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Who inspires Turkmenistan’s elites? · Global Voices
Abel Polese

Turkmen in traditional costumes. Photo (c): Abel Polese, 2014-15, used with permission.
Ashgabat, 4.30 am. A crowd of foreign guests has gathered in the arrivals hall of the capital's international airport, sleepy but excited. They are met by a young man in his early 30s, who runs back and forth between from the group in the arrivals hall and the street, ensuring that everyone gets onto the right car headed for the right hotel.
This is a common scene at airports, but on looking at the scene more closely, the casual observer will notice one major difference: The young man politely addresses guests from Arabic-speaking countries in their language, gives others instructions in Russian, welcomes Turkish scholars in Turkish, offers European and American guests help in English, and delivers instructions to taxi drivers in the Turkmen language. Then a colleague arrives and starts addressing Farsi-speaking guests in their native language, in addition to other languages in his personal language reservoir.
Taking care of guests is never an easy task, especially when the guests number several dozen. But our Turkmen friends know exactly whom to address in what language, and when they meet someone new, they immediately memorise what tongue that person requires.
Later in the day, the interested guest is likely to be surprised yet again, on discovering that the scene at the airport was not an isolated case: Multilingualism is a common feature among Turkmenistan’s educated class. In a fashion that seems to hearken back to another century, when diplomacy was carried out by multilingual individuals who were sent to study at the best universities in the region, a large number of Turkmen speak several languages, and not necessarily the one that would seem to be the easiest.
This scene might be even more unexpected in a relatively closed country such as Turkmenistan, which all foreign citizens require a visa to visit. What can this new multilingualism tell us about how Turkmenistan's elite see the country's place in the world? And what might they tell the world with their new linguistic skills?
The roots of Turkmen multilingualism
When asked, Turkmen make no secret of how and why they have had to learn other languages. It allegedly all started in the 1990s when, in times of uncertainty, some educated Turkmen started looking beyond Moscow and countries in the former Soviet space to pursue their university education.
Some went to Cairo: Universities in Egypt would enrol anyone who applied and tuition fees were low and sometimes non-existent. The only obstacle was completing the application form in Arabic. But our resourceful Turkmen would find someone to help them and, after arriving there, would start picking up the language.
(This, in fact, is the principle behind all intra-university exchange programmes. The difference is that in the Turkmen case, the learning experience arose out of individual initiative rather than a structured mechanism.)
Not all Turkmen found Egypt convenient or suitable. Another major educational hub was Teheran, where some future graduates would go to study and return fluent in Farsi.
Turkey was, and still is, another major destination. Turkmen citizens need no visa to enter the country and the two languages are close, and mutually intelligible to a fair extent. As a result, the two countries have close ties—closer than Turkmenistan has with some its former Soviet neighbours. For comparison, note that while several direct flights per day between Istanbul and the Turkmen capital Ashgabat are available daily, not a single direct flight between Ashgabat and the much closer Tajik capital, Dushanbe.
The Turkish language also enjoys a special status in Turkmenistan, where knowledge of the “Ottoman language” is considered normal among the educated classes. Turkish television channels broadcast in Turkmenistan. Both Turkish government and private sector Turkish actors are active in the country through the TIKA Turkish Development State Agency (TIKA) and construction companies. Asghabat's first large shopping mall was built by a Turkish company, and has an entire floor dedicated to the sale of Turkish produce, as well as Turkish-speaking personnel to serve Ashgabat’s Turkish expat community.
I have never asked Turkmen how they know Russian. It seems too naïve a question to pose in a former Soviet country even if Russian language has long been phased out in many spheres of life. Yet, the country’s main newspaper, Neytralny Turkmenistan, still publishes a Russian edition. In addition—and this is a general rule—a country with limited resources needs to import a number of things, including education. A number of Turkmen also continue to be educated at institutions where Russian is the language of instruction, whether in Russia, Ukraine or other former Soviet capitals. There is, for instance, no school for aircraft pilots in Turkmenistan, but the country still needs pilots, who are usually trained in Ukraine.
As in the case of Turkish, Russian is also often acquired through leisure activities. The number of pirated movies produced in Russia might be enough to justify learning Russian. Satellite TV is also available in Turkmenistan and the most accessible language, along with Turkish, is still Russian.
While Russian is no longer an official language and is not used for official signs or communication, and while the Cyrillic alphabet has been replaced by the Latin one (with special letters to accommodate Turkmen sounds), the full transition to Turkmen has not yet taken place. Simple signs like “wet paint”, or “do not walk this way” in a park or near a construction site are usually written in Turkmen, but it is not uncommon for them to be accompanied by an unofficial Russian translation. The most logical explanation for this is the fact that some Turkmen failed to notice the sign because of the new alphabet. Those who have difficulties reading Latinised Turkmen can at least understand the Russian version.
But opportunities and challenges have nevertheless pushed Turkmen elites to resort to other channels and establish close relations with other non-Soviet countries that have few political ties with Turkmenistan.
While highly centralised from an official standpoint, Turkmen politics are strongly influenced by informal and personal relations. If the official presidential translator, for instance, has spent a number of years in Iran, Turkey or Egypt, that person can translate cultural concepts and propose a nuanced understanding of foreign diplomats’ attitudes. They can also remind the president, if he is not yet aware of it, of the role that country plays in the lives of Turkmenistan and its elites. This could shed some positive light on the relationship, and, possibly, lead to better economic or political relations. Turkmen elites, especially those trained abroad, therefore have agency (albeit limited) and can exercise an influence on the country's decision-making.
We cannot know exactly to what extent, but critical analyses of international relations from Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics onward have widely acknowledged the influence of personal relationships, perceptions and other individual and subjective elements in political decisions. Through having relations with countries other than Russia (and the West) Turkmens draw inspiration about models of consumption, technologies, political ideas and business from a variety of sources, then import and re-elaborate them and make them part of the national ideology. Since independence, Turkmenistan has discovered, rediscovered, or invented a number of myths and traditions that have been inspired by other countries.
There are definitely a number of myths, stories and traditions that have survived the Soviet period. But the complexity of post-modern rituals, national turbo-pop songs and traditions have also been partly imported.
What is clear is that Russia is not necessarily Turkmenistan’s primary inspiration. A number of other countries, whose importance has perhaps been underestimated, have also contributed not only to the formation of Turkmen elites, but possibly also—indirectly—to shaping the country's official narrative, political attitudes, and where the country locates itself in the international political arena.

author: Abel Polese


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Chechen leader suggests killing users who ‘insult honour’ online · Global Voices
RuNet Echo

Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Republic of Chechnya, addresses the region's government in November 2019. Screencap from GroznyTV's YouTube video: “Рамзан Кадыров призвал Правительство ЧР активнее содействовать развитию малого и среднего бизнеса“
Chechnya's outspoken ruler Ramzan Kadyrov has publicly suggested the murder of his government's critics online.
During a government meeting about the development of small businesses on November 5, Kadyrov appeared to condone extrajudicial attacks on online critics, calling on youth organisations, law enforcement agencies, and the government to come together to name and shame such users.
This is not unusual behaviour for Kadyrov, who has ruled the restive autonomous republic of one million in Russia's North Caucasus since 2007. For several years, human rights defenders have consistently cited Chechnya as one of Russia's most repressive regions, citing widespread torture, disappearances, and complete intolerance of dissent. This makes Chechnya an extremely dangerous place for any kind of critical or investigative journalism; in 2017, the Russian journalist Elena Milashina went into hiding after receiving death threats connected with her reporting on an ongoing crackdown against LGBT people in Chechnya.
The most striking sentence in Kadyrov's speech read:
Тех, кто нарушает согласие между людьми, сплетничает, чинит раздоры. Если мы не остановим таких людей, не убьем их, не посадим, не напугаем, ничего не получится.
Those who disrupt harmony between people are spreading gossip and sowing discord. If we don't stop these people, if we don't kill them, imprison them, scare them, then nothing will be achieved.
Initially, Kadyrov appeared to stress the legality of these threats, possibly referring to a law passed this year against “disrespect” to the authorities online. The Chechen leader added that “the law, constitution, and democracy are for the well-being of the people,” but warned that “all the rest are crooks, traitors, rabble-rousers, and schizophrenics of all stripes; we must stop them.” Ominously, Kadyrov warned that “if somebody insults honour, it is impossible to leave him alone, even if the whole world burns with a blue flame and the laws of all countries are violated.”
Predicting a public outcry, Kadyrov complained that “now they'll all say: ‘Ramzan said that somebody must be killed’ yet again.” His prediction was correct: Kadyrov's words have been reported by both pro-Kremlin and independent media outlets, generating fierce criticism in the comments sections of both.
Kadyrov's speech was originally broadcast by CGTRK Grozny, a state-owned television channel close to Chechnya's regional government. It only received wider attention after the BBC's Russian service produced a video with Russian subtitles. Most of Kadyrov's address to the regional government was in Chechen, with occasional phrases in Russian. That could be deliberate; the BBC has noted that Kadyrov is much more belligerent when speaking in Chechen.
There are, after all, not many non-native Chechen speakers worldwide; this fact has led Russian government officials to claim that Kadyrov's words were mistranslated. On November 7, Kadyrov's press secretary Alvi Karimov told Interfax-News that BBC had not covered Kadyrov's words objectively and that “their translator knows Chechen as well as I know Tahitian.” But other responses suggest that the translation was accurate; the same day, Chechnya's ombudswoman for human rights Kheda Saratova remarked that while she could not support such words as a human rights defender, she sympathised with Kadyrov, who was fed up with being insulted online and made death threats simply for effect, in order to get his critics to be silent.
But it's possible that these words were not merely an outburst on the spur of the moment.
In April, Kadyrov met with local media representatives and demanded that they step up the fight against “ideological attacks against Chechnya and Russia,” giving speaker of parliament Magomed Daudov and Akhmed Dudayev, the recently-appointed head of CGTRK Grozny, three months to show results. This also led to a wave of social media harassment against the popular exiled blogger Tumso Abdurakhmanov, a Chechen Islamist video blogger living in exile whose Telegram channel is sharply critical of Kadyrov's government.
This has become a common response to prominent Chechen critics. As Kavkaz Realii, the North Caucasus service of RFE/RL, has reported, citing anonymous sources, the Chechen authorities have run a “troll factory” since at least 2015, whose employees register under Russian-sounding names to post support for Kadyrov online, giving the impression that his heavy handed rule has admirers across the rest of Russia. By October 2019, Dudayev declared that Kadyrov and Chechnya were victims of attempts at defamation from overseas, the battle against which would be aided by a full reorganisation of state media.
In light of these efforts, it is no surprise that Kadyrov has made similar threats in the past. A similar incident occurred in June 2019, when a lingering territorial dispute between Chechnya and the neighbouring Russian republic of Dagestan flared up again. In this tense atmosphere, Kadyrov's Instagram account (of which he is an avid user) was filled with critical and sometimes offensive comments from Dagestani users. Kadyrov was indignant, and recorded a video on June 11 in which he said that he had “brotherly respect” to Dagestanis and fellow Chechens, the security services were watching such behaviour online:
Мы все читаем. Целая группа над этим работает. У нас адаты, обычаи никто не отменял. Поэтому убить меня – это не так страшно. А если вы оскорбляете мою кровь, род и мою семью, мой народ – это для меня важнее всего. Поэтому за языком следите, за пальцами следите. А то мы поломаем пальцы, вырвем язык. Имейте в виду: мы ни один провоцирующий комментарий, видео, публикации не оставим. Где бы он ни был, какой бы он ни был… Вы меня знаете хорошо. Я люблю за свои слова отвечать. Я вас прошу по-братски, как мусульманин мусульманина – не поддавайтесь на провокации.
We're reading everything. An entire group is working on that. We have our adats [Chechen traditions]. I'm not so scared of being killed. But if you offend my blood, my people and my family, my nation — those are the most important things for me. So watch your tongue, and watch your fingers. We'll break your fingers and tear out your tongue. What I mean is: we won't leave one provocative comment, video, or publication alone. Wherever he may be, whoever he is… Well, you know me well. I love to answer for my words. I'm asking you, as a brother, as a Muslim to a Muslim: don't give in to provocations.
This was no bluster; it appears that Chechnya's authorities closely follow the mood on social media. In fact, they have an extensive history of publicly humiliating Chechens for any kind of criticism or dissent, including that expressed on social media. On February 1, a man named Musa Susayev was made to apologise online for sharing an anonymous message on WhatsApp criticising the conduct of Chechnya's gas company. On July 27, 16-year old Magomed Akhmatov had to repent live on air in a conversation with Chechnya's chief mufti Salah Mezhiyev, which was broadcast by GTRK Grozny, saying that he was “deceived by people who care nothing for me,” and “apologised before the entire Chechen people.” In September, the brothers Adam and Magomed Ismayilov were made to apologise publicly to local officials on television for leaving comments on social media speculating about the origin of the funds for a large new mosque in the city of Shali.
But across the rest of Russia, these statements are received with deep unease. At a time when charges of “extremism” have been brought against protesters such as Yegor Zhukov for much, much less, a widely shared impression across the RuNet is that Chechnya's ruler is a law unto himself. This is probably why Russia's presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently dismissed the idea that the Kremlin would call Kadyrov to account for his words:
― Так получается, что за последние недели несколько тем, которые связаны так или иначе с Чечней, вы не комментируете. Просто для того, чтобы понимать, — в Чечне сейчас такая же ситуация, как во всех остальных регионах России, с соблюдением российского законодательства? Или там какие-то особенные условия сейчас?
― Нет, в Чечне не могут быть какие-то особенные условия. Это субъект Российской Федерации со всеми вытекающими юридическими и иными последствиями с точки зрения режима применения законодательства.
― То есть эти высказывания — как вы говорите, вы еще не ознакомились — в Кремле будут изучать? Проверять, насколько они действительно были сделаны?
― Послушайте, мы не можем же руководствоваться сообщениями «BBC», да? Я говорю, что мы не можем воспринимать сообщение «BBC» как первоисточник, который <…> комментировать.
― Но государственный телеканал ЧГТРК «Грозный» это тоже опубликовал. Правда, без перевода.
― Без перевода? Нет, нам неизвестно о таких высказываниях ничего.
― Будут ли они проверяться или нет?
― Нет, не будут.
Maxim Kurnikov, Ekho Moskvy: So it happens that in recent weeks there have been several topics, connected in one way or another with Chechnya, about which you won't comment. Just so that we understand: is Chechnya in the same situation as all other regions of Russia, when it comes to adherence to Russian legislation? Or are there special conditions there now?
Dmitry Peskov: No there cannot be any special conditions for Chechnya. It's a subject of the Russian Federation, with all the judicial and other consequences that entails, and from the point of view of the system of applying legislation.
Maxim Kurnikov: That is to say that these statements which, as you say, you haven't familiarised yourself with, will be looked at in the Kremlin? In order to investigate to what extent they've really been acted upon?
Dmitry Peskov: Listen, we can't govern the country based on statements by the BBC, right? I'm saying that we can't accept statements by the BBC as a primary source about which […] we can comment.
Maxim Kurnikov: But the state-owned channel CGTRK Grozny also broadcast them. Admittedly, without a translation.
Dmitry Peskov: Without a translation? No, we're not aware of any such statements.
Maxim Kurnikov: So will they be investigated or not?
Dmitry Peskov: No, they won't.
― Ekho Moskvy, Blog, 6 November 2019

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: RuNet Echo


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Equatorial Guinea vice president’s supercars seized to fund development programs · Global Voices
Abdoulaye Bah

Screenshot from coverage from French channel France 24 on President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue's “incredible fortune” via YouTube.
Known for his playboy lavish lifestyle, Equatorial Guinea Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue was prosecuted by The Geneva Prosecutor’s Office in Switzerland, and 25 of his supercars were seized and auctioned by Swiss authorities. The proceeds of this auction will fund social programs in this west African state, where the majority of the population survives with less than a dollar a day.
The political man also known under the name “Tindordin” has benefitted from solid legal immunity, allowing him to escape justice following a number of accusations of misuse of public funds and money laundering. Indeed, he is the son of the current president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago, who has ruled Equatorial Guinea with a steel hand for more than 40 years.
However, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported in 2019 that after years of impunity, international justice has finally proceeded with legal proceedings against Obiang in many countries where he has had business dealings.
Following this worldwide investigation, the Geneva auction of Obiang's collection of 25 supercars has brought more than 18 million dollars.
The website coupsfrancs.com provides more details on this auction:
Sept Ferrari, cinq Bentley, une Maserati et une Aston Martin figurent au catalogue de cette vente aux enchères qui a lieu le 29 septembre à Genève. Ce trésor est estimé à plus de 17 millions d’euros avec quelques pépites : les lots les plus chers sont deux hypercars, une Lamborghini Veneno Roadster blanc cassé, vendue autour de 5 millions d’euros, et une Ferrari hybride jaune d’une valeur de 2,5 millions d’euros…
On ne compte pas le parc automobile des autres pays européens et de la Guinée Équatoriale où Teodorin collectionne tous types de véhicules et motos de luxe.
Seven Ferraris, five Bentleys, a Maserati and an Aston Martin were part of this auction on the 29 September in Geneva. This treasure is estimated to be worth more than 17 million euros [$18,773,440 United States dollars] with a couple of highlights: a Lamborghini Veneno Roadster rang up to 5 million euros [$5,521,600 USD] and a yellow Ferrari hybrid raking in 2.5 million euros [$2,760,800 USD]…
We are not even considering Teodorin's collection of all kinds of luxury cars and bikes in other European countries and Equatorial Guinea.
The website africanews.com explains the procedures for handling the funds outcoming of this auction:
Geneva prosecutors said in February that they had closed an inquiry into Teodoro Nguema Obiang for money laundering and misappropriation of public assets with an arrangement to sell the cars to fund social programs in the West African state.
Obiang came under pressure in 2017, when he went on trial in October of that year and a French court handed him a suspended sentence of 3 years in jail and a suspended fine of 30 million euros [$33,128,700 USD], mainly due to money laundering. The French court also confiscated his French assets, estimated to be worth more than 150 million euros [$165,643,500 USD]. The trial for the appeal is scheduled for December 2019.
The same year, he was stopped in Brazil for not having declared an important amount of cash — Brazilian law prohibits people from entering the country with more than 10,000 reals in cash [$2,444.21 USD]. And things didn't go smoothly, as blogger Hippolyte Gourmantier shared on confidentielafrique.com:
The federal police have seized nearly 1.5 million USD in cash in one bag, and in another, luxury watches belonging to the vice president, worth an estimated 15 million USD.
Let's remind President Obiang that for the last 39 years, dictatorship and the elimination of opponents of the regime have forced 250,000 Equatorial Guineans to exile the country in an attempt to save their lives or protect their wealth from being stolen.
The corruption practiced by the regime of President Obiang has emptied and looted the country, whose people cannot benefit because this wealth is essentially kept for the presidential family's own benefit.
There will always be people ready to defend this type of personality, in the name of Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialist struggle, neo-colonialism and African sovereignty.

