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Mozambique criminalizes child marriage · Global Voices
Bendito Zivane

Mozambique school girls. Photo by Mr.Fink's Finest, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
On July 18, the Assembly of the Republic of Mozambique passed a law criminalizing marriage between an adult and a person under the age of 18.
The new law states that an adult who marries children and adolescents is to be punished with up to 12 years in prison, and a family member who forces the child to accept marriage will be punished with up to eight years.
Upon the law's approval, members of civil society organizations, who have pushed for such a law for years, shared hugs and smiles.
Mozambique has one of the highest rates of premature unions in the world. A study by the Southern Africa Network against Child Trafficking ranks Mozambique the 11th country in the world with the highest rates of such unions and the 2nd among the countries of Southern Africa.
Official statistics indicate that about 500,000 Mozambican women aged 20-24 married before the age of 18, and about 57,000 married before their 15th birthday.
According to several studies, premature marriage is a decisive factor for girls to drop out of school. It also exposes them to sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS or obstetric fistula, which contributes to maternal and child mortality.
The president of the Children's Parliament — a civic organization working with children and adolescents from Mozambique — Kino Fernando Caetano said that:
A lei recentimente aprovada constitui uma grande alegria e vitória para as crianças e a sociedade moçambicana no geral. A lei é resultado de um verdadeiro esforco conjunto, que envolveu o Governo de Moçambique (MGCAS), a Assembleia da República e a Sociedade Civi (CECAP).
The recently-passed law is a victory for children and Mozambican society in general. The law is the result of a true effort involving the Government of Mozambique (MGCAS), the Assembly of the Republic and the Civi Society (CECAP).
Speaking with Global Voices, Dércio Chiemo, a local teacher and social activist, points out that while the law is a victory for all actors working to eradicate premature marriages, the communities that still engage in the practice will need support:
É uma vitoria para as organizações que se uniram e lutaram para que essa proposta de lei fosse aprovada. É também uma grande vitoria para todas aquelas vozes e gritos que não se faziam ouvir: gritos de raparigas que foram obrigadas a se casar prematuramente, sem a sua vontade sem o seu consentimento, sem ser ouvidas. […]
[Mas] Não podemos pensar que [pelo] facto de existir essa lei os casamentos prematuros vão parar, isso demostra que a partir de hoje temos que começar a trabalhar para que as pessoas tenham o conhecimento da lei e com isso ajudar a diminuir ou mesmo acabarmos com os casamentos prematuros.
It is a victory for the organizations that came together and fought to get this law passed. It is also a great victory for all those unheard voices and screams: screams of girls who were forced to marry prematurely, unwillingly without their consent, without being heard. […]
[But] We can't think that [only because] this law exists, premature marriages will end, it shows that starting today we will have to start working so that people have the knowledge of the law and thus help to decrease or even end premature marriages.
For Júlio Mutisse, a bachelor of law from Eduardo Mondlane University, the problem of premature marriages go beyond the legal issue, as it's necessary to understand the phenomenon as a whole:
O desafio é grande gente. Ultrapassa a aprovação da lei.  Tal como eu vocês estão cientes que o país tem muitas e boas leis com medidas sérias sobre determinados comportamentos mas continuamos a assistir a esses comportamentos recorrentemente.
É um bom passo sim, mas há que entender este fenômeno e atacar suas causas. Por que é que o casamento estava regulado do jeito que estava antes? Como era a sociedade? Este fenômeno é novo? Temos que trabalhar nas causas e com muita acuidade.
The challenge is big. It goes beyond the approval of the law. As we know, our country has many good laws with serious measures about certain behaviors but we continue to witness those behaviors repeatedly.
That's a good step, but you have to understand this phenomenon and tackle its causes. Why was the marriage regulated the way it was before? What was society like? Is this phenomenon new? We have to work on the causes and with great wit.
Meanwhile, Fernando Moiane states that the biggest problem lies in the customs and cultural habits of Mozambicans:
Precisamos sim combater os casamentos prematuros mas eu acho que o parlamento fez pouco o tpc pos [sic] esta lei nao encontra suporte naquilo que é a cultura , usos e custumes dos Mocambicanos [sic]. Para me [sic] esta lei esta condenada ao fracasso pos [sic] nao [sic] reflete nada ao conjunto de usos e custumes seculares do povo africano no geral e Mocambicano [sic] em particular.
PS: preparem as cadeias para irem recolher todos os homens de Chibuto, Homuine, mutarara, macomia etc.
Yes, we need to fight against premature marriages but I think that parliament has done little work, this law finds no support in what is the culture, uses and customs of the Mozambicans. For me, this law is doomed to failure since it does not reflect the set of secular uses and customs of the African people in general and Mozambican in particular.
PS: Prepare the chains to collect all the men from Chibuto, Homuine, Mutarara, Macomia, etc.

author: Bendito Zivane


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Nigerian creatives bid farewell to Toni Morrison, who wrote race into American consciousness · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Toni Morrison speaking at a tribute to Nigerian author Chinua Achebe at the 50-year anniversary of “Things Fall Apart” in Town Hall, New York, February 26, 2008. Image by Angela Radulescu, via Flickr: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Toni Morrison, the trailblazing American author, died August 5, 2019, “following a short illness,” according to a statement by her family. Morrison was born 88 years ago in Lorain, Ohio, United States:
We are profoundly sad to report that Toni Morrison has died at the age of eighty-eight.
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019 pic.twitter.com/DWnElCpMKc
— Alfred A. Knopf (@AAKnopf) August 6, 2019
Morrison was a groundbreaking author who understood the power of language as “an oppressive or uplifting force —she refused to let her words be marginalized.” Her books were written from the perspective of the minority and powerless—a black African American.
Morrison not only mentored many generations of African American writers — but she also inspired many Nigerian writers who met her in her books. In 2008, Morrison spoke at a PEN America tribute to iconic Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of “Things Fall Apart.”
Like Achebe, Morrison interrogated issues of race and power in her novels. Nigerian literati remember Morrison for the profound impact she had on West African writing and publishing.
Over a sixty-year writing career, Toni Morrison published eleven novels, five children’s books, two plays, a song cycle and an opera. Some of her literary canons include: “The Bluest Eye” (1970), “Sula” (1973), “Song of Solomon” (1977), “Tar Baby” (1981), “Beloved” (1987), “Jazz” (1992), “Paradise” (1997), “Home” (2012) and “God Help the Child” (2015). Morrison also taught literature as a professor at Princeton University.
In the 1970s, Morrison was “largely ignored as a writer” but the next decade heralded the acknowledgment of her work with many awards. Morrison's novel “Beloved” won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Fiction. The first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, Morrison's novels were “characterized by visionary force and poetic import [that] gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
United States President Barack Obama awarded Morrison the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.
‘Toni reaches us deeply, using a tone that is lyrical, precise, distinct, and inclusive.’ — President Obama gave Toni Morrison the ultimate tribute while awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Morrison died today at 88. pic.twitter.com/1XGe8Fs73e
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 6, 2019
Ayodele Olofintuade Nigerian writer celebrates an ancestor who has now being deified:
Toni Morrison joined the ancestors, she lived a worthy life, a full one. Mà j'ọ́ọ́kún, mà j'ekólò, oun tì wọ̀n njẹ l'àjúlè ọ́run ni kò bá wọn jẹ.
— ayodele olofintuade (@aeolofintuade) August 6, 2019
Toni Morrison joined the ancestors, she lived a worthy life, a full one. Do not eat slugs, turn down offers of worm, feast at the table of the Irúnmolè [deity], of the Óósa [god].
Morrison cannot die, exclaimed visual artist Victor Ehikhamenor:
When you are Toni Morrison, you don’t die, you never die. She birthed eternity with the canonical works she created. Let the world not mourn by crying their bluest eyes out for one of our most beloved! ??
— victor ehikhamenor (@victorsozaboy) August 6, 2019
Nze Slyva Ifedigbo was full of gratitude:
Thank you for the stories.
Rest in peace. #ToniMorrison pic.twitter.com/FWnDX3oPS3
— Sylva Nze Ifedigbo (@nzesylva) August 6, 2019
Writer Ukamaka Olisakwe prayed for the eternal repose of Morrison's soul [Ka mkpulu obi gi naa na ndokwa]:
Sleep well, Toni Morrison. Ka mkpulu obi gi naa na ndokwa.
— Ukamaka Olisakwe (@MsOlisakwe) August 6, 2019
She called us—at the margin of society—”beloved,” wrote poet Gbenga Adesina:
Toni Morrison solved the problem of Naipaul for me. Born a year apart, both at the margin of society. Naipaul internalized the colonial shame & wrote great sentences in service of cruelty. Toni insisted on that margin as a place of insight & subjectivity, she called us beloved.
— Gbenga Adesina (@Gbadenaija) August 6, 2019
Ike Anya bid a safe journey [ije oma] to the lion [agu]:
Ije oma, agu https://t.co/IommMZTfyl
— Ike Anya (@ikeanya) August 6, 2019
Morrison as a guest lecturer at the US Military Academy, March 28, 2013. US Army photo by Mike Strasser/USMA PAO via Flickr: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Writer Temitayo Olofinlua, from Ibadan, Nigeria, narrates that she read “Beloved” at university but did not understand it at first until her lecturer discussed it in such a way that made the author think the professor was talking about another book and decided to read it over again:
It is the way that Morrison wields language that makes her unforgettable. She makes words sing in your heart even though your head does not understand it yet. However, after your heart has sung the lines, again and again, your head gets it.  And with that language, she wrote about the struggles of African Americans in America.
Morrison wrote about what it means to be African American in a way that even I, a young Nigerian student at the time, connected with the experiences. Her stories were human enough for me to relate with. That is why Morrison's novels remain even more relevant today, as they were decades ago when she wrote them. This transcendental power of writing is what Morrison possesses, this ability to speak through her words, making the works echo through times, that is what makes her special. She lives on through her works.
Poet and linguist Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún describes Morrison as a “force” who granted black people an existence in “the world as valid and authentic as others”:
As a black woman writing in the world, and one who decidedly chose a spot far away from the mainstream and made it hers, she was always a force for all the world. In her books, black people and black women all over the world have come to find their way of existing in the world as valid and authentic as others’.
…I will remember her with these memorable lines from her Nobel lecture: ‘We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives…’ and more profoundly, ‘Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.’ For this, and for her work as a strong forebear, I will cherish her memory and the challenge she has left for us.
In an interview with the Paris Review, Morrison — who ordinarily abhorred labels — made an exception and embraced the title “black woman writer.” She admitted that her work as a writer is to make “meaning out in the world” in response to the “incredible violence” and “willful ignorance” she witnessed throughout her lifetime:
It is not possible for me to be unaware of the incredible violence, the willful ignorance, the hunger for other people’s pain. I’m always conscious of that, though I am less aware of it under certain circumstances. … What makes me feel as though I belong here — out in this world — is not the teacher, not the mother, not the lover, but what goes on in my mind when I am writing.
Then, I belong here and then, all of the things that are disparate and irreconcilable can be useful. Struggling through the work is extremely important—more important to me than publishing it.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Security forces in Guinea now have the right to use deadly force · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

