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In the face of nation-wide violent deaths, Nigerians seek a better deal · Global Voices
Eta Uso

A banner calling for a march to Aso Villa, the workplace and official residence of the Nigerian President, located in the capital city of Abuja, to protest the continuous killings in Nigeria, June 2018.
On June 23, 2018, armed gunmen attacked 11 villages and killed more than 200 people near Jos, the capital city of central Nigeria's Plateau State, without any intervention from security forces, in one of the bloodiest retaliatory pastoral conflicts yet.
Following the June 23 attacks, Nigerians are saying enough is enough and have taken to social media to protest a nation-wide uptick in brutal killings using hashtags such as #MakeNigeriaSafeAgain and #StoptheKillings. Others have taken to the street, though in trickles.
As Africa's most populous nation, with 87 million of its residents living in poverty, the Boko Haram insurgency, communal clashes, banditry and other forms of conflict are also to blame for the soaring number of violent deaths in the country. Since January 2018 at least 1,813 people have been murdered across 17 states — double the 894 people killed in 2017 in Nigeria.
Gimba Kakanda, a writer and media influencer, took to the street along with fellow Nigerians to air his displeasure and had this to say:
Here to ask our politicians for a better deal! #MakeNigeriaSafeAgain pic.twitter.com/YckqrcOs3F
— Gimba Kakanda (@gimbakakanda) June 30, 2018
Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, former Minister of Education and vice president of the World Bank also took to the street:
I MARCHED as far as I could to the Villa to protest the INEFFECTUAL WAYS of .@NGRPresident @MBuhari on the #TerroristsHerdsmenKillings.
Their Police, Military & SSS trampled on my rights- seized my banner. #StopTheKillings. #EndTheBloodFlow!#PlateauMassacre . pic.twitter.com/fljTDIt42q
— Oby Ezekwesili (@obyezeks) June 26, 2018
Through his Twitter account Africa Fact Zone, award-winning publicist and influencer Isima Odeh said in a threaded tweet:
#PrayForNigeria
3 dead in last week's Ojuelegba truck accident
Over 130 people dead in Plateau crisis
4 dead in Igbeagu, Ebonyi & Ukelle, Cross River clash
Today, 30+ vehicles with people burnt, as tanker catches fire on Otedola Bridge
Butchers & cops clash in Bodija, Oyo. pic.twitter.com/MRSDpKBkMg
— Africa Facts Zone (@AfricaFactsZone) June 28, 2018
Civil society groups also joined in:
We are saddened by the events in Plateau state that have left hundreds dead, orphaned and widowed.
In these trying times, we should unite as a people and not fight among one another. Our hearts go out to all the victims of these attacks.
We are with you, we care#PrayForPlateau pic.twitter.com/iWuhfnyjRp
— Our Moment Group (@OMG_NIG) June 25, 2018
Even former vice president Atiku Abubakar was stern in his condemnation of the government's inability to protect its citizens:
Mindless killings in our country, we cannot be in continuous mode of bloodletting & mourning. Government needs to be alive to its primary responsibility of protection of lives and property. My heart goes to the victims of Barkin Ladi LGA of Plateau State https://t.co/x3f0UcHC2F
— Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) June 24, 2018
In a press statement, Amnesty International Nigeria joined the online commotion:
The authorities have a responsibility to protect lives and properties, but they are clearly not doing enough going by what is happening. The latest incidence in Plateau state, where armed gunmen attacked 11 villages on 23 June for at least seven hours and killed at least 200 villagers without intervention from security forces should be investigated.
On Twitter, the NGO has also shared a map of the killings:
Nigeria: Mapping the killings across Nigeria from January to June 27: #Nigeria#Borno#Benue#PlateauKillings#Zamfara#BirninGwari#Tarabapic.twitter.com/X8aw7J76TZ
— Amnesty Int. Nigeria (@AmnestyNigeria) June 28, 2018
Following massive condemnation over the June 23 attack, President Muhammadu Buhari paid a condolence visit to Jos. In his speech to distressed citizens, Buhari praised his government over the handling of insecurities in the country, but urged citizens to pray for divine intervention:
Nobody can say that we haven’t done well in terms of security, we have done our best, but the way this situation is now, we can only pray.
The president's remarks only added fuel to the fire, as the country's citizens are not having any of that.
Pres Buhari @MBuhari went to Jos to tell the people who had just buried hundreds of their loved ones that were massacred that there is nothing he can do they should pray to God, yet he has lots of security protecting him. Why didn't he send his security to Jos & pray to God?
— Aisha Yesufu (@AishaYesufu) June 30, 2018
With rising frustration in the country, the demand for good governance and protection of lives and properties continues to rise among Nigerians. Only time will tell if things will improve.

author: Eta Uso


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The ‘future belongs’ to Afghanistan’s spinning cricket star Rashid Khan · Global Voices
Ezzatullah Mehrdad

Rashid Khan. Image posed on his official Facebook account.
A young Afghan cricketer has won unprecedented recognition after being selected by the sports network ESPN for its All-Time T20 International Cricket XI, a kind of hall of fame for the best performers in an exciting, fast-paced version of the sport.
The cricketer is Rashid Khan, and his remarkable rise has helped a war-torn country rub shoulders with the superpowers of the cricket world, inspiring millions of Afghans in the process.
Delighted to be selected as The All-Time T20I XI of the last 25 years cricket and to be among top cricket players around the world. Thank you Jury and @ESPNcricinfo ???? pic.twitter.com/k2GDwfu4SJ
— Rashid Khan (@rashidkhan_19) June 23, 2018
Rashid Khan Arman, was born on September 20, 1998 and raised in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. After that his journey mirrored that of so many of his compatriots, through poverty, war and a brief spell living in Pakistan to escape the violence.
Rashid Khan in action. Image posted to his official Facebook account.
It was in Afghanistan, however, that he began honing his skills as a bowler — the person whose aim it is to get the batsman ‘out’ in cricket — by watching some of the greatest practitioners of the day on television and learning from them.
Two of his early idols were Indian bowler Anil Kumble and Pakistani all-rounder Shahid Afridi.
Rashid Khan “Nobody taught me leg-spin and wrong ones. I just observed Shahid Afridi and Anil Kumble” #Cricket
— Saj Sadiq (@Saj_PakPassion) June 11, 2018
It is fitting then, that Khan now joins his erstwhile hero Shahid Afridi — 19 years his senior and now retired — on ESPN's all-time list.
Afghanistan became a fully-fledged member of the International Cricket Council in 2017, taking the ICC's total membership to 12 countries. Cricket is also played at various levels in 92 other countries (associate members).
In recent years Afghanistan has been crawling up the global cricket rankings, and has particularly shone in T20, a three-hour version of the game wherein each team faces 120 balls that was only invented in 2003.
As in other, longer-form versions of the game, the team that is batting aims to score as many “runs” as possible. When a team is bowling, it looks to take “wickets” to dismiss the batsmen of the batting team and keep the batting team's score down.
Rashid Khan in action. Image posted on his official social media account.
Most recently, in June, Afghanistan lost to India in the country's first-ever competitive “test match”, a slower more traditional version of the sport than T20 that takes place over days rather than hours.
But weeks before that Afghanistan beat Bangladesh for the first time in T20. Rashid Khan, one prominent Bangladeshi newspaper said, was “the star of the show.”
Similarly, in a game against Ireland in 2017, he stole all the headlines, setting a T20 International record for the fastest-ever five-wicket haul.
The Future Belongs To Those Who Give The Next Generation Reason For Hope. @rashidkhan_19 pic.twitter.com/3v3tpvWIcu
— Diva Patang (@DivaPatang) June 11, 2018
Rashid Khan made his international cricket debut for Afghanistan during a tour of Zimbabwe in October 2015 after he had just turned 17. Less than three years later he became the youngest player to captain an international team.
Perhaps the greatest accolade he has received in his short career so far has come from Sachin Tendulkar, a retired Indian cricketer often viewed as the greatest batsman of all time.
Khan, said Tendulkar in May, “is the best spinner in the world” in T20 International cricket, a reference to the spinning technique employed by Khan and other bowlers of his style.
Honestly … @rashidkhan_19 is something special ??
— Alexis Nunes (@alexisenunes) June 6, 2018
Having come from poverty, Rashid Khan no longer has any financial problems. In 2017, aged 18, he signed a contract with with the Sunrisers Hyderabad team to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the richest in the world.
There, in a cricket-crazy country, he is regarded as something of a phenomenon, regularly winning man-of-the-match awards.
.@rashidkhan_19 continues to win Indian fans hearts. pic.twitter.com/DBf6ug90IM
— CricTracker (@Cricketracker) June 4, 2018
But, Afghanistan remains possessive over its star wicket-taker, as demonstrated by a diplomatic tweet from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that was addressed to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year.
Afghans take absolute pride in our hero, Rashid Khan. I am also thankful to our Indian friends for giving our players a platform to show their skills. Rashid reminds us whats best about Afg. He remains an asset to the cricketing world. No we are not giving him away. @narendramodi
— Ashraf Ghani (@ashrafghani) May 25, 2018
In other words, Khan is a national treasure.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Ezzatullah Mehrdad


