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Amaal Said’s Portraits of Belonging: An Interview · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Zachary Rosen interviews photographer/poet Amaal Said. Amaal was born in Denmark to Somali parents and is currently based in London:
AIAC: Your photographs are remarkable in how they challenge and evolve notions of beauty in mainstream Western media by featuring intimate portraits of melanin-rich young people – with piercings, in headscarves and with natural hair. What experiences inform and shape the content of your photographs?
Amaal Said: I try my hardest to keep close to beauty. I grew up in a neighbourhood referred to as a ghetto in Odense, Denmark. I went back two years ago and all I can remember is how many shades of green I saw. I wish I had captured more of it. My own memories of Odense are at odds with what I read about it and hear from family. It’s always been a beautiful place to me, which doesn’t mean that a lot of sadness and tragedy didn’t happen there, it just means that both elements can exist at the same time.
I’ve spent most of my life in London and I’ve had the pleasure of being in communities with other artists who are doing really important work in the world. I never felt alone in that case. Negative opinions of the countries we came from and the communities we lived in existed. I was in classrooms with other children who claimed that people that looked like me were dirty immigrants who stole jobs and cheated the system. I feel like I spent a lot of time at secondary school fighting people’s opinions. And I’m not in those particular classrooms anymore, but I’m still trying to combat those negative portrayals.
I never saw the documenting I did as particularly hard work. I asked to take people’s pictures because I found them beautiful, because I recognised myself in them. I realise now how important the work is and how necessary it is to push against the images that do not represent us in our best light.

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Ananta Bijoy Das Becomes Third Free-Thinking Blogger Killed This Year in Bangladesh · Global Voices
Rezwan

Ananta Bijoy Das. Image courtesy his Facebook page
It's a sad day for online activists in Bangladesh. On Tuesday morning, science writer and blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was murdered by a group of three or four masked people wielding machetes in Sylhet, Bangladesh's fifth largest city.
It was the third such killing this year of a writer who advocated secular thought, allegedly at the hands of religious extremists.
Das, 33, was a banker by profession but also edited a quarterly magazine called Jukti (Logic) and headed the Sylhet-based Science and Rationalist Council. He was the author of four books on science and critical thinking, and took an active part in the Ganajagaran Mancha, a forum born out of the Shahbag protests that demands a ban on Islamist parties and the death penalty for convicted war criminals.
Das was also an admin for the Bangla blog Mukto Mona (Free Thinkers), which won Deutsche Welle's prestigious BOBS award for social change in April 2015.
According to the Doha Centre of Internet Freedom:
While most of Das's output for Mukto-Mona focused on science and evolution, he wrote a number of blogs that criticised some aspects of Islam and also of Hinduism.
In comments on Facebook posted early Tuesday, Das slammed the local member of parliament from the ruling Awami League party for criticising one of the country's top secular and science fiction writers.
Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country, is officially secular. But people who have challenged religion have repeatedly been targeted by Islamic extremists in the past decade.
The nature of the threats have also escalated from local to international. Just a week ago, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) claimed responsibility for the assassination of Bangladeshi-American blogger Avijit Roy (the founder of Mukto Mona blog) on February 26 in which his wife Rafida Ahmed was badly injured. In a recent interview, she slammed Bangladesh's government for inaction and has termed the attack on her husband as “well planned, choreographed – a global act of terrorism.”
On March 30, another blogger who opposed irrational religious belief, Washiqur Rahman, was hacked to death in Dhaka. Two madrassa (Islamic religious school) students were apprehended and a third assailant got away. Both Roy and Rahman's cases are under trial.
Das had been on extremists’ hit list for some time and was first named in a list of 84 bloggers deemed atheist or blasphemous by Islamic hardliners submitted to the government in 2013.
AQIS claimed responsibility for Das’s murder, according to tweets by extremist group Ansar Bangla Team. “Another file closed! Stay tuned for next target,” the statement read.
Screenshot of the AQIS statement
Outrage over Das’ death spread quickly. Prominent blogger Arif Jebtik wrote on Facebook:
লিখতে, বলতে, ভাবতে কোনো কিছুতেই আগ্রহ পাই না। ৮৪ জনের একটি তালিকা স্বরাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রণালয়ে জমা পড়েছিল দুইবছর আগে, তালিকা থেকে নবম হত্যা হয়েছে আজকে সিলেটে। তালিকা নিশ্চয়ই চূড়ান্ত নয়, গত ২ বছরে আরো নাম সেই তালিকায় নির্ঘাত যুক্ত হয়েছে। কিন্তু অন্তত এই ৮৪ জনের ব্যাপারে গত ২ বছরে কোনো খোঁজখবর হয়নি, তাঁরা নিয়মিত বিরতিতে খুন হওয়া শুরু করেছেন।
মাসিক কোটায় হত্যা শুরু হয়েছে হয়তো এটি সপ্তাহান্তের কোটায় উন্নীত হবে। ৮৪ জন যাবে, আরো হাজার চুরাশির নাম তালিকায় আসবে। খানিক আহাজারি হবে, সবখানেই একটা ফিসফিস-চুপচুপ ভাব, কিছু বিকৃত মানুষের উল্লাস-তারপর পরের হত্যার জন্য অপেক্ষা।
এই দেশে আইনবহির্ভূত সব হত্যাই জায়েজ হিসেবে মেনে নিয়েছে বৃহত্তর জনগোষ্ঠি, এখানে সবগুলো খুনই ‘বিচ্ছিন্ন ঘটনা'।
I don't have the impetus to write, say or think anything. Two years ago a list of 84 bloggers was submitted to the Ministry of Home, 9th from the list was murdered today in Sylhet. This list is not exhaustive, surely more names have been added in the past two years. But nobody bothered to think about the safety of these 84 individuals. They are ending up dead one by one, in regular intervals. Now they are killing one every month, maybe they will speed up to do the same weekly. This list will be done, thousands more will be added. People will regret the death a bit, hush, silence everywhere, demonic joy from some perverts, then everybody waits for the next kill. In this country all these illegal killings have been taken for granted, every death is an isolated incident.
Blogger and activist Rayhan Rashid remembered the fallen who were attacked or killed for their free thinking in Bangladesh:
Fallen heroes of free-speech: #HumayunAzad #RajibHaider #AvijitRoy #Oyasiqur #AnantaBijoy Photo courtesy: MadhuMondol pic.twitter.com/TC1wgjyCAw
— Rayhan Rashid (@rayhanrashid) May 12, 2015
@rayhanrashid 3 killed in less than 90 days. Bangladeshi free thinkers r the softest Jihadi target. @RichardDawkins @NickCohen4 @TarekFatah
— Bidit (@bidit76) May 12, 2015
#Rajibhaidar #AvijitRoy #Wasiqurbabu #AnantaBijoy The list is getting longer and longer. We will fight till one of us alive.
— Rana Meher (@Rana_Meher) May 12, 2015
Ananta Bijoy Das's last posts were translated from Bengali to English by Arunava Sinha:
The last posts of murdered Bangladeshi blogger Ananta Bijoy Das, one written hours before he was killed http://t.co/YRuVn5yRkF @scroll_in
— Arunava Sinha (@arunava) May 12, 2015
The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) wrote in a blog that Ananta Bijoy Das's application for a visa to travel to Sweden, under invitation from Swedish PEN to speak in a conference, was rejected recently by the Swedish embassy in Dhaka, on the basis that he might seek to remain in Sweden.
Exiled writer and columnist Taslima Nasrin blamed the government:
Bangladesh government is not taking any action against the Islamist-killers for being afraid to be labelled as anti-Islam. Islamists are allowed to do whatever they like in Bangladesh. It seems killing free-thinker atheists who criticize Islam is their main agenda.
Rajib Haider
A.K.M Shafiur Rahman
Avijit Roy
Washikur Rahman Babu
Ananta Bijoy Das.
Who is next?
Tomorrow maybe you. Or maybe me.
Blogger Haseeb Mahmud wrote:
পুলিশের দায়িত্ব কি সেটা এই মুহুর্তে একটা প্রশ্ন। অভিজিৎ হত্যার কোন সুরাহা হয়নি। ব্লগার রাজিব হত্যার মামলায় গ্রেফতার ও সেটার বিচার শুরু হলেও সেই হত্যাকান্ডের নাটের গুরু এখনো ধরা ছোঁয়ার বাইরে। অনন্ত বিজয়ের হত্যাকারিদের গ্রেফতার ও তাদের রাতারাতি বিচার শুরু হবে এটাও আশা করা কঠিন। আমাদের করণীয় চাপাতির মুখে লেখা না থামানো। লেখা থামালে জিতে যাবে আনসারুল্লাহ।
What the responsibility of the police is at this point is a question mark. They could not find the killers of Avijit Roy. They have arrested the killers of blogger Rajib, but the mastermind is on the loose. It is a tough to hope that the killers of Ananta Bijoy will be nabbed anytime soon or a trial will start. Our prerogative is to not to stop writing even if confronted by wielding machetes. If we stop writing they will win.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Rezwan


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Angani: First Operational Cloud Service in East Africa · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Last month, Angani launched first operational cloud service in East Africa:
Angani, the first fully automated cloud infrastructure company in the region, today officially launched their cloud and hosting services. Angani also announced their partnership with local data center operators that will make it safe and cost effective to provision cloud solutions. With Angani’s cloud platform, users can have a new server operational in a secure, reliable datacenter within 15 minutes.
Angani also offers the following services
•	Virtual office includes E-Mail, data backup and PABX
•	CCTV Storage and Backup
•	Media Storage and Playout


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Can Africa Really Maintain Its Own African Centers for Disease Control? · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Anna K. Mwaba discusses the future of the newly established African Center for Disease Control:
The establishment of such a center in Africa is not a particularly new idea; talks on the need for more effective means to combat epidemics on the continent were held in July 2013 at the Special Summit of the African Union on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, in Abuja, Nigeria.
In her opening remarks at that meeting, AU Chairwoman Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma emphasized the need for the AU to act and for “the final push” to tackle HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. These sentiments echoed those made at previous meetings on the matter. The fact that this was not the first time this issue has been discussed at such a high level, raised doubts as to the ability of the African Union to undertake such an endeavor.
Two main, and related, reasons for these doubts are the AU’s current financial capacity and the political will of its member nations. It is common knowledge that the AU faces significant funding challenges, compounded by the fact that many member states continuously fail to pay their annual contributions. This inability to contribute to the AU’s operating budget casts doubt on member state willingness to prioritize AU activities while facing their own domestic, often economic, challenges.


