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Scenes from Ma’shour: On the brutal suppression of protests in an Iranian city · Global Voices
Rahim Hamid

Protesters in the city of Ma'shour, in Iran's Ahwaz region. Photo courtesy Rahim Hamid. Used with permission.
By Rahim Hamid and Aaron Eitan Meyer
Southwest Iran is home to the city of Ma’shour, part of the majority-Arab region of Ahwaz. In November 2019, Ma'shour gained notoriety for crimes committed against its residents by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and its minions—but this latest episode is merely a continuation of the decades of misery experienced by people in the region under the regime's brutal yoke.
With a population of around 120,000, Ma’shour comprises five residential areas—Jarrahi, Koura, Khor Mussa (Sarbandar or Khomeini port), and the old and new city areas. The overwhelming majority of Ma`shour’s residents are ethnically Arab, and the city’s importance lies in the presence there of a petrochemical industry which refines the oil and natural gas resources of the Ahwaz region.
Because of the very real threat of reprisals by the regime, local witnesses spoke to the authors of this story on condition of anonymity, painting a devastating picture of a city experiencing population transfer by a racist regime. One person explained the phenomenon of “flying employees”, meaning top-level employees who come in to work and fly back the same day to Tehran. They also bring in relatives to fill jobs ranging from tea- and coffee-makers to housekeeping staff.
These “flying employees” and their relatives are all ethnically Persian; the people they displace are overwhelmingly Arabs.
The witness added that the reason these employees do not live in Ma'shour is because of the highly polluted air. The Arab population, meanwhile, lacks the means to escape from the hazardous air conditions caused by the petrochemical industry, and live in miserable conditions.
“The suicide rate is rising here,” the local witness told us. “Young people have lost hope for the future. You are deemed a criminal when you are born Ahwazi (Arab). You are condemned to deprivation when you are born Arab.”
Despite the region’s wealth, the local majority-Ahwazi population is denied access to the benefits of the area’s resources. Anger, despair, high suicide rates, disproportionately high rates of cancer, and erasure of cultural identity characterize the Ahwazi population here.
Ahwaz as a region had erupted in protests even before the start of the fuel protests in the center of the country. The catalyst was the poisoning of a popular Ahwazi dissident poet named Hassan Haidari while in regime custody, along with longstanding grievances at the regime’s brutality and ethnic discrimination.
The protests in Ma’shour were violently suppressed. When young people blocked roads leading to the petrochemical facilities with burning tires, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attacked them with tanks and gunfire.
Young Ahwazi protesters fled to the nearby marshlands to escape the machine guns, but the IRGC forces opened fire into the marshlands then set it afire, killing dozens of young, mostly unarmed protesters. An eyewitness explained: “We didn't take seriously what they said because we thought they were threatening us, like they had in the previous demonstrations. But they started randomly firing at the people with machine guns.
When the IRGC forces began shooting, people, including women and children, fled to Jarrahi town and some took refuge in the nearby marshes, but the [IRGC troops] shot at them indiscriminately, without mercy. About 60 people were reportedly killed in the marshlands and dozens were injured.”
Another eyewitness who lost many relatives in the massacre said that the IRGC forces deployed heavy military equipment in the Jarrahi and Koura districts. The forces also searched the area with UAV drones and helicopter gunships, and brought in other vehicles and weapons, including tanks.
While the government’s shutdown of the nation's internet initially prevented the details of the massacre from reaching world audiences, witnesses have begun telling their stories, in the hope that the regime will be held accountable for its crimes.
One such young woman told us that protesters in the Jarrahi township of Ma'shour took to the streets in earnest after protests had swept across the country. They began demonstrating at the entrance to the town over two days. They blocked off roads, a peaceful form of protest that was occurring all over Iran.
Then, the young woman continued, “We were surrounded by deadly tanks and heavy weapons. Iranian regime forces began to harass and attack us. The young men were merely standing and sitting in the middle of the road demanding their rights to work, life, wealth, security and health. The interesting thing was that most of the armed forces who were shooting and beating the Arab protesters were speaking Arabic, but with accents spoken in countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. They were ruthless and sprayed the chests of unarmed protesters with bullets. The poor Arab protesters fell one after the other to the ground, and others desperately rushed to the marshes near the gathering place at the entrance to the city.”
The IRGC has a documented history of bringing in its terrorist affiliates to suppress Ahwazis, including Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units, as well as various entities active in Syria in support of the Assad regime, which has been increasingly propped up by Iran. Ahwazi activists both inside and outside of the region have repeatedly asked the same question: “Why do we hear about these terrorist groups when they attack others, but never when they are brought in to kill us?”
The eyewitness continued. “The forces continued shooting at those who had taken cover in the waters and reeds of the marsh. They also fired randomly at neighboring houses, and this resulted in the largest number of deaths and casualties.”
“We went to the hospital and found dozens of victims, including dead and wounded, on the hospital floor. The lack of doctors and nurses and the massive amount of blood on the floor and the walls… all stained with the blood of young people, including two dead women, one middle-aged and one in her 20s.
“We moved from the hospital to the city, and we were hearing gunfire all around. We went to the home of one victim who was a family member, when we ran into forces that started firing at us with lethal weapons that almost took down the walls. We entered the house under a hail of bullets. We all gathered in one corner of a room so that the gunfire did not hit us.”
In the days after this horrific incident, the stench of charred corpses in the marshes remained so strong that it reached across the city. Footage shows grieving families asking: “What was the crime of these deprived people? They just wanted to protest extensive oppression. In which country does the government use tanks and machine guns against public protests? But here is the Iranian regime, which burned young people alive in the canebrake.”
The devastated families were left to listen helplessly the screaming, weeping, and pleas for help from family members stranded in the marsh, and to smell their burning flesh after the regime troops set the reed beds alight.
Human rights activists in Ahwaz say the regime is even attempting to extort money from grieving families, charging them around $4,000 each to have the bodies of their loved ones returned, and even charging ‘fees’ for the bullets used to kill their relatives.
Another witness told us that “the citizens of Koura neighbourhood said ‘We have two options: to die under torture by the regime or to resist the Revolutionary Guard forces. Then the world, especially the United States government, might support our revolution against the repressive and brutal regime.’”
For four days, the eyewitness said, the protesters maintained control over Koura and Tanideh Street in Jarrahi, as well most of the neighborhoods of the city of Ma’shour, and several suburbs. “The clashes were fierce. The IRGC escaped because of the effective resistance, and the people were able to control the main road leading to the city and the adjacent petrochemical industrial complex.
“The citizens of Ma’shour were awaiting action by the international community to stop this heinous crime,” continued the witness, breaking down in tears.
That intervention never materialized. Internet service has mostly been restored throughout Iran. In Ma'shour the marshland has stopped smoking, the smell of burnt flesh is no longer in the air. But the air remains heavily polluted, and the local Arab population remains destitute, even as it reels in shock at the horror it recently experienced. The only new developments are negative: anguish for the family members of those murdered, fear for loved ones arrested and taken to unspecified prisons in the dark of night, and now despair that the world will ever take action.
There is no question that the regime's actions defy international law and fundamental morality, but as long as the powerful nations of the world fail to take direct action, there is neither comfort nor hope for the people of Ma'shour and for all Ahwazi people.
Rahim Hamid is an author, freelance journalist, and human rights advocate based in the United States. He is the editor of Dur Untash Studies Centre (DUSC), based in Canada. Hamid’s writings often focus on the plight of the Ahwazi people in Iran. Follow him on Twitter at @samireza42.
Aaron Eitan Meyer is an attorney admitted to practice in New York State and before the United State Supreme Court, and a researcher and analyst. He has written extensively on lawfare, international humanitarian, and human rights law.

author: Rahim Hamid


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Abduction of human rights activist echos chilling trend in Tanzania · Global Voices
GV Sub-Saharan Africa

Tito Magoti is a human rights activist from Tanzania. Photo courtesy of the Legal and Human Rights Center.
Prominent human rights activist Tito Magoti was abducted in broad daylight by five unknown people in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and is now being detained by police.
Magoti, who works as a public affairs officer with the Legal and Human Rights Center, was abducted on Friday, December 20, 2019, at 10 a.m., as he was on his way to purchase a new mobile phone, according to a statement by the LHRC. Police denied having any information about Magoti's whereabouts when the LHRC first reported him missing on Friday.
Magoti's abduction echoes a chilling trend toward the disappearances of journalists, human rights defenders and opposition leaders in Tanzania since 2015 when President John Magufuli first took office.
STATEMENT ON THE ABDUCTION OF LHRC’s EMPLOYEE, MR. @TitoMagoti #BringBackTito #BringBackTitoMagoti pic.twitter.com/wfD4AaFPgt
— LHRC (@humanrightstz) December 20, 2019
Later on Friday, the police confirmed that Magoti had been arrested, along with three other unnamed people, on “various allegations,” according to Dar es Salaam police chief Lazaro Mambosasa, as reported by Reuters. However, police have not released information about where Magoti is being held and no official charges have been made as of Saturday, December 21, according to The Citizen.
Earlier today Human Rights Centre in Tanzania said they had received news that activist @TitoMagoti had been abducted.
Police have now released a statement saying Mr Magoti is in their custody alongside 3 others, all of whom are being questioned regarding ‘various matters’ pic.twitter.com/jS16hcupdh
— Samira Sawlani (@samirasawlani) December 20, 2019
As one of the most vocal human rights advocacy groups in the nation, the LHRC has spoken out loudly against diminishing press freedoms and opposition repression under President Magufuli's administration.
Magfuli has denied allegations of cracking down on the media and human rights defenders but ran on a strong campaign to root out corruption in the East African nation. In 2017, he warned that “press freedom has limits.”
Zaituni Njovu, who works with Africa Human Rights Network (AHRN), told Global Voices through a Whatsapp text:
This incident is not good for human rights because everyone has the right to protection and freedom. Mr. Tito [Magoti] has been arrested by civilian police, although at the beginning it was announced to the public that he had been abducted by unknown people. Police [finally] made a formal statement that they arrested him, although they have not said so far [where].
Njovu continued:
It’s true that human rights defenders [HRDs] are hunted like animals in Tanzania and arrested by police and government agencies — especially when you do your job correctly. In short, it’s not wanted for HRDs to speak at all about anything in TZ [Tanzania].
The human rights situation is unsatisfactory here in TZ [Tanzania]. The safety of HRDs is very low and they are often exposed to adverse events until some [even] lose their lives.
Magoti's colleagues and friends continue to search for him by making visits to various police stations in Dar es Salaam, inquiring into his safety and whereabouts:
Where's @TitoMagoti https://t.co/Gnpsa8IHzD
— Deeno (@0ff657fba72d426) December 21, 2019
Our team, together with @THRDCOALITION, has arrived at the Central Police Station in Dar es Salaam this afternoon to continue to search for our brother, @TitoMagoti, without success. Tanzanians continue to raise our voices. #FreeTitoMagoti
NEWS UPDATES:
So, HRD @TitoMagoti is not being held at the Dar es Salaam Central Police station. We looked for his name in the registration book twice, but couldn't find it.
We are now heading to Oysterbay Police station.
We will keep you updated.
Issued by @THRDCOALITION pic.twitter.com/w4wss93v7Q
— THRD-COALITION (@THRDCOALITION) December 21, 2019
Magoti, who specializes in human rights in business, has worked with the LHRC for three years in Tanzania, where human rights protections have steadily deteriorated.
In early December, in the Magufuli administration's latest blow to human rights, the government withdrew Tanzanians’ right to “directly seek redress from the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.”
Netizens came out on Twitter in Magoti's defense, noting his disappearance and arrest as part of a larger human rights crisis in Tanzania.
Jeff Msangi saw Magoti's arrest as a major setback for human rights:
A lawyer and human rights activist. Abducted. Arrested. Questioned.
48+ hrs later. Where is he? No one can tell. Even his fellow learned brothers and sisters. His rights? No.
It’s 2019. Not 1949. Imagine. #TitoMagoti pic.twitter.com/MS6VjdmxFV
— Jeff Msangi (@msangijeff) December 21, 2019
Under the hashtags, #BringBackTito and #FreeTitoMagoti, activists and human rights defenders have launched a campaign on social media to find Magoti and ensure justice for him.
A human rights activist @TitoMagoti was earlier today abducted and is now being detained by the police in Dar #Tanzania in broad daylight
This is not right. #BringBackTitoMagoti
We will not be silenced #ChangeTanzania pic.twitter.com/Zlc3z1r1xM
— #EndChildMarriage (@mwanyumahope) December 20, 2019
Political scientist Aikande C. Kwayu made a call for compassion on Magoti's behalf:
Am celebrating my cousin’s wedding but I am constantly having intervals of mind breaks thinking of @TitoMagoti . I hope he is safe. Please #BringBackTitoMagoti #FreeTitoMagoti – it’s Christmas season, let’s be compassion for once as a nation.
— Aikande C. Kwayu (@aikande) December 21, 2019
Magoti's abduction and arrest mark a disturbing trend in Tanzania, prompting Angela Quintal of Committee to Protect Journalists to tweet:
Here we go again. Another HRD, @TitoMagoti, is abducted in #Tanzania. #BringBackTitoMagoti https://t.co/r8a4hYQEnM
— Angela Quintal (@angelaquintal) December 20, 2019
In July 2019, journalist Erick Kabendera was abducted using similar techniques by six plainclothes policemen in broad daylight. For months, he has languished in prison on trumped-up charges of economic crimes and may face up to 15 years in prison.
Kabendera's lawyers have said that his arrest was politically motivated.
As a journalist, Kabendera has been critical of the Magufuli administration and produced reports on Tanzania’s divisive politics for international and local media such as The Guardian, African Arguments and The East African.
Kabendera will spend the holidays behind bars as his case has been postponed ten times in court. The next hearing is scheduled for January 2, 2020, the BBC reports.
As Tanzania heads into the new year, human rights defenders, journalists, activists and concerned citizens continue to paza sauti, a Swahili phrase meaning  “raise voices,” so that cases like Magoti's and Kabendera's don't go silent.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: GV Sub-Saharan Africa


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After costume controversy at Miss Universe, Jamaicans celebrate Miss World win · Global Voices
Emma Lewis

Screenshot of a “Good Morning, Britain” interview with the 2019 Miss World pageant winner, Miss Jamaica, Toni-Ann Singh.
Beauty pageants are extremely popular in Jamaica. Many find these glitzy events to be an affirmation of Jamaican culture on the world stage — like sports and music.
Jamaicans celebrated on December 14, 2019, when Jamaican Toni-Ann Singh won the Miss World contest. But one week prior, on December 8, Miss Universe sparked displeasure thanks to a “national embarrassment” over Jamaican delegate Iana Tickle Garcia's national costume, which paid homage to a legendary slave owner.
While Jamaicans joyously celebrated Singh's Miss World win on social media, the Miss Universe costume controversy continued to stir debate online.
Singh, an aspiring doctor born in the rural parish of St. Thomas, dedicated her victory to ambitious, young country girls like herself:
To that little girl in St. Thomas, Jamaica and all the girls around the world – please believe in yourself. Please know that you are worthy and capable of achieving your dreams. This crown is not mine but yours. You have a PURPOSE. pic.twitter.com/hV8L6x6Mhi
— Toni-Ann Singh (@toniannsingh) December 14, 2019
Jamaican social media, unsurprisingly, erupted in joy and a wave of patriotic fervor:
Talk truth! Wi Queen TUN UP! #MissWorld2019 pic.twitter.com/Mfpw9lSrT0
— Terri-Karelle Reid (@TerriKarelle) December 14, 2019
Olivia “Babsy” Grange, Jamaica's Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, was especially delighted:
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She’s done it. Miss Jamaica, Toni-Ann Singh is Miss World 2019. We are so proud! #Jamaica
— Hon.Olivia Grange (@Babsy_grange) December 14, 2019
For many Jamaicans, the Miss World crown helped assuage the anger and discomfort caused at the Miss Universe contest, when Garcia appeared on stage in a white carnival-style outfit titled “The White Witch of Rose Hall”.
Garcia's Miss Universe costume sparked outrage because it paid homage to “Annie Palmer,” the main character who features in the gothic Caribbean legend of the “White Witch of Rose Hall.” According to legend, Annie Palmer was a white woman born in Haiti, who learned to practice voodoo as a young girl. She moved to Jamaica and married John Palmer, the owner of a “great house” — Rose Hall, located in Montego Bay, which is now a major tourist attraction.
The legend is largely derived from a 1929 novel by H.G. De Lisser, replete with racial stereotypes. In the book, she was sexually rapacious, had four husbands and several lovers, including male slaves, many of whom she murdered. Eventually killed by a slave herself, the story goes that Annie Palmer's ghost still allegedly haunts the historic house.
Research shows that there was a real woman by the name of Rosa Palmer — the first mistress at Rose Hall — who apparently did have four husbands, but no criminal tendencies. Subsequently, there was a Jamaican-born Annie Mary Palmer, who had no connection with Haiti, and who died a widow in relative obscurity and not in Rose Hall. But the “White Witch” story has been crafted into a titillating attraction for visitors to Rose Hall, which offers tourists a haunted night tour during which Annie Palmer’s ghost might appear.
One Jamaican objected strongly to what the costume represented, wondering whether the contestant had objected to it:
Why would the ppl in charge of the #MissJamaicaUniverse pageant send this young lady to the #MissUniverse stage as a notorious slave master who killed countless black ppl esp black men. Also, why didn't goodie speak up? #AnniePalmer was the best y'all could do? Uno wrong fi dis. pic.twitter.com/0Vs6x0ZgJ2
— Denise Walters (@like_daw) December 7, 2019
The Miss Universe Jamaica Facebook page shared this description:
[…] Dubbed the White Witch of Rose Hall, local folk legend has it that Annie Palmer ruled the 18th century plantation with an iron fist and drove fear in the hearts of loved ones and enemy’s [sic] alike. Her iconic home, the Rose Hall Great House is a national heritage site in Montego Bay Jamaica and still stands magnificently today after almost three hundred years as a popular visitor attraction where many claim they have spotted Annie Palmer’s ghost.
Jamaican social media users were deeply offended by Miss Jamaica Universe’s depiction of a slave owner:
This outrage is not about the costume, or about whether she was real or not.
This is outrage against what that costume represents; slave masters oppressing slaves. You recognize that in your history books, you don't celebrate it as an expression of our culture.
Get that clear. https://t.co/2dw9fkmGCh
— Stepping Razor ?? (@geoffmarsh) December 8, 2019
However, Garcia's sponsors, Rose Hall Developments Ltd., stood their ground. The managers of the Miss Universe Jamaica organisation posted this response on Facebook:
With this year’s costume, we never sought to glorify slavery, nor promote witchcraft or any of the folk tales Annie Palmer has been accused of, instead, what we sought to do […] was to just tell the story of another part of Jamaican history without endorsing, glorifying or celebrating her deeds or the atrocities of slavery, and hopefully, the conversations resulting could lead to teachable moments for these same young people we were targeting, especially those who have no interest in history taught the traditional way.
Obviously, we have succeeded in this mission, as more people are now talking about this aspect of Jamaican history and we hope they will now be motivated to engage in further research in the topic to have a greater understanding of our past.
Blogger Chelan Smith, however, was not fooled:
I understand they want to step outside the box […] Unfortunately, the organisers jumped out of the box and into the sugar cane fields. To those who can’t see the issue, I would want you to learn the difference between culture and history. A slave owner is not our culture; chattel slavery is our history and not something that should ever be feathered and sequined. Anti-Semitism is a part of Germany’s history, but Miss Germany wouldn’t go as Hitler, because it’s not their culture…
Nevertheless, my heart goes out to the actual Miss Universe Jamaica contestant, who probably didn’t have a say in all of this. I can’t imagine my horror if I were asked to walk down a stage dressed in slavery cosplay. The organisers released a statement that they succeeded in generating discussions about this part of our history, and even quoted Marcus Garvey. Nice try.
Given the whole debacle, the Toni-Ann Singh win at the 2019 Miss World competition felt like the ancestors at work:
One of our own black women…from St. Thomas…wins in England…within said week of “slave owner representation”… at Tyler Perry studios…on a former confederate army base…where competition won by a black…South African…woman w/…natural hair
Ancestors working overtime
— Deika Morrison (@deikamorrison) December 14, 2019
Another Twitter netizen chimed in to comment on Singh’s place of birth — in Jamaica, the parish of St. Thomas is known for its practice of the Indigenous spiritual practice of obeah:
Wait, St Thomas?? The ancestors DEFINITELY avenged the Annie Palmer costume. https://t.co/Rd846CQf82
— ??? (@jordanfibonacci) December 14, 2019
Certainly, by the time the world found out that Jamaica had won the coveted Miss World title, and that women of colour had won all five of the most major beauty contests in the world, Jamaicans were happy to join a celebration of #BlackGirlMagic and set aside the “White Witch” experience:
#missuniverse #missworld #missusa #missteenusa #missamerica #southafrica #Jamaica #NorthCarolina #Connecticut #NewYork pic.twitter.com/A5RvyXfQB5
— Harrod ? (@Harrod_USA) December 15, 2019

author: Emma Lewis


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Inside the party membership scandal rocking Azerbaijan’s opposition · Global Voices
Lamiya Adilgizi

Illustration (c) by Tom Venner for GlobalVoices. Used with permission.
This story was funded by the European Union and supported by the OPEN Media Hub. The author is not, and has never been, a member of any political party in Azerbaijan.
When political dissidents flee Azerbaijan, they do not take plastic boats across the Mediterranean to land on Greek beaches in the cold of winter, nor do they have to walk or hitch-hike their way to Germany, the Netherlands, or Switzerland: they simply fly in carrying documents confirming membership in an opposition party.
Azerbaijan is ruled by Ilham Aliyev, who took over from his father Heydar in 2003. Three parties and several independents sit in the National Assembly, Azerbaijan's parliament. But behind this facade of pluralism is unanimous support for the Aliyev regime and the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP). Meanwhile, the country's extra-parliamentary opposition is marginalised and repressed, with increasing severity in recent years. Human rights activists, journalists, and critics of the regime have been jailed and subjected to severe human rights abuses. Although the government rejects any criticism of its human rights record, Freedom House classifies Azerbaijan as an “entrenched authoritarian regime.”
So being a card-carrying member of an extra-parliamentary opposition party in Azerbaijan today comes with the expectation of abuse, harassment, and sometimes criminal charges. It also means such activists and politicians have good grounds to claim asylum overseas, but it likewise makes party membership attractive to others as a near-ironclad guarantee of success settling in Europe. For years, rumours have circulated that high-level officials in Azerbaijan's opposition parties have been providing membership cards to people with no connection to their political movements — allegedly for cash.
After a series of arrests of Azerbaijani citizens in Germany, there are now grounds to suspect that those rumours are more than rumours after all.
This story revolves around one particular party, the Musavat.
“People approach the Musavat party to get its membership cards; after two or three months, they get additional reference letters referring to these non-political people as ‘heroes who have constantly fought against the repressive regime in Azerbaijan,’ and a few photos together with the party chairman at rallies. That opens the gate to getting asylum abroad,” Yafaz Hasanov told Global Voices. Hasanov is a board member of the Musavat party and the former chair of the Musavat AKM Supervisory Committee in Germany, an organisation established by Musavat in 2016 for its political emigres in the EU.
“This was still possible up until one year ago, but now the German authorities do not believe in it anymore,” he remarked.
Forty-year-old Rahid Bashirov found that out the hard way. Bashirov had been a member of the Musavat party since 1998 and served as deputy chairman of the party's youth branch in Zengilan. In 2014, Bashirov, though still a member of Musavat, started to become disillusioned with the party and was drawn towards the N!DA civic movement. After the Azerbaijani government started to intensify its pressure on members of the opposition in 2015, Bashirov and his wife were dismissed from their jobs at the Shusha Road Institute and the Rabita Bank. In 2017, the family fled to Europe.
“In 2017, the situation became harder. I regularly expressed critical thoughts on social media; we were trying to organise ourselves outside party structures since we were not satisfied with Musavat's policies,” Bashirov told Global Voices in a telephone call. He continued to oppose the authorities’ oppression until he was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. “Now I'm in Germany; I could be arrested if I return [to Azerbaijan] which could pose a risk to my life; even being in jail for a month means igniting my illness,” Bashirov explained.
Upon arrival in Germany, Bashirov applied for political asylum but was rejected. When he appealed the decision at a court in the German city of Münster, the judge dismissed the case.
The rejection letter Bashirov received from the German authorities included the following revealing admission:
…Auch die vorgelegten Parteiausweise, sowie Stellungnahmen anderer Parteimitglieder sind nicht geeignet, den klägerischen Vortrag zu stützen. So ist schon zu beachten, dass Gefälligkeitsbescheinigungen von Parteifunktionären in Aserbaidschan unschwer zu beschaffen sind.
…Furthermore, the party IDs submitted, as well as the statements of other party members, are not sufficient to support the plaintiff's claims. It is to be observed that [such] certificates can be gratuitously obtained without difficulty from party functionaries in Azerbaijan.
There are other indications that Germany has started to treat Azerbaijani asylum applications with more caution. According to the country's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), 1,783 Azerbaijani citizens applied for asylum in 2018. Fifty-seven of these applications were approved. Meanwhile, of the 630 asylum applications made by Azerbaijani citizens in the first five months of 2019, only six were approved. That's an approval rate nearly three times lower than in the previous year.
Ilgar Isayev, who helps assess asylum applications from Azerbaijan for the BAMF, told Global Voices that the majority of Azerbaijani citizens applying for asylum in Germany do so as political dissidents. “They mainly give political reasons, as though they have been persecuted by the government, but when you look into their stories you see that they are mostly unaware of politics… or their statements do not match with what is actually happening in Azerbaijan,” Isayev told this reporter during an interview on September 10. “You feel that these are not people with a political past. People who are really exposed to political persecution are mostly public and quite well-known.”
The BAMF has a rigorous process for verifying asylum seekers’ stories. First, the German officials must consider what might await the person if he or she is sent back to Azerbaijan. If BAMF's decision-makers like Isayev believe there is a good case for asylum, the institution turns to the German Embassy in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, which has independent sources who can establish the applicant's identity and cross-check their story. During this process, explained Isayev in the same interview, the BAMF is not necessarily interested in party membership but whether the individual really is subject to persecution in Azerbaijan.
Isayev added that even in such cases, the party documents provided by applicants were often genuine. “They were predominantly available from 2015 to 2018, but now they're [seen as] insufficient […] It is recommended that no decisions are made on the basis of those documents,” he explained.
This chimes with Bashirov's claims that many people who have received political asylum in Germany on the basis of their Musavat party membership are not opposition members at all. “None [of them] can come and tell me that they've had as systemic political activity as I had, nor been subjected to pressure from the police in Azerbaijan.”
Bashirov says that the sale of such party membership cards began in 2005 when former parliament speaker Isa Gambar still led the Musavat party. “Under the leadership of Arif Hajili [since 2014], it has become more systematic due to the establishment of the party's European Coordination Centre (AKM),” he added.
In August 2019, Musavat party chairman Arif Hajili admitted that he had issued official reference letters to 197 people over the past five years. Hajili, who was re-elected party chairman for another five years on October 13, emphasized that “these documents can be obtained by contacting the relevant party structures. These issues are regulated by the internal governing rules of Musavat.”
Several of Musavat's members told Global Voices that the party's board was never informed of the identities of the 197 people, and the leadership's alleged secrecy over new certificates had ulterior motives.
Yadigar Sadigli is a former deputy chairman of Musavat. He began investigating the party's alleged facilitation of emigration from Azerbaijan as early as 2016, when he worked as a coordinator with party activists in Europe. Sadigli says that, during that year, 60 people had been given reference letters to support asylum applications in Germany. He claims to have verified that none of these 60 people had ever been Musavat party members, though declined to reveal their identities when asked by Global Voices.
“Even though repressions against the party were not as harsh as they had been, the number of Musavatists heading abroad to seek asylum was suspiciously increasing. The disconnect was so obvious that I could not keep silent,” Sadigli told Global Voices.
“We repeatedly suggested that [Musavat] should stop issuing these certificates, and that the party should keep away from the issue as the scandal has already hurt the party image. We even suggested a moratorium on certificates for a certain period,” Sadigli says. “We stated that no one member's rights are more important than the image of the party, but our proposals weren't accepted,” he sighed.
Sadigli eventually resigned from Musavat in May 2018, he says due to frustration at his inability as deputy chairman to investigate the party's asylum policy.
Yafaz Hasanov shares Sadigli's misgivings. “As an active Musavatist and a journalist, I know all the Musavat party members who have been persecuted by the government. I've only seen 19 or 20 of them in Europe so far. So how come the figure is officially 197?” asked Hasanov.
Both Hasanov and Sadigli claim that some party officials even retroactively supplied documentation to Azerbaijanis who had already settled in Europe.
“[Some Azerbaijanis] think that as soon as they are in Germany the gates of heaven will be open to them. But then they realise that they need a residency permit, so they address Musavat AKM to get membership cards and reference letters,” explained Hasanov. “The AKM then sends this list of names to the Musavat headquarters in Baku and they ask that these new names become unconditional members of the party. These names then get registered with an earlier date, and then become members of the Musavat AKM.” Hasanov claims that Musavat AKM has provided at least 200 people with this kind of reference letter, though he suspects the real figure is much higher.
In interviews with Global Voices, the issuing of retroactive letters of reference was neither confirmed nor denied by Hajili or Ilham Hasan, head of Musavat's AKM. Hajili declined to comment further, saying that he felt “there is no need for the press to discuss these issues.”
Tofig Yagublu, another former Musavat deputy chairman, questions the ethics of issuing retroactive reference letters: “Any party member has the right to receive a reference [letter.] I only ask that the reference is written correctly,” he says. “If a person has only been a member of Musavat for a month and has not been subjected to any pressure, there should be no exaggerations… The signature and the stamp are not fake, but the references are full of lies.”
Yagublu goes a step further in his accusations when he says the AKM could exchange reference letters and party membership certificates for money.  “No fake references are given for free”, he says, adding that, on several occasions, he has been approached by Azerbaijani citizens in Europe who have been dissatisfied with documents they have received from the AKM. “They told me that the AKM had cheated them… Of course, they're not paying 100-200 EUR for such assistance. One man who approached me in Europe told me he paid 2,000 EUR for a reference letter from the AKM. But then his lawyer told him that the document was not satisfactory.”
Zakir Agayev, the AKM's former coordinator in Bavaria, also claims that Musavat issues membership cards “to earn money,” and that some officials treat Musavat “as a tourist company rather than a political party.”
Agayev says that between 2005 and 2016, as a small businessman in Azerbaijan, he offered the Musavat party financial assistance, and was later appointed chairman of its branch in the Jalilabad province. When his business was confiscated by the government, Agayev was appointed as a board member of the AKM. But when he tried to reach out to Musavat members based in Europe, he continued, the party did not provide their contacts.
“The ones I reached out to voiced their apathy towards politics in Azerbaijan, which made me suspicious,” recalled Agayev, who added that he did not know any of these new party members so was interested to find out why they had settled in Germany. However, Agayev says that the party leadership did not appreciate his inquisitiveness, and suspects that his expulsion in 2017 may have been connected to his inquiries as well as his Talysh ethnicity.
“I have been a member of the Musavat party for 19 years and a deputy chairman, but I don't know these people,” exclaimed Sadigli. In his opinion, Azerbaijani activists who are subject to pressure from the government do not usually need to take party documentation to European migration offices, as they are already recognised by international human rights watchdogs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
“More interestingly, while holding a rally in Baku, the party leaders cannot gather 200 people to protest,” Sadigli wondered aloud in the interview. “So how can they send 197 people as persecuted members to Europe?”
Musavat party leaders strongly deny the accusations. In an email exchange with this reporter, Musavat's former leader Isa Gambar described them as “a slander campaign against the Musavat party” which began long ago.
“We have heard these allegations, from the authorities, from opposing political forces, and from those who have, for some reason, been offended by the Musavat Party. However, none of the bodies and individuals making the accusations have provided proof […] they have not provided a single counterfeit document from the Musavat Party,” declared Gambar. “How can it be possible, as it is claimed, that Musavat has given away fake documents for years and in such large numbers, but at least some of these fake documents have not been released?”
Importantly, the documents presented to migration offices across Europe cannot be unambiguously called “fake.” Even when they are rejected, such as in Bashirov's case, the party membership cards and letters of support are nonetheless issued by Musavat officials.
“All of them are original, like my own party ID card. They all have the party's stamp on them. The fake element is the people to whom the party ID cards are given,” explained Yafaz Hasanov.
“The party cannot be held responsible for the decisions of European countries, and has not assured any of its members that these documents are sufficient to get permission [to stay] in Europe,” explained Gambar, who speculated that criminal groups may be forging the party's membership cards and documents and stressed that greater European scrutiny of such documents did not reflect a greater suspicion of the Musavat party per se.
When asked about Bashirov's Musavat membership card, Gambar confirmed to Global Voices that the membership card was genuine, in contrast to what he calls “fake documents.” Gambar said that he was not surprised by the German court's negative response to the appeal, as Bashirov “presented his membership card acquired in 2007, which was 12 years ago, in 2019.” Technically, this should not matter; party functionaries say that none of the official membership cards issued by the Musavat party have a validity term.
This isn't the first time Musavat's membership policy has been put on the spot. On February 27, 2017, Gambar and Hajili were summoned to the General Prosecutor’s Office and interrogated about Azerbaijanis seeking refugee status in Europe with fake documents. Gambar described the move as politically motivated.
“Apparently the authorities were concerned about the active participation of the Musavat Party in the country and around the world,” Gambar told the news website Novator after their questioning. Arif Hajili made similar remarks at that time.
On February 25, 2017, Musavat's deputy head Gulaga Aslanli was also interrogated. On December 11 of this year, Aslanli filed a lawsuit against Yafaz Hasanov on charges of slander concerning Hasanov's allegations that Musavat is involved in document forgery.
Bashirov, at least, is convinced that the Musavat party refused to stand by him because he refused to pay bribes. “But not only: if I'd said ‘long live Arif [Hajili]!’ they would have helped me too,” he added. “But because I'm genuine and they couldn't make money from me, they decided to remain silent. They didn't want to go further, as this trade is public now and that their market is dying,” concluded Bashirov.
Sadigli told Global Voices that he “did not want to believe” that money could be exchanged for party membership.
Indeed, it is hard to prove whether money changed hands for ID cards and letters of recommendation. Azerbaijani asylum seekers who had received the cards were reluctant to speak on the record, out of fear of jeopardising their residency status. But a recent arrest in Germany suggests a possible connection.
On November 13, Der Spiegel reported that German Federal Police launched an early morning raid on apartments in Cologne, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, and Düsseldorf as part of an operation against smuggling, document forgery, and money laundering by gangs of Azerbaijani citizens. The 180 police officers involved were able to secure extensive evidence, including laptops, smartphones, identity documents, and around 21,000 euros in cash.
According to a press release from the police in the city of Koblenz, a 49-year-old and a 58-year-old Azerbaijani citizen were arrested. One of them was Mehdi Khalilbayli, the second in command of the Musavat AKM. “These people are accused of having smuggled at least 20 people from Azerbaijan to Germany in exchange for payment of between 3,000 and 10,000 Euros. The group of perpetrators had provided the gangs with fake documents on an organized scale to enable them to stay in Germany for a long time,” reads the press release.
In an email exchange with the author on December 3, Federal Public Prosecutor of Koblenz Thorsten Kahl confirmed that the two men were detained on the basis of an arrest warrant concerning people smuggling and document forgery, and added that the investigation concerns eight suspects.
This latest series of arrests was apparently launched after a confession by Rashad Mammadov, who, according to a ruling from the Koblenz City Court from October 25 seen by reporters, had acted as a driver to transport forged documents and large sums of money between Khalilbeyli and Ilham Hasan.
Immediately after the arrests, Musavat leaders attempted to distance themselves from the arrested men. In comments to independent media outlet MeydanTV on November 14, Hajili claimed that Khalilbeyli was simply “an ordinary member of the party and not the deputy chairman of the AKM.” On November 20, chair of Musavat's AKM Ilham Hasan stated that Khalilbeyli had not been expelled from the organisation, and stressed that all accusations against Musavat in connection with selling membership cards were a smear campaign.
The rumours appear to have damaged the reputation of Musavat. Azerbaijan's oldest political party, which led the country during its short period of independence after the collapse of the Tsarist Empire, now faces what could be an irreversible damage to its credibility.
“All these public discussions about the sale of party ID cards have increased the public's scepticism and diminished their confidence [in Musavat.] If they are confirmed by the [German] courts, I think the party leadership should resign […] This scandal has stuck to the party's name, and it will put an end to the leaders’ political careers,” remarked Professor Altay Goyushov, a political scientist and head of the Baku Research Institute, a think tank based in Azerbaijani's capital (Dr. Goyushov is also a prominent member of REAL, another opposition movement in Azerbaijan — ed.)
Goyushov believes that unless and until the German court system issues a ruling, the party leadership will simply dismiss the accusations as rumours and falsehoods. He believes that even though Musavat is unlikely to leave Azerbaijani politics quickly, its influence is overstated and the veteran party has been unable to seriously address the needs of a youthful population which demands a rejuvenated politics.
“The opposition has been trying to renew [itself] since 2010, but the repressions, the reprisals over N!DA, the arrest of Ilgar Mammadov managed to stop that process. At the center of all those repressions, the traditional opposition including Musavat started reappearing, but it seems the party itself had difficulties getting people involved in political struggles,[which] shows that the void was not actually filled. But the space is not empty in vain, this process has to be led in a certain direction. Probably, the process of formation of a new opposition party, which is mainly composed of young people in Azerbaijan, is a must and they will emerge,” says Goyushov.
Sergey Rumyantsev, a Berlin-based sociologist specialising on Azerbaijan, believes that the outlook is bleak. “The Musavat crisis is connected more with state pressure and it's obvious that the government has used this case to try and destroy the country's opposition parties even more. But in principle there are internal problems: the leadership of Musavat has not changed for a very long time. It's a huge problem when the opposition party copies the regime and becomes hereditary,” explained Rumyantsev.
For now, Europe plays an important role for Azerbaijani dissidents as a space where they can express themselves openly and form associations. That is why activists like Sadigli feel that Musavat's scandal is also a tragedy which could threaten that oasis of freedom.
In the two weeks since the arrests, the German authorities have deported nearly 300 Azerbaijani citizens from Bavaria alone. Meanwhile, Vusal Huseynov, head of Azerbaijan's State Migration Service, has identified 1,385 Azerbaijanis who he says are illegally in Germany and must be returned home.

author: Lamiya Adilgizi


text:
New documentary charts the RuNet’s unlikely rise — and its fall · Global Voices
Maxim Edwards

Russian President Vladimir Putin shares his thoughts on the origins internet during a press conference. Image from Andrey Loshak's Holivar documentary, YouTube.
Just over 25 years ago, the .ru domain name was created, and with it the RuNet was born. Russian journalist Andrey Loshak has marked the anniversary by releasing “Holivar” (known in English as “Holy War” or “InterNyet”), a seven-part documentary on the evolution of the Russian internet. Featuring interviews with entrepreneurs behind iconic Russian digital brands like VKontakte, Yandex, and Mail.ru, the series charts the RuNet’s rise from a niche 1990s subculture to the ubiquitous part of Russian society, culture, and politics it has become today.
The first episode in the series premiered on June 9, 2019 at the Beat Film Festival, and was released publicly on the Current Time YouTube channel, owned by Radio Free Europe, on September 5. The series has received critical acclaim both in Russia and abroad, winning the Redkollegia and Professiya-Jurnalist awards:
Как будто смотришь фильм о медленном и мучительном умирании близкого друга и бессилен ему чем-то помочь.
It's like watching a film about the slow and painful death of a close friend and being unable to help him in any way.
— A top comment beneath Holy War's 6th episode on YouTube
Loshak's film simultaneously celebrates a milestone and bids farewell to the Russian internet he once knew — and he appears to have known everybody — there are very few prominent living entrepreneurs (or enemies) of the RuNet who did not appear in the documentary. Though their accounts may may seem anachronistic to viewers in Europe and North America, these figures tell a unique story of wistful techno-utopianism, which seems far removed from today's political and moral panic over data security and the unchecked influence of digital giants.
In this retelling, the RuNet was the creation of some pugnacious “disruptors” (the good guys), and its inherent internationalism and openness now under threat from the Russian state (the bad guys), who are set on nationalising it as a “splinternet.” The series opens and closes in California, starting with a hippy innovator who helped construct the Soviet internet, and ending with these same praiseworthy innovators having moved to Silicon Valley because Vladimir Putin's Russia no longer had a use for them.
Following the introduction of Russia's “Sovereign Internet” bill in November, there is an urgent need to recall the international pedigree of Russia's internet. Both detractors and supporters of the bill are keenly aware of this history, with the former emphasising the role of Anton Nossik and Russian-Israeli tech engineers who returned to Russia in the 1990s, and the latter (including Vladimir Putin) maintaining that the internet always was — and unambiguously remains — a project of western intelligence services.
Perhaps the most interesting lesson from Loshak's documentary is that, despite its international origins, the RuNet has long been “sovereign” — just not in the way that the authorities might prefer.
Today, it seems remarkable just how little Putin and the Russian elite appeared to care about the internet in its early days. In one memorable anecdote, the late Anton Nossik and investor Egor Shuppe recall then prime minister Putin's 1999 meeting with key representatives of the “online community.” Shuppe recalls that “our hidden agenda was to explain to him that we were kids who had no power, so should be left alone… and the weirdest thing was that Putin gave us his word and kept it for 15 years.”
Similarly, In 2001, when the first online web conference was held with Putin's participation, journalist Marina Litvinovich recalls having to explain to the president what the internet was. Putin reportedly told her that he did not need the internet, as he had many other sources of information — an attitude which, by some accounts, persists to this day:
Ну, я думала что поскольку он разведчик, КГБщик, то я рассказывала что это большая база данных, с которой можно найти все угодно, и показала сайты. Я показала ему несколько сайта поисков, Yandex, Rambler, Yahoo. Не было много времени, но я помню что, вообщем, не проникулся он интернетом. Я много раз узнавала у разных людей, что он не ползовался интернетом и не понимает зачем. Он много раз потом говорил, что это какая-то помойка.
Well, I thought that he's a secret services agent, a KGB guy, so I told him that it's a big database, with which you can find anything you need, and showed him some sites. I showed him a few search engines, Yandex, Rambler, Yahoo. There wasn't a lot of time, but I remember that, on the whole, he didn't really care for the internet. I heard many times from various people that he didn't use the internet and didn't understand why he should. He's said many times since that it's just a trashcan.
Subsequently, the Kremlin did show some interest in the growing opportunities of an online presence. Following the destruction of the opposition-friendly oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky‘s Media Most holding during the early years of Putin's rule, the new president's team made their first foray into online media. Political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, for whom Litvinovich worked at the time, helped launch early online news platforms like Strana, Vesti, and Lenta.ru, but with limited success and stiff competition from popular news aggregators, the authorities gradually lost interest in the initiative.
But necessity breeds invention: faced with a lack of investment, the RuNet's entrepreneurs created an autonomous digital ecosystem, with its own leading digital brands. As Russian investor Yury Miller points out, the RuNet's uniqueness lies in the fact that Russian tech companies still maintain significant — and sometimes, leading — positions on the market, without state interference or protectionism (unlike China).
Some of these brands, such as Miller's Mail.Ru, have even entered the London Stock Exchange — and despite the global financial crisis of a decade ago, influential businessmen like Alisher Usmanov continued to invest in the RuNet.
By the time Putin returned to the Russian presidency in 2012, the mood was very different. The impact of the Arab Spring, widely attributed to the power of social media, compelled Russia's rulers to consider the revolutionary potential of the RuNet. Once the broadcast and print media had been brought to heel, the RuNet became a space for combative, independent journalism, beyond the state's reach.
By 2012, Yandex News and Lenta.ru had become more popular than the state-owned Channel One. Something had to be done, and it was. Putin's return to power was accompanied by protests over the first restrictive legislation against the RuNet. It would be the first of many.
These years marked a new, proactive approach from the Kremlin towards digital governance. Once “Grey Cardinal” Gleb Pavlovsky, who left the presidential administration in 2011, joined the opposition, the Kremlin found a new “internet director” in Konstantin Rykov. In the documentary, Pavlovsky seems amused by the “ostentatious projects with lots of Russian flags” which emerged. These evolved so well that Rykov, who brought the style to the RuNet, was no longer needed, says Pavlovsky. “Anybody can do it now.”
And they did. The Kremlin and its supporters soon learnt the value of a state-organised “civil society”. In 2011, Alexey Malofeev, a monarchist and traditionalist oligarch, founded the League for a Safe Internet; its “CyberSquads” monitored the internet for objectionable content in the name of protecting family values and keeping children away from harmful online material. The Kremlin's increasing interest in digital governance therefore became linked to a “grassroots” conservative turn, aided by the pronouncements of outspoken, socially conservative lawmakers like Yelena Mizulina.
The seeds of the Internet Research Agency, the notorious St. Petersburg-based “troll factory” that would later flood any critical content with angry posts by employees posing as patriotic citizens, can also be seen in these initiatives.
From 2012 onwards, the interventions came thick and fast. An internet blacklist law was passed, initially to target child abuse and narcotics, but in 2013, its scope was broadened to include “advocating extremism” and “calling for illegal meetings”.
At the same time, the government exerted pressure to change the editorial leadership of Gazeta.ru, and blocked the independent news website Grani.ru. In 2014, in the run-up to Russia's annexation of Crimea, the majority of the editorial staff of Lenta.ru, including editor Galina Timchenko, staged a walkout in protest over political interference, and thereafter founded the independent media website Meduza.
That same year, Russia's largest social media network, VKontakte, came under the control of the Russian authorities when its founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, refused to hand over user data to Russian law enforcement. Upon leaving the country, Durov decried Russia as “now incompatible with the internet business”. VKontakte and Odnkolassniki, another popular Russian social media network, are now owned by Mail.ru. The digital giant's current director is, quite tellingly, Boris Dobrodeev, son of Oleg Dobrodeev, general director of Russia's state-owned broadcasting company, VGTRK.
With the appointment of German Klimenko as Putin's new internet advisor in late 2015, the Kremlin further tightened the screws on cyberspace. By 2016, the government had turned its attention towards Yandex. A new law on news aggregators would undermine this early RuNet giant, which was now obliged to only index stories from media sources approved by the state communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor. These restrictions culminated in the Yarovaya Law, which expanded existing counter-terrorism legislation to make further demands for data collection on Russian internet users.
Loshak's interviewees do not hesitate to stress how unprofitable these restrictions have made Russia's once vibrant digital market. Yandex, for instance, was said to be even ahead of Google in some innovations, though lamentably, investment in the RuNet has fallen back to what it was a decade ago. While some miss the RuNet of the turbulent 1990s as a space of free expression, others miss it as a space for unbridled business opportunity; in the series, the two are strongly presented as synonymous.
However, Loshak's focus on the self-declared architects of the RuNet leads him to avoid a key category of RuNet “entrepreneur” — the ordinary citizens who have made it their own, often in difficult circumstances. It is an innovation for which the RuNet is famous, and feeds into a worldwide conversation about digital freedoms and creativity.
Overseas, the RuNet is primarily known not for its investment potential, but for its users’ commitment to free access to culture and knowledge, often achieved semi-legally. Sci-Hub, Lib.ru, and LibraryGenesis are all examples of this battle around culture and copyright, which a purely commercial or political account of the RuNet's woes cannot fully address.
To date, the Duma has passed over 20 laws restricting internet freedom in Russia. It doesn't look as if they will stop, either; Loshak suggests that the next frontier may now be YouTube which, much like the online media outlets of the 2010s, is harder to bring to heel than a traditional television station or newspaper.
As the blogger Ilya Varlamov tells Loshak, the Kremlin's approach to YouTube mirrors its attempts to crack down on bloggers during the 2010s. Yet, in 2019, video bloggers are at the forefront of the social and political conversation, on a far more sophisticated and popular RuNet than a decade ago. Their ability to thrive off donations from their armies of followers presents a dangerous financial — as well as political — autonomy.
So what will the latest chapter in the RuNet’s history look like? According to Loshak, what will save the RuNet will be not professionalism, but the “idiocies of corruption” — perhaps meaning that the state’s bold plans will not be properly implemented as a result. Nevertheless, he added, the current confrontation was an inevitability:
[Рунет] помогает людям объединиться, горизонтально, а наша власть привыкла к такой строгой иерархичности, к этой приславутой вертикале. Они входят в этот клинч. Тут правда такой конфликт онтологический… Я не вижу как еще власть может реагировать кроме пытаться взять под контроль полностью.
The RuNet helps people to organise horizontally, and our authorities are used to strict hierarchies and a vertical of power. They’re in a clinch; this is by nature an ontological conflict…  I don’t see how the authorities could react other than to try and fully take it under their control.
— Andrey Loshak in conversation with Ekho Moskvy, September 5, 2019

author: Maxim Edwards


text:
Sudan’s ride-sharing revolution needs better regulation · Global Voices
Mohamed Suliman

Taxis in Khartoum, Sudan, October 20, 2012. Photo by Digitalain via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0.
Ride-sharing apps have revolutionized transportation and improved lives around the world — most recently in Sudan. But with this change came legal complications and debates about labor organizing and the relationship between platform owners and drivers.
Sudan’s ride-sharing industry faces serious challenges regarding labor rights, algorithm bias and data privacy that need to be addressed for ride-sharing to be sustainable.
In the last few years, following the expansion of internet penetration to almost 30 percent, Sudan’s ride-sharing industry started to take off.
Platforms such as  Tirhal, lemon and Mishwar now dominate the market. Foreign companies such as the Dubai-based Careem, which was acquired by Uber earlier this year, tried to invest in Sudan but ultimately divested. Startups such as Tarha based its model on the ride-sharing idea but offers a car-pooling service to the same destination.
Ride-sharing has had a profound impact on taxi drivers in Sudan and created intense rivalries between each other — and ride-share drivers — to secure clients.
In December 2018, the General Union of Transport Workers and the Transport Ministry released a statement to support the suspension of the ride-sharing apps. The secretary-general of the union, Yosif Jamaa, said these apps get around the Emergency Transport (ET) law, a permit intended for use in emergencies only. “The ET law isn’t permanent and not to be used all the time, in addition to system flaws, technical issues, and other issues that have no special legislation to address them,” Jamaa said.
Sudanese social media hit back against these attempts.
Taxis in Khartoum, Sudan, February 2007. Photo by Turkairo via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0.
There are currently only two contractual agreements to regulate the ride-sharing industry.
The Emergency Transportation Permit is a permit issued by the state. Technically, this permit is intended for use in emergencies only. Yet, all ride-sharing companies must request this permit as one of its conditions for registration.
Ride-share drivers must also agree to various terms and conditions and sign these contracts when they download applications to work for ride-sharing companies. These agreements govern and organize the relationship between drivers and platform owners.
Yet, these contractual agreements — albeit covering basic relations between the state, platform owners and drivers — still overlook crucial issues in terms of labor rights.
For example, the law does not recognize drivers as full-time employees. With vague categorization as “drivers” or “contractors,” companies can shirk responsibility to provide health insurance and other benefits. The current contractual agreements are also vague in terms of drivers’ responsibilities to pay taxes on income earned from their work in the ride-sharing industry.
Algorithm bias poses yet another challenge for drivers. Platforms are not transparent about the algorithms used to organize traffic and set rates. These algorithms can sometimes show bias toward particular areas over others, preventing drivers from getting matched with clients. Drivers should know which algorithms are used to set the prices and determine viable routes.
Data privacy and protection remain vulnerable for those who participate in ride-sharing, both clients and drivers. Drivers’ names, addresses and car numbers should be protected by platform owners, but there is no language in the current agreements to ensure data privacy. Some ride-share apps such as lemon, put a link to a privacy policy that leads only to their webpage — perhaps to fulfill registration requirements for Apple and Google Play stores.
A data breach of tirhal taxi during the ongoing revolution in Sudan in January 2019 underscored the importance of data protection. The hacker, who goes by the name “Mr. Sniper” on Twitter, tweeted that leaked data included order histories and live locations and registration data for drivers and customers. Further analysis of the leaked data revealed drivers’ names and license information, car makes and models, license plate numbers and trip logs, according to Rogue Media.
Until now, ride-share drivers have no official union that can raise awareness about their issues, and advocate for their rights against the platforms’ owners and government’s policies. The right to unionize is not explicitly stated and drivers do not currently have the right to engage in collective bargaining with platform creators about working conditions, fair contracts, wages and other issues.
Drivers meet on a few Facebook groups to discuss a wide range of problems and issues, share ideas, or sell and buy cars and accessories, but no formally organizing has begun in Sudan to solve drivers’ issues.
Uber, the ride-share giant based in the United States, has had to look closely at these issues and continues to attempt to resolve major disputes with their drivers.
Many Sudanese citizens think the Sudanese economy has benefited from the ride-sharing industry and experts say it has reduced the transportation problem in Sudan. But for society to adopt ride-sharing in a sustainable way, new laws must address a litany of unresolved issues to ensure the rights of all parties.

author: Mohamed Suliman


text:
Family members preserve the memory of a worker killed during Brazil’s dictatorship · Global Voices
Agência Mural

A union leader died in 1979 during the military dictatorship. Image: Henrique Sales Barros/Agência Mural, used with permission.
This story was written by Henrique Sales Barros. It is published here via a content-sharing partnership between Global Voices and Agência Mural.
On October 31, 1979, Santo Dias Filho — or Santinho, as he is known — and Luciana Dias were, respectively, 13 and 11 years old.
That day, in the middle of a crowd of 30,000 people, they were in a car with the then Archbishop of São Paulo, Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, on their way to Sé Cathedral. There, they participated in the funeral mass of their father, Santo Dias, who had died the day before at a workers’ protest.
Santo was distributing pamphlets at the door of the old television tube factory Sylvania, in Campo Grande, southern São Paulo, when he was shot in the back during an attempt by police forces to repress the striking workers.
As well as being a union leader, Santo Dias also acted as community leader along with his wife, Ana Dias, in the Vila Remo neighbourhood where they lived, in Jardim Ângela district, also in the capital’s south, and was a member of Brazil's Workers’ Pastoral.
Santinho and Luciana are now adults of 53 and 51 years old. Together, the siblings are the main figures of the Santo Dias Committee, which promotes and helps in the organization of events to preserve the metalworker’s memory.
Today, Luciana Dias is the educational coordinator of a school in Jardim São Luís, in southern São Paulo. | Photo: Henrique Sales Barros/Agência Mural, used with permission.
The committee, created soon after Santo's death, traditionally organizes an event in his memory every 30 October, at 2 p.m., in front of where the Sylvania factory used to operate, on Quararibéia Street. Today there is a residential condominium there.
On the tarmac, people paint, in red, the words “here the Christian worker Santo Dias da Silva was murdered, on 30 October 1979, by the military dictatorship.” From there, they head for Campo Grande Cemetery, about 500 meters away, where Santo's body is buried.
When Santo Dias died, 15 years had passed since Brazil’s 1964 military coup that deposed President João Goulart. The country was ruled by General João Baptista Figueiredo, at a time when political opening and re-democratization were beginning to be discussed. However, it was only in 1985, six years later, that a civilian would again hold the presidency.
For Luciana Dias, the group is necessary so that her father's story does not fade away. “He was a voice that was silenced by the dictatorship, and a silenced voice always has a lot to say,” she said.
Committee meetings are held in a room in the Holy Trinity Convent, in the capital’s southern Santo Amaro district. Santo Dias arrived in this area when he came in the city as a migrant from Terra Roxa, a town in the interior of São Paulo state, in 1962.
Anybody interested in participating in the meetings is welcomed. “There [in the meetings of the Committee], there are priests, bishops, university students, friends of Santo,” says Santinho.
They leave the conservation of documents to Cedem (Documentation and Memory Center) of Unesp (São Paulo State University), which keeps more than 3,500 documents, including texts, photographs, and videos, and others, related to the worker. The archive can be viewed at Cedem's headquarters in Praça da Sé, in downtown São Paulo.
Luciana Dias thinks leaving these files with Cedem's is the best way to preserve them. “There everything is well kept, sterilized, and acclimatized. Here [with the family] all this material stayed in cardboard boxes,” she recalls.
Santinho graduated in architecture and designed his own house | Photo: Henrique Sales Barros/Agência Mural. used with permission.
This year, the family has often split itself to attend the numerous events happening, sometimes on the same day and at the same time.
“There's a lot that happens that we, the Santo Dias’ family, don't ask. There are other people, from other places, who come to us and say ‘look, come here, we'll pay homage to your father,'” said Santo Filho.
On Saturday 26 October, for example, Santinho went to São José dos Campos city, a one-hour drive from São Paulo, to participate in an event by the Drivers’ Union in honour of his father. Meanwhile, Luciana went to the Memorial of Resistance in central São Paulo, where a detention centre of the dictatorship used to be, to participate in the launch of the second edition of the biographical book “Santo Dias: When the Past Becomes History.”
The book was written by Luciana with the journalist Jô Azevedo and the photographer Nair Benedicto. The first edition was released in 2004, and the book has more than 60 testimonies from religious people, family, friends, and retired workers who were close to Santo.
Luciana says she grew up having the idea of writing a book about her father: “Stories of bosses, barons and colonels we already have in heaps, but the story of a worker is never valued as much,” she said.
Asked about how young people from the outskirts have been involved in keeping their father's memory alive, Luciana recalled when she went to see a play in February based on his biography, staged by a youth group from the Capão Redondo Cultural Factory, in southern São Paulo.
Luciana watched “Os Santos Dias do Capão“, directed by 34-year-old Ícaro Rodrigues, at Cia. Mungunzá in central São Paulo. When she was introduced to the young performers at the end of the play, she said they were surprised and thanked her for attending, amidst tears and smiles. “It was emotional,” she said.
She also mentioned the coordinators, teachers, and students of Ubuntu, a network of pre-university courses in southern São Paulo, of which one of the branches carries her father's name. They worked with the committee and created a poster with a QR Code which links to a page with information about Santo Dias.
When asked, Santinho was confident that his father's memory will be maintained even if he, his sister or people who had close contact with Santo are no longer alive. “The memory of Santo is no longer ours, his family’s: it is the world’s,” he said.

author: Agência Mural


text:
Has Russia influenced the general elections in Mozambique? · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

Elections in Mozambique. Photo by Dércio Tsandzana from September 2019. Used with permission.
Two months after general elections in Mozambique gave an overwhelming victory to the ruling party Frelimo, citizens continue to debate whether foreign actors might have interfered with the electoral process.
On October 15, 2019, Mozambicans cast ballots for president, parliament and — for the first time— provincial governors. Incumbent president Filipe Nyusi was reelected and his Frelimo party obtained two-thirds of the unicameral legislative seats and won all governorship seats. The Constitutional Council, Mozambique's highest court, hasn't yet ratified the results, which is contested by the opposition.
Two weeks after the elections, on October 30, Facebook announced the suspension of accounts originated in Russia targeting multiple African countries, including Mozambique. The company said the accounts engaged in “inauthentic behavior” and were connected with Russian financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin.
Prigozhin, who has close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was indicted by the United States’ special counsel Robert Mueller for running a ”troll factory” that interfered in the 2016 presidential election in that country.
In its announcement, the company said:
Today, we removed 35 Facebook accounts, 53 Pages, seven Groups and five Instagram accounts that originated in Russia and focused on Madagascar, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon.
The individuals behind this activity used a combination of fake accounts and authentic accounts of local nationals in Madagascar and Mozambique to manage Pages and Groups, and post their content. They typically posted about global and local political news including topics like Russian policies in Africa, elections in Madagascar and Mozambique, election monitoring by a local non-governmental organization and criticism of French and US policies.
Facebook added that these accounts and pages spent around 77,000 USD in ads from April 2018 to October 2019.
One of the pages Facebook listed as being “inauthentic” was that of the Association for Free Research and Cooperation (AFRIC). This organization sent a 60-person electoral observation mission to Mozambique, according to its official website.
The NGO self-describes as “a community of independent researchers, experts, and activists” and says that, in the past 14 months, it has observed elections in Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and the Republic of South Africa, as well in Mozambique.
According to a story from November 2019 by the Portuguese version of Radio France International (RFI), AFRIC's observatory mission in Mozambique operated “without anyone knowing very well the work of the field observers.” RFI did not cite any sources for such allegations.
AFRIC's report on the Mozambican elections praised the process as “well-organized,” but listed a number of irregularities during voting and vote counting.
The report echoes other observation missions’ conclusions. The European Union's mission identified more serious irregularities.
Suspicions about Russian interference began before the elections with the publication, on October 4, of a poll conducted by an organization called the International Anticrisis Center (AIC), which gave a clear victory to Frelimo.
According a story by The Guardian from May 2019 about the South African elections, the International Anticrisis Center is believed to be linked to Prigozhin. Both AIC and AFRIC attempted to influence the vote in favor of the ruling African National Congress party (ANC), The Guardian reported.
Mozambican law prohibits polling during the electoral period. The opposition party Renamo reported the case to the Attorney General's office.
Nevertheless, the poll was widely disseminated on social media, including via Facebook pages that have now been deleted. Until today, the poll is available on AIC's website.
After it was published, the Center for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican civil society organization, claimed that the survey could be an attempt to influence public opinion:
O mais provável é que a sondagem publicada seja mais uma fake news. Os dados são bastante suspeitos, uma vez que o Presidente Filipe Nyusi teve uma classificação alta em termos de popularidade em Nampula controlada pela oposição do que em Gaza, que é bastião da Frelimo.
Most likely, the published poll is another piece of fake news. The data is quite suspicious, as President Filipe Nyusi scored higher in popularity in opposition-controlled Nampula than in Frelimo's bastion Gaza.
Members of the Frelimo party also published the poll on different social media platforms. One of the members who had shared the survey removed it after being called to attention on Twitter by the social activist Tomás Queface:
Ehehe estou na arquibancada a acompanhar o desenrolar da conversa. O ilustre @basiliomuhate publicou uma sondagem que dá vitória de Nyusi e a Frelimo em quase todas as províncias. Mas como apercebeu-se de que estava a cometer um ilícito foi obrigado a remover o link ?
— Tomás Queface (@tomqueface) October 9, 2019
Ehehe I'm just watching the conversation. My friend @basiliomuhate published a poll that gives Nyusi and Frelimo victory in almost every province. But when he realized that he was committing a legal error, he was forced to remove the link ?
African history researcher Eric Morier-Genoud commented:
Illegal interference in the #Mozambique elections. No poll is allowed to be published during the electoral campaign. From Russia with Love… https://t.co/Ayu2aMu4Tl
— Eric Morier-Genoud (@emorier) October 10, 2019
Two days before the official election results were announced on October 30, AIC posted a tweet congratulating Filipe Nyusi and Frelimo.
Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi is re-elected with 73% of the vote. His Frelimo party will get 184 seats in Parliament. Opposition party Renamo failed to win a single province pic.twitter.com/89Un408fCn
— International Anticrisis Center (@iaccenters_en) October 28, 2019
The relations between Russia and Mozambique have warmed up in the last years.
Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi visited Moscow in August, and on that occasion, Russia announced it would forgive 95 percent of the Mozambican debt, although the exact amount of this debt remains unclear. Nyusi also attended the first Russia-Africa summit in Sotchi in October.
Morier-Genoud claimed that Nyusi's trip to Russia served as a thank you for Russia's support:
@FNyusi off to #Russia to thank the government for its military help, its meddling in elections, and possibly for some loan to help struggling ENH national oil company — “из России с любовью” #Mozambiquehttps://t.co/lF1jS9bUYa
— Eric Morier-Genoud (@emorier) October 22, 2019
On October 21, the Russian Foreign Ministry congratulated Mozambique for holding elections:
❗ Presidential, parliamentary and gubernatorial #elections were held in #Mozambique on October 15. #Moscow welcomes the success of such an important event in Mozambique’s domestic political life. ? https://t.co/LfamnZp1u0 #Russia #Diplomacy #Africa #RussiaAfrica pic.twitter.com/lcPWoQ20a2
— MFA Russia ?? (@mfa_russia) October 21, 2019
This article is part of a series of posts examining interference with digital rights through methods such as shutdowns and disinformation during key political events in seven African countries: Algeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The project is funded by the Africa Digital Rights Fund of The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA).

author: Dércio Tsandzana


text:
Latest offering from Russian cult novelist Pelevin divides and confuses critics · Global Voices
Sasha Shapiro

Detail from the front cover of Viktor Pelevin's “искусство легких касаний” (“The Art of the Light Touch”), published 2019. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
This August, prolific Russian writer Viktor Pelevin published his newest novel “The Art of the Light Touch” (Искусство легких касаний). Pelevin, who has published a new book every year since 2011, is hailed by literary critics and adoring fans as an “undeniable genius” for his stark analysis of Russia's contemporary political and social climate. But Pelevin is also something of a mystery: the author has not given an interview or been on a book tour in over a decade. Indeed, many fans suspect that Pelevin is less an individual and more a conglomeration of many different authors. Some even think he is a computer.
For his part, Pelevin has done nothing to dispel these rumours and conspiracies. Whoever he really is, Pelevin’s talent is undeniable. He fuses esoteric philosophy with sharp observations on current events. In 2009, Pelevin was voted the most influential intellectual in Russia; his works have made it into the postmodernist literary canon and are taught in every philology department in Russia and in universities abroad.
That reputation made the mixed reviews which met this year's eagerly anticipated novel all the more surprising.
Unlike Pelevin's recent works, “The Art of the Light Touch” is not a novel, but a collection of tangentially related short stories. It is also less of an explicit reflection on Russia's politics and provides a broader and more philosophical reflection on the country's predicaments. Perhaps, writes critic Galina Yuzefuvich, Pelevin is simply “tiring of his role as professional interpreter of Russia's political reality.” But if that's true, it doesn't mean that these fantasies are any less interesting for those seeking to understand contemporary Russia.
Iakinf, the first of the trio, is the most readable. It is the story of four friends (a banker, a late-night television host, a sociologist, and a glazier) on a hiking trip in Kabardino-Balkaria, in Russia's North Caucasus. They are led by Iakinf, a mysterious guide who gradually reveals his past as a psychic during the tumultuous 1990s and his acquaintance with a mafioso who employed him to summon the ancient spirit-God Baal. Iakinf captivates his audience and readers alike with tales of ancient spirits and child sacrifice. We are left wondering what the latter signifies: are Russia's youths and their futures being ritually sacrificed to maintain power structures? Is progress and potential being sacrificed to feed the power-hungry Russian authorities?
At the end of each night, the four friends question their narrator’s story. Is Iakinf really a powerful mage, or just a talented fabulist? They find out soon enough. As they choose their paths, the friends find themselves before the mountain where Iakinf once summoned the ancient spirit Baal. They follow the steps of Iakinf's spirit children who were ritually sacrificed, and the four friends disappear without a trace. Following the frame narrative, a literary device beloved by Russian authors Pushkin, Gogol, and Nabokov, this story ends just as it began. Iakinf rides down the mountain on his bicycle, whistling his out of tune French ballads, waiting to lure more unsuspecting travellers.
The menace of myth and unreality is also a strong theme in the third story, titled Stolypin: Fight After Victory. It is a continuation of Pelevin's recent book Secret Views from Mount Fuji (2018), and features the same protagonists. It is set in a dreamscape, at first a train, which turns out to be a boat, and is a linguistic exploration of prison slang as well as a psychological investigation of the prison mentality. Pelevin presents a twisted, post-Soviet Russian version of Plato’s cave: a warped view of reality from behind the prison bars.
But it is the second story, by far the most substantial, which has most captivated critics’ attention.
Also titled “The Art of the Light Touch”, it is a detective narrative which attempts to tie ancient masonic conspiracies to contemporary politics. The story's protagonist is Konstantin Parakletovich Golgofskii, a prominent Russian philosopher and historian specialising in Freemasonry. After witnessing the attempted assassination of a neighbour (General Izyumin of Russia's Foreign Military Intelligence Services) while at his summerhouse, Golgofskii delves into a mystery that redefines his life. As the general drinks a poisoned tea and collapses into Golgofskii’s arms, he shakily points to the roof of his house. Golgofskii immediately assumes that the wounded general's last gesture is something of great importance, so starts his investigation that ultimately leads him to the truth behind the information war between Russia and the United States.
His quest leads Golgofskii across Russia and Europe, always staying one step ahead of Russian secret services who are determined to prevent him from discovering a dangerous secret. The quest takes Golgofskii to the house of a noted Egyptologist in Kaliningrad, a dingy Paris brothel, the living room of a renowned scholar of the Marquis de Sade, and the home of a former SS officer on the bank of a majestic Norwegian Fjord (where he goes undercover as a researcher of East German televised ballet.) He eventually makes his way back to Moscow to meet his final source: a subordinate of General Izyumin who was been working on a top-secret project conspicuously titled “The Art of the Light Touch.”
A few self-indulgent abstractions later, concerning the history of ancient Egyptian sects, the French Revolutionary Cult of Reason, and Nazi occultist movements, Golgofskii discovers the shocking truth. The Russian government has harnessed ancient masonic secrets of disseminating information. The world, in Pelevin's narrative, is not ruled by a world government, nor by ruling classes of the rich and powerful, but by chimeras. These “tattoos of the mind” play an important role in Izyumin’s obsession with occult history, given their historical role as artificial semantics designed to manipulate public opinion.
If that sounds confusing, that’s because it is.
Pelevin's Russia is determined to avenge the fall of the Soviet Union, for which it holds the United States partly responsible. General Izyumin’s goal was to turn the tables on the United States and facilitate its rot from the inside. To do this, he believed, it was necessary to impose on the US that which killed the Soviet Union: an atmosphere of deceit, hypocrisy, and fear. “What would happen if conservative US senators are told, at a secret hearing, that the entire politically correct agenda was created at a GRU [Russian Military Intelligence] facility outside Moscow?” asks Golgofskii's informant in the secret services. This is revenge enacted by “weapons-grade memes,” or “chimemes.”
But the project dies along with General Izyumin. It is disbanded, shut down, and demobilised by the top brass once it becomes evident that the “stupid Americans” have caught on. As the US news media frenzies over Russian interference in their presidential elections and as the existence of Russian troll factories and Twitter bots comes to light, the Americans are enraged and ready to retaliate. As Pelevin stresses, the Russians are now intimidated: they talk a big talk, but back down easily. Izyumin’s poisoning is also a form of poetic justice; his organization is responsible for the entirely non-fictional poisoning of former double agent Sergey Skipal and his daughter, whose demise made headlines earlier this year while Pelevin was working on this very story.
The “Art of the Light Touch” has received mixed reviews from the Russian public. Some love it, some hate it, but most agree that the work is not Pelevin’s best.
Yuzefovich critiques Pelevin most harshly for the second story, arguing that many of Golgofskii's intellectual detours are nothing more than the author’s excuse to dive into impenetrable metaphysics that are unnecessary to the main idea. She faults him for his “pseudo-detective plot [that] is so weakly constructed that it actually sinks into a gurgling mass of words.” Similarly, Igor Kirienkov in his review for Russian news website RBK also faults Pelevin for what he calls self-indulgence, rating the book as “not great, not terrible.” Kirienkov is bored with Pelevin's choice of characters, his world of oligarchs, stockbrokers, and secret agents, which he derides as “socially shortsighted prose.” However, literary columnist Natalya Lomykina, in her review for Gorky Media, finds Pelevin’s novel refreshing, worthy of spawning “a new army of Pelvin fans,” and enriched by a “well-tailored lining of human beliefs.”
The RuNet and Russian blogosphere are more forgiving of Pelevin's writing. Marks Gurjevs of the Latvia-based website Polaris argues that Pelevin “masterfully finds the painful points of our [Russian] multimedia society, with the detached thoughtfulness of a mediator.” Anya Sklyar, a Ukraine-based blogger on LiveJournal with a PhD in psychology, revels in Pelevin's novel. “I am delighted!” she writes. “Here is a writer with whom I would like to talk…here is a [story] that one can analyze for a long time and find many philosophical and psychological undertones and themes.”
However, others feel that Pelevin has simply run out of steam. Pavel Tretyakov of HydraJournal dismisses Pelevin’s newest novel, claiming that his prolific output does not obscure the fact that the author has run out of new ideas. Readers would do better to return to Pelevin's earlier classics, he says, such as “Chapaev and the Void,” “Yellow Arrow”, and “Generation P.” In the Livejournal platform “chto chetat’?” (What should we read?), user majstavitskaja laments that they “don’t want to become somebody who, when asked about Russian literature in five years’ time, responds, ‘I don’t read Pelevin anymore.’ But that’s where I am headed.”
Ultimately, Pelevin’s book seems to have been written and edited too quickly. The depth and the rich allusions of his writing are difficult to coax out from beneath multiple layers of irony in an already chaotic narrative. While critics and readers alike agree that Iakinf is the most enjoyable of the three stories, as it reminds them of Pelevin’s earlier works. Some, such as critic Anna Narynskaya, calls the third story a “dessert,” as a welcome continuation of Pelevin's latest novel.
But the second and most substantial story is also the most bedevilling. Although it has the richest symbolism of all for international readers, given today's strained relations between Russia and the United States, it is also the most ambitious, which is perhaps its undoing.
Maybe it's hard for Pelevin's fans to get used to a light touch from such a heavy hitter.

author: Sasha Shapiro