Guinea's Parliament via Soman/Wikimedia Commons: CC BY 2.5
On June 25, 2019, the Guinean National Assembly adopted a law concerning the use of firearms by security forces:
This law establishes several justifications for the use of force, notably to defend space occupied by police, without making it clear that firearms are only to be used when the threat of death or serious injury exists.
The law sparked a strong reaction from human rights nongovernmental organizations and opposition groups, who fear the law will be used to grant impunity and target dissent ahead of 2020 elections when President Alpha Condé will seek a third term.
In 2017, a joint report by several Guinean human rights NGOs, published with support from Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT-France) and the Human Rights League (LDH), raised concerns over a legal loophole in the new penal code that exists in the definition of the right to self-defense:
The new draft of the Guinean penal code does not adequately define self-defense and the state of necessity for self-defense. Human tragedies resulting from a disproportionate use of force are regular in Guinea, such as incidents that took place on August 16 in Conakry [the capital], (a peaceful march during which a young man died).
Critics of the law have questioned its benefits in a country where security forces often use excessive force.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch made a joint statement, referencing demonstrators and security forces killed in recent years:
Dozens of demonstrators and two law enforcement officers were killed in 2012-2013, on the eve of legislative elections. At least 12 of whom were killed, six of those by gun fire, and numerous others injured, in the run-up and following the 2015 presidential election. At least 21 people died at protests in 2018, of which at least 12 were victims of deadly fire by police forces. It should be noted a police officer and soldier were also killed by protesters.
This excessive force occurs despite Guinea's commitment toward international norms regarding the use of weapons. Guinean journalist Alpha Amadou Diallo cites a release from the civil society organization, Cellule Balai Citoyen Association, that address these international norms:
International norms regarding human rights stipulate that firearms must never be used to simply disperse a crowd. If self-defense to disperse violent demonstrations is inevitable, security forces must only use the minimum amount of force necessary to control the situation by relying on the proportionate use of less lethal weapons.
The approval of this law coincides with anticipated presidential elections in 2020, during a period where the risk of violence increases due to President Alpha Condé forging ahead with his plan to amend the constitution that would allow him to seek a third term — something Article 27 of the constitution does not currently allow.
Cameroonian journalist and activist, J. Rémie Ngono, remarks:
Foreseeing protests against his third term, Alpha Condé has voted for a law granting the right for soldiers to pick off protesters like sitting ducks.
The opposition equally contested this law desired by the presidential majority. Guinean journalist Mamadou Baïlo Keïta reports:
The document sparked a lively debate among National Assembly members. The parliamentary group of the Liberal-Democrats made up of elected officials from the UFDG [Union Democratic Forces of Guinea] rejected the proposed law, submitted to parliament by the government.
As many observers have noticed, the principal risk is that police will act with impunity. Thus, for researcher Jim Wormington, at the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch covering West Africa:
Guinea has a new law which seeks to protect soldiers who use deadly force from judicial proceedings.
With Guinea on the brink of a political crisis, the law could promote impunity in the case of new human rights violations.
https://t.co/oDBB7XDju6
— Jim Wormington (@jwormington) July 4, 2019
This concern is shared by opposition leader Bah Oury:
The reoccurring tragedies that Guinea has experienced throughout its history should push to more strictly regulate the use of firearms to maintain order. This permissive law is dangerous and a step in the wrong direction.
https://t.co/ktg21oHe4A
— Bah Oury (@bahourykigna) July 8, 2019
For Nouhou Baldé, journalist and political, economic, and social analyst, the potential for abuse is clear :
A Dangerous #law in #Guinea : #soldiers authorized to shoot (with #weapons of #war), @guineematin, @FrancoisPatuel, @Amnesty, @hrw, #Guinea, https://t.co/WPVM8ELmCm
— Nouhou Baldé (@Nouhoubalde) June 27, 2019
With a contested independent national electoral commission (CENI), and judicial authorities backing President Alpha Condé, the introduction of this law is the latest act designed to intimidate any opposition to attempts by the government to impose a third term on Guineans.

author: Abdoulaye Bah


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Sentencing of Turkish social media influencer sparks debate on free speech · Global Voices
Sevgi Yagmur Bulut

Sign displayed at the Istanbul Museum of Innocence. Photo by Filip Noubel, used with permission.
A Turkish Twitter celebrity is being sued for allegedly advocating drug consumption, and attempting to use social media to overthrow the government. The Twitter celebrity, Pınar Karagöz, claims her tweets were in fact making reference to a Netflix series.
Karagöz, who is better known online by the nickname Pucca, posted a tweet in 2018 in which she said that “hundreds of poor people are able to earn their bread by selling drugs”.
This tweet has been introduced as evidence in a court case charging Karagöz with the crime of promoting drug use which is an actual crime in Turkey . Although Karagöz said the tweet was published “for fun” in reference to the Netflix series Narcos that features Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar, she was initially handed a 7-year jail sentence on 12 July 2019.
Upon learning of her sentencing, Karagöz published an emotional video in which she says—her voiced choked with tears—that “I've learned that I've been handed a 7-year prison sentence because of my tweet about Escobar.”
Espiri olsun diye attığı bir tweet yüzünden 7 yıl ceza aldı bu kadın yazıklar olsun bunu yapanlara şaka gibisiniz artık yeter ! #pucca #ProtestoEdiyorum @PuCCaa pic.twitter.com/oLLAGKeuZN
— Öylemiymiş! (@oylemiymis1) July 12, 2019
This woman was sentenced to 7 years because of a tweet that she sent as a joke.
Later, the court reduced the sentence to 5 years and 10 months in prison and a fine of over US$ 11,000. Karagöz then tweeted:
Escobar izleyip burada yorumlamayın, 5-10 yıl hapis alırsınız… müthiş bir ülke yemin ederim…. pic.twitter.com/bNT7rGGjhL
— PuCCa (@PuCCaa) December 20, 2018
Do not watch and comment about the Escobar series here, you'll get 5-10 years imprisonment… What a great country…
The other crime with which Karagöz was charged was using social media in an attempt to overthrow the government. The court's decision made the claim that “taking into account the impact of social media in society, it is possible to conclude that in some countries, social media has managed to overthrow the government by uniting people under specific ideologies.”
As Karagöz's video started to circulate on social media, certain netizens noted that the punishment was not fair, considering the charges usually brought against serious offenders such as rapists:
7 sene hapis ve 4.000 para cezasına çarptırıldı Hayır katil olduğu ya da insanlara tecavüz ettiği için değil, anne ve bir yazar olduğu için. Narcos dizisini izleyip Escobar ile ilgili bir tweet attığı için.Uyuşturucuya özendirdiği için Mükemmel(!) ülke mükemmel(!) adalet. #pucca pic.twitter.com/SnrQo86KQJ
— Bûse (@buseluna) July 12, 2019
She was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of 4,000 lira. Not because she is a murderer or because she is a rapist. But because she is a mother, and a writer. For watching Narcos tv series and tweeting about Escobar. For encouraging drugs. Perfect (!) Country  Perfect (!) Justice
Düşündükçe aklım almıyor. Dizilerde uyuşturucu kaçakçıları kahraman yapılıyor, ufacık çocuklar tecavüze uğrayıp tecavüzcüsüyle evlendiriliyor ama bir sosyal medya fenomeni Escobar hakkında tweet atınca 7 yıl hapis alıyor. Başka bir boyutta yaşıyoruz. Ya da yaşıyor muyuz? #pucca
— Özgür Uysal (@etoburzebra) July 20, 2019
I don't get it.  In the (Turkish) series drug traffickers become heroes, raped teenage children marry the person who raped them, but when she (Pucca) tweeted about Escobar, she gets seven years prison. We live in another dimension. Or are we even alive?
Yet others said she deserved the sentence because she set a “bad example” for Turkish youth.
Senin uyuşturucuyu özendirici mesajını on binlerce genç gördü. Aralarından sadece biri bile merak edip bu zehirle tanıştıysa, o gencin hayatının değeri 7 yıl hapis midir?
O genç senin çocuğun da olabilir.
Şimdi ağlamayı kes ve yediğin naneye bu pencereden bakmayı dene #pucca! https://t.co/ZyLqEIE5wB
— Mehmet Ali ÖNEL (@Mehmet_Ali_ONEL) July 13, 2019
Tens of thousands of young people have seen your drug-promoting message. If only one of them ever wondered about this poison and tried this poison, can that young person's life match the seven year prison sentence? That young person could have been your child. Now stop crying and look at what you have done from this perspective, try looking through that window.
#Pucca hapse girmeyi haketti
1 genç onun yüzünden uyuşturucuya başlasaydı vebali kimde olacaktı
7 yıl hapis 1 TÜRK gencinin hayatı için az https://t.co/uwBAMfNpcf
— Ceren Laz Kızı ⚡ LAZ-400 ?? (@CerenLazKizi) July 12, 2019
Pucca deserves to go to jail. Who would be to blame, if just one youngster started drugs because of her. 7 years in prison for 1 young Turk is not enough.
The debate took an unexpected international turn as Pablo Escobar's son joined the debate by starting to follow Karagöz on Instagram.
Pablo Escobar'ın oğlu Pucca'yı Instagram'dan takip etti pic.twitter.com/S3LaaUKOXK
— İzmir (@tabikiizmir) July 17, 2019
Pablo Escobar's son followed Pucca on Instagram pic.twitter.com/S3LaaUKOXK
— İzmir (@tabikiizmir) July 17, 2019
As comments continue to develop, and more people take sides, the conversation around Karagöz's Tweets case has reopened a debate around censorship in today's Turkey. Some netizens have expressed the view that Karagöz's experience has reinforced their fear of writing what they think, particularly if they are critical of, or opposed to President Recep Erdoğan's policies.
bi an bu tweet yuzunden hapis yatarim korkusu geldi allah belami versn sadece cok yorgunum
— catsu (@thequanium) July 19, 2019
I fear imprisonment now because of this tweet, goddamn, I'm just too tired
Turkey has indeed lost a number of political freedoms in recent years, as documented in scores of international country reports. The 2019 Freedom House Freedom in the World Report states that self-censorship is on the increase. According to the report:
“While not every utterance that is critical of the government will be punished, the arbitrariness of prosecutions, which often result in pretrial detention and carry the risk of lengthy prison terms, is increasingly creating an atmosphere of self-censorship.”
Clearly, the court's decision in Karagöz’s case is perceived by Turkey's social media users as a warning to think twice before expressing themselves on social media.

