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Myanmar Activists Say Junta-Era Defamation Law Must Go · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Members of the Committee for Amending the Telecommunications Law hold a rally to call for the removal of the controversial section 66(d) of the law. Photo from the Facebook page of The Irrawaddy, a content partner of Global Voices.
Myanmar’s military-backed government lost the 2015 elections, but the measures it implemented to silence dissent are still the law of the land.
This includes the “Telecommunications Law,” which was passed in 2013 to promote foreign investments in the Information Technology sector and protect technology providers and users. But despite this clear objective of the law, many officials interpreted section 66(d) as a useful legal basis to file defamation charges against their critics.
Since its passage, 48 defamation cases have been filed in the courts invoking section 66(d) of the law. Last year, even with the former opposition party National League for Democracy taking control over the government, 29 people were still arrested for breaking this law.
Section 66(d) states that whoever uses a “telecommunication network to extort, threaten, obstruct, defame, disturb, inappropriately influence, or intimidate” can be “punished with imprisonment for a term extending to a maximum of three years, and shall be liable to fine or both.”
For many activists and journalists, the wording of this provision is vague and it can be narrowly interpreted to accuse anyone of defaming another person.
Since last year, Section 66(d) has gained notoriety for being a legal tool used by senior military officials against their critics in the mainstream and social media.
Despite the defeat of the party it backed in the elections, the military continues to wield strong influence in the bureaucracy. The Constitution it passed in 2008 guaranteed military representation in the parliament and the Cabinet.
Worried about the increasing number of Section 66(d) cases, some activists, scholars, and journalists formed the Committee for Amending the Telecommunications Law (CATL) to persuade the parliament about the urgent need to reform the law.
They asserted that section 66(d) is unnecessary because defamation is already covered by existing provisions in the Penal Code.
The CATL argued that, under Section 66(d), a person accused of defaming someone can be detained without being given the right to bail. A third party can also file a case on behalf of another person, which explains why some cases involving the military were initiated not directly by army officials but by civilians.
In Burma , the NLD Government is taking charge the people who critize them with
Article 66 D Act. WE SAY NO TO 66D. pic.twitter.com/5mRGMZPjeK
— myo tayzar mg (@mtzrmaung) November 7, 2016
Bo Kyi of the Assistance Association for Political Protection believes that defamation can be addressed with less severe punishment:
Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law should be removed—it is better for the country’s future if we try to solve problems by discussing them patiently while fostering the culture of democracy and compromise from all sides.
Human rights lawyer U. Robert San Aung agreed that the law needs to be overhauled:
It is not appropriate that a citizen who criticises someone more powerful should face legal action of this kind.
Activist Ko Maung Saung Kha observed that Section 66(d) is selectively used by authorities while religious hate speech and online abuse against women are becoming prevalent:
We have to raise a question why this law doesn’t take effect against those who spread religious hate speech online. There are sexual abuses against women online but this law can’t prevent them. The law only takes actions against those who insulted state leaders … The law is being used with impunity.
The activist is referring to the rising anti-Muslim sentiment on social media spearheaded by radical Buddhists. Myanmar has a Buddhist-majority population. Some radical Buddhists are accusing Muslims of plotting to displace Burmese residents from their communities.
Aside from public officials, ordinary citizens have also invoked section 66(d) against their critics and online trolls on social media. Writer Moe Thet War explained how the law has affected the behavior of many Internet users in Myanmar:
Ever since the creation of Section 66(d), citizens have become hesitant to publicly share anything on Facebook, even if they're actually pointing out someone else's wrongdoing.
Moe Thet War used the cartoon below to illustrate how a thief can accuse a Facebook user of committing a crime if the latter uploads an “insulting” photo on the popular social media platform.
This cartoon pretty much sums up Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law https://t.co/gt7fWJyB72 pic.twitter.com/N9nVqje5NQ
— Coconuts Yangon (@CoconutsYangon) December 8, 2016
The CATL organized a rally in mid-January to press for the removal of Section 66(d). In response, the parliament said it is willing to review the law and address the negative impact of Section 66(d).


