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Will Kyrgyzstan call time on uranium mining? · Global Voices
Aisha Jabbarova

A rally against uranium mining in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. A Russian-language poster at the rally reads: “We demand a law to ban the mining and processing of uranium in our country.” Photo by Aisha Jabbarova.
As citizens of a former Soviet state still living with the stains from Moscow's aggressive nuclear programme, many Kyrgyz want to see uranium mines consigned to the past.
It is not surprising then, that the prospect of a new mine in the province that surrounds the Central Asian country's treasured Lake Issyk-Kul prompted an angry public backlash.
On April 26, the anniversary of the Chernobyl power plant disaster, some 200 people turned out for a colourful protest in the country's capital Bishkek to support a ban on uranium mining.
A rally against uranium mining in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova.
The demonstration came after months of public uproar over the planned exploitation of the Kara Balta Uranium field in Issyk-Kul province, a key tourism hub. A second demonstration is planned for April 30.
Nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition to stop the mine opening in Issyk-Kul, where several protests took place earlier this month.
The government has said that it has taken away the license of the “UrAsia in Kyrgyzstan” company that planned to mine the deposit.
There is still some confusion over whether this is a final decision, however.
On April 25, at a meeting with Issyk Kul residents, Deputy Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov said the license had been “revoked.”
Boronov also implored residents not to hold protests after the tourism season began on April 29.
But 24.kg, an independent outlet, reported on April 29 that a government notice the outlet received a copy of merely informed the company that its license had been suspended, rather than revoked.
That document was only signed on April 27, two full days after Boronov addressed residents.
Public anger over the mining plans has put the government in such a tight spot it it is difficult to imagine the UrAsia project going ahead now.
In response to the uproar, independent lawmakers in the parliament have proposed two laws that would limit uranium mining in the country.
The harsher one calls for a nationwide ban until 2070, whilst the other calls for a 20-year ban inside the Issyk-Kul region.
Both of these measures fall short of the wishes of the Bishkek protesters, who demanded an all-time, irreversible national ban as well as as an investigation into responsibility for issuing the license to the company.
As a Soviet republic, Kyrgyzstan produced and processed uranium for Moscow's nuclear drive.
But the mining sites were not properly reclaimed after closure in the mid-1990s. This means they now pose a radioactive threat to transboundary rivers in seismically active Central Asia, as well as health risks for immediate populations.
A rally against uranium mining in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova.
In 2017, then-Kyrgyz President Atambayev addressed the UN General Assembly in New York on the dangers of uranium tailings in Kyrgyzstan for Central Asia as a whole, and called for financial assistance in reclaiming former mining lands.
Now in opposition, Atambayev's party has supported calls for a ban on uranium mining.
But the UrAsia in Kyrgyzstan company, held its exploration license that it secured in 2010 throughout Atambayev's six-year presidency.
The company itself has said it is committed to safe mining and has refused to comment on its license issues.
Uranium mining is not the only form of mining that has triggered a popular backlash in recent times. Gold mining is equally contentious and far more integral to Kyrgyzstan's frail economy.
The Kumtor gold mine — also in the Issyk-Kul region — contributes up to 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
But the mine run by Toronto-headquartered Centerra Gold has been a source of social and political frictions ever since 1998, when one of its trucks spilled cyanide into a river during Kumtor's first full year of operations.
A rally against uranium mining in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Photo by Aisha Jabbarova.
Politicians, particularly those in opposition, have been quick to capitalise on anxieties over mining for their own opportunistic ends. Mining companies have also accused local community leaders of spearheading extortion bids in the past.
During the April 26 protest, demonstrators were keen to prevent politics from undermining the environmental message.
One demonstrator even manhandled perennial opposition figure Ravshan Jeenbekov to prevent him addressing the crowd.
Jeenbekov later called the man a “provocateur” while acknowledging that there were people at the meeting who “didn't want to allow a famous politician to speak.”

author: Aisha Jabbarova


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Announcing the Global Voices Asia Pacific Citizen Media Summit: Join us in Taipei, Taiwan on June 2! · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

We're excited to announce that our Asia teams will be hosting the Global Voices Asia Pacific Citizen Media Summit in Taipei, Taiwan. The event, which includes internal meetings for the GV community and partner organisations, will culminate in a public conference on June 2, 2019. Register for the conference here.
The Global Voices Asia-Pacific Summit will bring together journalists, bloggers, digital activists and researchers to share experiences, gain knowledge, and forge new collaborations. The meeting will address new techno-political challenges and their implications for internet rights and activism, digital security and privacy, digital inclusion and development across two themes: “The rise and challenges of digital authoritarianism in the Asia Pacific”, and “Citizens’ response to digital authoritarianism”.
The Summit is supported by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, Open Technology Foundation, and Open Society Foundations, and co-hosted by the Chang Fo-Chuan Center for the Study of Human Rights at Soochow University in Taiwan.
Like all GV events, the Global Voices Asia Pacific Citizen Media Summit will be an exceptional opportunity for learning and sharing with a diverse and dynamic global community. Visit the Summit website for details on venues, registration, programming and more—and do save the date!

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Georgia Popplewell


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Common leopard gecko found in Nepal for the first time · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

Common leopard gecko. Image by Matt Reinbold for Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The common leopard gecko (Eublepharis macularius) has recently been recorded as a new species for Nepal; however, as Nepalese researchers and nature lovers officially recognize the country's 11th gecko species, some conservationists are also beginning to worry that it might be a possible target in the illegal exotic pet trade.
When Yam Bahadur Rawat posted a picture of a strange looking gecko in Facebook, reptile expert Karan Shah suggested it might be a new species for Nepal. “He then removed the post and on researching further it was ascertained to be completely new for Nepal,” said Shah, talking to Global Voices.
One of the research team members, Jeevan Thapa posted on Facebook:
Happy to share a new species of lizard recorded from Nepal. This documentation from Nepal added a new family, genus and species of herpetofauna from Nepal. Now, this species becomes the 11th gecko species for Nepal.
The first sighting of two common leopard geckos, nocturnal in nature, were found hibernating in the Kamdi Biological Corridor of Banke District in western Nepal. The corridor connects Banke National Park in Nepal with Suhelwa Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, India. These secretive, ground-dwelling geckos have been reported to occur in arid habitats of Afghanistan, north-western India, and Pakistan. However, they were found in a sal (Shorea robusta) mixed deciduous forest in Nepal for the first time on 30 December 2016.
The team later found other evidence of common leopard geckos occurring in other places as well. On 18 April 2017, two more leopard geckos were found in Nawalparasi District and on 10 June 2018 in Surkhet District of western Nepal.
The team writes in their research article:
Common Leopard Geckos remained undetected in Nepal until now. This could be attributable to the secretive nocturnal nature of the species or the limited research on the herpetofauna in western Nepal. These new records from three different localities indicate that the species is likely to have much wider distribution in Nepal, including Banke National Park, which lies between the sites of these observations.
Unlike other geckos, they have moveable eyelids but they lack clinging toe pads – this means they can blink and close their eyes during sleep but can’t climb smooth vertical surfaces. They have tiny little feet with harmless claws. They live up to 20 years and some have even lived to 30 years in captivity.
These beautiful geckos, however, are traded both legally and illegally due to their high demand among exotic pet lovers.
Hardwick’s gecko (AKA Indian leopard gecko)
Why I don’t have one: HARD to get, and when they’re available, they’re RIDICULOUSLY overpriced thanks to demand. That also goes for other Eublepharis sp. that’s NOT a Common leopard gecko. pic.twitter.com/X1KrCT9ISH
— ?MSU’s Cowboy In The Jungle ?? (@mc_copperhead) July 9, 2018
As reported by Reptiles magazine, captive-bred leopard geckos cost between USD 20 to USD 3,000. However, as reported by DC Nepal, the security forces at Nepal-India border confiscated five leopard geckos which commanded a price of NRs 184 million (1.65 million USD).
The illegal trade of these geckos, although believed to be from India, suggests the traders might be targeting geckos from Nepal as well. However, the IUCN Red List of threatened species doesn’t include these magnificent species. So, the research team has recommended a detailed inventory of these geckos in Nepal that would lead to a better understanding of their distribution and help the conservation of these charismatic species.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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‘Envision a new war’: the Syrian Archive, corporate censorship and the struggle to preserve public history online · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle

“Damascus-Old City – Umayyad Mosque- دمشق- المدينة القديمة – الجامع الأموي,” Damascus before the war. Photo by Hani Zaitoun (CC BY-SA 3.0)
This post was written as part of a partnership between Global Voices and Monument Lab, an independent public art and history studio based in Philadelphia, US.
One of the most haunting images of war in the modern era shows five young children running barefoot from a cloud of smoke. At the center is a naked girl, screaming in pain from the effects of a napalm bomb that South Vietnamese troops, propped up by the US military, had mistakenly dropped on her village.
“The Terror of War,” also known as “Napalm girl,” was captured by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut in 1972 and appeared in major newspapers across the world, including the New York Times.
Although showing a photograph of a naked child went against the Times’ and other newspapers’ policies, editors made an exception because of the illustrative nature of the image. The photo later won a Pulitzer prize and left an enduring mark on public understanding of the Vietnam War and its consequences for civilians.
In 2016, this very same photo was censored on Facebook. The image was uploaded by Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, as part of a historical review of the war. It was taken down by Facebook almost immediately afterwards, because it depicted a naked child.
In response, Aftenposten editor-in-chief Espen Egil Hansen wrote an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg imploring him to “envision a new war where children will be the victims of barrel bombs or nerve gas. Would you once again intercept the documentation of cruelties?”
Facebook soon thereafter reinstated the image. In an interview with The Guardian, a PR spokesperson explained that Facebook had reversed its decision because the image of the girl, Kim Phuc, was “an iconic image of historical importance.”
There is no need to envision or imagine this “new war” that Hansen described in his plea to Zuckerberg. It is already happening, in Syria.
I recently watched a series of videos showing the aftermath of a sarin gas bombing in Idlib province, in 2017. Several of them show chaotic scenes at a medical center. In one, a teenage boy lies on the floor, barely conscious, with foam oozing from his mouth, a telltale sign of sarin gas exposure. Another shows a child of maybe three or four years lying on a table in a medical center. A man stands over him and explains in Arabic how the child succumbed to the deadly gas. The man keeps his face out of the frame.
These are a just few of thousands, perhaps millions of videos of this kind. Syria’s may be one of the most documented wars in human history. How will this overabundance of videos and pictures affect how the war is understood in the future? And what consequences will they bring for the war’s perpetrators?
While it has become increasingly difficult and dangerous for professional media outlets like AP or the New York Times to cover the war, it is being thoroughly documented all the same. With mobile phones in hand, Syrians have been recording and photographing bombings, shellings, nerve gas and chemical weapon attacks and uploading these images to the internet. The video I mentioned above was taken by SMART News Agency, a group known for documenting the work of the White Helmets in Aleppo.
Millions of media files are moving around online, and constantly shifting public understanding of the war and its effects on people’s lives. This abundance of documentation has the potential to serve as testimony for the public record and even evidence of war crimes, if regime leaders are one day brought before the International Criminal Court. It has the power to provide the public with a collage of information and memory of the war, the people whose lives it changed and took away, and the place where all this happened.
But the sheer abundance of material at hand — tens of millions of files and counting — is almost impossible to parse or search without guidance.
A group of technologists in Berlin is trying to change this, one media file at a time.
Syrian technologist Hadi Al-Khatib left his country for Berlin, Germany in 2011. Later that year, he began helping a group of Syrian lawyers who were trying to gather evidence of human rights violations at the start of the war. The group was overwhelmed with digital media files and had no strategy for verifying or classifying the abundance of digital media that was already pouring out of the country.
This was in 2011, when the social uprisings that spread across the Arab region were at their peak, changing the course of history in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and beyond. Al-Khatib had seen firsthand how digital documentation of human rights violations could spark protest and shift public understanding of major events in a country’s history.
But he also knew how complicated this kind of documentation could become. The world’s most accessible social media platforms were optimized for clicks and advertisements, not for verification, categorization or contextual understanding.
Al-Khatib recruited a few colleagues to figure out how they could help. The trio spent the next three years collecting, verifying and categorizing digital media files from the war.
A collage of images of chemical weapon attacks and victims. Collage by Adam Harvey, Syrian Archive (CC BY-SA 4.0)
In 2014, they launched the Syrian Archive, a public database that today contains more than five million images and video files from the war.
The Syrian Archive is not your average online library. The homepage features investigations of airstrikes by Russian planes, chemical attacks, and shellings that have destroyed hospitals, bakeries and mosques.
The site highlights evidence of chemical weapons attacks, which are forbidden under international humanitarian law.
The keywords and categories one uses to search the archive offer a stark sense of its holdings. One can search videos of attacks by the type of weapon used — barrel bombs, cluster munitions, drones and sarin gas are among just a few of the options in the “weapons used” drop-down menu.
It’s the kind of work normally undertaken by a UN agency or international humanitarian organization. But as the archive’s materials note, these institutions have not kept up with the pace of this war. The French Foreign Ministry and the UN Commission of Inquiry into Syria have confirmed that 163 chemical weapons attacks have taken place in Syria. The Syrian Archive has documented 212.
If they don’t do this work, Al-Khatib says, the materials — and everything they can tell us about the war — may soon become impossible to check or verify. Some of it may be lost altogether.
“This data is useless if it’s not labeled or searchable,” Al-Khatib told me when we met in Berlin some months back. “But if there’s context, there are lots of things we can do.”
The goal of their work, most immediately, is to provide journalists and human rights workers with datasets that are searchable, verified and contextualized by local and subject matter experts. In a not-too-distant future, the group expects these videos and images will serve as evidence in war crimes cases against the parties involved, thanks in part to partnerships with the UN High Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley Law School.
Beyond preserving evidence, Al-Khatib also envisions the archive offering future generations rich material for reconstructing, historicizing and memorializing the war, the people whose lives it changed and took away, and Syria as a country.
“For me, what is most important is to make sure this data is going to be available for the next 10, 20 years,” he says. “I imagine this could contribute to a museum, or a digital memory space.”
But right now, the team has little time to make meaning or narratives from these images. They just know that the images need to be preserved.
To gather this data, Al-Khatib and his colleagues work directly with local journalists and humanitarian groups documenting the war. They rely heavily on Facebook and YouTube, the primary platforms where these groups and countless individuals upload their files. They estimate that 90% of the media files in the archive come to them by way of these two social media behemoths.
He and his colleagues have identified several hundred sources across the social web, mainly Facebook pages and YouTube channels, from which their systems automatically capture images and videos each day. This allows them to classify and archive material in ways that these corporate platforms are not built to accommodate.
But increasingly, they are capturing files not only for the sake of archiving them, but to prevent them from disappearing altogether.
Faced with rising pressure from governments to rid their networks of violence and hatred, companies like Facebook and YouTube’s parent company Google are scrambling to censor graphic violence and anything that could be linked to violent extremist groups like ISIS. Thousands of videos and photos from the Syrian war have disappeared along the way.
Videos that could be used as evidence against perpetrators of violence have been deleted upon upload, or censored by the companies shortly after they are published. They are often impossible to replace.
Al-Khatib says they have to do better than this. “The companies have a responsibility to preserve these materials,” he says. “It’s evidence.”
The Syrian Archive team, including Hadi Al Khatib, right. Photo courtesy of Syrian Archive (CC BY-SA 4.0)
He explains that right now, there are only small, partial solutions to the problem. For example, YouTube allows users to reclaim videos that they’ve uploaded, but which were rejected for violating the company’s rules prohibiting extreme graphic violence.
But, he asks: “What if the source is not alive? What if the source is arrested? What if the source doesn’t have access to email?” These are incredibly common predicaments in Syria.
And there is a great deal of material that never even sees the light of the public internet. We talk about how Google uses machine learning technology to scan videos for terms of service violations, like extreme graphic violence. In some cases, videos are rejected and purged from the site before they even become public.
“We have no idea what doesn’t make it onto the site,” Al-Khatib says. “We don’t know everyone. So if they don’t keep it [on their devices], that’s that.” He seems to care deeply about every video, as if each one is part of the story.
Among the millions of files, there are surely some that could one day become “iconic image[s] of historical importance,” rising to the level of Nick Ut’s photo of the young Kim Phuc running for her life.
But if the person who captures them puts them into the hands of companies like YouTube and Facebook, and then loses her device, or even her life, the image may be lost forever.
While millions of people have the power to capture these images, a mere handful of privately-owned and operated companies are the ultimate arbiters of what becomes public and what does not. With minimal regulation or accountability mandates to comply with under US law, and increasing pressure to keep violence off their networks in Europe, companies are routinely disposing of this material.
Who is actually reviewing these videos and deciding what stays and what goes? Sometimes companies pay people to do this work, but over the past two years, machine learning tools and other types of artificial intelligence have become a favored (and more affordable) solution to this problem. While AI tools are very good at recognizing the content of an image — such as a naked child, in the case of Kim Phuc — they may never have the capacity to judge its context or legal significance.
Unlike Ut’s photograph, carefully considered and contextualized by Ut and his editors at AP, depictions of the Syrian war increasingly are at the mercy of technical, non-human systems that decide which images to allow and which ones to censor.
How should social media companies contend with this abundance of images and video circulating online, some of which may serve as vital evidence of war crimes or human rights violations? And how can people who witness these events document and preserve them in the interest of public knowledge?
What if we had a “social media” space where information was organized based on its context, legal significance and cultural meaning? How might we see the present time, and the past, differently?
The Syrian Archive may be setting the course for a new kind of public space online, moving away from Silicon Valley models that are all built to generate attention for the sake of ad revenue.
While the future of its subject matter remains painfully uncertain, there is some light in knowing that in the years to come, those who want to tell stories of Syria will have this rich archive of data and stories from which to draw.
Listen to author and Advox director Ellery Biddle discuss these issues with WITNESS’ Jackie Zammuto and public art scholar Paul Farber on the Monument Lab podcast.

author: Ellery Roberts Biddle


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White flags: Sri Lankans in mourning · Global Voices
GroundViews

After the Easter Sunday bombings, people are hanging white flags everywhere, outside their houses, in public places and their vehicles. The colour white is used to symbolise mourning in Sri Lanka. Image via GroundViews.
This post by Amalini De Sayrah originally appeared on Groundviews, an award-winning citizen journalism website in Sri Lanka. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
A series of coordinated bomb explosions killed hundreds in Sri Lanka as they congregated for Easter Sunday mass, on April 21, 2019. Among the six main blast sites were three churches: St. Anthony's Church in Kotahena, St. Sebastian's in Katuwapitiya and the Zion Church in Batticaloa. The following photos and interviews were gathered on April 22, a day after the attack.
St. Anthony’s Church, Kochchikade. Image via GroundViews.
White and black flags flutter in the scorching sun over the heads of crowds gathered at the security barrier around St. Anthony's church at Kochikade, Kotahena (Colombo 13).
The clock is frozen at 8:45 p.m. Image via GroundViews.
“See the clock?” a man passing by says, “it’s frozen at 8.45, when the blast went off.”
The prominent Catholic shrine was the first in the series of explosions that happened that day. Debris from the explosion – shattered glass that encased the main statue on the church’s face, and the protective glass over the main doors – glint in the sun as police, army and medical personnel clear through the rubble.
Mourners gathering. Image via Groundviews.
Everyone comes here to pray, from near and far. Who’d do something like this to such a holy place?
Located in Kotahena, a suburb of the Sri Lankan capital, the shrine has become a place of refuge for people of all faiths in Sri Lanka. There has been an outpouring of sorrow in the wake of the explosions.
Hanging white flags. Image Via GroundViews
I helped move the bodies; all day, from 9am in the morning till 6pm in the evening. We were carrying them and lining them up, to take to the morgue. At a point, you lose count.
His leg is bandaged, and he lifts it to reveal a wound on the bottom. A nail from the falling interior had injured him, as he and others tried to help rescue victims of the attack. He collapsed due to the blood loss from the wound, and the police had to send him away; he got bandaged up and came back to help.
Attending the vigil. Image via GroundViews
I didn’t even want to believe it…all the small children…the women. We don’t think about how life can end so suddenly.
He goes into graphic detail about the state of the bodies he saw that day, motioning with his hands along his own torso and limbs to indicate the damage. Many in the community – irrespective of faith – had come together to send people for emergency treatment at the Colombo National Hospital, and to transport bodies to the Colombo Morgue.
Justice, not revenge. Image via GroundViews
The man also participates in a small vigil, organised by a group of independent citizens, that took place at the 150-year jubilee statue, south from the shrine. “Justice, not revenge”, read the signs, and candles are lit against the beating wind. Just over an hour later, a van parked close to this location exploded while the bomb disposal squad of the Special Task Force (STF) was defusing an explosive device found inside it.
White flags everywhere. Image Via GroundViews
We are not thinking if it's someone we know, or someone who lives close by. We are tying these flags for all those who lost their lives.
Tying up white flags. Image via GroundViews
His hands are full with a string of black and white mourning flags. A large group of men who live in the neighbourhood are tying them up along Jampettah Street, the busy road that runs perpendicular to the church’s entrance.
The heavily guarded church. Image via GroundViews
The 8am service was being carried out in both Sinhala and Tamil. Those attending were mostly people from outside these neighbourhoods. Then the explosion happened.
A couple who lives in the neighbourhood says that the 8 a.m. Easter mass is usually celebrated in Sinhala. This year, the Saturday midnight mass was held in Tamil, and most worshippers from the area would have attended that.
Periyamulla. Image via GroundViews
White flags flutter along empty roads, where small shop fronts and restaurants remain closed long after curfew was lifted.
Negombo Grand Mosque. Image via GroundViews
We are worried for our community too, and we want the country to know that we also reject what happened. Muslims do not stand by this.
A Muslim neighbourhood. Image via GroundViews
Mosque leaders say that Pakistani families have come under attack from relatives of individuals who died in Sunday’s explosions. They have attacked and stoned their homes, breaking windows with rocks. These families are refugees who belong both to the Ahmadi Muslim community or to the Christian faith who are fleeing persecution in Pakistan. The families then approached the Negombo police, and asked that protection be put in place – a request that leaders say was granted by the police.
Praying in a mosque. Image via GroundViews
We say prayers five times a day. This is not the usual time of prayer for us. It is a special prayer, one of mourning.
Inside the Negombo Grand Mosque, janazah or funeral prayers are taking place. After they are concluded, the crowds gather around a coffin which is brought out from the premises, and the community is given a few minutes to pay their last respects.
Carrying a coffin for the janazah prayers. Image via GroundViews
She was 13. Her father’s Muslim but her mother is Catholic, so she’d gone to church on Sunday. That’s how our communities are, we are so mixed and connected.
A small group of Christian women are also present at the mosque; they pray and recite stanzas of the rosary over the body before it is borne away for burial. Women in a home nearby claim that Muslim families live in the immediate area surrounding the Katuwapitiya church.
White flags in Katuwapitiya. Image via GroundViews.
White flags fly under a darkening sky. Military personnel and police officers line the narrow road, as vehicles with mourners and pedestrians try to navigate what’s happening around them.
The Katuwapitiya road. Image via GroundViews.
There’s a funeral happening at every few houses, down almost every little lane.
The Katuwapitiya road is a long stretch of houses in mourning. Banners outside the homes indicate that entire families, or several members in a single family, were killed in the blast at St. Sebastian’s Church.
Military personnel guarding the road. Image via GroundViews.
People near a church. Image via GroundViews.
Look at how close their houses are to the church. It must be a quick walk to mass and back. How would they have even known that their walk that day would end this way?
More white flags. Image via GroundViews.
Mass burials have begun to take place, with several bodies leaving the church for burial at cemeteries across Negombo. An empty land was reportedly cleared for the purpose of making space for the sheer number of coffins that needed to be accommodated.
Revelations unfold around the perpetrators of the attacks, and political commentary coming from the highest officials in the country grows more frustrating, yet burials will continue over the next few days. The total number of deaths from the attacks on the 21st is currently reported at 253, and still rising.

author: GroundViews


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Ugandan pop star politician Bobi Wine pens song on police brutality during house arrest · Global Voices
James Propa

A Screenshot of the Official Music Video of Bobi Wine's ‘Afande’ song via Youtube.
Easter Weekend wasn't happiness and celebration for Ugandan member of Parliament, musician and activist Robert Kyagulanyi, famously known as Bobi Wine.
His annual Easter Monday beach concert, held at his One Love Beach Busaabala, 12 kilometers from Kampala, the capital, was tentatively approved by the police but later canceled two days before the event.
Police cordoned off the venue and prohibited access to the premises for everyone, including Bobi Wine, the owner.
In the early hours of Easter Monday, April 22, 2019, Bobi Wine was arrested as he approached the venue for a planned press conference to address the reasons why the police canceled his concert.
Police smashed his car window and used pepper spray to get him out of the vehicle when Bobi Wine insisted that he had not broken any laws.
The video below shows the police arresting Bobi Wine after breaking into his car as he approached the beach property for his press conference. They also dispersed the crowds using water cannons and teargas:
The letter issued by police detailing why they canceled the concert cites that in the past, Bobi Wine failed to follow guidelines provided by the Uganda Police and that they could not guarantee adequate security for both the revelers and residents who live near his beachfront property.
Part of the Police Letter canceling the event shared on Bobi Wine's official Facebook page.
Following the arrest, Bobi Wine went under house arrest, and during this time, he composed a new multilingual song about police brutality.
In the makeshift home studio, he penned lyrics about the need to fight for better police treatment, who he says brutally and unjustly handled him. The song also featured one of Bobi Wine's famous phrases, “I am not fighting you, I am fighting for you.”
I used the past two days under house arrest to compose a song which I now dedicate to our men and women in uniform.we are grateful for the sacrifices they make to keep our country safe and we implore them to stop violating the rights of the citizens. https://t.co/fkJNkXkGZ9
— BOBI WINE (@HEBobiwine) April 25, 2019
Below is the music video of the Afro Beat song “Afande,” a Swahili word for an officer. The video includes cutaways from several police brutality scenes along with footage recorded inside his house where he remained confined. The video has so far been watched 299,000 times in four days and trending number 1 on Youtube in Uganda:
The song opens with these lyrics in English:
Why beat me, there is no difference between me and you! / Why kick me yet I have no problem with you? / Before you became a soldier or police officer, you were an ordinary citizen / Before you hurt me, listen to my cry.
For the last three years, 124 concerts featuring Bobi Wine have been canceled and police have cited failure to fulfill requirements and at other times failure to request for approval.
Last year, Bobi Wine's maiden concert was canceled several times before he changed venue from the 60,000-capacity Namboole National Stadium to his own One Love Beach Busaabala, which fits around 30,000 people. At the 2018 concert, Bobi Wine spoke about politics — a subject the police always ask him to avoid at his music concerts.
Ugandan Twitter user Stotrixbaxx thinks police ran out of excuses in their efforts to cancel Bobi Wine's concert:
The police wants us to believe that the same Bobi wine who followed guidelines last time during the Kyarenga concert at Busabala has refused to follow the same guidelines today.
The police plays too much!! Smh!!!!
— sotrixbax???? (@sotrixbax) December 26, 2018
NTV Uganda journalist and activist Joel Ssenyonyi wonders why the police used a heavy deployment to stop Bobi Wine's concert but could not use the same manpower to provide security for the concert.
I'm looking at the heavy Police & Army deployment at One Love Beach Busabala and wondering why they didn't deploy this as security for the concert, considering Police said they cancelled the show because Bobi Wine had not provided adequate security for show attenders!
— Joel Ssenyonyi (@JoelSsenyonyi) April 22, 2019
A new proposed bill in Uganda attempts to regulate music industry operations by having every artist register with the government and seek permission to perform on shows outside the country.
As an opposition politician, Bobi Wine has used his role as a musician to promote messages of peace, unity and transformation, specifically focusing on unjust social media taxes introduced last year.
This bill could mean that the government can control Bobi Wine's performances outside of Uganda, ultimately crippling his music career — and dampening his social influence.
Watchdog Uganda made a summary of what is in the proposed bill, with a few highlights below:
In 2013, the Public Order Management Bill was also passed into law and this gave the inspector general of police (IGP) the power to regulate public gatherings, demonstrations and processions.
In most cases, the police cite the same law to stop political gatherings.
The opposition claims that the IGP does not respond to their requests to peacefully demonstrate and this is the reason why many demonstrations are disrupted by using teargas, bullets and physical beatings by armed forces.
Several opposition leaders including Bobi Wine have found themselves in jail for holding demonstrations without the IGP's approval.
On April 29, one week after his house arrest, Bobi Wine tried to make his way to the criminal investigations department to file a statement on the Easter concert, but the police again arrested him.
The police presented Bobi Wine in court on old charges of holding illegal demonstrations against the Social Media Tax in 2018.
He has since been remanded to Luzira prison after the police prevented a bail, following several demonstrations around Kampala as a result of his arrest.
On May 2, 2019, he was granted bail following a live teleconference hearing between Bobi Wine in prison and the court in Kampala.

author: James Propa


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Venezuela’s political crisis is intensifying and censorship is on the rise · Global Voices
Laura Vidal

A rally starts to gather in Altamira, in the East of Caracas, a typical point in the city taken by government opponents. Photo by Efecto Cocuyo, used with permission.
A new chapter in Venezuela's political power struggle started early on April 30 when opposition leader Juan Guaidó called people to the streets for what he described as the “definitive phase” of “Operation Freedom”, an effort to bring an end to Nicolas Maduro's government.
Guaidó delivered his message in a video shared on Twitter, where he stood before a group of soldiers in uniform. Standing in the background was opposition leader Leopoldo López, Guaidó's political mentor. Their supporters soon took to the streets on April 30 and again on May 1.
In short order, major social media platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube became inaccessible, and broadcast connections for both CNN and BBC were cut off altogether.
On January 23, 2019, Guaidó, who is president of the National Assembly, invoked Article 233 of the Venezuelan Constitution to take presidential powers and call for elections. The National Assembly had denounced the government of Nicolás Maduro as illegitimate after he was inaugurated for a second term, following May 2018 elections that were widely considered to have been fraudulent.
“Operation Freedom” was intended to be the first of a three-part plan proposed by Guaidó in January 2019. This also became his mantra as a political leader: “end the usurpation, [form a] transitional government, and [hold] free elections”.
In February 2019, the United Nations still recognized Maduro as Venezuela's president, but 65 countries had recognized Guaidó as interim president.
According to local independent news outlet Efecto Cocuyo, protests are ongoing in many cities in the country, and authorities have resorted to violence in efforts to disperse demonstrators.
Media collective Caracas Chronicles described some of the events of April 30:
The hardline anti-regime demonstrators resisted teargas at Altamira and several other places across the nation. Some were wounded—in some cases by gunfire. Protestors seemed exhilarated and were eager to stand their ground. It was impressive, as protestors cheered GNB officers who stood by them against the regime’s security forces. The video of a “Chavista” armored vehicle ramming protesters near La Carlota airbase became viral.
The political cliffhanger has people online constantly looking for information, and bracing themselves for the coming hardships:
Que peo con esta vaina en #Venezuela siempre con una angustia,amanecimos llenando todos los peroles con agua,hasta los vasos,cargando teléfonos celulares y lámparas,preparando los bolsos con enlatados y realmente no se,no se nada,mejor me voy a trabajar.
— VIVO POR Y PARA VENEZUELA (@Dannypino2) April 30, 2019
The situation in Venezuela is exasperating. We're always in anguish. We started the day collecting as much water as we could, even in glasses. We charged cellphones and lamps, prepared our bags with canned food. I honestly don't know what else to do. I'm going to work.
Food, water and electricity are increasingly scarce, as is access to communication networks. These factors, combined with the looming threat of violent confrontations in the streets, have put many Venezuelans in a perpetual state of uncertainty.
According to censorship researcher Andrés Azpúrua, Venezuela set a new “record in censorship” for itself on April 30 and May 1, as several communication services and television channels became inaccessible in the country, exacerbating the country's already heavily restricted media landscape:
Hoy ha sido un hito de la censura y bloqueos en #venezuela. Particularmente en #internetVE.
Uno de los días donde más ha crecido la censura y también que ha mostrado más desespero, especialmente con cambios de técnicas de bloqueo durante el día
— Andres Azpurua (@andresAzp) May 1, 2019
Today has been a landmark for censorship and [web] blocking in Venezuela. Particularly on the internet.
It is one of the days in which censorship has increased and where the [strategy] has shown more desperation as different blocking techniques have been used over the course of the day.
The Venezuelan Institute of Press and Society reported that on April 30, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Periscope, YouTube and Google services were difficult to access on the country's major internet service providers — Digitel, Movistar and the state-controlled company CANTV. WhatsApp (arguably the most important communication platform for Venezuelans) and Telegram were difficult to access through CANTV.
Internet censorship research group NetBlocks reported that services were restored 20 minutes prior to Nicolás Maduro's streamed speech on May 1.

author: Laura Vidal


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A mixed welcome for Trinidad and Tobago’s plan to regularise Venezuelan asylum seekers · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The coastal town of Cedros is the closest legal point of entry for Venezuelans coming to Trinidad and Tobago. Image by Grueslayer @Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
As Venezuela continues to grapple with its political and socioeconomic crisis, the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago is also struggling to manage the resulting influx of Venezuelan asylum seekers.
Trinidad lies just north of Venezuela — at the closest point the distance between the two land masses is only 14km (8.7 miles) — and for Venezuelans fleeing hardship and violence, it's one of the destinations of choice. Some arrive covertly, others come through official ports of entry. Estimates suggest that the country has already taken in as many as 60,000 asylum seekers, and the figure is climbing. In addition to being increasingly visible, the local Venezuelan population is vocal and politically active, demonstrating most recently in Trinidad's capital in support of opposition leader Juan Guaidó's overtures to the Venezuelan military on April 30.
Just over a year ago, in April 2018, Trinidad and Tobago was chastised by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) over the forced deportation of 82 Venezuelan asylum seekers. In a statement to the UNHCR, the government said that although it had acceded to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and is a signatory to both the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, a lack of legislation “has hindered the application of proper protection principles for refugees and asylum seekers.”
Now, the Caribbean nation is striving to correct that state of affairs, with the government approving in April a registration policy for Venezuelan refugees that would allow them to seek employment, and offering amnesty to the undocumented. The opposition says the plan is ill-conceived, but the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce noted that it “allows for a mechanism to record and track the tens of thousands of migrants” and “affords them some level of dignity by ensuring that they are legally recognised, thus preventing them from being exploited.”
There is evidence that Venezuelan asylum seekers, particularly women, have been exploited, but just as concerning to Trinidad and Tobago citizens is violent crime, an issue with which the nation is already grappling. On April 4, 2019, a Venezuelan man was shot and killed outside the UNHCR building on the outskirts of the capital, Port of Spain. A week later, on April 11, there was another fatal shooting of a Venezuelan national, this time near a busy shopping plaza during the afternoon rush hour.
Incidents like these, social media tales of Venezuelans producing fake Trinidad and Tobago national identification cards (the authenticity of which was refuted by the country's Elections and Boundaries Commission), and warnings that the arrival of Venezuelan criminal elements will cause a spike in local crime rates have prompted Minister of National Security Stuart Young to clarify that the registration measure is not a “get out of jail card for criminals”.
An incident in late April highlighted the range of local attitudes toward the influx of Venezuelans. On April 25, 2019, more than 30 Venezuelans fleeing their country were feared drowned after their boat capsized in rough seas approximately three miles off the Venezuelan coast. Social media channels were flooded with comments, some sympathetic to their plight, but many others celebrating the fact that they failed to make it across to Trinidad.
David Abdulah, leader of the political party Movement for Social Justice, stopped just short of suggesting that the amnesty arrangement had contributed to the tragedy. He did say, however, that the policy “was badly rolled out”.
In a post that was liked and shared hundreds of times, Facebook user Tillah Willah couldn't help but point out the irony of the citizens of a country built on slavery and indentureship deriding such a disaster:
What does it say for the education we receive, that the descendants of those who arrived here on boats can now watch and laugh at those who are drowning. What does it say for the unclaimed bones of the ones we lost in the many tragic terrible crossings, that we haven't the shame to weep or silently give thanks that we made it across unscathed.
I wish the Kala Pani [“Black Water”, referring to a past prohibition of crossing of the ocean] could rise up and wash away this vicious nastiness we now possess.
I wish Olokun [An Orisha, considered the ruler of all bodies of water] would fling those unclaimed bones in our faces.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Ethnic Albanian votes will decide presidential elections in North Macedonia · Global Voices
Metamorphosis Foundation

Two voters in front of a polling station in North Macedonia. Photo by Meta.mk News Agency/Borche Popovski, CC BY.
This story originally appeared on Meta.mk News Agency, a project of Metamorphosis Foundation. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
North Macedonia will vote on the second round of the presidential elections on Sunday, May 5, amid uncertainties about the turnout and the outcome.
This is the first presidential elections since the right-wing VMRO-DPNME lost parliament majority in 2016 after ruling for 12 years, and will be the first major test of political support to the government coalition led by the pro-West Social Democratic Party (SDSM).
The Social Democrat candidate, Stevo Pendarovski, barely won the first round with 42.81 percent of the total vote: his main opponent, Gordana Siljanovska Davkova of VMRO-DPMNE, finished with 42.25 percent, a mere 4,486-vote difference.
This is the narrowest margin between two candidates who went to the second round of the past five presidential elections in North Macedonia.
Another source of concern is whether the second round will achieve the minimum quorum for the results to be valid. Macedonian law dictates that at least 40 percent of the 1,8-million electorate is required to vote for that to happen. The first round, held on April 21, had a turnout of 41.67 percent, only slightly above that threshold.
The third candidate, Blerim Reka, who is ethnic Albanian, finished the first round with 10.6 percent of the vote. The ethnic Albanian community comprises about a quarter of North Macedonia's population and it is widely understood that most of Reka's votes came from citizens of his ethnicity.
Billboard of the ethnic Albanian presidential candidate Blerim Reka in the center of Skopje, North Macedonia. Photo by Global Voices, CC-BY.
The final results will likely be decided by Reka's voters. Many analysts agree that those votes will most likely go to Pendarovski, as VMRO-DPMNE's platform is largely based on the promotion of ethnic Macedonian nationalism.
Local journalist Furkan Saliu has been tweeting in both Albanian and Macedonian about the fact that convicted war criminal Johan Tarchulovski, a VMRO-DPMNE MP, has been a part of Siljanovska's campaign.
Nuk shkon me të përkrah edhe shqiptarët edhe kriminel i dënuar për krime lufte ndaj shqiptarëve
Некако не иде да те подржи криминалец осуден за воени злосторства против Албанците, и да бараш гласови од Албанците pic.twitter.com/TpXdCFS6iZ
— FurKlan (@FurkanSaliu) April 28, 2019
Somehow it doesn't seem right to be supported by a criminal convicted of war crimes against Albanians, and asking the Albanians to vote for you.
Adding Siljanovska's and Reka's votes, plus the invalid ballots, a total of 432.000 people didn't vote for the current Social Democratic Party government.
Prime Minister Zoran Zaev stated that the party has understood the people's message. Zaev said the election results means people are unhappy with the poor performance of the lower echelons of his government and announced a “clean-up” of corrupt or incompetent officials.
Stevo Pendarovski and Gordana Siljanovska Davkova will run for the second round of the presidential elections in North Macedonia, on May 5. Photo by Meta.mk News Agency, CC BY.
In a show of support, actor Dragan Spasov, known as Dac, gave Zaev a broom as a gift during a public rally. In January 2018, Dac resigned as acting director of the National Theater after he caused a traffic accident in which a young woman was hit, but wasn't seriously injured. He has since said that his example of political responsibility should be followed by all officials.
The government's perception is that there has been some disappointment with recent nepotism scandals when members of parliament and ministers appointed relatives to posts at state-owned companies. On April 25, Zaev ordered such relatives to resign from their positions.
On the other hand, officials of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE have an additional interpretation. Its officials said the election results also convey public dissatisfaction with the Prespa Agreement, which changed the country's name to North Macedonia and ended a 27-year dispute with Greece, and that the VMRO-DPMNE fiercely opposes.
The agreement led to its signatories, Macedonian Prime Minister Zaev and his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipiras, to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Siljanovska has frequently stated that should she wins, her government will never use the name North Macedonia.
In turn, Pendarovski has said that votes to VMRO-DPMNE are votes to bring back the regime of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, sentenced to two years in prison on corruption charges in 2018, now a fugitive in Hungary.
Nonetheless, first and foremost the minimum turnout of 40 percent must be achieved. If that doesn't happen, the election process would have to restart from the beginning, and a new political crisis could follow.

author: Metamorphosis Foundation


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Running counter: An interview with a French publisher of Turkish literature · Global Voices
Filip Noubel

One of the growing number of titles translated and published by Kontr. Photo used with permission.
Sylvain Cavaillès is an Istanbul-based French translator and the founder of Kontr, the only French publisher focusing exclusively on contemporary Turkish literature.
Turkey has a rich literary tradition, but with the exception of 2006 Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, Turkish authors aren't ordinarily published in French. Sylvain wanted to change that when he founded Kontr in 2017.
Going by the Turkish spelling of the French word contre, which means “against”, the small publisher's portfolio has eight titles so far, most of them by Turkish writers of Kurdish origin — and almost all translated to French by Sylvain himself.
The following is an abridged transcript of an interview I did with Sylvain in April 2019 about this unique literary enterprise.
Sylvain Cavaillès: C’est le résultat d’un processus assez long et complexe. Mon premier vrai contact avec la littérature turque s’est fait en français en 2003. J’ai découvert en librairie Quarante chambres aux trois miroirs de Murathan Mungan, et l’une des nouvelles de ce recueil m’a particulièrement marqué sur le moment, au point que je me rappelle très clairement avoir regretté de ne pas connaître le turc pour pouvoir traduire cet auteur et échanger avec lui. Quelques années plus tard, j’ai commencé à passer beaucoup de temps à Istanbul et à apprendre la langue, et lorsque j’en ai été capable je me suis naturellement mis à lire en version originale. En 2012, j’ai pris la décision de reprendre des études, et j'ai fait un master, puis une thèse de doctorat sur les écrivains kurdes de la littérature turque contemporaine, que j’ai soutenue en 2018.
Sylvain Cavaillès: It is the result of a rather long and complex process. My first real encounter with Turkish literature happened in French in 2003. I discovered Murathan Mungan’s collection of short stories, called Üç Aynalı Kırk Oda, or Forty rooms with three mirrors, in 2003 in a bookstore. One of his short stories really made an impression on me, and I remember thinking it was a pity I didn’t speak Turkish, so that I could translate this author and communicate directly with him. Several years later I started spending time in Istanbul and learnt Turkish, and once fluent, I started reading in Turkish. In 2012, I went back to University, did a Master and eventually finished my PhD on Kurdish authors in contemporary Turkish literature in 2018.
SC: Le nom de Kontr représente pour moi, notamment, ce qui est à la marge, à la périphérie, et doit lutter pour exister. Et cela peut s’appliquer à la fois aux groupes humains et aux genres littéraires. Kontr aura toujours cette dimension de « contre-courant ». Les auteurs que Kontr a publiés jusqu’à présent (Murathan Mungan, Murat Özyaşar, Seyyidhan Kömürcü, Cihat Duman et Mehmet Said Aydın) ont tous un lien avec les régions kurdes de Turquie. L’apparition récente de cette nouvelle géographie littéraire au sein de la littérature turcophone m’a semblé être l’un des traits les plus intéressants du paysage littéraire turc actuel, et ce sont ces auteurs que j’ai voulu faire découvrir au public francophone en priorité. Toutefois, deux titres qui paraîtront cette année ne relèvent pas de ce domaine.
SC: The name of the publishing house, Kontr, represents what is at the margin, and must fight to exist, whether it is as a community or as a literary genre. Kontr will always be ‘running counter’. The authors published by Kontr  – Murathan Mungan, Murat Özyaşar, Seyyidhan Kömürcü, Cihat Duman et Mehmet Said Aydın, are all connected to the Kurdish regions of Turkey. The recent emergence of this new literary landscape within the Turkish-speaking literature seems to me the most interesting aspect of contemporary Turkish literature. These are the writers I want to introduce to francophone audiences in the first place. Yet two titles scheduled for this year are by authors who are not connected to Kurdish areas.
SC: Le phénomène Pamuk a eu un double effet d’occultation, d’une part, mais aussi une sorte d’appel d’air : le Nobel de Pamuk a sans aucun doute éveillé un intérêt du lectorat français pour la littérature turque.  Mais en 2018, les deux seuls auteurs de Turquie dont on parle sont Aslı Erdoğan et Selahattin Demirtaş, simplement parce qu’on comme « Ces écrivains qui font trembler le dictateur », formule cliché dont le seul but est de faire vendre des livres. Ce n’est pas Orhan Pamuk qui aujourd’hui occulte les auteurs de son pays, mais ce genre de clichés faciles. Concernant la promotion de la littérature turque en tant que telle, Kontr est aujourd’hui la seule maison qui, à son échelle, s’y consacre entièrement.
SC: The Pamuk phenomenon has had a double effect: it has concealed the rest, and yet set a trend. The attribution of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Pamuk in 2006 did stir an interest for Turkish literature in France. But in 2018 Turkish literature is reduced to only two authors, Aslı Erdoğan and Selahattin Demirtaş, simply because they are categorized as “the writers who make the dictator shake”. This is a cliché intended to help books sell. Indeed it is not Pamuk who is concealing the rest of Turkish literature, but such cheesy clichés. Today Kontr is the only publishing house that focuses exclusively on Turkish literature in French.
SC: Les plus grandes difficultés que j’ai pu rencontrer jusqu’à présent avaient trait à l’oralité d’une part, mais aussi à la régionalité. Certaines expressions idiomatiques n’ont cours que dans une région bien délimitée du territoire. Dans la plupart des cas, je parviens à résoudre la difficulté par moi-même. Mais s’il le faut, j’en parle avec l’auteur. C’est sans doute pour Rire noir, de Murat Özyaşar, que j’ai le plus échangé avec l’auteur. Murat a un style très particulier, très oral, musical, rythmique, syncopé, et hybride car il est dans une situation de bilinguisme et, comme il le dit et l’écrit lui-même, son turc est contaminé par la syntaxe du kurde. Il m’a donc fallu tenter d’appliquer au français le traitement que lui-même applique au turc. Cela a été à la fois mon plus grand défi en tant que traducteur mais aussi l’expérience la plus enthousiasmante que j’ai vécue.
SC: The most challenging aspects are spoken language and regional idioms. Certain expressions are limited to one particular region. Usually, I manage to solve them on my own. When needed, I discuss it with the author. I did that a lot with Murat Özyaşar for his book Sarı Kahkaha, translated as “Rire noir” in French [translated as “Yellow Laughter”, in English]. His style is peculiar, very oral, musical, syncopated, hybrid since he operates in a bilingual environment. As he said himself, his Turkish is “contaminated by the syntax of the Kurdish language.” I thus had to apply to French the same process he applies to Turkish. This has been my biggest challenge as a translator, but also the most exciting experience.
SC: Être à la fois traducteur et éditeur indépendant n’a pas été un choix mais une contrainte imposée par le contexte de l’édition française. Lorsqu’on vous fait patienter pendant des années, lorsque vos traductions, bien qu’elles n’aient été ni payées, ni publiées, apparaissent malgré tout sur des sites internet libraires, vous êtes obligé, si vous voulez que les auteurs que vous défendez soient publiés, de créer votre propre structure d’édition. Le premier livre de Kontr est sorti parce qu’une éditrice française avait laissé son auteur, Mehmet Said Aydın, sans nouvelles après lui avoir promis de faire son livre. Aydın est venu me trouver en me demandant de trouver une solution. Je lui ai promis de faire son livre, sans même croire qu’il y aurait une suite éditoriale à ce geste. Mais une fois ce premier livre publié, j’ai compris que je n’avais pas le choix. Je ne me suis jamais considéré comme un activiste, pourtant j’ai créé une maison d’édition qui s’appelle Kontr et qui s’est construite contre un certain nombre de choses. En premier lieu contre contre certains comportements qui ont cours dans l’édition, et contre les diktats qui tentent de nous faire croire que les lecteurs francophones n’aiment pas certains genres, tels la nouvelle ou la poésie. Je ne crois pas que ma posture se définisse fondamentalement par rapport à ce qui se passe dans la sphère politique. Mon but est de transmettre la littérature que j’aime et qui me semble être la littérature qui compte, aujourd’hui en Turquie. Même si je crois fermement en certaines causes, la cause ne justifiera jamais mes choix éditoriaux. Une maison d’édition est avant tout une maison, où l’on invite ceux que l’on aime. Pas une machine à fabriquer des produits, des étiquettes, ou à faire de l’argent.
SC: I did not become a translator and independent publisher by choice, but because of the situation of the French publishing industry: I had for years experienced endless waits, unpaid and unpublished translations that yet show up as available titles on websites. In the end I had no choice but to set my own structure in order to publish the writers I promote and translate. The first book published by Kontr is the result of a French publisher not fulfilling her promise to publish the author Mehmet Said Aydın. He came to me to ask for help, which I did, thinking this was a one-time operation. Once he was published, I realized I had no choice but to continue. I have never considered myself an activist, yet my publishing house is called Kontr (Against) and is indeed conceived as going “against” certain things. Against the behaviour of certain publishing houses, against the diktats that want to convince us that francophone readers do not like certain genres, such as short stories or poetry. But my take is not fundamentally defined by politics, my goal is to convey the literature that I enjoy, and that matters today in Turkey, in my view. A publishing house is a home where one invites the ones he likes, it is not a factory aimed at producing goods, labels or at making money.
Kontr's founder, Sylvain Cavaillès. Photo used with permission
SC: La situation à laquelle vous faites référence fait comme partie de la définition de la Turquie, qui est constamment en phase de transition politique et culturelle. Aujourd’hui l’attention de l’Occident se focalise sur la figure de l’actuel président et, avec l’aide de la médiatisation de quelques figures emprisonnées, on imagine un pays où la création littéraire serait bâillonnée. Or, les écrivains en prison auxquels vous faites allusion sont avant tout des opposants politiques. Aujourd’hui, en Turquie, personne n’est en prison ou en exil à cause de son œuvre littéraire, ceux qui sont inquiétés le sont à cause de leur engagement politique. Il y a certes un climat de peur, et sans doute un peu d’autocensure chez certains auteurs et éditeurs. Mais cela n’empêche pas le second livre de Selahattin Demirtaş de paraître ces jours-ci chez l’un des éditeurs turcs les plus importants. Globalement, le monde politique ne se soucie pas de littérature. Pour finir, cette instabilité dont vous parlez, loin d’être une menace, est sans doute ce qui justifie l’existence de Kontr, car les auteurs que nous publions et continuerons à publier, sont des écrivains qui ont un certain positionnement au sein de la société turque et qui construisent une œuvre littéraire d’importance.
SC: The situation you are referring to is part of what defines Turkey, a country that is constantly in a process of political and cultural transition. Today the West is focused on the figure of the current President, and the media paints a picture of a country where authors are not allowed to speak. But the authors who are in prison today are political opponents. Today, if someone is in jail, it is not because of their literary production, it is because of their political engagement. There certainly is a climate of fear and probably a certain level of self-censorship among certain authors and publishers. Yet Selahattin Demirtaş’ second book will soon be published by one of the largest publishing houses in Turkey. Generally speaking the political sphere pays little attention to literature. To conclude, the instability mentioned here is not a threat but rather an opportunity justifying Kontr’s existence, because the writers we publish and will continue to publish are authors who position themselves and build major literary works.

author: Filip Noubel


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The Sri Lanka Niqab ban and the politics of distraction · Global Voices
GroundViews

“zorro inverted”. Photo by Henrik Dacquin via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0).
This post by Shaahima Raashid originally appeared on Groundviews, an award-winning citizen journalism website in Sri Lanka. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement with Global Voices.
As of last Monday, Sri Lanka is taking a seat at the table next to a list of 13 other countries across the world who have passed legislation banning the niqab or face veil.
Amidst incensed murmurs from certain parliamentarians, and following a discussion with the country’s main Islamic theological body, the All Ceylon Jammiatul Ulema (ACJU), the President’s office has announced that ‘any garment or item which obstructs the identification of a person’s face would be barred.’ Sri Lanka has been under emergency regulations following the Easter Sunday attacks which killed over 250 people. The ban will hold until emergency regulations are lifted.
Ever since the identification of the all-male terrorists behind the massacre as members of militant group ISIS, Muslim women — for some inexplicable reason — have borne the brunt. Instances of headscarved Muslim women being refused entry at various supermarkets and prominent establishments were followed by the usual scaremongering, with alarmist infographics doing the rounds and yet again ‘educating’ the public on the differences between the burqa, hijab, and chador.
A victory indeed for both anti-Muslim voices, as well as for many within the Muslim community who seek to dissociate themselves from a supposedly dated form of Islam— one that they claim has no bearing on inherent Sri Lankan Muslim identity.  This is a view that discards the notion that any religious or ethnic identity is fluid, in flux, and subject to constant evolution.
The main winner of the grand slam, however, is the current political establishment, members of which are probably high-fiving each other as a result of this kneejerk symbol-politics manoeuvre, on having supposedly successfully placated the public and eased their fears of homegrown terrorism. It is a move that bleeds hypocrisy, for it subliminally ‘others’ an already marginalised segment of a minority community at the same time that the government is PSA’ing for peace and coexistence in this time of crisis.
What is most insulting to the intelligence of our society, however, is that amidst all this brouhaha, few have questioned the actual relevance of this new ban to the current state of our security affairs.
No eyewitness report or CCTV footage showed that any of the suicide bombers from any of the coordinated attacks across the country were on that day wearing the niqab/burqa/chador at the time of inflicting their terror. They were in fact dressed in men's attire, with faces completely exposed. It might also be useful to add here that they weren’t dressed in traditional Muslim man garb either.
How, then, did the face-veiling Muslim woman get pushed under the bus as the most identifiable sign of radicalism?
It is obvious that the government was cornered into passing this legislation, as was the ACJU in having to support this move. While all communities have only praise for the exceptional work of the security forces in tracking down the attackers within just hours, the country’s elected leadership was in dire need of a win following what many experts claim was a massive intelligence failure, a blunder involving the wrongful identification of a terror suspect, and incompetence in the handling of events overall. A distraction was desperately required, so something needed to give — and it just so happened that the niqab-wearing Muslim woman was the easiest scapegoat.
To an outsider unfamiliar with Muslim religious symbolism, the face-veil can come across as alien, even unnerving. And while our first instinct is to ‘other’ such women in an attempt to deal with the discomfort of dealing with an unknown, a woman out in the street in a niqab is — for as long as anyone can remember — most certainly not an oddity that has compelled anyone to stop and recite their final rites.
The misguided belief that the face veil is a marker of extremism isn’t based on any empirical research. If studies were to be carried out, results would show that Muslim women in general — let alone those who cover their faces — have had minimal, if any, association with acts of terror committed in all the countries that have banned them.
Contrarily, there is a clear proven relationship between terrorist attacks and increases in recorded Islamophobic incidents against Muslims, with women being disproportionately targeted. One can dare to infer that being visibly Muslim carries a greater risk to oneself than to the people around oneself.
The niqab ban has been put in place as a security measure, they say – a flexing of muscle towards any semblance of radicalisation that will apparently deter any future acts of terror in the country. But the perpetuating of this ideological hegemony is doing Muslim women no favours. If anything, the ban is a wholly counterproductive one, in that it ostracises an already marginalised segment of a minority community – a sliver of a percentage of the 10 percent that is the country’s Muslim population.
If, as is commonly believed, veiled Muslim women are already being persecuted, the ban will serve only to confine these women further to their homes, under the control of the men accused of governing their lives, and further disconnected from the ability to assimilate with the rest of society. Even more worrying is the fact that there are studies which link living in environments that are aggressively policed on the basis of belief with radicalisation.
The absurdity of the mismatch between the attacks and the niqab ban aside, this in itself should be a war cry for secular feminists advocating for everyone’s basic right to the civil freedoms of a liberal society. Where, at this moment, are the proponents and ambassadors so wholly soaked in the ‘Muslim woman saviour complex?’ A segment of Muslim women has been forbidden from wearing what they feel best represents their Sri Lankan Muslim identity. They were not consulted before this legislation was passed, nor were they given the chance to show their willingness to cooperate in instances where identification was required.
Ludicrously, discourses surrounding veiled Muslim women are lobbed back and forth according to the convenience of the times. In times of peace, such women are oppressed and subservient to patriarchal whims and fancies, while in the immediate aftermath of a terror attack they are hostile and threatening, capable of devising all kinds of evil. They are either victims of violence, or the perpetrators of it.
This age-old preoccupation with Muslim women’s attire is in actuality a gross conflation of conservatism with extremism. In claiming that a strip of cloth holds the answer to combatting a severe global threat is trivialising the greater issues at hand. If there were a direct correlation between the attacks and veiled individuals, legislation forbidding the covering of the face in public would be wholly justified. But there is none.
Muslim women shouldn’t be faulted for the chinks in the state’s armour. In not being able to answer the hard questions of accountability, in their failure to act on available intelligence and lack of general good governance, those at the top should leave well alone and consider hiding their own faces instead.


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Why is Twitter blocking state accounts in Venezuela? · Global Voices
Ellery Roberts Biddle

Detail of illustration by Venezuelan artist Eduardo Sanabria. Taken from his pubilc Facebook profile and used with permission.
As confrontations between Venezuelan state forces and opposition leaders escalated to new heights this week, Twitter suspended multiple accounts belonging to Venezuelan state ministries and foreign consulates on May 1 and 2.
Twitter accounts for the ministries of education, oil and women's affairs were all suspended on May 1:
Unconventional coup: Venezuelan institutional accounts are being suspended arbitrarily.
Suspended as of now -
Ministry of Popular Power for Women @MinMujer
Ministry of the Popular Power for Education @MPPEDUCACION
Ministry of Popular Power for Oil @MinPetroleoVE
— Camila (@camilateleSUR) May 1, 2019
At the time of publication, these accounts remained suspended. Some consular accounts, including that of the consulate in Vancouver, Canada, had been restored.
This is not the first time state or local officials in the country have had their accounts suspended, but the political stakes in this case are uniquely high.
Uncertainty about who is in power in Venezuela arguably has never been greater. Since January 2019, governments of 65 countries worldwide have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as legitimate president of the republic, while for the others, Nicolás Maduro — who was re-elected in May 2018, amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud — retains the title.
On April 30, Guaidó called people to the streets for what he described as the “definitive phase” of “Operation Freedom”, an effort to bring an end to Nicolas Maduro's government. Protests are ongoing in many cities in the country, and authorities have resorted to violence in efforts to disperse demonstrators.
In recent years, it has become common for public officials, their associates and supporters to post messages on social media that might violate Twitter's rules against hate speech and violent threats. These types of behavior warrant account suspension, and may have caused Twitter to shut down these accounts (we asked the company for comment, and were awaiting their reply upon publication).
But the move could carry other consequences, both for the public and for the company. The government of Nicolás Maduro has called out Twitter's blocking of these accounts, noting that they took place “at the same time as the attempted coup,” underlining a suggestion raised by many Twitter users that the company has a bias against the Maduro government.
Alongside the significant questions this raises about Twitter's role (intentional or not) as a political actor in this scenario, the suspensions could offer authorities increased justification for blocking Twitter altogether.
The unique public value of accounts like these — even if they are spewing hateful or partisan vitriol — is also worth considering. With the accounts now suspended, their past tweets have been removed from public view. We cannot see what these officials said or did not say that might have triggered this response — their URLs simply lead to the generic “account suspended” page. Unless a third party has collected the information elsewhere, there is no public record of what the account posted in the past.
Whether or not these accounts were sharing important public information, any message coming from a public official — even if that official's status is contested — has some value to constituents. Twitter offers a unique window into people's minds and emotions, something that can be especially valuable in moments of political crisis. People want to know what their leaders are thinking.
The removals also contribute to the increasingly scarce landscape of public information available to Venezuelans, as electricity and internet connections flicker off and on, and major social media and news networks like BBC and CNN get kicked off the air.
Blocking even more speech from public view may only contribute to the information crisis.


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Too big to be anonymous? Russian journalists unmask a famous anti-Kremlin blogger, sparking ethical debate · Global Voices
Alexey Kovalev

At the time of writing, StalinGulag's blog on Telergram had 355 thousand subscribers. In a highly unusual move, Telegram's creator Pavel Durov even gave StalinGulag a verification badge — something that only a few select blogs on Telegram can boast to have // Photo by Runet Echo
StalinGulag is an immensely popular Russian political blogger. He has more than one million followers on Twitter, and 347,000 subscribers to his channel. This places him among the top five most followed bloggers on Telegram, an essential platform for politically active Russians.
His acerbic, profanity-laden critiques of Russia's political system and latest news generate thousands of likes and retweets. Here’s a typical one:
«Ради приезда Ким Чен Ына во Владивосток более 23 тысячам студентов Дальневосточного федерального университета отменили занятия на пять дней»
Представляете, ради пухлого диктатора закроют Гарвард, например? Потому что где-то народ – это граждане, а где-то просто скот
— Сталингулаг (@StalinGulag) 23 апреля 2019 г.
While Kim Jong Un is visiting Vladivostok, five days worth of classes were cancelled for 23 thousand students of the Far Eastern Federal University. Can you imagine Harvard closing down for a visit of a plump dictator? Because somewhere the people are citizens and in other places they are nothing but cattle.
Until recently, StalinGulag’s identity was a mystery. But in July 2018, RBC, a business news outlet known for its investigative exposes of the infamous St. Petersburg “troll factory,” used open source intelligence methods to trace StalinGulag's true identity to that of one 26-year-old Alexander Gorbunov, an online trader from Makhachkala, the capital of the North Caucasian republic of Dagestan.
When RBC’s investigation came out, StalinGulag dismissed the report as conjecture based on hearsay and attacked the journalists for “blaming an unsuspecting person for something they didn’t do.”
There were no further corroborations or follow-ups on RBC’s story, but theories about the real owners of StalinGulag and their motivations kept emerging.
Some wondered if there was a real person behind the account. Others suggested it was run by a group of individuals. A former Ukrainian special services officer even alleged that the StalinGulag blog was secretly controlled by the SBU — Ukraine’s primary intelligence agency and successor to the KGB.
Things took a dramatic turn in April 2019, when StalinGulag announced on his blog that police were searching the home of Alexander Gorbunov’s elderly parents, on the premise that his phone number was used to commit an act of “telephone terrorism.” The author of StalinGulag continued distancing himself from Alexander Gorbunov, while offering the latter support and even promoting a separate channel called “Sanya [short for Alexander] from Dagestan.”
Then, on April 30, the online investigative outlet Baza interviewed Gorbunov’s mother who confirmed that Alexander Gorbunov was indeed the same person who ran the StalinGulag blogs — thus finally corroborating RBC’s original report and confirming StalinGulag’s true identity.
It turned out that StalinGulag is indeed Alexander Gorbunov — now 27 and living in Moscow, but originally born in Makhachkala. Gorbunov is wheelchair-bound and suffering from a chronic, rapidly progressing condition known as Werdnig-Hoffman disease, the most severe type of spinal muscular atrophy.
When it became clear that any further denials would be pointless, Gorbunov himself finally came out in an exclusive interview with BBC Russian — coincidentally, the same outlet where the author of the original exposé of his identity, Andrey Zakharov, currently works as an investigative reporter.
Here’s how BBC Russian described the first public appearance of one of the most sought-after anonymous political bloggers in Russia:
For someone whose pithy tweets frequently contain expletives and slang, Gorbunov in real life comes across as articulate, educated and thoughtful.
He arrives at the BBC office smartly dressed in a black polo-neck and tweed jacket. He speaks softly and with the quiet confidence of someone who is used to being listened to.
In the interview, Gorbunov spoke of the difficulties of growing up as a disabled person in one of the least wheelchair-friendly places in Russia. He expressed his desire to provide the best care for himself and his forays in online business, from selling dietary supplements to dreams of setting up his own investment fund. These ambitions were crushed, he said, when StalinGulag’s real identity was revealed in 2018 and his prospective partners bailed out of the deal for fear of political repercussions.
One might wonder why he chose this particular name. His intention, he explained, was to troll Stalin fans who would flock to a familiar name and the avatar of Joseph Stalin smoking a pipe, expecting to read praises of the dictator but seeing instead something radically different.
An outpouring of sympathetic messages on Russian social media followed his BBC Russian interview. Even those who disliked StalinGulag’s crude, populist messaging lauded his strength of spirit and will to live despite his severe physical impairments.
Сталингулаг вообще молодец. если бы на меня жизнь вывалила столько говна, не уверен что у меня хватило бы сил даже просто дышать. А чувак что-то делает, старается. респектище кароч.
— M̢̎̈ͅa͔̜̲̭̱͇̬͌̓̈́ͭ̀r̶͓̣̥͇̼͕͚͊ͧ͛ͩ̅͛͆́̈́̕ͅk̰̦ͬ̊̀̎ͥ̐͛̒̃ (@Mark__Shein) 2 мая 2019 г.
Stalingulag is a great guy after all. If life poured so much shit on me, I’m not sure I’d have the strength to even breathe. And this dude is doing something, carrying on. huge respect to him, I’d say.
Этот человек – чертов герой https://t.co/mZAKY4GUTd
— рывкин (@Andrew_Ryvkin) 2 мая 2019 г.
This man is a goddamn hero.
ну вот многие хуесосили сталинагулаг за всякую ебанину (и надо сказать, за дело, пишет временами отвратительно), но вот сегодня оказалось, что он вполне самостоятельный сильный человек, который зарабатывает и живёт совсем другим, бывает, дя
— Смерть неизбѣжна (@death_is_invtbl) 2 мая 2019 г.
Many would badmouth stalingulag for the crap he’s been putting out there (and for good reason, his writing is sometimes atrociously bad), but it turned out today that he is an independent, strong person who makes his living on something quite unrelated [to his blog] and lives a full life. So it happens, yes.
The case also prompted fierce debates in the Russian media community about the justification for such unmasking anonymous bloggers in an atmosphere where any government critic could be targeted for persecution or harassment.
Roman Volobuyev, a former journalist and currently a film director, wrote on his Facebook page, addressing the editors of RBC, the outlet which ran the original expose of StalinGulag’s identity:
В чем ценность этих неполных анкетных данных фигуранта для общества? В чем та большая польза, которая перебивает приход ментов к маме, слежку и прочие радости, которые ему в итоге прилетели? Какое «информированное решение» общество не могло принять, не зная что человека зовут Саша? (Это даже если прекраснодушно предположить, что общество у нас способно на какие-то решения, а не просто жрет информацию и забывает о ней через день)
What is the societal value of publishing these incomplete biographical details? Where is the public good that outweighs the cops’ visit to his mom, the surveillance and other “bonuses” now heaped on him? What “informed decision” was society prevented from making while being unaware that the man’s name is Sasha? (Even if we naively assume that our society is capable of acting on the information instead of just passively consuming it and forgetting about it the next day.)
Valery Igumenov, who was editor at RBC when the original investigation of StalinGulag came out in 2018, responded to Volobuyev with a comment that left many scratching their heads:
нам было интересно, кто это пишет, зачем и почему. самый популярный политический телеграм-канал, 300 тыс человек в среднем читает пост, и никто не знает, кто это. вопрос, который люди задавали друг другу все время. почему надо об этом рассказать? автор каждый день транслирует в мозг другим людям безусловно идеологически заряженные послания – вокруг пиздец, все плохо, все еще хуже, жить невозможно, головы не поднять, ложись и помирай. при этом сам человек находит силы как-то жить, зарабатывать деньги, интересоваться чем-то еще, кроме этого пиздеца, но на других вываливает только отчаяние и желчь, без просвета, без вариантов, без выхода. я не считаю, что такой человек имеет право на анонимность, потому что он просто умножает беспомощность и депрессию, оставаясь где-то там в тени за кадром.
We were interested in who was writing this and why. The most popular Telegram channel, 300 thousand views per post, and no one knows who it is. This is a question people have been asking each other all the time. Why tell about it? Day in, day out the author is sending these, without doubt, ideologically charged messages, getting into people’s heads: everything is going to shit, it’s all bad and only going to get worse, life is impossible, can't even keep your head upright, just lie down and die. Meanwhile, the man himself is still somehow finding the will to live, to make money, to have other interests outside this neverending torrent of doom and gloom, but still is dumping on others nothing but despair and bile, without hope, without options, without an exit in sight. I don’t think a person like this deserves the right to anonymity, because all he’s doing is just multiplying the helplessness and despair while staying out of sight himself.
Valery Igumenov argued that there was public interest in knowing the person behind an immensely popular political blog, even though it did not in the end, contrary to the original assumption of the investigative reporter, turn out to be the work of a shadowy team of professionals waging an information war.
Since RBC is a business publication, those who agreed with Igumenov said, there was still merit in exploring the one-man media empire which brought its owner considerable profit in advertisement. StalinGulag also offered sponsored posts for upwards from 150 thousand rubles, or approximately 2,300 US dollars.
However, many of Igumenov's colleagues and members of the public were disgusted by the idea that a person should be denied anonymity if their writings are too “depressive.” Screenshots of Igumenov’s comments started circulating online, with many former and current media professionals condemning the lapse in judgement that, in their minds, led to exposing a vulnerable person to danger because an editor didn’t like his style.
Liusia Shteyn, an opposition politician and a local council member in Moscow, wrote:
Не люблю стиль недовольного постинга скринов комментариев, но не сдержалась! Это бывший главред РБК так обосновывает деанон Сталингулага прошлым летом. Не транслируйте в мир свою фрустрацию, а то справедливые журналисты решат, что вы не имеете права на анонимность, и к вашей маме придут с обысками
I don’t like the style of angry posting of screencapped comments, but here I couldn’t help myself! That’s how RBC’s former editor justifies Stalingulag’s deanon[ymization] last summer. Don’t transmit your frustration into the world, lest a fair-minded journalist decides that you don’t deserve to be anonymous, and cops will bust into your mama’s home!
But others thought that, Igumenov’s peculiar emotional arguments aside, there still was journalistic value in RBC’s investigation of Stalingulag’s identity.
Amid these debates, some government loyalists found silver linings in the story:
А вообще, смешно, оппозиционный блоггер СталинГулаг личным примером показал, что Россия – страна возможностей, где инвалид может хорошо зарабатывать своим умом, заниматься политикой и жить в самом дорогом городе страны.
— Владимир Демидко (@vdemidko) 2 мая 2019 г.
It’s ironic, after all, that an opposition blogger like StalinGulag demonstrated through personal example that Russia is a land of opportunity where a disabled person can make a good living with his own mind, dabble in politics and live a full life in the most expensive city in the country.
The debates about whether StalinGulag’s unmasking served any public interest are still ongoing, but it’s already clear that it’s a landmark case in history of Russian independent media.

author: Alexey Kovalev


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As Cyclone Fani hits India’s eastern coast, preparedness saves thousands of lives · Global Voices
Subhashish Panigrahi

Map plotting the track and the intensity of the Cyclone Fani that ravaged India and Bangladesh. Image via Wikipedia. Public Domain.
When the severe Cyclone Fani made landfall in the Indian state of Odisha on May 3, it took 24 lives before spreading to neighboring West Bengal and then Bangladesh. Named by Bangladesh, Fani means the hood of a snake in Bengali and other South Asian languages. It was the second most powerful cyclonic storm in 20 years after the 1999 Odisha Cyclone (also known as 99 Super Cyclone).
Odisha claimed over 10,000 lives, but many more were saved because of the local administration's resilience and planned evacuation carried out with support from thousands of volunteers. With Cyclone Fani, the local administration also prepared in advance as they expected Fani to hit 10,000 villages and 52 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in 14 districts in Odisha.
The New York Times reported:
To warn people of what was coming, they deployed everything they had: 2.6 million text messages, 43,000 volunteers, nearly 1,000 emergency workers, television commercials, coastal sirens, buses, police officers, and public address systems blaring the same message on a loop, in local language, in very clear terms: ‘A cyclone is coming. Get to the shelters.’
The chief minister officer of Odisha tweeted to request financial support from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund to manage post-disaster rehabilitation efforts wherein anyone in distress can alert the officials using hashtag #CycloneFaniSOS, tweet to @SRC_Odisha or call on an emergency helpline at +91-0674-2534177.
#Odisha has been devastated by #CycloneFani. Please help rebuild precious lives with your online contribution to Chief Minister Relief Fund via link: https://t.co/C2LrUttIsr pic.twitter.com/gtEb9viHk2
— Naveen Patnaik (@Naveen_Odisha) May 4, 2019
The official Twitter account of N. Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister Andhra Pradesh informed:
We are closely monitoring the damage caused to agricultural crops by #CycloneFani. Farmers can report the damage & losses on one of the following:
1. People First app https://t.co/qYQO66W8PO
2. Kaizala AP CM Connect https://t.co/3ZQ4C3RCwa
3. RTG website https://t.co/zxLPRwxPLm pic.twitter.com/yyReR73luZ
— N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) May 3, 2019
The cyclone was as strong as a Category 4 hurricane with Category 5 being the highest level recorded based on the Saffir–Simpson scale with wind speeds between 209–251 kilometers per hour at the Category 4 level. At the time of reporting on May 3, 56,000 officials were deployed in India to help evacuate more than 1 million people to designated shelters.
So far 24 killed in Odisha due to Fani. @htTweets
— ????????? ??????? (@debabrata2008) May 5, 2019
Fani united everyone in Odisha — the local administration worked with media houses to spread a cautionary message to masses. Vineel Krishna, CEO of Bhubaneswar Smart City, an administrator of Odisha's capital, tweeted requests to media channels to relay the government's messages:
After strong winds in initial phase, Eye(centre) is the calm part. It’s deceptive and people tend to come on to the roads. Once Eye passes, gusty winds take over – higher wind speed n heavy rainfall. very dangerous. Bhubaneswar going thru this phase now! 4 hrs of cyclone so far! pic.twitter.com/yrAjkpqqC8
— Vineel Krishna (@rvineel_krishna) May 3, 2019
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) appreciated the Zero Causality Policy by India Meteorological Department (IMD), a federal government department that mitigates the risks of disaster management for natural calamities:
India's ‘zero casualty’ policy, pinpoint warnings minimised #CycloneFani deaths #ResilienceForAll https://t.co/9z4tR7iegH via @economictimes
— UNDRR (@unisdr) May 4, 2019
Swetapadma, who works for the Odisha government, tweeted how difficult it was to evacuate people from their homes to safe places:
True. Experienced this being in the side of the Govt. How difficult it is to evacuate people, we had to beg and threaten, take help of police for evacuation. Its more than 72 hrs and we hardly got any sleep. Thankful to police and all those associated with us. #CycloneFani https://t.co/Krltmacj0W
— ଶ୍ୱେତପଦ୍ମା (@swetapadma07) May 4, 2019
The devastating effect of Fani also affected news circulation as a local news channel's teleport is down during the cyclone:
Kanak News Teleport down. Off air.#CycloneFani
— Tanaya Patnaik (@tanaya_p) May 3, 2019
Despite early precautions taken by telecom carriers to ensure connectivity during the cyclone, almost all networks were disrupted. However, with limited access after hours of power failure, many individuals took to social media to share news with pictures and videos from the ground.
9 AM 4 May – No Wind, Sun shining, Restoration on full phase.
No Electricity
Mobile Network: Jio voice working now, data terribly slow. Idea no signal. Airtel no signal since yesterday. #BSNL working uninterrupted.
Bapuji Nagar, Bhubaneswar#Fani #FaniCyclone #CycloneFani
— Ramesh Routray (@rameshroutray) May 5, 2019
Wikipedia has requested for volunteers to translate Wikipedia articles in Asian languages to help people to get information in indigenous languages.
Can you contribute to our knowledge about the cyclone or its aftermath? We could use your help in all languages. Please translate and/or share. #CycloneFani
— Wikipedia (@Wikipedia) May 5, 2019
In Fani's catastrophic aftermath in India and Bangladesh, the damage to humanity, economy and ecology is unimaginable. While India is in the middle of its general election that will cost about ₹50,000 crore ($7 billion), the tragedy of Fani is already a huge hit and citizens have risen to the challenge.

author: Subhashish Panigrahi