author: Sevgi Yagmur Bulut


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Witch-hunting still claims lives in rural India · Global Voices
Anumeha Verma

A village near Jamshedpur in Jharkhand. Picture courtesy Anumeha Verma
On 20 July, four elderly people were lynched by a mob in the Gumla District of Jharkhand, India after being accused of practicing witchcraft. According to reports, the victims were accused of causing a man's death and they were eventually found guilty of witchcraft by a Panchayat (a village assembly). The victims were dragged out of their homes and beaten to death by masked men wielding sticks. Eight of the attackers were subsequently arrested by police.
According to police data published by The Times of India, witch-hunting in Jharkhand has claimed 123 lives from May 2016 to May 2019.  Across the country, 134 people were killed for the alleged use of “black magic” in 2016, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
“Witch-hunting is not new in Jharkhand,” says Prem Chand, the Founding Chairman of the Free Legal Aid Committee (FLAC) in Jharkhand, in a telephonic interview. FLAC has been instrumental in bringing about legislation against witch-hunting in Jharkhand. The organisation first began working in this area in 1991 when a woman was accused by her neighbour of causing a boy’s death. An irate mob attacked her and killed her husband and son. She sustained injuries.
When Prem Chand and his colleagues visited the offenders in the prison, they were met with defiance:
They told us that they stood by their accusation. They also shared a belief that when the blood of a woman branded as a witch falls on the ground, she loses her so-called powers of sorcery.
Prem Chand says that it affects specific sectors of the population:
Usually, it is the women from the weaker sections of the society and economically backward regions that are targeted. The victims are mostly Adivasis, Harijans and Dalits. It is an assault on the dignity of women and a violation of constitutional rights for a dignified life for every human being.
Activists say that deeply rooted superstitions prevalent in the hinterlands are a major cause behind the practice. A lack of education, poor health facilities and economic backwardness mark the regions where these practices are prevalent.
The cases so far show that often a rumor started by someone is enough to get the ball rolling. Despite the laws enacted by various Indian states which declare witch-hunting to be illegal, participants in these cases see it as a form of self-defense.
It is also used as an excuse for grabbing resources owned by women, exacting revenge or even exploiting women for sex. According to Prem Chand:
The premise is that once you brand a woman as a witch, you can subject her to any treatment. However, it is important to note that the practice is used as a justification for exploitation and is not a cause behind it per se.
Ironically, the panchayat often provides tacit approval for branding a person a witch even if does not pass ruling on the punishment to be meted out.
In addition to the elected panchayat, there are self-styled caste panchayats with no legal mandate whatsoever that operate in certain parts of the country. These bodies pass verdicts and mete out punishments and remain largely unchallenged. An incident in Ajmer district of Rajasthan in 2017 reported involvement of caste panchayat leading to the death of a 40-year-old woman.
Legally, the courts can take action against such verdicts in case of both elected panchayats and caste panchayats. However, the victims seldom get the opportunity to reach a court of law before they become targets of mobs.
Witch-hunting across India
Jharkhand has recorded the highest number of crimes committed in the name of witch-hunting but it is not the only state.
People blame accused witches for causing a slew of misfortunes: the death of a person or animal, droughts, crop failures, etc. The attacks on these women (and some men) are vicious and inhuman. At times, the accusations and punishment are meted out by their families.
Some have lived to tell the tale and fight. Chutni Mahato of Saraikela in Jharkhand is one of them. People from the region call her a ‘tigress’. She was accused of practicing witchcraft in 1995. Since then, she has transformed into an activist crusading against the victimization of women in the name of witch-hunting with the help of NGOs working to end the practice.
Chutni expresses how the lack of resources often makes it a struggle to fight against the practice. “I wish there was more support from the authorities and government for the work that we are doing here. However, I have suffered because of this practice. When someone comes to me for help, I am always going to stand by them,” she said in a telephonic interview.
Both the survivors and activists feel that there is a lack of public opinion in support of ending witch-hunting. The activists who were interviewed for this story expressed a paucity of political will and intellectual engagement to provide the momentum required for the campaign against the heinous practice to succeed.
A silver lining in this dark cloud is that people working against the practice believe that the situation can be turned around. According to Prem Chand:
The efforts for ending witch hunting can be modeled on the same principles that the government has used for promoting other social problems such as the literacy mission. Also, the intellectuals would have to lend their support to the cause to mold the public opinion.

author: Anumeha Verma


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China’s hunger for minerals stirs resistance in rural Thailand · Global Voices
The Isaan Record

Open-pan salt cooking at a factory in Kut Ruea village in Sakon Nakhon province. The workers are paid according to the amount of salt they produce for the day– about 350 baht (11.3 US Dollars). Visarut Sankham/The Isaan Record
This edited article is from The Isaan Record, an independent news site in Thailand, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. This story is a joint production between The Isaan Record and China Dialogue.
The future of a Thai-Chinese potash mine planned in northeastern Thailand is mired in uncertainty as villagers are putting up fierce opposition, fueled by concerns about livelihood security, health, and the environment.
After a protest group led by local women blocked access to drilling sites last year, the Chinese mining company filed a flurry of lawsuits against the villagers seeking 3.6 million baht (about 116,800 USD) in compensation
Meanwhile, questions linger whether the outgoing military government tweaked legislation to the benefit of foreign mining companies while neglecting environmental protection and community rights.
China’s global success in agricultural production is owed in part to a supply of cheap fertilizers. The country is the world’s largest consumer of potash, a natural mineral that boost yields and enhances crops’ water retention and disease resistance.
Chinese farmers depend on potash imports mainly from Canada, Russia, and Belarus. But as prices of the mineral remain high with a surge of almost 25 percent in the past year, the country has pushed to develop new and cheaper sources.
It turned its eyes on the rich potash reserves in Thailand’s Northeast region.
The region, which has long mined salt, is sitting on two major potash deposits discovered in the 1970s, known as the Khorat Basin and the Sakon Nakhon Basin. Yet in the following decades, the natural resource was left largely unexploited because of strong local opposition, environmental concerns, and legal restrictions.
After a military junta gained power in a coup in 2014, however, it announced plans to increase mineral resource extraction in the country to boost the economy.
In the same year, Chinese state-owned China Ming Ta Potash Corporation gained permission to explore 120,000 rai (about 47,500 acres) of land in the northeastern province of Sakon Nakhon. Apichat Sayasiyot, China Ming Ta’s manager said:
China and Thailand are both looking for new potash supply sources to cut import and production costs. Thailand has potash but needs the help of the Chinese to extract it. It’s a Thai-Chinese collaboration that will benefit both parties.
In the rural district of Wanon Niwat in Sakon Nakhon province, people responded first with fear, and then with anger to the news of the planned potash mine. Local officials had failed to sufficiently inform the residents of 82 villages that their homes were now part of a mining area.
“The company had started exploring at two drilling sites but people in the community were left without any information about the project,” said Mali Saengbunsiri, a 50-year-old farmer and grandmother of four.
Farming communities in Wanon Niwat depend on the area’s fertile soils, rivers, lakes, and wetlands that form a delicate ecosystem which provides them with food and other resources.
Many villagers in the district worry that the mining project will destroy farmlands, damage the environment, and poison water sources, as well as imperil people’s health. Mali added:
Just imagine the impact of a huge industrial mining project here. The scary thing about salt is that it is capable of damaging just about everything.
Potash mining produces large amounts of salt as a byproduct that can pose a threat to the area’s soil, water, and animal life. In a region that already suffers from salt-affected soils, locals fear that the project will turn fields into barren land and kill off their crops.
If the rain washes the salt into rivers, lakes, and wetlands, few freshwater organisms can survive. It could end livelihoods based on fishing in the district’s Huay Thong lake, a body of water that is also the main water source for thousands of people. Mali said:
We worry that all the fish will die and the soil will be so salty that we can’t grow any crops on our land anymore.
We don’t know how the company intends to protect us from the dust and salty water coming from the salt mountain in the mine. How effective is it going to be?
The risk of salt dust being blown by the wind from the mine into closeby communities is raising concerns about the potential impact on people’s health.
Locals and experts are also concerned that large-scale potash mining will lead to the appearance of dangerous sinkholes. A rock salt operation in a nearby district caused one such hole that grew into a massive, 15-meter-deep pit the size of a football field.
China Ming Ta seeks to reassure local residents of its safety plans to alleviate these environmental and health risks. It pledges to implement measures to prevent the discharge of dust and salty water into the environment.
A small hole in the ground next to the salt farm close to Non Sabaeng village in Sakon Nakhon province grew into a 15-meter deep pit, the size of a football field. Sinkholes are common in areas of salt production where groundwater is pumped up to the surface over the years. Visarut Sankham/The Isaan Record
But the mining company’s assurances come too late to allay the fears of the people of Wanon Niwat. Fueled by the sense that fateful decisions had been made over their heads, villagers in the district organized an anti-mining group in 2016.
Led mainly by middle-aged and older women, the group has teamed up with activists, academics, and non-governmental organizations to oppose the potash mine. They put up protest banners, organized public forums, and submitted petitions to officials and the company to stop the project.
In February 2018, the group escalated their protest and blocked the road to the site of the fourth borehole, effectively stopping the company from moving drilling equipment into the area.
The company plans to set up 60 drilling sites in order to evaluate the quality of the potash before establishing the mine. Earlier, protesters also successfully blocked the site of the planned third borehole. This leaves the company with only two operational drilling sites.
In December 2018, the group organized a five-day protest march under the banner of “Wanon Walk” through four districts of the province, drawing about 200 supporters. Photo by Luke Duggleby for MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum.
In response to the local activists’ persistent opposition, the mining company took matters to court and filed a total of 20 lawsuits against nine members of the protest group.
The company claimed that the blocking of the drilling sites cost it five million baht (about 157,500 USD) each time.
China Ming Ta accused the villagers of illegal obstruction of their mining site, defamation, and a violation of the Computer Crimes Act for demanding an official investigation into the mining project on social media. The company seeks compensation of 3.6 million baht (about 116,800 USD).
But Sakkaphon Chaisaengrat, the protesters’ lawyer, argues that the villagers acted well within the law and only exercised their rights.
“The law allows people to publicly exercise their community’s rights to protect resources, culture and local ways of life,” he said.
Activists and experts in the Northeast argued that local conflicts over natural resource management would likely grow more severe after the Thai government enacted new mining legislation in August 2017 in favour of industry and mining.
Drafted and approved by the military junta’s appointed lawmakers, the new minerals act fast-tracks the approval process of mining concessions. The consideration period for permits was more than halved from previously 310 days to 100-150 days.
Despite the lawsuits filed against her group, Mali Saengbunsiri (middle) is determined to continue opposing the mining project. Photo by Luke Duggleby for MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum.
But the junta miscalculated the level of resistance the potash mining project would incite among people of Wanon Niwat and elsewhere.
“We don’t want industry here!” said Mali. “We won’t let this area, abundant in natural resources, be turned into an industrial zone.”
In fact, across the region, local groups have been organizing against mining projects, including in the provinces of Nakhon Ratchasima, Chaiyaphum, Loei and Udon Thani.

