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Amid civil unrest, internet shutdowns are making Zimbabwe’s economic crisis worse · Global Voices
Kudzai Chimhangwa

President of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa arrives at Waterkloof Air Force Base ahead of the BRICS Africa Outreach Summit being held in Johannesburg, South Africa. July 26, 2018. Recent protests and military crackdown on civilians calls Mnangagwa's leadership into question.  DIRCO News Service/Jacoline Schoonees via Creative Commons / Wikimedia.
Following the January 12 declaration of an official fuel price hike in Zimbabwe, civil unrest and political paranoia has rocked the nation.
President Emmerson Mnanagagwa announced that fuel prices at $1.30 USD per liter would go up by 150 percent, making Zimbabwe's fuel among the most expensive in the world. The next day he left for a five-day tour of Russia and Eastern Europe, purportedly in search of investment deals. Chaos and anarchy broke out the following Monday.
The military was immediately deployed to quell protests after angry mobs looted and set ablaze several supermarkets and chain stores. Reports of state agents gunning down unarmed civilians circulated on social media before the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) completely shut down the internet and all forms of social media from January 14-January 20, 2019.
During the 6-day internet blackout, business literally came to a halt as traders and investors remained uncertain over the economy's trajectory.
Following State Security minister Owen Ncube’s decision to shut down the internet, human rights lawyers prepared and submitted an urgent court application to rescind the action.
The High Court ruled on January 21, 2019, that Ncube did not have the authority to compel mobile operators to cut off services. Judge Owen Tagu told the court that the minister had no authority to make the directive and ordered telecommunications firms  “to unconditionally resume the provision of full and unrestricted services to all subscribers forthwith.”
The court order cited laws that exclusively endow the president with the right to shut down internet services.
Government spokesperson George Charamba told state-controlled papers that the government would not stand by while “such narrow interests play out so violently.”
“The response so far is just a foretaste of things to come,” said Charamba via the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. He continued:
The internet was the tool used to coordinate the violence. But is it not interesting how when we are carrying our dead to the cemetery, at a time when we are counting losses that run into millions of dollars, someone is worried about the internet? You expect us to preserve the internet and ensure that there is maximum damage to our society?
Dhewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa Director with the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch, told Global Voices that the internet shutdown was a gross violation of human rights as such action disrupts daily life and business transactions. The majority of Zimbabweans rely on mobile money for everyday services. Mavhinga explained:
It is possible that President Mnangagwa could shut down the internet again because the court said the president has that authority. During the shutdown, without internet, medical doctors were unable to communicate and respond to emergency cases or to coordinate medical support.
The internet remains a cornerstone of Zimbabwe’s economic activity. With sky-high rates of unemployment and underemployment, most entrepreneurs rely on the internet and social media platforms such as Twitter and WhatsApp to market their products and services.
Since the shutdown, Zimbabwean small businesses have lost an estimated $12.5 million a day, according to think tank TheBehaviourReport.com.
Social media has remained critical to informing citizens as the state-run media outlets remain biased in favor of the ruling party, ZANU PF. During the course of the shutdown, state media barely reported the disturbances.
“I feel that these people in government suppressed our right to freedom of speech and expression,” said Allan Chino, a 21-year-old youth. He continues:
I lost out greatly on a cheaper means of communication with my friends and family. The only option I have left is to download a good VPN (Virtual Private Network) because as long as this government is in power, there is no guarantee that the social media will not be shut down again.
Thousands of citizens who just wanted to be safe and stay informed were left stranded.
Adolf Mavheneke, a human rights activist, said that it was naïve to think that the recent internet shutdown was done by the minister without the knowledge, confirmation and acknowledgment from the president.
“That a minister appointed by Mnangagwa proceeded to effect the order against legal prudence, confirms how the man is ever prepared to dump the national constitution and proceed with political whim,” he added.
Mavheneke said that while acknowledging that freedom of expression as expressed under Section 61 of Zimbabwe’s Constitution is not an absolute right, the internet shutdown sets a bad precedent and will leave a scar on the future of citizens’ freedom and human rights:
In fact, these were and remains self-made attempts to hide state-sponsored violence as everything now happened under the cover of the internet and social media darkness. And the record is also clear on cases where the military and other state security agents went on the rampage during the internet blackout. The future of human rights in Zimbabwe remains a sad reality because we have a leadership that … is prepared to push for legitimacy through the crack of the barrel and the bullet.
He noted that in the aftermath of a disputed election in November 2017, Mnangagwa and Vice President Constantino Chiwenga authorized the use of military force against protesters, and six civilians who were not part of the protests were gunned down. A Commission of Inquiry exonerated Mnangagwa and his administration but also recommended restraint and observance of the rule of law. Therefore, the recent use of soldiers to thwart anti-government protests is illegal and in violation of Zimbabwe's constitution.
“Sooner or later, if this factor is not kept at bay it will consume even those who unleashed it in the first place,” he said.
A young woman who requested anonymity said the violation of citizens’ communicative space by the government was terrifying:
You know what the most scary thing is? It's not the fuel price increases, it's not the looming hunger. It's not about the communication shutdown between friends and families. Neither is it about the soldiers going out to maim and kill innocent civilians. No. The most scary thing is that these guys in government are convinced that they are doing a good job of running this country.

author: Kudzai Chimhangwa


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Displaced farmers’ coalition reclaims their road to sustainable livelihoods 9 years after Haiti’s devastating earthquake · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

Members of the Kolektif Peyizan Viktim Tè Chabè and some of their legal advocates from Accountability Counsel, who helped the farmers’ collective stand up for their rights after being displaced from their land to accommodate an “earthquake recovery” project. Photo courtesy Accountability Counsel, used with permission.
January 12, 2019 marked nine years since the disastrous 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti, levelling much of its infrastructure, crippling its already limping economy, and causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. People in Haiti lost loved ones, homes, livelihoods, prospects.
This year, instead of solely remembering the devastation, one group of Haitian farmers redefined what the anniversary of the earthquake means to them by signing a historic agreement that will provide redress to the nearly 4,000 people in the northeast of the island who were displaced to accommodate the construction of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and USAID-financed Caracol Industrial Park.
Touted by the Haitian government as part of the earthquake reconstruction effort, the park was intended to jump-start the island's economy and generate revenue “more than 150 times the estimated value of the crops grown on the 240-hectare plot” where the industrial park was being developed.
But as the first anniversary of the earthquake approached, 422 farmers and their families had their arable farmland taken away, with only a few days’ notice. The park never functioned to more than ten to 15 per cent of its capacity and ended up generating much lower employment than estimated. People who did secure jobs there were paid the equivalent of US $5 a day.
The IDB offers a different version of events. While both parties concede that in January 2011, a fence went up along the boundary of the project site, the farmers say that once it was constructed, they no longer had access to the land, and their crops were destroyed. The IDB maintains that had access to the land until later that year. The little compensation the farmers eventually received began trickling in only in September 2011. The replacement land they were promised never materialised.
Seven members of the Kolektif Peyizan Viktim Tè Chabè and their advisor celebrate after signing the agreement with the IDB. (AREDE's Milostène Castin is fourth from right, and Eva Jean-Baptiste, whose family lost land, is second from right). Photo courtesy Accountability Counsel, used with permission.
The story could have ended there. But after receiving the final cash payout in late 2013, and realising it wasn’t enough to help them rebuild sustainable livelihoods, the farmers formed a collective — the Kolektif Peyizan Viktim Tè Chabè — to defend their rights. While the Kolektif represents the interests of all the displaced farmers, 415 signed on formally to the group.
On January 12, 2017, with assistance from local and international civil society organisations, the farmers filed a detailed complaint to the IDB’s accountability office. They asked, among other things, for fair financial and non-financial compensation and educational support for the victims’ families.
They also asked the bank to re-examine its definition of whom it deemed “vulnerable”. When it undertook its first resettlement process, the bank only identified 35 people as vulnerable, and most of those did not receive additional support to rebuild their livelihoods. The Kolektif argued that far more of its members were vulnerable and needed extra support.
Talks between the Kolektif, the IDB and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (UTE) began about five months later. They lasted 18 long months, finally producing a landmark agreement that will ensure the farmers access to new land, jobs, modern agricultural equipment, small business development and training opportunities. It also covers specific compensation for the most vulnerable — well beyond the 35 people initially identified — and includes access to microcredit, with specific emphasis on women and people with disabilities.
The farmers celebrate news of the agreement. Photo courtesy Accountability Counsel, used with permission.
With the help of interpreters, I spoke by phone with Milostène Castin, the coordinator of Action pour la Reforestation et la Défense de l’Environnement (AREDE), one of organisations that helped the famers file the original complaint, and Eva Jean Baptiste, one of Kolektif’s leaders. Eva, whose family lost their land to Caracol, helped negotiate the landmark agreement.
Castin wanted to help the farmers overcome social exclusion and get a meaningful settlement, so AREDE began to sensitise them about the benefits of community engagement. Castin cautioned that progress would be gradual, , but he believed the process of demanding accountability would bear fruit. The IDB had internal mechanisms to determine whether there had been any wrongdoing. If successful, the farmers’ action would serve as a strong precedent if government were tempted to take similar decisions in the future.
Local adviser Milostène Castin (second from left) sits with the farmers during a break from the negotiations. Photo courtesy Accountability Counsel, used with permission.
With Castin's help, the farmers formed the Kolektif and began organising themselves into committees. They had a clear strategy for reclaiming their livelihoods: make all affected families aware of what was at stake, and seek support where they needed it. Action Aid came on board to help compile and analyse information, and Accountability Counsel handled the legal aspects of lodging the complaint.
Members of the Kolektif Peyizan Viktim Tè Chabè meet to discuss the details of the final agreement. Photo courtesy Accountability Counsel, used with permission.
When, in June 2017, the Kolektif received an official response from the IDB saying their complaint was accepted, it was the first time in Haiti that victims of a land grab had been able to make their voices heard in a formal dispute resolution process. The farmers finally had a seat at the table, and could advocate for themselves. For Castin, that empowerment was one of the greatest accomplishments of their shared journey.
The agreement, which the farmers helped craft, was eventually finalised in December 2018, and Castin says it is a testament to their solidarity and resolve.
Still, it has been a roller coaster ride for the affected families. Prior to the 2010 earthquake they lived modestly, but were able to eat well, afford basic health care and pay for their children’s education. After work on the industrial park began in earnest, all of this changed. Eva Jean Baptiste describes it as “cutting off our two hands,” adding, “it was a kind of death. We were desperate. We had no other source of income.”
Eva Jean Baptiste, one of the leaders of the Kolektif Peyizan Viktim Tè Chabè. Photo courtesy Accountability Counsel, used with permission.
Even today the everyday reality is tough, but Eva is proud that the Kolektif defied the odds. She calls the case “seminal”. “We knew we were telling the truth,” Eva explains. The “coalition strategy” gave them the strength to put pressure on both the government and the IDB. The farmers knew that all the bank’s operational protocols with regard to the industrial park had not been followed, including environmental safeguards and policies on involuntary resettlement and gender equality in development, and felt that they could effect change.
Describing the women of the community as “first witnesses” to the misery that came with the loss of their land, Eva paints a vivid picture of their experience:
In Haiti, women spend more time at home with the children. We had nothing to fall back on, nothing to sell at the market. Some people even tried to take loans to feed their families or send their kids to school. What we suffered through the most was the loss of our dignity. We had nothing, and the women saw it all first. We were looking directly at the misery, day after day, when we couldn't feed our children or send them to school. At least the men could leave home and try to do something, even if they came back with nothing.
Now that the agreement has been signed, Eva is satisfied, even though the collective didn't get everything it wanted. They had hoped, for instance, that the IDB would bear the full cost of their children’s schooling, but the IDB agreed instead to provide two packages of school supplies and support materials for each family.
Eva is optimistic about the implementation phase which, appropriately, began on January 12 and will roll out over the next five years.
Farmers attend a meeting. Photo courtesy Accountability Counsel, used with permission.
“We have joy in our lives now,” Eva says. “This has helped us restart our lives.” Approximately 100 of the most vulnerable farmers will now have private title to land. Others will have access to agricultural equipment and training, or small business development assistance.
Crops take time to grow, so community members have also been offered interim employment at the park to give them a steady income while they work towards creating a sustainable livelihood.
As for Castin, he's says seeing the positive results keeps him going: “It's about creating communities that last.”