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‘Operation Restore Democracy’ Raises Hopes and Demands Across Africa · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh was pressured to leave office by ECOWAS. Public Domain photo by the White House uploaded online by Wikipedia user Alifazal.
Internet users have welcomed the decision by the Economic Cooperation of West African States (ECOWAS) to intervene in the Gambia, pressuring Gambian President Yahya Jammeh to go into exile after losing last month's election. Energized by this move, Africans on social media are now criticizing the region's other international groups for failing to remove other “dictators” who have long ruled throughout Africa.
Internet users have put tough questions to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC), and the continental body the African Union (AU), among others.
In an intervention codenamed “Operation Restore Democracy,” ECOWAS threatened to remove Jammeh by force, ultimately pressuring former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh to go into exile. Jammeh, who ruled the Gambia for 22 years, lost elections last month to Adama Barrow. After initially accepting defeat, Jammeh later refused to step down, citing supposed voting irregularities.
Jammeh met with several West African leaders, before a last-ditch peaceful mediation effort, after ECOWA's deadline first expired. He was then given one last chance before ECOWAS said it would deploy an armed monitoring group stationed just outside the capital, Banjul, that would force him from office. Finally, the presidents of Guinea and Mauritania convinced Jammeh to leave the country.
New President Adama Barrow returned to the Gambia on Jan. 26 after being inaugurated at the Gambian embassy in Dakar, Senegal. This was the first time an African president has ever been sworn in on foreign soil.
Following the ECOWAS’ success, Africans have singled out groups like SADC and AU for allowing Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza and Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe to stay in power. Nkurunziza changed the constitution in 2015 to allow him to remain in office for a third term, and Mugabe, who is believed to have lost an election to Morgan Tsvivangarai, also retained his presidency.
On Twitter, “Sure Kamhunga” asked:
SADC must use Ecowas solution on leaders refusing the will of the people. No more massaging despotic egos in the name of brotherhood
— Sure Kamhunga (@sure_kamhunga) January 19, 2017
Castro Ngobese asked the SADC to take action against President Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo:
#SADC must walk the talk, DRC's Kabila must GO.We must applaud #ECOWAS leaders for their uncompromising pressure on Jammeh to leave office.
— Castro Ngobese (@castrongobese) January 19, 2017
Kabila's last term in office was supposed to end in December, but he's still in office, arguing that the elections cannot be held now because of logistical and financial problems. A deal reached between the government and opposition parties has it that elections will be held at the end of 2017 and Kabila will step down afterward (a year after his second term expired).
“Zimbabwean Patriot!” shared a cartoon mocking SADC and Zimbabwean President Mugabe:
SADC we don't want this type of pressure in 2018. Look to #ECOWAS. @SADC_News. Take lessons from #Gambia! pic.twitter.com/R3oWtsIj5R
— Zimbabwean Patriot! (@iamtheone1980) January 26, 2017
Some Africans are even suggesting that the next chairperson of the AU should come from West Africa. Muhereza Allan wrote:
I now agree that the next @_AfricanUnion Chairperson should come from West Africa. Kudos #ECOWAS #Gambia ✊✊✊
— Muhereza_Allan (@Mura_Allan) January 19, 2017
The AU will elect its next chairperson at the end of January.
Referring to the 2008 disputed elections in Zimbabwe, McIntosh Polela wrote:
Ecowas is doing in Gambia what the useless SADC should've done when Mugabe lost an election & killed citizens to force power sharing deal
— McIntosh Polela (@toshpolela) January 19, 2017
After the 2008 elections in Zimbabwe, SADC-led negotiations resulted into a power-sharing government, where Mugabe remained president and the main opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai served as prime minister.
Waiswa Batambuze wants regional bodies to be strengthened as a first priority:
I think be4 we start talking about a united Africa, we need to first create and cement regional network effects like EAC  ECOWAS, SADC etc. https://t.co/gOzd6ctOSY
— Waiswa Batambuze (@IBatambuze) January 9, 2017
David Lewis observed:
People on my feed outside West Africa, esp in Central Africa, looking on at #ECOWAS + its robust approach to #Jammeh #Gambia with much envy
— David Lewis (@DG_Lewis) January 19, 2017
Ilunga Ntengu pointed out countries in East and Southern Africa that must be watching the events in the Gambia:
ECOWAS is out here teaching EAC and SADC a lesson; Uganda, Burundi, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Congo, Angola must be watching this closely.
— Ilunga Ntengu (@davxnt) January 19, 2017
Despite overwhelming support for ECOWAS, Zimbabwean Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo — a supporter of Robert Mugabe, 92, who has been in power since 1980 — thought the inauguration of Gambian President Adama Barrow in Senegal was a circus and an embarrassment:
Absolutely not. I repeat. It's a circus & an embarrassment to have a president sworn-in in a foreign country & sets a bad precedence! https://t.co/wHa1w77uzH
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) January 20, 2017
Chris Danga responded to Moyo:
@ProfJNMoyo Ecowas  is a pro-active organization unlike our toothless SADC. Some of u would have gone in 2008
— Chris Danga (@chris_danga1) January 9, 2017
While acknowledging that comparisons between regional bodies is good, Zimbabwen blogger Takura Zhangazha noted that context matters:
What is however missed is that Ecowas and SADC are two very different African inter-state organizations. Not just by way of their historical development but also in relation to the fact that they have always tended to act differently on the continental stage especially after they were both reformed in the early 1990s, Ecowas 1993 and SADC 1992 to make them much more formal and more concerned in members states affairs. Especially where it concerns their respective regional economies and trade.
Zhangazha continued:
But thankfully ECOWAS and SADC are from the same Pan African womb. They however tend to act differently and have a different history of interaction with global powers. Sadc, having its foundation in the liberation struggle era of the Frontline States has a history of solidarity between liberation movements and was never going to abandon that in the face of the regional behemoth that was Apartheid South Africa.
Ecowas, with member states that have experienced greater periods of national independence and inundated with Cold War battles for control of natural resources such as petroleum was always more nuanced and divided in its global relations. Things are therefore not so Manichean. Nor are they easily excusable or a matter of pitting one African region against another.
Looking at lessons Southern African countries can learn from ECOWAS, Chris Saunders (an emeritus professor at the University of Cape Town) and Henning Melber (a professor in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria) pointed out that SADC does not have a military force. They further offered some history on SADC interventions:
The only case that somewhat resembled events around The Gambia was South Africa’s intervention in Lesotho in September 1998. Nominally under SADC, that intervention’s goal was to ensure the incumbent ruler was not ousted by opposition forces.
Three SADC member states did intervene militarily in the DRC in August 1998. Troops from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe were deployed, nominally under the umbrella of SADC. The goal was to aid the then president, Laurent Desiré Kabila, against rebels who had invaded the eastern Congo. Kabila would not have been able to consolidate himself in power without the military support of the three SADC states.
Both interventions were controversial within SADC, since they were not based on a common decision by the member states. These were at that time marred by the rivalry between Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. This may help explain why there have not been any similar military interventions since.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Protests, Deportations and Uncertainty: Iranians Ensnared by Trump’s Immigration Ban · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Iranian-American academic Karim Sadjadpour juxtaposes the image of elderly Iranian green card holders detained for hours in Washington, against an image of Ivanka Trump with her husband dressing up for a night out on 28 January, the day after Trump's executive order on immigration.
Panic, anxiety, worry. Messages of concern, messages of advice. It was a tough several days for a lot of Iranians, thanks to an executive order from President Donald Trump banning nationals from seven countries, including Iran, from entering the US.
It started on Wednesday, 25 January, when President Donald Trump issued executive orders to crack down on undocumented immigrants across the United States and withhold federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement actions. Protests were immediate, and Iranian-Americans were among the participants.
“Proud daughter of Iranian immigrants making America great since 1988″ pic.twitter.com/DuvSGj9riz
— Negar نگار (@NegarMortazavi) January 25, 2017
That same day, White House documents leaked to the media indicated that there were more orders to come, including a temporary immigration ban targeting the nationals of seven countries: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. At that point, nothing was official, but the Iranian community was already starting to fear for the worst.
Many in the Iranian American community nervous this morning about what #Trump’s visa restrictions will do to their regular family visits.
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) January 25, 2017
Countless msgs from young Iranian students who live in US & are right now visiting family in #Iran or traveling. All absolutely terrified.
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) January 26, 2017
Outrage was starting to brew, especially as Trump's justification of the executive order, formally titled the Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” was national security. Many observers began to point out that the ban would not have stopped any of the recent attacks that have happened in the US — the perpetrators have either been American citizens, or from countries not on the list. Others deemed it a “Muslim ban” dressed up to look like something else — Trump had called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” during the presidential campaign.
911 Hijackers
Shoe Bomb
Underwear Bomb
Fort Hood
Time Square
Boston
San Bernardino
Orlando
NY-NJ Bombs
None from the 7 listed in ban.
— Ali H. Soufan (@Ali_H_Soufan) January 26, 2017
The leaked draft ban led to many warnings that nationals of the seven listed countries who lived in the US with visas or green cards should not leave the US in case they be blocked from reentering. These fears then became reality on Friday, 27 January when Trump signed an executive order prohibiting nationals from those seven countries, Iran included, for 90 days. Although the Trump administration has since walked this portion of the order back, the ban initially included those who had valid visas or green cards.
Since he signed off on the order, the stories of deportations, airport detentions, and protests have overwhelmed news feeds and personal conversations.
My timeline is full of stories of people impacted by #Trump’s order. They are in shock & can’t believe it. #VisaBan pic.twitter.com/VfahEMi8VG
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) 28 de enero de 2017
Particularly notable are the many talented graduate students who have been barred or detained upon return to their homes. One Iranian PhD student at Stony Brook Department of Linguistics, Vahideh Rasekh, was detained at New York's JFK International Airport for 24 hours. She was returning to her studies after spending winter break with her family in Iran.
Meet Vahideh Rasekh: A Ph.D student in NY’s Stony Brook university. Currently detained in JFK. #VisaBan#MuslimBanpic.twitter.com/a4KXB6clvc
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) January 29, 2017
Rasekhi was ordered to be deported Saturday on a plane back to Istanbul despite a federal ruling granting stay orders against the orders of the ban.
Despite the stay order Vahideh Rasekhi is being deported on an 11:40 PM flight from JFK to Istanbul. #MuslimBan https://t.co/W6Y7mq1mnV
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) January 29, 2017
Journalists, activists and lawyers worked diligently to get her off the plane, and she was released Sunday at 3pm.
After close to 20 hours detention in JFK, Iranian Ph.D student Vahideh is free and speaks to media. #MuslimBan pic.twitter.com/f0DBWOiFUp
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) January 29, 2017
Another notable case has been that of Samira Asgari who was prevented from boarding a flight to the U.S. at the Frankfurth airport. Asgari holds a doctorate from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, was traveling to Boston to begin working on a tuberculosis project at a Harvard Medical School laboratory. In a statement of frustration, she asked Americans if they felt safer now that they were preventing her from starting her potentially life saving research at Harvard. Her entry to the U.S. continues to be denied.
I was pretty excited to join @soumya_boston‘s lab but denied boarding due to my Iranian nationality. Feeling safer?
— Samira Asgari (@samsam_86) January 28, 2017
Others were stuck for hours in airports waiting to be reunited with loved ones, like the case of an Iranian-American woman who was waiting overnight for her parents to be released by customs.
Stony Brook U student Shahar was just informed by Customs that her Iranian parents will remain in custody at JFK until at least tmrw morning pic.twitter.com/QsqpCNWvgX
— Mana Yegani (@Law_Mana) January 29, 2017
Similar stories of Syrian, Yemeni, Sudanese refugees and immigrants being denied entry have been numerous.
Also read: More Than a Hundred Iranians, Many of Them Legal Residents, Face Challenges Entering the US

author: Mahsa Alimardani


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A Legislative Proposal in Mexico Would Tie Political Parties’ Funding to Voter Turnout · Global Voices
Giovanna Salazar

Photo by ProtoplasmaKid. Taken from Wikimedia Commons and published under license CC-BY-SA 4.0
Against the backdrop of intense public outrage at the recent increase in gas prices in Mexico, a legislative initiative to reject the excesses of the political class has gained support throughout the country. Called #SinVotoNoHayDinero (#NoVotesNoMoney), the proposal is spearheaded by Manuel Clouthier and Pedro Kumamoto, two independent congressional representatives whose goal is to reduce the income of political parties.
Currently, political parties receive public money based on a calculation that involves the total number of people registered to vote (44.50 Mexican pesos, or approximately 2.14 US dollars, per person). The parties receive this money regardless of whether those registered to vote actually do so in a valid way on election day.
The initiative, which was recently approved by the Congress of the State of Jalisco (a state located in the western part of the country) and sent to the Chamber of Deputies at the federal level, aims to change the way in which public resources are allocated to finance political parties. With this, they hope to involve politicians in electoral participation and reduce the public resources taken by political parties.
The #NoVotesNoMoney website explains the basics of the problem:
Creemos que los partidos reciben demasiado dinero público y que esta fórmula hace que no se esfuercen para conseguir el voto popular. Nuestra propuesta consiste cambiar la fórmula para que en vez de multiplicar el padrón se multiplique la votación valida emitida (votos totales menos votos nulos y en blanco) por el 65% de una UMA. Esto haría que los partidos tengan que esforzarse porque las personas voten en las elecciones y en 2015, hubiese significado un ahorro del 65% (los partidos hubiesen recibido mil 800 millones de pesos).
We believe that the parties receive too much public money and that this formula leads to politicians not making an effort to win the popular vote. Our proposal consists of changing the formula so that instead of multiplying voter registration, the number of valid votes cast (total votes minus invalid or blank votes) would be multiplied by 65% of UMA [Measure and Update Unit, which substitutes minimum wage in some indexes]. This would force the parties to make an effort because people vote in the elections, and in 2015 it would have meant a savings of 65% (the parties would have received 1.8 billion pesos).
They say the proposal would not only save public money, but also encourage participation. In this regard, Pedro Kumamoto, who serves as independent representative for Jalisco, states:
Este tema es central, pues en nuestro actual sistema electoral no hay ningún tipo de restricción o castigo si en una elección no participa la mayoría de los electores. Hemos llegado a las ridículas cifras como el 25% o 30% de participación en estados como Baja California o Chihuahua. Y lejos de ver alguna tendencia que demuestre que los partidos han entendido, nos encontramos con elecciones llenas de guerra sucia, malos candidatos, procesos pantanosos, compra de votos y un debate yermo, lo que termina generando un distanciamiento mayor del electorado regular y, por consecuencia, una menor participación.
This is a central issue, because in our current electoral system there is no type of restriction or punishment if the majority of voters do not participate in an election. We have reached ridiculous participation statistics, like 25% or 30% in states like Baja California or Chihuahua. And far from seeing any trends showing that the parties have understood, we find ourselves in elections full of dirty war, bad candidates, swampy processes, buying votes and barren debate, which ends up creating a greater distance from the regular electorate and lower participation.
Likewise, with this new proposal, null votes would become an effective form of protest because, in effect, exercising a null vote would subtract possible economic resources from the parties.
In the midst of the economic crisis that the country is experiencing and whose consequences are suffered mostly by citizens, a proposal that seeks to restrict the broad privileges of political parties is seen by many as a step forward to social justice, something welcomed by many in Mexican social networks:
Aún con lo situación actual del país, personas como @pkumamoto con iniciativas cómo está le regresan la esperanza. #SinVotoNoHayDinero pic.twitter.com/R426De11n0
— Lisset Gutiérrez (@LissetGtzV) January 18, 2017
Tweet: Even with the country's current situation, people like @pkumamoto with initiatives like this one restore hope. #SinVotoNoHayDineropic.twitter.com/R426De11n0
Image: How does #NoVotesNoMoney work?
Today parties assign your money according to a formula
This must change! We propose
If they want our money, they need to earn our vote
Let's get the parties back to the people
A recortar donde sí se debe: financiamiento público a partidos para que esté vinculado al voto y no al padrón. Apoya #SinVotoNoHayDinero pic.twitter.com/GGetrdBTlF
— Denise Dresser (@DeniseDresserG) January 15, 2017
Cutting back where we should: public funding of parties so that it's linked to the vote and not the register. Support #SinVotoNoHayDinero pic.twitter.com/GGetrdBTlF

author: Giovanna Salazar


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Algerian Blogger Merzoug Touati Could Face 25 Years in Jail for Interviewing an Israeli Official on YouTube · Global Voices
Afef Abrougui