author: The Isaan Record


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In Ethiopia, disinformation spreads through Facebook live as political tensions rise · Global Voices
Endalkachew Chala

On July 18, two Ethiopian protest groups clashed in front of the Ethiopian embassy in Washington, DC, in the United States, as Ethiopia’s tense national politics spread to its diasporas.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed [left] sits with Minister of Defense Lemma Megersa, November 24, 2017. Photo by Odaw via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0.
Protesters demonstrated their opposition to the current government, waving flags missing the characteristic yellow pentagram, a symbol of Ethiopia’s collective national identity.
Pro-government supporters, mostly of Oromo ethnicity, marched to confront the anti-government protesters. They wore red, yellow and green, Ethiopia’s national colors, and carried Oromo Liberation Front flags.
Demonstrators got close enough to hurl insults at each other.
But this real-life confrontation pales in comparison to the intense, bitter political agitation taking place in every corner of Ethiopian social media, and especially on Facebook. Ethiopians use Facebook more than any other social media platform and many citizens consider Facebook to be the “internet.”
Since last year, Ethiopia has undergone a much-lauded transition from dictatorship to democracy. Many Ethiopians embraced the transition spearheaded by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. But the euphoria accompanying Ethiopia’s embrace of civil liberties has deflated as political rifts resurfaced between non-ruling elites of Ethiopia's two main ethnic groups: the Amharas and the Oromos.
Tensions between the two groups manifest online as Facebook Live and YouTube videos featuring Ethiopian personalities with strong opinions and political viewpoints. Hundreds of Facebook pages and YouTube channels create content for Ethiopia's diverse cultural and language groups. In Ethiopia, there are about 83 native languages spoken but Amharic, Afan Oromo, Tigrinya, and Somali are Ethiopia's major internet languages.
These widely shared videos shape and inform the current discourse on Ethiopian politics, both at home and among its large diaspora, often exchanging and amplifying mis- and disinformation originating with these videos.
Online conspiracy theories, political rants and rumors laced with communal hatred are now common genres in Ethiopian social media.
Almaz, an Amhara anti-government protester who is using a pseudonym to protect herself from abusive attacks online, was one among the incensed crowds at the Washington D.C. demonstration. Her experience of social media organizing and agitation is typical of many of the other protesters. She first heard about the anti-government demonstration via Facebook and follows a range of anti-government activists on the platform.
Since she moved to the US in September 2018, she has been using Facebook to follow the news from home — especially Facebook’s live streaming services.
Almaz and her friends use the newsfeed to both signal interest in certain stories and to coordinate watch parties, in which like-minded viewers gather online to watch popular live streams. She often joins parties to watch Yoseph Yitna, a conspiracy theorist who broadcasts daily from abroad about Ethiopian politics.
As part of its democratic reforms, the new government stopped blocking websites from Ethiopian diaspora opposition groups and ended politically-motivated content filtering. It has decreased surveillance and harassment of journalists and opened up the telecom market. In the absence of developed local media institutions, Facebook has become the primary portal for news and information for Ethiopian internet users.
For every political development, a fresh set of broadcasts appears, mainly on Facebook and increasingly on YouTube in Amharic and Afan Oromo.
Almaz also tunes into political ranter Yoni Magna for news analysis on Facebook.
Manga launched his rage brand of social media in 2015 and regularly offers inflammatory comments ranging from current political events to religion to pop culture in Amharic language.His tagline reads “Thanks to the Mother (Mary) and Her Son” and he describes himself as a truth-advocate for Ethiopians. His Facebook page has a significant and engaged audience. At the moment, he has about 161,000 followers and his YouTube channel has been viewed more than 29 million times. On a typical show, he talks for nearly an hour and bounces from topic to topic. He shouts, feigns menace, and insults his critics with ethnic slurs that target various ethnic and religious groups.
Almaz also watches dozens of Facebook live videos by Tolosa Ibsa, a Facebook conspiracy theorist whose YouTube channel has been viewed more than 11 million times. Gigi Kiya, a commentator who also trolls her opponents, garners about 10 million views on her YouTube channel.
Yoni Magna, Gigi Kiya, Tolosa Ibsa, and Ambo Urge. These are few Ethiopian Live Streamers on Facebook and YouTube
These formerly fringe Ethiopian social media figures have benefited from Ethiopia’s new opening. They are mostly diaspora-based monologuists broadcasting from their living rooms, complaining vigorously about the Ethiopian government, and attacking each other. Facebook is their headquarters, although some have migrated to YouTube, to monetize their work through ads.
Many of these content creators share inaccurate and blatantly false reporting. They run Facebook pages populated by people who share similar political views, hardening political differences by creating echo chambers, information-cascade and filter bubble effects among Ethiopia’s diverse ethnolinguistic groups.
The comment sections of Facebook live broadcasts from these figures fill with people throwing insults and memes at each other.
Over the past few weeks, Almaz incessantly shared Facebook Live video links and posts about an incident that happened in June 2019 in Amhara, Ethiopia's second-largest region. On June 22, an armed group murdered the region’s president along with his adviser and the region's attorney general in an alleged failed regional coup attempt. General Asaminew Tsige, chief of security forces in the Amhara region, commanded the armed group. This incident was triggered by a simmering intra-party dispute in the region’s governing party, Amhara Democratic Party (ADP).
On Facebook, rumors swirled that the assassinations were part of a plot created by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who is an Oromo, to wipe out the leadership of the Amhara people.
One of the unsubstantiated claims about the assassinations of the three leaders of the Amahara Region Almaz shared on her Facebook page. The picture on the right is General Asaminew Tsige who allegedly led the coup before he himself was killed.
The misinformation epidemic via Facebook live video transcends ideological and ethnic divides.
Another pro-government protester at the DC rally, who uses the name Yoseph, just returned to the US following a visit to Ethiopia after 15 years of exile.
Like Almaz, Yoseph heard about the demonstration on Facebook, but from a completely different universe of Facebook live video broadcasters. For his daily media diet, Yoseph usually visits the Facebook pages of Ambo Urge and Hangaasa Ahmed Ibraahim, two fervent supporters of Ethiopia’s prime minister who broadcast unsubstantiated claims about people who do not support him. They regularly bash citizens who oppose Abiy as settlers who are nostalgic for Ethiopia’s pre-1974 imperial era, where Ethiopians were merely considered as ”a collection of imperial subjects” rather than citizens. Yoseph shares videos that exaggerate Abiy's heroism and spreads rumors about his rivals.
One of the viral campaign banner ads circulating on Facebook during the campaign
Earlier in July, activists and concerned Ethiopians began a social media campaign to limit misinformation and hateful content on Facebook. They flagged violent content to Facebook and encouraged others to report them using Facebook’s on-site reporting tool. One activist who asked Global Voices to remain anonymous says he flagged content that ranges from bigoted memes to inflammatory videos, yet most of the content he reported remained on Facebook. For example, he reported a YouTube video of an ethnic extremist who threatened to kill Amharas and their children who live in Oromia. The truncated version of the video was still circulating on Facebook at the time of publication of this article.
A Twitter user flagged another ethnic extremist who called on Facebook for Amhara women to poison their Oromo husbands to wipe out the Oromos.
In this video, this man speaking in Amharic calls for a genocide against ethnic #Oromo. He is appealing to all Amhara wives who are married to Oromo men to poison their husbands. I’m only translating his message for the world to see it. @BBCAfrica @USEmbassyAddis @hrw #Ethiopia pic.twitter.com/YxotYfXjty
— Alex A (@lakimlakim) July 21, 2019
These are just a few examples of the estimated hundreds of thousands of hours of videos streamed in at least five major Ethiopian languages. Activists are frustrated that most malicious content flagged is not removed, leaving them to wonder if Facebook cares about the damage it might be causing in Ethiopia.
Facebook has recently employed an Ethiopian as one of its market specialists for sub-Saharan Africa. According to Facebook, markets specialists ”play a key role within the global community operations team by keeping the platform safe, vibrant and diverse.”
However, it is not clear if the employee's responsibilities include content moderation of Amharic videos. It also remains unclear whether Facebook and other platforms are investing enough resources to address problematic content in Ethiopia such as disinformation and hate speech.