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Janine Mendes-Franco


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Divided they stand: Caribbean nations take sides on Venezuela · Global Voices
Georgia Popplewell

Members of the CARICOM delegation at the United Nations on January 2019. (From L to R) Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs Dennis Moses, Prime Minister Keith Rowley of Trinidad and Tobago, CARICOM Secretary-General Irwin LaRocque, Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and CARICOM chairman Timothy Harris. Photo: Office of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, public domain.
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations’ position on the situation in Venezuela became clearer over the past weekend—and it’s anything but unified. Allegiances didn’t necessarily align, however, with those expressed in the Organization of American States (OAS) resolution on January 10 that sought to declare the second term of Nicolás Maduro’s presidency illegitimate.
In the January 10 vote, five nations supported the OAS line, three voted against it, and five abstained.
On the night of January 24, 12 out of the 15 CARICOM member states signed on to a collective statement reaffirming the CARICOM guiding principle of “non-intervention and non-interference” in the affairs of sovereign nations. The signatories include Jamaica and St. Lucia, who reversed the positions they had taken in favour of the OAS resolution on January 10.
Guyana, which shares a disputed border with Venezuela, had issued its own statement earlier on January 24, taking a less categorical stance, but supporting “calls made at both the regional and international levels for immediate dialogue involving all political and social actors, with a view to the preservation of the democratic process and a return to normalcy.”
Haiti, on the other hand, has recognised Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's interim president, and so has the Bahamas. Both nations had voted in favour of the OAS declaration.
Some Caribbean leaders have directly condemned the United States’ support of Guaidó. Talking to the Miami Herald, Gaston Brown, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, called it “a brazen regime change” and “an affront to democracy within the hemisphere.” St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ prime minister Ralph Gonsalves accused the US of “carrying out a coup d’état.”
In Trinidad and Tobago, Prime Minister Keith Rowley and other politicians bristled at a statement released by the US ambassador criticising the country for “recognising the undemocratic and illegitimate government of Nicolás Maduro.”
On Monday, January 28, a delegation of CARICOM leaders including the prime ministers and foreign ministers of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis and Grenada met in New York with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Also on Monday, Maduro reportedly told members of the diplomatic corps that he had spoken to CARICOM leaders and was “open to mediation talks in ‘Trinidad and Tobago or wherever’ with the Venezuelan opposition”.
CARICOM’s position is clearly influenced by concern about the possibility of external military intervention in the Venezuelan crisis. Donald Trump has warned that “all options are on the table”. Venezuela’s military is reportedly in talks with Guaidó, but so far has stood with Maduro, and the arrival of nuclear-capable Russian bomber jets in Venezuelan territory was reported in December. The latter is of special concern to Guyana, whose border dispute with Venezuela has intensified since the discovery of oil in Guyanese territory in 2015.
In the January 24 statement, CARICOM leaders invoked “Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter which calls for Member States to refrain from the threat or the use of force.” They also called on “external forces” to “refrain from doing anything to destabilise the situation and (…) to avoid actions which would escalate an already explosive situation to the detriment of the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and which could have far-reaching negative consequences for the wider region.”
The statement also emphasised “the importance of the Caribbean remaining a Zone of Peace,” invoking an idea first advanced by Maurice Bishop, who came to power in Grenada in a revolution that toppled the government of Eric Gairy in 1979. In an address to the General Assembly a few months after taking power, Bishop said:
“We join with our sister Caribbean nations in re-emphasising our determination to preserve the Caribbean as a zone of peace, free from military intimidation. We demand the right to build our own processes in our own way, free from outside interference, free from bullying and free from the use or threat of force.”
“In Nobody’s Backyard”, another of Bishop's well-known speeches, attacked the persistence of US president Theodore Roosevelt's characterisation of Latin America and the Caribbean as Washington’s “backyard.” Bishop’s overthrow and subsequent execution by a faction of his own People’s Revolutionary Government sparked the United States’ invasion of the island in 1983.
An image from the March 1982 edition of The Grenada Newsletter. SOURCE: University of Florida Digital Collections.
The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a regional bloc formed in 2011 to promote self-definition outside of the influence of Washington, formally proclaimed the Caribbean region a zone of peace in 2014.
In my capacity as Chairman of @CARICOMorg I am engaging in shuttle #diplomacy The volatile situation in #Venezuela does not auger well for the #Caribbean region remaining a zone of #Peace pic.twitter.com/4F5zlpYGJi
— Timothy Harris (@pmharriskn) January 27, 2019
The idea has also been invoked in the last couple of years by Caribbean politicians such as Guyana's president David Granger and the country's prime minister Moses Nagamootoo. Antigua and Barbuda's prime minister Gaston Browne used the phrase in December 2018 in response to the reported arrival of Russian bomber jets in Venezuela:
“This hemisphere must remain a zone of peace,” Browne said in a radio interview. “We abhor any conflict or military provocation that could lead to warfare, destabilise our region and bring harm to innocent civilians.”

author: Georgia Popplewell


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Larisa Pak is the last Korean standing at Tajikistan’s hardscrabble border with Afghanistan · Global Voices
Salam Aleik

Larisa Pak surrounded by family in her house in the village of Sukhrob, Farkhor district, Tajikistan
With her long, colourful dress, covered hair and accentless ownership of the local tongue, Larisa Pak does not stand out from the other women in her village a few kilometres from Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan. But her surname, which she retained even after marrying her late husband, is a reminder of another homeland some 5,000 kilometres east of the one her parents adopted.
Up to 200,000 ethnic Koreans were deported to Central Asia from the Russian Far East during the 1930s as Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the forced displacement of entire minority populations suspected of lacking loyalty to Moscow.
The Kremlin's specific fear regarding the Korean population was that it was being infiltrated by agents of Japan, which was occupying the Korean peninsular at the time and casting an expansionist glance across the Asian continent.
Many Koreans were initially placed in labour camps in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where unknown numbers perished from malaria and other diseases working in abominable conditions.
Over time the ‘Koryo Saram’, as Soviet Koreans were known, gradually shed their native language for the Union's lingua Franca, Russian, and, in rarer cases, the titular languages of the countries they settled in, such as Tajik and Uzbek.
For 65-year-old Pak's parents, Tajikistan was a second stop in Central Asia after the steppes of Kazakhstan. Farkhor, the district in which she grew up, got married and raised 10 children, hosted a collective farm growing rice where mostly Koreans worked.
Today she is the only Korean left in Farkhor, where the gruelling soundtrack of war between Afghan government forces and the militant Taliban can sometimes be heard in the distance.
“I never felt unwelcomed or uncomfortable among the locals. I grew up among Uzbeks and Tajiks, and later, when married, started dressing like local women, converted to Islam, and began praying five times a day,” Pak told Global Voices, circled by daughters, son, in-laws, and numerous grandchildren.
During the 1990s, Tajikistan was consumed by a war of its own. Koreans, along with other minorities, including Germans and Russians, fled the republic over the course of a five-year civil conflict that cost tens of thousands of lives and deepened the economic devastation wrought by the Soviet collapse.
Larisa Pak inside her home in the village of Sukhrob, Farkhor district, Tajikistan. Photo by author.
If there were 13,500 Koreans in Tajikistan in 1989, there were just over 600 in 2010 according to a national census carried out that year. Most of those remaining live in the capital Dushanbe.
In Farkhor, where Pak grew up, Koreans sold their homes to local Tajiks and Uzbeks. The rice-growing ‘sovkhoz’ where they lived and worked has been privatised and its workforce has doubled.
Life here has grown less comfortable since the dawn of Tajikistan's independence in 1991, Pak says. Water lines have broken down, the medical point consistently staffed during the Soviet era no longer has a doctor and electricity is inconstant.
Pak, however, never thought of leaving southern Tajikistan, where she spent most of her working life as an accountant for local authorities.
“I gave all my daughters into Tajik and Uzbek boys following the local customs. My sons also married local girls. Now I have so many wonderful grandchildren, daughters-in-law and neighbours,” Pak said.
Pak was just 18 when she married her neighbour, an ethnic Uzbek boy, Mengal Mamatkulov. The language of their household was Tajik, although Pak can also speak Uzbek and counts Russian, the language her parents spoke, as her mother tongue.
Pak calls Mamatkulov's death several years ago her “only sadness.”
Pak's husband, Mengal. Photo used with permission.
While Larisa Pak spoke of her in-laws in glowing terms, her eldest daughter, 47-year-old Safarmoh, told Global Voices that her mother's journey to becoming an honorary Central Asian wasn't always a smooth one.
Key to her acceptance in her husband's family, Safarmoh recounted, was the love and respect of Mengal's father, who singled her out as his favourite daughter-in-law. This special relationship helped remove some of the doubts others in the family had about Pak's heritage.
Larisa Pak consulting with grandchildren. Photo by the author.
Every so often, fellow villagers get a reminder of her Korean roots. On more than one occasion, she has been visited by representatives of Seoul's embassy in the country.
In 2004, South Korea introduced new legislation that allows ethnic Koreans in the former Soviet Union and China preferential access to its labour market. The country where four of Pak's sons and one daughter now live and work has also become a popular migration destination for non-ethnic Korean citizens of the Central Asian ‘stans’.
Pak says that the money her children have sent back from South Korea helped pay for air conditioning in her home — a great blessing given daytime summer temperatures in southern Tajikistan regularly threaten 50 degrees Celsius.
She has never traveled there herself, however, and shows no burning desire to do so in her advancing years.
“I have grown used to living here the my whole life. I am satisfied and happy with the life I have here, among this nation, which also became my nation. This is my home.”

