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Guatemalan Vice President Resigns, Protests Continue · Global Voices
Renata Avila

Roxana Baldetti, now former Guatemala Vice-President. Picture by Nomada.gt under a Creative Commons license.
On Friday May 8, Guatemalan Vice-President Roxana Baldetti resigned. Her announcement is a reaction to an investigation linking her closest aide — now a fugitive — to a big government corruption scheme, known as La Linea.
Case against La Línea & social movement it inspired represent victory fight against #impunity in #Guatemala @ipinst http://t.co/lGjtTBd0Dm
— Impunity Watch (@ImpunityWatch) May 8, 2015
The investigation into La Linea — so called because of the apparent existence of a special number well-connected people could call to evade customs duties on imports — was conducted by the International Commission Against Impunity. The CICIG is a mechanism to fight corruption in Guatemala backed by the United Nations, which is attempting to rescue the country's institutions and dismantle so-called “parallel” power structures.
Guatemalan citizens recently marched in the streets to demand the resignation of the country's top leadership, and the announcement of Baldetti's exit is creating a festive, hopeful spirit on social networks. It took 23 days to force her resignation, as a useful chronology produced by news site nomada.gt indicates.
Indeed, for most Guatemalans, Baldetti's resignation is not enough. They want her and all the government figures involved in La Linea and other cases prosecuted and convicted.
La primavera guatemalteca llegó! una de las consignas en las calles de Guatemala. Población busca dimisión de OPM pic.twitter.com/vdkBFli4F6
— PrensaComunitaria (@PrensaComunitar) May 9, 2015
The Guatemalan Spring Has Arrived is one of the slogans in the Guatemalan streets. The people want President Otto Perez to resign.
And while today hundreds will demonstrate in the streets, next week will be critical, with politically tense negotiations on the replacement Vice President beginning.
This all happens as Guatemala's Congress — very much a “Congress in Campaign” — prepares for November elections with huge political and economic interests at stake.
Let the resignation of #Baldetti be the start of structural changes in #Guatemala
— Anna Sandoval (@AnnaSandovalG) May 9, 2015
In addition to CICIG, the driving force behind Baldetti's ouster has been an emergent generation of active and critical Guatemalan youth, many of them born in times of peace and democracy, who are ready to add substance and meaning to the word.
While the corrupt mainstream media and old elites maneuver behind close doors, this demographic is increasingly ready to take to the streets and demand transparency, accountability and genuine change for an ossified political system.
Thus, as Congress prepares to consider a trio of V-P selections submitted by the executive, politics in Guatemala is on a knife edge.
The Baldetti resignation in particular poses several questions: Will the new appointment be able to run in future elections? What would happen if the current President steps down, due to popular demand? Might there be an early presidential election in these new political circumstances? And will Baldetti be able to flee the country with her assets in tact, escaping punishment altogether?
Political status quo is in flux in #Guatemala, and could be new precedent if #Baldetti is prosecuted: @martin_guate https://t.co/NP4wBlORtJ — Benjamin Reeves (@bpreeves) May 8, 2015
Pedir que solo salga #Baldetti es pedir Olvido y Perdón a las élites parasitaria que se enriquece de la evasión pic.twitter.com/iY7tnCOjbB
— C P R . U r b a n a (@puebloresiste) May 6, 2015
To ask just for the exit of #Baldetti is to ask to forget and forgive the parasite elites, getting richer from tax evasion.
Congress will choose new VP from a list of 3 that will be prepared by Prez @ottoperezmolina. — Phil Neff (Version) (@cascadiasolid) May 9, 2015
If #Guatemala Congress approves VP resignation she will lose immunity for prosecution. #CasoSAT #CasoLaLinea #BaldettiRenuncia (3/3)
— NISGUA (@NISGUA_Guate) May 9, 201
And the networks lit up at the news that Roxana Baldetti's Twitter account had been deleted:
Baldetti ya desapareció de Twitter, que no desaparezca también de Guate! #ArraigoABaldetti pic.twitter.com/Rbr7ow2PHh
— flaka (@flakitasamayoa) May 9, 2015
Baldetti is gone from Twitter, we must not permit her to flee the country!
Next month will be crucial for the future of the small and troubled Central American nation. Guatemalans are hoping that any changes will be changes for the good.

author: Renata Avila


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How a Traditional African Game Spread Throughout the World · Global Voices
Boukary Konaté

Waali, a traditional game in Mali – permission from Boukary
Some 7032 kilometers lie between Bamako, the capital of Mali, and Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. Yet for centuries now, there have been tangible links between these two countries.
This is not really surprising. Despite the long distance, the two countries (and their neighbours) share a common Bantu heritage. This explains why their cultures have several common aspects.
Map of Bantu migrations via Mark Dingemasse CC-BY-2.5
An ancient strategy game known as ‘Waali’, enjoyed from the villages of the Sahel through to the fishing communities of the Mozambique Channel, bears witness to these important migratory flows and to Africa's intermingling of cultures. It is a traditional game in Mali and, while it has almost disappeared in some parts of the country, it is still being played in some Malian villages.
While the photo at the top of this post shows a game-set made out of clay, there are also sets made of wood. Once played exclusively by kings and their friends, Waali is now played by people from all walks of life.
Lova, a contributing member of Global Voices, notes an important similarity between Waali and a Malagasy game called ‘Katra’. Katra emerged in Madagascar in the 17th century  – it was at around this time that a wave of Bantu migration reached Madagascar's shores.
Lova writes on twitter:
Ressemblance fascinante entre le Waali, jeu Malien http://wp.me/p4FZv7-g1 et le Katra, jeu à Madagascar.
There's an interesting resemblence between Waali, a game from Mali http://wp.me/p4FZv7-g1 [Fr], and Katra, a game from Madagascar.
Katra, a traditional game from Madagascar – public domain
After this photo was shared, several web-users responded by pointing out similar games in their respective countries.
Nene Ba, a friend from Daka, pointed out the existence of a similar game in Senegal:
Chez nous, ça s’appelle le Wourè
We call this game ‘Wourè’ in Senegal.
Mina Harker shared an image of a similar game known as ‘Awalé':
Je l’ai acheté en France en 2002 dans une boutique qui faisait de l’artisanat africain. La vendeuse m'a dit que celui que j’ai arrive de la Côte d’Ivoire.
I bought a set in France in 2002 in an African crafts shop. The shopkeeper told me that it came from the Ivory Coast.
Mina also shared a link to information about the game's origins and its rules:
Le but du jeu est de récolter un maximum de graines. Il se pratique à 2 joueurs qui se font face avec devant eux 6 trous. S'il y a d'autres trous, ils servent à engranger les prises. On dépose 4 graines dans chaque trou
The goal is to ‘harvest’ as many seeds as possible. It is played between 2 players and the board usually has 6 pockets. If there are more than 6 pockets, then the extra pockets are used to store seeds that have already been harvested. You put 4 seeds into each pocket.
Mina adds that there's also another variation in France:
En France,  on faisait ça dans la terre à 24 trous. quand j’ai trouvé l’Awalé en 12 trous,  j’ai pas hésité a le prendre, pratique à transporter pour jouer. En revanche, je ne connais pas le nom du jeu. On faisait les trous dans la terre on mettait des cailloux et on jouait. Apparemment ce jeu se joue aussi au Brésil.
In France, we played by digging 24 holes in the ground. When I found a 12-pocket version called Awalé, I did not hesitate to buy it. It was portable and convenient. That said, I still don't know the name of the 24-hole version. We would dig the holes into the ground and used pebbles to play. I've heard that this game is also played in Brazil.
Sy Sye provides some further information about the game:
Ce jeu existe dans beaucoup de pays, moi je l’ai connu au Ghana où il s’appele Oware. Cet article dit que le jeu est censé être d’origine Akan, soit du Ghana et/ou de la Côte d’ivoire, et qu’il est répandu un peu partout en Afrique. On peut aussi noter l’apparente similarité des noms de ce jeu, ce qui rend bien vraisemblable une origine commune.
This game exists in many countries. I first found it in Ghana, where it is called ‘Oware’. This article says that the game is supposed to be of Akan origin – maybe from Ghana and/or the Ivory Coast. It also says that the game is played pretty much all throughout Africa. The different names given to the game often sound similar and this suggests that the game's different regional versions all have a common beginning.
The names of the various different versions are: Oware (Ghana), Ayò (Yoruba), Awalé (Ivory Coast), Wari (Mali), Ouril or Uril (Cap Verde), Warri (Caribbean), Wali (Dagbani), Adji (Ewe), Nchọ (Igbo), Woure (Senegal) and Awélé (Ga).
If you know of any other versions of this game, share them with us on twitter (@fasokan or @globalvoices) or in the comments section below.
This article was first published via ‘Quand le village se réveille‘ [Fr] [tr: literally ‘when the village wakes up’] – a Rising voices project. It was reformatted with permission from the project's members.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Boukary Konaté