author: Endalkachew Chala


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Tanzanian journalist faces trumped-up charges after abduction and detention · Global Voices
GV Sub-Saharan Africa

Erick Kabendera during a coaching session with journalists in 2012 in Dar es Salaam. Photo by Pernille Baerendtsen, used with permission.
On July 29, six plainclothes policemen forcefully removed journalist Erick Kabendera from his home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and took him into police custody. Police say Kabendera had failed to obey a summons to investigate the status of his Tanzanian citizenship.
Over the last week, police searched Kabendera’s home twice, confiscated his passport and other personal documents and interrogated his family.
By August 5, authorities switched track, charging Kabendera with money laundering, tax evasion in the amount of $75,000 United States dollars, and criminal racketeering, according to a copy of the charge sheet obtained by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Police say Kabendera committed these crimes over a four-year period beginning in 2015.
With these charges, Kabendera may face up to 15 years in prison and can not seek bail.
Tanzania's Magufuli??
First they abduct a journalist, when there is an outcry they claim he is not Tanzanian, when that doesn't stick, he is charged with organised crime and tax evasion. People, meet Erick Kabendera, his crime is journalism. #FreeErickKabendera pic.twitter.com/bQ5D96lcPe
— Caroline Ariba (@CarolAriba) August 5, 2019
“Press freedom has drastically deteriorated in Magufuli's Tanzania,” CPJ reports.
CPJ sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo says:
It seems that for the past week, authorities have been searching for a way to justify their detention of this critical freelance journalist. First, they claimed Erick Kabendera’s citizenship was in question, today they have leveled drastically different charges, which call into question their motive for holding him.
As a journalist, Kabendera has been critical of President John Magufuli’s administration and often speaks out in favor of press freedom. He has reported on Tanzania’s divisive politics for international and local media such as The Guardian, African Arguments and The East African.
Jebra Kambole, Kabendera’s lawyer, says authorities also accused Kabendera of sedition for allegedly publishing an article titled “John Magufuli is bulldozing Tanzania’s freedom,” in The Economist, but this charge was later dropped.
Just in: Tanzanian Journalist Erick Kabendera to be charged with sedition over an article published in the Economist titled ‘John Magufuli is bulldozing Tanzania’s Freedom’.
Statement from Jebra Kambole states that Mr Kabendera has been denied bail. #FreeErickKabendera pic.twitter.com/ISgABIgCH6
— Samira Sawlani (@samirasawlani) August 2, 2019
Kabendera’s family says this is not the first time the Tanzanian government has questioned Kabendera’s citizenship. In 2013, authorities lobbed a similar charge against him but the case was later dismissed, according to The Citizen. Kabendera felt at the time that authorities called his citizenship into question as a way to silence him.
Last year, The Citizen also reported on several other cases where the government used the citizenship question as a “tool to silence critics in Tanzania.” Aidan Eyakuze, executive director of Twaweza, a civil society organization focused on citizen voices, says authorities confiscated his passport and banned him from travel while investigating Eyakuze’s citizenship status.
Two weeks prior, Twaweza had issued and released results from a survey called “Speaking truth to power? Citizens’ views on politics in Tanzania.” The Commission for Science and Technology (Costech) claimed the survey was unauthorized and threatened legal action but later dismissed the case, according to the same Citizen article.
Tanzania has in recent years introduced a series of amendments and laws that target bloggers and media, civil society organizations, arts and cultural organizations and academics and researchers in what is by critical observers perceived as attempts to control Tanzania's narrative and stifle free speech and political dissent.
Hundreds of journalists, human rights advocates and concerned leaders and citizens flooded social media in support of Kabendera:
AFEX Africa calls the charges a “blatant act of violation:”
It's been nine days and Tanzanian police are still holding investigative journalist, Erick Kabendera in custody. @AFEXafrica calls for an end to this blatant act of violation: https://t.co/7UFZkzYzwV @MRA_Nigeria @FXISouthAfrica @gmpressunion #FreeErickKabendera #NoImpunity
— AFEX (@AFEXafrica) August 6, 2019
Kabendera, who often mentors aspiring journalists, inspired this tweet from a former student:
I have met Erick Kabendera once in my life, and for a little less than 80 minutes. He came as a guest Tutor to my class (School of Journalism and Mass Communication- @UniofDar). Despite the brief time he spent with us, I learned a lot from him. He truly inspired me! #100K4Erick
— 肯尼迪 Ole Mmari Snr. (@KennedyMmari) August 6, 2019
Another netizen notes that Kabendera's arrest and trumped-up charges signal a warning to other citizens:
SIMTETEI Kabendera Kwasababu Ni Mtanzania Au Sababu Ni Mwanahabari NAMTETEA Kwasababu Naishi Tanzania Anayoishi Erick. Haki Isipotendeka Kwake Leo Na Nikanyamaza, Inaweza Kesho Kutotendeka Kwangu VileVile. Hakuna Aliye Salama ‘Udhalimu Unapotawala’ #10k4Erick #FreeErickKabendera pic.twitter.com/fHX1K99Uzn
— LoveBites (@MasaiMudy) August 6, 2019
I don't defend Kabendera because he's a Tanzanian or because he's a journalist. I defend him because I live in Tanzania where Erick lives. If rights are not granted to him today, and I stay silent, it's possible that tomorrow, rights will be denied to me also. No one is safe when ‘Injustice Reigns.’

author: GV Sub-Saharan Africa


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Travel: An extreme sport for Africans · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Africa silhouette image by Natasha Sinegina (CC BY-SA 4.0). Visa page images by Jon Evans (CC BY 2.0). Image remix by Georgia Popplewell.
In 2019, Temitayo Olofinlua, a Nigerian writer and academic, was denied a visa to attend the European Conference on African Studies in Edinburgh, UK. The British High Commission in Nigeria said they were “not satisfied” that Olofinlua would leave the UK at the end of her trip.
The truth is: I am tired.
— Temitayo Olofinlua (@Tayowrites1) May 29, 2019
The visa refusal was later rescinded by the UK Home Office. Olofinlua went to the conference and has since returned to Nigeria.
Others have not been as lucky. In April 2019, the UK visa authorities prevented 24 out of 25 African scientists working on infectious diseases from joining their colleagues at various events taking place as part of the London School of Economics Africa Summit. The people most invested in and best-positioned to tackle the problem of diseases on their continent, were barred from participating in an event about “the challenge of pandemic preparedness.”
The LSE will be holding its next Africa summit not in London but in Belgium due to the ease of securing visas for Africans there, and because so many African invitees now refuse to go through the humiliating British visa application process. https://t.co/Q3WfiHS7Ja
— Mũthoni Mũrĩu (@jmmuriu) July 18, 2019
Barring Africans from entry into certain countries is not only humiliating — it also highlights the institutional racism that underpins the notion that African professionals and creatives cannot be trusted to obey the law.
Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” The reality, however, is that without a passport and valid visa, this right cannot easily be exercised. And the ease of getting a visa varies according to nationality. On the 2019 Henley Passport Index, Japan and Singapore hold the top spot for access to most countries, while Angola, Egypt and Haiti are at the bottom.
Kenyan author Ciku Kimeria describes the indignity of living without “passport privilege.” She notes that even a visa does not guarantee entry because “you still have to deal with the surly immigration official who will suspiciously ask, ‘And what are you here to do?’” If the answer to this question isn’t to the official’s satisfaction, visitors could find themselves being marched back to the departure gate.
We need to address this visa injustice. It’s time we talked about #visareciprocity. If you apply these rules to Ugandans going abroad. Same rules should apply to foreigners visiting Uganda. Enough is enough. And Africa, it’s time to drop the visa requirements to visit each other pic.twitter.com/aiX0tsALSe
— TMS Ruge (@tmsruge) July 11, 2019
For Africans traveling outside the continent, applying for a visa can feel like offering sacrifices to a ravenous god. Adéṣínà Ayẹni (Ọmọ Yoòbá), Global Voices Yoruba translation manager, recounts his recent experience trying to procure a visa to Lisbon, Portugal, for the 2019 Creative Commons Summit:
It was the greatest news of my life when I received a mail to deliver a keynote address at the 2019 CC Summit in Lisbon. . . . On April 18, 2019, some days to my birthday, I submitted my visa application to attend the Lisbon summit at the VFS Global office in Lekki, Lagos. The summit was slated for May 9-11, 2019, but visa processing takes a minimum 15 days.
On the day I was to depart for Portugal, I still [hadn’t] received my passport. . . . 11 days after the summit elapsed, I received a text from the VFS for collection of my passport. My people say, inú dídùn l’ó ń mú orí yá (you cannot be at your best when sad). It is one thing that I was not given a visa to attend the summit, another is that the huge scholarship grant to attend the summit went down the drain, wasted. I am miserable because I have not been able to refund the scholarship due to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy on wire transfers. It is excruciatingly painful that my right to associate as a free citizen of the global village was violated. I was stripped of my voice!
It’s difficult for Africans to travel outside Africa — but it can be equally grim to travel within the continent. Citizens of many countries in the global North can travel to most Africa countries visa-free, or with few restrictions, but the majority of Africans need visas to travel to over half of the other African countries.
Nigerian Global Voices contributor Rosemary Ajayi captures the “struggle of Africans traveling within Africa”:
I am happy that we, and many others, are highlighting the challenges Africans face getting Western visas. This doesn't annoy me as much as the struggles of Africans travelling within Africa. At RightsCon in Tunis, and GlobalFact in Cape Town, I took the time to ask Africans if they had needed visas. Just this weekend, I learnt of a Nigerian journalist who was unable to attend GlobalFact because he didn't have a visa. Let's not talk about how most of the African delegates at RightsCon had to fly out of Africa first, in order to get to Tunis. Last month, I met an East African journalist applying for a visa to Nigeria. He was asked to supply the driver's license of the professional driver picking him up from the airport!
As Rosemary points out, intra-continental travel is often further complicated by having to travel out of the continent in order to reach a destination within Africa.
At the International Air Transport Association (IATA) regional aviation forum in Accra in June, Ghana's Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia lamented the fact that “a business person from Freetown [Sierra Leone], for example, should travel for nearly two days to go to Banjul (often through a third country) for a journey which a straight-line flight would have taken only one hour.”
The convoluted flight routes are then compounded by the extraordinarily high cost of air travel within the continent. The currency in the following tweet is Nigerian naira, around US$ 990.
I wanted to go to cote d’ivore last week, checked wakanow , the cheapest flight was 380k. Lagos to New York is 360k. https://t.co/ObJ5HfLFIF
— ❤ (@TounBash) September 17, 2018
A rescue operation off the Canary Islands in 2006. Photo by Noborder Network. (CC BY 2.0)
Between 2010-2017, migrants from sub-Saharan African countries accounted for the largest migrant population in the world after Syria. Many Africans leave the countries fleeing poverty or violent conflict, to seek asylum, refugee status or permanent residence in North America or Europe. A 2018 Pew Research study reports that the number of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa “grew by 50% or more between 2010 and 2017, significantly more than the 17% worldwide average increase for the same period.”
Sub-Saharan Africans are also emigrating to countries far and wide. In 2014, over 170,000 migrants without legal documents ferried across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. Many hailed from sub-Saharan Africa. In December 2018, Brazilian police rescued 25 sub-Saharan African nationals who had “been at sea for over a month” in the Atlantic Ocean. The travelers had paid “hundreds of dollars apiece” for the trip from Cape Verde. In June 2019, US Customs and Border Protection in Del Rio, Texas, USA, arrested more than 500 Africans from Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola, for trying to cross into the USA via the Rio Grande River.
While dominant narratives in the media perpetuate Africa as a continent of mass migration driven by poverty or violent conflict, however, Marie-Laurence Flahaux and Hein De Haas, scholars from University of Oxford and University of Amsterdam, respectively, take issue with this stereotype.
Flahaux and De Haas argue that these narratives are propagated not only by “media and politicians” but also by scholars. Their research shows that migration from the continent is multi-layered and driven by global “processes of development and social transformation” that have increased the “capabilities and aspirations” of Africans’ to migrate — similar to migrants from other parts of the world.
These stereotypical narratives, however, often inform visa policy: Most countries’ authorities assume that all Africans who travel will not return to their home countries, leaving African visa applicants to bear the burden of proof.
Getting non-African nations to take a more nuanced approach to visa approvals for African nationals is a long battle. Meanwhile, African nations can take action to improve mobility across the continent. A common African passport is one step  — but it's not enough. The Single African Air Transport market (SAATM), and the Continental Free Trade Agreement, both launched last year, have laid the foundation for some of these shifts, but widespread implementation is still a long way off.
Meanwhile, as an African, to dare to travel is to be subjected to cruel humiliations when travelling outside Africa — or to be jolted out of the fantasy of African unity by the harshness of travelling within the continent. Either way the visa gods demand more sacrifices, while remaining adamantly intransigent.