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Can Electronic Games Accelerate Ghana’s Development? · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Join Accra Technology salon that will take place on May 26th, 2015. The theme of the salon is Games for Ghana’s Development:
Electronic games are a two trillion dollar global industry. Game development in Ghana is growing rapidly, fueled by the popularity of mobile phones and climbing Internet usage rates. African game developers are increasing their share of this demand by developing culturally relevant games that speak directly to local markets.
What is the potential of the game industry to further Ghana’s development?
While games are often considered frivolous entertainment, evidence shows that games can effectively improve cognition, problem solving, and spatial skills development, with a particular benefit for science, engineering, and mathematics education. “Serious” games can also help communities explore different development scenarios to solve critical problems in society.
Please RSVP now to join the next Technology Salon Accra where we will explore questions like:
What kinds of games would excite Ghanaians and improve society?
Who would play them? What would they learn?
How can we incentivize “good” games and improve others?
Where should we look to see the future of gaming in Ghana?


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Can This US Presidential Hopeful Capture Republican and Latino Hearts? · Global Voices
Robert Valencia

Marco Rubio hopes to be the first Latino president of the United States. But how long can he pander both the Latino and Republican base to achieve this end? Photo courtesy of Flickr/jbouie (CC BY 2.0)
As a registered independent voter in the US, I am keenly watching a 43-year-old senator from Florida state, who has his eyes set on the White House.
Like me, Marco Rubio, is young and Hispanic, the fastest-growing demographic in the country.
But unlike me, Rubio is Republican. The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio climbed his party's ranks to become the youngest speaker of Florida state's legislature in 2008.
Hispanics make up 11% of all eligible voters in the US. Increasingly, the Republican party has been courting this ethnic group, which has overwhelmingly voted Democrat in the past.
Rubio may appeal to a new generation of Latino voters, but he has a number of hurdles to overcome, if he makes it through the primaries.
Rubio is one of eight Republican candidates to have announced their intentions of running in the 2016 primary, an election process both major parties in the US – the Democrats and the Republicans – go through, to select top candidates for presidency. Another 11 Republicans are exploring their candidacy too.
Rubio is not the only Republican candidate hoping to attract the Hispanic vote. Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two former presidents, is fluent in Spanish, and his family has been successful in attracting the Latino vote in previous elections. Then there is Ted Cruz, another candidate of Cuban origin, but he does not speak Spanish and is a vocal opponent of immigration reform, which is supported by most Hispanics.
If Rubio manages to beat all these contenders in the Republican primaries, he’s likely to face Hillary Clinton in the general election. A recent poll by Florida Atlantic University shows that Hispanics overwhelmingly expect her to be the nation’s president. To date, Clinton has a lead over all potential Republican opponents.
Months after Barack Obama clinched a second term as president in 2012, the Republicans began a soul-searching process to figure out who amongst them would attract new sympathizers. Then, TIME magazine’s February 18, 2013 issue hailed Florida Senator Marco Rubio as “The Republican Savior” and the “new voice of the GOP (or the Republican party.)”
There is only one savior, and it is not me. #Jesus
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 7, 2013
Though Marco Rubio rejected the idea of being a “Republican Savior,” the party capitalized on his image.
In 2013, Rubio delivered his party's official response to President Obama's annual televised State of the Union address. This catapulted the young senator's image in front of tens of thousands of Americans.
Rubio's turn on TV accomplished more than just representing the Republican vision for the nation; it also spurred thoughts about having a Hispanic president.
In some ways, Rubio is banking on his story, which is a twist on the traditional American dream: Rubio comes from a family of immigrants, is married into a family of Colombian immigrants, and lived in a neighborhood of immigrants, West Miami, the bedrock of his “dazzling ascent from city commissioner to state house speaker to U.S. Senator,” according to TIME magazine.
Rubio's long term focus on the White House is unquestionable, but complicated as he attempts to walk what Michael Grunwald in TIME magazine called “the thin, hard line between the Republican establishment and the base, between compassion and the rule of law, between family and politics.” Rubio understands that he needs support from strong conservative Tea Party movement within the Republican party and the Hispanic community at large, to achieve his Oval Office aspirations.
Nevertheless, Rubio faces an uphill battle to attract the Hispanic vote.  Despite the speculation of political pundits, being Latino and fluent in Spanish is not the golden ticket to unlocking the Latino vote.
A recent poll suggests that the youth vote may be up for grabs for either Democrats or Republicans, the same can’t be said for the Hispanic vote. For many of them, there is no gray area for America’s most pressing issues, and Rubio will soon find out that it’s hard to appease both the Latino community and the Republican base at the same time. Especially when it comes to these four areas.
A part of the bipartisan Gang of 8, Rubio was one of eight Senators to draft the immigration bill in 2013. The bill would make it possible for many undocumented immigrants to gain legal status and citizenship. It would also add 40,000 patrol agents at the borders. During his interviews with Univision’s Jorge Ramos and Telemundo’s José Díaz Balart, Rubio said that immigration reform may occur if he becomes president, but deferred action for childhood arrivals, a policy that allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country before their 16th birthday, and Obama’s executive action on immigration, must come to an end. Which is why, prominent Latino organizations like America’s Voice have expressed mistrust in Rubio.
Rubio also opposes the Affordable Care Act. While his stance against Obamacare may please the Tea Party, it puts him at odds with Hispanics who have seen some benefits in enrolling to this program, according to The New York Times.  Additionally, in two interviews, Rubio expressed his discontent with warming US-Cuba relations, appealing to the Republican base that has strongly supported the Cuban embargo. Recent reports show that the Cuban-Americans favor lifting the embargo, and a poll conducted by Florida International University reveals that 68 percent Cuban Americans favor restoring diplomatic relations with the island.
In an interview with Fusion Rubio said he would attend a gay wedding if it were someone he cares about. Days later Rubio called the ongoing gay marriage civil rights cases “ridiculous and absurd,” once again appealing to conservative voters. Hispanics, on the other hand, have shown increasing support to same-sex marriage according to a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute.
In terms of gun control, Hispanic voters say they prefer gun control over the rights of owners by 62 percent to 36 percent, and 82 percent of foreign-born Hispanics living in the United States believe controlling gun ownership is more important. Conversely, Rubio stands with gun rights, as it was demonstrated at an event hosted by the National Rifle Association in Nashville this year. He vehemently supports the second amendment of the US constitution, which defends the right to keep and bear arms.
Finally, one issue Rubio may concur with conservatives and Latinos alike is abortion. Hispanics support abortion rights by 48 percent but 44 percent believe it should be illegal, according to the Pew Research.
Recently, the Senator, who ranks among the least-wealthy candidates in the Republican party, also came under scrutiny because of his relationship with patron and billionaire auto dealer Norman Braman.
As a young Latino voter, I remain skeptical whether presidential hopefuls — Democrat and Republican — will take Latino issues as their campaign's priority in the primaries.
But one thing is clear: it is important to watch the Republican primaries because Rubio is using his Hispanic heritage to attract votes. And if it works, Hispanics could vote against their own interest. For now, Senator Rubio may truly be the savior his party needs.

author: Robert Valencia


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Fed Up With ‘Political’ Blocking, Russia and Ukraine Appeal to Facebook · Global Voices
Tanya Lokot