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How Does China’s Foreign NGO Management Law Curb the Development of Civil Society? · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Hong Kong protesters demanded the release of political dissident, Xu Zhiyong, the founder of Gongmeng and figure head of China's new citizen movement. Image from Wikipedia
The China National People's Congress passed a second reading of the Foreign NGOs Management Law last month and released the complete text of the draft legislation on May 5.
The latest draft has been described by major state-directed media as lessening control over foreign NGOs, since it allows them to open offices in the country with permission from the government. These changes were explained by way of “the Chinese government's positive attitude towards some international NGOs” in a government commentary on the draft.
Yet Chinese NGO circles remain skeptical about the new law.
The first draft of the law, written jointly by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, was submitted to the bimonthly session of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPC) in December 2014, but the details were not disclosed until March 2015 when it was amended. In the same month Chinese officials revealed some fresh restrictions imposed on foreign NGOs.
As Maya Wang, China researcher for Human Rights Watch, pointed out to Global Voices:
The second draft has made no significant improvement upon the first from a human rights point of view. There are some changes, but they are technical changes and do not alter the fundamental purpose of the law, which is to significantly tighten the Government's control over civil society if adopted.
Research carried out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates that there are about 1,000 foreign NGOs operating in China and an average of between 4,000 and 6,000 NGO projects on issues including poverty, environment, health and education carried out annually. These projects — worth hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars combined — often involve partnerships with local NGOs and social groups.
The new law forbids foreign NGOs that have not registered in China or obtained a permit for their temporary projects to commission local organizations or individuals to carry out activities inside the country (Article 6).
Prominent activist Zeng Jinyan says that provision in particular will increase risks for domestic NGO workers:
根据这个草案，国内NGO的风险巨增，国际国内Ngo若想在中国开展活动，几乎全都丧失独立性。境外非政府组织管理法（草案二次审议稿）全文（标注版） | http://t.co/LmR5WW5YOU
— zengjinyan (@zengjinyan) May 6, 2015
According to the draft, the risk of running domestic NGOs will increase tremendously and both international and domestic NGOs will lose their independence in their China projects. See Foreign NGOs Management Law (Second Draft) whole text (with notes): http://t.co/LmR5WW5YOU
Notably, the State Council Public Security Department will have an outsize role under the new legislation, obtaining the power to approve the registration of foreign NGOs and manage their activities.
That “management” entails a “coordination mechanism” that involves “researching, coordinating and resolving major problems in the management of foreign NGOs” (Article 7).
Maya Wang elaborated further on the role of the Department:
[…]'supervision’ can entail entering the premises of the foreign NGO at any point, questioning its staff, and copying or seizing any document, all tactics more commonly reserved for a criminal investigation. Foreign NGOs will have to submit for approval annual work plans and funding allocations, and will be prohibited from engaging in a range of peaceful activities, from raising funds or accepting donations in-country to recruiting volunteers or trying to recruit members ‘directly or indirectly.’
Violations mean that an NGO's representative in China (the draft law now requires foreign NGO to establish a representative office) would be liable to punishments, including a 15-day detention.
The release of the draft law prompted a broad public discussion.
A detailed explanation of how the law might curb the development of the NGO sector in China soon circulated widely among Chinese NGO workers via social media.
The author of the explainer lists a number of adverse impacts on the civic sector in mainland China:
1. Workload and recruitment:
按照新法，境外NGO临时活动每年一申，而设立代表机构五年就得重新申请一次，并且代表机构实习“双主管”制度，除了要找业务主管，还得到公安部门登记，稍微挪一挪，就得这个主管同意，那个主管备案，活动前各种申请，活动完各种递交材料——一个活动稍微多点的机构，估计每年光是跑行政事务，都得跑烂几双鞋。
According to the new law, foreign NGOs have to fill in applications for their temporary projects once a year. As for the setting up of sub-branches, they have to re-file an application once every five years. The [NGO] offices in China will be under a “dual-supervision-system”, which means their projects have to be approved by related authorities and the public security department. Any change would have to get the approval again. Activities plans and reports have to be submitted to both sets of authorities. If the organization is active, the administrative workload would be tremendous.
事多没办法，那就多招点人吧，naive！新法规定，境外非政府组织代表机构在中国境内聘请工作人员或者招募志愿者，应当委托当地外事服务单位或者中国政府指定的其他单位办理。（32条）[…]
境外非政府组织代表机构中的境外工作人员的比例不得超过工作人员总数的百分之五十。（35条）
So, they can recruit more people to deal with the extra workload, right? Naive! The new law requires that any local recruitment of regular staff or volunteers must be handled through the foreign affairs service units or other Chinese government-designated units. (Article 32)
The proportion of foreign personnel at foreign NGOs’ offices must not exceed 50% of the total staff numbers (Article 35).
2. No more funding for advocacy groups:
新法规定，中国境内个人、法人或者其他组织不得接受未登记代表机构、未取得临时活动许可的境外非政府组织的委托、资助，代理或者变相代理境外非政府组织开展活动。(38条）
无需讳言，现在政府和国内的基金会愿意支持倡导工作的少之又少，一刀切断，又不知道有多少倡导型机构饿死。加之，新法中还有一条，境外非政府组织不得资助“政治活动”，否则吊销、取缔、拘留（5条、59条），什么是“政治活动”，这两年的风声鹤唳让人越发摸不着头脑。做倡导的小伙伴请自求多福。
The new law specifies that any legal entities in China must not accept commissions or financial support, or represent foreign NGOs that have not registered a representative office in carrying out activities. (Article 38)
Currently, Chinese government and domestic funding organizations seldom support advocacy groups. The sector will die out because of funding shortage. Moreover, the law also forbids foreign NGOs from sponsoring political activities or it would be shut down or penalized. Yet the definition of “political activities” is so blurred. God help activists.
3. Development of social enterprise faces a dead end:
境外非政府组织不得从事或者资助营利性活动（第5条），那社会企业怎么办？
Foreign NGOs cannot engage in or sponsor profitable activities (Article 5). What about the development of social enterprises?
4. Definition of foreign NGOs and their activities:
As the law defines foreign NGOs as overseas non-profitable, non-governmental organisations, such a definition can be extended to non-profitable enterprises such as hospitals, and educational organizations. As the law forbids foreign NGOs, which are not registered in China to carry out activities in China or commission local legal entities for carrying out activities, the impact will affect commercial activities springing from the private sector.
比如，一家英国医院到上海采购医疗设备，上海公司要识别英国医院，到底是营利利还是非营利机构，才敢签合同？
For example, a hospital from the U.K wants to buy some medical facilities in Shanghai, the Shanghai company has to make sure that the hospital is not a non-profitable entity before it signs the contract?
每年都有一些国外基金会面向全球提供访问、游学、奖助学金的项目，自然也覆盖中国大陆，新法出台后，要在中国发奖学金，他们首先得：1.（取得五年资格）去业务主管申请开设代表机构资格，再去公安部门登记 2.年度计划、财务、税务等细节一个都不能少 3.派一个首席代表 4.境外工作人员不得超过50%，得再委托当地外事服务单位或者中国政府指定的其他单位找一个员工……
Many foreign foundations provide worldwide funding for visiting scholars, exchange or scholarship, such funding opportunities naturally extend to China. Once the new law is implemented, if they want to extend their fundings to China, they have to 1) apply for a representative office and register to the public security department; 2) submit their plan, budget, tax form; 3) send a chief representative to China; 4) ensure that their foreign representatives will not exceed 50% total staff, and they moreover have to ask the foreign affairs service units or other units designated by the China government to hire a local employee…
Since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power two years ago, the crackdown on dissent and civic groups has been unprecedentedly broard and fierce.
The pretext for these crackdowns are thus far related to tax evasion, such as the arrest of Ai Weiwei in 2013 and the shutdown of Gongmeng in 2009. The government has also showed it will detain people for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles“, a catch-all criminal offence that has been invoked to prosecute dissent and activism in the past few years, as seen with the arrest of five prominent feminists two months ago.
This new set of laws would provide still further legal grounds for future crackdowns and political prosecution, since any overseas connection to organizations that are not registered in China could mark an organisation or person as out as a criminal.

author: Oiwan Lam


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Media Factory Seeks to Invest in New Digital Media in Latin America · Global Voices
Mary Aviles

Media Factory, a startup accelerator which focuses on the business of online news and journalism, announced the second class of its news acceleration program, seeking to support new digital-only media ventures in Latin America during 2015.
Teams should be based anywhere in the region and have a strong professional network, successful experience generating impact (building audience, having political influence, or creating revenue), experience in journalism and digital content, capacity to produce summaries and to cover breaking news, and a fluid understanding of new technologies related to media. The initial goals will be to work on audience generation, community engagement and defining a business model.
Media Factory invests USD 75,000 in each company and works with founders on editorial efficiency, audience growth, and revenue generation. The second class will be held over three months in Buenos Aires, beginning Sept. 1st, 2015, after the Media Party conference.
After the acceleration period, the teams will return to their countries of origin where they’ll receive the mentoring of Media Factory to scale and achieve new rounds of investment. Furthermore, as part of the acceleration process, the startups will build strong sales and marketing departments so they can monetize their platforms.
For the first class in 2014, Media Factory reviewed 115 entries, interviewed 58 teams and selected 18 finalists, to choose three teams to its first class of entrepreneurs. ElMeme.me from Argentina, El Cambur from Venezuela, and GKillCity from Ecuador spent around 100 days in Buenos Aires, received investment and mentorship from disruptive digital media worldwide like Mic.com, Vox Media and the Knight Lab at Northwestern University.

author: Mary Aviles


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The Humanitarian Crisis You Haven’t Heard of in Burundi · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

50,000 refugees have fled Burundi (here at the border with Tanzania). Photo via Jamii Forums
Following Burundi President Nkurunziza's announcement of his candidacy for a third term (unconstitutional by Burundi's existing law), a massive humanitarian crisis has hit the country as at least 50,000 refugees have fled the country after scenes of violence were reported in several cities. The occurrence of violence were often posted on social media platforms first under the hashtags #burundichaos or #sindumuja. The following infographic sums up the refugees situation as of May 8:
UPDATE: According to @Refugees, 50,000 refugees hv fled to #Tanzania #DRC & #Rwanda over the past month #burundichaos pic.twitter.com/8id2Rawnbl
— Jamii Forums (@JamiiForums) May 9, 2015

author: Lova Rakotomalala


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The Salvadoran Town Where Migrants Are Hotly Debated Folk Heroes · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