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Two universities sign historic agreement on slavery reparations in the Caribbean · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The University of Glasgow in Scotland. Photo by Hugo Cadavez, CC BY 2.0.
Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, and the University of Glasgow’s Chief Operating Officer, Dr. David Duncan, recently signed a historic agreement for slavery reparations — the first such contract since people enslaved by the British were fully emancipated in 1838.
Never before has a UK-based institution that profited from slavery apologised for its role — and even more importantly — put its money where its mouth is. Quite fittingly, the £20 million agreement ( $24,308,500 USD) was signed at The UWI's regional headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, on July 31, 2019 — the day on which full emancipation finally took effect 181 years prior (and the eve of the annual Emancipation holiday that many regional territories celebrate).
That £20 million, symbolic of the sum the British government paid to slave owners as compensation for the abolition of slavery, will be used for research and other development-based initiatives between the two universities over the next 20 years, under the auspices of the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research, which is to be jointly owned and run. The aim is for the centre to find solutions for some of the Caribbean's most pressing developmental challenges, including economics, public health care, and even issues of cultural identity. It will be established on both universities’ campuses by September 2019.
Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary McDonald Beckles (left), and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde (right), at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica November 17, 2017. IMF Photo/Krzystof Rucinski, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Ever since 2013, when he was elected as Chair of the CARICOM Regional Reparations Commission, aimed at “outlin[ing] the path to reconciliation, truth, and justice for the victims of slavery and their descendants”, Sir Beckles has been at the forefront of the region's lobby for reparations.
In a 2019 interview with regional magazine Caribbean Beat, he said that being a “Windrush child” sealed his destiny of being “involved in aspects of the black journey”. He also noted the “transformational power” of the University of the West Indies — currently ranked among the top five percent of the best universities worldwide — in building a resilient, sustainable region:
The last fifty years, we’ve built the Caribbean out of the colonial rubble. The issues in front of us this time are very different. An important role of UWI is to help clarify this historic moment and develop conversations about the next half-century. […] My focus was always on economic development and the role that education can play in the economic transformation of our societies. […]
Reparations is connected to economic development. […] I’m the vice president of the UNESCO Global Slave Routes project, the chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, along with other hats. I’m responsible for developing a framework for the research of slavery on a global basis. I spend a lot of time in Africa, Latin America, and Asia looking at how black slavery was globalised. Everything is connected. Britain has a role to play in putting back some of the money it milked from the Caribbean for its own development. Having achieved its own transformation, we’ve been left with the results of that extraction. I believe we have a right! Britain should return to the scene of the crime, and participate in cleaning up the mess it left behind.
In the context of the UK's repeated dismissal of the subject of reparations, this Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Glasgow is being hailed as seminal. Sir Beckles applauded the University of Glasgow's stance that “a university cannot be excellent if it is not ethical,” adding that the agreement has put the institution on “moral high ground”.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


text:
Dubious CIA plot theory by former Yugoslav army colonel finds a platform in Serbian media · Global Voices
Metamorphosis Foundation

Vreme weekly article “How Colonel Karan won the special war against Serbia” analyzing the conspiracy theory about spy center in a car dealership, and toy cars. Photo by Meta.mk News Agency, CC BY.
This story originally appeared on Meta.mk News Agency, a project of Metamorphosis Foundation. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Several Serbian media outlets have recently published an op-ed by a retired military officer in which he promotes a theory that many people see as conspirational or false. The theory claims that the intelligence services of the Balkan countries have congregated in a car dealership in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, to plot the assassination of Serbian opposition leaders and then blame the government for it, as part of a plot to bring down Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
The op-ed is signed by Ljuban Karan, a 66-year-old retired KOS (Counterintelligence service of the ex-Yugoslav People’s Army) colonel, and was originally published by the Serbian weekly newspaper Pečat on July 19. The article was then republished by several Serbian media outlets, such as Novi Standard, the tabloid Informer, and the Večernje Novosti, which is a state-owned newspaper whose editor-in-chief, Milan Vučelić, is also the owner of Pečat.
The op-ed is titled “Noose for Serbia” (original: „Омча за Србију“) and discusses the existence of a “special warfare” against Serbia lead by NATO, and a “new secret operation – Noose, which involves an elaborate plan for Serbia’s ruin,” as the article says. Karan says he has analyzed the possible scenarios for the demise of Vučić, and warns of the possible political assassinations of opposition figures (for which, he says, the government will be blamed). He writes:
Ако се упитамо ко би могао бити мета, логично је да то буде неко од опозиционих лидера, можда чак и неко од оних који су под контролом Запада. Са становишта вођења специјалног рата, најефектније би било уклонити некога ко тренутно највише напада актуелну власт. Некога ко би више користио мртав, као „политичка жртва режима“, него као неуспешан опозиционар без подршке народа. Они који су се упустили у прљаве игре са западним обавештајним службама нису ни свесни у коликој су опасности да страдају од прљаве машинерије за коју раде и за коју верују да им користи.
If we ask ourselves who could be the target, it is only logical for it to be one of the opposition leaders, maybe even someone who is controlled by the West. From the point of view of waging a special war, it would be most effective to remove someone who is most vigorously attacking the current government. Someone who would be more useful dead, as a “political victim of the regime”, than as an unsuccessful opposition figure without people’s support. Those who are engaged in the dirty games together with the Western counterintelligence services are not even aware of the danger that they may suffer from the dirty machinery for which they work hard for and believe to have an use of.
Karan, who has long been a public figure in Serbia and often voices his anti-NATO positions in pro-government media, didn't name any sources in his article, nor presented concrete evidence to back up his allegations.
Speaking with the weekly newspaper Vreme (no. 1491) about his theory, Karan said his insight is based on “information published in the media” and his own interpretation. He didn't specify which media reports he used.
At a press conference, the leaders of the opposition party Alliance for Serbia (Savez za Srbiju) expressed concern that Karan's allegations amounted to threats against them and demanded an investigation. They mentioned that Večernje Novosti, one of the outlets that republished the op-ed, is state-owned, and also claimed to have evidence that they are being monitored by the Serbian Ministry of Interior since September 2018.
Speaking with Vreme, Karan said that he did not want to convey a death threat to the opposition, but merely to “warn” about the so-called special war against Serbia.
Vreme weekly article “How Colonel Karan won the special war against Serbia,” and some toy soldiers. Photo by Meta.mk News Agency, CC BY.
Karan stated that neighboring Croatia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia all participate in this plot against Serbia. He claimed that a group led by the CIA is operating out of a car dealership in Skopje. He writes:
Од пре два месеца бугарска обавештајна служба укључила се у заједнички подривачки рад против Србије, а то је отприлике период када је активирана операција „Омча“. Њихови оперативци делују заједно са обавештајцима Македоније, Албаније и Немачке из центра у Скопљу, који је највероватније формирала ЦИА, а који је маскиран у оквиру представништва за продају аутомобила.
Two months ago, the Bulgarian counterintelligence service became part of the joint special operation against Serbia, that is, roughly in the same period that the operation “Noose” was launched. Their operatives are working together with the counterintelligence agents from Macedonia, Albania and Germany from Skopje, a group most likely formed by the CIA, camouflaged as a car dealership.
A week earlier, on July 12, Serbian Progressive Party MP Milovan Drecun said on an interview on RTS (Serbia's national broadcasting channel) that the Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev should explain himself about the “strong intelligence team camouflaged as a dealership of the great Western car manufacturer in Skopje.” That seems to have been the first time such an assertion was voiced by a public figure, and it could have served as a basis for the retired colonel's claims.
The Macedonian public doesn't seem to be aware that there is a car dealership in Skopje that could be serving as the headquarters of an operation against Serbia. Such information has so far not been published in any Macedonian media outlet, even as speculation. Macedonian journalists have pointed out that if such a “camouflaged car dealership” existed in Skopje, it is unlikely that it would have remained undiscovered. In particular, this seems like something that wouldn't have gone unnoticed by the media critical of the current pro-NATO Macedonian government.
According to Vreme journalist Slobodan Georgijev, who interviewed Karan, it is precisely the existence of such articles that indicate that Serbia “is indeed involved in some kind of special warfare, but it is a war that the regime is waging against everyone who thinks, speaks and works differently from Vučić and his team”. According to him, in that war, the media plays perhaps the leading role. “Fake news, fake media, fake journalists, fake analysts – they have flooded the Serbian media space,” concludes Georgijev.
During the last few years, the term “noose” was used by several Belgrade tabloids, such as Informer or Srpski Telegraf, known for publishing misinformation about world conspiracies against Serbia. Those media would often promote the idea that the Serbian president was in danger, and variations of the phrase “the noose around Vučić’s neck is tightening” were common.