Images mixed by Tetyana Lokot.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has publicly joined calls for a dedicated Ukrainian Facebook office. His support for the cause comes after numerous users in Ukraine—and in Russia—complained of their posts and accounts being taken down or blocked, despite the fact that they may not have violated Facebook's terms of service. Users in both countries claim these takedowns are politically motivated and the posts are being reported for violations by masses of “Kremlin supporters.”
Ukrainians Campaign for Local Office
Poroshenko addressed Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg in a post on the website, after other Ukrainian users commented on Zuckerberg's announcement of a townhall Q&A in the company's headquarters on May 14.
Screenshot of President Poroshenko's Facebook post addressing Zuckerberg.
We have to use all available channels to get reaction from global companies. Ukraine must get a Ukrainian Facebook office!
Poroshenko's statement was spurred by a popular Ukrainian comment on Zuckerberg's post. The user reported that posts like this photo of a Ukrainian soldier's daughter were allegedly being flagged as “nudity.” The commenter also linked to a petition suggesting Facebook should pay more attention to its Ukrainian segment and consider opening a regional office.
Lately, the blocking of popular and active users in the Ukrainian Facebook Community has become a common and regular practice.
Our requests for Facebook support to address these issues, our requests for explanations of the valid reasons for blocking or deactivating these accounts are often ignored, or – if considered – considered for a very long time (up to 10 months) and with no real resolution.
Russians Blame the Kremlin Bots
Russian Facebook users have also complained of unfair blocking, with RuNet guru Anton Nossik blaming the “Kremlin bots” for content takedowns and blocks on his own account and others. Nossik's examples from his own page did contain nudity (photos from a Biennale performance) and execution-style images (a screenshot from a Russian music video), so they may have indeed violated Facebook's rules, but he believes the posts were flagged as part of a systematic campaign by pro-Kremlin forces to silence dissenting voices of those who somehow end up on the “enemies of the people” roster.
Технология блокировки проста как мычание. В адрес Abuse Team англоязычной социальной сети направляются сотни и тысячи жалоб от ботов на некий аккаунт, предположительно нарушающий пользовательское соглашение этой самой сети. […] Но, видя такое количество жалоб единовременно, не читающий по-русски и не понимающий ситуации англоязычный модератор соцсети приходит к выводу, что пост действительно нарушает какие-то community guidelines — откуда ему знать про бюджеты на борьбу с национал-предателями в Интернете?!
The blocking technology is very simple. The Abuse Team of the English-language network gets hundreds and thousands of complaints from bots about an account which allegedly violates the terms of service of this network. […] But when they see such a volume of complaints simultaneously, an English-speaking website moderator who does not read Russian and does not understand the situation concludes that the post really does violate some community guidelines—how would they know about the budgets dispensed to fund the fight against “national traitors” online?!
Facebook has previously dismissed the claims that the number of complaints on a piece of content increases the likelihood the post might be taken down. In an October 2014 interview with RuNet Echo, Richard Allan, Facebook's VP for Public Policy in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, stressed that the company does not see a large volume of reports as a “good indicator” of whether or not a piece of content stands in violation of the site's policies.
We've been running the service for 10 years, and there are ways in which people try and game our reporting system. They try and use the system to get to other people on the site. One of the obvious ways people tried to use the system in the early days is to send in multiple reports in the hope that those could take down some content they didn't like. So we've very quickly learned that a lot of reports is not a very good indicator of whether content is bad.
Nossik's post comes on the heels of the swift blocking and unblocking of a May 6 post by Russian journalist Sergei Parkhomenko criticizing a leaked Russian report that assigned the blame for the MH17 tragedy to Ukraine. Previously, Facebook also deleted a post by LGBT activist Lena Klimova, who posted images of her online abusers and juxtaposed them with their hateful comments.
Commenting on Sergei Parkhomenko's post deletion, Facebook spokeswoman Sally Aldous told RFE/RL that the post was removed “mistakenly,” and that the FB team “deals with thousands of reports each day,” so mistakes do occasionally happen. While Facebook did not specify what specifically triggered the removal of the post, Parkhomenko does not believe his post violated any community standards and that the takedown was the result of pro-Russian online activists spamming Facebook with complaints.
The Same Rules for Everyone?
As early as the summer of 2014 Ukrainians had complained of what they said is politically-motivated blocking of prominent Facebook users, when several well-known pro-Ukrainian activists who were critical of the Kremlin and the pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine had their Facebook pages blocked. At the time Ukrainians said the pages were blocked because of complaints by “organized pro-Putin groups of Russian users.” Ukrainian users also implied the Ukrainian segment was somehow mismanaged by the “biased staff” in the Russian office, which Facebook denied, explaining that both the Russian and the Ukrainian segments were managed by an international team from their Dublin headquarters.
While Ukraine is worried about impartial platform management, Russian users have more to fear from Facebook's relations with their own government. In recent years, both Facebook and the U.S.-based social-networking site Twitter have removed posts and accounts critical of Russian authorities based on claims by Russian state media watchdog Roskomnadzor that they violate domestic laws.
In December of 2014, Facebook blocked the event page for a protest rally in support of Putin critic and opposition figure Alexey Navalny for users in Russia, ostensibly at the behest of the Kremlin. After a major outcry, Facebook said they would not block other protest pages, but did not comment on the initial block.
As platforms like Facebook and Twitter become more important in the struggle for free speech and alternative public spaces around the world, it is more important than ever to recognize that these websites do not currently have tools in place to mitigate government pushback on activists and independent journalists, like “political takedowns” through mass complaints or the misuse of the companies’ own rules (like what constitutes “hate speech”or “impersonation”) to ban unwanted content.
Facebook's Allan conceded that “people will try and work around systems,” whether through impersonation, reporting, or by other means.
We're not going to say never, that people aren't going to find new ways to game the system, but our philosophy is if that's happening, we will try and identify those problems, and we'll try and change our systems to make sure that they are protecting against any kind of abuse.
While this philosophy sounds reasonable, the fact remains that free speech in Ukraine, Russia, and other countries where traditional media systems are corrupted, depends more and more on corporate platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Recognizing the instances of state actors trying to “game the system,” guarding the freedom of independent voices, listening to the grievances of individuals and communities, and addressing their concerns should be at the top of the agenda for social media companies if they want to retain the trust—and screen time—of their users.

author: Tanya Lokot


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‘Stop Destroying Our Communities For Coal We Cannot Use’ · Global Voices
350.org

The Rhineland coalfields are Europe's biggest source of CO2. Photo credit: Ende Gelände
This article is based on a piece written by Emma Biermann for 350.org, an organisation building a global climate movement, and is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
In April, I joined over 6,000 people to create a human chain at the Garzweiler coal mine in western Germany’s Rhineland. We were united in our message to end coal reliance and accelerate the transition to renewable energy that should have begun yesterday.
The long-standing villages of Borschemich and Immerath, where the human chain went through, have gradually become ghost villages. Residents have been bought out and communities broken down by the German electric utility company RWE.
RWE is expanding the ninth largest coal mine in the world, despite debts, despite the destruction of homes and farmland, despite high levels of local pollution and radioactivity, and of course despite the fact we know this is coal we simply cannot keep burning if we want to limit catastrophic climate change.
Herr Schmitz, farmer from the village of Holzweiler, Germany. Photo credit: Emma Biermann
I’m not even sure how we began talking. I think I asked him if the tractor over there was his. It was. It was pulling a trailer decorated with banners showing the boundary where people are calling for the mine to end.
We met amidst 5,998 or so other people trailing yellow ribbons standing amongst fields of crops that in two to three years time, as it stands, will no longer exist.  His village – the village of Holzweiler – was a backdrop to the solemn scene. He did not know yet whether his land too would be pulled up to dig the coal from beneath it.
Herr Schmitz, the farmer I met that day, told me the worst thing was not knowing. How do you plan or deal with a situation if you don’t know if in a few years time you and your family will be relocated? Moreover, how does that actually practically happen? How can you replace someone’s field and crops? How can you replace someone’s home, history, and livelihood?  He said, for him maybe it wasn’t so bad, but what about his son? What was he going to do?
If we close the mines, hundreds of jobs will be lost we are told. But here I hear stories of not just jobs being lost but also communities. And it’s done with dirty tactics. Herr Schmitz told me RWE comes into communities years in advance of the demolition taking place. When villagers were offered compensation for relocation, their initial reaction was resistance, as you can imagine. “But time softens them,” said Mr Schmitz. RWE begins to cut things down in the surrounding area, already destroying what they can access, making it feel like the work is already underway. Then some people take the offer. A few people begin to leave and local businesses begin to lose their customers. How can the baker stay open as the village slowly dissipates? Once the first few go, it has a domino effect.
He points to a building and tells me it used to be a hospital. Now it’s empty and boarded up. In this village a few residents remain in resistance, but there are no shops left, no church, or other local services. He tells me another four villages, hundreds of years old, are due to be demolished over the next 15 years. He takes me to the other side of his tractor to a banner which names those villages and those – like his – that are under question.
On 25th April, more than 6,000 people created a human chain against coal at the open-pit lignite mine Garzweiler in the Rhineland, Germany. Photo credit: Emma Biermann
Mr Schmitz took part in his first human chain here almost exactly 30 years ago. He’s still resisting. It filled me with sadness talking to him, but maybe the seasons are changing and we are on the winning side.
RWE is in €31 billion of debt; the cost of coal is becoming increasingly expensive, not to mention when you add the external costs; limitations are being made on coal emissions and we’re realising to exactly what extent we can’t burn the black stuff (90% of coal reserves in Europe need to stay in the ground if we want to stay below 2 degrees warming). And well, there’s an ever growing movement ready to resist. This 14-16 August we will be climbing into a 400 metre-deep coal mine to stop the largest diggers on earth.