A passport that belonged to Sigfredo Chávez. Intipucá celebrates him as its first migrant to take off for the US. Credit: Ruxandra Guidi. Published with PRI's permission
Intipucá is a small town in southeastern El Salvador that lies close to a beach popular with surfers. But the reason most outsiders know about this place has nothing to do with tourism. Intipucá is famous for the people who have left.
An estimated 5,000 Intipucá locals now live in and around Washington, DC. The mayor, Enrique Méndez, gave me his version of why people started leaving the town en masse for the US.
“It was because of the armed conflict here in El Salvador,” he says, “and the first to go was Sigfredo Chávez.”
The statue of Sigfredo Chávez in Intipucá’s migrant’s park Credit: Ruxandra Guidi. Published with PRI's permission
The mayor’s story isn’t quite right. The migration began in the late 1960s, at least 15 years before El Salvador descended into civil war. And when he says Sigfredo Chávez was the town’s first migrant, several people in his office start to disagree.
It turns out that the story of Intipucá’s first migrant is part reality, part gossip and part legend.
One person who claims to know the real story is Oscar Romero, Sigfredo Chávez’s nephew. Early on a weekday morning, before he heads out to work, Romero meets me in front of the monument erected in his uncle’s honor in Intipucá’s main plaza.
Looking up at the clay statue of man with a backpack slung over his shoulder, Romero is clearly filled with pride.
“It’s the first monument to emigrants in the world!” he says. “Nowhere else did people have the idea to praise their first migrant. So my uncle now is an international symbol!”
Chávez is definitely something of a folk hero in Intipucá. “He’s fit and athletic,” Romero says, pointing to the statue. “You see his character traits on his face: Confident, driven. He’s headed north, in the direction of the airport.”
Chávez came from a landowning family that hit some hard times after El Salvador’s agrarian reform. According to the story, his mother, an ambitious woman, pushed him to go the US to improve the family’s fortunes. Romero says his uncle left town in 1968 with a tourist visa; the first migrant from Intipucá didn’t cross the US-Mexico border illegally on foot, like so many others after him.
He went to Washington, DC, and his stories started filtering back a few months later. You could make a good living doing dishes and cleaning homes, he said.
A poster in Intipucá’s cultural center celebrates the 45th anniversary since the first migrant left town for the US Credit: Ruxandra Guidi. Published with PRI's permission
Many locals started to follow, and within a few years, Washington became the top destination for Intipucá natives. Some people in the town say about 300 people were leaving for the US every day, though that’s clearly an exaggeration.
No matter the numbers, remittances from Washington began to flow back to Intipucá. They eventually paid for a school, a stadium and a cultural center, so having a connection to the first migrant means bragging rights here.
“It’s like an award. It’s like saying I win the prize because my family was the first to migrate,” says Jaqueline Portillo, director of Intipucá’s cultural center and the guardian of many of the local families’ artifacts, documents and photos. Inside her locked desk drawer are Chávez’s old passports, his divorce papers and family photos.
So it's no wonder Chávez's family isn’t the only one to claim the number-one spot.
Alfredito Arias insists he was the first to leave, in 1967, but he won’t consent to an interview. He says he’s done trying to make his case to strangers.
“The Chávez family kept better documentation than Alfredito Arias,” Portillo says, “so there’s simply more weight to the story of Chávez being the first migrant.”
Intipucá’s town center. Remittance money has flowed in, but the population has flowed out. Credit: Ruxandra Guidi. Published with PRI's permission
This article and radio report by Ruxandra Guidi for The World originally appeared on PRI.org on May 4, 2015, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
Chávez died in 2006, so he can’t tell his own story. But his widow, Elba Salinas, is still alive in the US. Her nephew, Hugo Salinas, says she should be credited as the first migrant — Chávez wouldn’t have left for the US if it hadn't been for her.
“He left with Elba!” Salinas insists. “Elba told me so!”
Salinas is collecting the details of his aunt’s story, and those of many other Intipucá migrants as well. He and Jaqueline Portillo are planning a big event for the 50th anniversary of migration in Intipucá, which is coming up in 2018.
“I want to create a positive image of my town, because no one was collecting these personal stories,” Salinas says. “Stories like the one of Mr. Martin Lazo, who would lend you a suit to get on a flight because you had to dress nicely back then. Or the story of ‘Travel Today, Pay Later,’ which would give you a loan so you could pay for your US visa.”
Salinas is worried these stories about immigration and Intipucá will be forgotten in the next few generations. Today, an estimated half of the town’s population is living in US. The streets are largely empty. Even Sigredo Chavez’s home is abandoned, another monument to a town that celebrates its own exodus.
Ruxandra's story was produced in association with Round Earth Media.

author: PRI/PRX's The World


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Clashes in Mahabad, Iran, Following the Controversial Death of a Female Hotel Worker · Global Voices
Faten Bushehri

A portrait painting of Farinaz Khosrawani, a Kurdish hotel worker who's suspicious death has caused unrest throughout Iran. Photo from the @alebabiri Twitter account.
Warning: Post contains disturbing images and footage.
Violent clashes erupted in the Iranian city of Mahabad between police and Kurdish protesters who set a hotel on fire on Thursday in a protest against the mysterious death of a female Kurdish hotel worker. Mahabad is an ethnically Kurdish Iranian city, located 200 kilometres from the border with Iraq's Kurdistan region.
Police used tear gas to disperse the angry crowd from the area in front of the hotel.
the brutality of #Iranian_regime #dictatorship in suppressing #demonstrations #JusticeForFarinaz #Iran #Mahabad pic.twitter.com/DMalyCqILw
— Khaled elEkhetyar (@freelancitizen) May 10, 2015
Farinaz Khosrawani, 26, was working at Tara hotel when she fell to her death from the fourth floor earlier this week.
Speculation surrounding the circumstances of her death has emerged from different sources and officials, leaving protesters even angrier. One version prominent among the protesters is that the woman jumped out of the window to escape an attempted rape.
Videos were posted of the hotel burning:
RT “@murad_med21: Rape growing anger Tara hotel was set on fire / Mahabad / Eastern Kurdistan #JusticeForFarinaz https://t.co/pgerVAIs8o“
— legionar (@MatevzNovak) May 7, 2015
According to Rudaw News Website, locals suspect that the chief protagonist in Khosrawani's death was an Iranian army officer allegedly working in collaboration with the hotel's owner.
Another recent post on Rudaw states that authorities have arrested a man in connection with the incident, who has confessed to being with her before she fell out of the window.
But the article also presented many other contradictory statements surrounding Khosrawani's death.
The pro-government website quotes Iran’s deputy police chief Saeed Montazer Almahdi saying the woman was trying to jump from one balcony to another after she had “learned that her family and hotel manager had found out about her work,” but lost control and fell.
His statement, which implies Khosrawani was a prostitute, is available on YouTube with Arabic subtitles. The government news also claims that hashtags related to this event originate from regional rival Saudi Arabia, suggesting the unrest is part of a Saudi-backed revolt.
VIDEO:Iranian TV tells its viewers that Saudis are urging Kurds to revolt against Tehran regime http://t.co/sIiAGpdJVM #امجد_طه #مهاباد
— #الأحواز امجد طه (@amjadt25) May 11, 2015
But Rudaw also cited a quote from BBC Persian who had spoken to the deputy governor of Iran's Western Azerbaijan province, Alireza Radfar, saying that Khosrawani and the suspect were in a romantic relationship. He says that she jumped to her death after the hotel manager informed her mother of the relationship.
It's one thing to be Kurdish in Iran and a another to be a Kurdish woman. #JusticeForFarinaz
— Zakarya Khezeryan (@Zakaryakh) May 9, 2015
Abullah Muhtadi, secretary general of the Kurdish Komala party, echoes protesters’ allegations and told Rudaw that Khosrawani was an accountant at the hotel and did not know the man:
It is said there were signs of a fight between the two and her clothes were torn and there were bruises on her body
While there are no confirmed reports regarding the death of Khosrawani, that did not stop protesters from taking to the streets to voice their disapproval and express no confidence in the authorities.
Several people were arrested and more than 25 people were injured in the clashes, leaving one in a critical condition. Angry protesters are tweeting #JusticeForFarinaz :
We will not remain silent as #Kurdish women are dishonored! We are not for sale! #JusticeForFarinaz #Mahabad #PJAK pic.twitter.com/nlxfbYqSUF
— MiddleEastrnfeminist (@HawzhinAzeez) May 10, 2015
Farinaz is just an example of millions who're facing discrimination and violence every moment in Iran #JusticeForFarinaz
— سياف سحيم (@Eyefalcoon) May 9, 2015
She jumped from the fourth floor of the building to avoid being raped by an #Iranian army officer! #JusticeForFarinaz pic.twitter.com/eJ6TXHuFYD
— Hanar Marouf (@Hanar_Marouf) May 8, 2015
In a reference to Reyhaneh Jabbari, an Iranian citizen, who was executed for killing her attempted rapist, Maha wrote:
Shameful silence of the world against oppression against women in iran… Rehana yesterday and today farinaz ! #JusticeForFarinaz”
— Maha (@mahan631) May 9, 2015
Others showed solidarity with the people of Mahabad:
Canton Kobane in solidarity with uprising in Mahabad:Kobane is Mahabad, Mahabad is Kobane! (ANHA) #JusticeForFarinaz pic.twitter.com/hh4Pv06gIF
— Cahida Dêrsim (@dilkocer) May 10, 2015
Demonstration in Hawler in solidarity with #Mahabad #JusticeForFarinaz via @aliabdelzadeh pic.twitter.com/vaKoQ59l6k
— Serko Şîvarmenî (@enlightenkurd) May 10, 2015
Pro-Mahabad protesters burn Iranian flag in Erbil #MahabadNotAlone #JusticeForFarinaz #TwitterKurds pic.twitter.com/VKBqx8JIoP
— Vager Saadullah (@Vagersedolla) May 10, 2015
Students in #Silemani, South Kurdistan: Rojhelat is not alone. We are all Farinaz! (Rojnews) #JusticeForFarinaz pic.twitter.com/STaTsNagq3
— Cahida Dêrsim (@dilkocer) May 10, 2015
Demonstration in #Duhok Kurdistan Supporting #Mahabad #MahabadNotAlone #JusticeForFarinaz #TwitterKurds pic.twitter.com/eynXEyGVhY
— Vager Saadullah (@Vagersedolla) May 9, 2015
This video, from May 9 shows police trying to run over protesters in the streets of Mahabad:
The news about Khosrawani's death spread quickly, triggering more protests in neighboring areas like the city of Sardasht.
Yesterday 9 May, Kurdish women in Sardshat and Sanandaj demonstrated for #JusticeForFarinaz, two women arrested pic.twitter.com/KwXKmESsPQ
— Dilan (@dilan_mirza) May 10, 2015
Kurds in other parts of the world like Berlin and London also gathered to call attention to the death of Farinaz. Mahabad's mayor Jaafar Katani asked the people to remain calm and wait for the results of government investigation to confirm the reasons behind the woman's death. Khosrawani's family also announced they will await results from authorities.
Most recently, a rally was held in protest against the events in Mahabad on Sunday afternoon in front of the parliament of Iraqi Kurdistan.
تجمع اعتراضی در حمایت از مردم #مهاباد، امروز، مقابل پارلمان #کردستان عراق منبع: http://t.co/5jBUBdQLW5 pic.twitter.com/LNbv0yRZYd
— Tavaana (@Tavaana) May 10, 2015

author: Faten Bushehri


text:
How Kelly Golnoush Niknejad’s ‘Tehran Bureau’ Bridges Iran and the West · Global Voices
Mahsa Alimardani