author: Metamorphosis Foundation


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Kenyan MP and her baby ordered out of parliament: ‘What was I supposed to do? Miss my duties?’ · Global Voices
Susie Berya

MP Zuleikha Hassan carries her baby in Kenyan parliament on August 7, 2019. Screenshot from Daily Nation via YouTube.
On August 7, Kenyan Member of Parliament Zulekha Hassan and her 5-month-old baby were kicked out of parliament. Hassan had entered the debating chamber with her baby in her arms during morning parliamentary proceedings, technically breaking house rules that prevent a “stranger” from entering the chambers, including babies.
A female MP in Kenya has been kicked out of parliament for carrying her baby into the chamber. She said it was an emergency and blamed her predicament on the lack of a parliamentary creche.
Read more: https://t.co/OQgvZ24fqU #BBCAfricaLive pic.twitter.com/zR6vAIarGV
— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) August 7, 2019
The incident has ignited renewed debate on breastfeeding rights for working mothers in Kenya.
Parliament was debating the Kenya-Somalia Maritime Border Dispute Resolution when MP Hassan walked in with her baby and parliamentary proceedings came to a halt. Several MPs began to shout and shove each other over the sight of MP Hassan with her baby.
Hassan explained that she brought her baby to parliament because of a family emergency, as quoted in the Standard:
This is my third baby in Parliament; I’ve never done this. I’ve tried really hard not to come with a baby but today I had an emergency so what was I supposed to do; miss parliament and my duties just because I have a baby? That’s why I came with her.
In an attempt to restore order, Deputy Speaker Christopher Omulele ordered MP Hassan to withdraw from the chambers together with her baby:
As much as [Hassan] might want to take care of her child, this is not the place for it. And I therefore direct she immediately withdraws and she may return to the chambers after she withdraws the child.
Immediately after Hassan was ordered to leave, some MPs stood up to support her and urged her to stay. This also caused a stir. MP Samuel Onunga Atandi was ordered to leave the chambers after he attempted to stop MP Hassan from being removed. The female MPs threatened to walk out with MP Hassan.
Coincidentally, the ruckus occurred during World Breastfeeding Week, held annually between August 1-7.
When asked if she was trying to make a statement, MP Hassan said no. The mother of three explained that this was the first time she brought her baby to work and said parliament is not a “family-friendly atmosphere.”
The presiding deputy speaker explained that parliament's facilities for lactating lawmakers make it unnecessary to enter the debating chamber with their babies. But MP Hassan said parliament had no nursery or crèche.
The National Gender and Equality Commission (NGEC) in Kenya criticized the removal of MP Hassan and her baby. The commission called out the removal as discrimination against a breastfeeding mother.
Furthermore, it wants the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC) to quickly establish a crèche to accommodate nursing MPs and their children.
Lawmakers MP Sophia Abdi Noor, MP Sarah Korere and MP Rachel Nyamai also criticized the incident. Like the NGEC chairperson, the lawmakers called out the PSC for not yet providing stations for breastfeeding mothers and children.
In 2013, the PSC was mandated to set aside a room for breastfeeding mothers.
MP Hassan is not the first Kenyan lawmaker to enter the parliament with a baby. In 2013, MP Sarah Korere breastfed her baby during the National Assembly. Wanting to exclusively breastfeed her baby for six months, she took breaks during parliamentary proceedings to go feed her baby.
Under Kenya’s Breastfeeding Mothers Bill, 2017, any woman who has a baby may breastfeed or express breast milk at a lactation place in the workplace. Unfortunately, since 2016 when this bill was first approved, the president still hasn’t signed it.
On May 15, 2018, Kenyan mothers marched in protest to parliament to petition the government to sign the Breastfeeding Mothers Bill. The protest was instigated by a discriminatory incident against a breastfeeding mother at a restaurant.
The Health Act, 2017 mandates workplaces to have well-equipped, clean lactation stations. However, only a few workplaces in Kenya have lactation stations. A similar breastfeeding health bill was opposed in 2015 and failed to become a law. Businessmen threatened to stop hiring women if they were forced to provide lactation stations.
In 2017, the Kenyan government unveiled a human resources policy that required public offices to provide lactation stations. Public offices were given three years to set up appropriate lactation and daycare stations.
Netizens were quick to comment about the incident and reproach MP Hassan’s removal from the parliament:
Women must work..Women must breastfeed!! This kind of discrimination cannot be tolerated!!! Lactation Rooms should be put in place!! https://t.co/kfXvgXBeNn Kwale woman rep Zuleika Hassan ejected for bringing baby to Parliament
— Jozzie Mwatibo-Kioko (@Tibz7) August 7, 2019
Women lawyers association EAWLA said Hassan's dismissal was unprofessional:
This dismissal was unprofessional and it should have come to the attention of the house that there is need to focus on why the breastfeeding chamber has not been set aside https://t.co/kG8AMSVGc2 #equality4all
— eawla (@eawla) August 7, 2019
Men came forward to show solidarity with Hassan:
#Kenya‘s men are not putting their best foots forward this week…https://t.co/ejjJztWz0G
— Michael Onyiego (@MOnyiego) August 7, 2019
Neighboring Tanzania allows breastfeeding mothers to leave the office for a maximum of two hours during working hours to breastfeed. This right extends consecutively for a period of six months after maternity leave, in accordance with Employment and Labour Relations Regulations, 2017.
Still, lawmakers are not allowed to feed their babies in parliament. On June 28, 2017, parliament did set aside a lactation station for the female lawmakers, but Tanzania still lacks regulations that require workplaces to provide lactating and daycare facilities.
Women are usually reproached for breastfeeding in parliaments or in public. Female MPs and leaders around the world have been breastfeeding in parliaments around the world, to global cheer and scrutiny.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Iceland, and the US allow women to enter parliament with their babies and breastfeed at work. British MPs are still not allowed to breastfeed or bring their young children into parliament.
In September 2018, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern attended the United Nations general assembly meeting with her baby, making history.
In New Zealand the PM brings baby to parliament and is admired, in Kenya an MP gets kicked out. Shame on you Kenya! https://t.co/4MT8WvzXyY
— Fatou Toure (LizaD) (@fatou2002) August 7, 2019
Ironically, Kenya is lauded as a breastfeeding success story. It's on track to increase exclusive breastfeeding to 50 percent by 2025 — a World Health Assembly target. However, Kenya still needs to improve the implementation of all related laws and mandates.

author: Susie Berya


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Beijing’s loyalists from Fujian province vow to beat up anti-extradition protesters in Hong Kong · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