author: Salam Aleik


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Once-beloved youth magazine is accused of whitewashing legacy of Serbian Nazis · Global Voices
Filip Stojanovski

The front page of Politikin Zabavnik, the issue from 18 January 2019, and a scan of the controversial article titled “Who were Ljotić's men?”. which Twitter user @lukazb posted with an answer “Fascists!”
Some members of the Serbian public expressed astonishment after the popular Belgrade weekly magazine Politikin Zabavnik published an article which many readers felt glossed over the war crimes of local Nazi collaborators.
Titled “Who were Ljotićevci?” (“Who were Ljotić's men?”) and published on the January 18 edition, the article presents the Serbian Volunteer Corps, a local associate of the Nazi regime during the Second World War, in a rather positive light.
With its name roughly translating as “Politika's Fun Paper” or “Politika's Entertainer,” the publication is targeted at “all ages from 7 to 107″ and is widely perceived as family fare. Founded in 1939, it enjoyed a cult status all over Yugoslavia as the epitome of high-quality edutainment, providing an encyclopedic mix of general knowledge, trivia, short stories, history, science, travel, and music, with about 50 percent of its pages devoted to quality comics.
Both media professionals and readers decried what they saw as the magazine's betrayal of its cosmopolitan and progressive values. They considered the article an act of final submission by the paper to Serbia's right-wing populist government, which has been rehabilitating the legacies of World War II Nazi collaborators.
Nazi occupiers and their associates killed around 140.000 people in Serbia, conducting genocide against over 20.000 Jews and about 12-20.000 Roma.
On January 20, 2019, the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) and the Independent Society of Journalists of Vojvodina (NDNV) called the article “the most pitiful of all kinds of media manipulations — manipulating children.” They noted that the magazine spreads “gruesome praises” about Dimitrije Ljotić, a Holocaust perpetrator, misinforming that “he condemned the pogrom of Jews.”
Istorijski revizionizam odavno je postao deo naše svakodnevice, a fašističke, nacističke i druge kvislinške i kolaboracionističke snage se na sve načine trude da falsifikuju istoriju.
Historical revisionism has become part of our daily existence, and the Fascist, Nazi and other quisling and collaborationist forces are investing enormous efforts to promote historical forgeries.
Some social media users reacted by providing documentary evidence from that period:
Evo, na ovoj fotografiji se vidi pomoć Romima. Ljotićevci ih vode na streljanje pic.twitter.com/lP8M9rUOcD
— Stefan Marković (@SMarkovic018) January 20, 2019
This photograph shows their help for Roma people. Ljotić's men take them to be executed by shooting.
Meanwhile, Belgrade's Jewish community published an open letter to Politikin Zabavnik editor on January 21, expressing their dismay and pointing facts related to the Second World War.
Dimitrije Ljotić JE BIO lokalni nacista i organizovao je vojsku, Srpski dobrovoljački korpus (nem: Serbischer SS-Freiwilligen Korps) koja je bila u službi Vermahta.
Ideologija ovog korpusa je bila identična nacističkoj: istrebljenje Jevreja, komunista i zapadnjačkog kapitalizma. Korpus je bio zloglasan po zločinima nad stanovništvom, posebno Jevrejima i Romima, partizanskim ustanicima i pripadnicima pokreta otpora. Ljotićeve jedinice su učestvovale u streljanju đaka u Kragujevcu u oktobru 1941. Dan nakon ovog masakra u organizaciji ZBOR otvorena je najveća antisemitska izložba u Beogradu tzv. “Antimasonska izložba” koja je bila usmerena ka “razotkrivanju judeokomunističke zavere” a u proljotićevskim novinama su se pojavile reči “Srbi ne bi trebalo da čekaju Nemce da počnu istrebljenje Jevreja”.
Dimitrije Ljotić WAS a local Nazi and organized an army, the Serbian Volunteer Corps (Serbischer SS-Freiwilligen Korps in German) which served the Wehrmacht.
The ideology of this corps was identical to the Nazis: extermination of Jews, Communists and Western capitalism. The corps became infamous for crimes against civilians, especially against Jews and Roma, against the partisans and other members of the resistance movement. Ljotić's units participated in the killing of students during October 1941 Kragujevac Massacre. A day after this massacre, his organization ZBOR opened the biggest anti-semitic exhibition in Belgrade, the so-called ‘Anti-masonic exibition’, aimed at ‘revealing the Judaeo-Communist plot’, while pro-Ljotić newspapers suggested that ‘Serbs should not wait for the Germans to start the extermination of Jews’.
Unlike the countries of the Soviet Bloc, the publishing industry in independent socialist Yugoslavia enjoyed a higher degree of freedom and imported much of its contents from the West. By the 1970s, publishers of magazines on a wide range of general interest topics, comics, pulp fiction, music, and even erotica/porn became self-sustainable by catering to the sizable middle class.
Politikin Zabavnik's circulation surpassed 300,000 in the “golden days” of the 1970s and early 1980s. Its mission was to build a “cultural infrastructure,” “develop ethical values” and nurture integrative Yugoslav patriotism.
The paper was published in Cyrillic (Serbian) and Latin (Croatian) versions, as well as in the Slovenian language. Its history sections would promote the anti-fascist values of the People's Liberation War, as well as the heritage of all peoples comprising the federation.
After the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, most of the Serbian media conformed with Slobodan Milošević‘s nationalist ideologies. Over time Politikin Zabavnik adapted to this new market reality by including more topics about narrow Serbian history and tradition.
Foreign observers have been warning that the publication increasingly promotes nationalism and extreme right-wing values, but this had little resonance with the Serbian public until the current scandal:
This is how politikin zabavnik illustrates story about family in Israel! Der Stürmer? pic.twitter.com/YsQx4Jedld
— Florian Bieber (@fbieber) August 14, 2016
This time, large numbers of social media users expressed their outrage, such as TV screenwriter Bane Raičević:
Nedeljom ujutru odem u prodavnicu, kupim Carnex jetrenu paštetu i Coca Colu. U povratku kupim Politikin Zabavnik. Dodjem kući, sednem u kuhinju, jedem ‘leba, paštete i CC i čitam Politikin zabavnik. Tako mi se svidjalo. To su moje '80-te. E to ste ukaljali, smrdljiva stoko.
— Bane Raičević (@baneraicevic) January 21, 2019
On Sunday morning I would go to the local shop, buy Carnex pork liver pate and Coca Cola. On the way back I would buy Politikin Zabavnik. I would come home, sit in the kitchen, eat the pate with bread and the CC and read Politikin Zabavnik. It was my indulgence as a kid. Those were my 1980s. These are the memories that you managed to soil, you stinky animals.
Another user tweeted an image of the paper's well-known logo – Donald Duck as newspaper seller — replaced with the Disney character's presentation on the Oscar-winning cartoon Der Fuehrer’s Face:
I tako se sjebao Politikin Zabavnik… pic.twitter.com/3PoGQaWxNn
— D.M (@DaGrimBo) January 19, 2019
And this is how Politikin Zabavnik screwed itself…
The magazine's following edition, published on January 26, run a new article titled “Who Ljotićevci [Ljotić's men] really were”, along with an introduction that was also posted on the magazine's Facebook page:
„Политикин Забавник” није желео да релативизује улогу злочиначких јединица организације „Збор”, као ни Димитрија Љотића, и њихових недела током Другог светског рата!
Извињавамо се свима који су наш текст тако схватили, а посебно јеврејској и ромској заједници!
Politikin Zabavnik didn't intend to relativize the role of the criminal units of the ZBOR organization, nor the role of Dimitrije Ljotić and their crimes during the Second World War!
We apologize to all who understood our text in that manner, and in particular to the Jewish and Roma communities!
This new version was a more factual account about the fascist nature of Ljotić's movement, and even included the photo of them leading Roma to slaughter that had been widely shared on Twitter.
NUNS and NDNV reacted again, saying that while the new article condemned Ljotić's men, it also rehabilitated other domestic traitors who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers (this time the Chetniks), and soiled the reputation of communists, supposedly using the excuse “for the promotion of anti-anti-fascism.”
The Politikin Zabavnik scandal exposes the deep polarization of Serbian society, the result of the use of nationalism as a tool to exploit the divisions between liberal citizens and their compatriots persuaded to consider ethnic identity as a key factor in determining if someone should be praised or condemned.