Niknejad takes a selfie of herself in her Boston home before a conference. Photo by Niknejad, and used with permission.
This is the second of a series of interviews with Iranian journalists who have dedicated their careers to communicating Iran's complexities and contradictions to those outside of the country. Read the first: Talking to Golnaz Esfandiari, English-Language Journalism's ‘Bridge’ to Iran.
Iranian media entrepreneur Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is the founder of ‘Tehran Bureau,’ a successful news agency hosted by The Guardian that covers Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Niknejad left a career as a California attorney to pursue her passion for journalism. She describes the thrill of the ‘messy press’ room over the orderly courtrooms as one of her initiations in the field. She then enrolled in the Columbia School of Journalism, where she first got the idea to start a news platform dedicated to her home country of Iran.
Starting as a small blog in her parents living room, Niknejad explains how Tehran Bureau ‘shot into the stratosphere’ with the Green Movement, and how she’s now cemented her project as one of the leading sources of coverage that gives a ‘dynamic’ view of Iran’s culture, politics, and people.
Kelly Golnoush Niknejad (KGN): My muse: Iran, and certainly the difficulties of reporting from there.
KGN: We were on top of it. We led a lot of the post-election coverage, earning a “must read” status from The New York Times. Foreign Policy credited us with making the internet respectable.
In September 2009, Tehran Bureau was described as a ‘must-read’ by the New York Times.
KGN: I had theories about why reporting from Iran was fraught with bias and inaccuracies. During the election, my ideas were put to the test. I think we passed with flying colors. I learned to trust myself even more than I already did. My idea for Tehran Bureau though came about at a time of relative freedom under President Khatami. I’m proud it worked under more difficult circumstances. But it’s when Iran seems relatively more open that I think a vehicle like this is needed. With Ahmadinejad, you knew what you were getting. Everybody did. With savvier people running the government, I’m not so sure.
KGN: Most of our reporters were in Iran. I was tweeting their reporting from Boston. They were gathering the information and I was putting it out from a safe place. Those who tried to judge the merits of a “Twitter Revolution” by counting the number of tweets coming directly from an Iranian IP address missed the forest for the trees. Twitter is a social networking tool stripped down to its most fundamental. Without it, news of the protests may not have traveled so widely. Yes, post-election reports erupted on YouTube and other channels, but they became public when they made their way to that narrow intersection between the personal sphere and the public one. It’s where the news and videos found a wider audience than our Facebook friends and those we reached through our email address book. It was on Twitter where some in the media already had a listening post. It may be common now, but it wasn’t then.
I had to take to Twitter once our website was taken down by a powerful denial of service attack. Our site was very popular but not as much as it was on Twitter. Tehran Bureau’s Twitter reporting on the elections and the aftermath was cobbled into narratives on the New York Times’ Lede blog and Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish. Our Twitter feed, @TehranBureau, went from a few hundred followers to 19,000 in two days. It felt like a revolution to me.
KGN: With great difficulty. You have to be a journalist, but a psychiatrist, professor, and mind reader as well. You have to be a diplomat to negotiate the wide gulf between Iranian culture and the West. It requires a lot of patience. It’s a 24/7 job. Forget weekends. The start of the week in Iran is Saturday, just when you want to wind down for a couple of days. Any attempted vacation backfires. Big news always breaks when you’re on a long transatlantic flight with no internet access.
KGN: It’s very different, liking comparing apples and oranges, or something more dissimilar. In the absence of political parties in Iran, the media serves as a tool for different political groups within the establishment. There are incredibly courageous journalists working within that system. But their methods are very different. They have to be. In the West, we value clear writing and transparency. In Iran, they often have to be opaque to keep themselves out of trouble. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg. Idealistically speaking, I don’t think you can have journalism without freedom of the press.
KGN: Yes, absolutely. It’s a complicated process. This is a constant battle. I don’t think you can learn to be a journalist from a weekend seminar or by ticking off a series of multiple-choice answers. I’m interested in training that is challenging and ongoing, even as you progress. And that’s what we try to do.
KGN: There are moments when I love the idea of being there, but it passes. I’ve never thought of going back. I had a very difficult experience living there during the revolution and in the eighties. Iran has changed dramatically, especially for people who like to have plastic surgery and drive fast cars. But for people like me, things haven’t changed. Whether you’re covering Iran from Qatar, Dubai, or Tehran, the Middle East and journalism don’t go together well.
KGN: No one thing in particular. I think many Americans see the Middle East as one homogeneous whole. They often hear about something that happened in Saudi Arabia and think it also takes place in the UAE or Iran. Or they may think ISIS practices extend to other Muslims.
When it comes to Iran, I often find myself having to go all the way back to 1979, then explaining the transformations that took place decade-by-decade, just to make sense of the present. It’s sometimes even hard for Iranians themselves to believe what goes on in Iran, let alone non-Iranians. This explains why it’s vital to cover Iran from the “bottom up,” chronicling the lives of ordinary people. Covering a country by reporting on the pronouncements of the ruling elite is probably the least interesting or informative kind of journalism. That’s why even very sophisticated people who follow the news on Iran have no idea what goes on there. Of course if they followed Tehran Bureau though, they would get a very dynamic view.
KGN: I started my professional life as an attorney. Even though I passed the California bar on my first try, to everyone’s horror, I moved to Paris and was trying to write a novel instead of making a lot of money practicing law. I decided to take what I thought would be a light part-time job as a news reporter to make ends meet. I was covering criminal courts — murder trials and the like — for a news agency headquartered in Los Angeles. I got the job because of my legal background. When I went to the downtown courthouse in San Diego for my interview, I remember the excitement I felt by the sight of the “Press Room” sign over the door. Obviously there was something wrong with me. I’d been to that building many times as a law clerk and even a lawyer. But I got a lot more excited by being in that messy press room among journalists. It was marvelous. Love at first sight. I’ve been feeding off that adrenaline rush for a long time.
KGN: I got the idea to start Tehran Bureau in journalism school. I couldn’t get any funding to launch it, so I went at it alone and empty handed. That’s where my parents’ living room comes in. Within the first week of its launch, our reporting was cited by ABC News and BBC World Service in English. A syndication agency picked up Tehran Bureau and started putting out our stories alongside Le Monde diplomatique’s and other well established news sources. The first client to purchase one of our syndicated stories was The New York Times. It was a great victory.
Then the election happened and Tehran Bureau shot into the stratosphere. Just about everyone turned to us for coverage. I ended up on the front page of the Boston Globe, profiled across the country by the Associated Press and NPR. The media blitz got the attention of a lot of people, including the wonderful people I had worked with at PBS Frontline on “Showdown with Iran”. They read or heard one of these stories and got in touch. Like everyone else, they thought Tehran Bureau was loaded. They thought I had managed this with a lot of funding. They offered to help. Entering a partnership with Frontline was like winning the journalism lottery. They deeply care about investigative journalism. I had the fortune of having Frontline serve as our incubator. While there, we won several awards and got a lot of recognition for our work. London though is much closer to the Iran story than Boston. The Guardian seemed like the most dynamic place to be. Emily Bell of the Tow Center at Columbia Journalism School introduced me to Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief, and things proceeded from there.
KGN: I was the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School, for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism.” I’d never thought of myself that way. I was just doing what made sense, what needed doing. So I guess I became one by necessity. Journalists I highly respect have often told me that not just with respect to Iran, but in the realm of single subject reporting and new media, Tehran Bureau has been a pioneer and trendsetter. In my more ambitious moments I like to believe it because I have a lot more ideas.
KGN: That’s like asking which child is your favorite.

author: Mahsa Alimardani


text:
Open Your Ears to the Sounds of the World With GV Radio · Global Voices
GV Radio

Global Voices Radio image by Kevin Rothrock
Global Voices is taking to the virtual airwaves!
We are excited to launch Global Voices Internet Radio. Our community has been creating and curating sounds from around the world, which you can access on your computer or mobile device. Keeping with our mission, GV Radio will highlight and amplify voices and music from around the world available on a livestreaming platform 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This new project is made possible with the support of Sourcefabric through their Airtime Pro platform.
GV Radio will bring our listeners content from all over the world and in different languages, reflecting the diversity of our global community.
To begin our broadcasting, we will dip into our archives to feature our award-winning Global Voices podcasts on a variety of topics. We will also bring you audio from some of our GV Face hangout series, as well as presentations from our recent Global Voices Summit in Cebu, Philippines.
Members of our community have also been contributing with original programming of their own, such as an Iranian music podcast created by our Lingua Farsi editor Mazyar Mahdavifar and an African music show called Africa Cheza by James Propa. In addition, more music has been contributed by our Rising Voices project The South of South from Mérida, Mexico. More projects from around the world are currently in development.
We have established several exciting podcast partnerships, including with Latin American digital storytelling program Radio Ambulante, whose episodes will be broadcast on GV Radio.
Thanks to a partnership with music bloggers community Music Alliance Pact (MAP), we will also air a selection of interesting and diverse world music from more than 30 countries as curated by MAP member Whothehell.net from Australia through their monthly Mapcasts.
Every two weeks, we will feature audio content from new podcast partners, who were identified by our community or suggested by our listeners. Through these partnerships, we aim to bring their podcasting work to a wider global audience so they receive the recognition that they deserve. If you have suggestions for non-profit grassroots podcasts to feature in future programming, please contact us.
Other GV Radio partners are:
Papuan Voices is a video advocacy initiative working with Papuan activists to more effectively tell their stories to the world. In 2011-12 EngageMedia and Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation collaborated with local organisations in Jayapura and Merauke to teach Papuan activists video production and distribution skills. In 2013 and 2014, we partnered with Belantara Papua and Yayasan Teratai Hati Papua to host a series of video workshops in Wamena and Sorong.
Jamaat-ul-Mausiqi is the Pakistani music podcast you've spent the last ten years waiting for. We dig out the underground, revel in the glorious past, and rhapsodise about the coming revolution. Run by Ahmer Naqvi (@karachikhatmal) and Shaheryar Popalzai (@spopalzai).
Pinarra Aku is a children’s language radio show, teaching Warumungu language. Created by BRA Artistic Director, Kathy Burns, whom co-hosts the show with Rosemary Plummer (Traditional Owner). The show is to educate and keep language alive. Rosemary and Kathy have been creating songs together and teaching language since 2011. They have combined their love of language and education to develop, ‘Pinarra Aku’.
We are working on a GV Radio page where you'll find all of the necessary links to learn more about the sounds that we are featuring. It will also include a widget with what is playing, what is coming up, and in which language.
This project is a work in progress, and we'd like to hear from you what you like and don't like, as well as suggestions for future programming.
Stay tuned!

author: GV Radio


text:
‘Proud Lebanon’ Releases Powerful Anti-Homophobia Video · Global Voices
Elia J. Ayoub