On August 5, about two dozen Fujianese picked a fight with anti-extradition protesters in North Point. Screen capture from Youtube video.
A large number of residents of Fujian, a province on the southeast coast of China, have announced they will be travelling to Hong Kong to beat up anti-extradition protesters during protests in the next few days.
Messages about the recruitment of cross-border attackers have spread all over the Chinese social media platforms WeChat and Weibo in the past week. Comments and reactions suggest such an aggressive move is being praised as ‘heroic’ by large numbers of mainland Chinese citizens.
In Hong Kong, local residents are fearful, as they have not seen many measures taken by Hong Kong authorities to stop the foretold criminal acts, except notices posted on residential buildings instructing residents near protest areas not to go out and to shut their apartment windows on August 11.
Notice issued by Police Traffic Department reminding residents to stay away from protests and shut the windows to prevent tear gas from entering their apartment. Image taken by Oiwan Lam.
Mob attacks in Tsuen Wan and North Point on August 5
After the mob attacks on anti-extradition protesters in Yuen Long on July 21, various media outlets reported that the China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong had encouraged pro-Beijing forces to block district-level protests in a gathering with village heads.
Despite public outrage, similar mob attacks have been observed in at least two other districts, including Tsuen Wan in the western part of Kowloon, and North Point in the eastern part of Hong Kong Island during the general strike, and in various district protests on August 5.
In Tsuen Wan, a mob wearing blue T-shirts was spotted on the streets at around 8pm, carrying sticks and other weapons. Upon receiving the news, a large group of anti-extradition protesters rushed to the spot and chased them away. But at around 11pm, when the majority of the protesters had left the scene, a group armed with weapons appeared on the streets to pick a fight and a 18-year-old man wearing a black T-shirt was chopped on his head, arm and leg by two white-shirted thugs on the sidewalk. Passers-by came to the rescue and the incident triggered yet another street fight between protesters and thugs. Three people suspected of starting the attack were beaten, tied up by protesters and left on the street for an ambulance and police to pick up.
In North Point, a group of thugs was spotted at a street corner waiting for protesters to pass by and pick a fight. But they were outnumbered by protesters and defeated quickly. @jesuispopple posted this video of the confrontation on Twitter:
Full video of what happened just now in North Point. Not quite sure why the white shirts went after a group of full gear'd, much younger, much agile (some wshirt can't even climb the rail) protesters who aren't afraid to fight back. #antielab #hongkongprotest pic.twitter.com/0OCoU4b7bO
— Poppie (@jesuispoppie) August 5, 2019
In both incidents, police officers were absent from the streets, and in the case of the North Point, police officers only arrived at the conflict scene four hours after the crowd had already dispersed. The police authorities later stated that the police station in North Point had been blocked by protesters, though in Hong Kong every district has a police station and it takes less than 15 minutes for another district to send backup forces.
Residents from North Point and Tsuen Wan quickly identified the attacking thugs as Fujianese, as they spoke the  Hokkien or Minnan dialect.
Hong Kong is a immigrant society and the majority of people who move to settle in the territory come from mainland China. About 1.68 million of them are Fujianese immigrants and their descendants. Both Tsuen Wan and North Point have become traditional residential districts for people who identify as Fujianese and migrated to Hong Kong in 1980s and 1990s. This community maintains close links with their relatives back in the province of Fujian in mainland China. Such communities also socialize in Hong Kong through village or town-level kinship associations called Tongxianghui, through which they connect with compatriots from the same hometown.
After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Beijing started considering and using Tongxianhui from Fujian and other provinces in China as a key mechanism for exercising political influence in Hong Kong, particularly during elections. Among hundreds of Tongxianhui in Hong Kong, the ones from Fujian province are the most loyal to Beijing. However, second- and third-generation Fujianese in Hong Kong have distanced themselves from Beijing’s political control, and some have joined the anti-extradition protests.
Interestingly, the current director of the China's Liaison Office in Hong Kong, Wang Zhiming, is Fujianese. He graduated from Fujian Normal University, and became a member of the Fujian Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He then became the director of the China's Liaison Office in Hong Kong in 2017.
After the clashes between Fujianese mobs and anti-extradition protesters took on August 5, a large number of mobilization messages appeared on WeChat groups. But Fujianese supporters of the anti-extradition protests leaked the message on the Reddit-like LIHKG and Facebook. Below is a screen capture of a message posted on a Fujianese WeChat group:
Screen capture of a Fujianese group on WeChat. Source protected.
Urgent notice: The head of Hong Kong Jinjiang Tongxianghui Shi Nengshi and the head of Hong Kong Anhai association Yan Kangcheng made a joint statement: last night about 20 patriotic Jinjiang fellows fought with 2 to 3,000 thugs. They were outnumbered and forced to retreat. They have not been injured and managed to hurt 30 thugs. To prevent further harassments from thugs, I would invite 500 young fighters from Anhai to support Jinjiang fellows. We would have 3,000 people in the frontline and 1,500 people to back them up. I will reserve rooms in Sheraton and Shangrila hotels for our patriotic Anhai fellows to enjoy. Please sign up for the event.
An online poster of “patriotic Fujianese” has gone viral on major social media platforms in mainland China.
Chats about the mobilization of Fujianese “fighters” to Hong Kong also circulated on Weibo. Large numbers of netizens do in fact cheer on this “patriotic act”. Here is a typical post on Weibo:
#福建人打废青# 福建人真的很难，要牵制台湾，要抵御台风，要开渔船去钓鱼岛绕圈，要防广东人的捕食，现在还要赶着去教育香港废青。之前有英勇的元朗人民组成白衫军，现在有福建人组成蓝衫军，反击爆徒的力量在壮大。如果有人把香港比喻成人体，那废青就是侵入肌体的病毒，这些英勇的人民便是白红胞，只有白细胞多了，才能将病毒消灭完，吞噬掉。这里真的要福建人致敬，对徒爆徒绝不要手软。
#Fujianese beat up young losers# Fujianese have a very difficult life. They have to struggle with Taiwan [Fujian is located across the strait of Taiwan main island, and people speak the same Min-nan Chinese language]. They have to fight typhoons [Fujian is located in a typhoon-prone area]. They have to defend the Diaoyu Islands [also known as Senkaku Islands, a disputed territory between Japan and China]. They have to compete with Guangdong province, and now they have to educate Hong Kong young losers. Previously, Yuen Long villagers courageously formed a white-shirt army, now Fujianese are forming a blue-shirt army to fight against the thugs. If we compare Hong Kong with a human body, the young losers are the virus that invades the human body, the courageous people are the white and red cells. We need more white cells to defeat the virus, and to swallow them up. We have to pay tribute to the Fujianese people, don’t be soft handed.
Another commenter said on Weibo:
食国之粮，护国家安全如果有需要，别说福建人，全国人民都会买票去香港，给港独分子好好上一课。
The nation has fed you. Protect national security. If needed, not only Fujianese, but people from the whole country can buy tickets to Hong Kong to teach the pro-Hong Kong independence thugs a lesson.
As a result of censorship, the majority of mainland Chinese people know very little about the anti-extradition protests. They believe that the current protest is a pro-Hong Kong independence color revolution sponsored by foreign forces.
Both local media outlets and the police authorities were notified of the Fujianese plan to pick fight with protesters. The only authority that can stop the massive street fight, however, is China's Liaison Office in Hong Kong.
To read more about Hong Kong anti-extradition protests, visit Global Voices’ special page.

author: Oiwan Lam


text:
Four possible explanations for Turkmenistan’s presidential hide-and-seek · Global Voices
Abel Polese

An image of Turkmenistan's president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, on display outside the national horse-racing ground in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen (CC BY-SA 4.0)
In the past few weeks, the Turkmen president, Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov, has been suspiciously absent from media and the political life of the country. He has been reported by turns as being at a German hospital looking after his ill mother, dead as result of kidney failure, then alive talking on the phone with the Uzbek president.
Whatever Berdymuhammedov’s condition, the reality is that, contrary to his usual style, he has not made any public appearances.
This situation has brought Turkmenistan, usually absent from major international news reports, into the limelight, with media and analysts speculating about the fate of the president. A Telegram message spread through Twitter on July 21 reported the president had died from kidney failure. State sources denied the rumours and announced on July 25 that Berdymuhammedov had spoken on the phone with the Uzbek president. He then disappeared again and hasn’t been heard from since.
Video clips of the president riding in a car and of him discussing the country's economic performance were released on August 3 and 5, but the footage is considered unreliable by some analysts.
Playing at guessing where the president might be has been a pastime for media and analysts this past July. Few dare to make predictions, but most analysts sense that something is going on. The situation has been made even more intriguing by the limited (read: virtual absence) of information offered by national independent media. Turkmenistan lags behind in terms of internet penetration and it is rare to come across any official information from sources other than state media.
In other words, at this stage, what happens in Ashgabat stays in Ashgabat.
Berdymuhammedov has ruled Turkmenistan since 2007, when he was selected to replace the country's first president, Saparmurat Niyazov. Niyazov had died on December 21, 2006 from a heart attack, leaving a power vacuum that was filled after a highly disputed election. Of the alleged 95% eligible voters that cast their ballot, 89.23% supported Berdymuhammedov (at least in theory). Re-elected in 2012, in 2016 he abolished term limits for presidential candidates, essentially opening up for himself the possibility of remaining president for life.
Why can Turkmen elites not simply tell the world where the country's president is? There are several explanations which are related to the four most plausible scenarios:
Scenario 1: Berdymuhammedov is alive and kicking. He could be on holiday but, given his long-standing love of media exposure, it would be unusual for the public not to have been treated to at least a picture of him driving a cruise ship in the Pacific or fighting a bull with his bare hands in Spain. The only possibility is that he is in some secret location, making strategic plans about the future of the country. Basically, this means he is doing some spring cleaning among Turkmen elites, sacking those who have shown any degree of hostility or lack of cooperation on certain delicate matters. But such a task could be carried out in a day or two. Why disappear for so long?
Scenario 2: Illness. According to official sources, Berdymuhammedov’s mother is ill. How long, however, can a president reasonably sit in a room looking after his mother leaving the country's most urgent affairs unattended? Or is there an associate whom he trusts so deeply as to leave him in interim command of the ship? The plane reportedly seen in Germany may have been used for the president and his mother, but not in the configuration that was declared. Rather than the president taking his mother, it may have been the mother taking the president to the hospital.
But, once at the hospital, what happened?
Scenario 3: It is not really nice to write about someone's death before his time has come, but one cannot ignore the fact that Turkmenistan may have no president at the moment. Why has nothing yet leaked out? Inasmuch as “stability” is one of the favourite words of post-Soviet elites, this hinges on at least two conditions.
Firstly, the incapacity of these elites to share hardship publicly. Appearances are all-important and, with public accountability counting for little or nothing in Turkmenistan, one way to deal with the president's death would be to spare the public the trauma of instability by announcing a new president together with the passing of the previous one.
Secondly, fear of being stabbed in the back is widespread among Turkmenistan’s citizens and even more so amongst its elites. If you were a member of the elite trying to derive the maximum benefit from a post-Berdymuhammedov reallocation of roles and redistribution of power, what benefit could you expect from being the whistleblower?
Scenario 4: The president has been dismissed, Boris Yeltsin-style, and the elites are re-organizing. Power relations are being redefined and it is in the interest of many for this to happen with little or no external influence. The reasoning of Scenario 3 can be applied here as well: Given the influence that Berdimuhammedow has wielded in the past, and his capacity to manage the elites, this scenario is not very likely, unless the president has suddenly lost his charisma or power, which is often what happens when serious illness strikes.
“Predictions are difficult, especially about the future,” the Danish physicist Niels Bohr warned us. But there is no prediction to be hazarded here. It is rather a matter of guessing what the president is doing. If he is not alive, reorganization within the elites will already have started and we would know something about the outcome of the process—or may even already know by the time this story is published.
It is likely that we do not know the current state of Turkmen politics because the elites themselves do not know it, and cannot make a decision—at least until the president’s health improves or definitely worsens. Until then, we are condemned to wait until the next leak of official information from the authorities.

author: Abel Polese