author: Abdoulaye Bah


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In Afghanistan, childhoods are lost to war · Global Voices
Ezzatullah Mehrdad

Mohammad Hazrati remembers his teenager son, Saleh Mohammad who was killed in a suicide bombing. Photo by Ezzatullah Mehrdad, used with permission
Saleh Mohammad was playing as usual in the yard of his family's home in Kabul on a late August daywhen he jumped over a block of wood, hurt himself in the foot and lost one toenail. But that didn't deter him from attending one of the most important events his family had been preparing for that same day in the evening: the wedding of his sister.
As musicians started playing, Saleh sat next to them to enjoy the feast. But his joy was short-lived: the numerous guests included a suicide attacker claiming allegiance to the Islamic State who detonated a bomb. That was the end of the wedding, as well as Saleh's life. He was thirteen.
As Ghulam Mohammad Hazrati, the father of the family, was frantically evacuating the dozens of bodies of the ceremony's guests, he couldn't find any trace of his son Saleh. He checked nearby hospitals in vain. Eventually, he noticed a severely maimed body in the yard, and as he explains: “We identified his body through his detached toenail.”
That attack left 92 dead, including teenagers and school children like Saleh.
Given that nearly half of Afghanistan’s population is under 15, children have been affected the most by the ongoing war:  suicide or car bombing, drones, night raids, widespread ground combat have all killed countless Afghans in large numbers.
The United Nations has documented 14,000 “grave violations” against children in the past four years of the Afghan war. The conflict has claimed the lives of nearly 3,500 youngsters and injured over 9,000 from 2015 to 2018. The armed insurgent groups are responsible for 43 percent of child casualties, while pro-government forces are responsible for 30 percent of the casualties, according to a U.N. report.
For those who survive such attacks, the trauma often stays with them for the rest of their lives. The non-profit organization Save the Children said this year that an estimated 20 million children wake up every day in fear of explosions or gunshots.
Kamaludin is a 14-year-old teenager who survived a Taliban car bombing in Kabul in early September. He recalls: “I had slept early because I had to go to school in the morning. The attack woke me up.” His young siblings were dug out of their two-story house which collapsed entirely.
“The main issue is that we do not acknowledge the children's experiences of trauma and depression due to their exposure to violence,” says Freshta Karim, founder and director of Charmaghz, a mobile library bus catering to children in Kabul. “Those who are in direct exposure experience post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Two recent attacks demonstrate the emotional toll the war takes on children. In a July car bombing, the Taliban hit an Afghan military installation in the early morning hours which coincide with school time in Kabul. At least 26 school children were injured. In another car bomb, the Taliban targeted an Afghan intelligence agency office near a private school in Ghazni, in central Afghanistan. The attack killed one school kid and wounded 60 others.
A classroom of a private high school was torn apart by a car bomb in the flashpoint Ghazni city. Photo courtesy of social media.
The schools near the bombing site were closed off for a few days. When classes resumed, students returned to classrooms severely damaged by the bombing. The situation is worse in rural areas: the Taliban and the Afghan security forces often school buildings as bases and rarely leave.
The widespread ground combat remains the main reason behind the closure of schools. Attacks on Afghan schools tripled between 2017 and 2018, according to UNICEF.
In May 2019, the UN children's agency said the conflict has led to the closure of 1,000 schools by the end of 2018, and that an estimated 3.7 million Afghan children between the ages of 7 to 17—nearly half of all school-aged children in the country—were out of school.
“It is the worst damage to the children in the country,” Karim said. “The opportunity for their talents to flourish is taken away from them. The war prevents them to develop their potential. Future scientists have no chance to emerge.”
“The Afghan war has taken away space from them to grow up in a [healthy environment],” Karim added. “They cannot develop critical thinking, which makes them vulnerable for exploitation by extremist groups, including the Taliban and the Islamic State.”
An educated future generation may likely fuel the flame of next-generation war in the country, even with a possible deal with the Taliban group, a lengthy peace process that has already dragged on for years without much significant result. But for children like Saleh Mohammad, a 6 grader, the war took his life before he could see the results of his summer midterm exam.
Just before the wedding of his sister, Saleh Mohammad had taken the exam and was enjoying the summer break from school. When the school reopened, his father Hazrati received the results of the exam and shared his feelings: “Mohammad was very good at school. I was hoping he would graduate from high school, study law at university, get a job, and build a future.”

author: Ezzatullah Mehrdad


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In Pakistan, the Azadi March demands an end to Prime Minister Khan’s administration · Global Voices
R Umaima Ahmed

Screenshot of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) chief Maulana Fazl ur Rehman speaking to the participants of the dharna (sit-in) in Islamabad on November 4, 2019. Via YouTube Channel of 24 News.
Just kilometres away from the Pakistani Prime Minister's House in the capital Islamabad, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Fazal) (JUI-F) Chief Maulana Fazl ur Rehman and some opposition parties with a few thousand supporters staged a ‘dharna’ or a non-violent sit-in protest on 1 November 2019 after a four-day walk to the city.
This ‘Azadi March’, or ‘freedom march’, is a protest demanding Prime Minister Imran Khan's resignation and dissolution of the assemblies. According to the protesters, the 2018 elections were not transparent and the administration was behind the ‘selection’ of the government. Despite three rounds of talks between the Government and JUI-F Shura members, a deadlock continues to persist at the time of this report.
The Azadi March has brought the religious right and secular left together on a one-point agenda of CIVILIAN SUPREMACY. https://t.co/Z6i0oa1xIv pic.twitter.com/yAKXmf8P8f
— ویخ پختون (@Weekh_Pakhtun) November 7, 2019
JUI-F is a rightwing Sunni Deobandi politico-religious party in Pakistan. Just days before the protest started, the federal government banned Ansar-ul-Islam, an alleged militant wing of the JUI(F). Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Pakistan Peoples’ Party and some other stalwarts of the political opposition also took the opportunity to became part of the march to protest against the government.
Ironically in 2014, Imran Khan, the current Prime Minister led an Azadi March and sit-in lasting 126 days seeking ouster of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
The protestors are provided with food and drinks by the organizers and during the sit-in, they offered prayers, recited verses of the Quran, and played games to pass time. There were a few Pakistani flags on show in the march and flags of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, i.e., the Afghan Taliban were also spotted in the crowd.
Anas Mallic, a journalist, tweeted pictures of the crowd:
Meet SajidUllah, A supporter of the Islamic Emirate at the #JUIF Jalsa – flags of Islamic Emirates ie the Afghan Taliban can be spotted in abundance the the dharna site. #AzadiMarch pic.twitter.com/DYrSdDmp83
— Anas Mallick (@AnasMallick) November 2, 2019
In his address, Maulana Fazlur Rehman criticized the government and institutions (hinting at the army):
…the marchers don’t want a fight with the institutions, but we want to see them [institutions] as impartial. We are giving you two days to stop backing the government.
In response to this speech, the Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asif Ghafoor released a statement:
JUI-F chief should tell which institutions he was referring to in his speech and should take up his reservations with the concerned institutions as Army is an ‘impartial’ institution.
According to an analysis by Pakistani-American columnist Mohammad Taqi, Maulana Fazlur Rehman is fighting a battle for his political survival with this Azadi March.
JUI-F Chief made all efforts to keep his audience engaged in the Azadi March, he even spewed hatred against Israel, India, and also the Qadiani or the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
Clearest articulation of “procedural democracy”, where MFR is congratulating protestors for thwarting an imaginary conspiracy by Israel, “Qadiyanis” to take over Pakistan using Imran Khan
The damage such bigoted rhetoric is doing to our society cannot be overstated #AzadiMarch pic.twitter.com/Kl27Zug2ZO
— Reema Omer (@reema_omer) November 3, 2019
Twitter users also condemned opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for standing next to JUI-F Chief on stage when he spoke against the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim community. The PPP, known for standing by minority groups and with Asia Bibi in the blasphemy case against her, was criticised for remaining silent during the march.
Bilawal Bhutto joined #AzadiMarch crowd that wants Asia Bibi killed & oppress Ahmadis more.
Same Asia Bibi, Salman Taseer gave his life for & same Ahmadis, he bravely visited after Lhr attack.
Dark day for this so called liberal party.
Politics can't get more dirtier than this. pic.twitter.com/xByjWzhOR5
— Shaan (@Shanyousaf6) November 1, 2019
During the Azadi March, there were also partial internet shutdowns. According to Digital Rights Monitor, Mobile data services were suspended in parts of Islamabad, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to restrict live streaming of the ‘Azadi March’.
Senior Journalist Mutraza Solangi tweeted a screen-shot of the message he had received regarding the internet shut down:
Mobile Internet was deactivated to stop the live streaming of Maulana Fazul Rehman’s Azadi March while all TV channels were forced to observe blanket media black out. Remember Imran Khan claiming that media in Pakistan is fewer than UK? pic.twitter.com/C7dK2SmZnW
— Murtaza Solangi (@murtazasolangi) October 30, 2019
Apart from internet shutdowns, members of the Ansar Ul Islam group also restricted journalists from covering the march at the venue.
اظہارِ رائے بنیادی جمہوری حق ہے لیکن فضل الرحمٰن کے آزادی مارچ میں شریک کارکنان کو بولنے کی اجازت ہی نہیں۔۔۔#FreedomMarch pic.twitter.com/AO9jLqvDMU
— Noshi Gilani (@noshigilani) November 3, 2019
Translation: Freedom of Speech is everyone's basic human right but in Azadi March people are not allowed to talk.
A few female journalists also faced resistance when they tried to march.
Renowned journalist Muhammad Malick tweeted:
Our two journalists Shifa Yousufzi & Annie shirazi we’re barred from covering JUI-F rally because they were ‘women’ and weren’t allowed to enter the venue. Seriously…cause they were women? What a shame and what a silly way to misrepresent Islamic teachings. Shameful indeed!
— Mohammad Malick (@MalickViews) November 1, 2019
Broadcast journalist Shiffa Z. Yousafzai mentioned:
Thread from Maulana March: Went to the ground, only men could be seen in the ground for yards and yards. It felt very awkward and uncomfortable to be stared at some kind of alien still my team went ahead with me covering the march. So we went towards the ground. #Azadi_March
— Shiffa Z. Yousafzai (@Shiffa_ZY) November 1, 2019
According to the reasons given by the JUI-F party, women were not taking part in the dharna because they were at home fasting and praying for their male family member’s wellbeing.
This is probably the most twisted logic you'd come across
Ansarul Islam workers tell @NayaDaurpk, #women aren't allowed at #AzadiMarch as their job is to sit home and pray for their male counterparts, even if they support Maulana's cause
Watch full ??https://t.co/uk3k30fuVp
— NayaDaur Media (@nayadaurpk) November 1, 2019
Earlier JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman had informed the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) about the non-participation of women in the upcoming Islamabad sit-in as it was un-Islamic in their way of thinking for women to participate in such activities.
Stand-up comedian Shehzad Ghias Shaikh sums up the situation:
What does Maulana Fazlur Rahman think? He can become Prime Minister by having a dharna in Islamabad, playing the religion card, threatening violence, exploiting the ahmadi issue, courting the army's support and asking for the PM's resignation? Who does he think he is? Imran Khan?
— Shehzad Ghias Shaikh (@Shehzad89) November 5, 2019