May 17 will mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (or IDAHOT), commemorating the day in 1990 when the World Health Association removed homosexuality as a disease. In anticipation, a Lebanese civil society group which goes by the name of ‘Proud Lebanon‘ has released a promotional video calling for LGBT rights in Lebanon.
The video, which features many prominent Lebanese personalities such as director Zeina Daccache and TV host Fouad Yammine as well as Cynthia Karam, Bruno Tabbal, Carole Abboud, Bechara Atallah, Rabih Salloum, Medea Azouri, Jana Younes, Christine Choueiri, Natacha Choufani, Yvonne el-Hachem, Pauline Haddad, Elie Youssef and André Nacouzi, calls for Lebanon to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to not discriminate against ‘those who are different’.
بتعرفوا إنو أول مادة بحقوق الانسان بقول إنو كل الناس متساويين بالكرامه و الحقوق.
بتعرفوا إنو بالقرن 21 بعد في ناس عم بيتعرضو للضرب، للتمييز، للإعتقال حتى أوقات للقتل بس لأنن مثليين. الاختلاف مش عيب. العيب هو محاربة الاختلاف. فيه يكون خيك، فيه يكون جارك أو زميلك بالشغل. فيا تكون اختك، رفيقتك أو حتى مديرتك بالشغل. مش لأنك رافض تعترف بوجودن، يعني هني مش موجودين. ما بكفي نعترض عالظلم، لازم كلنا نشتغل لنبدل هل قوانين الظالمه. القوانين بتحمي كل المواطنين. لأنو القوانين هي للحماية مش للإضطهاد. كلنا خلقنا احرار ومتساويين. بعرف إنو صعب نواجه المجتمع بس عالقليله القانون لازم يكون صح. الديموقراطيه مش بس اكثريه واقليه، هي تأمين الحماية لكل المواطنين. مش ضروري تكون فقير لتدافع عن حقوق الفقرا. مش ضروري تكون مرأة، لتدافع عن حقوق المرأة. مش ضروري تكون لاجئ لتدافع عن حقوق اللاجئين. مش ضروري تكون مثلي لتدافع عن حقوق المثليين. بيكفي تكون إنسان. بيكفي تكون انسان… لو اختلفنا ما لازم نختلف، لو اختلفنا ما لازم نختلف.. حتى لو اختلفنا ما لازم نختلف، لو اختلفنا ما لازم نختلف . لاقونا ب 17 ايار بمسرح هوتيل مونرو تنتشارك سوا باليوم العالمي ضد رهاب المثليين من الساعة 11 الصبح لل ساعة 6 المساء.
Did you know that the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights? Did you know that in the 21st century, there are still people being beaten, stigmatized, arrested and in some cases even killed… just because they are LGBT? Being different isn't shameful… what's shameful is fighting diversity. He could be your brother, your neighbor or your co-worker. She could be your sister, your friend, or even your boss at school. If you don't recognize their existence, it doesn't mean that they don't exist. Protesting this injustice isn't enough. We should all work together to change these unjust laws and replace them with laws that protect all citizens. Because laws are for protection, not discrimination. We were all born free and equal. I know that it's hard to face society, but at least the laws need to be just. Democracy is not only majority and minority, it is to provide security to all citizens. You don't have to be poor to defend the rights of the poor. You don't have to be a woman, to defend the rights of women. You don't have to be a refugee, to defend the rights of refugees. And you don't have to be gay, to defend the rights of LGBT. Being human is enough. Even if we are different, we shouldn't disagree. Meet us on May 17 at Hotel Monroe to participate together at IDAHOT from 11am till 6pm.
The legal status of LGBT rights in Lebanon isn't very clear. While there is no law specifically forbidding homosexual relationships, there is an article – Article 534 – which forbids sexual acts that “contradict the laws of nature”. This article, however, has been dismissed by at least two judges as being invalid.
Indeed, in January 2014, a judge ruled that Article 534 cannot be valid as it “did not provide a clear interpretation of what was considered unnatural.” His decision was based on a previous court ruling made by another judge in 2009 reaching the same conclusion.
The 2014 ruling deserves particular mention. The story relates to an unnamed transgender woman who was accused of having sex with a man. When brought to his attention, Judge Naji El Dahdad of Jdeide Court rejected the case, stating that:
Gender identity is not only defined by the legal papers, the evolution of the person and his/her perception of his/her gender should be taken into consideration. Homosexuality is an exception to the norms but not unnatural therefore article 534 (which prohibits sexual relations that “contradict the laws of nature”) cannot be used against homosexuals, and therefore, technically, homosexuality is not illegal.
This article was written with the help of Nour Hajjar.

author: Elia J. Ayoub


text:
Selective Truths Revealed: The Case of Iranian Search Engines · Global Voices
Small Media

From top to bottom, the logos of Parsijoo, Yooz, and GorGor. Mixed by Amin Sabeti.
This post was written by Small Media researcher Kyle Bowen, and is based on Small Media's latest Iranian Internet Infrastructure and Policy (IIIP) report. A version of this post was published on Medium.
Over the past few years, Iranian officials have championed ‘national’ tech development projects (such as the National Information Network (SHOMA) and Iranian versions of Western services), while eschewing foreign platforms like Viber and WhatsApp.
One of the most recent examples of this dynamic can be found in the February 2015 launch of three Iranian search engines: Parsijoo, Gorgor and Yooz. While this was announced in February, it should be noted that Parsijoo was in fact launched a few years ago, and Yooz was launched in early 2010. It’s unclear why the authorities are presenting them as “new”.
Government officials insist that Iranians can use domestic search engines without any disruption from the filtering system, regardless of what terms they search for. The authorities also maintain that these search engines can compete with Google and other Western alternatives.
Small Media’s latest report put these claims to the test. We picked six potentially keywords: ‘sex,’ Baha’i,’ ‘Mir Hossein Mousavi,’ ‘BBC Persian,’ ‘Facebook,’ and ‘VPN,’ and searched for them on the search engines mentioned above plus google. Here’s what we found:
We couldn’t resist starting with such a potentially salacious keyword as “sex”. And the results didn’t disappoint. Perhaps most striking was the lack of results from Parsijoo, which greeted our query with a blank page.
What happens when you search for ‘sex’ on Parsijoo
The other Iranian search engines were a bit more forthcoming. GorGor’s first page of results included links to pages about erotic stories, various sex positions, and dire warnings about the dangers of anal sex. Yooz offered similar results, while also including a blog post about why some women do not like oral sex and a documentary about sex in a Sigheh, or temporary marriage.
Google took things a step further, providing links to pages with “sexy images,” and “the most viewed sex videos.” So sex-related searches seem to generate different results on Iranian search engines than they do on Google. But does this disparity hold when the keyword has to do with religion?
We chose “Baha’i” as a religion-related keyword mainly because of the well-documented history of persecution Baha’is have suffered in the Islamic Republic. Our findings here weren’t especially surprising. The results on all of the Iranian search engines were overwhelmingly hostile to Baha’is, with many referring to them as “the misguided Baha’i sect.”
Google, on the other hand, offers more balanced and neutral results: the top three results are from Wikipedia, the fourth is the website of the worldwide Baha’i community and the last 5 results are opposed to the faith. With sex and religion out of the way, let's now turn to politics. How did Iranian search engines deal with searches for Green Movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi?
Although Iranian search engines seem to pull in Mousavi-related Wikipedia pages indiscriminately, the majority of non-Wikipedia content on their front pages are news articles from before Mousavi’s house arrest, or editorials criticising his political activities. None of the articles concern his criticisms of the Ahmadinejad government, or claims of electoral fraud in 2009. More than 40% of Google’s front page results concern these topics.
Put another way, when Iranian search engines weren’t pulling content from Wikipedia, they seemed to be excluding results that might challenge the government’s line on sensitive political matters. Turning now to searches for BBC Persian, we encounter a more subtle and insidious form of censorship.
Not only do Yooz and GorGor offer no links to either bbcpersian.com or bbc.co.uk/persian, but the majority of results on Yooz actually direct users to persianbbc.ir, which is a fake version of BBC Persian.
Links to the fake BBC Persian on Yooz
The real and fake BBC Persian pages look very similar. See if you can tell which is which. Here’s the first one, which we’ll call Image 1.
Image 1
And here’s the second, which we’ll call Image 2.
Screenshot of Image II.
Give up? Image 1 is the fake BBC Persian, and Image 2 is the real one. If you don’t speak Persian, you’d be forgiven for struggling with that question. But if we translate the top three headlines on each page from April 17, 2015, it gets a bit easier.
While the real and fake BBC Persian pages look very similar, a look at the top three headlines for each reveals a sharp contrast in editorial orientation. It seems that Iranian search engines are trying to deceive users by sending them to fake pages filled with spurious and inflammatory stories. With searches for online social networks, a similar form of deception emerges.
As with BBC Persian, searches for social networks like Facebook and Twitter often direct users to artificial knock offs. For example, whenever users search on Parsijoo, Yooz or GorGor, they cannot find links to Facebook or Twitter. Instead, users are directed to Iranian versions of these websites via links such as: facebooki.ir, facecamp.ir, twittfa.ir.
While these search engines seem to be designed to hide the URLs for Facebook and Twitter from users, some of them actually display these URLs on the top of the results page. For instance, you cannot find Facebook.com among Yooz’s search results. However, the top of the results page contains a brief description of Facebook, followed by a link to Facebook.com.
Facebook description (and link) automatically imported from Wikipedia
While the search results try to direct users to Iranian social networks, the description at the top of the page contains a link that leads them straight to the real Facebook! It’s difficult to say whether this oversight stems from carelessness or incompetence, but it seems clear that such sloppy attempts at censorship wouldn’t be difficult for even the least tech savvy Iranians to circumvent. Speaking of circumvention, lets see how Iranian search engines handled queries for VPNs.
Unlike most of the terms discussed above, the results for searches for VPN on Iranian search engines and Google are very similar, and include numerous video tutorials regarding VPN use hosted on Apart, an Iranian version of YouTube. Yet while Iranian search engines don’t appear to censor results for VPN related searches, it is possible that when a user clicks on one of the links, he or she will be blocked from accessing the VPN selling site.
In any case, for all the filtering discussed above, it seems that Iranian search engines are surprisingly forthcoming as far as queries for circumvention tools are concerned.
It seems clear that domestic search engines form a new part of Iran’s vast internet filtering apparatus. As we have seen, searches for sensitive keywords, such as Baha’i, yield considerably different results on Iranian search engines than they do on Google.
For some users, this disparity is a good reason to distrust Iranian search engines. Their familiarity with Google’s results for a given search will make it easy for them to spot a heavily filtered domestic alternative. Moreover, the fact that Yooz carelessly included a link to Facebook at the top of its results page suggests that many netizens won’t have too much trouble circumventing censorship efforts. However, we can’t assume that all users will be so critical or astute.
Those users who credulously turn to Yooz, GorGor, and Parsijoo with their online queries could easily be lead to believe false or misleading information. Moreover, even critical netizens may struggle to tell the pages for the real BBC Persian and the fake one apart, as they look remarkably similar.
In an age when so much of what we know about the world comes from online media sources, exercising control over which websites users see and which ones they don’t endows search engines with considerable power. And when the Iranian government uses that power to promote a specific ideological agenda and exclude alternative viewpoints, the Internet freedom of Iranian citizens suffers.

author: Small Media


text:
Thank the Ottoman Empire for That Taco You’re Eating · Global Voices
PRI/PRX's The World

Tacos al pastor from Carmela's Mexican Restaurant in Beaumont, Texas. Credit: Randy Edwards/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
This article and radio report by Deena Prichep and Daniel Estrin for The World originally appeared on PRI.org on May 7, 2015, and is republished here as part of a content-sharing agreement.
At the Supermercado Mexico in Portland, Oregon, you’ll find a turning spit of pork, basted with chili and onions, dripping fat and flavor. Shave some off into a tortilla and you’ve got a taco al pastor, the classic Mexican street food.
It’s a similar scene halfway across the world in Jerusalem. At the hole-in-the-wall Al Waary restaurant, there’s a vertical rotisserie of beef spinning next to the flames, flavored by tangy vinegar. Shave some off into a pita, and you’ve got shawarma — the quintessential Middle Eastern street meat.
If you're thinking these beloved dishes might be linked, you're right. So we hit the street food trail to find out, starting in Jerusalem.
“Shawarma is very, very interesting,” says Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, sitting at the Al Waary shawarma joint. The origin of the word shawarma comes from the Turkish word çevirme, which means “turning.”
Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, in front of Al Waary shawarma stand in Jerusalem. Credit: Daniel Estrin. Published with PRI's permission
You can find some version of shawarma everywhere in the Middle East where the Ottoman Empire once reigned.
“Turks call it döner kebab; Greeks call it gyro; Iraqis call it kas,” Qleibo says. “This shows you the all-pervasive influence of the Ottoman Empire, because all the subjects of the Ottoman Empire eat shawarma even though they call it by different names.”
Of course, the people of the Ottoman Empire didn’t all stay there. About 36,000 people under Ottoman rule left for Mexico between the late 19th and early 20th century.
“People came from as far as Egypt. I found some people [who] came from Iraq,” says Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp, a history professor at Sonoma State University who has tracked the migration of Middle Easterners to Mexico. “The majority came from the Levant, as it was called during that time, which is now modern-day Lebanon and Syria.”
The migrants left for the usual reasons: looking for economic opportunity, dodging army conscription and escaping sectarian violence. And when they arrived, they brought their food with them. “By the 1930s, there were restaurants that served shawarma,” says Jeffrey Pilcher, a historian and author of the book “Planet Taco.”
A shawarma sandwich in Jerusalem. Swap in pork for lamb, and a tortilla for a pita, and you've got the Mexican classic, Taco al Pastor. Credit: Daniel Estrin. Published with PRI's permission
Then the cuisine morphed: “During the 1960s, the Mexican-born children of these Lebanese migrants … start opening up their own restaurants, and they start to create a kind of a hybrid cuisine,” Pilcher says.
“They take the technology that they grew up with in these Lebanese restaurants, the vertical rotisserie — but instead of using lamb, they use pork,” Pilcher says. “They marinate it in a red chili sauce, which gives it that distinctive color, and they cook these up and serve them and call them tacos al pastor.”
Even the term “al pastor,” which means “in the style of the shepherd,” is a nod to the original Middle Eastern lamb version of the dish.
When Mexico’s economy boomed after World War II, tacos al pastor moved from small towns to bigger cities and eventually into the US.
The fact that this classic dish was a relatively recent import from the Middle East doesn’t necessarily make it any less Mexican, adds Pilcher, the taco historian. “Authenticity isn’t always something that dates back to the ancient Aztecs and Mayas,” he says. “That meaning of Mexico is continually being recreated in every generation.”
But whether it’s lamb or pork, tortilla or pita, Jerusalem or Portland, the essentials have remained the same: Fat and fire, a handful of spices, a quick meal —  and a taste of tradition.


text:
Why Arabic Script on the Walls Might Not Stop Public Urination in Dhaka · Global Voices
Rezwan

The photo shows Arabic sign on the sidewall of Panthakunja Park at the Karwan Bazar in Dhaka. Image by Sk. Hasan Ali. Copyright Demotix (7/5/2015)
Public urination is a problem in Bangladesh due largely to a lack of public toilets. Municipal officials in the capital Dhaka have battled in vain to stop men urinating in public, with signs in the local Bengali language and warnings of punishment and fines yielding no notable results.
Now the government is hoping that an innovative idea can put a stop to the habit. Recently the Ministry of Religious Affairs released a video highlighting their campaign “Language Matters” wherein Bengali signs warning against urination are now being replaced by Arabic signs, a holy language for Bangladeshis.
Perhaps they have taken a cue from neighbouring India — battling with the same problem — where pictures of Hindu gods and godesses on the walls are intended to have the same effect.
Although some are lauding the state's effort to solve a perennial problem, others are skeptical, claiming the campaign supports blind faith and promotes misconceptions.
Sufi Faruq comments on YouTube:
ধর্ম মন্ত্রণালয়ের দারুণ একটা ক্যাম্পেইন !!! (..)
বাংলাদেশের বেশিরভাগ মুসলিম আরবি ভাষা না বুঝলেও এই ধরনের অক্ষরকে পবিত্র মনে করে। তাই ওই স্ক্রিপ্টে লেখা যে কোনকিছু অপবিত্র করতে ভয় পায়। এই ভয়টার বেশিরভাগ সময় ধর্ম ব্যবসায়ীরা অপব্যবহার করতো। এবার একটা দারুণ কাজে ব্যাবহার হল।
A great campaign by the Ministry of Religious Affairs!!!
Most of the Muslim majority Bangladeshis cannot understand Arabic but they deem it as a holy language. So they fear to desecrate anything written in that language. Most of the time it was used by religious opportunists as it is the language of the Koran and the prayers. Now it has been used for a good cause.
Despite the Ministry of Religious Affairs’ claim in the video about toilets being present in most of Dhaka's 10,000 mosques, the general lack of public toilets in the city of approximately 15 million is a genuine challenge. The city's large homeless population is particularly affected by the shortage.
Adnan R. Amin at Alal O Dulal Blog thinks that the video does not get to the root of the problem and instead aims to create false impressions:
The using of a religious misconception (“Arabic is a holy language”), to prevent a social evil, is clever. But it also reinforces and lends credence to that misconception, instead of dispelling it. One would think that for a ministry for religious affairs, dispelling religious misconceptions would outweigh protecting city-walls. If there were funds available to the government, Dhaka’s City Corporations could’ve used them to create better facilities for women. While it is difficult to discern from boardrooms, the 36 public toilets with facilities for women are now being used by men. Judging from the tactic and tone of  this video, a reexamining of both government bodies’ priorities seems to be in order.
Translating “do not urinate here” to Arabic reduces public urination in Dhaka @OgilvyChange #NudgesInTheWild pic.twitter.com/5b9MjUoLXy
— Umar Taj (@umar_taj) May 10, 2015
Moreover, Fariduddin Masud, an influential cleric criticised the Ministry for Religious Affairs.
While most mosques do have sanitary facilities, mosques themselves are “not public toilets”, he said, adding that “nobody has the right to use the language of the Koran for such a campaign.”
Blogger Irene Sultana doubted the campaign via a blog post on Women Chapter titled ‘Not Arabic, but Public Toilets, Matter”:
ঢাকা শহরের প্রতি দেড় লাখ নাগরিকের জন্য শৌচাগার রয়েছে মাত্র একটি। [..] অধিকাংশ পাবলিক টয়লেটই ব্যবহার অনুপযোগী। [..] পাবলিক টয়লেটহীন নগরীতে পথচারীদের অধিকাংশই তাই ফুটপাতকেই বেছে নিচ্ছেন ’হালকা’ হতে।
না বুঝে কেবল আরবি লেখা থাকলে সালাম করা হলো এ দেশের মানুষের ধর্মীয় অন্ধত্ব। ধর্ম মন্ত্রণালয়ের দায়িত্ব ছিল মানুষকে এসব অশিক্ষা থেকে বের করে শিক্ষিত, সচেতন করা, তার বদলে মানুষের সেই অজ্ঞতাকে ব্যবহার করে ’সমাধানের’ নামে মূলত একটি মশকরা করলো!
There is only one toilet in the capital Dhaka for every 150,000 people, out of which many are not usable. So in the absence of enough public toilets the pedestrians use walls to relieve themselves.
Many Bangladeshis respect the Arabic language because they don't know the language. The duty of the Ministry of Religious Affairs was to educate them and make them aware that this is a language only, not everything in its writing is sacred. But instead they used this ignorance to eke out a “solution” which is actually a farce.
Sultana also cites the recent efforts of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who built toilets in front of temples and achieved 5.2 million lavatories in the first 100 days of his tenure.
Bangladesh lags far behind on this issue.
While state religious officials are already trumpeting its successes, the campaign does not appear to have been well thought-through. If implemented to the fullest extent, Dhaka's walls will be covered by Arabic but people will still have nowhere to urinate.
Moreover, in India, before Modi went on his toilet-building spree, the gods on walls campaign unravelled: people simply began urinating on the faces of the deities. Innovative campaigns incorporating public shaming such as “The Pissing Tanker” also lacked impact.
For this reason Adnan R Amin's comment that the money spent on the campaign — “a proxy solution that treats the Symptom and not the Cause” — would be better spent on new public toilets in Dhaka seems to be well-founded.

author: Rezwan


text:
Words from the World of Uruguay’s Ex-President, José ‘Pepe’ Mujica · Global Voices
Guillermo Vidal