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Cambodia’s government claims upcoming election will be free, fair and plural—but civil society says otherwise · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Screenshot of YouTube video
Liberal, pluralistic, democratic, peaceful, free, fair, and non-violent.
These were the words used by a Cambodian state-affiliated press office to describe how the government will conduct the general election scheduled to take place on July 29, 2018. Campaigning starts on July 7.
A video produced by the Press and Quick Reaction Unit of the Office of the Council of Ministers even boasted that the upcoming election “could be considered one of the best Election (sic) in Cambodia’s history.”
The video was likely intended to address the criticism from local and global civil society groups with respect to the deteriorating state of democracy in Cambodia. The Cambodian People's Party has been in power for 33 years under the leadership of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is considered to be Southeast Asia’s longest-serving head of state.
The video suggests that, contrary to what critics have been saying in international forums, the election is open to all candidates. It even includes a speech by Hun Sen directing officials to assist all registered political parties during the campaign period.
Prime Minister Hun Sen delivering a speech. Screenshot of YouTube video
But the key word there is “registered.” Indeed, it is true that registered parties are free to participate in the elections.
But the country’s main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was dissolved by the Supreme Court in November 2017, after Hun Sen accused it of conspiring with foreign countries to topple his government.
CNRP’s top leaders have either fled the country or are currently detained, and its members of parliament were removed from their posts and banned from running for public office for five years.
The video even makes a claim that Cambodia offers a lesson to other countries on how to promote pluralism, pointing to the fact that in 2013, there were only eight parties competing in the general election. The government today has registered 20 political parties.
Cambodia as model of pluralism? Screenshot of YouTube video
The video also highlights the presence of international observers who can visit polling places without any restrictions. The government said 50,000 observers were invited and 300 journalists from 35 institutions were accredited for this year’s election.
The video claims that unlike in other countries, Cambodia places no restrictions to international election observers. Screenshot of YouTube video
But the video fails to mention that in May 2018, the government issued a code of conduct for election observers which media groups said would restrict the work of journalists. The code of conduct prohibits journalists from expressing “personal opinion or prejudice” or conducting unauthorized interviews at polling booths.
The code also criminalizes the broadcasting of news that could cause “confusion and loss of confidence” in the election.
In response to the rule, the International Federation of Journalists said, “These latest guidelines have robbed Cambodians of any chance of vital information to make informed political decisions.”
In another part of the video, the election is touted as a peaceful event “free from rhetoric quarrel.”
Screenshot of YouTube video
The video does not mention the inter-ministerial prakas (regulation) issued on May 28, 2018, that expanded web and social media control in the country. The new directive mandates several government agencies to block websites with content considered as “incitement, breaking solidarity, discrimination and willfully creating turmoil leading to undermining national security, public interest and social order.”
More than 116 civil society groups based in Cambodia signed a statement criticizing the prakas, arguing that it “threatens the privacy rights and freedom of expression of every single internet and social media user in Cambodia and further diminishes the limited space left for public debate following months of attacks on media freedoms.” The statement further reads:
The order can be used to stifle all forms of public discussion in Cambodia. Virtually any opinion which authorities consider unacceptable could fall under its vague, sweeping criteria such as “breaking solidarity” or “undermining social order”.
Aside from attacking the opposition, the Hun Sen government was also accused of undermining free speech after it ordered the filing of tax evasion charges against local radio stations and newspapers which have been mostly critical of the ruling party.
These charges triggered the demise of the country's only two independent newspapers — The Phnom Pehn Post and The Cambodia Daily. After receiving crippling tax bills, the Daily ceased its operations in September 2017, while the Post's owner sold the newspaper to a public relations company that has worked on behalf of the government.
Curiously, the video also stresses that “voter turnout (is) not a factor in determining (the) democratization process.” It even cites the low voting participation rate in countries such as the United States and France. These elements may have been included in light of the fact that the CNRP is urging its supporters and the public to boycott the elections.
Speaking before the United Nations at the end of June 2018, the International Commission of Jurists summarized the criticism of human rights groups about the decline of democracy in Cambodia:
Authorities continue to abuse the legal system to repress civil society, independent media, the political opposition, and increasingly, ordinary individuals.
The Government has threatened prosecution of any person calling for a boycott of the highly compromised elections. It has established a working group to monitor and control all information on websites and social media. Ordinary people are being arrested, charged and detained under a new lèse-majesté law.
Below is the full video of the Press and Quick Reaction Unit of the Office of the Council of Ministers:

author: Mong Palatino


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Lebanese journalist sentenced to prison in absentia, for ‘defaming’ foreign minister on Facebook · Global Voices
Hassan Chamoun

Picture of Fidaa Itani taken from his Facebook profile. Photo credit: Wassim Naboulsi
A Lebanese journalist was convicted in absentia of defaming acting Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Gebran Bassil in a Facebook post.
A court in the western Lebanese city of Baabda sentenced Fidaa Itani to four months in prison and a fine of 10 million Lebanese lira (roughly USD $6660) on June 29, 2018.
Fidaa Itani is a journalist who focuses on Syria and the refugee crisis.
The Facebook post in question leveraged a complex critique of political and military actions by various powerful actors in Lebanon. Itani decried raids carried out by the Lebanese army in Arsal last year, which resulted in the death of Syrian citizens in detention. He also criticized the continuous nationalist push for the forced removal of refugees on Lebanese territories.
Itani went on to express concern about the Lebanese political party and militant group Hezbollah. Itani has publicly opposed Hezbollah's military intervention in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime.
Shortly thereafter, lawyers for the army and the presidency filed a lawsuit against Itani. On top of this, he began receiving direct threats from people associated with Hezbollah. In short order, he fled the country and sought exile in the UK.
In an interview with the francophone Lebanese newspaper L'Orient le Jour, Itani explained that the original suit, filed by lawyers claiming to represent the Lebanese president and the army, seems to have vanished and now been replaced by the case brought by Gebran Bassil.
Je ne sais pas comment la première action judiciaire a disparu, ni ce qui a été concocté dans ce cadre entre les services de renseignements de l’armée et le président de la République, ou encore le Hezbollah (également visé par le post, et dont les intimidations contre M. Itani sont derrière son départ pour Londres, NDLR). Il semble toutefois que Gebran Bassil se soit porté volontaire pour intenter une action à leur place.
I don't know how the first legal action disappeared, nor what was cooked with the case between services of the military intelligence and the president of the republic, or even Hezbollah. Although it seems that Gebran Bassil volunteered to institute an action in their stead.
Itani also said that he had not received official confirmation of the sentence, and only heard the news from media reports. He also told Maharat Foundation, a free speech NGO, that acting Minister Bassil has filed a total of nine cases against him, including this one.
Reacting on both Facebook and Twitter, Fidaa Itani was unsurprisingly critical of the judge's decision. Sharing an article citing his prison sentence, he commented: “More repression and more robberies.”
The sentence of Itani was reported, criticized and denounced by some Lebanese and international organizations.
In an email sent to reporters, Bassam Khawaja, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, said:
Sentencing a journalist to four months in prison for a critical Facebook post is an outrageous attack on free speech that lays bare the lack of meaningful protections for freedom of expression in Lebanon. Lebanon’s new parliament should act quickly to abolish laws that criminalize defamation, which are disproportionate, unnecessary, and violate international human rights law.
Indeed, Lebanon's penal code criminalizes defamation and makes special provisions against insulting the president, the flag, and other public officials. The country's military code criminalizes “insulting the flag or army”. These offenses all are punishable with fines and prison time, and offer no special exception for journalistic work.
According to Freedom House 2016 Report on Lebanon:
Lebanese journalists complain that media laws are chaotic, contradictory, and ambiguously worded. Provisions concerning the media, which justify the prosecution of journalists, can be found in the penal code, the Publications Law, the 1994 Audiovisual Media Law, and the military justice code.
In Lebanon's legal landscape, court cases against journalists are not a new phenomenon, but such incidents have multiplied in recent months, with a smattering of charges against journalists, TV show hosts, and commentators.
On January 24, 2018, TV comedy show host Hisham Haddad was prosecuted for making jokes at the expense of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Saudi crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman.
In March 2018, the owner of the website Lebanon Debate was sentenced to six months in prison and was ordered to pay 10 million Lebanese Lira, after being found guilty of libel in a case brought by the Director General of Customs.
In November 2017, prominent Lebanese TV host Marcel Ghanem was prosecuted for obstruction of justice after he resisted charges brought against two of his guests, both Saudi journalists, who denounced Lebanese President Aoun and Minister Bassil of being “Hezbollah's partner in terrorism.” The case against Ghanem was dropped.
In another article written by L'Orient Le Jour, Marcel Ghanem was reported saying that the arrests of journalists and their convictions was the result of “muzzling practiced by the ruling powers under the cover of the struggle against terrorism or Israel”.
But public prosecutors are not the only legal entities bringing charges of defamation and libel against media workers. On January 10, 2018, the Lebanon's notoriously harsh military court sentenced in absentia Lebanese journalist and researcher Hanin Ghaddar for defaming the Lebanese army at a conference held in the USA in 2014. Her sentence was later overturned.
Ten days later, military intelligence summoned human rights defender Ovada Yousef over Facebook posts. Yousef told Human Rights Watch that he was detained by the military and police for four days.
Maharat Foundation, a media and free speech NGO, has called for Lebanese judicial authorities to take into account the right of criticism against public persons:
تطالب “مهارات” المجلس النيابي الجديد بالتسريع لإقرار الاصلاحات التي تقدمت به مهارات مع النائب غسان مخيبر وأبرزها الغاء عقوبة الحبس ومنع التوقيف الاحتياطي عن كل من يعبر عن رأيه بأي وسيلة ضمنها الانترنت وتوسيع مفهوم نقد الشخص العام.
Maharat also calls on the new parliament to speed up the reforms it has introduced with the MP Ghassan Mukhaiber, notably the abolition of the prison sentence and the preventive detention of anyone expressing his opinion by any means, including the Internet, and broadening the concept of public criticism.
Time will tell if their initiative amounts to real change in the country's free speech environment.

author: Hassan Chamoun


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A mother in the minefields: Women work to make disputed Nagorno Karabakh a safer place · Global Voices
Chaikhana.media

The following is a version of a partner post by Global Voices’ partner Chai-Khana.org. Text and photos by Knar Babayan.
From a distance, the three sappers all look the same – high boots, trousers with deep pockets, a special helmet, protective visor and gloves. Many locals in Nagorno Karabakh, a relatively traditional society, assume they are men. But these are women, and, like men, when they head into potential minefields, they are doing so to help their families survive.
“I’m doing it for my family, to provide my children with a safe and better future,” explains 38-year-old sapper Kristine Khachatryan, the married mother of three boys, ages six to 18.
When Khachatryan comes home on the weekends, her six-year-old son Nairi follows her every step.
For years after its conflict with Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s, Nagorno Karabakh routinely posted 20 or more annual civilian casualties from landmines and unexploded ordnance.
The Halo Trust, a British mine-clearing organization which has operated here for the last 18 years, now declares Karabakh is 90-percent mine-free, but the potential threat remains. Just this March, a mine explosion in the Martakert region took the lives of three sappers and wounded two villagers.
Taking on demining is no easy decision. But three years ago, when Halo Trust began to recruit its first women sappers, Khachatryan, a village-council accountant from Artashavi, 80 kilometers to the southwest of Karabakh’s main town, Stepanakert, decided to apply.
After checking and finding no mines in one spot on a piece of land near the village of Karegah, Khachatryan marks off a new area for demining.
She did so “out of curiosity” — in 2013, two mine explosions near Artashavi had wounded several locals — but also out of financial necessity.
Khachatryan’s husband, Garik Ohanjanyan, a former school teacher, was unemployed.
Work as a sapper, which pays 225,000 drams (about $464) a month and comes with insurance, roughly quadrupled her income.
”Of course, it's not easy to be a sapper. Of course, my family worries about me,” says Khachatryan. “I also worry and try to follow all the safety rules. If you are following the safety rules, you can keep yourself safe. The golden rule of doing a dangerous job is to be safe.”
Once certified, though, she did not expect to stay on the job for long. She accepted the post since the first demining field was close to Artashavi, within easy reach of her family.
“Of course, I was worried in the beginning,” she recounts, “but later I understood that there is no bad work. There are just bad people. And now I’m proud that I’m doing a big and important humanitarian job.”
Even in the field, Khachatryan makes a point of painting her nails, wearing makeup and tending to her hair. Women should always look feminine, no matter what work they do, she says.
The fact that she also was a pioneer never occurred to her.
“Before becoming a sapper, I never thought that this was a ‘man’s job’ or about how I should work in a man’s world,” Khachatryan continues.
“You have completely different things on your mind when you enter a minefield,” such as routine daily matters or your family, she adds.
Halo Trust’s 11 female sappers work in three teams, each with a male lead. The organization intends to train women as team leaders and drivers, says project coordinator Anna Israelyan.
Very often, sappers work in fields far from their main base, usually a rented house in a nearby village or town. For this reason, sometimes a small, demined part of a field is turned into an open-air kitchen where they can eat and relax. On cold, rainy days, they also dry their clothes there.
They spend Monday through Friday in the field. Getting to the field station, a rented house in a village or town, can take time on Karabakh’s rough roads – over two hours to travel 65 kilometers by taxi, for instance. Public transportation does not always exist.
Khachatryan’s day starts at 7am each Monday. Already dressed for fieldwork, she quickly checks her mine-clearance equipment and drinks a cup of tea or coffee while running out the door.
Most of this territory near the village of Karegah in the Kashatagh region had already been demined when Khachatryan and her team came to the spot, shown here in the winter of 2016. During their week of work here, Khachtryan found one mine. She says that she feels nothing in particular when she finds a mine; the emotions hit after it has been deactivated.
In her absence, her husband and sons — 18-year-old Gor, 16-year-old Tigran and six-year-old Nairi — have had to learn how to clean the house, cook, wash dishes and use the washing machine.
Khachatryan’s husband and three sons handle all the housework while she is away during the week de-mining.
Next year, when her oldest son, Gor, 18, heads to Stepanakert for two years of compulsory military service, she wants her two younger sons to follow him so that they can see each other and have access to more sports.
During her breaks on the Karegah field, Khachatryan made a sapper snowman to photograph and email to her sons.
The boys still do not think that demining is appropriate work for a woman, but they are proud of their mother when she appears in news stories.
Khachatryan herself concedes that “I don’t always feel myself in harmony as a woman, as a mother and as a sapper.” She would like to organize her work so that she has more time for her family; particularly, her youngest son, who was just three when she began demining.
Nonetheless, she believes that “women are not inferior to men professionally.”
To make up for her absence during the week, Khachatryan tries to buy something tasty for her sons on the weekends. Here, with her husband, Garik, reflected in the mirror, she warms up French fries for lunch.
For some people, though, the mine explosion this March was a warning that it was time to change her profession. Many friends and relatives began to phone and ask whether she would leave her work, Khachatryan says.
“Honestly speaking, I had no sense of fear entering a minefield after that accident,” she elaborates. “It was deeply painful to me as a human being and I had a sense of huge responsibility to continue the work of my friends.”
She intends to stay on the job.


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Authorities blame air conditioning as Azerbaijan plunges into darkness · Global Voices
Arzu Geybullayeva

Darkened version of ‘Baku Boulevard in Evening’. Original photo by vita86. Creative Commons.
Every year — this year on March 24 — the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWN) asks individuals, communities, and businesses to switch off their lights for an hour as a symbol of commitment to the planet. Azerbaijan marked Earth Hour late in 2018, but made up for lost time by plunging into darkness for an entire night on July 3.
This was one of the many jokes abounding on social media after Azerbaijan's biggest blackout in over 15 years.
The reality is that as an ex-Soviet petro-state with some of the worst quality air in the world, Azerbaijan has never been too big on Earth Hour. The country-wide darkness was instead caused by a huge explosion at a key hydroelectric power station.
As the complaints piled up on social media, the office of the President released a statement blaming the heat. Excessive use of air conditioners amidst the biggest heatwave the country has experienced in 120 years — temperatures reached 43 degrees Celsius — was the cause of the accident, the office said. The Ministry of Emergency situations urged calm in another statement. Although power was restored in the afternoon, a second blackout in the evening brought the capital Baku's metro to a standstill.
The last time the whole country experienced a blackout was in 2002 after an accident at the same power plant. Energy expert Ilham Saban commented on July 3 that lessons from this outage had not been learned. Turgut Gambar, a founder of the NIDA civic movement complained on Facebook that “normal countries” would not depend so strongly on a single power plant. Azerbaijani scholar Altay Goyushov wrote on the same platform:
Have you heard of a country where lights are out, everywhere at the same time? Hear it now. There is no other comparison.
Some examples of humour during the #Azerbaijanblackout had more overtly political overtones. In the tradition of “turn the lights out when you leave”, Hebib Muntenzir of independent outlet Meydan TV reasoned:
I think President Ilham Aliyev left the country, and just before he left, he ordered to switch off the circuit breaker.
Amid observations government websites had gone down along with the power supply, the blackout was also a timely reminder of the tough conditions endured by prisoners across the country. Shura Ibrahim, the mother of Giyas Ibrahim, a man jailed on charges critics describe as politically motivated, described something akin to a humanitarian crisis in the jail where Ibrahim is incarcerated in an interview with RFE/RL's Azeri language service:
As soon as he got on the phone, all he could talk about was the heat inside the jail. He told me that nothing was working, the ventilation system was down, fridges were out of order, there was no water.
The costs of the massive outage are yet to be calculated. However, the root cause of the collapse — chronic dependence on a single, overburdened grid — remains unchanged, leaving little hope that such collapses can be avoided if temperatures soar again.
Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, it was extreme cold, rather than extreme heat that threw roughly a million citizens in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek into despair earlier this year.
The collapse of a heating plant there as temperatures outside reached minus 27 degrees Celsius was a source of mass dissatisfaction in January as residents slept in duffle coats inside cold, damp apartments.
The power failure was predictably followed by accusations of corruption and a series of highly politicised criminal cases that could see the country's ex-premier and the city's former mayor face lengthy prison terms.

author: Arzu Geybullayeva


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The threat of a restrictive NGO law looms over Slovakia · Global Voices
Tibor Blazko

A protest in Bratislava after the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fianceé Martina Kušnírová. Photo by Flickr user Peter Tkac. CC BY-SA 2.0
Slovak officials are increasingly using rhetoric that paints civil society as a danger to the country, which some fear is laying the groundwork for more government oversight — and more ways for those in power to punish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that they dislike.
Former Prime Minister Róbert Fico warned that the government would soon propose and put before parliament a new NGO law:
„Na jeseň ide do parlamentu zákon a pri každej jednej organizácii, ktorá je v treťom sektore, bude napísané, kto ju financuje, či je to zo zahraničia alebo nie je.“
In the autumn, the law goes to parliament, and for every organization in the third sector, it will be reported who finances it, whether it is from abroad or not.
Fico was forced to step down earlier in 2018, in the wake of mass protests over the murder of anti-corruption journalist Ján Kuciak. He remains head of the Direction – Social Democracy party (Smer-SD), which is part of the ruling coalition.
Fico claims that his fall from power was triggered not by genuine public outrage over cronyism and injustice, but rather by an orchestrated intervention by Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist George Soros, along with the NGOs funded by Soros foundations, and Slovak President Andrej Kiska, whom Fico alleges is controlled by Soros. He also has accused NGOs of having links to organized crime groups.
Soros's advocacy for freedom of expression, government accountability, rule of law and equality has made him a favorite right-wing boogeyman. In neighboring Hungary, for example, the parliament recently approved a new package of laws dubbed “Stop Soros” that criminalize groups who help migrants and tax foreign donations to NGOs. (Editor's note: Global Voices is a grantee of the Open Society Foundations, part of the Soros network.)
Fico has even gone so far as to suggest that NGOs are orchestrating the influx of economic migrants and asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East into Europe, as a way to foment geopolitical struggle and weaken the European Union:
Pozrite sa, kto sem tých migrantov vozí. Sú to mimovládne organizácie
See who is bringing these migrants here. That are the non-governmental organizations
Fico's former Minister of Interior Róbert Kaliňák has said that if journalists really want to know who is behind the migration wave, all they need to do is look at who is financing NGOs.
The issue of migration, documented and undocumented, has divided members of the European Union roughly in two camps. On one side are countries like Germany which have adopted a comparatively humane approach to accepting those fleeing war and insecurity and are generally pro-immigration as it brings fresh labor and talent into their aging population.
On the other side are countries like Hungary which have steadfastly refused to accept newcomers, claiming it would destroy the fabric of their societies.
Many NGOs have played an important role in offering support to migrants and asylum seekers, from saving lives on the Mediterranean to helping new arrivals integrate into society and learn their rights and responsibilities.
Fico's replacement as prime minister has also characterized NGOs as suspicious in light of protests in the country and promised to increase regulations on them.
Under current Slovakian law, NGOs with an income of more than 200,000 euros must submit financial reports, certified by an auditor, that detail their funding sources and make those reports publicly available. It's not unusual for others with lower incomes to do so voluntary.
Not all NGOs seem to be held to the same standard, though, in particular those with ties to the government. For instance, in a June 22, 2018 story, the news portal Aktuality.sk noted that its journalists could not find any annual report for the ASA Institute, an NGO affiliated with Fico's Smer-SD party.
In a recent episode of the political discussion program “Saturday dialogues” on Slovak public radio, Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini said he is interested who is behind “For a decent Slovakia” — the anti-corruption movement that was born from demonstrations over journalist Ján Kuciak's murder — and how they are financed.
A recent “For a decent Slovakia” gathering, held on 22 June, had an estimated 6,000-8,000 participants. The prime minister said he did not see any problem in people attending those protests, but that it is necessary to clarify how they operate:
“Netuším, prečo organizátori Za slušné Slovensko opäť volali ľudí do ulíc, pretože nič také dramatické sa nestalo, aby bol na to dôvod.“
I have no idea why the organizers “For a decent Slovakia” have been calling people to the streets again because nothing so dramatic has happened to give them a reason for it.
In reaction, Slovakian blogger Ivan Baltay criticized Pellegrini and Fico for delegitimizing the protests, explaining that participants are demanding justice for slain journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kušnírová:
Páni Fico a Pellegrini. Hlavnou motiváciou našich protestov je Jano a Martina. Ak ju znevažujete konšpiračnými teóriami, vysmievate sa motivácii ako takej. Čiže aj ich motivácii, pre ktorú prišli o život.
Mr. Fico and Mr. Pellegrini. The main motivation of our protests is Jano and Martina. If you disrespect it with conspiracy theories, you are laughing at the motivation. So also [laughing] at their motivation, for which they lost their lives.
Tomáš Bořuta, an organizer of “For a decent Slovakia” protests in the town of Považská Bystrica, wrote:
Vážený pán konšpirátor! (list premiérovi)
Vyjadrili ste počudovanie, ako dokáže niekto po štyroch dňoch od zverejnenia informácie o vražde Jána a Martiny zorganizovať nejakú udalosť.
Nuž čuduj sa svete, pán premiér, pán digitálny líder, je rok 2018. Tu u nás v Považskej to neboli štyri dni, ale hneď v utorok po pondelkovom zverejnení informácií o vražde, sme zorganizovali prvú udalosť – a to Sviečku za Jána a Martinu. Ono, totiž určite viete, existuje niečo také, čomu sa hovorí sociálne siete, ktoré v sebe skrývajú veľký komunikačný potenciál.
Prvé podujatie teda stálo presne 0 eur, slovom NULA, zorganizovali sme ho preto, lebo nami táto dvojnásobná poprava otriasla a akosi sme potrebovali zo seba dostať ten smútok a zdesenie, že v našej krajine, ktorú už desať rokov so svojimi kolegami „spravujete“, dokáže niekto takto hanebným spôsobom zavraždiť dvoch mladých ľudí, ktorí žili v pravde.
Dear Mr. Conspirator! (letter to the prime minister)
You have wailed about how can someone organize an event four days after the news of Ján and Martina's murder was published.
Now, big surprise, Prime Minister, Mr. Digital Leader [a reference to Pellegrini's former governmental position as deputy prime minister for investments and information], it is the year 2018. We did not take four days here in Považská, but just on Tuesday, after the news of their murder on Monday, we organized the first event — a candlelit vigil for Ján and Martina. There is, you know, something called social media, which have a great communication potential.
The first event cost exactly 0 euros, spelled out: ZERO, we organized it because we were shaken by this double execution and we needed to exorcise this sadness and insanity: that in our country, which you have “managed” for ten years with your colleagues, someone can in such a dishonest way kill two young people who have lived for the truth.
Pellegrini also has alleged that organized crime groups might be using NGOs as a cover, citing drug-related criminality. But when pressed for proof, he admitted it was just a hypothesis.
In a June 24 television discussion with his Hungarian counterpart Victor Orbán, Pellegrini said Slovakia will follow Hungary's lead in toughening regulations on NGOs to increase transparency surrounding their financing.
WORRYING! “Slovak PM P. Pellegrini reacted by saying that the transparency of NGO financing in Slovakia must also be increased. He even admitted that Slovakia, too, will toughen the appropriate laws and regulations…” @slovakspectator https://t.co/zjwjeMZula
— VIA IURIS (@viaiuris) June 26, 2018
Interestingly, amid these calls for more transparency surrounding NGO financing, the government does not appear to be meeting its own standards. A day after Pellegrini's television appearance, the Stop Corruption Foundation announced that, after years of unsuccessful attempts, it is suing the Government’s Office for unlawfully concealing information about a 1.3 million euro contract with Deloitte.

author: Tibor Blazko


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What were Global Voices’ readers up to last week? · Global Voices
L. Finch

Photo by Flickr user Jocelyn Kinghorn. CC BY-SA 2.0
At Global Voices, our community researches, writes, edits, and translates stories with a mission to support human rights and build bridges of understanding across countries, cultures, and languages.
We don't publish just to grab clicks or follow a news trend. We do, however, like to keep track of the ways in which our hard work has impact around the world.
To that end, one useful metric is how readers respond to our stories and translations. So let's take a look at who our readers were and what caught their attention during the week of June 25-July 1, 2018.
Last week, our stories and translations attracted readers from 197 countries! The top 20 countries represented across all of Global Voices’ sites were:
1. United States
2. Brazil
3. Japan
4. France
5. Philippines
6. Argentina
7. Spain
8. Mexico
9. Taiwan
10. Peru
11. Germany
12. Bangladesh
13. Saudi Arabia
14. Colombia
15. India
16. Russia
17. Italy
18. United Kingdom
19. Angola
20. Canada
But that's only a small slice of the diversity of our readership. Let's use the True Random Number Generator from Random.org and take a look at a few other countries on the list:
81. Qatar
185. Seychelles
165. New Caledonia
109. Finland
132. Armenia
The English-language site is where the majority of original content is first published at Global Voices. The top five most-read stories of last week were:
1. Rising star footballer is among more than a million Uyghurs sent to Chinese ‘re-education’ camps
2. No paper, no electricity, no news: Information controls keep coming in Venezuela
3. Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh jailed on national security charges for representing hijab protesters
4. The Nepali “sausage vine” evergreen plant is famous in the United Kingdom, yet remains unknown in Nepal
5. Vietnam’s new Cybersecurity Law could further undermine free speech and disrupt businesses
Lingua is a project that translates Global Voices stories into languages other than English. There are about 30 active Lingua sites. Below is last week's most-read story or translation on each active language site.

author: L. Finch


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First comprehensive study on child abuse in Madagascar points to alarming level of violence · Global Voices
Blogueurs invités

Malagasy children by Yves Picq – CC-BY-SA-3.0
[This article was written by an invited author, Andry R. Razafimbahoaka. The article was then edited by Global Voices for context and clarification]
Since the Convention on the Rights of the Child was signed in 1991, Madagascar has been multiplying its efforts to implement policies that protect child rights and created more than 750 child protection networks within the country since 2004. Despite this progress, abuse, violence, sexual exploitation and forced labor are still a tragic reality which silently occurs behind closed doors. According to a report released by the Malagasy State and UNICEF, every second young Malagasy claims to have been the victim of violence at school, and nine kids out of ten have been beaten by their family.
Following a request by the Malagasy government, UNICEF carried out a study on violence perpetrated against children in the country. The result of the study is beyond alarming:
89% des enfants disent qu’ils ont été violentés physiquement un jour au sein de leur foyer. Et pourtant ils sont 72% à dire qu’ils se sentent en sécurité chez eux.
89% of children report having suffered from physical domestic abuse at least once. Nonetheless, 72% of them say they feel safe at home.
Globally, the report highlights that violence is very often rooted in traditional practices which are very difficult to challenge. Rajae Sbihi, a child psychiatrist who partook to the study, explains:
La violence est considérée comme une méthode éducative, que ce soit dans le milieu familial ou à l’école
Violence is considered as a means of education, whether it is at home or at school.
Young Malagasy girls by Hery Zo Rakotondramana on FlickR – CC BY-SA 2.0
According to Sbihi, children in rural communities are even more at risk to violence, explaining that almost 20% of Malagasy children are not registered at birth – particularly in remote districts – which increases their vulnerability. Public powers are indeed often one of the only safeguards for child victims of violence, even more, if it happens at home. This type of violence leads to severe wounds, trauma, physical and emotional development troubles, risky behaviors or even dropping out of school altogether.
Besides physical violence, there is a range of scenarios which hinders children development. In fact, 40% of young Malagasy's report having worked before the age of 18. Laureate Rasolofoniainarison, national administrator of projects at the office of the OIT (in English ILO: International Labour Organization) in Antananarivo, explains how this perpetuates the cycle of poverty:
les parents disent souvent qu’ils les envoient travailler au lieu d’aller à l’école parce qu’ils sont pauvres. En réalité c’est le fait de faire travailler leurs enfants qui les rend pauvres, en perpétuant un cycle dans lequel l’éducation et la possibilité de s’élever socialement n’ont aucune place.
Parents often say that they send them to work instead of going to school because they are poor. In reality, making their children work is what makes them poor, by perpetuating a cycle in which education and the possibility of rising socially have no place.
Young girls are even more vulnerable to this violence. Early marriage is part of the Malagasy tradition and is a problem for minors. More than one-third of girls between the ages of 15 and 19-years-old are already married or in a relationship. Very few teenagers use contraceptive methods (less than 8%) which considerably increases the number of unwanted pregnancies. In fact, 30% of the minors in the island have a child, as reported by a rating from the World Atlas 2015. This number reaches up to 50% in some areas of the capital. Another alarming statistic is the rising rate of sexual exploitation of girls for commercial purposes, particularly near petroleum and mining sites.
Before this report, children's needs and rights were unknown in Madagascar. This latest report is seen as a tool which allows child protection advocates to better understand, prevent and respond to these risky situations. It is also a first step towards a more comprehensive national policy which aims to reduce violence. It can also be used as an argumentative tool to convince people to let go of traditional practices which can be detrimental to children. In total, UNICEF has deployed 240 social volunteers on the island to provide psycho-social support, communal dialogue and social mobilisation.
UNICEF has also established partnerships in order to develop a code of conduct for all mining employees and sub-contractors in Madagascar, in an effort to end young women's sexual exploitation. This practical approach should hopefully have a progressive impact on their protection in the next few years.

author: Blogueurs invités


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Months after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, Dominica launches a tree-planting campaign, but is it enough? · Global Voices
Kori Tuitt

Grapefruit tree, Dominica. Photo by scottmontreal, CC BY-NC 2.0.
This post is part of Global Voices’ effort to track citizen media stories of hope and resilience after the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, through its partnership with Covela Foundation and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) for the Caribbean Voice initiative.
Dominica's new tree-planting initiative is sowing seeds of hope as citizens rally to rebound from the ravages of Hurricane Maria, the Category 5 storm that hit the tiny Caribbean island on September 18, 2017. Living conditions in Dominica have been tough ever since, as Maria caused widespread devastation, but the tree-planting drive is being welcomed as a small but significant step toward normalcy, even as so much more remains to be done.
Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit announced the initiative on his Facebook page, sharing photos of himself and many other volunteers who participated in the initiative:
Over the weekend I spent some time planting over 80 trees that will one day bear avocados, soursop, carambolas [starfruit] cashews, cocoa, coffee and various varieties of citrus, mangos, guavas and cherries.
I am encouraging every family in Dominica to plant a fruit-bearing tree, because it is important that we continue to feed ourselves as a nation.
Finally, I'd like to remind you that World Environment Day is tomorrow and this year’s theme is ‘Beat Plastic Pollution: If you can’t reuse it, refuse it’.
In a separate Facebook post, Skerrit shared photos of sorrel and bean planting.
Social media users praised the prime minister's rebuilding efforts and investment in the nation and suggested that other members of the governing party should get involved. One Facebook user on Skerrit's page left a comment saying he was pleased with the message being sent to eat locally grown food.
The replanting effort seemed to be so well subscribed that some netizens were having trouble sourcing plants.
But for others in the agricultural field, this initiative does not seem like enough to sustain them. According to the National Hurricane Center's Tropical Cyclone Report released in April 2018, Dominica's agricultural sector was largely eliminated after Hurricane Maria, and many families whose livelihoods depended on farming have since struggled for income.
A January 2018 disaster profile on the island conducted by ACAPS, a Norwegian non-profit that offers independent humanitarian analysis, said that because of Hurricane Maria, “around 24,000 people became severely or borderline food insecure”:
The hurricane severely damaged farm housing, irrigation infrastructure, feeder roads, livestock production, forest reserves, and fishing boats. Self-sufficiency has been a priority to speed up the recovery process: the country currently depends on shipments of food relief from regional and international stakeholders. Fast-growing food crops were identified as the priority, including seeds for tomatoes, eggplants, pumpkins, sweet pepper, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, and kale. Four major sites were identified as strategic areas for replanting interventions: Roseau, the Northeast, the Southeast and Portsmouth, with the Portsmouth community, located in the north of the island, being particularly important as it provides the hospital food supply.
On Facebook, Anton Outaway Viville commented:
The young farmers and even some of the older heads can't afford fertilizers and chemicals to treat our farms. Why can't the farmers be treated better in this little country? We struggle too much to run our little farms with [our] low income. Help us Lord for I know not what the next generation brings?
The second part of the prime minister's message regarding the plastic pollution was just as urgent to some citizens. Facebook user Elizabeth Williams had a few suggestions:
Great job well done
However, it is very simple to solve or curb the problem of the plastic pollution Mr. PM
Please put a ban on all Styrofoam and plastic products imports
Then please remove the import duties on the paper products which will replace the plastic usage and reduce the pollution tremendously
Immediate education to the public on the introduction of Recycling – install a recycling plant Stat and implement and execute.
No shop talk. Action.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Netizen Martha Cuffy asked:
A practical example of fruits of thy labour. Thank you for mentioning the plastic situation. Can we expect a date soon when plastic bags are banned in Dominica?
There was no response to her question on the thread.
A few people were not convinced by the show of environmental allegiance, suggesting that the whole affair was merely a political show. Facebook user Roland Rogers Arnold challenged the prime minister on his policies, saying, tongue firmly in cheek:
Leading by example…how original. Food security is priority number one. Have you kept Monsanto and their glyphosate of the island? Salut!
Monsanto was the controversial United States agrochemicals giant recently acquired by Bayer whose products, including glyphosate, a potent weed killer, have been linked to environmental contamination, disease, and even death, particularly in developing countries whose laws may not be stringent enough to hold dangerous products and practices to account. However, there has been no confirmation as to whether or not its products have been used in Dominica as far back as in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Erika in 2015.
As the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season draws closer, time will tell just how effective Dominica's rebuilding and hurricane preparation efforts have been thus far.

author: Kori Tuitt


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Wrongly labeled as ‘foreign agents’, Russian environmentalists face regulatory punishment — and violent threats · Global Voices
BlueLink

On guard in the mountains: Andrey Rudomakha, chairperson of the Environmental Watch of the North Caucasus. Photo: vk.com/rudomakha
This article is based on a piece originally published on BlueLink, and is republished as part of a partnership with Global Voices. It was first written in Bulgarian by Ksenia Vakhrusheva.
On the evening of 28 December 2017, a group of environmentalists were attacked by three masked men on Russia's Black Sea coast.
When they set out to conduct a public survey of a construction site in the region, they got into an altercation with security workers who demanded that the activists erase their photos of the site. They refused to do so.
Soon after this encounter, they were approached by three masked men along their route. The men violently assaulted two members of the group and attacked the third with pepper spray. They stole equipment, cameras, computers and documents and then fled, leaving one member of the group, Andrey Rudomakha, with a concussion and a broken nose.
Several days later, on 9 January 2018, Rudomakha and his colleague Dmitry Shevchenko received an email from an unknown sender, urging them to leave the country. The email alias was “Death to Rudomakha.”
As of late June 2018, there has been no progress in the official police investigation of the attack, despite multiple clues as to who might have been the assailants.
A photo with a threat sent anonymously to EWNC vice chair Dmitry Shevchenko. The text reads: “Henchmen of Rudomakha go out of the country. You better leave Dmitry…”
The environmentalists are part of Environmental Watch of the North Caucasus (EWNC), a Russian NGO that monitors the environmental effects of construction and industrial projects in the region. While authorities have given no indication of what or whom might have motivated the attack, Rudomakha and his colleagues at EWNC are confident that the attack was a carefully planned retaliation for the group's investigation of an illegal private winery.
Rudomakha’s lawyer, Alexey Avanesyan, also suspects that the attack was intended to prevent the publication of findings from the activists’ inspection. Despite the fact that the cameras were stolen during the attack, they were able to save all photos of the sites and the church.
On their expedition in a state forest (public land), the activists found a winery, still under construction, and what looks like an Orthodox chapel surrounded by a massive fence. Next to the site, the activists came across illegal logging and yet another building site. The forest where these constructions are located is next to two large vineyards.
EWNC’s investigation revealed that these two forest sites are in fact being rented by different companies. The first site was rented by “Perspectiva OOO” for hunting purposes. But according to the law, hunting permits do not allow for the construction of permanent buildings. The owner of “Perspectiva OOO” is Pavel Ezubov, a longtime business partner of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Ezubov is also the son of the State Duma Deputy from the Krasnodar region.
Church illegally constructed in the forest in the Krasnodar region, Russia. Photo: Viktor Chirikov, Environmental Watch of the North Caucasus (2017).
The second site is a 20-hectare plot and is where the aforementioned church was built. The tenant is “Axis Investments AO,” the same organisation that owns the neighbouring vineyards. The state registry lists the founder and CEO of “Axis Investments AO” as lawyer Alexey Tot.
According to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Tot is known as a business partner of Putin’s classmate, lawyer Nikolay Yegorov from St. Petersburg. Altogether, these sites have the appearance of a future private winery that one can imagine would serve high-ranking people.
Immediately after the attack, a petition on Change.org was created demanding a fair investigation of what was a violent crime. By the end of January 2018, more than 120,000 people had signed the petition. Environmental and human rights organisations across Europe sent official letters with the same request to the Russian Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Security Service as well.
In response to an inquiry sent by the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum, the Investigation Office of the Krasnodar region answered that the investigation was being “taken under special control”.
For years, EWNC has faced constant pressure from authorities and businesses for its investigations of environmental legislation violations. At the time of the attack, the organisation was embroiled in a regulatory struggle to get itself removed from Russia's so-called “foreign agents” registry.
EWNC is based in Russia, employs only Russian nationals. Since 2014, shortly after Russia's “foreign agents” law was passed, the group stoppd receiving funds from foreign sources and has supported itself on funding from within Russia since that time. Nevertheless, EWNC was wrongly blacklisted and placed on the registry in 2016 on suspicion that the group was still accepting funding from foreign sources.
The label “foreign agent” itself can render an organization the target of constant pressure from authorities, state-owned media and pro-government civil society. All NGOs registered as “foreign agents” are required to submit reports to the Ministry of Justice every three months instead of just one annual report. There is also a persistent threat of new fines, the obligation to conduct an expensive annual audit, and the requirement to label all printed and online publications with the inscription “made by a foreign agent.” The “foreign agent” label stigmatises organisations as well, because society still perceives a “foreign agent” as a spy.
The EWNC appealed the decision in court but lost their case and started abrogation before a higher court. The group also appealed to the court to cancel the fines imposed on the organisation and its executives for not having entered the registry voluntarily.
In September 2017, EWNC sent an official inquiry to the Russian Ministry of Justice asking to be removed from the “foreign agents” registry. The deadline for replying to the inquiry expired on 9 January 2018, with no answer.
But soon after, the Ministry of Justice removed the organisation from the “foreign agents” registry, following a second detailed inspection of EWNC’s activities.
The Ministry of Justice removed the EWNC from the list very quietly. EWNC at first received neither a letter, nor a public notice, nor a comment from officials. Information about the group simply disappeared from the online register. Formal confirmation arrived only on 18 January 2018.
The confirmation notice proved that the results of the Ministry's first inspection in 2016, after which EWNC was declared a “foreign agent”, were wrong: EWNC did not receive foreign funding at this time, and by law should thus not have been included on the “foreign agents” registry.
While the Ministry of Justice did not find any foreign funding, they found some activities in the organization’s work, which they identified as “political activity”. Bureaucrats were referring to Shevchenko’s speech during an anti-corruption rally on 12 June, 2017.
The rally was part of some protests organised by supporters of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in different Russian cities. “I said three times during my speech that I do not speak as a representative of EWNC, and I have a video recording of it, but the Ministry had still decided that it was a political activity of EWNC,” Shevchenko stated. EWNC plans to file a complaint about this component of the investigation, on grounds that it could leave them vulnerable to being blacklisted again.
According to EWNC deputy chair Dmitry Shevchenko, all fines were ultimately cancelled, except one: a personal fine against Andrey Rudomakha, the head of the organisation, for the amount of 100,000 rubles [roughly EU 1300].
Despite these multiple caveats, the group sees the decision as a victory. “This is certainly not the last campaign against us, I’m sure there will be other attempts to shut our mouth, but in this particular war we have won,” Rudomakha told local media.
“The war” against EWNC has been under way since 2014, and the group's leaders expect it to continue, despite its recent removal from the blacklist.
Vice chair Shevchenko described the move as “just a formality”. He thinks the Ministry of Justice would be happy to keep the organisation on the register if it had any grounds for it. “We are excluded from the registry because we filed a complaint in autumn and we had compelling reasons,” he explained. By the time EWNC was included on the list, it had not received any foreign funding during the period of time covered by the investigation.
These are only some of the struggles the group has faced in recent years.
EWNC first caught authorities’ attention when the group revealed serious violations during construction for the Sochi Olympics in 2014. At the time, local authorities tried to shut down EWNC in court, a move that received a strong response from both the Russian and international environmental communities. European green parties and environmental and human rights organisations from various countries made public statements urging Russian authorities to stop the pressure on independent environmentalists. BlueLink Foundation also joined the campaign.
Evgeny Vitishko, an EWNC Board Member, spent two years in prison on a tangle of charges targeting his activism during the Sochi Olympics and his apparent utterance of a swear word at a public bus stop.
Similar charges resulted in Suren Gazarayan, one of the most prominent members of EWNC, being forced to leave Russia and seek political asylum in Estonia.
In April 2017, during an extraordinary inspection at the organisation’s office, some important documents disappeared. In September 2016, masked men brutally attacked volunteer firefighters from EWNC and Greenpeace-Russia in Krasnodar, leaving two volunteers seriously injured.
To date, the police have not carried out a thorough investigation of any of the above-mentioned crimes. None of the attackers were ever found, arrested or convicted.

author: BlueLink


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#NoToSocialMediaTax: Join Global Voices for a July 9 tweetathon against Uganda’s social media tax · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

#NoToSocialMediaTax tweetathon poster by Innocent Amanyire / @NinnoJackJr
Join the Global Voices Sub-Saharan Africa team (@gvssafrica) for a multilingual tweetathon demanding an end to the taxation of social media in Uganda.
On July 1, the Ugandan government began enforcing a new law that imposes a 200 shilling [US$0.05, £0.04] daily levy on people using internet messaging platforms, despite protests from local and international online free speech advocates.
This move, according to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, has the dual purpose of strengthening the national budget and also curtailing “gossip” by Ugandans on social media. It was also popular among local telecom providers, who do not directly benefit from the use of foreign-based “over-the-top” services such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp.
The policy was preceded with an order to register all new mobile SIM cards with the National Biometric Data Centre. The measure also forces Ugandans to only use mobile money accounts in order to recharge their SIM cards and makes it mandatory to pay a one percent levy on the total value of transaction on any mobile money transaction.
These new policies make it more costly for Ugandans — especially those living in poverty — to communicate and perform everyday tasks using their mobile devices.
On July 2, civil society and legal advocates in Uganda filed a court challenge against the law, arguing that it violates the country's constitution.
A protester demonstrates his opposition to Uganda's social media tax at a gathering on July 6, 2018.
On July 6, concerned citizens and civil society advocates issued a joint press statement [see below] calling on Ugandans to avoid paying the tax by using alternate methods to exchange money and access social media, and to join a “National Day of Peaceful Protest Against Unfair Taxation” on Wednesday, July 11, 2018.
The Global Voices community and our network of friends and allies wish to support this and other efforts to demand an end to the tax. We believe that this tax is simply a ploy to censor Ugandans and gag dissenting voices.
We believe social media should be freely accessible for all people, including Ugandans. The Ugandan social media tax must go!
On Monday, July 9, beginning at 14:00 East Africa Time, we plan to tweet at community leaders, government and diplomatic actors, and media influencers to increase awareness and draw public attention to the issue. We especially encourage fellow bloggers and social media users all over the world to join us.
JOINT PRESS STATEMENT ON THE AMENDMENT TO THE EXCISE DUTY ACT TO LEVY TAXES ON SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND MOBILE MONEY TRANSACTIONS
Convened on Friday, 6 July, 2018 at 2.00PM
On Tuesday, 3 July, 2018, we young people and youth leaders from various student guild governments, musicians and artistes, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and the Parliament of Uganda held a Press Conference at which we expressed our serious reservations and grave concerns about the amendment to the Excise Duty (Amendment) Act which levies a tax on social media access and an extortionist one per cent (1%) charge on Mobile Money transactions.
We implored the Speaker to recall Parliament from recess and asked the Leader of Government Business to table a motion to repeal the amendment by Friday, 6 July, 2018. The deadline elapsed a few hours ago and we are here to announce the way forward:
i) We invite citizens and subscribers to stop transacting via any of the Mobile Money services and as an alternative, rely on physical payment methods so as to avoid paying the unfortunate tax;
ii) We further encourage citizens to use available options to stay online without paying the daily two hundred Uganda shillings (200/-) per day to access social media sites;
iii) We also call upon Members of Parliament to expedite the process of recalling the House but also to conduct consultations in their constituencies regarding this matter;
iiii) Finally, we are declaring Wednesday, 11 July, 2018 as a National Day of Peaceful Protest against Unfair Taxation. In this regard, we invite citizens to deliver petitions to their Members of Parliament and to dress up in red coloured attire as they go about their daily business. We have already notified the Uganda Police Force and a copy of the notification is available.
We will continue engaging our respective constituencies and leaders to protest, reject and continue the boycott until the poorly thought-out taxes are rescinded. As young leaders, we have undertaken research and consultations and are willing to suggest better avenues and models of taxation that are sustainable and beneficial to both the citizen and the state.
STEERING COMMITTEE
NATIONAL CITIZENS’ ACTION AGAINST UNFAIR TAXATION

author: Nwachukwu Egbunike


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Ugandans say #NoToSocialMediaTax because it exploits women, youth and the poor · Global Voices
Nwachukwu Egbunike

Ugandans are standing up against a new tax on social media and Mobile Money.
On July 1, 2018, the Ugandan government started taxing citizens a fee of 200 Ugandan Shillings (USD $0.05) for using social media, raising substantial condemnation from Ugandans.
With Uganda's average GDP per capita at USD $604.00, daily use of social media or messaging apps could eat up three percent of the average Ugandan's annual earnings.
The fight to resist the social media tax took a legal twist on July 2 when concerned citizens approached the courts, claiming that the tax violates Uganda's constitution.
Petitioners argued that the tax contravenes the human rights of Ugandans as enshrined in “the specified provisions of the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda”.
Kenyan newspaper The Daily Nation reports:
The petition, filed by a team of young advocates under their Cyber Law Initiative (U) Limited and four individuals, Mr Opio Bill Daniel, Mr Baguma Moses, Mr Okiror Emmanuel and Mr Silver Kayondo against the attorney-general, is challenging the Constitutionality of the (200 USH) [$0.05 USD] daily charge for access to social media platforms.
[…]
The petition is particularly targeting several sections of the Excise Duty Amendment Act 2018, which provided for taxes on Over The Top (OTT) services from mobile telephone usage.
The tax threatens fundamental rights to freedom of speech and access to information which are not only guaranteed by the Ugandan Constitution but also protected under international treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — Uganda is a signatory to both documents.
The petitioners also implored the court to issue an order that will permanently halt payment on the social media tax. PCTech magazine reports:
They want the court to issue an order, permanently stopping the government and all her agencies, authorities and officials from imposing any tax on internet or social media usage. In addition, they also want an order, directing the government and government regulatory body of the communications sector; Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) to only regulate OTT services in a manner that guarantees free access, net neutrality, and open internet.
Ugandan lawyer Silver Kayondo vowed to “fight up to the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights”:
#SocialMediaTax Petitioners have been joined by Raymond Mujuni in defence of OTT journalistic sources and #digital broadcasting. On our way to Court to file against the AG. UCC and URA added for consequential Orders. We'll fight up to the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights
— Silver Kayondo (@SilverKayondo) July 2, 2018
The Global Voices community, which we represent, has also taken a stand on the issue and organized a tweetathon in solidarity with activists in Uganda, set to take place on Monday, July 9.
#NoToSocialMediaTax campaign poster. (Image designed by Innocent Amanyire @NinnoJackJr and used with permission)
As the legal battle ensues, questions around equity, justice, and access remain and need further investigation. According to a survey by the National Information Technology Authority, 77 percent of Ugandans cannot afford basic internet usage costs and only 22 percent of the total population currently uses the internet.
Rather than investing in infrastructure that could expand Ugandans’ access to broadband connectivity, the government has imposed a social media tax seriously limits access while bringing more money to its own coffers.
Critics see the tax as a form of double taxation because airtime and data were already taxed. Now, many users say they simply can not afford to pay the extra 200 USH per user per day to access web-based social and communication platforms, also known as over-the-top (OTT) services.
The tax widens the internet access gap not just for Ugandan youth and the poor, but also for women, furthering the gender digital divide.
Exempt the Rich: Tax the Poor. #SocialMediaTax pic.twitter.com/nUz0SdLNBr
— Rwakakamba Morrison (@Rwakakamba) July 2, 2018
Uganda struggles with one of the highest unemployment rates in East Africa. A 2014 Ugandan census report indicated that out of over 18 million people between the ages of 14 and 64, 58 percent were unemployed. At the same time, 52 percent of Ugandans owned mobile phones and 71 percent of these users live in rural areas, according to a 2014 report by the Uganda Communications Commission.
Youth ages 15 to 24 years old are on the frontlines of smartphone usage and make up 28 percent of the population. Many rely on their phones and on WhatsApp to engage in businesses that run on mobile money. They say they feel that the social media tax will only stifle entrepreneurship, ease of business, and creativity.
The Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) points out that just one gigabyte (GB) of data will now cost users nearly 40 percent of their average monthly income:
Part 1: The cost to connect for #Uganda’s poorest will jump by 10%, resulting in just 1GB of data costing them nearly 40% of their average monthly income. The richest Ugandans will experience an increase of 1% in their cost to connect! @A4A_Internet
#SocialMediaTax pic.twitter.com/aiYTtNReky
— CIPESA (@cipesaug) July 1, 2018
The social media tax comes on the heels of the controversial social media “gossip tax” in April 2018 and is seen as an affront to already over-burdened citizens. At that time, President Museveni wrote:
I am not going to propose a tax on internet use for educational, research or reference purposes… these must remain free. However, olugambo (gossip) on social media (opinions, prejudices, insults, friendly chats) and advertisements by Google and I do not know who else must pay tax because we need resources to cope with the consequences of their lugambo.
The government's categorization of social media platforms as a luxury activity exposed a deep lack of digital literacy among policymakers in the Museveni government.
Ugandan journalist Daniel K. Kalinaki succinctly summarized the impact of both the “gossip tax” and the “social media tax” on everyday Ugandan citizens:
There are basically two problems with the social media tax. First, it shoots the wrong person twice: A Facebook user has already paid tax on the mobile phone, data and electricity; they are, except in a few cases, the product, not the revenue. The tax is like taking money at the gate then also charging for the seats in an empty stadium.
Secondly, people generally don’t gossip or insult others for a living; they do so because they are idle, sad and often unemployed. Imposing a tax to keep them quiet is the cyber equivalent of asking starving people who don’t have millet to eat red velvet chocolate cake instead. This and the mobile money tax have taken many young and poor people, including many in the countryside who have never paid a direct tax, through the organ grinder of our tax system. You can hear the screams from Kidera to Kyotera.


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Censorship in Uzbekistan: The more things change, the more they stay the same? · Global Voices
Chris Rickleton

Umida Akhmedova. Photo used with permission.
It's all change in Uzbekistan, or so we are told. Since the 2016 death of the country's ruler of nearly three decades, Islam Karimov, the ex-Soviet republic of 33 million people has opened its door a crack and pulled up the blinds.
Tourists are increasingly welcome inside the Central Asian republic and the government is looking out to the world too, attempting to secure investments, loans and better relations with the countries that surround its double-landlocked territory.
Karimov's successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has publicly celebrated the legacy of his former mentor, but has also made efforts to distance himself from some of the darkest elements of his long, repressive reign.
But how far will Uzbekistan go in its stated desire to end forced labour? How confident can we be of the government's pledge to end torture in the country's jails? And will it ever accept a critical press and even limited political opposition?
One litmus test of Uzbekistan's potential move away from hardened authoritarianism is the arts. Under Karimov, whose reign began during the Soviet era, film, photography, music and other forms of artistry were all routinely censored, creating a bleak environment for self-expression.
A notable example of this practice was the sentencing of photographer and filmmaker Umida Akhmedova to six months imprisonment in early 2010, after she was charged with defamation and insult, under articles 139 and 140 of Uzbekistan's Criminal Code. Her crime? Showing images of poverty that contravened the narrative of national success trumpeted by state media. She was immediately amnestied but retains a criminal record.
Global Voices last interviewed Umida in 2015. We spoke with her again in June 2018, some months after she received a curious and unprecedented invitation to exhibit her latest works at a private gallery in the Uzbek capital Tashkent. She was asked to present her work alongside the work of her husband, filmmaker Oleg Karpov.
Does that mean she is optimistic about the future for art in the region's most populous country? In a word, no.
Global Voices: Umida, a lot has happened since we last spoke! Was it a surprise to you that you were allowed to hold an exhibition for the first time in Tashkent last year?
Umida Akhmedova: It was not that we were allowed to, the idea was proposed to us and it was not a surprise. It was immediately clear that this was not an independent decision on the part of the gallery and rather part of the government's games. At the time, Mirziyoyev was planning to go to the United States and authorities were doing a lot of work in terms of improving the country's image. Why did we agree to go along with it? Because I live here! At any rate, the theme of our exhibition was not so “sweet” (from the government's point of view). It was titled “Meek Sky” in contrast to the “Peaceful Sky of Karimov” mentioned in the state's celebrations of his life.
The experience of Soviet dissidents teaches us that it is possible to play with the government — if only for short periods of time of course — when your services are suddenly in demand. You can show your opposition in a passive sense. We decided to play at this old game.
But the name of the exhibition — Meek Sky — plus some of the video footage we used gave the exhibition an anti-Soviet feel. Sure enough, the subsequent reaction of the government was sufficiently “Soviet.” At night someone came and fired shots from an air pistol at the glass panels of the art gallery!
GV: Do you really think that happened because of your exhibition?
GV: It seems that many things have changed in Uzbekistan under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, but also that much has stayed the same. Would you agree with that?
UA: Some things have changed. It is now possible to take photos in Tashkent metro, for instance. [Editor's note: Under Islam Karimov, photography inside Tashkent's ornate subway stations was banned as the stations were viewed as “strategic objects”]. Also it has become easier in the airport and crossing borders. There is now a visa-free regime between Uzbekistan and our neighbour Tajikistan. Some of the roads [at the border] that Karimov closed have now been re-opened. And of course, a number of political prisoners have been released.
But then again, foreign media still struggle to get accredited and opposition websites are still blocked. Tashkent city is mindlessly destroyed [by over-development]. Just as previously, Uzbeks need to leave the country in search of work. The president calls back Uzbeks from exile, but then they are arrested when they return, despite some of them already being citizens of other countries. This is a worrying signal! Real reforms are not underway, just an appearance of reforms. The political elite has been overhauled, but not necessarily for the better.
A promotion for Umida Akhmedova's “Meek Sky” exhibition. Used with permission.
GV: I saw recently that state television in Uzbekistan was showing images of poverty in Uzbekistan's regions — precisely the thing you were criminally punished for. Does this mean that things will get easier for artists? How have any of these political changes affected art? What themes are artists still unable to cover?
UA: I definitely don't think things have changed for artists, just because we were able to do one exhibition in a private gallery. The priority is still given to pompous and empty ideological projects, like “Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan in Meetings Across the World.”
Official propaganda sometimes allows itself to show a less rose-tinted life, but always selectively and usually only with the president's say-so. Things that artists cannot do? Criticise the new authorities, their reforms, or the president. Or cover relations with Russia, which are neo-colonial in nature.
[Editor's note: Uzbekistan's delegation at the United Nations recently said that reforms in the country would not extend to rights for LGBT citizens. Same-sex relations remain illegal in the country. Some analysts have noted that social conservatism is gaining an even stronger public foothold under the new administration, with obvious implications for censorship.]
GV: Your husband Oleg is a filmmaker. Has he felt any changes?
UA: Oleg has made and will continue to make films and it never occurs to him to ask anyone's permission. Another matter is working with the filmmaker's association and holding film festivals. I don't think he has a desire to do this and our perestroika (reforms) haven't so far allowed any space for this. We did do some film screenings in the same gallery where we held the exhibition but ran into problems because the organisers did not want to take any risks. Now we are not doing any screenings there anymore.

author: Chris Rickleton


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‘Apartheid couldn’t have happened without that spatial carving up of the landscape’ · Global Voices
Janine Mendes-Franco

The 2016 Master Jury for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture; Professor Lesley Lokko is at the far right. Photo courtesy Lokko, used with permission.
Who would have thought that architecture could be so closely connected to things like identity, culture and politics? Certainly not Professor Lesley Lokko, back when she was studying the discipline at London's prestigious Bartlett School of Architecture.
But now, as head of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa — which she plans to make the “biggest and the best on the continent” — Lokko doesn't see things in the typical way.
This unique perspective is just one of the reasons she's considered such a prominent figure in the emergent African architectural scene. Lokko enjoys examining these sorts of juxtapositions. Half Ghanaian, half Scottish, she first studied sociology, then Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, then decided she wanted to become an architect. She graduated from the prestigious Bartlett School of Architecture in London and began her professional career, while simultaneously creating a name for herself as a best-selling novelist.
On the invitation of the Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Architects and Bocas Lit Fest, the country's premier annual literary event, Lokko recently made her first visit to the twin island republic, where she gave a few public lectures on the importance of architecture in today's society, literature and more.
Architect and author Lesley Lokko. Photo used with permission.
She sat down with Global Voices for a fascinating chat about globalisation and identity, and the parallels she sees between Caribbean and African societies. In this, the first of a series of posts about her visit, we discuss race, culture, innovation, and the impact that architecture can have on society, particularly postcolonial ones.
Global Voices (GV): How did you come to be Professor Lesley Lokko? You seem quite liminal in a field that's generally all about structure.
Lesley Lokko (LL): My father was part of the first wave of Africans who were sent overseas to study. A lot of them came back with foreign wives, so there was a whole generation of — we call ourselves ‘half-castes’ — that’s a particular Ghanaian term, but a whole bunch of mixed race kids who are the product of that particular period in history.
GV: Did that help shape your worldview?
LL: It did, and I’m probably more conscious of it now in a much more positive way, because I think the early years — not so much childhood because you’re sort of oblivious — but teenager, early adulthood, I think the struggle was very much to reconcile being from two places that were actually very different, but that it was okay. I grew up in Ghana, went to school in Ghana, then at the age of 17 I was sent overseas to boarding school in England. I’ve written about this since — I left Ghana knowing very clearly that I was half Scottish and half Ghanaian, and when I arrived in Britain the next morning, I was black. And it’s not that I didn’t know what black was, but suddenly the black part of it was the overarching identity. And it took me a long time to come to terms with that because blackness to me, particularly in Britain in those days, simply seemed to me not being white — and I couldn’t quite get my head around now not being something was the primary identity; that somehow you’re identified by a lack of something.
GV: Let's talk about that in relation to architecture. Looking at apartheid-era South Africa, for instance, how does architecture enhance — or limit — people's potential? How does space affect output?
LL: Historically, the role of the architect was always to project onto the ground the social and cultural values of any given society — in other words, to build representations of the values that a particular culture holds dear. To give a more concrete example, you could say a house is a representation to the outside world of the aspirations, hopes and experiences of the people living inside it. But at the same time, you don’t expect your built structures to represent the real you — what you’re looking for is the best possible representation — the ambitious, cultured image of yourself. You don’t expect your buildings to represent your tensions, your insecurities and your mistakes; you want your architecture to represent the best of you.
If we think about the colonial and post-colonial world, at nominal independence, which is the political franchise, suddenly you take the emotional experience of that period of your own history — the struggles for self-determination, self-worth and the re-evaluation of what’s usually been a suppressed and oppressive history — but you find that it’s very difficult for your architecture to express that. What tends to happen is that the new political reality simply borrows the ‘old’ or existing architecture — the structures, buildings, ways of living and working — and you’re unable to articulate what the tension between that real, lived experience of the struggle for independence might have been and what your aspirations for the future now are.
In South Africa, certainly, architecture was always complicit in oppression. Apartheid might have been a political and social structure, but it was also a physical one. Now, two generations after that first wave of great decolonisations in Africa and a generation after South African independence, I think people finally have the courage to look at this discipline that they’ve studied and to think about it differently.
It's a complicated thing. Architecture is a seven-year course and during the time you’re studying, you also change. Architecture changed fundamentally the way I think — it didn’t just change the way I see things, it altered the very structure of how I see. So suddenly I’ve become complicit in it, because the things in my profession that are valued — whether those are aesthetic, or political, or social — have become my own vocabulary, and that vocabulary actually can’t accommodate this previous history, which has a lot to do with discomfort, with shame, with guilt, with envy…very complex emotions that the discipline is not easily able to translate.
Apartheid couldn’t have happened without complicity of the architectural profession — that spatial carving up of the landscape — blacks live here, whites live here. This is how a white person should live and work; that’s what a black person ‘deserves.’ The standard township house was called an NE51 (non-European 51). It’s a child’s model of a house that’s essentially a box: window, window, front door, four identical ‘rooms’ that could be anything — bedroom, kitchen, living-room — there was absolutely no difference. That model replicated across an entire landscape, but some architect actually designed that. That model didn’t just ‘happen’. Many of the heroes of South African architecture, men who went out in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s to Europe and the United States to study or apprentice returned with a dilemma. In the West, architecture has always had an avant-garde, slightly left-leaning, and socially-engaged philosophy. But in South Africa, these same men who had studied under some of the great modernists, had to come back and implement the most repressive housing policies, land policies, spatial policies.
And so for me, in South Africa, there’s a kind of dilemma at the heart of the discipline. I keep comparing it to a wound that somehow won’t close. To make matters worse, since independence in the '90s, very little ‘new’ blood — new thinking, new ways of articulating the discipline, new ways of teaching — has come into education, into the academy. There are now proportionally fewer educators and teachers of architecture at a time when the discipline is enjoying a resurgence of popularity, and I think some of that is to do with shame.
Architecture’s one of the most interesting disciplines because it’s so lateral. People think of architecture as being vertical, but it’s actually the opposite. It touches on the surface of almost everything, so counter to the way you see it, it operates at multiple levels across a wide range of things, which makes it a very diffused discipline. So in a strange way, it’s a very good discipline for talking about these sorts of things — race, identity, gender, power — but I also think it’s up to diasporic, post-colonial architects to grab that opportunity with both hands. It’s difficult, because it’s almost like patricide — you have to kill off your own father (architecture) — in order to say something else. It’s a terrible irony that in the United States, more prisons are built than new homes. When you think of the proportion of African American men who are in jail, what does that say about a society’s idea of ‘home’?
GV: What has struck you about Trinidad and Tobago's architecture?
LL: On the one hand, it’s quite schizophrenic — you drive down the street and you’ve got simultaneously California, West Africa, India — it’s a mash-up, but it’s also a very exuberant one. When I came in, it was late at night but it was a holiday, so the streets were completely empty. So we drove in from the airport and suddenly you get to the centre of town and there’s huge, loud, noisy action and I think, ‘Oh! I could be in Accra!’ And then you roll out onto the Savannah and there’s no-one on the streets. It’s very quiet, with all these stately colonial houses — Naipaul lived here and this person studied there — and you sweep across to this James Bond Hilton.
The house that Professor Lesley Lokko designed and built upon her return to Ghana. Photo courtesy Lokko, used with permission.
When Lokko left the UK and moved back to Ghana to work as a writer, the first thing she did was build a house — out of mud — a modern house, built using a traditional technique.
In Trinidad and Tobago, that traditional style of house was called “ajoupa”. Created by the Amerindians, the style was freely adapted over the centuries by the country's settlers to the point where architect John Newel Lewis called it “the prototype of Trinidad architecture”.
GV: This traditional building approach is no longer used in Trinidad and Tobago, primarily because it could not scale — and with globalisation, there is now greater consumption of foreign trends. Are we discounting our own innovativeness?
LL: It’s a complex question, but I’ll answer it a roundabout way. When I first started writing, I had a very clear idea in my head of who my audience was. My publishers had a completely different idea. I had deliberately tried to bring together two genres of writing — one was highbrow literature around questions of identity, race, interracial relationships, political histories, and the other was the blockbuster — and it was a conscious decision to take these two genres and somehow combine them. I was aware that it was probably going to take some time for that hybrid to fully emerge but I realised that my publishers had targeted the books primarily at working-class, aspirational women — secretaries, receptionists, people who wanted a bit of glamour and travel and exotic locations, but who didn’t necessarily want a complex literary read. I remember having these endless arguments with them because every book cover was a girl in a sarong walking down a beach. I hated the covers. Eventually, someone in marketing allowed me to see some of the data they used when deciding on the PR campaigns. I got a stack of paper with reams of binary code, and I said, ‘What is that?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, it’s a woman who’s got a high school education and works in a bank, goes to Ibiza on holiday and drives a Golf.’ I’d be like, ‘How do you translate that [profile] to code? But that code — and I think it’s in a sense the pre-runner of algorithms — was the rationale behind the marketing campaign. And I remember thinking, ‘The people I’m interested in probably fall in between code categories, and a marketing code cannot accommodate that.’
A detail of the cover of one of Lesley Lokko's novels. Image provided by Lokko and used with permission.
LL: So to answer your question about taste, because those sorts of things are the underlying structure in terms of how taste is formed, what you see in West Africa, for instance, is that the manufacturing plant that once made a particular product is going out of business because another product is overtaken it. But on the side of the road you’ll find an enterprising young man who takes bamboo and tries to make that product, but doesn’t have the infrastructure of a small company, [so] he’s locked into a copy relationship forever. He’s not generating anything new; all he’s doing is trying to approximate, but that approximation is also the formation of its own taste. It’s a really deep-seated relationship between the confidence of the self to generate culture and the insecurity that simply follows culture, always from somewhere else — but even in that act of following culture it’s producing something. It’s almost like self-deception — you think you’re not putting yourself into it because you are copying it, but every act of making is its own thing in a sense.
My house doesn’t look like a mud house, but I remember my father coming when I was first building and he was very confused by the fact that there was only one room — what you’d call open plan. So he says to me one time, ‘My darling, where are you going to sleep?’ I pointed to the open space behind the bookshelf, and I said, ‘It's a loft, but it’s also exactly the way people in Ghana traditionally lived — in single rooms that were joined in a compound structure.’ And my dad then started going around Accra saying, ‘You know, my daughter is reinventing the traditional Ghanian way of living!’ So it was no longer a loft or an open plan, it was now a traditional African whatever — and in the end, I think the fact that it was made out of mud became less important to people. And I do now see copies of that house — maybe not made of mud, but they are emerging — so again, something starts off as something quite innocuous and people start to copy it. I think that’s the point about providing a platform here in Trinidad for people to discuss the impact of those very small moves, because in much bigger metropoli, you have events like this…five a week kind of thing. In Ghana, to put on an event at the Institute of Architects where people come and discuss architecture is quite unusual, and so people are kind of relegated to just copying stuff off the street because there’s no platform to discuss things in any other way.
In the next instalment of this series, the conversation turns to technology, relationships and the synergies between architecture and writing.

author: Janine Mendes-Franco