author: Filip Stojanovski


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Mining disaster in Brazil shows that Bolsonaro’s pledge to loosen up sector regulation is totally insane · Global Voices
Global Voices Brazil

View of the region after the dam burst in Brumadinho. Photo by Minas Gerais’ Firesquad, public domain
Three years, two months and 20 days since a mine tailings dam collapsed in Brazil's southeastern state of Minas Gerais, and the deadly tragedy repeated itself only 120 km away: on January 25, 2019, three dams burst in the city of Brumadinho, in the same state. After the first one erupted, the mud overloaded the other two causing them to collapse.
As in 2015, the Brumadinho dams belonged by mining giant Vale. The accident happened around noon, while the company's employees were on their lunch break. According to Vale's CEO Fábio Schvartsman, 427 people were inside the cafeteria when it flooded. G1, a local news outlet, informs that 60 people are confirmed dead, but only 19 bodies have been identified so far; 192 people have been rescued alive, and 292 are still missing. The majority of the victims are Vale’s employees.
The accident happened only three days after President Jair Bolsonaro spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying that Brazil is “the country that most preserves the environment in the world”. He added that the country needs to “advance in the balance between preserving the environment and biodiversity and the necessary economic development”.
One of his campaign's promises was to facilitate mining activities in the Amazon region. On his inauguration, he criticized the mining regulators and vowed to loosen up the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
After the Brumadinho tragedy, Bolsonaro spoke defensively at a local radio station, saying that Vale, which is a private company, “has nothing to do with the federal government”. He added that the government's responsibilities lie with Brazil's Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), the country's main environmental regulator.
The following day, Bolsonaro announced the creation of a council and a committee to follow the developments in Brumadinho.
Meanwhile, relatives from those missing are still waiting for updates. On Friday, Estado de Minas, a local newspaper, interviewed 75-year-old Mauro Fonseca, whose two nephews, who are Vale employees, were at work at the time of the accident:
O Ronaldo conseguiu escapar com um caminhão. A gente conseguiu falar com ele. Só que o Rogério não. A irmã dele está desesperada. A gente liga, mas só dá caixa-postal. Ele estava no refeitório.
Ronaldo managed to escape with a truck. We talked to him. But Rogerio didn’t [escape]. His sister is desperate. We keep calling, but the call goes to voicemail. He was at the cafeteria.
The area was left covered in mud. Photo: Minas Gerais’ Firesquad, public domain
Speaking on national TV, Schvartsman has claimed that the collapsed dam has been out of use for the past three years and that it was last monitored 15 days before the disaster. In September, a German company inspected the place and reported that the dam was “stable”, he said. Schvartsman added that while the scale of the environmental damage might be lower than in 2015, the “human tragedy is greater” this time.
A note released by the National Mining Agency says that the Brumadinho dams were classified in a category of “low risk and high potential damage” (regarding the loss of human lives and the social, economic, and environmental impact associated with them).
The Brazilian state of Minas Gerais concentrates 63 per cent of the country's high-risk mining dams, according to Agência Lupa, a Brazilian fact-checking agency. “High risk” here means that it contains “problems in its technical characteristics or a poor state of conservation”. The distance between the city of Brumadinho and Minas Gerais’ capital Belo Horizonte, which is Brazil's sixth largest city, is of 60 km.
Brumadinho is the home of Inhotim, the largest open-air museum in the world, whose collection includes works on how humans exploit the soil. The museum had to be evacuated after the bursting.
Reporter Lucas Ferraz, who was born in the region, reminded the public of the museum's spurious connections with Minas Gerais’ mines:
Barragem da Vale se rompe em Brumadinho, onde fica Inhotim. O dono de Inhotim fez fortuna com uma mineradora cuja barragem, em Itabirito (66 km de Brumadinho), também se rompeu (anos 80, com mortos). Itabirito, por sua vez, está a 63 km de Mariana. Descaso continuado e circular.
— Lucas Ferraz (@lucasfferraz) January 25, 2019
Vale’s dam bursts in Brumadinho, where Inhotim is located. The owner of Inhotim made his fortune with a mining company, whose dam, located in Itabirito (66 km from Brumadinho), also collapsed (in the 1980s, with deaths). Itabirito is 63 km away from Mariana [the site of 2015's tragedy]. Constant and circular neglect.
Minas Gerais’ governor Romeu Zema and president Jair Bolsonaro, reuniting a day after the tragedy. Photo: Isac Nóbrega, Presidency, public domain
Three years after the first disaster, the effects in the River Doce and the ecosystem around Mariana are still evident. Experts at the University of São Paulo estimate that the environment will take centuries to recover itself. To this day, no one has been arrested and people from the affected communities are still waiting for compensation.
Less than 24 hours since the bursting in Brumadinho, inhabitants of cities located along the river Paraopeba, which was engulfed by the mud, reported sights of dead fishes. The population of the 48 affected cities surpasses 1,3 million people. The state government has suspended all of Vale’s activities in the region.

author: Global Voices Brazil


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Surveillance is a key concern for foreign journalists working in China, survey shows · Global Voices
Hong Kong Free Press

Graffiti art of surveillance camera. Published and labeled for reuse on Pixabay.
The original version of the following post was written by Jennifer Creery and published on Hong Kong Free Press on January 29, 2019. The republication is based on a partnership agreement.
Working conditions for foreign correspondents in China deteriorated in 2018, according to an annual report from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC). Surveillance, both on the street and via communications networks, has become a dominant concern.
Of the 204 journalists who completed the report's survey, 48 percent said they had been followed, and 91 percent said they were worried about the security of their phones.
More than half of the respondents believed that government interference had worsened over the course of the year – the largest proportion since 2011, and a 10 percent increase from the year before. Not a single correspondent said conditions improved last year, the FCCC added.
Survey participants represent media from 31 countries and regions. Not all respondents answered every question. Additionally, bureau chiefs from nine international news-gathering organisations were interviewed extensively for the report.
Of the 27 respondents who visited Xinjiang – a northwestern region of China populated predominantly by Turkic Muslims – 24 said that they experienced “interference” while there. Xinjiang has seen a mass crackdown of ethnic minorities including the arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in extrajudicial “re-education” camps since President Xi Jinping implemented a hardline policy in 2014 to tackle social unrest.
The press club, which is not recognised by Beijing, added that surveillance and other forms of obstruction were prevalent in the region. Of the 204 respondents:
Nathan VanderKlippe, a correspondent for Globe and Mail, told the FCCC that he was subjected to intense surveillance while reporting on the region:
I was followed and tracked for nearly 1,600 kilometres, by at least 9 cars and 20 people – most of whom refused to identify themselves or their organisations…I was detained numerous times. A police officer seized my camera and deleted pictures without my consent.
The survey showed that Chinese authorities have refused to issue or renew visas for journalists, in what may be retaliation for negative news coverage. Megha Rajagopalan, former China bureau chief of Buzzfeed, was forced to leave the country last year after her application for a press visa was denied without explanation. Rajagopalan had covered Asia extensively since 2012, and her report on surveillance technology in Xinjiang won recognition at the 2018 Human Rights Press Awards.
Visas with shortened terms were also issued in apparent retaliation for coverage that upset the government. Voice of America (VOA) reporter Yibing Feng was given a six-month visa instead of the usual one-year term; a New York Times journalist was issued a three-month visa. Bill Ide, bureau chief for VOA, told the FCCC:
It’s harassment…They’re trying to send a message, but it’s unclear really what the message is, because we have asked them repeatedly to tell us specifically what led to the shortened visa and they have not given us any clarity.
About half of respondents attended interviews at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs prior to receiving their press credentials. One in 10 said they had problems during the renewal process.
Chinese employees of foreign media outlets also faced unique risks. 37 percent of respondents said that their local colleagues had been subjected to harassment and intimidation by authorities, including being forcibly separated and denounced as “traitors,” the report found.
In addition, the report raised concerns over the safety of sources within China, who are routinely subject to intimidation and harassment. According to the report, 34 percent of respondents said that sources had been harassed, detained or questioned by authorities at least once.
Police in Urumqi, China. Photo licensed to public domain.
The report also noted areas of improvement. Fewer correspondents were called to Ministry of State Security meetings. There also were fewer reports of Chinese diplomats placing pressure on news organisations’ headquarters, and 84 percent of respondents said they had smooth visa processing procedures. On balance, the FCCC report concludes that the government has adopted a more nuanced approach to controlling foreign media.
Both physical and digital surveillance have became key concerns among foreign journalists. Alongside those who had been followed (48 percent of respondents), 22 percent were aware that authorities tracked them using public surveillance systems.
The FCCC report collected a number of cases showing how journalists and their sources were being watched. In an interview for the report, Matthew Carney from Australian Broadcasting Corporation said:
I have witnessed files been moved in my laptop, also in my phone I have actually seen them in my Gmail opening and closing files. This instance was at 2 a.m. in the morning. I had a very high level of surveillance in my home and office, on phone, all communications apps: Wechat, Gmail, ABC email, malware in my phone, etc.
Yuan Yang from Financial Times said,
Police officers told me they know about a social event I was organizing that I had privately invited friends to using Wechat.
FCCC president Hanna Sahlberg wrote that she is worried about the deteriorating press environment in China:
The wider monitoring and pressure on sources [to] stop journalists even before they can reach the news site…There is a risk that even foreign media will shy away from stories that are perceived as too troublesome, or costly, to tell in China.
She added that there were reports of Chinese officials offering to bug the homes of Hong Kong-based journalists on behalf of the Malaysian government, as media workers investigated a multi-billion dollar graft scandal in Kuala Lumpur that implicated now former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
China ranked 176 out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index, making it one of the most restrictive countries in which foreign journalists work.