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Hong Kong Citizens Want Legal Protections for Their Metadata · Global Voices
Jennifer Zhang

Data privacy protest, Unter den Linden, Germany. Photo from Flickr User: Lindsay Eyink (CC: AT)
Hong Kong’s top security official finally clarified the legal procedure governing law enforcement’s requests for user data information from Internet service providers. Now we know for certain that there is no legal procedure regulating user data requests in Hong Kong. This begs the question: Should government agencies really be able to look at our metadata without any oversight from the courts?
Lai Tung-Kwok, Hong Kong's Secretary for Security, said at a Legislative Council meeting on 29 April that law enforcement agencies may request necessary user information (such as account names, IP addresses and log records) from service providers for locating witnesses, evidence or suspects when investigating criminal cases. Warrants are only required for seizure of communications content and documents, and no warrants are required for requests for metadata. That means there is no judicial scrutiny for the 23,946 user information requests the Hong Kong Police Force and the Customs and Excise Department have issued in the past five years.
Law enforcement officials appear to believe that metadata, or “non-content” data, is not sensitive. But in the modern technology age, metadata can reveal a lot about a person. Website logs of usage information and IP addresses, for instance, can tell the police when you login to a local forum and how long you stay at the forum. With the assistance of Internet service providers, police can also ascertain your physical location when you access the forum.
The development of big data and targeted advertising proves metadata is not “non-sensitive” at all. If you consider how much companies can learn about you just by having access to your metadata, it is not hard to see how governments might do the same.
Chiang Yam Wang, Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner, raised concern over the lack of protection of Internet users’ metadata in a recent blog post. Chiang believes our metadata can be more revealing than the actual content of the communication.
Metadata portrays a detailed, comprehensive and time-stamped picture of who is communicating with whom, when, how often, and for how long; where the senders and recipients are located, who else is connected to whom, and so forth. It thus reveals the details of our personal, political, social, financial, and working lives.
Hong Kong’s legal framework for regulating law enforcement’s access to personal identification information has lagged behind other jurisdictions — even those thought of to be weak on privacy protections. For example, the United States’ Electronic Communications Privacy Act, despite being under constant attack for its weak protections for metadata, sets out rules for law enforcement officers to follow when they compel service providers to release users’ metadata. Even the much-maligned Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, passed in response to the attacks of September 11, requires court approval for bulk phone metadata collection. Legal experts have little faith in the particular court that oversees this provisions — in fact, a federal court ruled last week that the practice violated existing provisions. Yet even this standard exceeds what is provided in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong also lacks clear guidelines on data retention, an issue that has recently developed in other parts of the world. This March, a judge in the Netherlands struck down the Dutch data retention law that requires telecom companies to store customers’ data for one year and Internet providers for six months. The judge said that while the law helps fight crime it also breaches the privacy of telephone and Internet users. In contrast, also in March, Australia passed a controversial security law that will force telecom and Internet service providers to store customers’ personal data for two years to help law enforcement combat domestic terrorism.
When it comes to the “individual privacy versus public safety” debate, it is worth revisiting the notion proposed by legal theorist Robert Post: Privacy isn’t the trumpeting of individual against society’s interests, but the protection of the individual based on society’s own norms and values. Privacy issues involve balancing societal interests on both sides of the scale.
It is upsetting to see Hong Kong, which prides itself on its rule of law, moving ahead without any laws or regulations to regulate and oversee police access to users’ metadata. And it is especially alarming when we think about its implications on the free flow of information and free speech. The loss of online privacy is certainly not the price Hong Kong citizens want to pay to stay away from those who are actually committing crimes.
Jennifer Zhang is a researcher at Hong Kong Transparency Report, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, The University of Hong Kong.

author: Jennifer Zhang


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Chinese Netizens See Symbolism in Viral Stage Collapse Video · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Cartoonist Biantailajiao captures the collapse of China Dream with his drawing.
Eight people were hurt, two of them badly, when a stage five meters off the ground collapsed while some 80 police officers were rehearing for a singing contest in China's Bijie city in Guizhou Province on May 8.
The accident was recorded and the video went viral on social media. Instead of showing sympathy, many people made fun of the incident with comments such as “The Chinese Dream is too heavy!” or “Showtime for the collapse of the Chinese Dream,” referring to President Xi Jinping's oft-cited phrase promoting national revitalization. Below is a YouTube backup of the video:
The theme of the singing contest was “The Chinese Dream and the Beauty of Labour”, which is part of national propaganda jointly organized by the All China Federation of Trade Unions, the Central Propaganda Department and the China Central Television Station (CCTV).
Twitter user @hnjhj mocked a CCTV news anchor’ tone of voice and commented:
为祝贺祖国母亲节快乐，昨日贵州毕节剧院演出了大型歌剧《中国梦的垮台》。
— Jian Alan Huang (@hnjhj) May 11, 2015
To celebrate the Mother's Day for our mother country, the Bijie city theatre in Guizhou Province puts on a grand performance of “The Collapse of the Chinese Dream.”
Built in 2008, the theatre is a landmark in Bijie city; at the time, construction cost about RMB 90 million (approximately 14.5 million US dollars). The fragility of the stage reminded many of the “tofu-dreg” school buildings that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, killing thousands of students. The term tofu dregs, which are the bits leftover in the tofu-making process, is often used to refer to shoddy construction work.
The sarcastic remarks about the Chinese dream being too heavy offer a glimpse of Chinese people's discontent with authorities’ empty political slogans. Cartoonist Biantai Lajiao captured the sentiment with a drawing (see image on top) showing a ship full of police officers sinking slowly into the sea.
However, the story was taken down from web portals and negative comments on Chinese social media were scrubbed soon after. Boxun, an overseas dissident Chinese website, managed to collect a number of popular comments on the incident:
中國夢太沉重了。
豆腐渣工程無處不在。
納稅人的錢不是讓你們參加歌詠比賽的。
站在搖搖欲墜的台子上唱讚歌是要摔下來的！
明顯是超重啦！遲到那三個人一上去舞台就塌了。
太諷刺了。中國夢就是這樣的？連個舞台都是豆腐渣工程！
1秒前還是歌舞昇平，1秒後分崩離析。終究會有壓垮駱駝的最後一根稻草！
The Chinese Dream is too heavy
Tofu-dreg projects are everywhere.
The taxpayers’ money is not to hire you for a singing contest.
Standing and singing praise on a collapsing stage will lead you to a fall.
Obviously too heavy. The stage collapsed when the three latecomers stepped onto the stage.
Too sarcastic. The Chinese Dream is like this? Even the stage is a tofu-dreg project.
One second ago, it was a grand show of prosperity. One second later, everything collapsed. The last straw will eventually appear.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Open Letter to President Obama From a Bahraini Human Rights Defender · Global Voices
Advox

Protesters in Manama, Bahrain, 2011. Photo by Bahraini Activist via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Kingdom of Bahrain is known for its vast oil wealth and, increasingly, its violations of human rights and religious freedoms. A nation of just 1.3 million, Bahrain has long been an ally of the United States, which has maintained a military base on the island since 1947.
In the popular uprisings of 2011, Bahrainis demanded greater accountability and adherence to human rights standards from their government. Since then, many have spoken of systematic discrimination and marginalization of Shia Muslims by the regime. While the majority of Bahrainis are Shia Muslim, the ruling Al-Khalifa family is Sunni. During the protests, Marc Lynch wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that “the Bahraini regime responded [to protests] not only with violent force, but also by encouraging a nasty sectarianism in order to divide the popular movement and to build domestic and regional support for a crackdown.”
The regime has developed a reputation as one of the most ruthless oppressors of online political speech. Numerous journalists, bloggers, photographers, and digital activists have been arrested and jailed for their efforts to shed light on human rights violations and promote their protection. Among them are two members of our own community, Ali Abdulemam and Mohamed Hassan, both of whom have been jailed for their work and now live in exile. This past February, Bahrain revoked citizenship of 72 Bahraini citizens (including Abdulemam), many of whom are journalists or bloggers.
Today, US President Barack Obama will meet with the crown prince of Bahrain, Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, whose family has ruled the island nation since the 18th century.
In the letter below, Sayed Yousif AlMahafdah asks President Obama to “be the voice of the people of Bahrain” and stress the importance of protecting human rights for all Bahrainis in this meeting. AlMahafdah is the Vice President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, a non-profit organization based in Bahrain and Denmark. AlMahafdah is in Berlin, where he has been forced to live in exile since October 2013, after being a target of arbitrary arrests and torture for his human rights work in Bahrain.
Dear President Obama,
Martin Luther King linked the fight for freedom, equality, and justice for African-Americans to the struggle of people around the world face: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Today I write to you about the struggle of my people in Bahrain.
In Bahrain, we have suffered from injustice and inequality for decades, and we’ve been fighting for our rights for even longer. The royal Al Khalifa family and their government target and suppress all voices that express the slightest opposition to their many violations against their people.
The government authorities have constantly and systematically focused on targeting Shia Muslims. The government demolished 38 Shia mosques in 2011, they allow hate speech against Shia to go unchecked in the media, they have imprisoned thousands of Shias and continue to use excessive force against Shia protesters. Shia are not allowed in the army, or to rise to important government positions. We are treated as second-class citizens.
The struggle and sufferings of the people of Bahrain are not unlike the struggles of African-Americans under Jim Crow-era laws, or the struggle of black South Africans under apartheid.
Let me tell you the story of my friends in Jaw Prison, Bahrain’s largest long term sentence prison for men, where the treatment of prisoners reflects the discrimination of Shia outside the prison walls.
On 10 March at Jaw, hundreds of Shia men and children were subjected to collective beatings, torture, and starvation. Prisoners used smuggled phones to upload photos of their torture to social media. Guards attacked the Shia prisoners and mocked their sect. The guards deprived them of practicing their beliefs and performing prayers. Some families have not heard from their imprisoned loved ones for weeks.
In addition, the authorities prosecute anyone who dares to report these crimes. Most recently, they arrested my colleague, prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab. He faces up to 10 years in prison for posting tweets about these and other human rights violations. The torture and abuse is continuing as I write. Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to stop it or even care.
Despite of this discrimination, we aim to achieve equality, freedom, and democracy, which we deserve as much as any other people. We believe in Martin Luther King’s words, “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” To take Dr. King’s words for Bahrain: “Our goal is freedom, [we] believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of [Bahrain] is freedom.”
We urge you to walk in the steps of US rights champion Martin Luther King and support our struggle. Be the voice of the people of Bahrain when you meet our crown prince.
Sincerely,
Sayed Yousif AlMahafdah
Human rights defender and a former political detainee in Bahrain
Vice President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights
@saidyousif

author: Advox


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Second Deadly Earthquake Sends Nepalis Scrambling for Open Spaces · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

A fresh 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on Tuesday. More than 50 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured in the Himalayan country and neighbouring states, as many buildings already weakened by a much bigger quake last month were brought down. Image by Sumit Shrestha. Copyright Demotix (12/5/2015)
Just as Nepal was coming back to normalcy following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that devastated the country on April 25, a second quake of 7.3 magnitude hit the country again on May 12.
Journalist Narendra Raule tweeted:
Many people in the street. Big earthquake in #Nepal. #EarthquakeAgain #Nepal #NepalQuake
— Narendra Raule (@NRaule) May 12, 2015
This time it was a weekday. On April 25, it was Saturday and people were in their homes. But on May 12, most were in their workplaces. There was a mayhem of traffic on the streets after the earthquake.
More than 8,000 people were killed in the April 25 temblor. Fifty-seven deaths have been reported so far in this quake, with more than a thousand injured. Dolakha district has been hit hard, with 34 reported deaths and 90 per cent houses collapsed, as per the preliminary information collected by Nepal Police.
Kashish Das Shrestha and social media users posted pictures from different parts of Kathmandu.
#NepalEarhquake April 25 (above) and May 12. pic.twitter.com/ZUHEOstnXr
— Kashish Das Shrestha (@kashishds) May 12, 2015
This building collapsed in Naya Bus Park today's quake; Nepali security forces working to rescue elderly woman inside pic.twitter.com/B1W4yW5rJc
— Kashish Das Shrestha (@kashishds) May 12, 2015
Another #EarthquakeInNepal shocking images from helicopter heading towards #Everest region pic.twitter.com/lrDzaL6mAX
— DOCTORS FOR NEPAL (@DoctorsForNepal) May 12, 2015
Sindhupalchok district, which took a hit in the April 25 quake, suffered more from the second one. Nine deaths have been reported there.
Scenes from Chautara, Sindhupalchowk after today's #NepalQuake. Pics @tinokreutzer pic.twitter.com/SYoTmv2vQ5
— Ujjwal Acharya (@UjjwalAcharya) May 12, 2015
Likewise, the second earthquake worsened life in Bhaktapur, which had seen huge amounts of damage by the previous earthquake.
People who had returned to their homes from their makeshift tents went back to their tents in open spaces.
#Kathmandu going back to the tents post #NepalEarthquakeAgain pic.twitter.com/WCYCvF3gZM
— myRepública (@RepublicaNepal) May 12, 2015
Here we go again. As people were only about to get normal, #NepalEarthquakeAgain pushed them out of their house. pic.twitter.com/XgkGzugW6h
— Templ_Monk (@Templ_Monk) May 12, 2015
Couldn't dare to stay inside! Back to tent to live wid nature- open field, starry night, mosquitoes… #NepalEarthquake2
— Smita Poudel (@Smita_Poudel) May 12, 2015
Popular online portal Onlinekhabar posted a photo story on the plight of people spending the night under the open skies.
Last week, the government of Nepal had requested that foreign relief and rescue workers return back to their countries as the situation was normalizing and the rest could be handled by the government itself. With teams from many countries already going home, the rescue and relief will be a tough task.
#Nepal jumped the gun by sending home foreign help. Relief will be an even more arduous task now. #NepalEarthquakeAgain #NepalQuakeRelief
— Mistress of Vices (@cyclopsee) May 12, 2015
Schools which were to open this week have been further shut down for two weeks more. They will now open beginning May 30, as per the directive issued by the Ministry of Education.
Nepalis had started getting back to their normal lives, recovering and rebuilding, but are again living in fear after the second quake.
Kashish Das Shrestha tweeted:
Any sense of calm that may have been restored amongst Nepalis has perhaps just collapsed with today's terrifying and long earthquake.
— Kashish Das Shrestha (@kashishds) May 12, 2015

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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This Is What Happened When a Musician Allegedly Said Ugandan Women Are Inferior to White Women · Global Voices
James Propa

Ugandan musician Coco Finger. Image from Coco Finger's official Facebook page.
In a recent interview with the Ugandan newspaper The New Vision, Okori Moses (one of top dance-hall musicians, famously known as Coco Finger) spoke about his relationships with women, saying several strongly negative things about Ugandan women. Moses claims he is incapable of settling down with a black woman and only dates them for casual sex.
He said:
Ladies are not easy, that’s what I can say. There a few who understand and that’s why I will never settle down with a Ugandan girl. I prefer whites.
He went on to say:
………………………I would date Ugandan girls for casual sex and not serious relationship.
These statements infuriated Ugandans, as well as many of The New Vision's readers, who lashed out at both the newspaper and the musician.
Moses should be ashamed of himself, wrote Martha Kebirungi:
wats this supposed to mean?? wat does he take us ugandan girls for!!!! he sound lyk he respects neither his mother nor sisters(if any). he should be ashamed of himself. wat if those white girls also prefer him for sex? would he be ok with it? anyway, if he said that he would be ok with it, then he is not worth any value.
Zera Alba wonderered why such people get media exposure:
Why do newspaper editors give such people platform in the first place?
Angelo Bosa warned Ugandan girls to stay away from people like Coco Finger, as it's clear, he says, that such men are just using them:
Ugandan galz muwulila.let him go find white gals.temumuwa wade nakatono.
Ugandan girls, have you heard? Let him go find white girls. Don't give him even a little piece of your bodies.
Kiyemba Harunah issued a warning to women who want to date celebrities:
Ladies who still want date these wannabe celebrities here is Coco finger story,by the way guys remind me he isn't the ex boyfriend to Wagio chic who died last year???? Ohhhhhh
Allan John Damulira, who grew up with the singer, thought the story was cooked up by the newspaper:
The Coco Finger I grew up with, the man I went to school with, the proud father to a beautiful daughter and husband to Okori Gloria can NEVER ever say such drivel. Never.
Similarly, Nicholas Opiyo thought the interview was falsified:
NO NO NO NO THIS IS A PREGNANT BLACKMILKING
MR Moses okori [Coco Finger] is married to a very good african lady with one child. And who are those people making useless news like that.
Let them try to fight coco in their music production than lying the whole world in that way.
On Twitter, senior journalist Grace Natabaalo asked,
Why is such garbage published?—> I prefer whites; I date Ugandan girls for casual sex – Coco Finger http://t.co/sz6v5FutdV
— Grace Natabaalo (@Natabaalo) May 7, 2015
Blogger Harriet Anena called the interview “crap”:
I prefer whites; I date Ugandan girls for casual sex – Coco Finger http://t.co/PSu4ox4Oym >The crap that get into our papers!
— Harriet Anena (@ahpetite) May 7, 2015
Other Ugandans commented on the newspaper's website. One reader named Dave thought Moses is naive, immature, and in need perhaps of medical attention:
Oh my……young, naive and starting out with the wrong foot forward. I can't believe our young generation has only this to offer. Coco likes whites woow, what a none starter! and his ideal woman has to have a “figure”! what an oxymoron those two don't go together.
What I see is an imuture, confused, self loathing chap, that I hope will man up some day, look at himself in the mirror and regret the words he spewed today. If you haven't seen the beauty of a black woman, you haven't been around! its all naivity and ignorance that is being displayed by this young man.
Young man, you have women issues and if I were you, I would put myself under the care of a competent Psychiatrist rather than scapegoating by blaming it on our Ugandan sisters!
Your inability to make “them” understand is your weakness not theirs!
Check yourself son!
JK considered the comments a sign of self-hate:
I bet he wishes he was born white but too bad…. IMO this is a self-hating, low esteem little prick looking for validation from a ‘superior race’. But hey, I could be wrong.
Later on, Moses came to his own defense, leaving a comment on the newspaper's Facebook page saying that the newspaper wanted to put him down because he prefers black Ugandan ladies:
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no plizz .This is not ryt,whoever put this in paper is just trying to look for ways to put me down bt no u can't in the name of God. . . . . . . am a proud black African n proud of our black wemen.i have a happy family wth a black woman n am proud we are blessed wth a beautiful daughter . The fact is i prefer
Black Ugandan ladies to whites.fuuuul stoooooop.
The New Vision has yet to respond to Moses’ claim that he never criticized Ugandan women in his interview.

author: James Propa


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How the Internet Both Facilitates and Challenges Rape in Russia · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

“Silence about rape means it will continue.” Image from Russian online community against rape. VKontakte.
Official figures say a fifth of women in Russia have experienced domestic violence. If you include cases of verbal abuse, the figure jumps to 40 percent. Only 12 percent of women, however, ever turn to the police for help. As if these numbers aren’t disturbing enough, the explosion of online social networks in Russia makes it easier than ever for sexual predators to contact and track down women.
But the Internet also presents women with new weapons against their attackers that can challenge a legal system stacked against them.
This is the story of one such case, reported by the Russian news network TV Rain, about a 24-year-old woman in Moscow who says she was raped by a man she met online. The Internet has also played a crucial role in her efforts to get justice.
Yulia says she got acquainted with her attacker on the Internet, and they agreed to meet for coffee at her apartment. When they spoke beforehand on the phone, the man was apparently courteous and kind. Their date started off well enough; he introduced himself as a police officer (a member of the SWAT, no less), even proving it to Yulia by showing her his badge and passport. They chatted for a few hours and watched a movie. The man even fell asleep during the film.
When Yulia woke him up, he raped her. This was on April 21, she says.
Yulia didn’t go to the police immediately. Later that night, after her attacker had gone home, she called him on the phone and demanded an explanation. He responded calmly, she says, telling her it wasn’t a “big deal.” When Yulia said she would file a police report, the man told her she’d never prove his guilt.
The next morning, he showed up at Yulia’s doorstep, ostensibly to apologize. Yulia says he started yelling at her, instead. When she slapped him in the face to stop his screaming, he beat her up. Afterwards, a doctor at a first aid clinic would tell her that she suffered a concussion. (TV Rain says it has a copy of the doctor’s diagnosis.)
After the fight, he called the police, claiming Yulia attacked him without provocation. Yulia called the police, too, but the same unit responded to both calls. The couple was brought into a local police station, where officers repeatedly reminded Yulia that false accusations are a crime punishable by as many as three years in prison. She filed a report, but says she soon saw her attacked walk out of the station with the document in hand. Witnessing this, Yulia abandoned her efforts and went home.
After consulting with a friend who worked in law enforcement, Yulia appealed to Russia’s Investigative Committee, where she was reminded again of the penalties for false accusations. After a delay of a few days, investigators questioned her and later came to her apartment to seize evidence. They promised to contact Yulia with an update by May 5.
Before May 5, Yulia’s attacker returned to her home several times. He apologized, she says, and begged her to drop the charges. When Yulia went to meet with her lawyer for the first time, her attacker was waiting outside her apartment that morning. He pressured her into letting him come with her to the meeting.
Yulia paid the attorney for the consultation and handed over the forensic-medical evidence for her case. The lawyer, who decided not to take Yulia as a client, later refused to return these documents. When her next lawyer failed to retrieve the paperwork, she threatened to press charges. Luckily, one of the investigators called, she was reissued her medical documents, and this problem was resolved.
On May 7, investigators called Yulia back for more questioning. It lasted nearly eight hours. Yulia’s second lawyer was unhappy with her decision to bring friends and supporters to the investigators’ office, saying publicity wouldn’t help her case. Yulia later said she thought it “strange” that her own legal representative feared publicity.
Yulia’s third and current lawyer is Mari Davtyan, an attorney at the Bar Association Moscow Legal Center and an expert on the Kremlin’s Social Commission of the Human Rights Council. For years, Davtyan has worked on domestic violence and campaigned against women’s discrimination on the labor market.
She says she learned about Yulia’s story the same place that it started: an online social network.
“In my experience,” Davtyan told TV Rain, “[the police] frighten everyone with penalties for false accusations—even those who are beaten in their own homes. But in my experience, nobody actually files these charges, and I’ve yet to meet a woman who was lying.” Davtyan says they should know by early June if investigators intend to open a case against Yulia’s attacker. Yulia says she intends to appeal, if police refuse to press on.
In a VKontakte post that’s been shared in several online communities dedicated to confronting violence against women, Yulia vows to keep fighting. Raising awareness about her story in online social networks, she argues, will engage the press and subject the authorities to a higher level of public scrutiny, hopefully pressuring police into charging the man who she says raped her.
Мой новый адвокат женщина посоветовала привлечь общественность так как при вмешательство СМИ дело не спустят на тормоза, а все виновные и те кто его покрывал наказаны. Поэтому я прошу вашей помощи любую которую вы можете мне оказать сообщить об этом вопиющем случае. Просто я устала бояться а моя личность уже всё равно растоптана. Спасибо. Если я привлеку общественность и людей то только тогда дело точно не развалят поэтому прошу вашей помощи. Спасибо.
My new lawyer is a woman who has advised attracting the public’s attention, insofar as police won’t be able to drop the case after the media gets involved, and those who are guilty and responsible for the coverup will be punished. So I’m asking for any help you can manage to tell others about this outrageous case. I’m simply tired of being afraid, and my own personal reputation is already destroyed. Thank you. If I can get my story to the public, only then will I stop them from tossing out my case. That’s why I’m asking for your help. Thank you.
TV Rain spoke on the phone to the man Yulia says raped her. Refusing to say where he works exactly, the man confirmed that he is employed by the police, and denied sexually assaulting Yulia, who he says is mentally ill. He says his supervisors are aware of the allegations against him, and he’s confident that he’ll be vindicated. He also promises to press charges against Yulia for what he says are false criminal accusations.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Human Rights Abuses in Azerbaijan: We Can’t Stay On The Sidelines Anymore · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

Police in Azerbaijan detain a young man. Photo by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reused with permission.
One month from now, Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku will host the inaugural European Games, a mega sporting event organized by the European Olympic Committee that will convene 6,000 athletes from more than 50 countries. On June 12, as European leaders and delegations gather in Baku to commence the games, will the eight billion dollar spectacle overshadow the myriad accusations of human rights abuses logged against the country?
Nearly one hundred human rights activists, journalists, bloggers and civil society representatives languish in jails across Azerbaijan, and the crackdown is spreading. And no longer is it just the most prominent activists intimidated, journalists thrown into jail, or media outlets forced to shut down. Now, every outspoken citizen risks jail time on false accusations of being a drug addict, a hooligan, a tax evader, an embezzler, or a traitor.
Take the case of human rights activist Rasul Jafarov. On April 16, he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for illegal business activities, evading taxes, and abuse of power. But it is widely believed that these charges are false, and that his real “crime” was monitoring and reporting on criminal cases against journalists and his successful awareness campaigns highlighting the violations of freedom of expression, assembly, and association that take place in Azerbaijan. His “Sing for Democracy” and “Arts for Democracy” campaigns drew attention to Azerbaijan’s poor human rights record, and his planned “Sport for Rights” campaign would have done the same in the run up to the European Games. But instead he is in prison.
Another case is that of a prominent rights defender who was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on April 22, on charges rights groups also say were politically motivated. Intigam Aliyev is no ordinary human rights defender. He has helped lodge over 200 cases with the European Court of Human Rights in defense of those unjustly imprisoned in Azerbaijan.
Khadija Ismayilova, a leading investigative journalist and fierce government critic who authored a number of key investigative reports exposing government corruption and the ruling family’s illegal business activities was silenced as well. Currently serving pre-trial detention, Ismayilova was initially arrested on charges of incitement to suicide, though these charges have since been dropped. In February, authorities added charges of tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship, and abuse of power.
But while Azerbaijan tries to silence people like Khadija, the rest of the world recognizes her for her invaluable work. Khadija has received a number of prestigious international awards, and on May 5 received PEN American Center's 2015 Barbara Goldsmith Freedom To Write Award, given annually to “an imprisoned writer persecuted for exercising her right to free expression.”
And Khadija isn’t the only award-winning critic behind bars in Azerbaijan. There is Leyla Yunus, prominent rights activist and recipient of the Knight of French Legion of Honor award. There is Anar Mammadli, a rights activist and recipient of 2014 Vaclav Havel Human Rights Award. Rasu Jafarov is recipient of Andrei Sakharov Freedom Award, which was also given to Leyla Yunus, Intigam Aliyev and Anar Mammadli.
The list of government critics behind bars goes on and on. As the international spotlight is about to be turned to Azerbaijan when it hosts the European Games, will these prisoners remain in the dark? Shouldn’t basic human dignity take precedence over the glitz and pageantry of the games?
For years Azerbaijan has been a country of “concern” or “worry” for Western politicians, analysts, and observers. At times the levels of concern grew into “grave concern” or “extreme worry.” And then even these admonishments disappeared–vanishing in the politics of caviar diplomacy. Those jailed stayed in jail, those who were silenced remained silenced, and more importantly, the authorities in Azerbaijan continued their skillful use of repression and crackdown tactics.
One success story of tackling the crackdown and getting some international attention has been hijacking the official hashtag of the European Games – #HelloBaku. In March, the organizers of the games announced a competition for the most creative photo – the winner would get tickets to the games’ opening ceremony. The winner was announced in early May:
#Baku2015 is proud to announce the winner of #HelloBaku social media contest.
Posted by Baku 2015 European Games on Friday, 8 May 2015
But as Index on Censorship later wrote, the contest backfired with “a number of social media users instead using #HelloBaku to highlight Azerbaijan’s poor record on human rights:
Must-read for @UNICEF @BP_plc @CocaCola http://t.co/N22wvofeRF #HelloBaku + video with @dinarayunus https://t.co/iZTYgxl79r #Baku2015
— Jan Kooy (@KooyJan) April 7, 2015
.@biginbaku What else is on offer in #HelloBaku? Journalists, bloggers in prison, crackdown on government critics. pic.twitter.com/rKx9AwTCPs
— Wenzel Michalski (@WenzelMichalski) March 26, 2015
But these are just small victories in the face of a much larger and stronger crackdown that requires more urgent attention.
Now is the time to act. Western leaders must pressure the government of Azerbaijan to start respecting the international conventions and agreements it has signed. A more critical approach must be taken against government officials involved in the ongoing harassment of journalists, civil society activists, rights defenders, and peaceful protesters. They need more than just our “concern,” as do all citizens of Azerbaijan.
Arzu Geybullayeva is a Istanbul-based journalist with a background in conflict resolution who has written extensively about Azerbaijan for local and international media, including Al Jazeera and Global Voices. She is a 2014-2015 Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellow with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Azerbaijani Service.

author: Arzu Geybullayeva


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Suspended Algerian Satirical TV Show Vows to Make a Comeback Online · Global Voices
Thalia Rahme

From the Facebook page of “Eldjazairia Weekend”
From exposing corruption among the ruling elite to denouncing odd practices in Algerian society, the satirical TV show ”Eldjazairia Weekend” has as many supporters as it does opponents.
Up until a few weeks ago, in its signature irreverent and snarky style, the show aired every Friday evening on El Djazaïria, a private television channel in Algeria. On April 24, the Eldjazairia Weekend team were forced to bid farewell to their TV audience. They were in tears.
While it appears that their network was behind the show's closing, according to Reporters Without Borders the satirical show was canceled due to political pressure from above. Their source is Abdou Semmar, editor-in-chief of the citizen media site Algerie-Focus and co-host of Eldjazairia Weekend.
Semmar, who is also a Global Voices contributor, co-hosts the show with journalists Karim Kardache, Mustapha Kessaci and actor Merouane Boudiab. Semmar has vowed that an online version of the program will soon be launched to counter this act of censorship.
Besides Algerie-Focus, Semmar is a member of Envoyés Spéciaux Algériens. If you are familiar with these outlets, you can probably guess the tone of Eldjazairia Weekend.
It seems things came to a head on April 17 when Abdou Semmar questioned the wealth and Parisian apartments of several Algerian ministers and Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal's daughter. His information was based on the book “Paris-Alger, une histoire passionnelle” (Paris-Algiers, a passionate history), by a French journalist who claims that Sellal's daughter paid for her flat in Paris with money from dubious origins.The government's reaction was immediate and included a phone call from the prime minister, according to Algerie Focus.
The video below shared by Algerian netizens on YouTube is entitled “This is why ‘Eldjazairia Weekend’ was stopped.” It shows the segment of the show that is suspected to have caused the ire of authorities and cancellation of the program.
The next one shows the last minute of the last episode of the program where we can see Abdou crying along with the rest of his colleagues.
The rest of the video shows details of the administrative proceedings, including warnings by the audiovisual regulation authority and direct interventions by the Telecommunication Ministry with requests for the channel to change the form and content of the show and to fire Abdou.
The channel and journalists yielded to their demands. However, authorities subsequently refused to acknowledge their role in the cancellation of the show and insisted that the decision was purely internal. In fact, the decision was officially announced by the channel itself on its Facebook page. In a public statement, El Djazairia TV stated that the show stopped temporarily and will resume after Ramadan in a new format and that they only received oral warnings, not unlike any other television channels in the country.
That decision stirred indignation among the Algerian public and journalists, who expressed their support to the team of ‘Eldjazairia weekend’. International organisations such as Reporters without Borders also denounced the cancellation of the broadcast and called for the immediate reinstatement of the show. A protest was scheduled to take place on May 1.  However, most private Algerian TV channels did not respond to the call for protest with only El Watan speaking up in support of Abdou and his colleagues. Only one parliamentarian Habib Zeggat dared to challenge the authorities and express his sorrow over the state of freedom of expression in Algeria, specifically focusing on the ‘Eldjazairia weekend’ case in his speech.
Incidents like this are not new in Algeria. Abdou has covered many stories where bloggers were imprisoned for merely criticizing the regime or calling for a democratic election.
After the protest, Abdou spoke to many media outlets, mainly French ones, to expose the truth behind the decision to cancel the show. Abdou regretted the lack of solidarity among Algerian media but lauded international media for their full support.

author: Thalia Rahme


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Ten Years on from Andijan Massacre, an Uzbek Pleads for Freedom · Global Voices
Eurasianet

The town of Andijan in Uzbekistan. Photo from www.panoramio.com. Licensed to reuse.
May 13 marks ten years since the government of Uzbekistan massacred hundreds of civilians that had gathered in a square in a provincial town in what appeared a spontaneous act of defiance against a brutal and corrupt regime.
In the aftermath of the massacre, the Uzbek government characterised the bulk of the protesters as ‘Islamic extremists’, a designation that has since become synonymous with anyone that does not fit in with the state's narrow vision of an ideal citizen.
While the subject of this post, Akram Rustamov, was not among those in the town of Andijan that day, his story offers a compelling insight into the climate of fear and paranoia created by the government — even thousands of kilometres beyond its borders — in the name of counter-terrorism.
The following post is written by Sonum Somuria, an independent filmmaker from Guerrera Films. It appeared on EurasiaNet.org on May 11.
I met 25-year-old Akram Rustamov by chance when I was researching a story on the hardships Central Asian migrants face in Moscow, where millions work the most menial jobs.
He was facing serious charges at home in Uzbekistan.
Uzbek prosecutors accuse Akram of recruiting for the “Islamic Movement of Turkestan” (some regional experts believe the group is an invention of the Uzbek secret police), of calling for jihad at home, and of seeking militant training in Syria.
Uzbekistan has used trumped-up terrorism charges for years to jail critics and thousands of others, mostly peaceful Muslims, rights groups say. The regime of Islam Karimov uses the arrests and closed trials to perpetuate fear and legitimize its authoritarian rule both at home and abroad. The rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is  the latest excuse.
Activist Bahrom Hamroev at Memorial, a leading Russian human rights organization calls the charges against Akram “fabricated and falsified.”
Akram asked me to film his story. He was desperate to prove his innocence.
Spending time with Uzbeks in Moscow, I quickly came to see that many live in fear of something far worse than the nationalist Russian gangs or shady employers I had set out to document.
When one of Akram’s friends – a bulky, confident guy I will call Ahmed – heard us discussing theories that the Karimov regime was behind bombings in Tashkent in 1999, he panicked. If anyone found out, he said, he would be locked up immediately. Ahmed and another friend facing charges similar to Akram’s are so afraid that they have stopped going to work, fearing abduction by Uzbek security services operating in Moscow.
Ten days after I filmed Akram, he phoned me and told me that he was going back to Uzbekistan. I pleaded for him not to, but he said he didn’t have a choice. He had received threatening phone calls from the Uzbek National Security Service (SNB), he said, and on April 24 he left.
Upon Akram's arrival in Uzbekistan, family and friends say, the SNB immediately detained him. No one has been permitted to visit him. His friends and family fear he is being tortured and that they may never see him again.
Hamroev at Memorial says he believes Akram was promised freedom, promised that his name would be cleared. There’s no way he would have left of his own volition otherwise, Hamroev says. He also believes Akram was given a choice, of a sort: come home or your situation will be far worse.

author: Eurasianet


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Two Tragic Cases Throw a Harsh Spotlight on Latin America’s Abortion Laws · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Campaign for mothers-to-be. Image on Flickr by Prefectura de la Provincia del Guayas (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Two cases of rape resulting in pregnancy thousands of miles apart have once again have put a face to a taboo topic in Latin America: abortion.
The first involves a Salvadoran woman who was pardoned after serving seven years of a 30-year sentence for aggravated homicide related to a stillborn birth. The second is a 10-year old girl in Paraguay who is pregnant after she was allegedly raped by her stepfather. Authorities have denied her an abortion.
Latin America has some of the most restrictive regulations on abortion in the world. El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Suriname and Chile ban it completely. Guatemala, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay allow it only when the mother's life is threatened. The only countries in the region where women are free to abort are Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico (but only in that nation's capital) and some countries in the Caribbean.
Salvadoran Carmen Guadalupe Vásquez Aldana was 18 years old when she experienced the events that landed her in prison, according to the campaign Las17. She was one of 17 women, known as #Las17, who were imprisoned for aggravated homicide of their newborns. Their defenders argue that the women lost their newborns due to a range complications beyond their control, and that authorities never pursued the truth and instead treated them as guilty from the start:
Había empezado a trabajar como empleada doméstica desde muy corta edad. Cuando ocurrieron los hechos […] trabajaba como empleada con un sueldo de $80 al mes, durmiendo en casa de sus patronos, en un cuarto que ni siquiera tenía luz eléctrica.
Al poco de empezar a trabajar sufrió una violación, producto de la cual quedó embarazada. […] Su vientre no le creció y su misma patrona no se había dado cuenta de que estuviera embarazada.
Tuvo un parto de madrugada en el pequeño cuarto que tenía en la casa donde trabaja. Asustada por que no esperaba ese parto y con miedo a perder el trabajo por ello, no pidió ayuda ni tuvo ninguna atención médica, y según ella manifestó la criatura nació sin vida. Tuvo una fuerte hemorragia y su patrona la encontró sangrando a la mañana siguiente. Guadalupe se levantó y trabajó en las tareas domésticas mientras seguía sangrando. Al mediodía, como no paraba la hemorragia, su patrona la llevo al Hospital de San Bartolo, donde no la atendieron hasta las 8:20 de la noche. El médico manifestó que tenía una fuerte hemorragia y el propio personal sanitario del Hospital la denunció a la policía por aborto y la detuvieron.
She started working as domestic worker at very young age. When the events took place […] she worked as housemaid earning $80 per month, sleeping in her employers’ house, in a bedroom that didn't have electric light.
Just after she started to work there, she was raped, and as result, she became pregnant. […] Her womb hadn't grown and not even her employer noticed she was pregnant.
She went into labor in the early morning in the small room she had in the house she worked at. Frightened as she didn't expect the birth and afraid of losing her job because of it, she didn't ask for any medical attention and, according to her declaration, hers had been a stillbirth. She suffered heavy hemorrhage and her employer found her bleeding the next morning. Guadalupe got up and carried on with household chores while still bleeding. By noon, as the bleeding hadn't stopped, her employer took her to San Bartolo Hospital, where she remained unattended until 8:20 in the evening. The doctor said she had a heavy hemorrhage and the staff of the hospital turned her into the police for abortion and she was detained.
El Salvador's laws regarding abortion weren't always so strict. As NACLA reports:
In El Salvador, a powerful pro-life movement led by the organization Yes to Life began campaigning for the total criminalization of abortion during a planned revision of the penal code in 1994. The right-wing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) political party allied with the pro-life movement, and in 1997, voted into law a new criminal code. The new code eliminated the previous law’s allowance of abortion in cases of rape or grave fetal deformation, or when it would save the health of the mother.
The changes to the code included declaring that life begins at conception and the state must protect that life.
The story took an unexpected turn on January 12, when the Commission of Justice and Human Rights in El Salvador's Legislative Assembly unanimously ruled to pardon Carmen Guadalupe. Hers is the first pardon granted in the history of El Salvador to a woman accused of abortion and gives hope to 16 other women who are still in prison.
In a press conference she had after being released, she said, “I thank God as finally justice was served, I declare that I am innocent.”
At the time, the news echoed on Twitter:
Congreso de El Salvador aprueba indulto a una de las 17 mujeres presas por abortar http://t.co/wjq7MkPsm8 vía @InfoNodal
— cosimina pellegrino (@cosipellegrino) febrero 25, 2015
El Salvador Congress grants pardon for one of the 17 women imprisoned for abortion.
La liberación de Guadalupe es un paso importante hacia la justicia para muchas mujeres #Las17 http://t.co/TqaHhrpOdP pic.twitter.com/iqiOYETBnB
— Túpuedessalvartuvida (@vida_mujeres) febrero 20, 2015
Guadalupe's release is an important step towards justice for many women.
Photo: “When I was in prison, I met other women like me who were being treated unjustly. I want to send them a message of hope and strength. I want them to know that the world is paying attention to their cases.” -Guadalupe
In Paraguay, a ten-year old girl represents another tragic side of the same drama. The child is five-months pregnant, allegedly raped by her stepfather Gilberto Benítez Zárate, who was finally detained by police after several weeks on the run. He is currently behind bars at the Tacumbú prison in Asuncion.
Authorities have denied the girl an abortion despite her mother's requests, and some medical experts fear that pregnancy at such a young age could endanger her life. The girl's mother –who reportedly raised the alarm last year that the stepfather was abusing her daughter, but police did nothing — was also arrested, accused of obstructing the investigation by giving false information about the stepfather.
As the website ActitudFem reports:
Tiene 10 años, pesa 36 kilogramos, apenas alcanza el 1.40 de estatura y está embarazada luego de que, se presume, su padrastro abusara de ella. Sin embargo, las autoridades paraguayas se niegan rotundamente a que la menor aborte.
El 21 de abril la menor llegó al Hospital Materno Infantil de Trinidad de Asunción acompañada de su mamá. La pequeña se quejaba de un dolor estomacal.
Pero cuando los médicos la revisaron descubrieron que en realidad la pequeña tenía 21 semanas de embarazo.
She is ten years old, weighs 36 kilograms (79 pounds) and she hardly rises up to 1.40 meters (4 feet 7 inches) and she is pregnant after her stepfather allegedly raped her. Paraguayan authorities, however, have rejected outright for the minor to have an abortion.
On April 21, the girl arrived to the Trinity Child's Hospital of Asunción with her mother. The girl was complaining about a stomachache.
But when the doctors evaluated her, they found out the girl was 21-weeks pregnant.
Paraguayan Minister of Health Antonio Barrios has expressed his total disagreement with an abortion. Furthermore, he has criticized the public campaign pressing the country's authorities to authorize the procedure.
Their refusal has sparked heated debate around the world. Amnesty International has called on authorities to allow the girl an abortion :
Amnesty International has issued an Urgent Action and its supporters have been writing letters to the Minister of Public Health and Welfare and the Attorney General calling on them to intervene to protect the girl and guarantee her human rights.
The organization has launched an online petition with the name Niña en peligro (Girl in danger), which currently has more than 5,000 signatures.
On Twitter, some users called on Paraguay's President Horacio Cartes to act while others repeated the news:
Una niña de 10 años violada por su padrastro, embarazada, la obligan a seguir con su embarazo (paraguay) #NinaEnPeligro
— Virginia C.R. (@vircore) Mayo 5, 2015
A ten-year-old girl raped by her stepfather, pregnant, she is forced to continue with her pregnancy (Paraguay). #ChildInDanger
Juan A. Torres, a social worker and healthcare activist in Spain, tweeted Amnesty International's note to his 31,000 followers:
Exige a @Horacio_Cartes que garantice salud a niña de10 años violada y embarazada http://t.co/jojaclpaGG pic.twitter.com/fYfnVpG4P3 — JUAN A. TORRES (@JuanMalaga2011) Mayo 5, 2015
Demand that Horacio Cartes guarantee health to a ten-year old raped and pregnant girl.
According to official figures, two girls between 10 and 14 years old give birth every day in Paraguay, most as a result of sexual abuse from their family environment. The World Health Organization puts the number of abortions carried out each year in Latin America at four million, and the majority of them are performed amid unhealthy conditions, especially in low income areas.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Venezuela Creates the Joint Staff for Cyber Defense · Global Voices
Global Voices Latin America

#SepaQue Ministerio de la Defensa crea la Dirección Conjunta de Ciberdefensa ● http://t.co/7JdVlgdDuE pic.twitter.com/ua82tGbO9d
— Efecto Cocuyo (@EfectoCocuyo) May 8, 2015
#YouMustKnow Venezuelan Defense Ministry creates the Joint Staff for Cyber Defense.
The Cocuyo Effect website reported that the Defense Ministry of Venezuela created the Joint Staff for Cyber Defense of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (known in Spanish as FANB).
The Official Gazette number 40,655, where the Act was published, offers no additional details on the operation of this Joint Staff; it only states that the Joint Staff will have several divisions: one for social networks; a division for cyber defense operations; one for IT security management; one for research and development and, of course, a director and a deputy director, as well as an area of administrative management.
The document notes that this new organization will be responsible for the country's cyber defense and supersedes the Joint Staff for IT Security of the FANB.
Other countries such as Spain, United States, Uruguay, and Colombia already have specialized agencies in cyber defense.
The Argentine Council for International Relations defines cyber defense as:
el conjunto de acciones y/u operaciones activas o pasivas desarrolladas en el ámbito de las redes, sistemas, equipos, enlaces y personal de los recursos informaticos y teleinformaticos de la defensa a fin de asegurar el cumplimiento de las misiones o servicios para los que fueran concebidos a la vez que se impide que fuerzas enemigas los utilicen para cumplir los suyos.
the set of actions and/or active or passive operations carried out in the field of networks, systems, equipment, connections, and personal of the IT resources of the Army to ensure the accomplishment of the tasks or services for which they were intended, and at the same time, prevents the enemy forces from using them.

author: Global Voices Latin America