerogative of good faith of both parties in the negotiation and makes the CMATS treaty invalid under the clauses of the treaty itself as well as the prevailing international law, namely the Vienna Convention.
Ratified in 2007, CMATS regulates the way the exploitation of natural resources in the Timor Sea should be shared between the two countries, namely the “Greater Sunrise” oil and gas field, whose assets are estimated to be worth about 40 billion US dollars. The oil treaty between the two countries requires East Timor to drop its requests for permanent maritime boundaries for 50 years, a stiplulation that works very much in Australia's favor: all of Greater Sunrise would fall within Timorese territory if boundaries were drawn in accordance with international law.
These issues are illustrated in a documentary produced by ABC Australia, Taxing times in Timor, which investigates the dispute between the Timorese government and the giants of the oil and gas industry:
The news from December lead the current Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, Xanana Gusmão, to react with indignation against Australia's conduct in local media. According to an article [tet, en] published by Tempo Semanal newspaper on December 11, Xanana accused the Australian government of interfering with justice and having a lack of ethics in the relations between neighboring countries. He also stressed that Australia spying on Timor was a matter of national security.
On the Australian side, Attorney General George Brandis, who authorized ASIO's operation, defended the legality of the raid, invoking reasons of national interest. This, because according to Brandis, the revelation of the identity of former spies who served in the Australian Secret Services may jeopardize national security.
On the other hand, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer, who negotiated CMATS with the government of East Timor in 2004, accused the current Timorese executive of opportunism for putting the treaty at stake. Right after his mandate in parliament came to an end, Alexander Downer became a consultant for Woodside Petroleum, a company that belongs to the consortium that exploits the fields of Greater Sunrise in the Timor Sea. This is one of the reasons why the former collaborator of the Australian Secret Services wanted to testify in favor of East Timor.
Protest in East Timor against the “return of colonialism”. Facebook page of Mario Amaral
On the Timorese side, the diplomatic incident has been interpreted as an injustice comparable to others from throughout the history of the country. For instance, when Australia opted to illegally explore East Timor's mineral resources in 1989, by recognizing the de facto Indonesian integration of the territory and turning a blind eye towards the atrocities and human rights violations committed during the Indonesian occupation from 1975-1999.
Demonstrators and politicians have stressed the unequal rights between rich and poor countries that this case represents, arguing that Australia's political and economic power is being used to perpetuate this kind of asymmetric relationship.
Read also: Australia Spied on Timor Leste to Gain Commercial Advantage (December 13, 2013)

author: Marisa Gonçalves


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Vargas Llosa’s ‘Conversation in The Cathedral’, 140 Characters at a Time · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

The anonymous Twitter user behind the handle @EnLaCatedral is determined to share [es] the whole content of “Conversation in the Cathedral“, a novel by Literature Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, 140 characters at a time. The novel by the Peruvian author begins with these words republished by @EnLaCatedral:
DESDE LA puerta de La Crónica Santiago mira la avenida Tacna, sin amor: automóviles, edificios desiguales y descoloridos
— Conversación (@EnLaCatedral) enero 16, 2014
FROM THE entrance of [newspaper] La Crónica, Santiago looks at Tacna Avenue, loveless: automobiles, uneven and washed out buildings


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3 Keys to Understanding Burkina Faso’s Anti-President Compaoré Protests · Global Voices
Rakotomalala

Widespread protests erupted in Burkina Faso on January 18 against constitutional reforms proposed by President Blaise Campaoré. But what do the protests mean, and why have the reforms inspired such a passionate reaction from the people of Burkina Faso? What would the implications of a prolonged crisis be for the region?
What sparked the protests?
The demonstrations were organised by the opposition to protest a change to the constitution that would allow Campaoré, who has been in power since 1987, to run for a third five-year term come the 2015 elections. This revision to article 37 of the constitution, which currently stipulates that presidential mandates must be limited to two five-year terms, is strongly opposed within some political circles as well as by voters.
Jan18th, 2014. #Burkina. Another mvt like this and Blaise #Campaoré (27 years in power) will step down. Big Up! pic.twitter.com/l1aghkxYGw
— Alain Doh Bi (@AlainDohBi) January 19, 2014
The two-term limit was approved in 2005 and cannot be applied retroactively, so Compaoré was allowed to run for office despite his nearly two decades of rule at the time.
The beginnings of opposition to the proposed change began to emerge the week before the changes when 75 members of the ruling party quit  in protest of the absence of consensus within the party.
An already controversial government
This isn't the first time President Compaoré's authority has been called into question during his current term of office. In February 2011, protests flared up in the capital Ouagadougou and across the rest of the region, following deadly beating of a student by police in Kougougou.
Blaise Compaoré, President of Burkina Faso since 1987. Via Wikipedia CC-NC-BY
To quell the dissent, Compaoré brought together the governors of all 13 regions and proposed measures to increase the purchasing power of students via increases in scholarships and stipends. Police violence and the murder of the president's opponents seemed to increase between 1990 and 2000. The common thread linking the riots was objection to rampant corruption and the presidential family's ever increasing wealth.
What the crisis means for the region
The effects of these demonstrations will be felt beyond the borders of Burkina Faso. Compaoré invited Guillaume Soro, president of the neighboring Côte d'Ivoire's Senate, to mediate the crisis. Following the November 2010 presidential election, that country experienced a drawn-out governance crisis after the two opposing leaders, Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara, both claimed victory. Protests and all-out violence marked the period from the initial standoff, as neither Gbagbo nor Ouattara showed signs of backing down. After months of conflict, Ouattara's troops eventually overran the country and stormed the presidential palace and captured Gbagbo with the help of French troops in April 2011.
Ivorian blogger Théophile Kouamouo drew the following conclusions from the meeting between Burkina Faso's president and the president of the Ivory Coast's Senate:
Depuis l’annonce, il y a une dizaine de jours, de la démission collective de plusieurs membres éminents du Congrès pour la démocratie et le progrès (CDP), parti du numéro un burkinabé Blaise Compaoré, les principales figures du régime Ouattara donnent l’impression que la seule idée de voir celui qui règne sur Ouagadougou depuis bientôt 27 ans à la retraite leur fait perdre tout sang-froid et les pousse à douter de leur propre avenir politique [..] Et si c’était finalement Guillaume Soro qui avait le plus à gagner dans le maintien au pouvoir de Blaise Compaoré, qu’il présente volontiers comme son « mentor » ? Il est probable que l’équilibre des relations pas toujours très claires entre Ouattara et son « dauphin constitutionnel » ait besoin de l’entregent du maître de Ouaga pour ne pas sombré dans la franche adversité.
Since the announcement ten days ago of the collective resignation of several senior members of the Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP), Blaise Compaoré's party, key politicians from the Ouattara regime in Cote d'Ivoire seem panicked at the very idea of seeing Compaoré, the one who has ruled over Ouagadougou [capital city of Burkina Faso] for nearly 27 years leave power for good. This possibility seem to have made them realize the fragile nature of their own political futures. […] And so what if it was ultimately Guillaume Soro who had the most to gain by keeping Blaise Compaoré in power, who he freely hails as his “mentor”? It is likely that the not always manifest balance of relations between Ouattara and his “constitutional successor” will require the interpersonal skills of the master of Ouagadougou so as not to slip into open adversity.
Laye Doulougou, a Burkinabe living in Ivory Coast, had a different view on the mediation:
Gardez vous de vous ” immiscer” dans les affaires du Faso lorsque que de bonnes âmes, dans un élan de solidarité sous régionale, l’aident à préserver sa stabilité et sa cohésion.
Nous autres burkinabé avons encore des souvenirs pas si lointains de la longue crise qu’a connue la Côte d’Ivoire et ne voulons pas voir notre pays vivre des moments pareils. Nous croyons en une Afrique stable, une Afrique panafricaine en paix et qui se développe grâce à des médiations de ce genre
Beware of “meddling” in the affaires of Faso while good souls, on the impetus of sub-regional solidarity, try tp help preserve its stability and its cohesion.
For the rest of us Burkinabes, the long crisis suffered by Ivory Coast is a not too distant memory, and we do not want to see our country go through the same thing. We believe in a stable Africa, a peaceful, pan-African Africa developed as a result of this type of mediation

author: Rakotomalala


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Breaking: Huge Explosion Rocks Downtown Cairo  · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

Egyptians just woke up to the sound of a huge explosion, that rocked downtown Cairo. Photographs posted online show a plume of smoke rising above the horizon. Some report the sound of gunshot. Initial reports claim that the explosion happened around the Cairo Police Directorate.
Journalist Rawya Rageh is glued to her TV screen reporting:
State TV interviewing witness saying explosion was in vicinity of Cairo Police Directorate #Egypt
— Rawya Rageh (@RawyaRageh) January 24, 2014
#Egypt state TV talking abt gunmen on motorbikes during q & a with witness, though report not sourced yet
— Rawya Rageh (@RawyaRageh) January 24, 2014
The information so far is sketchy. Online, Cairo residents are scrambling for information.
Mohamed Abdelfattah asks:
Shit anyone heard what I heard ? Was that an explosion I just woke up to it
— Mohamed Abdelfattah (@mfatta7) January 24, 2014
Rania Hafez reports:
The house went on vibrate for a breif moment #cairo #explosion #mohandesin
— Rania Hafez (@rania_hafez) January 24, 2014
Cairo Live 24/7 shares this photograph:
Explosion in downtown #cairo Large plume of smoke from about 1km north of downtown #cairo #egypt pic.twitter.com/tv1snLXOTr
— Cairo Live 24/7 (@cairotoday) January 24, 2014
And this photograph is also making the rounds:
@Bassem_Sabry pic.twitter.com/xYh3kHlOjN
— kha sf (@khasafy) January 24, 2014
And Mahmoud Saber says it could only be from the Cairo Police Directorate:
انا شايف الدخان من الشباك .. الدخان طالع من نحية مديرية امن القاهرة .. ومفيش اي حاجه في المنطقة دي غغير مديرية اامن القاهرة
— Mahmoud Saber (@Aouds) January 24, 2014
I am looking at the smoke from outside my window. The smoke is coming from the direction of the Cairo Police Directorate. There isn't anything in that direction except the police directorate

author: Amira Al Hussaini


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Chikungunya on the Rise in the Caribbean · Global Voices
Jason Nathu

Chikungunya, a mosquito borne illness that causes fever and severe joint pain, has been spreading throughout several Caribbean territories since late last month.
Officials on the island of St. Martin, have begun vector control measures to reduce the population of the aedes aegypti mosquito, which is primarily responsible for the spread of the virus; regional netizens have been using Twitter to give updates:
Mosquito fogging to start Thursday throughout country; Residents urged to step up mosquito elimination measure… http://t.co/t1nqC12kJm
— Mr. St.Maarten (@visitstmaarten) December 11, 2013
Cases have also been reported on the Dutch side of the island:
Minister De Weever: Country wide Clean-Up to Start January 25; 10 Confirmed Cases of Chikungunya; Country rema… http://t.co/ELcvrQSpve
— Mr. St.Maarten (@visitstmaarten) January 21, 2014
Other territories are also taking precautions as cases of the virus have been reported in several other islands:
#CURACAO: Health officials are to take steps to combat the chikungunya virus after detection in the dutch part of St Maarten
— CaribbeanNewsNetwork (@caribbeannewsuk) January 16, 2014
Barbados is still free of the chikungunya disease. This comes as the Ministry of Health … – http://t.co/sQlKiKt4Pf pic.twitter.com/vCFGnRdHti
— Barbados Today (@BarbadosToday) January 18, 2014
Chikungunya spreading in Caribbean. Besides St. Martin/St, Maarten, now in St. Barts, Martinique, Guadeloupe and BVI http://t.co/3E5HHRLUIQ
— David McFadden (@dmcfadd) January 14, 2014
American Science Professor and blogger Jeff Stratford predicted that it is only a matter of time until cases of the virus appear in the United States:
Why do I think Chukungunya is coming to the US? The virus is carried by mosquitoes are are ubiquitous throughout the Americas. All the virus needs to get a foothold in the US is for an infected individual (say a tourist) to bring the virus back to the Americas while the virus is circulating in their bloodstream. Then an “American” mosquito can bite the infected person, pick up the virus, and the cycle starts anew.
Since 2005, cases of the virus has been reported in over 40 countries worldwide.  You can keep track of the regional spread of the disease via Twitter, under the hashtags #chikungunya #caribbean.

author: Jason Nathu


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Chinese Billionaire Activist’s Confession and Release · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Chinese billionaire activist Wang Gongquan, who was arrested and detained for more than 4 months, was released on bail after making “confessions” that he and another citizen right activist Xu Zhiyong had organized and incited criminal activities to assemble a crowd to disrupt order in public space. Offbeat China has the story.


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GV Face: Live from the Arab Bloggers Meeting #AB14 · Global Voices
Global Voices

In this special edition of GV Face, GV veterans and colleagues join us live from Amman, Jordan, where nearly 80 bloggers and activists from throughout the Arab region came together this week for the Fourth Arab Bloggers Meeting. After four days of training and discussion between bloggers, activists, musicians, rappers, teachers and scholars from across the region, there's plenty to talk about.
GVers Advox Director Hisham Almiraat, GV MENA Region Editor Amira Al Hussaini, SMEX Co-Director Mohammed Najem and Berkman Fellow Dalia Othman share with us their insights from this remarkable event.
Learn more about the meeting and read blog posts from throughout the week (in English and Arabic) on the #AB14 website: https://ab14.globalvoicesonline.org/

author: Global Voices


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March in Mozambique Capital Tries to ‘Rescue’ President Armando Guebuza’s Image  · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, was the scene of a march on January 18 organized by the ruling party Frelimo as a way of saluting President Armando Guebuza [PDF] for his deeds and for his administration over the last two mandates. The president, who turned 71 years old on January 20, has been in power since 2004, and his second mandate is expected to come to a close this year.
The march came at a time when political and military instability is rocking the central and southern regions of the country, with confrontations arising between opposition party Renamo‘s armed men and the Mozambican army. The inability of President Guebuza (who is also the president of Frelimo, the only party in power since the country gained its independence in 1975) to solve the conflict has been one of the reasons why he has fallen out of the people's favor. Several media outlets reported that the march aimed at rescuing the president's image.
The image of the “March of the Ducks” was widely shared online. It reads: “Guebuza, my friend, ducks are with you” and “Mozambican ducks really love their leader Armando Guebuza, they're marching in his honour”. The image is a parody of the reason that Mozambique's President Armando Guebuza has given the press for his economic success: he supposedly became rich by selling ducks.
The location of the march, which gathered around 2,000 people, was the same as another rally on October 31, 2013 that protested against a series of kidnappings and the increasing insecurity in the country. That march brought together more than 20,000 people; it was organized by the Mozambican League for Human Rights and led by the League's President Alice Mabota [pt], whose name is beginning to arise as a possible candidate for this year's general elections.
On January 16, Frelimo's First Secretary in the city of Maputo, Hermenegildo Infante, officially launched the march [pt] and pointed a finger at those who criticize the president:
Eu tenho a certeza de que estas pessoas depois de cessar o seu mandato hão-de falar bem do presidente Guebuza.
I am sure that these same people will praise President Guebuza, once he finishes his mandate.
António Jorge, a resident of the city of Maputo, had a different opinion:
Pelo contrario iremos sentir a falta de sermos roubados pelo governo, que inventa leis e não cumprem. Sr. Infante não nos chama de ignorantes como Sr esta ser, solução leia a carta da renamo em imprensa e nos diremos onde vocês estão a falhar e onde eles estão a falhar e daremos soluções. O Sr. tem filhos porque não manda um dos seus filhos a guerra para o senhor poder sentir o que e perder um filho por causa da ignorância, ambição de um punhado de dirigentes do partido FRELIMO. Fala de segurança que segurança o sr tem nas ruas de maputo ? Os primeiros a roubarem a população são os trabalhadores do estado junto com os seus dirigentes, hoje temos mais medo da policia do que do ladrão.
On the contrary, we will miss being robbed by the government, which creates laws, but does not follow them. Mr. Infante does not call us ignorant, as he is showing himself to be; the solution is to read the letter by Renamo in the press and we will say where you have failed and where they have failed and we will give solutions. Don't you have sons? Why don't you send them to war so that you can feel what it is to lose a son because of ignorance, ambition on the part of a bunch of leaders from FRELIMO. You speak of safety, what safety have we got on the streets in Maputo? The first ones to steal from the population are the state workers together with their leaders; today we are more afraid of the police than of the thief.
Photo by @Verdade: “The march organized by the party Frelimo on Saturday, with the aim of praising Mozambican Chief of State Armando Guebuza for his “deeds” thoughout his two mandates and to honor his 71st birthday, has served mainly to make what was already known evident, though some people refuse to recognize it: the unpopularity of the president before the people whom he governs.”
Luis Augusto Maraire, in view of a photo published by @Verdade newspaper of the march, commented that Frelimo should be concerned with the political tension spreading throughout the country instead of organizing a march:
a frelimo gasta tempo fazendo marcha pra exaltação da credibilidade de Guebuza, em vez de pensarem uma forma de pararem e pensar uma forma de parar o derramamento de sangue das zonas centro,norte e sul
Frelimo spends time organizing a march to praise the credibility of Guebuza instead of thinking of a way to stop and think of a way to cease the bloodshed in the central, northern and southern areas.
In the same publication, Cesar Eurico Kawawa, a resident of Nacala on the country's northern coast, praised the initiative of the march:
Guebuza Merece muito mais do que esta simples marcha. Guebuza fez muito para Moçambique e pelo povo moçambicano, mesmo que o SUCESSO ALHEIO incomode aos que se recusam a ver os feitos deste Herói da Luta Contra a Pobreza! Bem haja Guebuza!
Guebuza deserves much more than this simple march. Guebuza has done a lot for Mozambique and for the Mozambican people, even if OTHER PEOPLE'S SUCCESS upset those who refuse to see the good deeds of this Hero in the Fight Against Poverty! Well done Guebuza!
Other people criticized the use of state assets for the benefit of party politics, such as a mini-bus from the Education Directorate to carry people to the march.
Beto Dias Pikles slammed the fact that the Public TV Channel was used to broadcast the march:
Os verdadeiros mocambicanos nao aderiram as idiotices cometidas pela Classe Governante pese embora seja um direito constitucional. Algo que deixa-me estupefato eh o porque duma [televisão] publica onde os impostos de milhoes de cidadaos a faz funcionar vai transmitir em directo uma marcha? Habitualmente minhas sobrinhas tem estado em frente ao ecra logo pela manha pra acompanhar programas que elas gostam e hoje a TV foi mais uma vez partidarizada.
True Mozambicans did not join the idiocies committed by the governing class, although it is a constitutional right. Something that leaves me speechless is why would public [television], which subsists on the taxes of millions of citizens, broadcast such a march live? Usually my nieces stand in front of the screen first thing in the morning to watch the programs they like, and today the TV was once again partisan.
The video below shows supporters in one of the main streets of the city center of Maputo:
The march was reported on Twitter under the hashtag #MarchaSaudaçãoGuebuza (March to salute Guebuza). Ulla Andren, the ambassador from Sweden in Mozambique, found the humor in the situation:
Frelimo organiza hoje marcha e cômico em saudação ao Presidente Guebuza em Maputo com lema “Guebuza – os moçambicanos estão contigo”.
— Ulla Andren (@UAndren) 18 janeiro 2014
Frelimo organizes a march today and comical greeting to President Guebuza in Maputo under the motto “Guebuza – Mozambicans are with you”.

author: Dércio Tsandzana