author: Hong Kong Free Press


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The beef between two Trinidad and Tobago soca stars is a nod to age-old musical traditions · Global Voices
Jada Steuart

Trinidadian soca star Machel Montano performing at OVO Fest in Toronto in 2016. PHOTO: The Come Up Show (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Private grouses have a funny way of becoming public feuds — especially in the music industry. From high-profile beefs like the ones between Kanye West and Taylor Swift and Jamaica's Mavado and Vybz Kartel, to the more local but equally infamous 2004 fight between Trinidadian soca stars Destra and Denise Belfon, celebrity quarrels often end up bringing attention to the artists and drawing new audiences to their music.
Now, thanks to a burgeoning battle between Trinidad and Tobago entertainers Machel Montano and Neil “Iwer” George, soca music officially has its first spat of 2019.
Trinidad and Tobago's annual Carnival celebrations take place this year on March 4 and 5, and the lead up is peak time for soca music. Popular soca performers like Montano and George are booked for Carnival events months in advance. They're releasing new music in a bid to win the coveted Road March title, which offers a substantial monetary prize to the artist whose song plays the most during Carnival.
Screenshot from a Vimeo video of Trinidadian soca star Iwer George performing at Return Fête in Toronto in 2018.
Soca music lovers first noticed tension between the two musicians when George released his first song of 2019, “Road March Bacchanal 2″. The song's lyrics makes it clear that George holds a grudge after losing the 2018 Road March battle to Montano. His composition, “Savannah”, was a strong contender, but Montano had teamed up with soca veteran Superblue to release “Soca Kingdom”, which copped the coveted 2018 Road March title. “Soca Kingdom” was played 336 times, and “Savannah” 140.
Bringing his personal disappointment into the public domain, George's lyrics accused the “soca mafia” — ostensibly a group of deejays and radio station owners — of conspiring to play “Soca Kingdom” at the all judging points. He sings:
On the stage was a next set of drama, the DJs and them playing ‘Savannah’
But when the mafia come, they switching from ‘Savannah’ to ‘Kingdom’
They join forces to win the big fight … this year you have to team up with Jesus Christ
In another version of the song, George accuses Montano of “bad talking” him, and belittles the honorary doctorate Montano recently received from the University of Trinidad and Tobago for his contribution to soca music.
Soon after George’s song was released, Montano responded with “Dr. Mashup”, in which he directly addressed allegations of rigging the Road March contest:
We doh plan for no road march, We doh sing bout man for no road march
We doh beg no one for no road march, everybody show me yuh hand for de road march …
That was not the end of it: at a new Carnival party, “Hydrate”, on January 13, both artists performed. George included his new verse and Montano supposedly had the last word:
After their performances, Montano’s manager, Anthony Chow Lin On, posted a photo to Instagram in which he comically holds the two apart:
Talk about Bachannal this morning ,, SOUND CLASH. they shoulda neva hurt Buju ⚰⚰⚰⚰ @iwergeorge @machelmontano
A post shared by  Chinese LAUNDRY (@tonychowlinon) on
The post left fans to wonder if the feud was real or simply a publicity stunt:
Not sure if this Iwer vs Machel clash fabricated but I am here for all of it. ALL. pic.twitter.com/XZ9xpUzZb8
— Dominic Angelo (@RayBanzs) January 18, 2019
Machel vs Iwer >>>> Drake vs Meek
— Carnival Horse (@brian_savage14) January 18, 2019
Stunt or not, many social media users following the feud have pointed out that this type of lyrical sparring (known as a “sound clash”) is not new; in fact, it is intricately woven into the origins of calypso music, and its modern-day hybrid, soca.
In a recent interview, George himself addressed the fact that he was just “documenting the history” as he “always does”, following the path of legendary calypsonians who did the same.
While calypso music is well known for its social and political commentary, an early form of the music involved verbal dueling similar to the war of words taking place between George and Montano. Calypso tents, where calypsonians perform during the Carnival season, were hugely popular for their “extempo wars”, live contests in which singers would improvise lyrics on the spot mocking each other, or on a specific theme. The banter between the performers is locally referred to as “picong”.
Such performances are typically interactive, with audiences echoing one of several refrains, the most common of which is “Santimanitay!”, a derivative of the French phrase “sans humanité”, or “without pity”.
But audiences have rarely witnessed a back-and-forth like this in recorded soca music. And real or not, the George/Montano feud has listeners as engaged as any extempo wars audience, both at Carnival events and online.
George and Montano will, very likely, both in the running for the 2019 Road March title and at the very least, the added drama makes for good entertainment and more music.
Soca lovers could ask for nothing more.

author: Jada Steuart


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The Spiny Babbler, Nepal’s only endemic bird, fascinates ornithologists and bird lovers alike · Global Voices
Sanjib Chaudhary

Spiny Babbler, the bird found only in Nepal. Photo by Sagar Giri. Used with permission.
Although more than 800 bird species are found in Nepal, the Spiny Babbler (Turdoides nipalensis) is the only bird that is endemic to the country. The greyish-brown bird, called Kaande Bhyakur in Nepali, lives in dense scrub and can be spotted more easily at elevations ranging from 500 meters to 2135 meters. Although the Spiny Babbler has been fascinating ornithologists the world around for years, environmental degradation is threatening this unique, much-loved bird.
Nepal has 876 bird species, with 1 endemic (Spiny Babbler). #AsianBirdFair
— Ivan Kwan (@Varanussalvator) November 1, 2015
The medium-sized bird is shy in nature and it’s difficult to observe them, except early in the breeding season when males often sing in the open.
Finally, a sight of the Spiny Babbler – a bird that occurs only in Nepal! Though they are Babblers, they sing a variety of rather loud & melodic songs from their hideouts amongst thick bushes, which resounds across the hills nearby – waking you up the possibility of seeing them. However, the amount of activity seems quite subdued in Winter. Spring & Summer season is probably the best time to catch a glimpse of this special bird which is recorded only in a few spots in Nepal. Makes one wonder what came to be that these birds have restricted themselves to only this geographical & political region. Thanks to @tharu_hunk &  @nikitakhamparia for this. #spinybabbler #endemic #endemicbirds #nepal #chitwan #birdsofnepal #birdsoftheindiansubcontinent #birdsoftheworld #uperdangadi #nepaltourism #nuts_about_birds #birdingenthusiast #natureinfocus #nepalphotography #nepalphotoproject @insta.nepal #nepalnature
A post shared by  Varun Mani (@bombaywhite) on
Song of a Spiny babbler (Turdoides nipalensis), the only endemic #bird ?of #Nepal known so far. #Spinybabbler #BirdsofNepal #काँडेभ्याकुर pic.twitter.com/CoQtwJvnUp
— ?Sonam Tashi Lama? (@SonamTaC) October 30, 2017
The book The Status of Nepal’s Birds: The National Red List Series states:
It seeks insects almost entirely on the ground among low bushes, appearing only occasionally. Spiny Babbler mounts branches of bushes or small trees to sing, bill pointed upward and tail down. It is a good mimic, with squeaks, chuckles and chirps. It is most easily located by its song and occasionally sings as late as September and October. The species is subject to seasonal altitudinal movements.
The Spiny Babbler, found only in Nepal, has fascinated ornithologists and bird lovers from around the world. Don Messerschmidt writes about ornithologist S. Dillon Ripley’s account of the bird in his book Search for the Spiny Babbler:
“It was a species that had defied scientists for years, since 1843 or 1844. At that time Brian Hodgson’s Nepali collectors working for him in the unknown vastnesses of Nepal had secured several specimens,” he writes. The Spiny Babbler “had remained a mystery ever since, one of the five species of Indian birds, which, along with the Mountain Quail, had apparently vanished from the face of the earth. But not quite, for if my guess was right, here it was hopping about large as life on the wooded slopes above Rekcha.”
Likewise, former-American ambassador to Nepal Scott DeLisi spent years trying to spot and photograph this bird.
Birder David Walsh tweeted:
The Ornitholidays group made the long drive from Kathmandu to Chitwan yesterday. The highlight was seeing Nepal’s only endemic bird, Spiny Babbler. @55birder pic.twitter.com/i0aBnvCbFE
— David Walsh (@DavidWalsh22) March 15, 2018
The bird is threatened by the clearance of scrub for agriculture and expansion of urban areas. Outside protected areas, it is sometimes threatened by hunting, and the hills surrounding the Kathmandu Valley have seen a decline in Spiny Babbler numbers. However, the same habitat loss that is destroying the Spiny Babbler's habitat in some areas might actually be creating more in others. As the forest continues to thin due to deforestation throughout the country, the scrub-dominated habitat that they call home is being created in its wake. But only time will tell what is in store for the population of Nepal's only endemic bird.

author: Sanjib Chaudhary


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DigiGlot Newsletter: Welsh-language rock music finds a place on streaming music platforms · Global Voices
Rising Voices

“Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch” is the name of a village in Wales and is also the place with the longest name in Europe, as seen as a Welsh language exhibit at 2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Photo by Alan Kotok and used under a CC BY 2.0 license.
The DigiGlot Newsletter is a bi-weekly collaborative newsletter that reports on how indigenous, minority, and endangered language communities are adopting and adapting technology to increase the digital presence of their languages, and in the process changing the internet landscape by increasing linguistic diversity online.
Screenshot from Spotify with the number of plays (as of January 29, 2019)
In late 2018, Welsh rock band Alffa became the first group to release a song in the Welsh language that hit one million plays on the Spotify streaming platform with the song “Gwenwyn”. This achievement is especially noteworthy because the band wasn’t particularly well known outside of Wales, but thanks to Spotify’s reach, listeners from as far away as Brazil and Mexico discovered a song in a language spoken by approximately 700,000 people. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, a columnist with the Guardian newspaper who herself is Welsh, dug deeper to inquire why a Welsh language song became so popular. She spoke with Alun Llwyd of the music distributor PYST, who credited the Spotify platform's openness to music in all types of languages. “What’s beautiful is that Spotify judge the songs on musical merit, not the language or the band,” Llwyd said. “Nobody knew Alffa outside a small part of Wales. This is testament to the strength of the song.” Since that earlier story was published, the Welsh song has hit two million plays.
A new Cree language podcast started by Nick Wapachee, a journalism student from Nemaska, Québec, aims to help young people develop their Cree language-speaking abilities. He noticed a trend of young Cree people increasingly speaking English and wanted to help provide more digital content in Cree, so he started a podcast sharing the stories of Cree elders. The In Eeyou Istchee podcast “promotes Cree diversity, respect, and freedom of expression” and helps bring the Cree language to speakers and learners, wherever they are. The podcast can be found on iTunes and Soundcloud.
In 2013, the international broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) started transmitting in the Bambara language, one of the official languages of Mali, spoken by approximately 15 million people. VOA also has a Bambara-language website which recently attracted attention for employing a “Frenchified” version of this Manding language and not the official orthography developed and promoted by the government and partner institutions such as the African Academy of Languages.
Dr. Coleman Donaldson, a linguist, researcher, and teacher of Manding languages noticed the VOA's use of French orthography. Don Osborn, author of the book African Languages in a Digital Age, wondered whether the reason for this was a scarcity of keyboards to enable writing in the official Bambara orthography. Ultimately it might boil down to VOA's determining that only a small portion of their audience can read Bambara orthography, but Osborn also points out that this is probably an untested assumption. The Cercle Linguistique Bamakois has initiated a petition calling on VOA to adopt the official orthography. The petition points out the effort and resources that went towards the development of the orthography, and that international broadcasters such as Radio France International have made an effort to use the official orthography on their websites.
KOBE Learn is an app designed to help young users learn common words and phrases in Ojibway, Cree and Oji-Cree, the traditional languages of First Nations communities in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The app is collaboration between the local Board of Education, language teachers, elders and community members. The Board was seeking a modern teaching tool that could help to carry indigenous languages into the future.
“Many of our elders are passing away, each day, and it's really important to keep what we have now,” said Sarah Johnson, the Board's native language lead. “A lot of our children entering school are not speaking their first language. So this is one small way of retaining, keeping the language.”
For many of us, the mobile phone has become an extension of the self – always present, and mediating much of our interaction with the rest of the world. Speakers of major world languages are used to having apps and games available in their language, but speakers of minority languages like Cymraeg (Welsh) seldom enjoy this luxury. In a new study, Daniel Cunliffe, a professor at the University of South Wales, examines the more than 400 Welsh apps in the Apple App Store. The research attempted to identify every Welsh language app, as well as to better understand the motivations and perspectives of their developers. Cunliffe found that Welsh app developers face multiple challenges in reaching users, especially with regard to the discoverability of their apps. The study, which concludes with recommendations for developers, language promotion NGOs, and others, will be of interest to any language community that seeking to engage users via their mobile devices.

author: Rising Voices


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Dota 2 stormed Kyrgyzstan’s state opera house and left a trail of destruction in its wake · Global Voices
Elita Bakirova

Mash up image of Kyrgyzstan's Opera Ballet Theatre in Bishkek, 2013 vs 1956. Image taken from Kloop.kg.
Was the state opera house director using his head or selling the country's soul when he allowed computer game-playing millennials to invade Kyrgyzstan's most famous cultural venue for a day?
Kyrgyz authorities took the second of the two positions on January 31 when they fired Bolot Osmonov after traditionalists expressed anger at his decision to host a national Dota 2 tournament in the capital Bishkek's Opera and Ballet Theatre.
Dota 2 — a violent multiplayer online battle arena game that is among the most popular in its genre worldwide — is a far cry from what normally goes on here.
On January 19, young Kyrgyz gamers gathered around the same stage where legendary ballerina Bubusara Beyshenalieva played the roles of Odette/Odile, Juliet and Aurora after making her bow at the Bolshoi in 1941.
They were there instead to mash buttons and compete over a prize pool worth 1,000,000 som (around $14,300 at current rates) put up by the event's sponsor — Russian mobile operator Beeline.
Not insignificantly, Beeline also paid the $300 per hour rent on the building that stands as an enduring symbol of the Soviet Union's cultural legacy in Central Asia.
Banner advertising the Dota 2 tournament in the central subway. Photo taken by Elita Bakirova.
For traditionalists, this was sacrilege.
Tair Beisheev, an opera soloist who performs at the Opera Ballet Theatre, was among the leading cultural figures that complained bitterly about the Dota tournament:
This is a place where great names, the sons and daughters of Kyrgyzstan performed, and now some terrible event, seemingly called ‘’Dota’’ is taking place here. Perhaps it’s me who has lost touch, or maybe it’s just some foolish generation that thinks this is acceptable. How did our government allow this?
Liberal opinion leader Bektour Iskender disagreed in a January 21 Facebook post:
Турнир по доте в театре оперы и балета — это может быть один из самых крутых способов развивать оперу и балет, хэллоу. Как будто 180 тысяч сомов на дороге валяются.
Hello?! A Dota tournament at the Opera and Ballet Theatre is one of the coolest ways of advertising opera and ballet. And its not as if you can just find 180,000 som (the total Beeline paid to rent out the building) lying on the ground.
By the tournament's end, Kyrgyz gaming collective NoLifer5 had pounded its way past other teams competing in the tournament to scoop half of the total prize pool.
Those winnings paled in comparison to the Dota 2 International (TI) pool, where where over $25 million was at stake for the teams competing in the 2018 edition in Vancouver.
Bishkek-born gaming star Evgeny Ri, who represented NoLifer5 at the January 19 event but plays for Ukrainian team Natus Vincere (Na’Vi) in more serious tournaments, earns thousands of dollars per month.
Ballet dancers in Kyrgyzstan's state troupe, meanwhile, are almost working for free.
Evgeny Ri, (in the left) known as Blizzy at the MegaFon Winter Clash tournament in Moscow. Photo taken by Erlan Bakirov
Despite financial constraints, the Opera and Ballet Theatre still puts on quality performances and retains a large and loyal — if somewhat ageing — following.
Public anger over mismanagement of this venue and others like it is growing, however.
In 2015, a previous director of the theatre, Timur Sultanov, was fired amid uproar after he held a birthday banquet on the hallowed stage for a city councillor.
Perhaps sensing a scandal of similar proportions was brewing, newly appointed Minister of Culture Azamat Zhamankulov moved quickly to distance himself from the Dota 2 furore.
“Cultural institutions are for cultural events only,” he said on January 21, claiming the theatre's management had failed to notify him of the plan to host the tournament ahead of time.
That claim is conceivable, but it seems unlikely that Zhamankulov had not noticed a series of billboards advertising the event around town.
At any rate, the damage was done.
Less than two weeks after the event, the Kyrgyzstan's Prime Minister Mukhametkhali Abylgaziyev signed off on Osmonov's dismissal.

author: Elita Bakirova


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Netizen Report: How Venezuela’s political crisis is playing out online · Global Voices
Netizen Report Team