author: R Umaima Ahmed


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Twitter was a minefield of false information during the 2019 Nigerian elections · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Image remixed by Nwachukwu Egbunike
This story is the second in a two-part series on online ethnic hate speech, disinformation and propaganda during the 2019 Nigeria elections. You can read the first part here.
In Nigeria, social media has a history of enabling ethnocentric disinformation and propaganda during elections. During the 2015 elections, Twitter Nigeria descended into a bitter and binary sparring match between supporters of the then-two major contestants, Goodluck Jonathan (PDP, an Ijaw Christian) and Muhammadu Buhari (APC, a Hausa, Fulani Muslim). Twitter became a tool for propagating ethnic hate and party politics.
The 2019 elections were no exception. On February 15, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released a statement expressing its concerns over an election campaign “polluted by disinformation.”
Nigerians also expressed their concerns. Journalist Abdulbaqi Jari tweeted:
We have to fight fake news now that political campaigns have started. People/accounts spreading fake news & deliberate misinformation should be reported. In promotion or criticism, everyone must play according to the rules.
— Abdulbaqi Jari (@Bahaushee) November 17, 2018
A 2019 study by Dani Madrid-Morales, University of Huston and Herman Wasserman, University of Cape Town concluded that “mis- and disinformation campaigns have been used to influence political agendas” in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. The high exposure to disinformation in social media especially during electoral campaigns, leads to a ”distrust” among social media users “because that's where they find ‘fake news’ most often,” Madrid-Morales asserted.
My ethnographic study between October 28, 2018, and May 29, 2019, that covered the 2019 Nigerian elections held on February 23 (to elect a president and a national assembly), and March 9 (to elect governors and state houses of assembly) revealed two major categories of false information: ethnocentric driven disinformation and political propaganda.
Peter Obi, the running mate of the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, was a victim of ethnocentric disinformation during the last elections. Obi was the former governor of Anambra State, in southeast Nigeria. A Twitter account supporting the Buhari-Osinbajo campaign, Coalition of Buhari-Osibanjo Movement, shared a tweet (Figure 1) which accused Obi of “deporting” northerners from Anambra State as governor.
Figure 1: Screenshot of a tweet by Coalition of Buhari-Osibanjo Movement accusing Obi of ‘deporting’ northerners.
Figure 2: Screenshot of a tweet by Nasir El-Rufia
This charge was amplified by Nasir El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State and member of the ruling APC, who tweeted (Figure 2) that Obi was “a tribal bigot”. This, according to El-Rufai, made Obi unfit to be a vice president of Nigeria.
What really happened?
In July 2013, 67 Nigerians, mostly from the Igbo ethnic group, “were deported all the way from Lagos and dumped at almost the same spot at the popular Upper Iweka area” in Onitsha, Anambra State, reported the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper.
Obi, who was then the governor of Anambra State, described this action by his Lagos State colleague, Tunde Fashola, as “illegal, unconstitutional, and a blatant violation of the human rights of the deportees.”
Following the public fury that this action generated, Premium Times reported that Obi was also guilty of the same action: In 2011, he repatriated child beggars back to Ebonyi and Akwa Ibom states, both in southern Nigeria.
Figure 3: Screenshot of a tweet by Jubril A. Gawat
While Obi did indeed deport beggars back to states in Southern Nigeria, he did not deport northerners and the accusation tweeted (Figure 1) by the Coalition of Buhari-Osibanjo Movement Twitter account was inaccurate. Rather it was APC's Tunde Fashola, who in December 2014, “deported 70 northerners, found publicly begging” back to Kano State, according to the online investigative newspaper Sahara Reporters.
However, this ethnically motivated disinformation was employed by APC supporters on Twitter to discredit their opponent. For instance, Jubril A. Gawat recently appointed as Lagos State's senior special assistant on new media tweeted that (Figure 3) a vote for opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar ”is a vote for Igbo.”
Nigeria is a country where ethnic identities run deep. These divisions are usually exploited during elections by politicians because of the obvious need to pitch their opponents into opposing camps of “we” versus “them”.
Hence, the allegations that Obi deported northerners was meant to re-ignite the ethnic animosities between the Igbo and Hausa, Fulani that led to the Nigerian Civil War.
The aim of these disinformation campaigns was to paint Obi as a Biafran ethnic irredentist. Located in southeastern Nigeria, the breakaway Republic of Biafra, which lasted for three years through a bitter civil war between 1967 to 1970, is largely populated by the Igbo.
Thus, Figure 3 proclamation that “a vote for Atiku is a vote for Igbo…”  was aimed to revive the ghost of the acrimonious ethnic hatred that pitched Hausa against Igbo. In 2019 elections, this meant that Atiku is a supporter of the Igbo who had once tried to break away from Nigeria.
Statements in Figures 1-3 convey strong emotions capable of reopening pent up memories, which in most cases have still not received closure, from both sides of the divide. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) maintains that disinformation like this targets the “vulnerability or partisan potential of recipients” by turning them into “amplifiers and multipliers.” Ethnically-charged electoral campaigns not only exploit deeply rooted prejudices but also morph recipients into disseminators of false information.
Similarly, ethnocentrism was also used by PDP supporters on Twitter to drive votes against the APC in Lagos State. Figures 4 and 5 show tweets by a PDP sympathizer alleging that Yoruba had set Igbo shops in Lagos on fire.
Figure 4: Screenshot of a tweet [flagged and pulled down by Twitter] by Chioma spreading disinformation of Yoruba burning Igbo shops in Lagos
The stories were false and were quickly dispelled by the Lagos State Police.
A Facebook post, using nearly the same words from Figure 4, and a picture depicting roads blocked by burning tires, circulated the same false claims. The photo used was from a February 24, 2017 protest that took place in a province near Pretoria, South Africa, reported African Check.
Figure 5: Screenshot of a tweet spreading disinformation of Yoruba burning Igbo shops in Lagos II
On February 13, Twitter user Souljah tweeted (Figure 6) that Ballard Partners, a PR firm based in Washington DC, which was allegedly hired as a publicist for the Abubakar presidential campaign, had conducted a poll which predicted a loss for the opposition PDP presidential candidate.
The result of the survey was conveyed in a letter signed by Brian Ballard, head of Ballard Partners, on February 5, and addressed to Olusola Saraki, the Director-General of Abubakar's campaign.
Souljah's tweet went viral with over 1 million likes and 1 million retweets for obvious reasons. The presidential election was previously slated to hold on February 16 (later postponed to February 23) and, with this poll coming three days before the elections, would have been catastrophic for the opposition PDP.
Figure 6: Screenshot of a tweet by Souljah
However, by the evening of February 13, Ballard Partners refuted the said survey (Figure 7) which they described as “fraudulent” and maintained that they had not “conducted any survey research on behalf of the People’s Democratic Party of Nigeria.”
Ose Anenih, a PDP supporter reported some of the APC Twitter sympathizers who circulated the fake poll to the Twitter handle of the Nigerian police and the Independent Electoral Commission, the electoral umpire, for “criminally and illegally” trying to “interfere with free and fair elections.”
But this was not the only case of weaponizing disinformation for political propaganda that was witnessed online during the elections.
Figure 7: Screenshot of a tweet by Ballard and Partners refuting a fake poll attributed to them.
Figure 8: Screenshot of a tweet by Lauretta Onochie, aide to the Nigerian president
On December 4, 2018, Lauretta Onochie, presidential aide to Buhari [then incumbent presidential candidate]  tweeted (Figure 8) a picture with food and 500 naira notes that was purportedly shared with the crowd that attended Abubakar's presidential rally in Sokoto in northwest Nigeria, the previous day.
Onochie's allegations were completely false. In fact, the picture she shared “was taken in February 2017″ at an event unrelated to “electioneering”, Chuba Ugwu pointed out in a reply to her tweet.
Onochie appears to be a specialist in disseminating falsehoods. The International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), an online news portal, analysed over 1,000 images shared on Twitter by Onochie between August 1, 2018, and July  31, 2019. The analysis revealed that “in at least 12 cases” Onochie “had used inaccurate pictures.”
Section 26 of Nigeria's Cybercrime Act prohibits ”use of threats of violence and insulting statements to persons based on race, religion, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin.” Convicted persons risk a five-year jail term or a fine not less than 10 million nairas [about $28,000 United States dollars] or both.
In March this year, Enough is Enough Nigeria (EIE), a youth-based movement and Paradigm Initiative (PI), a digital rights policy and advocacy group, instituted a court case in an Abuja court against Onochie and Gbenga Olorunpomi, an aide to Kogi State governor.
The two organisations compiled instances of hate speech “gathered from online comments” made by Onochie and Olorunpomi which they deemed to be in violation of Nigeria’s Cybercrime Act of 2015.
Most of the instances highlighted above were not mere happenstance. Rather, there was a deliberate and systematic effort to pass off lies as true information.
This is not surprising considering that both APC and PDP engaged an army of online warriors to either “neutralize adverse” social media reports or “fend off” attacks during the campaign periods. Each side engaged “cyber troops” — “government or political party actors tasked with manipulating public opinion online.’’
This year's elections were a repeat of 2015, where both APC and PDP engaged in “disinformation, misinformation, propaganda” campaigns on social media that were “carefully designed to hoodwink the unsuspecting electorate,” asserts Eshemokha Austin Maho, a Nigerian media scholar. They achieved this through the creation of “bogus social media accounts” from which “smear campaigns” and “doubtful information and propaganda” were disseminated.
The resultant impact was that Twitter became a battleground of ethnocentric disinformation and political propaganda before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the 2019 elections in Nigeria.
This article is part of a series of posts examining interference with digital rights through methods such as network shutdowns and disinformation during key political events in seven African countries: Algeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The project is funded by the Africa Digital Rights Fund of The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA).

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Was this Nigerian English language film too English for an Oscar nomination? · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Screenshot of a scene from “Lionheart,” a 2018 Nigerian movie directed by Genevieve Nnaji that screens on Netflix.
On November 4, the United States-based Academy Awards or the Oscars disqualified Nigeria’s first-ever submission in the Best International Feature Film category. “Lionheart,” a 2018 drama now streaming on Netflix, was found to be “ineligible to compete” because it was “largely in English” reports the Wrap, an online media platform.
There are over 500 languages spoken in Nigeria, a former British colony where the national language is English. The characters in “Lionheart” speak a style of English unique to Nigeria. This disqualification has ignited a conversation about whether or not Nigerian English can be considered a different language distinct from British or American English.
“Lionheart,” directed by Genevieve Nnaji, is currently streaming on Netflix. In the movie, the “ultra-capable female” Adaeze [Nnaji] struggles to keep her father's transport company alive “in a sexism-driven industry,” an LA Times review writes. “Adaeze, in Nnaji’s hands, quickly becomes an appealing 21st-century global heroine, an exasperated but honest striver in the peculiar bind of fighting literal patriarchy while also respecting a legacy she’d like to continue.”
In response to the disqualification, Nnaji tweeted:
1/1 1/2 Thank you so much @ava❤.
I am the director of Lionheart. This movie represents the way we speak as Nigerians. This includes English which acts as a bridge between the 500+ languages spoken in our country; thereby making us #OneNigeria. @TheAcademy https://t.co/LMfWDDNV3e
— Genevieve Nnaji MFR (@GenevieveNnaji1) November 4, 2019
The Academy created the basis for confusion when it changed the category of Best Foreign Language Film to Best International Feature Film. This “muddied the waters” by giving the false impression that “language is no longer a factor in determining eligibility for the category,” according to the Wrap.
Nonetheless, the rules have not changed, and the emphasis on foreign language remains.
The Best International Feature Film award is granted to a movie produced outside the US with a predominantly non-English dialogue track, a rule that the Oscars selection committee in Nigeria has admitted it did not stick to when they submitted the award entry.
The resultant disqualification of the movie is a sad reflection of the ineptitude of Nollywood's (Nigeria's movie industry) “poor attention to detail.” “Lionheart” is a “right movie” that got nominated into “a wrong competition,” the BBC wrote.
Nigerian linguist and poet, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún took the lead in the language conversation that followed the disqualification of “Lionheart.” Túbọ̀sún argues in African Arguments that Nigerian English “is a Nigerian language” entirely different from British and American variants:
Its phonology (we stress the third syllable [ad-mi-RAL-ty] rather than the first [AD-mi-ral-ty], for instance), syntax (we say ‘let me be going’ for ‘I have to leave now'; ‘senior brother’ rather than ‘elder brother'; and ‘next tomorrow’ rather than ‘day after tomorrow’, etc.), and lexicon (words like ‘trafficate’ and ‘overfloat’, all distinctly Nigerian) already qualify it as almost a different language. Why else, for instance, would foreigners say ‘pardon?’, ‘scuse me?’ and ‘say it again’ so many times when speaking to us?
Túbọ̀sún points out the irony that Nigerians wishing to enroll in US universities have to take TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), a test that measures English language proficiency “of non-native speakers.” This is paradoxical because as a former British colony, Nigeria's official language is English.
Túbọ̀sún insists that although Nigerian linguists have failed to “codify and officially recognize” Nigerian English, the artistic brilliance of Nollywood has taken that lead.
Cultural scholar Kovie Biakolo further extended the conversation. Biakolo noted that Nollywood cannot afford to only make movies in Nigerian native languages — for the simple, obvious reason: language diversity. With over 500 languages, English is an official bridge connecting Nigerians residing within and outside the country:
Nigerian writer Chika Unigwe aptly captures why language has the “power to shape” narratives:
Our ideas of beauty, of race, of civilization and so on are based on the narratives that were told of us by those with the power to shape and share those narratives, and they in turn have become the narratives that we tell ourselves of ourselves. Why would an Igbo child tell another that eating akpu [a popular food eaten in southeast Nigeria] is bush? Or that eating with your fingers is bush? Or that speaking Igbo is bush? Why would an Igbo man come on Twitter — as someone did recently — and say what a pity it is that one of our Igbo leaders has an Igbo accent. It is because over the years, we have allowed — not always willingly, I must add — we have allowed others to calibrate what is ‘bush’ and what is not, what is desirable and what is not.
One has to thank the Oscars for this disqualification as it has ignited a conversation that goes beyond “Lionheart” on the value of language and taking charge of Nigerian narratives — in all its languages.
There have been no formal efforts to designate Nigerian English as its own language category. Nonetheless, this cultural debate on style and linguistic aesthetics of Nigerian languages are long overdue.
In the end, “Lionheart” goes beyond the Oscars because it has forced the global gaze on the inequality that certain languages connote within a multilingual world and the attendant dynamics of power. This is the reason why creative works like “Lionheart” exist — employing artistic elegance to ignite difficult conversations.


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Surveys show majority of Hong Kong people have lost trust in the city’s police force · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Graffiti behind the riot police was a mockery of “uneducated bad cop”. Image from the Stand News.
The Hong Kong government officially withdrew the extradition bill on 23 October, but protests continue and the issue of police brutality and abuse of force has replaced the extradition bill as the city's major concern.
The Hong Kong police force, which had been crowned Asia's finest since the 1980s, has faced a massive loss of public support since the anti-extradition protests broke out in June. Currently, more than half of the city's population has zero trust in the police force according to an ongoing poll conducted by the Center for Communication and Public Opinion Survey of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
As pointed out by Martin Purbrick, a former Hong Kong police officer in counter-terrorism intelligence, in a research paper published in mid-October, the political chaos in Hong Kong is related the “indiscriminate use of force” by the police against “the entire protest crowd of several tens of thousands” rather than the few hundreds who had instigated the violence. The landmark incident took place on June 12 when the police fired more than 150 rounds of tear gas at the protesting crowds and labelled the protest a “riot”, an offence that carries a maximum penalty conviction of ten years imprisonment.
From that day on, the single protest demand, withdrawal of the extradition bill, has evolved into five demands: an independent investigation of the abusive use of force by Hong Kong police, withdrawal of the riot label, amnesty for those arrested, and universal suffrage of the Legislative Council and the Chief Executives.
As indicated by the CUHK's ongoing poll which has started in May, prior to the anti-extradition protests, the zero-trust rate was just 6.5 percent and less than 30 percent expressed distrust against the city's police force. After June 12, the zero-trust rate surged to 22.5 percent but the majority of the respondents still trusted the police. The research center has thus far conducted five rounds of telephone surveys through random sampling and respondents were asked to rate their trust on the police from zero (weak) to ten (strong) among other questions. Leung Kai Chi, a member of the research team, summed up the five rounds:
Latest Poll: 51.5% say they have ZERO trust in HK Police. More than half for the first time. Over 70% say they don’t trust the police. We are now running a gigantic social experience of “violence without legitimacy in a global city”. #StandwithHK pic.twitter.com/HHokNITds0
— Leung Kai Chi 梁啟智 (@LeungKaiChiHK) October 16, 2019
Only after the Yuen Long mob attack incident on July 21 did public support for the police took a more serious dive. The CUHK's results align with another poll conducted by Hong Kong Public Opinion Institute from 24-26 July 2019, in which 79 percent of respondents supported the setting up of an independent investigation commission with 73 percent supporting the complete withdrawal of the bill.
While the survey results imply that the “indiscriminate use of force” on June 12 was perceived as a mistake in judgment, the absence of police force during the pro-Beijing mob attack in Yuen Long and the government's refusal to investigate on the police's misconduct has ruined public trust in the police.
The attacks against protesters by Beijing supporters recurred and on a number of occasions, including Tsuen Wan and North Point mob attacks, the riot police did not take action to stop pro-Beijing protesters from their aggressive tactics. On the other hand, the attacks resulted in a number of injuries. Below is a list of cases:
As protesters have lost trust in the police force, the radical ones have taken self-defensive measures to fight back, with some measures taking the form of vigilantism. For example, on October 8, after a taxi driver crashed his vehicle into protest crowds and injured at least one female protester in Cheung Sha Wan, the driver was beaten severely on the spot and hospitalized. After the incident, a pro-Beijing and support police organization donated half a million Hong Kong dollars, approximately US$ 68,000 dollars to the taxi driver while a 20-year-old anti-government protester who appeared at the car crash spot was arrested for rioting.
More than half of the respondents in CUHK's survey accepted the radical act of justice outside the rule of law:
Are people ok with vigilantism? Apparently yes. Ppl have no trust in the police now, so it is ok to resolve things themselves. But only to put ppl under control, though. #StandwithHK pic.twitter.com/udEkhBubOJ
— Leung Kai Chi 梁啟智 (@LeungKaiChiHK) October 16, 2019
At the same time, the riot police have become more aggressive in clamping down on protests since August. One of the most violent scenes took place as the riot police stormed the Prince Edward subway station with batons and pepper spray, indiscriminately arresting passengers inside the station on August 31 after an “authorized rally” that took place on the Hong Kong Island side.
In reaction to police brutality, a vicious cycle of violence emerged in September. Protesters threw firebombs as the police fired tear gas and deployed rubber bullets. However, people's opinions did not shift. In fact, more respondents found protester-led escalation of violence to be “understandable”:
After a month of vandalism and firebombs, figures on protest violence surprisingly did not change much (within margin of error). Possible explanation: ppl are so upset with police brutality that the increased protest violence is acceptable. #StandwithHK pic.twitter.com/ciQ9N0F1vp
— Leung Kai Chi 梁啟智 (@LeungKaiChiHK) October 16, 2019
On the other hand, people are more skeptical of police operations as indicated in their perception of the shooting of a teenage protester with real bullets at close range in Tsuen Wan on October 1:
How about the live round in Tsuen Wan? Overwhelming response: the police made a mistake. #StandwithHK pic.twitter.com/bu8Z99CYm5
— Leung Kai Chi 梁啟智 (@LeungKaiChiHK) October 16, 2019
By mid-October, 51.5 percent of respondents from CUHK's survey expressed zero-trust in the police. The proposal of a large scale restructuring of the police force, which was put forward by the activists after the August 31 Prince Edward station incident, has gained strong public support according to the same survey. The CUHK's poll in October showed almost 70 percent of respondents supported radical reform of the city's police:
This is the first time we ask a question on “large scale restructuring” of the police force, sometimes referred to as “the sixth demand”. The result is a resounding yes. #StandwithHK pic.twitter.com/UEzIBpINlz
— Leung Kai Chi 梁啟智 (@LeungKaiChiHK) October 16, 2019
The Hong Kong government has not taken any measures to address the police trust crisis. On the contrary, Chief Executive Carrie Lam has invoked the Emergency Ordinance and enacted an Anti-Mask Law, both of which have given the city police force unrestrained power to clamp down on protests.
The four-month-long protests have resulted in 1,235 injured citizens. In addition, 300-400 protesters have received medical treatment at underground clinics for fear of being arrested at the hospitals. The police have fired nearly 6000 tear gas canisters and arrested more than 3,000 protesters. One-third of those arrested are students.

author: Oiwan Lam


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What the door knockers in Colombia’s Cartagena de Indias tell us about the city’s history · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

San Felipe de Barajas Castle, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Photo by Gabriela García Calderón.
The city of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia is known for its impressive city walls, built during the Spanish colonial period to protect it from attacks by pirates and privateers. The city has one of the mightiest fortresses in South America and the Caribbean.
Door at the historic center of Cartagena de Indias. Photo by Gabriela García Calderón.
You could almost say that Cartagena de Indias is an “open-air museum full of secrets.” Some of those secrets are concealed by what is another hallmark of the city: its door knockers, or the “old metal doorbells that many doors had […] before electric doorbells existed,” according to travel blog El rincón de Sele. The entry says:
Durante siglos fue, sin duda, un símbolo de distinción de tal forma que existía un refrán en español que decía «A tal casa tal aldaba» refiriéndose por completo a términos de clase social y poder. […] Durante la época colonial en América hubo ciudades ricas en la diversidad y laboriosidad de dichas aldabas, siendo una de las más destacadas Cartagena de Indias, en la actual Colombia, la cual formó parte en principio del Virreynato de Perú y a partir del Siglo XVIII del Virreynato de Nueva Granada.
For centuries, it was, no doubt, a symbol of distinction to the extent that there was a saying in Spanish that went “To each house its door knocker,” referring completely to terms of social class and power. […] During the colonial period in America there were cities that were rich in the diversity and the laboriousness of those knockers, with Cartagena de Indias as one of the most well-known examples in present-day Colombia, which at first was part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, and then during the 18th century became part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada.
Each design had a meaning, as the website Fuscia notes:
La lagartija significaba que era parte o descendiente de la familia real. El león significaba que era parte del mando militar o de la iglesia, casi siempre fueron destinadas para las puertas de las iglesias.
El pescado o figura marina significaba que era un comerciante, la mano se decía que era la mano de la Virgen de Fátima, por ende, era una familia religiosa.
The lizard meant that [the owner] was a part of or descended from the royal family. The lion meant that [the building] belonged to the military or the church, almost always those were used for church doors.
The fish or sea figure meant [the owner] was a trader. The hand was said to be the hand of the Virgin Mary of Fatima, thus, it was a religious family.
Door at the historic center of Cartagena de Indias. The metal buttons is a sign of social class. Photo by Gabriela Garcia Calderón.
The door knockers were made by expert forgers according to the requests of the house owners. Today, descendants of those forgers are still in the business, such as Jesús Acevedo Pombo, from the Cartagenero neighborhood of Getsemaní. A 2013 article by a local newspaper told his story:
Jesús cuenta que al principio sólo le mandaban a hacer leones, anillos y manos, que eran las figuras clásicas que había en la época de la Colonia.
Ahora, las personas están menos interesadas en seguir con la tradición y se les ha dado por innovar mandando a hacer sirenas, caballitos de mar y hasta cabezas de diablos.
Jesús says that, at first, he only received requests of lions, rings and hands, which were the classic figures from the colonial period.
Now, people are less interested in following the tradition and have begun innovating by asking for mermaids, seahorses and even devil's heads.
On Twitter, it's possible to find photos of some of the door knockers:
Aldabas de #Cartagena. Lo bello de las pequeñas cosas. pic.twitter.com/bPXvNltchM
— Ricardo Hernández (@ing_rhr) August 7, 2019
Door knockers of Cartagena. The beauty of small things.
@Gus_Noriega la ciudad con las mejores aldabas de Sudamérica: Cartagena de Indias (fotos de Instagram). cc @__PNH__ @Laoncediez pic.twitter.com/KUN1N4VU4j
— Jaime Gallegos (@drjegc) April 18, 2019
The city with the best door knockers in South America: Cartagena de Indias (photos from Instagram).
The travel and curiosity website Atlas Obscura has an entry about Cartagena's door knockers too:
A popular saying in Spain was “A tal casa tal aldaba,” or “To each house its door knocker.” This referred to the practice of displaying a resident’s social status or profession on their front door through the design of its knocker. https://t.co/XR78K2PTrh
— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) 11 de mayo de 2018
Now you have one more reason to visit Cartagena de Indias!

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Netizen Report: Domestic worker abuses in the Gulf expose tech companies’ failures to protect human rights · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle, Netizen Report Team

Image licensed to public domain, without attribution.
The Advox Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in technology and human rights around the world. This report covers news and events from October 27 – November 10.
An investigation by the BBC has shown how people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are using mainstream mobile apps and social media services to buy and sell domestic workers on the black market. The findings appear to mark clear violations of developer rules and terms of service for the major platforms involved — Instagram, Google and Apple.
Domestic workers in the Gulf often come from Africa or Southeast Asia and are hired within the “kafala” or sponsorship system, in which the person or family hiring the worker is responsible for their visa and legal status. The system has been known to enable inhumane treatment of workers. In recent years, workers have used social media to speak out about their plight, but this has sometimes resulted in further punishment at the hands of their employers, or even government officials.
Two BBC reporters went undercover to Kuwait to report the story, presenting themselves as a couple interested in hiring a domestic worker. On Instagram and Facebook, and through apps like 4Sale, which is available in both Apple and Google’s app stores, the reporters found people buying and selling domestic workers in open violation of local labor laws. “The sellers almost all advocated confiscating the women's passports, confining them to the house, denying them any time off and giving them little or no access to a phone,” they wrote. These things all constitute violations of Kuwaiti labor laws, and of international human rights standards.
Commenting on the technology platforms’ role, UN Special Rapporteur Urmila Bhoola told the BBC that the companies are “promoting an online slave market.” “If Google, Apple, Facebook or any other companies are hosting apps like these, they have to be held accountable,” she said.
When the BBC approached the technology companies with their findings, all expressed concern. 4Sale, which enables users to advertise, sell and buy a wide range of goods, removed the domestic worker section of its platform. Facebook banned the #maidsfortransfer hashtag from Instagram, though this is not likely to eliminate the problem. Both Apple and Google said they would seek to eliminate this type of activity, which appears to violate their rules (Google prohibits “apps that facilitate or promote illegal activities” and Apple prohibits apps that might “place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way.”) Apple also pointed its finger at third-party app developers, maintaining that it is the job of the developer to follow the company’s terms of service.
Since the story appeared on BBC.com, Kuwaiti law enforcement authorities have begun looking into the issue and have placed at least two people mentioned in the article under investigation.
The investigation scratches the surface of a deeply-rooted problem within major social media and web platforms that offer services and functionalities that can process the communications and commercial transactions of billions of people each day. In the relatively short history of these firms, no company operating at this scale has found a way to effectively screen content and third-party services for evidence of harm or even systematic violations of human rights standards, as seen here.
On November 1, Russia's controversial “Sovereign Internet” bill entered into force. The law dictates that if and when a (vaguely defined) “crisis situation” is declared, the internet in Russia (or at least in certain regions) will be technically cordoned off from the global internet. Supporters argue that the move is necessary to shield Russia against cyberattacks from abroad, while human rights and free speech defenders argue that the law threatens online freedoms.
The law obligates internet service providers to route incoming international traffic through internet exchange points (IXPs) based in Russia, enabling the centralised operation of the internet in a crisis situation. It also requires service providers to install special devices which would assist Roskomnadzor, the state's communications watchdog, to block undesirable internet traffic. These would send data to a central monitoring facility which could examine such traffic in real time using deep packet inspection, a method considered far more effective than blocking distinct IP addresses. The bill also calls for the creation of a domestic version of the domain name system (DNS) or the phonebook of the internet, given that in the event of an internet cutoff, Russian service providers would be unable to connect to foreign DNS servers.
On September 27, Roskomnadzor announced that it would launch tests of the systems in the southern Ural region, to some local disgruntlement. The results were not made public.
The US justice department has charged two former Twitter employees with spying on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government. Filings made public on November 6 indicate that the two individuals obtained, without Twitter’s authorization, personal data and other information about Saudi government critics who actively use Twitter, and then shared that information with Saudi authorities, in violation of both Twitter’s internal rules and US law.
One of the former employees, Ali Alzabarah, viewed restricted personal data for an estimated 6000 accounts, including that of Saudi activist Omar Abdulaziz, a prominent Twitter user and acquaintance of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Abdulaziz has filed a lawsuit against Twitter and McKinsey, a US-based consulting firm that has worked for the Saudi government, claiming that both companies have “invaded [the] plaintiff’s privacy and exposed him, his family members, friends and political associates to imprisonment, torture, and even death.”
Abdulaziz and Khashoggi are just two among many Saudi activists and journalists that have have faced coordinated harassment campaigns that bear the hallmarks of a government operation, along with other forms of repression, both online and off.
Public protests denouncing government corruption and demanding an overhaul of public services have been underway in Iraq since early October. During that month, authorities imposed an “internet curfew”, cutting access during evening hours. On November 4, Iraqis saw a massive internet shutdown that affected most parts of the country and persisted for 41 hours, by the count of NetBlocks, an internet censorship measurement group. Reuters reported that the shutdown followed violent clashes between protesters and “unidentified assailants” in Baghdad that resulted in the deaths of at least six people.
Mobile data networks were shut down on October 22 in parts of Islamabad and Lahore during a series of marches by conservative political parties that oppose the government of PM Imran Khan. Journalists suspect the outages were intended to block the groups from live streaming their march, but the government has released no official public statement on the matter.
Media Matters for Democracy, an Islamabad-based NGO, notes that the Islamabad High Court ruled in 2018 that arbitrary, government-ordered network shutdowns were illegal. However, the government challenged the decision and obtained an interim stay-order, until the case can be heard again on appeal.
A group of activists from leading media, free speech and digital rights organizations in southeast Asia gathered to denounce rising levels of government repression of online speech in the region. Pointing to jailed Vietnamese bloggers Nguyen Van Hoa and Le Dinh Luong and Myanmar digital filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, the group highlighted the perils of their “increasingly authoritarian region.”
“We stand witness to bloggers, protestors, human rights defenders, journalists and everyday internet users being harassed, threatened, beaten, prosecuted and imprisoned for their legitimate use of online spaces,” they said in a statement. Signatories to the statement include the Association for Progressive Communications, Engage Media, Thai Netizen Network and Viet Tan.
Freedom on the Net 2019: The Crisis of Social Media – Freedom House
Report on digital welfare and human rights – UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston
On the blocking of pro-choice websites: Women on Waves and Women on Web – Coding Rights, Open Observatory of Network Interference, Women on Waves and Women on Web
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Maxim Edwards, Leila Nachawati, Taisa Sganzerla contributed to this report.


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Tanzania high court upholds ruling to end child marriage despite attempts to repeal it · Global Voices
Susie Berya

Schoolgirls in Tanzania pose for a photo on July 10, 2007. Photo by Fanny Schertzer, used with permission via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
In October 2019, Tanzania's high court upheld the landmark 2016 ruling that increased the minimum age of marriage for girls and boys to 18.
The Tanzanian government attempted to repeal this decision, claiming that girls mature earlier and marriage is a form of protection for pregnant young women, and should, therefore, be allowed to marry earlier than 18.
But on October 23, 2019, the Tanzanian government lost its appeal and the high court ruling remains: The marriage age for both males and females is 18, reinforcing the ban on child marriage in Tanzania.
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Tanzania has one of the highest prevalence rates of child marriage in the world.
Netizens were quick to express their delight over the ruling. Some congratulated Rebeca Z. Gyumi, the petitioner and respondent behind this case. Gyumi is the founder and executive director of Msichana Initiative (Young Woman Initiative), a Tanzanian nongovernmental organization that empowers girls through education.
A real #supadada!!Hongera @RebecaGyumi @Advocate_Jebra and team. I remember your journey started in 2016, I witnessed the first win, and you kept on fighting to #endchildmarriage Tokomeza #NdoaZaUtotoni
?????? pic.twitter.com/Rel6fwFs0R
— supadada (@tulanana) October 23, 2019
Mohammed Dewji, a businessman and former politician, applauded the decision as a win for girls in Tanzania:
?? What a win for girls in Tanzania! The #Tanzania Court of Appeal has upheld the landmark 2016 ruling by the High Court which set the minimum age of marriage for girls from the age of 14 to 18! Hongera kwa wasichana wote wa Tanzania ?? #AChildIsNotAWife #EndChildMarriage. pic.twitter.com/flpILFeNTq
— Mohammed Dewji MO (@moodewji) October 23, 2019
Netizen Lydia Charles called it the “best decision ever made”:
This is best Decision the court has ever made. So much to celebrate. Hongera kwa wasichana wote wa Tanzania. Hongereni @MsichanaUwezo team kwa kuongoza hili #NdoaZaUtotoni
— Lydia Charles (@Lydiacharles_) October 23, 2019
In 2016, Gyumi challenged the constitutionality of the Law of Marriage Act, 2002 (LMA) that allowed females under the age of 18 to get married.
According to Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS),  36 percent of women aged 25-49 get married before their 18th birthday compared to only 5 percent for men the same age.
The LMA allowed girls as young as 14 to get married with consent from a court and age 15 with the consent of the parents whereas 18 years was the minimum age for a male.
Through her attorneys, Gyumi argued that the LMA provisions were discriminatory for giving preferential treatment to males in the matter of eligible marriage age. They further argued that the provisions infringed the right to equality and they were too vague and too susceptible to arbitrary interpretation to deny female children their right to education.
Gyumi petitioned the High Court to find the provisions of LMA null and void.
The High Court never declared the provisions in the LMA null and void. But they found the provisions unconstitutional and gave the government one year to correct the anomalies in the LMA provisions. Through the attorney general, the government was directed to put 18 years as the eligible age of marriage for both females and males.
However, then-Attorney General George Masaju was aggrieved by the ruling and immediately served a notice of appeal to the High Court:
So I've jst been notified by my advocate, that Office of Attorney General has served me a notice of appeal to HC decision on #ChildMarriage
— RebecaGyumi (@RebecaGyumi) July 28, 2016
In September 2017, Masaju officially filed for an appeal against the 2016 ruling.
Rasmi:Nimeletewa document za serikali kukata rufaa kwenye kesi ya #NdoazaUtotoni. Kesi no 204 ya Sept 2017 pic.twitter.com/xrJu8p66tW
— RebecaGyumi (@RebecaGyumi) September 21, 2017
Official: I've been served government documents of appeal in the case of #childmarriage. Case number 204 of September 2017.
In four months of court proceedings, the government sought to appeal the 2016 ruling that required the revision of the provisions LMA that allowed girls to be married at the age of 15. The appellant, represented by principal state attorneys, Mark Mulwambo and Alesia Mbuya, provided biological differences and customary and Islamic laws as grounds for the appeal.
Ms. Mbuya argued that biological differences put boys and girls in “different categories” and that therefore, the law treats them differently. She argued that because girls matured earlier, the law took that into consideration. She argued that marriage could protect unmarried girls who get pregnant at an early age.
Further, she argued the court erred by “equating the age of the child and the age of marriage,” meaning that the court should consider male and female children differently when it comes to marriageable age.
Netizens were quick to criticize the grounds the appellant provided in court.
Be afraid of people who can justify stupidity ?
“Tanzania's attorney general launched an appeal, one of its claims was that child marriage could protect unmarried girls who get pregnant.”
“Tanzanian court upholds law banning child marriage – CNN https://t.co/P3VbmJt4tr“
— gatuyu (@Gatuyu) October 24, 2019
The court’s ruling is a step toward eliminating harmful practices and ending all forms of discrimination against girls in Tanzania. According to the United Nations, in order to achieve gender equality by 2030, governments need to change discriminatory laws and adopt legislation that proactively advances equality.
Data shows that the age of marriage is directly related to levels of education and wealth (TDHS 201).  In Tanzania, there is a 6-year difference between the age of marriage between girls with no education and girls with secondary or higher education.
In Tanzania, it is illegal to impregnate or marry schoolgirls with 30-year imprisonment as punishment. Pregnant schoolgirls are not allowed to return to school even after they have given birth.
The ban on child marriage will protect all girls, regardless of their school enrollment status. In Tanzania, child marriage bars girls from education and leads to school dropout, according to data from the Tanzania National Survey, 2017).
This ban creates better conditions for schoolgirls to finish school without barriers. Even so, impregnated schoolgirls are still faced with an unconstitutional ruling that prohibits them from returning to school.

author: Susie Berya


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Beirut demonstrations honored in a map showing protest as a process of live ‘city-making’ · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

The map designed by Antoine Atallah shows how different groups of protesters occupied the space to conduct different kinds of activities. Used with permission.
The protests that have swept Lebanon since October 17, 2019 started as a reaction to the announcement by the government of new taxes. They have since evolved into a rejection of the political and economic model that has allowed local elites to maintain control over the country since the end of the civil war in 1990. United across religious communities, classes and gender, the protesters marked an important victory on October 29 when Prime Minister Saad Hariri stepped down.
The demonstrations have since been widely reported in the Middle East and beyond in news stories, photos and video—and now, one extraordinary map. A very recent addition to the narrative of the movement is a cartographic representation of the protests by Antoine Atallah, a Lebanese architect, urban designer and environmental activist.
Demonstrations in Beirut on October 19, 2019. Photo by Shahen Araboghlian via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
Asked about why he chose that particular form, Atallah explains:
“Maps are important additions to the visual “magma” we're being exposed to because they allow us to summarize, reflect and put things in perspective. An outer, zoomed out, snapshot makes them more obvious”.
Asked about what motivated him to do such work, he says:
“It’s the fact that for the first time since the beginning of the civil war and the subsequent Solidere takeover, people were given a chance to claim their right to the city in an area that was taken away from them. It's an extremely inspiring moment, where “city-making” can be observed live. I felt that mapping this process is extremely important since the current occupation is fleeting and precarious, can shift and change or disappear suddenly”.
Atallah is referring above to the company Solidere, which has close links to then President Hariri and started in 1994 to rebuild and gentrify that area with fancy restaurants and boutiques catering mainly to wealthy Lebanese and visitors from the Gulf.
While the map has been circulating on social media for just over 24 hours, it is already gaining traction because it illustrates the essential needs of many residents, Atallah says:
“Lebanese people have appropriated the voids of the city center to create the function they need: to discuss, to rest, to eat and have fun for free or for cheap, to dance. This is a lesson to everyone who underestimated people's awareness, maturity and capacity to be space builders, to be creators of function and meaning, to be actors of a collective project” .
Regarding his hopes for the future, Atallah concludes:
“The challenge comes from the political system which has imposed itself for 30 years and maintains wide leverage and huge power. In fact, the main challenge comes from asking a parliament which is against us, to compose a government that will be against them. The equation is complex and challenging. But I also trust the collective intelligence that's been displayed in all those weeks of revolution. It will surely prevail and nothing will ever be the same again”.

author: Filip Noubel


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Hong Kong police violence escalates dramatically: unarmed protesters shot with live rounds · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

Screen capture from Cupid Producer's video via HKFP.
The following post is a round-up of a series of reports written by several contributors of the free online news platform the Hong Kong Free Press at different dates. Those include: Kris Cheng on November 11 and November 9, Holmes Chan and Jennifer Creery on November 9 and Holmes Chan on November 9. It is published on Global Voices under a content partnership agreement. We warn our readers that some of the videos in this article include graphic content.
The Hong Kong police, often regarded as the most trusted in the region, have lost their reputation as several serious instances of violence and violation of their own rules are now coming to the surface, while Hong Kong enters its eighth month of protests against government policies curbing democratic rights.
On November 11, a Hong Kong traffic police officer fired three live rounds at two unarmed protesters in a district located in the east of Hong Kong island early morning during a city-wide strike action.
Protesters were blocking roads outside an exit of the Sai Wan Ho subway station. At around 7:15 a.m., a police officer tried to chase pedestrians, then pulled out a service pistol and pointed it at them, according to footage captured by Cupid Producer. He then grabbed a protester in white, and shot another black-clad protester in the stomach at close range.
Another protester in black then appeared to try and grab the officer’s gun, as he fired two more shots.
Bloodstains were seen on the ground as the two were subdued. One protester appeared to be conscious, as he responded when he asked his name. The other protester, however, was unresponsive.
Passersby then argued with police and riot police fired pepper spray. A woman tried to get close to the unconscious protester, but was wrestled down by another riot officer.
The two protesters were later taken away in an ambulance.
Protesters across Hong Kong tried to disrupt the morning commute on Monday November 11 as part of a wider plan to mobilise people for a general strike. Arrests were made across Hong Kong, including in Tuen Mun, Wong Tai Sin and Sha Tin. Mass Transit Railways (MTR )services were disrupted on several major lines, including the Kwun Tong Line, Tung Chung Line, East Rail Line, and the Ma On Shan Line. Light rail services were also affected.
Demonstrators have vowed an escalation following the death on November 3 of 22-year-old Alex Chow Tsz-lok, who succumbed to his injuries after falling one story in a car park. While the cause of Chow’s death remains unclear, riot police were conducting dispersal operations nearby at the time of his fall on November 3 around 1 a.m.
Photo: May James/HKFP.
A number of medical workers commented that Chow's injury was suspicious as all fractures appeared on his head and hip bones. A prominent brain surgery doctor believed that Chow might have been unconscious during the fall as the height of his fall was just four meters, and a conscious jump or fall would have more likely resulted in fractured bones on his arms and legs in a standard situation.
On November 9, thousands of people gathered outside the government headquarters to mourn over Chow's death. They expressed their belief that the government and the riot police should be held accountable for his death. A 40-year-old office worker told HKFP at the vigil:
This shouldn’t have happened. I want to know the truth. Even though the police tried to say it had nothing to do with them, I don’t believe it, I don’t buy it at all. They have really lost their credibility.
Outrage grew as the public heard for the first time of an accusation of a gang rape inside a police station in Tsuen Wan back in September. The police force has since confirmed that they had received such a complaint on October 22, but claimed that the allegations did not match investigation results.
Details of the gang rape allegations were first leaked online, and were later followed up and unveiled by Apple Daily news. The alleged victim is an 18-year-old woman who received an abortion at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital on November 5.
Reportedly, the woman was stopped when she was walking past the Tsuen Wan district police station in mid-September. Despite the fact she did not wear black (most protesters wear black clothes to express their political views) and did not perform any act of protest, she was allegedly taken inside the station and gang-raped by four masked men.
The Apple Daily report said the woman displayed symptoms of depression after the incident, and was initially hesitant to file a complaint to the police. She discovered she was pregnant after a hospital visit in mid-October, and told medical staff about her experience while accompanied by her mother.
A Facebook page, HA secrets, administered by public hospital workers leaked that fetal DNA had been gathered as evidence to identify the perpetrator.
On October 26 – four days after the police complaints office was notified of the incident – a police spokesperson said that it “had not received any complaints of sexual assault” at the San Uk Ling Holding Centre, a separate facility which has come under fire as notorious for inmate abuse. At the time, police did not say whether they had received any complaints of sexual crimes in relation to Tsuen Wan Police Station or other police facilities.
Surveys show that the majority of Hong Kong people do not trust the police force and demand an independent investigation on police's abusive use of force.
Professor Clifford Stott, Dean for Research Faculty of Natural Sciences of Keele University in the United Kingdom, is one of the five members in the international experts’ panel which was set up in early September to assist IPCC in its thematic study of the protests.
On November 9, Cliff Stott, one of the five members of the international experts’ panel for Hong Kong Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) that was set to assist the IPPC itself spoke up. He made a statement on Twitter saying that the current mechanism under IPCC lacks power, and urged for a more comprehensive investigation by an independent group with requisite powers:
International Experts Panel for Hong Kong Independent Police Complaints Council study into the disturbances concludes a need to substantially enhance IPCC capacity, which if addressed may allow their Thematic Study to provide a compelling case for next steps. pic.twitter.com/mMw4lQiUuU
— Clifford Stott (@cliffordstott) November 9, 2019

author: Hong Kong Free Press