José Mujica, former president of Uruguay. Photo published on Flickr by OEA- OAS. Published under Creative Commons.
Some will like him, others will not, but what no one can debate is that ex-President of Uruguay José Mujica (2010-2015) earned his place in the pantheon of notable world leaders, a status cemented when Monocle magazine named him “the Best President of the World” in 2012.
The fame that Mujica (‘Pepe’, as he is popularly known in Uruguay) achieved at an international level is due partly to the unusual characteristics of his rule, such as his modest way of life and the fact that he donated 90% of his salary to worthy causes.
His policies also attracted world attention, however, especially the law legalising and regulating the sale of marijuana in the country — prompted by a desire to wrest power away from the state's prominent drug cartels — and his commitment to renewable energy.
‘Pepe’ left office earlier in March this year in accordance with the single-term limit in Uruguay's constitution. But his forthright philosophies and worldview, which provoked both admiration and repudiation, is likely to be associated with Uruguayan politics for some time.
Having spent 13 years of his prime as a political prisoner during the dictatorship years of the 1970s and 1980s, ‘Pepe’ gained a reputation for never shrinking from a confrontation and sticking up for what he believed to be the most important things in life.
For some, including some Uruguayans, his informal style could be embarrassing and his Latin American diplomacy was not always airtight. He was once reportedly caught calling Argentine President Cristina Kirchner “an old hag” and her husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner “the one-eyed guy”on account of his lazy eye.
But here are some of José Mujica's more thought-provoking musings, courtesy of his Wikiquote:
“La política está sujeta a volar como las perdices, cortito y rápido. Y se está necesitando política de largo aliento en un mundo que se globaliza”.
“Para vivir hay que trabajar, ¿verdad? Y si no trabajás estás viviendo de garrón a costilla de alguien. Y la vida de parásito no es digna, pero tampoco podés vivir nada más que para trabajar. Así de sencillo. Porque lo más glorioso que tenés es la vida. Y eso, que es tan elemental es la cosa que más olvidamos, pero nos lo hace olvidar la cultura, el medio ambiente y sobre todo esa violencia de arrastre que tiene la sociedad de consumo y que parece que si no estamos subidos en ese tren nos vamos a morir”.
“Son los más pobres. Mi definición es la de Séneca: “Pobre es el que necesita mucho”. Porque el que necesita mucho, eso es infinito, esos son los más pobres”.
“Nosotros creemos que el narcotráfico, no la droga, el narcotráfico es el peor flagelo que estamos soportando recientemente en América Latina”.
“Y no defendemos ninguna adicción, pero la vía represiva viene fracasando, ya llevamos muchas décadas y viene fracasando, entonces nosotros decimos “hay que tratar de arrebatarle el mercado, sacarle la razón de ser, que es arrebatarle el mercado”.”
“Abogo por una manera personal de vivir con sobriedad, porque para vivir hay que tener libertad y pa’tener libertad hay que tener tiempo…
Entonces soy sobrio para tener tiempo, porque cuando tú compras con plata no estas comprando con plata, estas comprando con el tiempo de tu vida que tuviste que gastar para tener esa plata”.
“Vale la pena vivir con intensidad, y te podés caer una, dos, tres, veinte veces, pero recuerda que te podés levantar y volver a empezar. (…) Derrotados son los que dejan de luchar, muertos son los que no luchan por vivir”.
“Lo que algunos llaman la crisis ecológica del planeta es consecuencia del triunfo avasallante de la ambición humana, ese es nuestro triunfo también nuestra derrota”.
“Continuarán las guerras y por tanto los fanatismos, hasta que tal vez la naturaleza nos llame al orden y haga inviable nuestra civilización”.
“Politics is subject to fly like partridges, short and fast. And what is needed in the globalised world is long-term policy.”
“To live you have to work, right? And if you were not to work you would be mooching off someone else. And the life of a moocher is not dignified, but you also can't live to work and do nothing else. It's that simple. Because the most glorious thing one has is life.  And although life is so elemental its the thing we most forget, but life causes us to forget our culture and the environment, and above all it is the violent pull of consumer society that makes it seem that if we do not get on board the train we will die.”
“We are the poorest. My definition is from Séneca: “Poor is he who needs a lot.” Because he who needs a lot, which is everybody, these are the poorest.”
“We believe that narcotraffic, not the drug itself, but narcotraffic, is the worst scourge that we have recently been supporting in Latin America.”
“And we do not defend any addiction, but the repressive route is failing, and it has now been many decades failing, so we say: ‘We must snatch the market, take away it's reason for being, that is, snatch the market from them.'”
“I advocate from a personal point of view to live with moderation, because to live you have to have liberty and to have liberty you have to have time… So I am moderate to have time, because when you shop with money you are not buying with money, you are buying with the time from your life that you had to spend to have that money.”
“It's worthwhile to live intensely, and you might fall one, two, three, twenty times, but remember that you will get up and return to start. (…) Defeats are for those that stop fighting, dead are those that stop fighting to live.”
“What some people call the the planet's ecological crisis is the consequence of the overwhelming victory of human ambition, that is our victory and also our defeat.”
“The wars will continue and therefore the fanaticism, until nature calls us to order and makes our civilisation viable.”
Pepe, now 77, lives in a modest farmhouse with his wife, Lucia, and his three-legged dog. The couple sell Chrysanthemums for a living.

author: Guillermo Vidal


text:
A Brazilian Girl Who Endured Racism at School Was Forced to Apologize to Her Aggressors · Global Voices
Fernanda Canofre

Lorena, 12 years old, and her mother Camila. (Photo: Facebook/Image used with permission)
Since Camila dos Santos Reis can remember, her daughter Lorena, 12 years old, has always been a sweet girl, who likes to run through Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo and watch Disney cartoons. However, since her return to classes this year, Lorena has been different — more quiet and withdrawn. It was an evening in March when Camila received a phone call from the school informing her that Lorena would be transferred to another class because “her classmates didn't adapt to her.”
It was difficult for Camila to understand. The two had always been very close, and it was strange that Lorena hadn't said anything. When her mother asked her about it, she explained that she was ashamed. Since the beginning of the school year, Lorena — who is black — had been suffering bullying and racism at school.
On the same day that Camila got the phone call, Lorena had gone to the school administration to complain about the attacks. But, according to Camila, the school only took measures to identify who was behind the attacks two weeks later. When the other students found out that Lorena had had to name her aggressors, she ended up being confronted, according to a post on the blog Preta e Acadêmica (Black and Academic):
No espaço da escola, seus “colegas” começaram a questionar sobre o ocorrido, e como ela pode ter os dedurado, iniciando uma gritaria contra a criança, que correu para os braços da diretora do colégio. A diretora, que “já está de saco cheio dessa história” (palavras da própria), resolveu fazer uma acareação. O resultado? Lorena teve que pedir desculpas para seus agressores.
At school, her “classmates” began to question her about what happened, and how she could have told on them, starting a shouting match against the child, who ran into the arms of the director of the school. The director, who “was already fed up with the story” (in her own words), resolved to confront the issue. The result? Lorena had to apologize to her aggressors.
In the end, the director asked if the girl would like to change classes, and Lorena, tired of the conflict, accepted.
Four days later, things got worse. As Camila described on her Facebook profile in a post shared by more than 74,000 people, Lorena sent her a message with the phrase: “Look at how I suffer,” followed by a series of audio recordings.
(…) coloquei meu fone no ouvido, e apertei o botão “REPRODUZIR”, que susto eu levei… logo a primeira frase gritada em alto e bom som foi “SUA PRETA, TESTA DE BATER BIFE DO CARA*****”, foram 53 segundos de ofensas horrorizantes, palavrões ofensivos, a nível físico, racial e por incrível que pareça sexual, vinda de um garoto de aproximadamente 13 anos morador do condomínio onde vivemos.
(…) I put my ear to the phone, and pressed the “PLAY” button, what a shock I suffered… right away the first phrase was shouted loudly and at a high volume “BLACK GIRL, FLAT-FOREHEADED*****”, it was 53 seconds of horrifying offenses, offensive curse words, on a physical and racial level, which incredibly also seemed sexual, coming from a boy of about 13 years old, a resident of the same complex where we live.
A group of 20 children — some from Lorena's school, others, her neighbors in São Bernardo do Campo — used a group on mobile messaging platform WhatsApp to continue hurling abuse at Lorena. Camila writes in the same post:
Pedi para ela me mandar todos os áudios que tinha recebido, uma sequência de mais de 20 áudios aproximadamente, então percebi que os áudios estavam sendo enviados de um grupo de amizade da qual ela faz parte. Todos os participantes do grupo são do condomínio, onde 2 meninos a ofendiam enquanto alguns outros incentivavam as ofensas.
As frases que mais marcaram e mais me assustaram foram:
“SUA PRETA, TESTA DE BATE BIFE DO CARA******!”
“EU SOU RACISTA MESMO, QUANDO EU QUERO SER RACISTA EU SOU RACISTA, ENTENDEU?”
“TODA VEZ QUE EU ENCONTRAR ELA NA MINHA FRENTE EU VOU ZUAR ATÉ ELA CHORAR”
“VOCÊ VAI FICAR NESTE GRUPO ATÉ VOCÊ CHORAR”
“CABELO DE MOVEDIÇA, CABELO DE MIOJO, CABELO DE MACARRÃO”
Muitos dos colegas ficaram quietos e preferiram não se manifestar, um deles até saiu do grupo quando as ofensas começaram, teve outro que se revoltou e disse que estavam passando dos limites e que aquilo já era desrespeito demais.
Entrei em choque, diante de tantas agressões psicológicas, tamanha inconsequência dessa juventude que ainda nos dias de hoje se comporta de maneira tão cruel, não posso encarar essa situação como “coisa de criança”, racismo nunca foi coisa de criança.
I asked her to send me all the audio recordings that she had received, a sequence of more than 20 recordings approximately, and I learned that the audio recordings were being sent from a friend group of which she was a part. All the participants of the group are from the condominium, and two boys insulted her while others encouraged the insults.
The phrases that left the greatest impression and scared me the most were:
“BLACK GIRL, FLAT-FOREHEADED*****!”
“I AM RACIST, WHEN I WANT TO BE RACIST I'M RACIST, UNDERSTOOD?”
“EVERY TIME I SEE HER IN FRONT OF ME I'M GOING TO INSULT HER UNTIL SHE CRIES”
“YOU'RE GOING TO STAY IN THIS GROUP UNTIL YOU CRY”
“QUICKSAND HAIR, RAMEN HAIR, PASTA HAIR”
Many of her classmates stayed quiet and preferred not to say anything, one of them even left the group when the insults began and there was another who got angry and said that they were crossing the limits and that it was already too disrespectful.
I was in shock, in the face of so much psychological aggression, the scope of which is reckless for the youth of today who behave in such a cruel way, I can't face this situation as “child's play”, racism was never child's play.
Because it involves minors, the case was sent to the Guardianship Council. Inside the school, there was no mention of punishment for the aggressors or an attempt to deal with the behavior of those involved.
In an interview with Global Voices, Camila revealed that this is what left her most indignant.
“É o errado vencendo o certo, trocou de turma, mas os alunos não foram conscientizados do erro que estavam cometendo, e nos corredores da escola quando se encontrassem, como seria? Eles iam continuar ofendendo ela? Recebi uma ligação da escola no período da noite me informando que ela seria trocada de turma porque não houve uma adaptação. Como assim? E na sociedade aonde eu coloco ela?”.
It is wrong prevailing over right, changing her class, but the students weren't made aware of the mistake they were committing, and in the halls of the school where they will meet, how will it be? Will they continue insulting her? I received a call from the school at night informing me that she would be moved from her class because there wasn't an adaptation. How so? And in society where do I place her?
Camila and Lorena. (Foto: Facebook/Image used with permission)
What happened to Lorena is a childhood experience shared by thousands of black girls who go through years in school hearing jokes about their hair and skin color. All victims of racism, not bullying.
To differentiate the two forms of prejudice, in 2013 a group of 21 black women resolved to gather their own school stories in the book “Negras (in)confidências: Bullying, não. Isto é racismo” (Unconfident Black Women: Not Bullying. This Is Racism). In it, they explain:
As organizadoras fazem questão de afirmar que o que ocorre com as crianças negras não é bullying e sim racismo, pois, no primeiro caso, a maior parte das agressões acontece sem a presença dos adultos e os que sofrem a agressão tendem a cometer atos de agressão por terem sofrido agressões, mas não falam sobre o assunto. O racismo, no entanto, é uma ideologia que afirma uma raça superior a outra; a ideologia é tão difundida que as agressões ocorrem tanto na presença de adultos, como os mesmos as promovem, assim, mesmo que as crianças procurem ajuda na escola, não a obterão, o que aumenta a sensação de injustiça e solidão. Acreditam que o bullying inferioriza e o racismo, para além de inferiorizar, desumaniza o ser humano.
The organizers make a point to affirm that what happens to black children is not bullying and instead racism, because in the first case, a large part of the attacks happen without the presence of adults and those that suffer the aggression tend to commit acts of aggression for having suffered the acts, but don't talk about the problem. Racism, however, is an ideology that affirms that one race is superior to another; an ideology that is so propagated that attacks occur even in the presence of adults, as they too promote them, such that even if children seek help at school, they won't get it, which increases the sense of injustice and isolation. They believe that bullying makes others inferior, and racism, in addition to making others inferior, dehumanizes the human being.
A study undertaken by the Fundação Institucional de Pesquisas Econômicas (the Institutional Foundation of Economic Research) in 2009 showed that ethnic-racial prejudice is the second strongest in Brazilian schools, only coming after prejudice for physical reasons, such as obesity. The study included professors, employees and students from 500 schools from around Brazil. Only 5% of those interviewed were black.
In 2003, Law 10.639, which made the teaching of “Afro-Brazilian History and Culture” a required subject in schools, seemed to announce a change in the system. But not so. Ten years later, professor Dennis Oliveira, a member of the Núcleo de Pesquisas e Estudos Interdisciplinares sobre o Negro Brasileiro (Nucleus of Interdisciplinary Studies and Research About Black Brazilians) pointed out for Revista Fórum that the problems with the implementation of the law stem from the resistance of university pedogogy programs to including the material in their curriculum and, consequently, the lack of teachers with an education in it.
Viviane de Paula, in an article published on the site Blogueiras Negras (Black Female Bloggers), states that “the school environment is still an oppressive agent for many identities,” something that the government and school communities still are unable to recognize:
A escola, sem dúvidas, é um espaço sócio-cultural que deve aceitar e, sobretudo, discutir amplamente a pluraridade cultural, até mesmo como uma maneira de desconstruir preconceitos. O que muitas vezes presencia-se nas escolas são atitudes de descaso e silenciamento por parte da gestão escolar. Observa-se que os gestores de instituições públicas e privadas não se posicionam: é mais fácil esconder, do que problematizar.
School, without a doubt, is a socio-cultural space that should accept and, above all, amply discuss cultural plurality, until it becomes a way to deconstruct prejudice. Often times what is present in school are attitudes of negligence and silencing on the part of school management. Observe what the directors of public and private institutions don't acknowledge: it's easier to hide, than to make an issue of it.
After everything that happened at school, Lorena only wanted to see her father, her mother and her best friend. “This created a huge insecurity in her, in addition to her resistance to going to school, she is having a lot of difficulty sleeping, she wakes up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, and her appetite has diminished a lot,” Camila said in her interview with GV.
Even so, the support that Camila has found on social networks since she told her daughter's story gives reason for hope. “Given the proportion this case has taken and the amount of messages of support, help and kindness that we have received, there are many more good people than bad,” she said.
Campaign in support of Lorena on the page Preta e Acadêmica. (Photo: Facebook Preta e Acadêmica)
Soon after the publication of the story on Facebook, a sociologist wrote to Camila offering to hold a training session with the faculty of the school about socio-educational measures to be taken in this kind of situation. School officials originally accepted, but then changed their minds.
According to Camila, there is still much that needs to happen before the conclusion of the case. The hashtag #SomosTodasLorena (#WeAreAllLorena) began to circulate, showing mothers and communities dedicated to praising black curly hair, such as the group As Vantagens de se Enrolar (The Advantages of Rolling).
Since her story appeared on the internet, Lolô (as Lorena is lovingly called) has adopted an afro — a good way for her to discover how beautiful and powerful she is.

author: Fernanda Canofre


text:
Human Rights Defender’s Hunger Strike Protests Torture in Infamous Bahraini Prison · Global Voices
Faten Bushehri

People rally in Bahrain on May 8 calling on authorities to stop the human rights abuses taking place in Jaw prison. Photo from Al Wefaq National Islamic Society's Official Twitter Account @AlWefaqEN
Prominent Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja went public with his hunger strike, which has now been going on for 23 days since he demanded authorities to investigate allegations of torture in Jaw prison with no progress.
In an open letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, Al-Khawaja said:
Building 10 in Jaw prison has become known as the torture building, and I have personally been hearing the screams of the victims.
He added that the type of torture prisoners have been subjected to in the last few months is the worst since 2011, when a so-called Arab Spring-inspired uprising started. Attached to his letter were detailed accounts of torture and mistreatment incidents on different occasions, including the crackdown on riots that happened inside Jaw prison.
Alkhawaja appeals to the High Commissioner for Human Rights to move rapidly on the situation in Jaw prison http://t.co/GYMssQsAxv #Bahrain
— Maryam Alkhawaja (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA) May 10, 2015
The main Jaw prison incident started on March 10, when an inmate's family was visiting the center and were told their son was barred from visits. The inmate's sister had an exchange with the police officer who reportedly hit her in return. Outraged inmates who witnessed the incident at the visitation lobby were taken back to the main prison buildings and riots erupted.
In a post written by Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab before he got arrested for tweeting, he revealed what had happened that day after the inmates were taken back to the main building:
They marched the inmates out into the courtyards, where every one of them was beaten and humiliated by the police. The forces took shifts terrorizing the inmates, passing the baton between Bahraini police and Jordanian units. The inmates were shot at with shotguns and sound grenades, aimed at their bodies. Inmates were forced to address the officers as ‘master’, beaten if they asked to be taken to the toilet (where they were given 30 seconds to relieve themselves), beaten during meals, and forced to insult their families or face more beatings.
Rajab is the president of Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) and a leading voice for the Bahraini uprising. He has been arrested and detained several times since 2011 for different charges, including “inciting gatherings and calling for unauthorized marches through social networking sites”, “participation in an illegal assembly”, and “insulting public institutions.” Most of his work has a heavy weight on social media, the main platform for his advocacy for human rights. Most of his latest arrests are in connection with statements and accusations directed at the government he had published on Twitter. His latest arrest on April 2 was related to tweets about abuses at Bahrain’s Jaw prison and the crisis in Yemen. On May 11, authorities prolonged Rajab's detention for two more weeks after having already extended it several times before.
Also in his letter, Al-Khawaja says prisoners were left out in the prison's yard for three days before they were forced to cramp up in two plastic tents. One tent had 310 prisoners, and the other had 318.
Inmates revelation to @hrw details the same facts of torture and abuse in Jaw Prison, to which @NABEELRAJAB is being arrested for. #Bahrain
— Bahrain Human Rights (@BahrainRights) May 6, 2015
#Bahrain: Troubling allegations of severe abuse in Jaw Prison. Medical access needed. http://t.co/NdXSvWsu5F pic.twitter.com/pkkjeKn5Fn
— Wenzel Michalski (@WenzelMichalski) May 6, 2015
Authorities reported a different side of the story, claiming that police controlled acts of “violence and vandalism.” They cite the prison center's director explaining one of the inmate's family asked to let a relative in with them for visitation, but their request was denied because the visitor did not carry an ID.
The center's director confirmed that some family members in connection with the incident were arrested, and “police acted to restore control” after a male nurse was taken hostage by prison inmates.
On the Ministry of Interior's official Twitter account, they announced that the whole incident had been recorded:
PT: Jaw Prison incidents were documented on video
— Ministry of Interior (@moi_bahrain) March 10, 2015
Yet no video has been available for the public.
Some protested the Formula 1 event that was held at Bahrain International Circuit from April 17 to 19, saying it prevented attention from real issues and violations taking place behind the scenes:
No to your bloody #F1 on our land #Bahrain While u r racing, there are ppl being tortured in #jaw_prison pic.twitter.com/wpC9smj841
— BAHRAINDOCTOR (@BAHRAINDOCTOR) April 17, 2015
On May 8, the King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa issued a royal decree pardoning a number of inmates for “humanitarian reasons”. Anti-government activists and protesters believe it is a move to cover up to the real violations and horrific treatment of prisoners.
تورط النظام في #البحرين بـ 4000 سجين مع شارع يغلي، فقرر الإفراج عن البعض ليتسع له المجال بإعتقال غيرهم فلذا أصدر ما يسمى بـ #مكرمة_ملكية
— بوخميس (@BUKHMAIS) May 9, 2015
The regime in Bahrain got stuck with 4,000 inmates in addition to outrage on the street, so it decided to release some prisoners to have more space for new arrests, and that's why it issued a so-called “royal decree”
According to the announcement, the decree includes female inmates, inmates who have special medical conditions, inmates under the age of 18, those sentenced to less than three years, as well as inmates who co-operated and showed “commitment and responsiveness to social and drug rehabilitation programs.”
Dozens of people tweeted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Méndez the same messages multiple times, hoping to gain his attention:
@antitorture_SRT @UN officers forced #jawprisoners to put their shoes in their mouths or shaved their heads
— حسن الشارقي (@Hassan_Alsharqi) May 9, 2015
@antitorture_SRT @UN Acting with impunity is what encouraged the police personnels to commit more human rights abuses against #jawprisoners
— abas.mohd22@gmail.co (@AbasMohd22) May 10, 2015
@antitorture_SRT @UN Officials did not allow #jawprisoners medical treatment for their injuries, including head and leg wounds
— BahraniAseel (@BahraniAseel) May 9, 2015
Al-Khawaja letter listed a number of prisoners’ cases in his letter, and revealed torture methods used by officers and guards including sleep deprivation, beating, denying medical treatment and banning them from accessing the toilet.
Abuses and violations still continue today:
Situation in #Bahrain‘s #Jaw prison…almost a month w/o inmates allowed to contact family. http://t.co/He1N1HL6U9 pic.twitter.com/MgmObuUdqT
— AHMED HUSSAIN (@iA7med80_) April 4, 2015
@SAIDYOUSIF التعذيب في #سجن_جو لازال مستمراً ويجب ان نحشد ونكشف للعالم ما يتعرضون له بشكل مكثف دون توقف اوصلو الرساله للخارج
— صبر جميل (@zainab3636) May 11, 2015
Torture in Jaw prison is ongoing and we have to mobilize and let the world know what prisoners go through. Deliver the message to the outside.
Human Rights Watch has called for an independent investigation into torture allegations. HRW Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director Joe Stork said: “The authorities need to allow independent medical access to the prison at once and ensure their access to building 10, where the most serious abuses are alleged to have taken place.”
Families of those who were involved in the March 10 riot say some inmates are still not allowed to receive visitors, or make phone calls to their relatives.
Jaw prison is built for a capacity of 448 inmates, but currently detains about 1,000 inmates.
Al-Khawaja is the former president and co-founder of BCHR, and an icon of the Bahraini uprising. He was arrested on April 9, 2011, and is currently serving a life sentence in Jaw prison. His active role in the field of human rights made him a subject for government harassment. His daughters Maryam and Zainab Al-Khawaja are also active in the human rights field.
This is not Al-Khawaja's first hunger strike. In fact, he went on several hunger strikes since the beginning of the uprising in protest of government's actions and abuses. Most notable is the “Freedom or Death” hunger strike that lasted for about three months.
Al-Khawaja continues to be on hunger strike waiting for authorities to take his demands into account and follow up with serious measures to stop the violations against prisoners.