An officer of the Venezuela's Bolivarian National Police watches protesters in Maracaibo, 2014. Photo by Maria Alejandra Mora (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Advox Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in technology and human rights around the world. This report covers news and events from January 18-31.
Amid mass public demonstrations and clashes between civilians and military forces in Venezuela, residents have been intermittently unable to access the internet and major social media platforms.
Public unrest has surged since January 23, when National Assembly president Juan Guaidó swore himself in as acting president of the Republic, charging that the incumbent government of Nicolas Maduro no longer has the legitimacy to stay in power. Guaidó invoked a constitutional statute that could (depending on interpretation) put him first in line to assume the Presidency of the Republic until free and fair elections could be held. As of this writing, Maduro has retained power with the support of the military, though many international leaders have expressed support for Guaidó.
Maduro was sworn in for a second six-year term on January 10, 2019, following an internationally condemned snap election in which opposition parties were barred from running.
In tandem with public demonstrations, major websites and services including Wikipedia, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter have been blocked intermittently on Venezuela’s dominant state-owned internet provider, CANTV, since January 12. At the same time, public officials and people on both sides of the conflict have been using internet platforms to establish and broadcast their positions.
On January 12, Wikipedia was temporarily blocked after volunteer editors descended into an “editing war” in which some had moved to change Guaidó’s article and officially label him as the country’s president.
Multiple military officers based outside the country have released videos on YouTube in which they condemn the Maduro government. While these messages are absent from Venezuelan television, they have made the rounds on regional networks. On Twitter, major international voices, ranging from Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, to US Vice President Mike Pence, have posted endorsements of Guaidó.
At Caracas Chronicles, popular political analyst Francisco Toro wrote:
Venezuela has lived through so many calamities in the last few years, we always tend to fall into the trap of thinking it can’t get any worse. It can get much, much worse. A civil war would obviously invite international intervention, on both sides. A Caribbean Syria, layered on top of a pre-existing food crisis, could make 2018 look like the good-old-days in retrospect.
[…]
The immediate future is enormously murky, and the uncertainty, understandably, drives everybody a little bit crazy. We all rebel against the simple, obvious truth: nobody knows what comes next.
During the six-day internet blackout in Zimbabwe, which came along with a wave of public protests against fuel hikes, human rights lawyers scrambled to challenge the shutdown in court.
The High Court ruled on January 21 that State Security Minister Owen Ncube’s decision to shut down the internet was unlawful. Judge Owen Tagu told the court that the minister had no authority to make the directive and ordered telecommunications firms “to unconditionally resume the provision of full and unrestricted services to all subscribers forthwith.” At the same time, media and internet rights groups in Africa and around the world issued a joint letter condemning the shutdown.
Against all odds, journalists in Sudan are working to cover the widespread protests against President Omar al-Bashir, who many Sudanese are pushing to step down before elections in 2020. Alongside sporadic censorship of major social media platforms, security forces in Sudan are preventing independent media outlets from printing their newspapers by physically barring workers from entering print houses. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 800 people have been arrested in the protests, among them several journalists.
A court in central Hubei province, China, found human rights advocate and website founder Liu Feiyue guilty of “inciting state subversion” on January 29. Liu was the founder and manager of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a website that covered a range of civil and human rights issues, including protests, police abuses, and government corruption — sensitive topics that are scrubbed from most Chinese media sites.
Meanwhile in Guangzhou, the prominent Chinese-born Australian writer Yang Hengjun went missing while visiting the country with family. Authorities have since confirmed that he has been arrested and charged with endangering national security. Prior to his work as a writer and blogger, Yang served in China’s foreign ministry. Reporters Without Borders has called for his release.
Grindr, a dating app popular among LGBTQ people, became inaccessible in Lebanon on two major telecom providers, Alfa and Touch, on January 18. A representative from Touch confirmed to Beirut digital rights group SMEX that the block was imposed at the request of Lebanon’s Ministry of Telecommunications. In a statement opposing the block, SMEX wrote:
This sets a dangerous precedent for the authorities to police individual freedoms, threatening not only their free expression but also their access to information, while undermining legal procedures and due processes.
The group also noted that the move appears to have violated Article 125 of the recently implemented E-transactions and Data Protection Law, which requires court approval prior to imposing such forms of censorship.
Turkmenistan’s sole internet service provider, which is owned and operated by the government, blocked the Google Play store on January 17, in what appears to be an attempt to limit Turkmen people’s ability to download VPN software. VPN applications are hugely popular in the small central Asian country, as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Russian social media sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki are all censored by the government.
Following the block on Google Play, VPN providers reported a spike in searches for VPNs, increasing by as much as 577 percent. Some people attempting to use VPNs say that their internet service has been shut off altogether.
The administration of newly-elected Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro decreed a change in Brazil’s Law of Information Access, which enables individuals to access government documents through a request process. The change allows lower ranks of government officials to mark documents as secret and “ultrasecret”, meaning that they cannot be subject to such requests. Previously, only the president, vice-president, state ministers, Armed Forces commanders and heads of permanent diplomatic missions could apply this designation to documents. The new decree allows government officers with only temporary contracts to do the same.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to merge messaging applications across Facebook’s three largest social platforms — WhatsApp, Instagram, and its flagship site. There’s no information yet on how the company plans to do this, but the architecture of this change and its effect on people’s privacy and safety could be enormous.
Gathering initial reactions from the cryptography community, WIRED’s Lily Hay Newman writes that the change could “unlock an even richer and more nuanced user data trove for Facebook to mine, and potentially make it harder to use one or more of the services without tying those profiles to a central identity.”
Correction: The original version of this post stated that Juan Guaidó swore himself in on January 20. He did this on January 23, not January 20.
Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Hong Kong Free Press, Oiwan Lam, Leila Nachawati, Filip Noubel, Georgia Popplewell, Elizabeth Rivera, Taisa Sganzerla, Nevin Thompson and Laura Vidal contributed to this report.

author: Netizen Report Team


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Portugal grapples with its own racism after video of police brutality goes viral · Global Voices
Dércio Tsandzana

Lisbon's Praça do Comércio. Photo by Vanusia Lombardi, used with permission.
Portugal is witnessing a nationwide debate about racism and police brutality after law enforcement authorities violently attacked residents of Jamaica, a low-income neighborhood in the capital Lisbon inhabited predominantly by black and immigrant communities.
According to Deutsche Welle Portuguese, the police was called to the area in the morning of January 20 following a misunderstanding at a birthday party.
A video that later would go viral shows officers beating up people. Two women were left injured, reports Deutsche Welle.
For the next two days, around one hundred people staged a protest against police brutality and racism at Liberdade Avenue, a major thoroughfare in Lisbon. Four people were arrested on the second day following clashes with the police, reports RTP Portugal and SIC Television.
Many reactions were observed on social media, some in support of the immigrants and others who think the police's handling of the situation was appropriate.
On a widely-circulated video of the January 22 demonstration, a woman is heard praising the police and insulting ethnic minorities who live Portugal. At some point, she says: “The races that are different from us whites, us who are Portuguese, always end up disturbing our country.”
Commenting on the video, Edgar Barroso, who is from Mozambique, said:
Eu vivi em Portugal por 2 anos. Nunca havia testemunhado tanta barbaridade junta num video de uma duzia de minutos. Que vergonha!
I have lived in Portugal for 2 years. I had never witnessed such barbarity in a video of just a dozen minutes. What a shame!
Boa Monjane, a Mozambican who is a student in Portugal, says the police's conduct reveals the racism that is deeply entrenched :
Não é que tivesse muitas dúvidas. Mas os últimos episódios em Portugal fazem transparecer ainda mais o racismo que caracteriza esta sociedade. Devo começar a valorizar mais os amigos que penso que não são racistas.
Not that I had a lot of doubts. But the latest episodes in Portugal make the racism that characterizes this society really come out. I should start to value those of my friends who I believe aren't racist.
The Angolan embassy in Lisbon issued a statement saying it was monitoring the case.
Sílvio Nascimento, an Angolan actor and television presenter in Portugal, published a video on Instagram speaking out against racism.
With a different perspective, social media user Lazáro Mabunda, who's from Mozambique, questioned Jamaica's residents claim of discrimination:
Estou a acompanhar o que está a acontecer no Bairro de Jamaica, em Lisboa, em Portugal. Os manifestantes, população Preta, alega discriminação. Bem, eu tenho uma visão diferente, não em relação a discriminação, mas em relação a reivindicação. Se és discriminado numa terra que não te pertence deves tomar duas opções: 1) regressar à tua terra e 2) ignorar a discriminação e continuar a viver na terra deles. Muitos africanos fogem dos seus tiranos para o ocidente, onde as liberdades são respeitadas.
I am monitoring what is happening in Jamaica neighborhood, in Lisbon, Portugal. Protesters, and the Black population, claim discrimination. Well, I have a different view, not in relation to the discrimination, but in relation to the claim. If you are being discriminated in a country that does not belong to you, you have two options: 1) return to your country and 2) ignore the discrimination and continue to live in their country. Many Africans flee from their tyrants to the West, where freedoms are respected.
Rubbem, an activist and entrepreneur living in Luanda, says that many Angolans migrate to Portugal for the lack of opportunity in their home country:
O racismo nunca vai acabar, os português maior parte deles detestam pretos e Nunca foram bem aceites. Prova do que falo, são os empregos onde os mesmos se encontram. [Por isso] muitos preferem imigrar e ser olhados como cães, do que cá sofrer.
The racism will never end, the Portuguese people don't like black people, they were never well-accepted. A testament to what I'm saying is the kind of jobs that they do. [That's why] so many people prefer to immigrate and bel looked down as if they were dogs, than to suffer here.

author: Dércio Tsandzana


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Pressure mounts for Thailand to free Melbourne-based Bahraini refugee Hakeem al-Araibi · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

Hakeem al-Araibi detained in Thailand – Screenshot TRT World Youtube video.
Pressure has increased in recent days to release Bahraini refugee Hakeem al-Araibi from a Thai jail. The former national football player was arrested in Bangkok on 27 November 2018 after Australia’s Department of Home Affairs controversially alerted Thailand about an Interpol Red Notice for his arrest. Hakeem was visiting Thailand for his honeymoon.
Hakeem had fled from Bahrain in 2014. He was sentenced to ten years in his absence for alleged vandalism of a police station. He strongly rejects the accusation. He argues that he has been targeted for his criticism of Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, the president of the Asian Football Confederation and a member of the Bahraini royal family. He also claims that Bahraini authorities tortured him in 2012 following the Arab Spring protests.
After seeking asylum in Australia he was granted a permanent protection visa and is awaiting the result of a citizenship application. He now plays for Pascoe Vale Football Club in Melbourne. They have worked tirelessly for his freedom. This tweet is typical of their efforts:
Dear Mr. @prayutofficial we are waiting for you to SAVE our player just like the #Autralians saved the #Thailand team. Your picture paints a thousand words. Happiness and #HumanRights is the key to life…you have it we don’t. #SaveHakeem @prdthailand @MFAThai @hakparn pic.twitter.com/lSGK1rQ1yR
— Pascoe Vale FC (@pvfc_official) January 30, 2019
There have been a couple of very positive developments this week, which marks two months since his detention. The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed that he has written to his Thai counterpart seeking al-Araibi’s release and asking that his extradition not take place.
This followed many calls for the Australian government to take a bigger role in the case. A week earlier @popcoin tweeted:
PM of Australia Morrison rushes out to have a photograph with tennis player Ash Barty but I have not heard one word of support from him for HAKEEM, the soccer player innocent in jail in Thailand about to be handed over to his torturers in Bahrain. Australia caused it.
— popcoin (@popcoin3) January 22, 2019
Secondly, Craig Foster, former captain of the Australian Socceroos team, took the campaign to free Hakeem to the FIFA’s headquarters in Zurich and reported a promising response:
Delighted to appraise the @FIFPro Board of the latest regarding #SaveHakeem and to reiterate the absolute importance of the playing profession standing as one when a colleague is threatened. Many thanks for your support https://t.co/WnqmNew4Ev
— Craig Foster (@Craig_Foster) January 29, 2019
Former English national team champion and current sports broadcaster, Gary Lineker, has also taken up Hakeem’s plight.
Come on @FIFAcom sort this wrong out: https://t.co/Vx3LHfAeyD
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) January 28, 2019
Deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, Phil Roberston, noted that one local Thai club had joined the campaign:
Many thanks to Chiang Rai United FC for strongly supporting #SaveHakeem! More #Thailand professional football clubs should make their voices heard, demand that @prayutofficial @MFAThai @prdthailand release #Hakeem immediately, let him go home to #Australia https://t.co/mwoeUtMY5Y pic.twitter.com/WjzpkZtlg4
— Phil Robertson (@Reaproy) January 27, 2019
This was not without irony as Australians played a major role in the rescue of the 12 schoolboy soccer players and their coach from a cave near Chang Rai. In fact, two were named joint Australians of the Year 2019.
Another Twitter user, @Tibby, summed up a common sentiment down under:
Australia just gave our highest award to 2 divers for risking their lives to rescue 12 Thai boys from underground caves. We know where Hakeem is. He just needs a one way plane ticket. Thailand, let our boy come home. You up for the task @ScottMorrisonMP? #SaveHakeem
— Tibby (@anewneighbour) January 25, 2019
Human Rights Watch has produced a campaign video for its social media sites:
There has been considerable activity on social media especially the #Save Hakeem and #FreeHakeem hashtags. There is also an Amnesty International Australia petition.
Sarah Joseph, Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, explained the intricacies of the human rights situation at The Conversation:
…he was detained under an Interpol red notice issued pursuant to a request from Bahrain. This notice breached Interpol’s own rules as it was issued against a refugee at the request of the country he had fled.
…If he is sent back to Bahrain, Thailand will refouler a refugee – that is, return him to the state from which he fled persecution, a grave breach of human rights. There are legitimate fears that he faces torture upon return to Bahrain.
Things are likely to come to a head soon as Bahrain has finally issued a formal request for Hakeem’s extradition.
Unfortunately, the Australian Prime Minister has not yet received a response from the Thai PM Prayut Chan-o-cha, with some commentators suggesting that he has been snubbed.