Police clashing with protesters during 2011 riots. Photo credit: Magharebia shared on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
Algerian authorities have charged blogger Merzoug Touati with “exchanging intelligence with a foreign power”, over a publicly posted video interview he conducted with a spokesperson for the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Police arrested Touati on 18 January and confiscated his computer and camera, according to the Algerian League for Human Rights (LADDH). The group's lawyers are representing Touati in court.
LADDH lawyer Ikken Sofiane told Algerian news site El-Watan that Touati was charged under article 71 of the Penal Code which prescribes a punishment of up to 20 years in jail for anyone convicted of “exchanging with agents of a foreign power intelligence which could harm the military or diplomatic status of Algeria or its vital economic interests.”
Merzoug Touati could face an additional 1-5 years in prison for “incitement to armed protests against the State.” His trial date has not been set yet.
Merzoug Touati. Photo shared on the Facebook page of his blog Alhogra
On 9 January, Touati posted on YouTube and on his blog Alhogra a video interview with Hassan Kaabia, the Israeli foreign ministry's spokesperson for Arabic-speaking media. The interview focused on the public response to the 2017 Finance Law, which includes an increase in value-added, income and property taxes, and a decrease in fuel subsidies. When the law went into effect on 1 January, strikes and riots erupted in the northern province of Bejaia and other parts of the country.
An Algerian government minister accused foreign powers of meddling in the country's affairs and orchestrating the protests. In the interview, Touati asked Kaabia about accusations made by an Algerian government. Kaabia denied any Israeli involvement.
Kaabia also told Touati that before 2000 there was “communication” between the Algerian and Israeli governments, but could not confirm if Algeria hosted a diplomatic office representing Israel in the past. Algeria and other Arab league governments, with the exceptions of Egypt and Jordan, do not officially recognize or have diplomatic relations with Israel due to the latter's occupation of Palestinian territories. However, some governments currently and in the past have maintained communication channels with or hosted offices representing Israel. Such relations are often kept secret by Arab governments due to the popular support to the Palestinian cause in the region.
On his blog Alhogra, Touati has consistently covered anti-austerity strikes and job protests, and rights violations committed by Algerian authorities. On 22 November, he posted an interview with Tilelli Bouhafs, whose father Slimane Bouhasf, is currently serving a three-year jail term on charges of insulting Islam in his online posts.
With the arrest of Touati, Algeria continues its crackdown on government critics and those peacefully exercising their right to free speech online. In December of 2016, this campaign cost the life of blogger Mohammad Tamalt who entered a coma after staging a two-month hunger strike in protest of his detainment for publishing on Facebook a poem critical of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

author: Afef Abrougui


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Building a Sustainable, Open-Source Platform for Language Learning · Global Voices
Derek Lackaff

A version of this post was originally published at r12n on Medium.
Learning a language is a challenging endeavor. Digital technologies have been developed over the last several decades to aid the process, ranging from (probably) familiar platforms like Rosetta Stone to immersive virtual environments.
In recent years, the web and mobile app Duolingo has risen to prominence by developing a novel learning model that focuses on maximizing user engagement. While Duolingo is free to use, it is not “open” in the sense that it can broadly invite users to collaborate and contribute. Duolingo learning features come and go, as the company determines what works best for the majority of users and supports financial growth.
Duolingo has an “Incubator” program that allows volunteers to develop new courses. However, the Incubator program is relatively opaque, and the learning content that is developed belongs solely to Duolingo. I asked Duolingo founder Luis van Ahn about course development plans for endangered or indigenous languages, and he replied: “We’ll be working on 4–5 smaller languages this year, but there are over 6,000 languages in the world, so we won’t have the resources to make a big dent any time soon.”
Social entrepreneur Marc Bogonovich, however, sees massive opportunity for language-learning technology that is open — open-source software, open educational resources, and even open business models. Bogonovich argues, “there are many emerging applications, often with very nice interfaces, but they are often unavailable to instructors or university instructors, or they expect to retain more control over the curricula (in design or intellectual property) than is acceptable or reasonable. We really want to empower instructors with excellent problem [design] interfaces for their students.”
To this end, Bogonovich founded Openwords with the intention of producing a free and open-source language learning platform.
Openwords is several things: it is a open-source language-learning app with robust lesson and course development features. It is a social enterprise, or a for-profit business that legally pursues a social mission — not shareholder value — as its highest priority. Finally, if things go according to Bogonovich’s plan, Openwords will be a community of language learners and teachers.
Where does Openwords fit in a technical and commercial language-learning landscape that already contains players like Duolingo and Memrise, and even open-source projects like Anki?
Bogonovich has structured Openwords to be open in multiple senses of the term. The software under development is open-source, as is the supporting infrastructure such as a problem markup language and file formats. He notes, “We’re designing the platform to have an open curriculum, meaning teachers and universities have the tools to create and modify the curricula directly. You won’t ask us for permission to build curricula — the tools we are building will just allow that.”
The user-generated content, such as problems, lessons, and curricula, is also intended to be open and adaptable by other users. Communities of language teachers will be able to share full semesters of content, for example, and individual teachers will be able to adapt and build on others’ lessons to make them better suited for specific learning contexts. Such open educational resources (OER) represent a massive opportunity for language communities with limited resources.
Bogonovich is interested in open technology which empowers people who are outside of Openwords’ formal organizational boundaries. He believes that this openness will encourage the teachers and universities who partner with Openwords to have a deeper stake in its success.
Openwords is also a startup, but a startup founded with clearly-defined open principles. Bogonovich realized from the start that he did not want to found a traditional business, where the bottom line was ultimately just the bottom line:
We are a social enterprise, meaning we have legally protected social and educational goals in addition to financial goals. Openwords is not legally obligated to maximize profit, allowing our organization to better align with the goals of educational institutions. We can maximize revenue (which is different than profit) to maximize our impact. Therefore, we are implementing business models that will sustain and grow open source technology.
An early partner in the Open Business Model Canvas group organized by Creative Commons, Bogonovich has been actively exploring ways to structure Openwords to maximize its social value and mission. The company is currently pursuing B Corp certification, which offers strong legal protections of Openwords’ social mission.
I believe that business institutions needs to evolve. They can’t just be about profit maximization. The predominance of such institutions will not create a sustainable future, and will not create a desirable future.
Openwords’ current revenue model is based on providing student tracking and metrics to educational institutional customers, and negotiations are underway with several universities. Bogonivich anticipates finalizing the first such agreements this year: “The path from zero to one client is a qualitative, exploratory, and experimental experience. One to ten clients is hopefully more quantitative. We can continue to engage in more experimentation, but once we’ve accumulated experiences and technologies we begin to generate revenue and scale.”
Openwords is like many open technology projects, in that it leverages a range of previously developed technologies. These include open source programming languages and development platforms. Bogonovich notes that technology standards are particularly important: “Standards like Unicode with their aim of representing most written languages makes something like Openwords possible. I think of Openwords as becoming a higher level element of educational technology infrastructure.”
Openwords app screens.
Openwords’ language learning interface should be familiar to users of platforms such as Duolingo or Memrise. A range of problem types are available, including fill-in-the-blank, sentence translation, and listening comprehension.
Openwords Lesson Builder GUI.
Where Openwords gets particularly exciting, however, is in the opportunities it provides to teachers. To design problems and lessons, teachers can use a graphic user interface (it uses drop-down menus at the moment, but a drag-and-drop interface is planned), or they can write problems in a text editor using a markup language. I’m not sure if this name is official yet, but I like “Openwords Markup Language” or OWML.
OWML is under active development, with the latest focus on how to represent problems containing audio. The general idea, however, is great: keep the educational content in a simple, open, text-based format that can be easily shared, modified, and manipulated.
Openwords Markup Language: the code on the right represents the problem on the left. Beautifully simple.
Openwords has strong potential for use in language communities with limited educational resources. The simple fact that the project is open-source, and that its content is not proprietary, should inspire confidence that effort put into the platform will not be squandered. Teachers who create lessons will never be locked out of their lessons due to a change in an interface or business model.
“OER and the open orientation I see as what is needed to reach various languages, even perhaps more than resources — there are a large number of under-resourced languages,” Bogonovich says. He suggests that the openness provided by Openwords will allow smaller language communities to usefully allocate and invest time into language course development. As evidence, he points to the large number of Wikipedias that have been collaboratively and openly developed in different languages over the years.
Bogonovich says that Openwords would be happy to work with members of such language communities: “We’ll work with with groups that perceive the value of OER. And I fully expect that means many different kinds of people and groups. We spent some time discussing why our platform would be valuable for indigenous communities.”
The Openwords problem formulation. Image courtesy Marc Bogonovich
In the longer term, Bogonovich envisions Openwords contributing to specific language learning agendas, as well as developing open analytics to provide a broader scientific understanding of the learning process. “After we develop a larger university client base we will begin even deeper technology development, and we will diversify the kinds of learning modules (types of individual problems),” he notes. “We will also explore in much more depth learning patterns, essentially which patterns or problems lead to learning in what segments of learners.”
He further explains, “Because Openwords is a social enterprise, and an open enterprise, what we learn is going to be public domain. Openwords can become a vessel for open science on foreign language learning. We know that other language learning apps do science internally. We’re going to make this public. We hope to leverage our community of users (with proper permissions and anonymity) for researchers who want to study big data and language learning.”

author: Derek Lackaff


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Language Legends Help Create a Colorful Snapshot of Australia’s Linguistic Diversity · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

Screenshot of the Gambay map
What better way to visualize the diversity of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages than with a multimedia online map?
“Gambay,” which means “together” in the Butchulla language of the Harvey Bay region in Queensland is a colorful resource map that provides information on more than 780 of the country’s native languages. Each dot on the map represents a different language region, and those dots showing similar colors indicate those languages that may have characteristics in common. Only around 20 of these languages are used on a daily basis by fluent speakers, so being able to establish links between similar languages is an important strategy to establish mutual support.
Screenshot of the Gambay map's Language Legends feature.
First Languages Australia formed a partnership with the Queensland Indigenous Languages Advisory Committee, which shared the technology developed for Nyurrangu Ngardji, a similar map displaying languages of Queensland.
Important contributions were collected from “Language Legends,” who are speakers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages working as local advocates. These individuals provided video testimonials outlining the importance of maintaining and revitalizing the languages for current and future generations. These contributions are an ideal way for these local leaders to introduce themselves to their own community as individuals committed to language promotion who can be called on for language advice and support.
Special emphasis was placed on how the language communities choose to represent themselves through the video testimonials, and verifying the location and spelling of the word they use to call their language. According to Melinda Holden of First Languages Australia, this feature is especially relevant as Australian languages were oral languages prior to the settlement, and:
they have been named/spelled various ways over the years by the missionaries, government officials, linguists and other researchers who have worked with the language communities; and by community members themselves.
This map places that decision-making ability back into the hands of community members to decide for themselves on how they are represented.
Another “Language Legend” featured in the map, Bridget, a speaker of the Warrgamay language, writes:
I’m a Djambi in our language. That means old woman. I’m a linguist, I prefer to use the term community linguist or first language linguist. I translate resources from English into our languages, and look at the materials that we need to support language learning. I work a lot with our community. We have a lot to do with our people, talking and agreeing on ways to support language.
I live it and breathe it everyday. Language work is the best thing I can do. Who wants to go out and do other things, when I can be saving our languages?
Additional ways for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to contribute and participate in Gambay and control how their culture and language is represented in cyberspace are being developed in conjunction with the “Language Legends” and regional language centers. The content currently displayed on the map could be used in the classroom across key subjects including English, Maths, Science, History, Geography and Civics. The notes it provides are linked to the Australian national curriculum and cover each year grade level.

author: Eduardo Avila


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Meet ‘VKgoeswild,’ Ukraine’s Classical Pianist-Turned Rocker · Global Voices
RuNet Echo

Source: YouTube.
By the time she was in kindergarten, Viktoriya Yermolyeva's parents knew she had a rare talent. Recognizing her perfect pitch and prodigious skill on the piano, they quickly enrolled her in a a special school to be trained as a classical pianist and signed her up for countless competitions and concerts.
But over time, the Kyiv-born pianist's tastes changed; despite winning numerous awards at international piano competitions, soloing at some of Eastern Europe's most famous concert halls, and training with some of the biggest names in contemporary classical music, Yermolyeva decided that she wanted to play another kind of music: rock.
While still performing as a classical pianist, in 2007, she created an account on YouTube to post recordings of her arrangements of metal and rock classics—using it as a kind of escape from her classical repertoire. “VKgoeswild,” Yermolyeva's rock alter ego, quickly took off, with her covers of System of A Down's “Toxicity” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Queen's “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and other songs tallying up millions of views each.
Despite first creating her account almost a decade ago, Yermolyeva continues to publish her covers regularly, and now has nearly half a million followers on YouTube. The 39-year-old rocker posts the sheet music for her arrangements on the website FlowKey; they're also available—more than 300 arrangements in all—for direct download for a small fee.
These days, Yermolyeva plays her rock on the road, often with a drummer, in venues across Europe.

author: RuNet Echo


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Notes From the Eye of the Crowd · Global Voices
Ivan Sigal

Faces of participants of the No Muslim Ban protest at Lafayette Park, in Washington D.C., January 29, 2017. Photos: Ivan Sigal
The residents of Washington D.C. came out of their houses and apartments last Sunday morning. They walked, biked and took buses down to Lafayette Square, in front of the White House, for a spontaneous demonstration, in tandem with other protests across the United States against Trump's Executive Order banning entry to the U.S. for immigrants, visa holders and refugees from seven countries.
Perhaps 5,000 people, seemingly unaccustomed to protest. In a tightly-packed space between left-over fencing from the previous weekend's Presidential inauguration, the event began with the same improvised spirit in which it was organized—through a Facebook page, then rippling across social media into the flesh-and-blood world.
In the absence of a stage or a clear leader, people in the crowd looked to each other for cues. They were less a mobilized march than a collection of individuals deciding, on the spot, how they should behave. Here were people coming out of their social media shells, out of communities defined by work or school and into a fully public civic space. There were rumors that political leaders attended, but they were not visible or audible from any of the vantages I achieved. Instead, people negotiated with others nearby, for space, for direction. And perhaps because this crowd was not united by any organizing principle other than the need to demonstrate resistance, those negotiations took place mostly in silence, with looks and nods and occasional gestures.
Faces of participants of the No Muslim Ban protest at Lafayette Park, in Washington D.C., January 29, 2017. Photos: Ivan Sigal
Perhaps they were angry, or determined, but the chants and calls of “Shame”, “No ban, no wall” and “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here” rose in restive pockets within the crowd, never reaching a volume or pitch that could be mistaken for aggression. As the crowd packed into the space from the rear, some took the initiative to announce a march along Pennsylvania Avenue, to the Trump International Hotel, and then onward to the Capitol. The jam broke, and we started moving.
Faces of participants of the No Muslim Ban protest at Lafayette Park, in Washington D.C., January 29, 2017. Photos: Ivan Sigal

author: Ivan Sigal


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Tabloid Tells Abusers How to Exploit Russia’s Decriminalization of Domestic Violence · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

Photo: Pixabay
The Russian federal government is very close to decriminalizing several kinds of domestic abuse, reclassifying “violence that doesn’t cause significant injury” as a misdemeanor. According to criteria laid down by Russia's Health Ministry, the draft legislation will decriminalize beatings within families that result in “minor harm,” like “small abrasions, bruises, superficial wounds, and soft-tissue damage.”
Last Friday, the State Duma approved the final draft of the legislation. Though the proposal has been controversial in the Russian media, just three deputies voted against it, while 380 legislators supported it. Now, the law needs only the approval of Russia’s always-compliant Federation Assembly, before it lands on the president’s desk for one final signature, and Vladimir Putin has already expressed his support for the bill.
Naturally, the Russian government’s move to decriminalize certain kinds of domestic violence has fueled an intense debate online, where you can also find no shortage of misogynistic jokes mocking the concept of violence against women and children, as well as jokes about the new avenues for expressing “masculinity” opened by a lighter approach to policing abuse in families.
While this kind of sophomoric humor is nearly ubiquitous on the Internet, especially with content related to women’s rights, it’s not limited to Russia’s “alt-right” lunatics sharing tasteless jokes.
On Jan. 27, hours after the Duma passed the final draft of the decriminalization bill, the pro-Kremlin tabloid “Life” shared a bizarre video on social media, titled “He Beats You Because He Loves You,” reviewing the “top five ways to commit domestic violence without leaving any traces on your loved ones.”
In 47 seconds, breezing through a jaunty little guitar song, viewers are treated to a playful montage of dancing clipart, explaining that people can use rolled up bed mattresses, place a book on someone’s head and pound through the book, smack relatives with an open palm, apply chokeholds, or beat the soles of someone’s feet. The final segment seems to show a child dying, as its feet are pummeled and the music becomes somber, before cutting to the Life logo and the hashtag “#wow.”
At the time of this writing, the video has 28,000 views on Facebook and more than 83,000 views on Vkontakte, where Life explained in a comment: “Here’s a video for you about what isn’t criminally punishable anymore. But you still shouldn’t do this.”
The video provoked immediate outrage from many in the Russian media — even from journalists who regularly experiment with edgy humor, like Igor Belkin, the mind behind “Lentach,” one of the RuNet’s most popular satirical projects.
In a note on Facebook, Belkin wrote:
Тут всякие хорошие и разные люди идут работать в “Лайф”, и, сообщив об этом на ФБ, удивляются, почему им в комментах нечужие и опять же неплохие в общем-то люди предлагают помочиться себе на лицо и так далее. Так вот примерно поэтому.
There are all sorts of various good people who go to work at Life, and, having shared this video on Facebook, are suddenly surprised when people they know — again, generally decent folks — comment on these posts, suggesting that they go and piss on their own faces, etc. Well, this is why that happens.
Domestic violence is an enormous problem in Russia today. Statistics released by the Interior Ministry in 2013, as reported by the website Meduza, show that police registered more than 38,235 abuse victims — almost three fourths of whom were women.
According to data collected in 2003 by Amnesty International, roughly 14,000 Russian women die annually from domestic violence — much of which goes unreported. At that time, researchers concluded that 36,000 women in Russia are exposed to domestic violence on any given day.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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The Executive Order on Immigration Wants You To Think Gaining Legal Entry to the US Is Easy · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

Protest against the Executive Order on Immigration in Boston. PHOTO: little celería via Instagram. Used with permission.
Last Friday afternoon, perhaps around the time the ink was drying on the US president’s now infamous Executive Order on Immigration, a group of people in a lecture room at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago were watching the first episode of the Brazilian Netflix production “3%”.
The series envisions a dystopian future in which young people are subjected to a series of tests to assess their fitness for admission to Offshore, the earthly paradise where only 3% of candidates gain entry. In one sequence in the episode, candidates are subjected to a humiliating interrogation. In the discussion that followed, a student said it reminded her of visiting the US embassy in Port of Spain. There were murmurs of recognition around the room, including from me. Once, in the early G. W. Bush years, my beat-up Honda Civic shut down on the side street near said embassy. As I tried to coax the engine back to life, two US Marines appeared out of nowhere, brandished assault rifles and yelled at me—evidently a suicide bomber—to “Stand down!” And that was outside the building. Inside, in the embassy’s consular section, the atmosphere can be nearly as anxiety-inducing.
One aspect of the drama surrounding the Executive Order that's resonated strongly for me is the misguided notion that gaining legal entry to the US is easy. In reality, it’s a bitch. Each of the several hundred legal visitors who were turned away at US airports as a result of the Executive Order had already experienced strict, nerve-wracking interrogation in order to obtain their travel documents. For refugees, as it's long been pointed out, the process is even more rigorous.
Perhaps it should be obvious, given the US’s popularity as a destination, that a US visa is not an easy thing to acquire. But if you’re a US citizen, or from of one of the countries on the US Visa Waiver Program list, you might not have considered this angle, even if you happen to be a journalist covering the story. Depending on where their travels take them, a great many people may never need to apply for a visa in their entire lives. Understanding what people go through in order to gain legal entry to the US, however, seems fundamental to understanding the level of nefarious overkill this Executive Order represents.
The US has every right to police and secure its borders, as does every sovereign country. But as Ron Nixon points out yesterday in the New York Times, there’s already a robust system of checks and vetting that legal entrants to the US undergo well before they ever touch US soil. The visa application process alone is arduous. Applicants must produce sheaves of documentation, including bank statements, police certificates, and proof of “strong ties” to the homeland such as marriage certificates and property deeds, which means that young, unmarried people are disfavoured from the start. Then there’s the extended grilling by a consular officer. Visa applications are frequently rejected, on all sorts of grounds. And it should be noted that in the event of a rejection, the US embassy does not refund the US$160 processing fee, which in many countries represents a good portion of the average income.
On arrival in the US, even a fairly uncontroversial traveler like me—a Trinidad and Tobago female citizen with a “Christian-sounding” name well past the age of the average drug mule—is occasionally subjected to odd lines of questioning by US immigration. Who did I know in the Netherlands? I was once asked while transiting through Miami on the way to Europe, as though knowing somebody in a country were a pre-requisite for traveling there. I shudder to think about the questions asked of citizens of the countries cited in the Executive Order.
The people who tried to enter the US by perfectly legal means this past weekend, and had their lives turned upside down by the Executive Order on Immigration, have every right to feel targeted and vilified. These people paid the price of entry, in both figurative and literal terms. You’d think an administration comprising a bunch of businessmen would appreciate that. But you also know why they don't.

author: Georgia Popplewell


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British Journalist Thinks The World Owes Latin America an Apology for the So-Called ‘War on Drugs’ · Global Voices
Autor Invitado

Johann Hari. Photograph taken from the Wikipedia Commons. From the public domain.
The following is a republication of the interview by Estefanía Sepúlveda Portilla (ESP) for the Chilean media collective Pousta and was originally published on their website under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence. In this republication, the interview will be released in two parts.
British journalist Johann Hari (JH) decided one day to take a critical look at the theme of drug addiction, for reasons more personal than journalistic. In his investigation, he discovered that the so-called “War on Drugs” — the global policy driven by the United States and later forcibly exported to Mexico and the rest of Latin America tackling the problem of drugs, weapons and prisons — had been going on for 100 years.
The studies and the scientific evidence do not support the strategy, but this has not put the brakes on international policies. Meanwhile, the problem becomes more and more complex and spreads to various countries throughout the region, with no end in sight. A total contradiction, no matter how you look at it. With a passion for journalism and the fire of an issue that affected him personally, Johann embarked on a three-year-long journey that spanned 15 countries in his search for answers.
The end result is his book “Chasing the Scream“, which analyzes and questions the perceptions that have been used to defend the continued conflict. According to Hari, in his first statement during the interview:
Una de las razones por las cuales investigué tanto tiempo este tema fue porque mi primer recuerdo de niño es de intentar despertar a un tío que yo pensaba que estaba dormido y no pude. Después descubrí que había problemas de adicción a las drogas en mi familia.
One of the reasons I investigated this topic for so long was because my first memory as a child was of trying to wake up my uncle, who I thought was sleeping, and I couldn't. Later I discovered there were drug addiction problems in my family.
Then, he continued explaining the background of his work: “When I started I was a bit arrogant, I thought I knew a lot about all this, but I realized that I didn't even know the most basic questions on the topic,” he recalls. “These were,” he says, counting on his fingers via Skype, “Why did we start a war 100 years ago against addicts and drug consumers? Why did we continue if it was a disaster? What alternatives to this strategy exist? What is it that turns people into drug addicts?”
Johann launches these four questions himself, before we can ask anything. Before we even finished translating them mentally, he continues talking:
JH Quería sentarme con gente que hubiese estado realmente metida en esto, que hayan visto sus vidas afectadas por el tema. Estuve en 15 países y finalmente conocí a un montón de gente, una mezcla muy loca, extraña y diferente: desde una persona trans que vendía crack en Brooklyn, hasta un sicario para uno de los carteles más violentos de Juárez de México. Estuve en Portugal, el único país del mundo que ha descriminalizado el consumo de todas las drogas, con resultados sorprendentes. Mi mayor conclusión al respecto es que todo lo que creemos que sabemos sobre adicción está mal: las drogas no son lo que creemos, la guerra contra las drogas tampoco.
JH I wanted to sit down with people who had really been immersed in this, who had seen their lives affected by it. I was in 15 countries and by the end I met a lot of people, a crazy mixed bag, strange and different: from a trans person who sold crack in Brooklyn, to a hired killer for one of the most violent cartels in Juárez, Mexico. I was in Portugal, the only country in the world that has decriminalized all drug consumption, with surprising results. My biggest conclusion, then, is that everything we think we know about addiction is wrong: drugs are not what we think, and neither is the war on drugs.
ESP: Let's start at the beginning. How and why did the ‘War on Drugs’ start?
JH Es bien interesante, porque yo pensaba lo mismo que todo el mundo te respondería ahora en la calle: que fue porque no querían que la gente se hiciera adicta, o que los niños consumieran. Pero no, no tenía nada que ver con eso. Fue fascinante encontrarme con la historia de Harry Anslinger, que es el creador de la “Guerra contra las drogas”. Él llegó al cargo de Director del Departamento de Prohibición del Alcohol en Estados Unidos, justo cuando la prohibición llegaba a su fin. Tenía un gran departamento y un gran cargo encima y nada que hacer; entonces, básicamente inventó esta guerra para mantener vivo el departamento. Lo hizo basándose en las tres cosas que más odiaba en el mundo, que eran los afroamericanos, los latinos y los drogadictos. Armó toda una burocracia basada en fuertes prejuicios sociales, para oprimir a esos grupos.
JH It's pretty interesting, because I thought the same as what anybody else would tell you on the street: it was because they didn't want people to become addicts, or that they didn't want kids to take drugs. But no, it didn't have anything to do with that. It was fascinating to come across the story of Harry Anslinger, the creator of the ‘War on Drugs’. He was given the position of Director of the Bureau of Prohibition in the United States, right when the prohibition was ending. He had this huge agency and a top position, but nothing to do. So he basically invented this war in order to keep the bureau alive. And he did it based on the three things he hated most in the world: African Americans, Latinos and drug addicts. He put together a whole bureaucracy based on strong social prejudices to oppress these groups.
How does Latin America come into play?
JH Ése es el corazón de la guerra contra las drogas. Cuando prohíben las drogas, éstas no desaparecen, solo pasan de manos de doctores y farmacéuticos, a narcotraficantes armados, y luego Estados Unidos culpa a México sobre esto, lo que es bastante irónico si ves que ahora, cien años después, Trump armó su campaña sobre esta idea. El gobierno de México en ese momento hizo algo bastante inteligente y valiente. Le dijeron a Estados Unidos: “Vimos lo que están haciendo, pero no funciona”. Entonces ponen a Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra a cargo de las políticas de drogas. Él tenia un centro de rehabilitación, conocía el tema. Entonces dice, ‘La cannabis realmente no es dañina, no deberíamos prohibirla. Sobre el problema con las otras drogas, se necesita tratar a los adictos con amor compasión y tratamiento, pero no hay que prohibir las drogas porque si hacemos eso las drogas van a ser controladas por traficantes, gángsters, y carteles.’ Si hay alguien en el mundo al que la historia le haya dado la razón es a Leopoldo Salazar, ¿no te parece?
JH This is the core of the ‘War on Drugs’. When they ban drugs, they don't disappear, they just go from the hands of doctors and pharmacists to armed drug dealers, and then the United States blames Mexico for it, which is pretty ironic if you see that now, 100 years later, Trump pitched his campaign on this idea. The Mexican government at that time did something pretty intelligent and brave.They told the United States, ‘We saw what you're doing, and it doesn't work’. So they put Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra in charge of drug policy. He owned a rehabilitation center and was familiar with the issue. Then he said, ‘Cannabis really isn't harmful, we shouldn't ban it. On the problem of other drugs, addicts need to be treated with love and compassion and medical care, but drugs must not be banned because if they are, they will be controlled by the dealers, the gangsters and the cartels’. If there's anyone in the world who history has proven right, it's Leopoldo Salazar, don't you think?
ESP: Totally.
JH La respuesta de Estados Unidos fue, ‘Sáquenlo’. México dijo que creía en él, y entonces Estados Unidos, fiel a su estilo, se puso amenazante, y en venganza, dejaron de exportar a México los opiáceos para medicamentos legales que se hacían en Estados Unidos. Y gente empezó a morir. Entonces, México tuvo que ceder. Así, esta guerra contra las drogas se expandió a toda Latinoamérica.
JH The United States’ response was, ‘Take him out’. Mexico said they believed in him, and then the United States, true to style, got all threatening and in retaliation, stopped exporting legal medical opiates made in the United States to Mexico. And people started to die. So Mexico had to give up. That's how the war on drugs spread to all of Latin America.

author: Autor Invitado


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Fake, Fraud, False, Fabricated: Finding the Vocabulary for Truth in News · Global Voices
Connie Moon Sehat

Image by Imgur user pleasegoogleShakerAamerpleasegoogleDavidKellyse
“Fake news” has received a lot of attention lately, especially as recent cases demonstrate potentially powerful and wide-ranging effects. Its potential for triggering violence was all too real at the turn of the new year: consider the late December threat of nuclear readiness that Pakistani defence minister, Khawaja Mohammad Asif, sent to Israel based upon a falsified news report about Israeli intentions. Within the United States, “fake news” has become a way of labeling news outlets that seem critical of Donald Trump but has also been considered as a possible explanation for his  rise to the presidency.
Fake news is not the only problem, as people like Melissa Zimdars (a professor whose fake news list was famously featured in the aftermath of US elections) have pointed out. Indeed, cases of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, click-bait, and “truthiness” seem equally prevalent and, perhaps in some cases, more harmful (as Gilad Lotan has recently argued).
In fact, it is difficult to know exactly what “fake news” is. It is not enough for a story to have incorrect facts — journalists have been wrong before — and does not include cases of outright journalistic fraud. Earlier uses of fake news were more closely tied to fabricated content with intentions to generate revenue. Now the term can include a whole spectrum of objectionable news types including some of the problematic cases mentioned above. There is at minimum a contest over the term, at least in English-language media spaces. Trying to translate this term into other languages further highlights the problem: take Japanese, where デマ or “dema” can mean “fake news” but also “false rumors” as well.
One thing that “fake news” does capture is the difficulty readers are having telling the difference between what is true and false in news reporting. A study from Stanford University last year of over 7,800 students showed that most US high school students, for example, simply accept photographs and their captions as “real,” without thinking to verify them. And the test photo in question?
Fukushima Nuclear Flowers
Presented with this image, students had a hard time seeing the above as anything but evidence of nuclear disaster.
So then, how can we talk about this and other problems raised by THAT TERM without further adding to the confusion? Especially given that, from the Global Voices worldwide perspective, the challenges raised by fake news are nothing new. That is why the NewsFrames Initiative, as one of its first efforts, is seeking to introduce some clarity, especially on a global scale.
This means tackling the difficult task of trying to find the right words to describe the issues and phenomenon. In December, we started out with fake but moved towards terms like false and fraudulent, both of which started carried implications about authorial intention and criminality that made us uncomfortable. At the moment, we have converged, somewhat tentatively, on the term fabricated news, which you can read more about on this page. We expect this will be a work in progress, one that will take into account the efforts of our volunteers, who are collecting specific types of this problematic news in any language.
Dwelling on “fake news” can raise questions about the overall limitations of fact-driven reporting, but we see it as an opportunity as well. The problems raised by creating, reading, and sharing fabricated content have been around for a while, and professional and nonprofessional writers have grappled with these and related challenges about accurate, unbiased, or objective measures on an ongoing basis. It could turn out that as we slowly reflect upon these challenges, we will discover, or rediscover, a language for standards in truthful storytelling and mature readership that can support just societies.

author: Connie Moon Sehat


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How to Reintegrate the Afghan Boys Used as Sex Toys of Powerful Men? · Global Voices
Rustam Ali Seerat

Screenshot from video of Bachi Baza males dancing shot in hotel in Kabul. Video uploaded onto YouTube by the user Sofi on September 9, 2013. Face of dancer blurred to protect identity.
In Bacha Bazi, a sexual practice involving two males that has remained common in Afghanistan through many centuries, relations are far from equal.
Today, the practice, which translates roughly as “boy play” typically involves an older man (often a powerful military commander either on the government side or the militant Taliban) and a young boy, aged between 14 and 18.
The boys are bought or sometimes kidnapped from their families and retained by their well-armed patriarchs for dancing, games and sexual pleasure. They are treated as possessions to bolster a warlord's standing in front of his peers, and their reintegration into society often ends in tragedy.
According to Akhilesh Pillalamarri, writing in the Diplomat, the ongoing prevalence of Bacha Bazi highlights “the tragic situation where consensual homosexual relations are punishable by death [in Afghanistan], while exploitative relationships with boys are simply winked at.”
While the historical origins of Bacha Bazi are difficult to trace, the practice is well-noted in literature. Great Persian-speaking poets from the fourteenth century including Hafiz Shirazi and Jami Herati penned verses in praise of the handsomeness of their boys. In his book Shahed Bazi dar Adabiat Faris (Bacha Bazi in Persian literature) a professor of Persian literature at Tehran University, Sirus Shamisa, claims that the anonymous muses of Persian romantic poets were often males, rather than females.
Some speculate that Bacha Bazi has sustained its presence in Afghanistan due to the distance traditionally maintained between the sexes throughout childhood and into adolescence.
The practice undoubtedly boomed, however, during the war of resistance that followed the Soviet Union's invasion of the country in 1979.  Mujaheedin fighting the invading force spent long periods away from home in remote mountainous regions where child soldiers would be among their companions.
More recently, in December, The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) warned that Bacha Bazi had surged again, following intense conflict in the northeast of the country. The commission called on the parliament to pass anti-Bacha Bazi laws.
Although the tradition is strongly associated with the northern regions of Afghanistan where resistance to the Soviet incursion for over a decade was concentrated, Taliban forces, whose sanctuaries are in southern and eastern Afghanistan, are now the biggest perpetrators.
This is in spite of the fact that, when in power prior to the US-led invasion of 2001, the group took steps to outlaw the practice and punish the older men involved in it.
Afghan social media users opposed to the Taliban strongly criticise the group for engaging in Bacha Bazi. But such criticisms often have the unfortunate side-effect of deepening the stigma surrounding the boys themselves.
لواطت و بچه بازی، لذت جنسی بردن از پسران جوان در بین طالبان مسلح افغانستان بیداد میکند.
Sodomy and Bacha Bazi (boy play), sexual exploitation of young boys among the armed Afghan Taliban is beyond description.
Posted by Said Azami on Sunday, June 5, 2016
Bacha Bazi boys can be deployed as weapons, as well as wartime concubines. In April 2015 the Afghan National Directorate of Security arrested a sixteen-year-old for attempting a suicide bomb attack after he was reportedly gang-raped and directed towards his target — the Bagrami district police headquarters in Kabul — by the Taliban.
According to a special report by the Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency, the Taliban also uses these young boys as prey to lure in the soldiers and policemen of the Afghan state.
One Afghan Facebook user vented angrily:
Afghanistan is only an Islamic country by name and no Sharia law is implemented in here. Because in Islam those who change their gender are cursed and are supposed be punished hard. But in Afghanistan Bacha Bazi  almost have became a culture. [Sic]
Posted by فیس بوک وطنی on Monday, January 20, 2017
Beyond the battlefield, the boys are used as dancers in weddings and parties, where they put on make up and dress like women.
Once older than 18, they are often released by their masters, but their problems don't end there.
The AIHRC's call to criminalize the practice will do little to help the victims, especially given chronic problems enforcing laws in Afghanistan.
What must certainly change is the widespread view that Bacha Bazi victims are morally and sexually impure, which has led to their rejection by their own families and society as a whole. It is precisely due to these perceptions that victims are increasingly falling prey to radical militant groups keen to offer them redemption through the pursuit of a supposedly divine cause.
Currently Afghan society struggles both to acknowledge the extent of the problem, and to accept that these boys are similar to other victims of the country's wars, such as the victims of Taliban land mines or ISAF coalition drone strikes.
One potential instrument to aid their reintegration could be the AIHRC itself. Currently the commission has a department that helps women who have faced domestic violence, but nothing specific for the male victims of Bacha Bazi.
Better institutional support for these traumatised boys and young men would go some way towards rolling back the cruel stigmatisation they have done nothing to deserve.

author: Rustam Ali Seerat


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Listen to the Tranquil Sounds of the Jetigen, One of Central Asia’s Forgotten Instruments · Global Voices
Akhal-Tech Collective

Jetigen stringed instrument. Photo taken from Kloop.kg. Creative commons.
Kyrgyz media portal Kloop.kg has published a short feature on the jetigen musical instrument, with a video featuring Jusup Asayev, director of the ‘Dostuk (friendship) Folklore Ensemble’ playing on the instrument.
According to the author of the article, the jetigen, which is played flat and can have up to 15 strings, has become less popular in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in recent times.
Given that the jetigen's timbre is much more impressive than that of the tinny-sounding, lute-like komuz played by thousands in Kyrgyzstan, or its Kazakh relative the dombra, the main explanation for the jetigen falling out of favour may be its portability issues.
At over one-and-a-half metres in length, the longest, most mellifluous jetigens are simply more awkward to lug around than either of those, which fit neatly into cases that can be slung over the shoulder.
One place where the jetigen is still thriving is the Russian Republic of Khakassia, where the ethnic Turkic Khakas people live.
@edentravels @ChrisRickleton @SonglinesMag @globalvoices This clip gives you a sense of its versatility. https://t.co/yyNxqNu9DN
— Nick Holdstock (@NickHoldstock) February 3, 2017
Now, having given a demonstration of the instrument at a music school in the capital Bishkek, Jusup Asayev is holding classes to help make the jetigen great again in his native Kyrgyzstan.

author: Akhal-Tech Collective


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Nigerian ‘Cultural Evangelist’ Promotes African Languages with Apps and Digital Storytelling · Global Voices
Eduardo Avila

Screenshot from the Oluronbi,digital story app.
“Cultural evangelist” is a term that Adebayo Adegbembo sometimes likes to call himself, which has become a fitting description of his work that combines technology, teaching, and a passion for promoting African languages and cultures on the internet.
Photo: Adebayo Adegbembo (used with permission).
Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Adebayo’s mother language is Yoruba, which is spoken by approximately 30 million people. His interest with this approach to languages started four years ago and came about while exploring ways to use technology to encourage his young niece and neighbor children to learn the language. As the founder of Genii Games, his team has been developing language-learning apps and animated videos for the Yoruba language, as well as other Nigerian and African languages. According to Adebayo, technology has become an optimal tool to make language learning “fun, appealing, and engaging”:
Technology offers the best form of creative approach to preserving native languages. It aids the process of documentation, collaboration between language experts, offers a wide array of distribution medium etc. With technology, it's easier to contextualize the languages to reach different audience categorized by age and level of understanding of the languages.
Designed for children, one of these language apps, Igbo 101, takes the form of an “adventure quest.” Users can advance through the game by mastering different language levels while achieving milestones with the ultimate goal of acquiring the gift of “Amamiihe,” which means knowledge in the Igbo language. The app recently released its second updated version and is available for both Android and iOS. Other language learning apps are available for Yoruba and Hausa.
To create these language learning apps, it takes a team of programmers, illustrators, voiceover artists, sound engineers, and language instructors to assemble all of the elements. The language experts are especially essential to the process to master the tonal elements of Nigerian languages, which also is spread across many different dialects. This process has been well-documented and published in the post “What Does It Take To Build An App” on Genii Games’ blog.
Highlighting stories from Nigeria and across Africa is an additional piece to Adebayo’s work. To help encourage the next generation of digital storytellers, he has been conducting workshops with elementary school-aged children throughout the continent. In March 2016, he led eight workshops with local schools across Nigeria, which focused on creating digital content for kids. He shared the basic idea of the activity:
It’s a workshop where we walk kids through the process of creating simple stories using technology tools. Together, we come up with ideas for stories then write out the script, draw, color, record the narration and piece it all together into an app or video. Our goal is to demystify the content creation process. Furthermore, our larger goal is to inspire these kids to take ownership of their narratives.
Based on the success of these workshops, he led a similar activity in Johannesburg, South Africa in conjunction with iAfrikan, Who Are We Africa, Macroscopia Labs and which was hosted by Jozihub, as part of the Youth Day festivities. Twenty-six children from two primary schools in Soweto took part in all aspects of creating a 90-second video about Umngqusho, a popular staple food from South Africa. In addition to coming up with the story idea, the children illustrated the characters, as well as provided the voices for them. The final result can be seen in the following YouTube video:
While these apps and digital stories have made advancements towards promoting Nigerian languages online, there are still existing challenges to ensure that more children can access this content. This especially affects children from rural parts of Africa, where there are lower adoption rates of smartphones. Adebayo said this is significant because smartphones “have features that make these languages better presented in multimedia ways, thus more creatively engaging. The growing availability of cheap smartphones will ease this over time and I think we're beginning to see it happen.”


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U Ko Ni, Respected Legal Adviser of Myanmar’s Ruling Party, Assassinated · Global Voices
Juan Cebu

U Ko Ni / shared widely on social media
Myanmar citizens are still in shock following Sunday's gruesome assassination of U Ko Ni, the country's state legal advisor and a prominent member of the ruling political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).
U Ko Ni, a lawyer who joined politics to support NLD party leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, was killed at the country's main international airport in the city of Yangon, moments after arriving from Indonesia.
After Myanmar transitioned to democracy in 2010 with a military-controlled parliament, Aung San Suu Kyi — the national opposition leader — was released from house arrest.
Activists like U Ko Ni later joined her to form an organized opposition party. U Ko Ni was most noted for speaking out against military abuses and for his in-depth knowledge of the 2008 Constitution, which guaranteed military control in the parliament.
After the NLD won the second general election in 2015 in a landslide, U Ko Ni became the state legal advisor.
During the election campaign, the country's military-backed party made efforts to adopt the rhetoric of anti-Muslim sentiments and Buddhist nationalism. Along with Aung San Suu Kyi, U Ko Ni — a Muslim politician — was one of the most frequent targets of hate speech and threats by the Buddhist nationalist groups.
In response to the death of U Ko Ni and a taxi driver, U Nay Win (who  died while trying to save him), many people in Myanmar have mourned on social media, blackening their profile pictures. Progressive Voice, a network of human rights advocacy organizations, honored the life and legacy of U Ko Ni in the following text:
Our condolences are with his family and others close to him. U Ko Ni was a highly-respected, intelligent and passionate constitutional expert and lawyer with an unwavering devotion and strategic approach towards overturning the 2008 Constitution that entrenches the military’s current dominance of political life and achieving a new constitution that guarantees a system of governance based on democratic values and principles.
Activist Thet Ko Ko also paid tribute to the taxi driver who was also gunned down at the airport, while trying to pursue the assassin:
ကျနော်တို့နိုင်ငံမှာ နိုငိငံသား အစ္စလာမ် ဘာသာဝင်နဲ့ ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာဝင်တွေအတွက် အကောင်းဆုံး စံနမူနာကို တက္ကဆီဆရာ ကိုနေဝင်း က ဆရာဦးကိုနီကို ကာကွယ်ရင်း အသက်စွန့်လိုက်တဲ့ဖြစ်ရပ်ကပြနေတယ်
ဘာသာမတူတဲ့ သူတိူ့ နှစ်ဦးအကြားမှာ တူညီတာက နိုင်ငံချစ်စိတ်ဘဲ ….
ဆရာဦးကိုနီနဲ့ ကိုနေဝင်း ကောင်းရာမွန်ရာသို့ ရောက်ပါစေ လို့ နှစ်နှစ်ကာကာ ဆုတောင်းနေပါတယ်
The fact that U Nay Win died trying to save U Ko Ni is exemplary for Buddhist and Muslims in our nation. The only common thing of the two people from two different faiths is their love for our country. Rest in peace U Ko Ni and U Nay Win. We are praying from depths of our heart.
Political analyst Maung Zarni shared his thoughts about the political motives of the assassination. He speculated the involvement of organized group behind the assasination:
Myanmar Generals don't like inter-communal peace & reconciliation.
Shooting U Ko Ni dead in the head at a high profile place like Yangon Airport, upon arrival from the official visit to Jakarta to go and study peaceful, interfaith life in Indonesia, was, in my view, to make the point that Muslims assuming advisory positions to NLD and ASSK would cost life.
Additionally, it is meant to further inflame religious bigotry as the news of the killing is widely reported and shared on Burmese language social media.
This is a calculated political move, not simply a homicide.
Donald Trump's official anti-Muslim policies and Muslim refugee ban may have emboldened and inspired anti-Muslim political assassination.
Thousands of people, including prominent politicians and religious and public figures, attended U Ko Ni's funeral. Moe Thway, a political activist, noted how the ceremony united Myanmar citizens:
ဦးကိုနီက
လုပ်ကြံခံရလို့သေသွားတာတောင်
တိုင်းပြည်ကို
နောက်ဆုံးအကျိုးပြုသွားသေးတယ်…
သိန်းဂဏန်းနီးပါးဘာသာပေါင်းစုံလူထုကြီးကို
ညီညီညွတ်ညွတ်
သေသေဝပ်ဝပ်နဲ့
သူ့နောက်ဆုံးခရီးမှာစုဆုံပေးခဲ့တယ်…
U Ko Ni is still serving the country for one last time, even after his assassination.
He united almost 100,000 people of different faiths at his funeral.
Picture of the funeral of U Ko Ni shared by Facebook user Kyaw Kyaw Win.
Facebook user Ei Myat Noe Khin described the assassination as a throwback to the era of Myanmar's military dictatorship:
I feel like we are back in the old days when the dictator ruled. We thought those days are over but yesterday's event just reminded us again. insecurity, fear, uncertainty.
remind us again that we have to work hard — harder than other people and unite more to speak out, point out, bring the impact to the country.
This is Myanmar's first political assassination in many years. The last killing of such a high state official was 70 years ago, when national leader General Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi's father, was assassinated along with other political figures.

author: Juan Cebu


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Women Facing Violence in Ecuador Vow to Be ‘Silent No More’ · Global Voices
Daniela Gallardo

Image: Pixabay.
The activists say they want to “break the silence.” According to the 2011 National Survey of Familial Relations and Gender Violence, six out of every ten women in Ecuador have been victim of some kind of abuse.
This January, the initiative “No callamos más” (“Silent No More”) started gaining momentum. The campaign is an effort to get women talking about the harassment, abuse, and mistreatment they've experienced firsthand.
In an interview with Global Voices, the project's co-creators, Verónica Vera and Francisca Frisone, explained how they were inspired by other movements in Latin America, such as the hashtag #MiPrimerAcoso – a campaign which started in Mexico but soon spread throughout the region – that helped draw attention on social media to the abuse of women.
[#Nocallamosmás] es una invitación a que las mujeres puedan poner en palabras sus historias para poder colectivizarlas con el afán de sentirnos respaldadas, sentir que no estamos solas, sentir que nuestras historias son compartidas y que tienen algo en común.
“Silent No More” is an invitation for women to put their stories into words, so they can be brought together, with the aspiration of feeling supported, and that we are not alone, and that our stories are shared and have something in common.
The Facebook page “No callamos más” (Silent No More) currently has more than 6,600 subscribers, and it can also be found on Twitter at @nocallamosmas. Stories about violence, abuse, harassment, beatings, rapes, gropings, and more have been published with the permission of the women who experienced this abuse.
¿Cuál es tu historia? (What is your story?) Screenshot from Facebook. Caption: “Tell us using these hashtags: #PrimerAcoso (First Assault) #NoCallamosMás (Silent No More). If you want to tell your story but protect your identity send it to nocallamosmas@riseup.net and we'll publish it anonymously.”
This campaign's first step, Francisca said, was to create a private group for women. That community now has roughly 26,000 members. Not all of these women have shared their testimonies, but those speaking up have permitted the campaign to share their stories on Silent No More's public Facebook page.
“I didn't want to. I told him no. He started to ask me again and again for me to do it…” begins one story. “I had an episode with a neighborhood store owner who wanted to take me to the back room of his business with promises of sweets and gifts. One time he invited me in, showed me his penis, and I ran out,” says another.
Silent No More is also working to inspire people to stand in the way of future violence. On Saturday, Jan. 28, the group held a reunion in Quito, in the “El Arbolito” park, inviting citizens to speak up on social media, with their families, and in all spaces of society.
With these efforts, the movement's organizers say they hope to create more safe spaces, where women can address the problem of abuse and its consequences.
In Ecuador today, more than half of all violent crimes committed nationally are acts of gender violence. According to the government, there were 80 femicides recorded in 2016. In the first four days of 2017, police recorded one femicide every 32 hours.

author: Daniela Gallardo


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A New, Free E-Book Celebrates Caribbean Waterbirds · Global Voices
Atiba Rogers

Waterfowl at the Pointe-a-Pierre Wild Fowl Trust, Trinidad. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
The Caribbean is home to more than 185 species of waterbirds — seabirds, wading birds, marshbirds, waterfowl and shorebirds, including migratory birds and a number of endemic and globally threatened species — and every year, new birds are discovered as scientists and conservation groups journey through freshwater swamps and marshes to manage and conserve the waterbirds in their habitats.
BirdsCaribbean, an international network dedicated to the conservation of birds throughout the region, conducts an annual Caribbean Waterbird Census (CWC), which includes waterbird counts in well over a hundred locations on more than a dozen islands.
Birds are most stationary during winter, so CWC arranges this region-wide count between January 14 and February 3 — in the middle of the (North-American) winter — to get a snapshot of the waterbird population and habitats used across the Caribbean. What's really cool about the census is that it is designed so that anyone can participate. By encouraging this non-expert involvement from the people of the Caribbean, the census has the potential to spark an interest in ornithology and environmental conservation from one generation to the next. Projects like these — especially in a region that is home to such a wide variety of banded and untagged waterbirds, both permanent and migratory — offer valuable insights into the welfare and survival of these species.
BirdsCaribbean found a brilliant way to commemorate this year's eighth annual CWC by releasing a free e-book, “Caribbean Waterbirds,” with stories by six authors who uncover different observations about these birds. The book is available in English, French and Spanish.
Duck at the Pointe-a-Pierre Wild Fowl Trust, Trinidad. Photo by Janine Mendes-Franco, used with permission.
There are only a few days left in this year's count, but if you'd like to take part, you can download protocols and a manual to guide you. Instructions for the two types of Level 1 counts (the easiest level) — Point Count and Area Search — can be found here. You can enter any data you collect on the eBird Caribbean website, which allows you to save your observations via graphs or maps, as well as compare your data with other locations around the Caribbean. This extensive database is a wonderful resource for birders, scientists, and environmentalists, so if you're not sure about any type of bird that you see, just take a photo and submit it to the CWC Yahoo group. BirdsCaribbean is also trying to grow its avian reference library via its flickr group, so you can post photos there as well.
You can also contact a local conservation group to find census activities on your island; groups like these will likely be taking on the more involved Level 2 or 3 counts, which have some measure of detection probability.
What makes this project even more necessary is the fact that, since waterbirds are hunted, the waterbird population needs to be monitored. BirdsCaribbean says that in the past, many of the region's wetlands have been destroyed, either as a result of climate change, or because areas have been put to other uses, including tourism and housing projects.
February 2, the penultimate day of the count, is quite fittingly World Wetlands Day, which commemorates the date on which the Convention on Wetlands was adopted, in 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar. For the last 20 years, the Ramsar Secretariat has supplied outreach materials to help raise public awareness about the importance and value of wetlands.

author: Atiba Rogers


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An Argentinian Fact-Checking Initiative Enters Its Seventh Year · Global Voices
Romina Navarro

The Chequeado team working on its verification tools and procedures. Photograph by Pablo Martín Fernández. Creative Commons.
Chequeado.com is Latin America's first online platform dedicated to the verification of the public discourse. Founded in 2010 by a group of Argentinian journalists and hosted at the Public Voice Foundation, the project the project is a self-described “non-partisan website that checks the statements of politicians, opinion leaders, businessmen, the media, and other institutions.”
Chequeado is part of a worldwide fact-checking movement, employing a strategy popularized in the United States in 2003, when Factcheck.org launched, monitoring public discourse in politics and popular culture for mistakes, inaccuracies, and untruths.
In a talk in October 2013, Laura Zommer, the head of Chequeado.com, described the importance of questioning all of the information that we receive with the aim of “reducing the margin of intellectual impunity” public figures often enjoy.
Los oficialistas nos acusan de opositores y los opositores de oficialistas. Menos mal, porque no vinimos a hacernos amigos de ellos, vinimos a crear una comunidad con vos. Creemos en averiguar los hechos y en que éstos priman sobre nuestros prejuicios y posiciones personales.
Government supporters accuse us of being opponents and the opponents [say we're] government supporters. It's just as well, because we're not here to be friends with any of them — we're here to create a community with you. We believe in finding out the facts and that this takes precedence over our personal prejudices and views.
Chequeado.com is an independent journalism investigation project that is financed by a diversification of funds strategy. It features a blog, pages on Facebook and Twitter, and also a newsletter.

author: Romina Navarro


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Hundreds Still Missing After Factory Fire in Philippine Export Processing Zone · Global Voices
Karlo Mongaya

Twelve hours after the fire started, the HTI factory was still burning as seen from the outside of the gate of the manufacturing hub. Photo from the Facebook page of Iohsad Phils
About 120 workers were injured after a factory fire razed the Housing Technology Industries (HTI) plant in the Cavite Export Processing Zone (CEPZ), located south of the Philippine capital Manila. The number of casualties could be higher because officials have yet to give a full accounting of the hundreds of workers who were reportedly trapped inside the factory during the fire.
The fire began at 6:20 PM on February 1 after an explosion was heard on the first floor where the chemicals used by the factory workers are stored. After 12 hours, firefighters were still struggling to extinguish the fire
HTI produces pre-fabricated houses for export. It is located in the CEPZ, a manufacturing hub where labor unions and the holding of factory strikes has been banned.
Friends and relatives of factory workers, nearby residents, and other social media users posted photos and videos of the fire as it happened. Calls for assistance to the victims and their families as well as for a complete accounting of the names of all the victims have likewise made the rounds online. The tragedy has been compared to the Kentex factory fire in Manila that led to the death of 72 workers in 2015.
Photo from the Facebook account of Ghie Nedo.
Journalist Kenneth Guda asked some pointed questions:
HTI, along with its sister company HRD, makes prefabricated houses with technologically advanced insulation and energy efficient technology. Although HRD is a Singaporean company, it exports primarily to Japan and to subsidiaries in the US and Australia (possibly others). Under what conditions are these houses made, in that factory in Cavite Economic Zone? Under what conditions were it possible to make make a safe, environmentally friendly house and yet expose those who make it to dangers like, say, a fire erupting from a foam used for the houses’ insulation?
Labor groups highlighted the silence of officials about the incident:
We are angered by the continuous silence of the officials of the Department of Labor and Philippine Economic Zone Authority on the deadly fire that occured in House Technology Industries, a factory located in Cavite EPZA yesterday. Media reports have monitored more than a hundred injured workers rushed in various hospitals in the area. There are also ground reports that hundreds of workers were trapped dead inside the factory.
Workers groups like the Kilusang Mayo Uno moreover condemned what they called violations of occupational health and safety standards that caused the tragedy:
Our hearts are crying out for justice for the workers of HTI. Not a single worker should die in the workplace, even when a fire breaks out. The estimated number of workers who perished is a clear indicator of occupational health and safety standards violations. We hold the capitalists of HTI, the Philippine Export Processing Authority (PEZA) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) accountable for the criminal neglect that caused another workplace tragedy.
Activist groups picketed the Philippine Export Processing Authority (PEZA) head office in Manila to demand justice for the victims of HTI CEPZA factory fire. Photo credits: College Editors Guild of the Philippines

author: Karlo Mongaya