text:
Iran Elections 2017: Hassan Rouhani Ran on Openness. But What Did He Actually Achieve? · Global Voices
Article 19

Hassan Rouhani has been both the candidate and president of “hope and moderation” for Iranians. Article 19's report assesses how this has had an effect on freedoms online before the upcoming election.
This post was written by Mahsa Alimardani as part of a larger Article 19 report on the state of Internet freedoms prior to the 19 May Iranian presidential elections.
When Hassan Rouhani first ran for president of Iran in 2013, he ran as a reformist candidate who promised big changes towards liberalizing Iran's economy and giving citizens greater access to information.
Front and center in his message was a pledge to improve Internet access – and to make it easier, freer and more affordable for more Iranians. This was a bold platform to pursue in contrast to his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who spearheaded the regime of censorship and control that has shaped Iran's Internet policy for more than a decade.
Rouhani is now seeking re-election (on May 19), and Internet policy remains a key component of politicians’ appeal for Iran’s population of 80 million, a demographic dominated by tech-savvy youth under 35. With this in mind, we look back at his promises and policy goals, and how they've played out in practice.
Rouhani fulfilling one of his campaign promises by unveiling the final draft of the Charter of Citizen Rights in December 2016. Image from Article 19 report.
Rouhani's central Internet policy platform centered on better access, with a focus on increasing Internet speeds to improve the country's economic situation. He even issued a “Charter of Citizen Rights” that enshrined rights to free speech and online privacy for citizens, though it is unclear what legal basis (if any) the document holds.
But in comparison to previous administrations, Rouhani's has had relatively little control over Internet censorship. Following civil unrest in 2009, Internet policy decisions became increasingly centralised under the office of the Supreme Leader with the creation of a Supreme Council of Cyberspace, which is now the ultimate decision making body on the Internet. While the Council include Iran's Judiciary and Revolutionary Guards, it does not include the president.
Charter of Citizen Rights
Fulfilling one of his 2013 campaign promises, the Rouhani administration published a Charter of Citizen Rights in December 2016. There are a few articles in the document that guarantee Iranian rights online:
Article 26: The Government shall, according to the law, guarantee freedom of speech and expression, especially in the mass media, cyber space, including in newspapers, magazines, books, cinemas, radio and television, social networks and the likes.
Article 33: Citizens have the right to freely and without discrimination enjoy access to and communicate and obtain information and knowledge from cyberspace.
Article 35 Citizens have the right to enjoy cyber security, security of communication technologies and informatics, and protection of their personal data and privacy.
Thus far, the Charter’s guarantees have not been reflected in the arrests, censorship, and other forms of online repression which have occurred throughout the Rouhani administration.
Despite filtering of smaller more secure apps such as Signal and Wispi, Rouhani’s administration has successfully prevented newer social media platforms from being blocked, including WhatsApp, Line, Tango, and Telegram.
But while these platforms have remained online, they have still been subject to strict limitations, as have their users. For Telegram, which with an estimated 40 million users has become the most popular messaging app in the country, the government now requires all public channels with over 5,000 followers to register with the Cyber Police. The policy stems from government rhetoric over the dangers of the free flow of information and an effort combat “fake news”.
Image of someone trying to extract passwords with a Telegram logo: Telegram vulnerabilities have been known to be manipulated by the Iran Cyber Army.
In January 2017, administrators found that when they registered with the relevant authority, Samandehi.ir, they were forced to add an automated government bot as an account co-administrator. The bot is suspected to enable wide-ranging surveillance abilities by allowing access to databases of specific users whose online activity can be further monitored.
In tandem with these measures, certain features of the app also have been eliminated for Iranian users. The the hardline judiciary (which does not lie within Rouhani's control) blocked Telegram's calling feature a day after it was released in Iran on 14 April 2017. The prosecutor general told Iranians during a 22 April IRIB broadcast:
With the help of all our security agencies, we have determined that Telegram voice calls are harmful to national security, especially so close to an election.
After ICT Minister Mahmoud Vaezi stated that Telegram would be censoring its sticker feature for immoral content for Iranians, in cooperation with Iranian authorities, Telegram vehemently denied cooperation with the Iranian government to impose censorship, beyond censoring Porn Bots, which they explained occurs in every country Telegram operates in. But some experts on the issue maintain suspicion that Telegram has agreed to terms set by the Iranian government, in order to avoid being censored altogether.
Image of Instagram on the Iranian flag by Nicolas Raymond from Flickr. The Iranian government had tried to censor individual Instagram pages through a failed “intelligent filtering” program.
Like Telegram, Instagram has become a platform where the Iranian government has exercised some power over speech, without shutting it down altogether. While Rouhani's administration has prevented Instagram from being blocked in Iran, they have simultaneously attempted a strategy of “intelligent filtering” on the platform.
In May 2015, Internet researchers cast doubt on the administration’s claims that the government was developing “sophisticated” technology to employ intelligent filtering on platforms like Instagram, proving that the government was simply taking advantage of Facebook’s omission of https (or SSL/TLS encryption) deployment to censor individual pages. While that technical evidence largely discredited the Ministry's claims, the ICT Ministry has announced a new effort to penalize specific users for posting immoral content, instead of censoring or penalizing the administrators of specific platforms. It is unclear how the government will implement this new policy.
Censorship of Global Voices was disabled once the website moved to https. The government however made sure to censor the Farsi website, but not the English website once https was enabled.
Among thousands of websites censored under the Rouhani administration, one that naturally stood out to Global Voices was our own domain. When Global Voices transitioned from http to https in 2015, the site suddenly became accessible in Iran, after having been blocked for several years. This indicated that the block was dependent on technical specifications contingent upon http. Iran’s filtering committee now seems to have selectively reinstated the filtering on the new https website, but it has limited this to the Persian language version of Global Voices (fa.globalvoices.org)
While censorship is a direct strategy to curtail the free flow of information, arrests, intimidations and the fear of looming surveillance work to stifle freedom of expression more than any technical filter can. This past year was punctuated with the arrests and physical take overs of the social media pages of models and members of the fashion industry, and progressed recently into various reformist and pro-Rouhani Telegram channels being seized and their administrators arrested.
Another prominent government strategy is to hack or target users online, in particular to dissuade or frighten Iranians from using certain online activities or expressions. The technical research of the Iran Threats project has detailed sophisticated strategies and technologies employed to attack users, including malware that targets journalists, and various methods of hijacking Telegram accounts. From January to February 2017, a number of journalists, members of Iranian civil society and activists in the diaspora were on the receiving end of Iranian government phishing attacks, with a mass notice from the Google email service Gmail informing several of these individuals that their emails were the target of “nation-state” attackers. These efforts have been previously linked to the Iran Cyber Army work to intimidate activists and journalists voicing opinions critical of the Iranian state.
There has been a very thin line between innovation and control in this administration’s shaping of Internet policy, as improvements of internet development come with a heavy price in handing over data to the government. This is seen in many of the promises of the incoming President to further develop Iran’s ICT industry, increase Internet speeds, and boost entrepreneurship, especially in the startup realm.
This approach has brought a mix of economic and cultural benefits and likely implications of increased government surveillance.
Boosting local ICT development has helped with one of the mandates of the National Internet Project, which is to localize all Internet services and place servers inside the country, thereby promoting local industry away while tightening controls away from foreign competition.
But while this does promote local development, it also puts local users’ data under the firm jurisdiction of Iranian law and the notoriously conservative judiciary, potentially increasing opportunities for government surveillance. Notable cases of the government’s use of user data for repression include the arrests of Isa Saharkhiz, whose mobile messages were exploited for cell phone monitoring, as well as the arrest of Iranian-American Nostrallah Khosravi-Roodsari who is believed to have been arrested based on Iran’s mass surveillance of SMS data.
While direct policies and regulations are a known method aimed to tighten controls in Iran, the second strategy of suspected government efforts to hack and intimidate the online activities of users are often more definitively grave – and they are also more difficult to report on.
There also has been a quiet unfiltering of Twitter. Reports since November 2016 have led many to believe this slow, quiet, and limited unfiltering of Twitter has led to an increase in Twitter users from inside Iran. This is because there are different filtering policies per ISP, previously done at a nationwide (IXP) level. In November 2016, many users were reporting access to Twitter through the Shatel network.
One marked achievement for this administration is the Internet bandwidth. Speeds have increased in Iran tenfold, from 624 gigabits per second to 4,000 gigabits per second in at the beginning of 2017, and increasing the country’s fiber optic network an additional 10,000 km since 2013. One of the greatest access to information struggles has been connection speeds, a form of censorship that government has even used to keep users from online activities, the best example being the 2013 Presidential elections.
While the Rouhani administration claims it has made great strides towards Internet freedoms, its main achievement has been in preventing broad-based censorship on certain platforms. The implementation of blocks on thousands of websites continued throughout his administration, alongside numerous arrests and efforts to centralize user data into the hands of the government. And the work of Iran’s conservative Judiciary and Revolutionary Guards has continued to strengthen state intimidation, arrests, surveillance and censorship. As the country approaches its 12th Presidential election, real concerns exist for both Iranians’ ability to freely share and distribute information during this important political moment, as well as the Rouhani government’s ability to find strength in its own values and against the country’s more hardline powers.

author: Article 19


text:
Palestinian Prisoners Remain ‘Determined’ One Month Into Hunger Strike Against Israeli Prison Conditions · Global Voices
Marwa Fatafta

Source: Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.
Over 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons have been on mass hunger strike, abstaining from food and drinks, for 30 consecutive days in a persistent struggle against abusive treatment.
Clashes in the West Bank have erupted as Palestinians rallied in support of the hunger strikers. On 12 May, Israeli forces killed a 23-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh by hitting him with a live bullet directly in his chest. Tens of other Palestinians were also injured in Nablus, Qalqiliya, and Hebron.
The open-ended strike started on 17 April, on the annual commemoration of Palestinian Prisoner's Day. Participants are demanding an immediate end to medical negligence, solitary confinement, and administrative detention, a quite common practice by Israeli authorities where a prisoner is detained for periods up to six months — renewed indefinitely — without a trial or charge.
There are approximately 500 Palestinians who are held by Israel in administrative detention on the basis of secret evidence. Israel's extensive use of administrative detention violates international law and has been frequently criticized by the United Nations, the European Union, and human rights organizations.
30th DAY
Only water and salt, only desires of freedom, only justice and peace..#DignityStrike #اضراب_الكرامة pic.twitter.com/VMNvX0v0wn
— RosmeWarda_Palestine (@RosmeWarda) May 16, 2017
Prisoners are also striking for better conditions such as longer and more frequent family visits, opportunities for secondary and higher education, and better access to medical care and services, among many others.
Israel has so far refused to respond to the prisoners’ demands. In response, Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the hunger strike, announced that he will escalate his strike and stop drinking water. “There is no backtracking. We will continue until the end,” he has said.
Barghouti also called on Palestinians to engage in civil disobedience to support the hunger strikers and commemorate the 69th anniversary of Nakba Day, the day that Palestinians mark the displacement that accompanied the creation of the modern state of Israel.
Israeli authorities have tried to stop the strike using a number of measures such as subjecting prisoners to sudden and frequent raids on cells with gas and police dogs, depriving prisoners of access to common areas, confiscating their clothes and personal belongings, separating participants from the movement's leaders, and confining them to solitary and dirty cells.
In attempt to break #dignitystrike, Israeli authorities moved numbers of #palestinianprisoners & detainees to solitary confinement #AlMezan
— Shirin Al.shobaki (@ShobakiShirin) May 16, 2017
Right at the beginning of the hunger strike, the Israeli Prison Services moved Barghouti and two other prisoners, Karim Younis and Mahmoud Abu Srour, to solitary confinement. They also released undated footage that they alleged showed Barghouti snacking secretly in his cell; Bargouthi's family and supporters have said Israeli authorities are lying and that the video is more than a decade old.
Another tactic, as reported by the prisoners’ lawyers, is to expose the hunger strikers to food to put pressure on them or to withhold urgently needed medical help until they end their strike.
30 DAYS of no food.. and the world continues blindfolded..! #DignityStrike pic.twitter.com/FzBcqNHRag
— eman qasim (@EmanQasim) May 15, 2017
Karim Younis, the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody, wrote an open letter assuring the Palestinian people that the hunger striking prisoners will continue their movement despite Israel's repressive measures. He also said that the prisoners are ready for serious negotiations with the Israeli Prison Services:
Our noble people,
From the cells of steadfastness, freedom and dignity in the isolation section of Ramla Prison, we salute you and appeal to you individually.
We assure you of our steadfastness and determination to achieve victory no matter how long the battle lasts.
We assure the masses of our people that the news of their solidarity and support reach us despite the isolation and siege, and we firmly believe in the inevitability of victory no matter how fierce the battle gets.
While the prison authorities have used all forms of repressive measures in order to break our will and subjugate us, these measures only increased our determination to continue with the hunger strike.
The full text of the letter is here on the website of the advocacy group called ADDAMEER Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Marwa Fatafta


text:
Political Bad-Mouthing in Trinidad and Tobago Sullies Opening of Stadium Named for Cricketer Brian Lara · Global Voices
Flora Thomas

Brian Lara at the Lord's Bicentenary Anniversary Match, June 22, 2014. Photo by Paul Hudson, CC BY 2.0.
In international cricketing circles, Brian Lara is a rock star. Deemed one of the greatest batsmen of all time, he is practically like royalty in Trinidad and Tobago, the land of his birth. But his name (and the fact that he lent it to the country's new stadium in south Trinidad) has been something of a political football ever since the controversial stadium — the construction of which was mired in allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement by previous governments — was finally opened under the People's National Movement (PNM) administration.
There was heated online debate about whether the stadium itself should have been a priority for the current government, especially in trying economic times. In the public Facebook group New Politics, Jenn Tetenbaum asked:
CAN D BRIAN LARA ACADEMY ENRICH THE LIVES OF T&T PEOPLE? IT'S AN ENTERTAINMENT VENUE
Devan Mahase responded:
wonder if the multi billion $ stadium came with ultrasound dept, mt. hope patients could go there
Mount Hope is a public hospital that has had its share of controversy; the country's public health system often falls short of the demands made on it. Opposition senator Khadijah Ameen also pushed the stadium versus health care angle of the narrative, quoting from a newspaper report about protests regarding the government's decision to open the stadium while the nearby children's hospital, built under her party's tenure, remained closed.
Facebook user Allan Karim added:
“I wonder how Brian Lara felt passing the brand new CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL closed on his way to open the Shed of Shame?”
While members of the country's opposition party (and other politically aligned Facebook groups) downplayed the numbers in attendance at the stadium's opening, several Facebook users posted photographic evidence that the stands were full.
When Lara himself spoke out, explaining that he felt “embarrassed and disappointed” over misconceptions surrounding the stadium, Ricki D. Ramgoolie, commenting on the UNC's Facebook page, said, “Yes Brian…. sing for your supper!”
Upon reading similar comments, Facebook user Colin Chalmers suggested, tongue firmly in cheek, that “maybe the first match at the Stadium should have been Indians vs Africans.” Trinidad and Tobago is, for the most part, politically divided along ethnic lines, with the opposition United National Congress‘ (UNC) support base being primarily Indian and the PNM's being largely black. Lara and his sporting accomplishments always seemed to transcend race, however — until the stadium came into play.
Marlon Rampersad retorted:
Imagine. the PP [coalition People's Partnership government, of which the UNC was a part] had completed the BLCA [Brian Lara Cricket Academy] and is today opening it. now imagine Brian Lara walking onto the field to greet Kamla [former prime minister].
now, Imagine what the PNM party hacks would have said about Lara.
Meanwhile, on the CCN TV6 Facebook page, Ed Reid played devil's advocate:
As I recall the story. One day Patrick Manning [former prime minister and leader of the PNM] asked Brian Lara how could Trinidad and Tobago get a 1000 Brian Laras. Brian explained to him that he was just fortunate to have the Cricket talent that he has. But most importantly, he told Mr Manning that all over the world where he had played cricket, some countries have a cricket Academy where they teach young potential players the rudimentaries of the game of cricket.
Young players will live in the Brian Lara Academy where they will train, lift weights, be trained in proper dieting, have the benefit of psychologists, have their bowling and batting actions filmed, analyzed, and improvements in techniques will be worked on.
Sports is not a hit and miss guessing game again. Sports is big business.
So here is my question to you Mr and Mrs UNC Naysayer.
In 2020, your young son has been observed and chosen as a candidate to enter the Brian Lara Cricket Academy. Scouts from all around the world done start comparing the little boy from Barrackpore as the next Lara.
Cricket is his passion and he is a boss student at Naparima.
Would you allow him to attend the Brian Lara Cricket Academy?
Nalini Dial, who was a member of one of the parties in the former People's Partnership (PP) coalition government, sought to cut Lara down to size:
Brian Lara I just want you to know that it's not YOUR money that built that stadium. It is the people's money. So next time when you are referring to the stadium, please don't say ‘ MY stadium’. Say OUR stadium. Ok? You don't have to start sounding like the PNM now just because they name it after you.
Others took jabs at the pedigree of cricketing personalities who were at the opening; despite local squabbles over the issue, there was some disappointment that former Indian cricket captain Sachin Tendulkar, for whom a stand was named at the stadium, failed to show up at the opening as promised.
Despite it all, there were many netizens who spoke out in Lara's defense, and praised his resilience. Bevon Xavier said:
Its [sic] a honor to watch Brian Lara west indies cricket batting legend and record title holder 400 not out batting in a cricket match in his own Brian Lara stadium which was official open [sic] today in Trinidad..
Michael Blair Blenman agreed:
Some things happen late in life…Big Respect to Brian Lara ..”
One netizen, Natalie Jaikie, had had enough of the Lara adoration:
Brian Lara is the best thing since sliced bread. We know this. Deep down I'm happy that the stadium is a tribute to him but exactly how long must the country thank him? Oh gosh man, yuh have a promenade, yuh have a stadium, yuh get to name the stand, just now we go have the re-brand the country as Trinidad and Brian Charles Lara…
In the end, Facebook user Rhoda Bharath cut to the heart of the controversy:
“How to make the celebration fo a Cricket god into a political and race issue? Ask a Trini”
But Wired868 was not prepared to leave the issue there, lashing out at both sides of the political aisle:
No amount of noise from the Opposition could keep their supporters away from seeing the Prince of [Port of Spain]. I doubt if there was any political persuasion not represented at the opening.
However, the Opposition were not the only ones to misinterpret what Friday meant.
The Government, likewise, mismanaged the event at every stage, the scoring of political points appearing to take precedence over all else. This was underscored by Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs Darryl Smith’s insistence that this was the first time Lara had been engaged in any meaningful way in the development of the facility. […]
Of course, the supporters of the PNM will place all the blame at the feet of the Opposition. It seems to me that the politicians believe that this entire enterprise—construction, refurbishment, official opening, etc—was really about them. […]
The politicians may not publicly admit it—the arrogance of partisanship would not allow them so to do—but they know that there are moments over which they have neither control nor influence. […]
Friday was not about the PNM or the UNC; it was about Brian Lara and his people, the people of Trinidad and Tobago.

author: Flora Thomas


text:
The Russian State Media: Champion of Internet Freedom. (From Now On.) · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

In the past five years, the Russian government has blocked an estimated 5.6 million webpages — most of them by accident, after blacklisting entire IP addresses to target individual lawbreakers. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal censor, has gone after both small online resources, like thousands of websites affiliated with illegal drugs and child pornography, and massive Web portals used by millions of people, like the torrent website RuTracker in 2015, and the professional social network LinkedIn last year.
Photo: Pixabay
Throughout all this time, Russian network television has never reached out to viewers with information about how to circumvent these censorship efforts. Roskomnadzor, meanwhile, has asked Internet anonymizers to honor Russia's government blacklist, and even blocked at least one proxy service for failing to comply.
But what a difference a day can make.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced a sweeping ban on several titans of the Russian Internet, ordering officials to block access to the social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, the search engine Yandex, and the email service Mail.ru.
With millions of Ukrainians now at risk of losing their beloved online services, Russia's mainstream media did what it often does in unexpected geopolitical situations: it suddenly changed sides, emerging as a vocal proponent of Internet anonymizer technology, after years of ignoring online censorship at home.
The state-owned news channel Rossiya-24 even stunned Internet freedom activists in Russia by airing instructions on how to access blocked websites using proxy servers. Ironically, because this network has been banned in Ukraine since 2014, Rossiya-24 broadcast its censorship-circumvention tips primarily to viewers in Russia, where Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Yandex, and Mail.ru all remain open for business.
Things could get even more awkward if Roskomnadzor continues blocking instant messengers that refuse to register with the Russian state as “information-dissemination organizers.” Officials have already blocked Zello, Line, and Blackberry Messenger for refusing to register, and the newspaper Vedomosti reported this week that Roskomnadzor has threatened to crack down next on Telegram, an increasingly popular chat app created by Pavel Durov, who also founded Vkontakte.

author: Kevin Rothrock


text:
‘Cyber Warrior’ Group Threatens to Extort Indian Women on Facebook · Global Voices
Inji Pennu

Students protesting outside Bangalore Town Hall on Sunday, December 30 demanding justice for the 23-year-old student who died on 29 December after being gang raped. Photo by Jim Ankan Deka via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 3.0)
Isha Ishika, a university student in the southern Indian state of Kerala, was threatened a few days ago by a members of a Facebook group called Kerala Cyber Warriors.
The Malayalam-speaking group of predominantly male members says that it aims to protect Indians online, especially Malayalee women, by hacking into pages where explicit images and content related to sexuality are shared.
They describe their activities on their group page, saying that they seek to ‘expose’ people and preserve the ‘honor’ of Malayalee women. They claim to have hacked Pakistan websites and to protect Indian soldiers. They also claim to have to brought down revenge porn groups on Facebook. It is not clear precisely what technical methods they use to gain access to these pages.
One such post on their group page addresses Malayalee women:
സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തിനു വേണ്ടി മുറവിളി കൂട്ടി നടക്കുന്നതിനു ഇടയ്ക്ക് നിങ്ങള് മറന്നു പോകുന്ന ചില കാര്യങ്ങള് ഉണ്ട്.അതൊന്നു ഓര്‍മിപ്പിക്കുക ആണ്.ഉപദേശം ഇഷ്ടം അല്ലെന്നു അറിയാം.എന്നാലും ഒന്ന് വായിക്കുക.
നിങ്ങള് സ്നേഹിക്കുന്നതിനോ,എന്ത് സംസാരിക്കുന്നതിനോ ആരും എതിരല്ല.പക്ഷെ ആ സംസാരം അതിര് കടക്കുമ്പോള് നിങ്ങള്‍തന്നെ മറന്നു പോകുന്ന ചില കാര്യങ്ങളുണ്ട്.
മറുപുറത്ത് ഉള്ളവന്റെ വാക്കും കേട്ട് സ്വന്തം നഗ്ന ശരീരത്തിന്റെ ഫോട്ടോ,വീഡിയോ അയക്കുമ്പോള് നിങ്ങള് ചതിക്കുന്നത് നിങ്ങളെ മാത്രമല്ല,ജന്മം നല്‍കിയ അച്ഛനേം,അമ്മയേം,സ്വന്തം കൂടെ പിറപ്പുകളെയും കൂടി ആണ്.അവരെ കൂടി ആണ് നിങ്ങള് നാണക്കേടിന്റെ കൊക്കയിലേക്ക് തള്ളിയിട്ട് ആത്മഹത്യയിലേക്ക് നയിക്കുന്നത്.
Dear sisters,
You might be speaking out for your freedom, but you are forgetting certain things. We know you don't like advice. We are not against you speaking or loving, but amidst all this, you are forgetting certain things
When you sent your pictures or video of you to your partner or lover, you are cheating yourself and also your father and mother, your siblings. You are destroying your family honor and pushing your family to suicide
A university economics student, Ishika was targeted by the group after she sent a message to several friends in an effort to collect data for a gender survey.
Ishika, who spoke with Global Voices about the incident, suspects that members of the group were somehow informed of her survey and that they considered it inappropriate, classifying it as a “sex chat.” This is visible in the transliteration of their response, otherwise in Malyalam, shown in the screenshot below. Ishika earlier had posted a picture of sanitary napkins, which the group also found problematic.
A member of the group told Ishika to stop publishing feminist posts and threatened to “slut shame” her and expose her nude pictures online if she did not comply with the demands of the Kerala Cyber Warriors.
Screen shot of Ishika's request and subsequent fallout. Her initial message reads: “We are gathering information on Gender Studies for an article, please provide with inputs if you have any.”
Members of the group told her that women like her were  “a blot to the Malayalam community” and that her activities were destroying the reputations of other young women. They also demanded that she send them her login credentials so that they could delete the posts themselves. She refused.
A member of the Facebook group then started to chat with Ishika, threatening to expose her if she did not comply with their requests within one day.
Ishika soon after published a Facebook post addressing the issue directly. She explained that she did not need their “protection” and she had no intention to remove any of her posts.
ഒരു പാട് വട്ടം ചോദിച്ചപ്പോഴാണ് നമ്മുടെ രക്ഷകൻ കാര്യം വെളിപ്പെടുത്തുന്നത്. ഞാൻ ഒരു വർഷം മുൻപൊക്കെ പോസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്ത പൈങ്കിളി പ്രേമ പോസ്റ്റുകൾ മുതൽ ഞാൻ എപ്പോഴൊക്കെയോ രതിയേ കുറിച്ചും ആർത്തവത്തേ കുറിച്ചും എഴുതിയത്,ഞാൻ മുൻപ് പോസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്ത പല വർണങ്ങളിലുള്ള മെൻസസ് പാഡുകളുടെ ഫോട്ടോ.. ഇതൊക്കെ പെൺകുട്ടികളെ അപകടത്തിൽ കൊണ്ട് ചാടിക്കുമത്രെ..
ബഹുമാനപ്പെട്ട കേരള സൈബർ വാരിയേഴ്സിന്റെ സേവനങ്ങൾക്ക് പെരുത്ത് നന്ദി. പക്ഷെ ഇനിയിവിടെ കിടന്ന് അലമ്പി നാറ്റിക്കാതെ ഇറങ്ങിക്കോണം ഈ അങ്കത്തട്ടിന്ന്., ഈ കൊട്ടാരവളപ്പിന്ന്… ഈ ടെറിട്ടറീന്ന്..
I asked them multiple times (what the issue was). The ‘saviors’ revealed that I have been posting about female sexuality, menstruation, along with pictures of sanitary pads, etc which according to them are are dishonoring women.
‘Respected’ Kerala Cyber Warriors, Thank you for your services. But I don't need them and leave me alone and my posts.
After Ishika published the above post, she encountered a fresh wave of trolling attacks, phishing attempts and sexual harassment online, with multiple accounts associated with the Kerala Cyber Warriors attacking her for speaking out against them.
Ishika tried to reason with them for two days and finally wrote a complaint to Facebook, using their abuse reporting process. The US-based company explicitly forbids bullying and harassment, but does not punish harassers unless victims submit reports of harassment through their official process.
Facebook's “Community Standards” policy on the matter reads as follows:
We don’t tolerate bullying or harassment. We allow you to speak freely on matters and people of public interest, but remove content that appears to purposefully target private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them. This content includes, but is not limited to:
Ishika has yet to hear back from Facebook on her complaint. Allies have also reported the Kerala Cyber Warriors group to Facebook, concerning their allegations of hacking other peoples’ accounts, which is also a violation of Facebook's terms.
There has also been fallout from the incident on Facebook itself. Sona Nakshathra, who is a woman journalist mocked the group on Facebook:
പെമ്പിള്ളാര് മര്യാദക്ക് നടന്നില്ലെങ്കിൽ അവരുടെ അക്കൗണ്ട് ഹാക്ക് ചെയ്ത് അവരുടെ നഗ്ന ഫോട്ടോ ഇട്ട് മര്യാദ പഠിപ്പിക്കും ന്ന് പറയുന്ന ഒരുകൂട്ടം ഊള ടീമാ… :/
Women be careful, the group is there to set standards on how women should behave, or they threaten to put up your nude pictures
Gayathri Narayanan, who is a woman psychotherapist wrote sarcastically:
മഹാപരാധം തന്നെ , പെണ്ണുങ്ങള് വെറുതെ സമത്വത്തെ കുറിച്ചൊക്കെ എഴുതാൻ പാടുണ്ടോ!!!!! എന്ത് സമത്വം??? അതും ലിംഗസമത്വം. ‘പ്രസവിക്കുക, കുട്ടികളെ വളർത്തുക തുടങ്ങിയ പരിപാവനമായ കാര്യങ്ങൾ മാത്രം പെണ്ണുങ്ങള് നോക്കിയാ മതി. ഇത് വെറുതെ ഓരോ തലത്തെറിച്ചതുങ്ങൾ, പെണ്ണുങ്ങൾക്ക് സമത്വം ഉണ്ടെന്നും സ്വന്തം ശരീരത്തിൽ പരിപൂർണ അധികാരം ഉണ്ടെന്നും , ഉമ്മ വയ്ക്കാനും വാങ്ങാനും അതിനെ കുറിച്ച് സംസാരിക്കാനും ഒക്കെ അവകാശം ഇണ്ടെന്നും ഒക്കെ എഴുതുന്നു പറയുന്നു… ഇവരെയൊക്കെ നന്നാക്കാൻ അമാന്തിക്കരുത്. (ഉപദേശിച്ചോ ഉപദേശിച്ചോ ,, ഇവരെയൊക്കെ ഉപദേശിച്ചോ… എങ്ങാനും ഇവരൊക്കെ തിരിച്ചു പറയണ മറുപടി കേട്ട് ബാക്കിയുള്ളവർക്ക് വല്ലതും തിരിഞ്ഞാലോ !!!
Big Deal. It is unpardonable women should write about gender equality. Why we need gender equality? Women should only be writing about parenting and pregnancy. These other radical women, who demand rights on their body, you should really teach them a lesson. Please keep on doing so, so that, when these women write back to you, some others will get more guidance through those replies at least.
Despite Facebook's proclaimed and actual efforts to curb gender-based harassment on their platform, threats of character assassination and extortion continue apace around the world, and in many countries where such threats can carry severe real-life consequences.

author: Inji Pennu


text:
Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients in Australia Raises Discrimination and Privacy Concerns · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Author's mashup: Images courtesy Wikimedia (JonRichfield, CC BY-SA 3.0) and Pixabay (Creative Commons CC0)
Trial drug testing of welfare recipients is to be introduced by the Australian government. This measure may well turn out to be popular with voters. An online poll taken since 2015 by isideWith.com has 59% answering ‘Yes’ to the question “Should welfare recipients be tested for drugs?’ from more than 35,000 responses.
However, it has copped lots of flak online by Australians who view it as reinforcing stereotypes surrounding poverty and unemployment or as violating people's privacy.
Centrelink is the government agency responsible for welfare payments and many other human services. The trial will involve 5,000 new recipients of their job seekers and youth allowances, who will be submitted to random testing for illegal drugs. Three locations will be selected.
Those who test positive will have their payments quarantined and face other restrictions. Quarantining involves restricting the types of goods and services welfare payments can be spent on such as food and accommodation.
There was a lot of cynicism on Twitter, such as Clancy Benson:
The ‘drug test for welfare’ line is simply designed to get headlines & reinforce negative stereotypes. #Budget2017 #auspol
— Clancy Benson (@ClancyBenson) May 10, 2017
Not everyone was against the idea:
Cant fathom complaints about drug testing for the dole #auspol. Do they realise dole is our money, used to purchase drugs? #Budget2017
— Kev Hearn (@Kev_Hearn) May 9, 2017
You need to pass a drug test to get most jobs these days. Why should taxpayers pay for drug addicts to sit on their arse?? #auspol https://t.co/PTXfwdoH4U
— Peter (@carnthacats) May 9, 2017
Maggie Gardener responded with criticism of a US testing scheme in Florida:
@Kev_Hearn American experience has not been good. Read this articlehttps://t.co/h4JYva4SwS
Only good for drug testing companies
— Maggie Gardener (@methusheilah) May 10, 2017
The 2013 post on Sobre Ebriedad, the blog of a law student and public health activist, argues that “the only state to have implemented drug testing for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) [welfare] program–actually lost money”.
Josh Butler at Huffington Post Australia summarised a meme suggesting other recipients of government money should be included, especially parliamentarians:
The overwhelming Twitter response to the plan to drug test welfare recipients: drug test politicians and their staff too #budget2017
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) May 9, 2017
Others attacked what they saw as government hypocrisy:
drink and drug test for corporate welfare recipients, too? #Budget2017 pic.twitter.com/yGMTVsKCKv
— Australia Institute (@TheAusInstitute) May 9, 2017
In a bizarre twist, authorities plan to identify areas of high drug usage by testing the sewage system. The Australian treasurer, Scott Morrison, has confirmed that these tests will be used for the trial.
Hugh Rundle, who describes himself as a flaneur [(someone who saunters around observing society), responded:
Of all the creepy things about Australia's government, testing sewage to find welfare recipients to drug-test might just be the weirdest. https://t.co/62ko8hZqoy
— (H)ugh (@HughRundle) May 11, 2017
Some commentators looked at the broader picture of a so-called war on welfare recipients. In her post ‘What on earth has Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison been inhaling?’ for the North Coast Voices blog, Clarence Girl attacked the treasurer's “disconnect from reality”. She also criticised tougher requirements on job seekers searching for employment as an “exercise in cuckoo land thinking” and “heartless”.
Job seekers aged 30-49 years have had their annual activity requirement of 30 hours per fortnight increased to 50. The activity includes part-time work, study, volunteering and other forms of participation. Job seekers between 55 and 60 can now only make up 15 through volunteering rather than the full 30 hours of their requirement. Those between 60 and pension age have had an activity requirement of 10 hours per fortnight introduced, which can be volunteering. The pension age is currently 65 with gradual increases to reach 67 years by 2023. A government fact sheet, Welfare Reform – 2017 Budget, outlines these and other changes such as the drug testing trial.
Sean Kelly of The Monthly news magazine disputed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's explanation that the drug testing policy is about “love”. He argued that the real motivation was a populist appeal:
[…] in this case: the government wanted headlines about cracking down on bludgers (and it got them). It cynically decided it would pick on the unemployed – those among us who are vulnerable to poverty, homelessness and mental health problems – because they can’t fight back.
Meanwhile, at the Australia Bulletin, Jessica raised some “unanswered questions” about the policy:
The data-driven profiling of welfare recipients raises a number of ethical questions the government should answer.
Among them:
Can the security of the data be adequately protected?
Will the information be used solely for its original purpose?
What procedures will there be to challenge your selection for a drug test?
She was one of a small number online who voiced concern about the growing intrusion into our privacy:
Many of our actions are now observable, searchable and traceable, and surveillance is more intrusive and extensive than ever. But the impact of this can fall more heavily on disadvantaged communities.
So-called “random” drug testing is just another example of this worrisome trend.
Lynlinking's tweet captured the overwhelming mood online.
What are they smoking in Canberra? Welfare drug test trial targets most vulnerable https://t.co/CV8SKNbJy8 via @theage
— lynlinking (@lynlinking) May 14, 2017

author: Kevin Rennie


text:
#FreeThe5KH Campaign Seeks Release of Five Detained Human Rights Activists in Cambodia · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

The five have been recognized as among the finalists in the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2017.
Since 28 April 2016, five Cambodian human rights activists have been detained for allegedly bribing a witness in a case involving the country’s opposition leader.
Ny Sokha, Yi Soksan, Nay Vanda, Lim Mony, and Ny Chakrya have been in jail for over a year now awaiting trial as authorities complete the investigation. Last April, a judge hearing the case extended their detention for another six months.
The five are accused of bribing the alleged mistress of the country's political opposition leader to deny their relationship. During that time, the government has been harassing key members of the opposition by charging them with various criminal cases.
The five belong to the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC), a group known for its human rights advocacy in Cambodia. They admit that they gave advice to the alleged mistress and reimbursed her for food and transport costs, but they denied the bribery accusation.
Their detention has been described by civil society groups in Cambodia as arbitrary and politically motivated. Since last year, human rights groups in and out of Cambodia have been petitioning the government to release the five through the #FreeThe5KH campaign.
The five have been recognized as finalists in the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2017. But the Cambodian government decried the nomination as an interference in the country’s judicial process.
Our #Ennals2017 Finalists announced https://t.co/l9yThiTwSi
Karla Avelar (El Salvador)
Mohamed Zaree (Egypt)
FreeThe5KH (Cambodia) pic.twitter.com/DrxkX2X6pv
— Martin Ennals Award (@martinennals) April 26, 2017
Cambodia’s ruling party has been in power for more than three decades. After losing a significant number of seats in the 2013 elections, it has imposed stricter laws regulating political rallies in the capital, while threatening ordinary citizens who cause “disunity” on social media. Cambodian voters are set to choose 1,646 leaders of communes and wards next month but the ruling party restricted the number of days for election campaign activities. The case of the five detained activists reflects the harsh political climate in Cambodia today.
One of the activities of the #FreeThe5KH campaign has enjoined the public to express their support for the activists. Netizens are encouraged to send photos of themselves holding a photo of the five. Below are some of the photos uploaded on the #FreeThe5KH Facebook page:
Source: Facebook page of FreeThe5KH
Source: Facebook page of FreeThe5KH
Source: Facebook page of FreeThe5KH
Source: Facebook page of FreeThe5KH

author: Mong Palatino


text:
Meet the Alliance Managing Mexico’s Mayan Rainforest · Global Voices
Periodismo de Barrio

Ownership of land to communities and communal lands is recognized in Mexico (Photo taken from the official website of Alianza Selva Maya and reproduced with permission)
On August 21, 2007, Hurricane Dean ripped through the Mexican city of Bacalar with winds approaching 300 kilometers (186 miles) per hour. According to a report published by Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior and the National Center for Prevention of Disasters, the storm caused more than $210 million in damages.
The hurricane also hit the Mayan rainforest, pounding about 917,000 hectares (2.3 million acres) of medium-altitude rainforest and 270,000 hectares (667,000 acres) of low-altitude rainforest.
Just before the storm, the community of Noh Bec had almost finished with the first authorized cuts as part of a forest management program launched in 1999 by the government.
Following the hurricane, the Secretariat suspended its program and approved short-term permits. Noh Bec also lost its forestry certification from the “Smart Wood” organization, which allowed the community to export its lumber to the United States and Germany. Meanwhile, the rainforest was left in critical condition.
Three years later, Noh Bec was still suffering. “Timber started to be sold at the prices they could managed to get, and [this made] prices fall a lot,” recalls Abraham González, the communal land’s forestry director.  “It was necessary to unite to standardize the prices for the wood.”
This is how the “Alianza Selva Maya” community began on July 15, 2011.
A local newspaper showing conformation of the Alianza Selva Maya. Photo: Official Alianza Selva Maya Blog. Reproduced with permission.
Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, passed in 1917, ceded land ownership to poor farmers and indigenous communities through the creation of two fundamental forms of social property: communal land and communities.
The shareholders of communal lands manage the “civil property” on the land, but they cannot sell, rent, mortgage, or offer it as collateral in credit applications. The system avoids granting full land ownership rights, fearing that it would lead to the manipulation of poor farmers.
The government maintained centralized control of the rainforests until 1940, when concessions were granted to private companies for the exploitation of forest resources. By the late 1970s, the Mexican forestry sector landed in crisis after over-exploiting its forests. In 1986, the government ended its concessions to private companies, returning the forest resources to the communities and communal lands.
In 1997, Mexican officials devise a new strategy to promote forest management built on two new programs: the Forest Development Program and the Community Forestry Development Program.
An estimated 2,300 communal lands and communities in Mexico — of a total of 8,400 — are allowed to use wood from their forests and rainforests. Over the past 25 years, more than 80 percent of the country's temperate and tropical forests have been managed by rural communities and indigenous populations, allowing them to decide on commercial timber production.
The Alianza Selva Maya has 113,000 hectares (280,000 acres) of jungle in areas known as Permanent Forest Areas and another 49,000 hectares (121,000 acres) under community conservation. Its five communal lands are Bacalar, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Noh Bec, Petcacab y Polinkin, and Xhaxil y Anexos.
José Antonio Arreola, a forestry technical adviser, explains that “each communal land is managed independently, but they are part of Alianza,” because “in a single communal land, we cannot achieve better prices for our wood.”
Alfonso Argüelles, Mexico’s national representative to the Forest Stewardship Council, a nongovernmental accreditation organization based in Bonn, Germany, explained to Elaine Díaz the major challenges facing communities:
There are two communal lands where the treasurers are women. Many work in eco-tourist areas. In the case of young people, we didn’t want them to go to the city because of the Internet, so we brought the Internet to the communal land. We didn’t want them to leave because of TV and so we brought cable TV. The community subsidizes it.
An owner can earn up to 4,000 Mexican pesos a month as a basic salary. If they are forestry technicians, it can reach up to 14,000. We have a policy of employment that favors the owners, then their children and relatives, then the members of the community, and finally, foreigners or people outside the village.
Argüelles also talked about how the council deals with the shareholders of communal land who do not want to take over common resources:
Opening space for entrepreneurs.  There are those who are satisfied with harvesting their wood and selling it, there are those who want to add an added value. The latter, for example, are allowed to create woodworking shops. If I allow you to have a woodworking shop, won’t you want to keep my wood, right?
Since its inception, Alianza has incorporated eco-tourism and carbon capture projects, and has developed techniques for adapting agriculture to climate change, as Argüelles explains:
We are the main drivers of rural community conservation. That’s what we live from.

author: Periodismo de Barrio


text:
Netizen Report: Chelsea Manning and the Power of Transparency · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

Screenshot of Chelsea Manning's first portrait post on Twitter, after her release on May 17, 2017.
US Army officer Chelsea Manning was released from military prison on May 17 after spending nearly seven years behind bars for sharing with Wikileaks thousands of classified military and government files that exposed human rights violations and corruption committed by the US government and numerous others.
The US government pursued 22 charges against Manning, including “aiding the enemy”. Although prosecutors were never able to prove that Manning’s actions had caused the United States material harm, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison in a case rife with political controversy and seen by civil and human rights advocates as an attempt to set a severe precedent for sentencing in cases involving the leaking of classified digital documents.
Her sentence was commuted by Barack Obama in the final days of his presidency. The commutation does not absolve her of conviction, but it means that she is now free to “breathe the warm spring air,” as she put it a few days before she walked free.
Manning’s civilian lawyer David Coombs published a sobering statement on the day of her release in which he described her sentence as a “grievous wrong” committed by the military court system. He wrote:
…the particular constellation of players involved in this case, the desire to make an example out of Manning, and the “win at all costs” mentality of the prosecution created a powder keg where the ability to achieve a just result was impossible.
So I don’t see Manning’s commutation as a victory.  I see it as an unfortunate failure of military justice to do its job.
The documents that Manning helped make public had an immeasurable impact on public knowledge about and response to the activities of the US and other governments. It included some of the most damning evidence of human rights violations committed by the United States in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Beyond the US, the documents demonstrated deep corruption and systemic human rights abuses by the Tunisian government under the regime of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali regime. Their release was a critical precursor to the Tunisian revolution, which brought about the Ben Ali's ouster in January of 2011 and helped inspire a series of uprisings across the region now often referred to as the “Arab Spring.”
In a reflective blog post that he published in 2013, Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia, who played a pivotal role in circulating the documents among Tunisian civil society, described the impact of her actions:
If the U.S. will take 35 years from Chelsea Manning’s life, may it console her that she has given us, Arabs, the secret gift that helped expose and topple 50 years of dictatorships.
[…]
After she was sentenced to 35 years in prison Chelsea Manning said in her statement that “Sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society.” I don’t know if she knows that she helped us, in this part of the world, to move toward that noble goal. Closing a cell door on a prisoner with a free mind has opened a thousand and one doors for a free society.
Manning will face a new set of challenges now that she is released, as she has become a high-profile person for whom harassment and threats of violence are expected to increase. Supporters of Manning have raised over US$140,000 in a Welcome Home fund, and put together a digital album featuring the artists Michael Stipe, Tom Morello and Talib Kweli to support her.
The Ukrainian President signed an order instructing ISPs to block several major Russian social media sites, including social networks VKontakte and Odnoklasniki, email service Mail.Ru and search engine Yandex. The same order placed sanctions on a number of Russian companies and individuals, including the airline Aeroflot, cybersecurity company Kaspersky Labs, and officials from the United Russia party.
This marks another wave of sanctions by the Ukrainian government since the annexation of Crimea: in all, 450 Russian companies and 1200 individuals have been targeted by sanctions since 2014. As of May 16, none of the sanctioned websites have been blocked.
By May 15, China had become the country most affected by the ransomware program “WannaCry”, which infected over 230,000 computers in 99 countries beginning on May 12, half of which were located in China. The ransomware attacks computers running Microsoft Windows and locks users out of their systems, demanding users pay US $300 to decrypt their files. Chinese users — and many others in countries with loose restrictions on intellectual property — are particularly vulnerable to the attack as many use unlicensed or outdated versions of Windows and thus do not receive security updates that prevent the attack.
The Thai government threatened to take Facebook to court over 131 “anti-monarchy” posts officials have asked the US social media giant to remove from its platform. Among the posts are a video showing the new Thai king walking through a shopping mall wearing a crop top, which was widely shared across the social network. Thailand imposes harsh lese-majeste laws, sanctioning any speech that is deemed insulting to the Thai royal family, and has stepped up its prosecution of violations of these laws: 105 individuals have been arrested for alleged lese majeste violations since a military coup in 2014. Facebook already has removed 178 posts in 2017.
Boys of Bangladesh, a network of Bangladeshi gay men, launched the Bangla-language blog Dhee (which means talent or intelligence in Bangla), to commemorate slain LGBT activists in the country and to raise awareness about discrimination against the LGBT community in the country. Just over a year ago, activist Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy and web journalist Xulhaz Mannan, who launched Bangladesh’s first LGBT news site, were hacked to death in the capital city of Dhaka.
Ansar Al-Islam Bangladesh claimed responsibility for the murders, but police have failed to issue any charges against suspects. While homosexuality is not explicitly prohibited in Bangladesh, the country’s penal code criminalizes sexual activities “against the order of nature”, which includes consensual homosexual acts, fellatio and anal penetration.
Mahsa Alimardani, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Sahar Habib Ghazi and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


text:
President Maduro Threatened This Venezuelan Journalist on Twitter, Then His Passport Was Suddenly Declared “Invalid” · Global Voices
Laura Vidal

César Miguel Rondón in his radio show on “Circuito Éxitos”. Screenshot of the video shared by the radio station.
Writer and journalist César Miguel Rondón was prevented from leaving Venezuela, after authorities confiscated his and his family's passports at Maiquetía's International Airport Simón Bolívar and declared them invalid.
Venezuelan authorities said the passports had been reported as ‘stolen‘ to the government department Administrative Service of Identification, Migration and Foreigners. According to the news site Runrun.es this is not the first time Venezuela's government has used this strategy “as a way to prohibit leaving the country”.
Days before Rondón was prevented from leaving the country, President Nicolás Maduro threatened Rondón with prison on Twitter for his comments on escrache, a protest tactic recently adopted by Venezuelans in which demonstrators confront and publicly shame government officials and their children living outside Venezuela. The confrontations are often marked with loud banging pots, which is another protest tactic called cacerolazo.
The tweet from Rondón that generated a threat from President Maduro said: “How does it feel to be spat on worldwide? To have no place to hide, plane to fly in, to never be in peace?”
The following video shows Maripili Hernández, a former Venezuelan minister, being escorted by police to safety after she was confronted by protestors at a restaurant in Madrid:
Under Maduro, Venezuela has been struggling with a massive economic crisis, food and medicine shortages, record levels of violent crime and poverty, and relentless power cuts for three years. Maduro's government has suppressed protests, censored the press and curtailed free expression during this time. Opponents, critics and journalists whose reporting puts the government in a negative light face imprisonment. Some have gone into self-imposed exile. Others have simply gone silent.
Rondón's Twitter feed was changed to ‘protected mode’, but the tweets that generated the president's comments were reproduced as screenshots alongside screenshots of his apology tweets, and reframed by government supporters who accused Rondón of being a “fascist” and a hypocrite:
Un recorrido por el TL de César Miguel Rondón o cuando te sacan de la borrachera facha pic.twitter.com/h4ootrGOdj
— Larissa Costas (@Larissacostas) May 17, 2017
Larissa Costas’ tweet: A tour around César Miguel Rondón's Twitter's Timeline after he's over his fascist trip.
Later on national TV, the President said Rondón's comments were an “incitation to violence and hate”:
Lo que César Miguel Rondón así como Tulio Hernández han promovido a través de sus cuentas de Twitter es para que estuvieran presos […] Ya deberían estar acusados judicialmente, porque están promoviendo una nueva Ruanda [en referencia al genocidio], de persecución, de matanza, de odio… y eso está penado en las leyes de Venezuela.
What César Miguel Rondón y Tulio Hernández are promoting on Twitter is [reason enough] to take them to jail. They should already be accused by the law. They're promoting a new Rwanda [in reference to the genocide] of persecution, massacre, hate… And that's punishable by Venezuelan law.
Rondón responded on Twitter, saying he didn't mean to promote any words of hate and underlined how throughout his career, his words were never used to promote hate. Online media outlets reported on his response, in which Rondón apologized if his words had been misinterpreted, and maintained that he condemned the public shaming protests. As quoted by Runrun.es:
El periodista le replicó vía Twitter: “Tengo una trayectoria pública de 4 décadas. Jamás he pronunciado una palabra alentando odio o violencia entre venezolanos. Como demócrata he respetado las posiciones de los demás, aunque no las comparta. Con la palabra, jamás con la violencia”.
The journalist responded on Twitter: I have a public, 4 decade-old career. I've never uttered one word encouraging hate or violence among Venezuelans. As a democrat, I've respected everyone else's position, even if I don't share them. With words, never with violence.
Today, while editing this story, the passport of an opposition leader and former presidential hopeful Henrique Capriles Radonski was also suddenly declared “invalid” as he was on his way to speak at the UN about human rights abuses in Venezuela.
#18Mayo Fui retenido y anularon y robaron mi pasaporte vigente hasta 2020 en Maiquetía! Todo… https://t.co/vrosIgv8TF
— Henrique Capriles R. (@hcapriles) May 18, 2017
I was retained and they invalidated my passport in the airport, which was valid until 2020
Also read our special coverage What Is Happening in Venezuela?

author: Laura Vidal


text:
Argentines Rally Against Ruling That Could Shorten Prison Sentences of Dictatorship-Era Criminals · Global Voices
Romina Navarro

Main act of the protest against the 2×1 for genocide accused ruling in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires. Photo Nuevo Encuentro, shared publicly on Facebook.
Argentines marched in cities across the country on May 10, 2017, to repudiate a Supreme Court decision regarding a measure known as “two for one” (2×1) that would reduce the sentence of a serviceman convicted of crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina.
The ruling refers to an old convention of Argentine criminal law that was intended at the time to reduce the prison population. It was established so that those who were detained without trial for more than two years would have the right to compensation for the delay in the form of double time served for however long they were held without conviction.
For the people protesting against the Supreme Court's ruling, it sets a precedent that could result in many of those who were members of the dictatorship's repressive forces being released early. The following video by Emergentes summarizes what the ruling means for Argentines and the reasons they reject it:
La gente manifestándose también es una respuesta simbólica y firme [de] lo que no queremos que vuelva a pasar nunca más
The people protesting are also a firm and symbolic response to what we do not want to happen ever again.
On May 3, 2017, the majority of the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Luis Muiña, who was convicted of “illegal deprivation of freedom aggravated by the use of violence or threats.” In a country where the wounds of the dictatorship have not yet healed, a ruling like this is a low blow in the eyes of those who have spent more than four decades fighting for justice.
The reaction of human rights organizations, political parties and citizens was swift, both in the streets and on social media, where the indignation was palpable in tweets using the hashtags #Noal2x1 (No to 2×1) and #Noal2x1aGenocidas (No to 2×1 for genocide criminals):
#NOal2x1aGenocidas…Este país no da para más.. q más falta????Por favor cuánta injusticia!!
— Laura (@Laura74347032) 3 de mayo de 2017
#NOal2x1aGenocidas… This country can’t take any more… What else is coming!? Please, how much injustice!
#NuncaMas #NoAl2x1AGenocidas
Este miércoles vamos todxs a la Plaza.
¡POR LA MEMORIA DE LOS 30 MIL COMPAÑEROS! pic.twitter.com/qAj0NtaGJR
— Peronismo Militante (@PMCapital) 8 de mayo de 2017
Image: Not one genocidal criminal on the streets. No to the 2X1 law. We will protest at the Plaza de Mayo.
Tweet: #NuncaMas [Never Again] #NoAl2x1AGenocidas This Wednesday everyone will go to the Plaza. FOR THE MEMORY OF THE 30,000 FELLOW [ARGENTINES WHO DIED]!
Este miércoles nos movilizamos junto con las organizaciones de DD.HH. para demostrar que este pueblo esta de pie! #Noal2x1 #NoAl2X1Genocida pic.twitter.com/OfViMk6Idb
— SeamosLibres (@SeamosLibresmp) 8 de mayo de 2017
Image: Let's defend our history. Not one genocidal criminal on the streets.
Tweet: This Wednesday we mobilize together with human rights organizations to prove that this country is standing up! #Noal2x1 #NoAl2X1Genocida
#NOal2x1aGenocidas “Argentina no puede retroceder en materia de DDHH. El mensaje de impunidad no puede invadir nuestras calles” @SergioMassa
— FR Tigre Centro (@FRTigreCentro) 10 de mayo de 2017
“Argentina cannot go backwards on human rights issues. The message of impunity cannot invade our streets” @SergioMassa
Secuestraron, torturaron, violaron, mataron, robaron bebes, miseria planificada.
Ni un genocida suelto#MisionesPresente#NoAl2x1AGenocidas pic.twitter.com/xwK0Tp2m4D
— Cristina Britez (@cbritezmisiones) 10 de mayo de 2017
They kidnapped, tortured, raped, killed, stole babies, planned misery. Not one genocidal criminal free #MisionesPresente#NoAl2x1AGenocidas
The general slogan that encompassed the call to action was clear — “Neither forgetfulness, nor forgiveness, nor reconciliation” — and white handkerchiefs, the symbol of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo association of mothers whose children were disappeared during the dictatorship, dominated the mobilization.
Here are some images of the massive march shared by the collective Emergentes:
Downtown Buenos Aires filled with white handkerchiefs. Photo: Emergentes, used with permission.
“Never again.” March in Buenos Aires against 2×1 for the genocides. Photo: Emergentes, used with permission.
March in Buenos Aires against 2×1 for the genocides. Photo: Emergentes, used with permission.
Symbolic representation of the victims of forced disappearance during the dictatorship. Photo: Emergentes, used with permission.
Secretary of Human Rights Claudio Avruj denied any interference of the Executive Branch in the Judiciary, and stated that it would be a mistake to confuse the court's decision with a decision of the government: “The first thing we proposed was respect for the independence of the branches of government. […] This has nothing to do with the unwavering commitment to the fight against impunity.”
On the same day as the march, Argentine President Mauricio Macri spoke out against the 2×1 ruling in a move that many considered “took too long to happen.” Meanwhile, the Senate issued a law, previously approved by consensus in an emergency session of the Chamber of Deputies, which limits the scope of the ruling and restricts its application in cases of people convicted of war crimes and genocide.
The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in the Senate session where the 2×1 decision was ruled inapplicable for those convicted of crimes against humanity. Photo: Emergentes, used with permission.
Despite the quick issuing of the law and the clarifications of the secretary of human rights, this controversial week does not bode well for President Mauricio Macri’s public image in the face of upcoming legislative elections in October 2017. It only adds to the general discontent within an important sector of Argentine society that already disapproves of several state policies enacted during his 16-month administration.

author: Romina Navarro


text:
Azerbaijan Blocks Independent Media (And Actually Admits it) · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

Wikipedia commons.
Earlier this month Azerbaijan's Ministry of Transportation, Communication and High Technologies broke the habit of a lifetime by securing a court order to block key independent media outlets, including three online websites and two satellite TV channels.
That isn't to say that the Ministry had not blocked websites before — just that it had never admitted to doing so. As in other heavy handed ex-Soviet states such as Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, previous reports of blocks were met with a shrug of the shoulders from authorities.
The May 12 court decisions affected azadliq.info, the Azerbaijani service of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty; Berlin-based dissident media outlet Meydan.TV; and satellite TV channels Turan TV and Azerbaijani Saadi (Azerbaijan Hour).
5 websites in #Azerbaijan have been blocked officially.
— Rovshan Mammadli (@MammadliRovshan) 12 мая 2017 г.
UPDATE: Azerbaijan: Opposition and independent news websites blocked https://t.co/QyEoeVbD3H #mediafreedom #ECPMF #mapmf
— Index on Censorship (@IndexCensorship) 11 мая 2017 г.
Azerbaijan blocked 5 leading news websites as part of crackdown on independent voices https://t.co/rNsRMZ9vFf @RSF_EECA @IRFS_Azerbaijan pic.twitter.com/lgOGaezO85
— IFEX (@IFEX) 4 мая 2017 г.
The state prosecutor claims that these websites “pose a threat” to Azerbaijan's national security and accuses them of sharing content that promotes violence, hatred, extremism, violates privacy and constitutes slander.
But recent articles published by Azadliq Radio do not match this description. The site's current page features stories on suicide rates in Azerbaijan, public protests, and the business dealings of Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva's private foundation, which surfaced new revelations regarding the financial activities of the president's relatives and his inner circle.
What's more, the court order does not just block the resources. It can be used as a premise to prosecute the outlets’ employees on the same spurious security grounds on which they were blocked.
Another website targeted recently by authorities was opposition media outlet abzas.net. In April, its editor Ulvi Hasanli told Meydan.TV that beginning in March this year, the website's editors and readers had noticed access issues.
The access issues began shortly after the parliament in Azerbaijan introduced amendments to the law on “Information, Informatisation and Protection of Information” and the law on telecommunications.
A detailed report published by Amnesty International highlighted additional digital attacks against journalists, activists and rights defenders in Azerbaijan:
We documented a series of spearphishing attempts using a custom malware agent that has targeted critics of the Azerbaijani government over at least thirteen months. The recent samples of the malware are consistent with independent reports of an increase in the compromise of social media accounts of activists. The victims and targets identified, as well as the political theme of bait documents, indicate that the campaign is largely targeting human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents. This campaign also aligns with findings by VirtualRoad.org in their report, “News Media Websites Attacked from Governmental Infrastructure in Azerbaijan”, which links some of the same network address blocks with “break-in attempts” and “denial of service attacks” against several independent media websites
In recent days, users in Azerbaijan have been reporting difficulties receiving incoming international calls via Skype and WhatsApp.
Nə whatsappla danışmaq olur, nə skypela. Bunlar da bloklandı?
— Tural Aghayev (@turaltaghayev) 13 мая 2017 г.
It is impossible to talk either with whatsapp, or skype. Are these also blocked?
There have been issues receiving international calls via Whatsapp and Skype in recent days. Looks like Aliyevs are short on cash, their mobile operators ran out of money.
Its been 5 days now that its been impossible to make calls with Whatsapp. Looks like they must have done this for security reasons but its still possible to make calls using Facebook messenger easily. They might have forgotten about that one.
Yes, its been like this for the past five days. Not possible to talk when receiving an international call. This was one thing we had left and they have taken it too. May God punish them. All they think about is how to shut people up and oppress them.
Hebib Muntezir, one of the founders of the now-officially-blocked Meydan TV offered a speedy solution to getting round the blocks:
The temporary [so far] access issues with Skype and WhatsApp can be circumvented by using VPNs.
It is worth noting that Azerbaijan is currently hosting the Islamic Solidarity Games, an international event that attracts kicked off on May 12 — the same day the court ordered the websites blocked — and will continue until May 22. The games are an Olympic-style competition open to all Muslim nations, in which some 3000 athletes from 50 countries participated this year.
Azerbaijan's National Olympic Committee proudly tweeted:
Our ceremony tonight is a universal story of a peace rooted in the culture and traditions of #Azerbaijan ?? pic.twitter.com/jwNpK08wix
— NOC Azerbaijan (@NOCAzerbaijan) May 12, 2017
Repression of critical journalism and internet censorship: these are some of modern Azerbaijan's strongest traditions.

author: Arzu Geybullayeva


text:
For Some Mexicans, a Presidential Hopeful Bears Worrying Similarities to Venezuela’s Maduro · Global Voices
J. Tadeo

Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo published under license of Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
A total of 4,178 kilometers (2,602 miles) geographically separate the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the United States of Mexico. However, this distance does not feel so vast, not only because of globalization, but also because of the similarities between the two of the countries’ main political actors.
In Venezuela, the last several weeks have seen popular discontent spill into the streets over certain government actions that many have perceived as a coup. Society is divided between those who support the current regime and those who want a change — a change which would include, among many other things, the exit of President Nicolás Maduro from his seat in the Venezuelan government at Miraflores Palace.
Beyond their own government's rhetoric on Venezuela, including the sterile calls for dialogue from Mexico's foreign minister, Mexicans analyzing the situation have found similarities between Maduro and a man who aspires — even after having been defeated in the last two consecutive elections — to one day run Mexico: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO for short.
Lo que sucede con Nicolás Maduro es lo que puede suceder en México si gana AMLO y MORENA.
— Lovato. (@Aldo_Lobato) April 12, 2017
What's happening with Nicolás Maduro is what can happen in Mexico if AMLO and MORENA win.
López is the founder and current leader of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) political party. He professes to be aligned with left-wing political ideals; however, his conservative stance on abortion, same-sex marriage and the rights of same-sex couples to form a family, among other issues, contrasts with the image he tries to create of himself as a progressive liberator.
The figures in Mexican politics who are close to López, like Dr. John Ackerman, every now and then wink in admiration at the Venezuelan government, as was reported at the end of March 2017 by journalist Pablo Hiriart, who is of Chilean origin:
El asesor de AMLO, que lo acompañó en Washington a denostar a las Fuerzas Armadas de México, ahora nos ofrece al gobierno de Venezuela como un modelo. Dice Ackerman que “Venezuela es mucho más democrático y respetuoso de los derechos humanos que México”. Para el asesor de López “en Venezuela los medios privados de comunicación electrónica se lanzan día y noche, y de la manera más frontal y directa, en contra de su gobierno, mientras en México estamos sujetos a un régimen de control mediático sin parangón”.
AMLO's adviser, who accompanied him to Washington to denounce the Mexican Armed Forces, now offers us the Venezuelan government as a model to follow. Ackerman said, “Venezuela is much more democratic and respectful of human rights than Mexico.” According to López's adviser, “In Venezuela the private mediums of electronic communication pounce on their own government day and night, and in a more direct, head-on way, whilst in Mexico, we are subjected to an unparalleled regime of media control”.
Ex-presidential candidate and lawyer Diego Fernández de Cevallos described the aspiring leader of the country this way:
Es un viejo político, criado y educado en la más pedestre tradición oficialista; sin ideas, con mucha ambición y mantenido con dineros públicos y otros desconocidos, va por un atajo sinuoso pero eficaz: se deslindó de su pasado, dice luchar por los pobres (entre más haya mejor para él), hace alarde de pobreza material envuelto en “honestidad valiente” (como si hubiera honestidad cobarde), transfigurado en cómico involuntario con su dedito distingue a los puros de los impuros (…)
He is an old-fashioned politician, raised and educated in the most pedestrian tradition; without ideas, but with a lot of ambition and maintained with public money and by strangers, he takes a meandering but effective shortcut: he breaks with his past, claims to fight for the poor (the more there are, the better for him), flaunts material poverty wrapped in “brave honesty” (as if there were cowardly honestly), transfigured into an involuntary comedian with his little finger distinguishing the pure from the impure […]
And in relation to the perceptions of corruption that accompany López, Fernández de Cevallos said:
Es limpio e incorruptible, jamás toca dinero bien o mal habido, carece de todo pero explota el malestar social y se hace acompañar por un número indeterminado de pillos que escondidas recogen dinero ilegal “para la causa”. Cuando son sorprendidos (en flagrancia), él responde que lo esculquen, que es pobre y ama a los pobres, que “no miente, no roba y no engaña”, que son trampas de “la mafia del poder”.
He's clean and incorruptible, he never touches good or bad money, he lacks everything but exploits social unrest and makes sure he is accompanied by an undetermined number of scoundrels that secretly collect illegal money “for the cause.” When they are caught (red-headed), he responds by saying that they are being ripped-off, that he is poor and loves the poor, that “he does not lie, steal or cheat,” and that the real cheaters are the “mafia of power.”
For precisely this type of conduct many Mexicans have taken to Twitter to warn of the similarities they see between Maduro and López:
@MLopezSanMartin@AtiendenosGDF Es igual que Nicolás Maduro echando culpa siempre al Imperio, pero nunca son ellos los responsables de esto o aquello. AMLO es un peligro.
— Diablo Guardian ?? (@BonoToxic) April 25, 2017
@MLopezSanMartin@AtiendenosGDF It's the same as Nicolás Maduro always placing the blame on the Empire, but they are never responsible for this or that. AMLO is dangerous.
@Mzavalagc No me extraña que sigan creyendo en AMLO, si en Venezuela hay quienes siguen creyendo en Nicolás Maduro, en todos lados hay inocentes
— Moises Hernandez C (@MoisesHcosi) April 24, 2017
@Mzavalagc It's no wonder people continue to believe in AMLO, if in Venezuela there are still those that continue believe in Nicolás Maduro, there are naive people everywhere
In mid-2017, Mexico will hold local-level elections in which the country's political parties will battle ferociously in order to strongly position themselves for the upcoming presidential elections of 2018. And during election season, public declarations — and the lack thereof — from political figures take on more significance.
Thus, the fact that López has not commented on the repression unleashed against protesters in Venezuela has been interpreted by some as a validation of those tactics:
Tanto AMLO como DELFINA han guardado silencio cómplice sobre as atrocidades que comete MADURO en Venezuela contra… https://t.co/YjqVNXsuDn
— Noé Aguilar Tinajero (@noenuestraepoca) April 24, 2017
Tweet: Both AMLO and DELFINA have kept complicit silence on the atrocities committed by MADURO in Venezuela against…
Article excerpt: The Venezuelan hell that they want for Mexico: Why hasn't the Mexican left condemned the cruelty of Maduro's government against the people? That was the question circulating on social media yesterday.
Not all Mexicans believed the comparison was valid, and many Mexicans stood fast in their support for López:
@julioastillero Yo apoyo a AMLO y no le odio amigo.. Admiro su trabajo y su valentia desde su trinchera!!
— PEPE (@jomaiz) April 20, 2017
@julioastillero I support AMLO and I don't hate him, my friend.. I admire his work and his bravery from his trench!!
@AR2ROTOTO Apoyo a @lopezobrador_ por que se que con él tendremos un mejor País, con oportunidades para todos. No por qué busque empleo! ☝?
— LM (@Luis_Montero36) May 1, 2017
@AR2ROTOTO I support @lopezobrador_ because I know that with him, we will have a better country, with opportunities for all. Not because I'm looking for work!
In Human Rights Watch's World Report for 2017, Executive Director Kenneth Roth observed that there is a “dangerous advance of populism” happening around the globe. Given that it is a worldwide phenomenon, it's not strange that some countries in Latin America might be following this trend.
In July 2018, we will find out whether Mexico will join this frenzy of leaders, who according to Roth “privilege the declared interests of the majority, encouraging people to adopt the dangerous belief that they will never themselves need to assert rights against an overreaching government claiming to act in their name.”

author: J. Tadeo


text:
Have You Heard of ‘Cash for Keys’? Many Elderly Immigrants in Los Angeles Have—and Are Fighting It. · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Yue Chang Zhou and his wife were asked to leave their apartment in a Los Angeles single-room occupancy building after it was sold last year. With a small fixed income, it’s unlikely that they could find an equally affordable housing option in LA, and the wait for subsidized senior housing can take several years. Credit: Roberto Guerra/PRI
This story by Ruxandra Guidi originally appeared on PRI.org on May 15, 2017. It is republished here as part of a partnership between PRI and Global Voices.
In cities around the US, rents are rising fast.
The technology boom and the housing rebound are transforming urban areas in many parts of the country, driving up the cost of living and forcing low-income residents out of their longtime homes. Among those most affected are immigrant seniors, like 86-year-old Ying Ya Yang, who lives out of a single room that’s only 100 square feet.
For over 15 years, she has slept, cooked and eaten in this small and cramped space. But she says she likes it that way.
A retired garment worker from China, Yang depends on a Supplemental Security Income of $800 a month. Her rent is $350 a month, and she is fully aware that it would be hard for her to find something cheaper even here in Lincoln Heights, a working-class immigrant neighborhood close to downtown Los Angeles.
“I’m very independent and self-sufficient,” she says. “My kids offer me money but I don’t take it, I like to take care of myself. And I like it here because it’s perfect for me: I can take the bus anywhere. You could say I want to stay here until the end of my days.”
One day last spring, however, Yang and her next-room neighbors, the Zhous, had some unexpected visitors: a group of Cantonese-speaking housing advocates. Yue Chang Zhou is visibly upset as he explains their situation to them.
“They came and basically told us, ‘You will have to move in six or seven months, and we’ll be paying you six months of rent and you can leave.’”
The “they” Zhou is referring to is probably the building’s new owner. He’s never actually met him, but he heard from some of his former neighbors that the owner had new plans for the property. The younger neighbors took the six months’ rent — about $2,400 — and left.
But no amount of money will make the Zhous or Yang want to leave at this point in their lives. And this response from seniors is very common.
“A lot of seniors want to age and die in their home,” says Phyllis Chiu, a retired schoolteacher who volunteers in immigrant neighborhoods like Lincoln Heights and LA's Chinatown, working with a group called Chinatown Community for Equitable Development. It’s one of a handful of volunteer groups in the city that go door-to-door and speak to tenants in their native language about their housing rights.
Cantonese-speaking housing advocate Phyllis Chiu assists tenants facing eviction in a building in downtown Los Angeles. Most of the people Chiu works with are elderly immigrants.
Credit: Roberto Guerra
“They don’t want to die in a hospital, they don’t want to die in a convalescent home. And they don’t want to have to move,” Chiu says.
Downtown LA is booming, with new condos and restaurants opening up. But the growth is bringing prices up in nearby ethnic neighborhoods where immigrants have been settling since the 1950s and '60s.
According to Chiu, a lot of people she wants to help are Asian Americans who are afraid to challenge management, especially in English. Without a fight, they get displaced.
Steven Wallace of UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research is concerned about those who are currently being displaced. He calls them the “hidden poor” — people with an income that is above the official federal poverty level, yet below what they need to make ends meet.
In LA, an estimated 200,000 elderly people currently fall into this category, and they’re often Latino, African American and Asian older adults who live alone or with only a spouse.
“In the '30s, we built millions of units of public housing around the country. In the '60s, there was Section 202, which built tons and tons of seniors’ buildings,” Wallace says. “Nowadays, it’s just very hard to get the financing, even if you’re a nonprofit organization and you want to build low-income housing, subsidized housing, senior housing. So something more needs to be done.”
The demand for housing is likely to continue to grow. But with that, so is a practice known as “cash for keys,” which basically means landlords are offering money to their tenants so they can move out sooner than the law requires.
Only four blocks away from where Yang and the Zhous live, another old building sat half-empty. Among its last few tenants are seniors, like 80-year-old José Viramontes. Originally from Mexico, Viramontes has lived here with his partner for 36 years.
A few months ago, the couple was approached by a new landlord. He asked them to leave. Even though they don’t speak English, the couple signed a document saying they would accept $1,500 each in order to vacate.
But then a housing advocate showed up at their doorstep, willing to help.
“It was a miracle, the kind of miracle that we didn’t see coming at all,” says Viramontes. “Fortunately, here we are, and now we’ll just have to find a new apartment.”
Viramontes found a pro-bono lawyer who will take their case to court. They allege that their eviction notice was illegal and that they qualify for thousands of dollars in relocation assistance — up to $20,000. But finding a cheap new apartment won’t be easy. Viramontes is blind and his partner, Malena, is physically disabled.
“As a last resort, if we can’t stay in LA, we’ll go south to Tijuana. Because it’s gotten too expensive here,” Viramontes says.
Ruxandra Guidi's story was made possible with support from The Eisner Foundation and KCRW.

author: PRI/PRX's The World


text:
Japanese Committee Clears Path for Vague and Controversial Anti-Conspiracy Bill · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Image chyron:  “Upheavel: vote forced on conspiracy bill. ‘Unacceptable!'… Strong condemnation from opposition committee members.” Opposition politician and member House of Representatives Committee on Judicial Affairs (left), clashes with fellow committee member Tsuchiya Masatada, member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (right), as the governing party forces a vote in committee to close debate on a controversial terrorism bill. Screencap from ANN News official YouTube channel.
Despite public protests, resistance from opposition politicians and international condemnation, Japan's ruling coalition ended committee discussions on a controversial anti-conspiracy bill May 19, paving the way for its passage into law before the Japanese parliament breaks for summer next month.
There are fears the vague nature of the bill, which will cover nearly 300 crimes, will erode personal liberties in Japan once it is passed, providing authorities with broad surveillance powers, and leaving the question of who can be monitored open to interpretation.
Japan's ruling coalition, headed by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the Liberal Democrats, has tried for years to revise Japan's existing Act on Punishment of Organized Crimes and Control of Crime Proceeds. The goal, according to the Japanese government, is to join the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, at a time when threats to national security are perceived to be increasing.
Japan's last large-scale domestic attack was carried out in 1995, by the group Aum Shinrikyo.
A Q&A published in the English-language version of Nikkei Asia explains:
Legislation proposed by past governments sought to make punishable acts of conspiring to commit serious crimes as a “group.” Such a broad definition sparked fear that harmless situations — say, co-workers talking at a pub about beating up their boss — could run afoul of the law.
This time, the government has dropped the word conspiracy and adopted the label of plotting to commit “terrorism” and other organized crimes.
Despite these changes, members of the House of Representatives Committee on Judicial Affairs, which has been debating and making changes to the bill since April 18, have expressed concern “ordinary people” are still in danger of coming under investigation on suspicion of conspiracy if the bill was enacted in its current form.
The bill, which would punish “preparations for terrorism or similar acts,” is said to only apply to “terrorist groups and other organized criminal groups.” But the definition of “group” is vague. According to the Nikkei Q&A:
A group is defined in the bill as two or more people, and the proposed charge would apply to those who plan one of the many listed offenses, in which at least one member makes specific preparations to carry out the offense. Punishment would be meted out to all members of the group, regardless of whether they were the one who made specific preparations. The list of offenses was narrowed down from the original 676 to 277.
Despite the implications the bill has for civil liberties in Japan, committee members have also expressed concerns about Justice Minister Kaneda Katsutoshi's understanding of basic legal concepts.
During committee discussions, Justice Minister Kaneda frequently relied on bureaucrats to whisper correct responses to questions.
DP lawmaker Seiji Osaka on Justice Minister Katsutoshi Kaneda: “He can’t answer the most basic question regarding the revision.” https://t.co/srFyVju8TP
— Beatrice Thomas (@bea_thomas82) May 17, 2017
Writing for the Japan Times, Tomohiro Osaki reports:
(Justice Minister) Kaneda said in April that “objective evidence” will be a major factor in deciding whether someone is plotting a crime, providing as an example: “If you walk under cherry blossom trees with beer and a lunch box, that’s considered as hanami (cherry-blossom viewing). But if you do so carrying a map, binoculars and a notebook, that might be your attempt to inspect a crime scene beforehand.”
In response, a committee member from an opposition party said, “You can still carry binoculars for bird-watching … That’s no clear criterion.”
Despite the concerns of committee members, on May 19 the ruling coalition used its majority to end debate in the  committee, and sent the the bill to Japan's parliament where the government will use its majority to pass it into law before the June 18 recess.
Like other controversial pieces of legislation passed by the Abe government, the bill has generated criticism both inside and outside of Japan.
Tokyo Shimbun reported that Joseph Cannataci, United National Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, has been critical of of the bill:
共謀罪「恣意的運用」国際視点から警告　 #国連報告者 、首相に書簡
注目の記事です！！　「 #共謀罪 」に関しては国外からも懸念の声が上がっています。https://t.co/bL5XyNDAqZ pic.twitter.com/0edx9J3pdo
— 東京新聞政治部 (@tokyoseijibu) May 20, 2017
International expert warns: Conspiracy bill “arbitrary enforcement”. Special #rapporteur delivers notified Japanese prime minister.
Notable article: How there are even international concerns about the new conspiracy bill. http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/s/article/2017052090065838.html
Reuters reported that Japanese spokesperson Suga Yoshihide tried to reassure the public about the intent of the legislation, saying it would would not target the “legitimate activities” of labor unions or other civil groups.
However, Shirakawa Yasuhiro, speaking for the National Police Agency, refused to confirm Suga's comments.

author: Nevin Thompson


text:
Ethiopia’s Cholera-Denying Candidate to Lead the World’s Top Health Body Is Taking a Battering Online · Global Voices
Endalkachew Chala

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ethiopia, speaks at Chatham House. Photo by Chatham House via Wikipedia. CC BY 2.0
Thousands of Tweets, several open letters and a relentless online campaign have dogged Ethiopia's candidate for the World Health Organization Director-General position, Tedros Adahanom, as member states prepare to vote on May 23, 2017. But why do Ethiopians dislike him so much?
With support from the Ethiopian government, Mr. Adahanom has led a robust and elaborate campaign, making it through to the last round of candidates; though the overall sources of his campaign funds remain shrouded in secrecy.
While the election for the Director-General of the WHO is largely an unexciting, institutional affair, Ethiopians fierce online opposition has added an interesting sub-plot as some of Adahanom’s controversies come to light.
@WHO #NoTedros4WHO #WHODG @BBCBreaking Tedros who denied to declare a cholera outbreak in Ethiopia can't be a director to WHO pic.twitter.com/v7B7ARAhgJ
— Wondwossen Teklu (@Kalebe38Teklu) May 20, 2017
Their relentless campaign might also have prompted media to shed light on Adahanom’s controversies.
The New York Times for instance revealed that Adahanom covered up a cholera outbreak during his tenure as Ethiopia’s health minister.
A few days later, the Washington Post reported that Adahanom “didn’t like mentioning a certain disease”.
Lancet, a respected British medical journal published a short, sharp letter alleging Adahanom’s indifference towards deals struck by the Ethiopian authorities with Japanese and British tobacco companies. In the letter, Frank Ashall of the Africa Tobacco-Free Initiative said:
Given the aforesaid issues, I believe that Tedros is not the right candidate that WHO needs to take it forward.
Adahanom has accused his fellow candidate Dr. David Nabarro of an imperialistic attitude but has not refuted any of the claims that have made his candidacy controversial.
Meanwhile, in the final few days of the campaign, Adahanom's opponents have been reinforced.
An Olympic medalist, Feyisa Lelisa, who was exiled after he defiantly protested against the Ethiopian government at the Rio Olympics asked Adahanom to drop out of the race and apologize to the people of Ethiopia for his role in human rights abuses and covering up cholera outbreaks as Ethiopia’s minister of health. Lelisa made the request in an Op-Ed for Al-Jazeera.
Reeyot Alemu, an award-winning journalist wrote an open letter protesting Adahanom’s candidacy to the World Health Assembly which is set to meet on May 22 in Geneva, Switzerland.
She wrote:
The reason why I am writing to you today is not to express self-pity. It is because I strongly believe that the World Health Organization (WHO), an important global institution, is on the verge of falling into the abyss of scandal. I fear that WHO’s reputation will be tarnished and credibility questioned if it elects Dr. Tedros Adhanom. The fact that Dr. Adhanom, one of the top human rights violators making life miserable to the people of Ethiopia, has managed to be in the last three candidates, bidding to take over the position of Director-General, is very troubling and alarming.
Yet another prominent opposition politician, Habtamu Ayalew, who was banned from leaving Ethiopia for medical treatment said:
I cannot imagine a person who refused treatment to a victim of torture seeks to run the global health institution
Adahanom’s team have fought back, however, arguing it is Africa’s turn to lead WHO:
3 Days to go!!! “This is time for #Africa ” because it has the best candidate @DrTedros to be the #NextDG of @WHO @DrTedros4WHO #Ethiopia .
— Zerihun Abebe Yigzaw (@zerubeeb) May 20, 2017

author: Endalkachew Chala