author: Kevin Rennie


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This Twitter account celebrates women in Japan, one short profile a day · Global Voices
Nevin Thompson

Photo of an actress posing as Nakano Takeko, a famous female warrior and military leader who fought and died during the final years of the Shogunate in Japan. Image from Wikipedia, public domain.
Celebrating Women in Japan is a project that publishes short profiles of prominent women in Japan on Facebook and Twitter once a day, every day.
One recent woman profiled was influential manga creator Rumiko Takahashi.
Yesterday, Rumiko Takahashi was awarded the Grand Prix at the prestigious Angouleme International Comics Festival for her contribution to the development of manga. Congratulations. Her work was described as ‘extremely progressive’. ????㊗ #Japan #CelebratingWomeninJapan pic.twitter.com/YkowwZqKCB
— CelebratingWomeninJapan (@womenofjapan) January 25, 2019
The project is spearheaded by Melanie Brock, an international business consultant in Japan and was inspired by a similar campaign conducted by Kirstin Ferguson in 2017. Ferguson, from Australia, wanted to counter online abuse regularly directed at women by using the hashtag #celebratingwomen as a “way to see more celebration and less denigration of women.”
Often the women profiled by Celebrating Women in Japan have advice for other women trying to succeed in their careers or life in general. Keiko Kojima, a Japanese scholar, television personality and essayist, was first interviewed by Celebrating Women in Japan in 2018. Her advice?
#Advice for younger generation: Look after friends who you can have constructive debate with. Think carefully about the type of world you want to live in. Strive hard to build it – and smile as you go. Do all you can to support yourself as you seek to create that place. ?? pic.twitter.com/c2z69bKBvR
— CelebratingWomeninJapan (@womenofjapan) April 2, 2018
Not all of the women profiled by Celebrating Women in Japan are originally from Japan itself. Based in the regional city of Hiroshima in western Japan, Rachel Nicholson is a successful translator, entrepreneur, and media personality:
In 2006, Rachel Nicholson came to Hiroshima as a translator before pursuing her passion for baking and co-opening a small diner. In 2017, she returned to her writing roots and today she spends her days as a bilingual writer, translator, TV talent, and full-time food snob. ???? pic.twitter.com/PU3MR6c4wq
— CelebratingWomeninJapan (@womenofjapan) January 26, 2019
The common theme of the daily profiles is that the celebrated women come from all walks of life, and all have experienced unique challenges and successes.
Today we celebrate Azusa Shiota. Azusa has recently become Japan’s first female member of the Japan Police Agency front line disaster and rescue team. ????#womenofjapan #rolemodel #CelebratingWomeninJapan pic.twitter.com/XCUHmbBDX5
— CelebratingWomeninJapan (@womenofjapan) January 29, 2019

author: Nevin Thompson


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With tensions rising ahead of 2019 presidential elections, Nigerians fear internet shutdown · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Fear has spread across Nigeria that the government may switch off the internet during the presidential elections in February 2019. What started as mere speculation has morphed into intense worry as election day approaches. Yomi Kamez of Quartz Africa explains:
Fears of an internet shutdown in Nigeria looms as tensions continue to rise ahead of 2019 presidential elections. ON / OFF Elevator switch. Photo by Andrew Huff. [Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 2.0)/ Flickr, January 20, 2007]
You can tell fears of an internet shutdown are running high in a country when citizens are looking into methods of staying online in case of a blockage. This past weekend, Quartz Africa’s guide to staying online during internet or social media blockages was our most read story, driven entirely by traffic from Nigeria. Scores of people shared concerns on social media at the possibility Nigeria might follow other African countries [like Sudan, Zimbabwe] that have taken to blocking social media or shut down the internet altogether under the guise of security concerns.
Recent events related to social media, hate speech, an unjust judiciary firing and replacement, and the breaking down of trust in the media have all contributed to the growing collective concern.
On January 25, 2019, Nigerians were shocked by President Muhammadu Buhari’s unilateral suspension of the Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Walter Onnoghen, and the immediate appointment and swearing in of Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, as the acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).
Onnoghen had been charged with financial negligence and fraud. However, many critics say these charges were a ploy to gag the judiciary ahead of the elections and intimidate other arms of government.
The suspension of Onnoghen contradicts the provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for the removal of judicial officers. The Third Schedule, Part 1 of the 1999 Constitution states that only the National Judicial Council (NJC) has the power to recommend removals from office. Part IV of the Constitution further reiterates this law.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari did not apply these principles. He usurped the powers of the NJC which is constitutionally mandated to recommend such removals from the judiciary or Senate (upper house of parliament) which must then ratify such decisions. The president's action was both tyrannical and lawless.
An editorial in Punch newspaper described Buhari's action as dictatorial and capable of precipitating a constitutional crisis:
Buhari’s action is vile, perfidious and indefensible. It is an action only fit for jackboot regimes, where the constitution could easily be suspended … Needless to say, the president’s singular and misguided action has the tendency to plunge the country into an unnecessary constitutional crisis and, perhaps, derail 20 unbroken years of democratic governance. This is not unlike other despotic and undemocratic acts that the government has been associated with  in the past, even if it might be considered more audacious, far-reaching and probably unexpected.
The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom also condemned the attack on the judiciary. On Twitter, netizens echoed the message.
The message to @MBuhari is simple #EndTyranny and obey the rule of law. Reverse the #OnnoghenSuspension pic.twitter.com/BCPMzarZ6L
— #BetterNigeria (@wildeyeq) January 27, 2019
“If the president shows himself to be lawless, he is inviting everyone to be lawless” @andyRoidO on #RubbinMinds pic.twitter.com/mr47Uai4ex
— Alexander ‘nochie Onukwue (@nochieonukwue) January 27, 2019
Another sign of a possible internet shut down is the government’s tendency to control free speech online on the basis of concerns for national security. Recently, the government directed security agencies to “tackle the propagation of hate speech, especially through social media.” This, according to reports by the Cable, will be achieved by monitoring social media accounts of “prominent Nigerians.”
In July last year, Nigerian Minister of Information Lai Mohammed described the growing level of fake news and hate speech in the country as a threat to national security. A year earlier, Nasir El-Rufai, governor of Kaduna State, described fake news and hate speech as the “biggest threat” to national security.
However, it is ironic that both Lai and El-Rufai are now concerned about fake news and hate speech as a national security threat. As opposition politicians, they both made unsubstantiated accusations to the former government.
For instance, Nassir El-Rufai, current governor of Kaduna State alleged in 2014 — without evidence — that he was “number 7 on [President Jonathan Goodluck’s] sniper’s list”.
On this note, I am going to bed. I am #7 on the GEJ snipers’ list, so I will only worry when GMB, Asiwaju, Amaechi, Akande, etc are killed!
— Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai (@elrufai) January 2, 2014
El-Rufai also claimed that Goodluck, then president, was a sponsor of the Boko Haram militant group. Similar claims were made by Lai Mohammed, who was then the National Publicity Secretary of APC.
As opposition politicians, these officials have in fact been proven to be purveyors of fake news and hate speech, using social media to devastating effects. But their actions were never considered a threat to national security; they were neither arrested nor was the internet shut down for this reason.
Movements like the 2012 #OccupyNigeria and the 2014 #BringBackOurGirls gained global acclaim due to social media usage in Nigeria.
In 2015, social media played an important role in Nigeria's elections when Twitter became a bitter and divisive battleground during campaign season and was used to propagate hate speech and disinformation.
This year, it has already played a major role as the medium of choice for political participation by Nigeria’s energetic youth population. Netizens have used social media to call attention to despotic government actions like the sacking of the CJN, that otherwise would have gone unnoticed by the general public.
Nigerians took to social media to note their displeasure, mount pressure on the government to rescind its action and mobilize protests:
Fellow Nigerians, the Vice President is scheduled to appear on Rubbin Minds, on Channels TV, in 1 hour.
We are protesting peacefully in front of Channels TV studio.
Lagosians, join us.
Let's tell the SAN to tell the President that we won't stomach his illegal suspension of CJN
— Chief orwelliANDYstopia (@andyRoidO) January 27, 2019
Whether or not the internet holds steady during elections, there is strong reason to believe that political speech online and on the street will be a target of government scrutiny.

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike