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A New Digital Tool Helped Rio de Janeiro Activists Document Abuses in the Olympics · Global Voices
Abir Ghattas

Screenshot of the WITNESS website.
The Rio Olympics recently welcomed the world’s finest athletes and provided a stage for Herculean feats of physical achievement, but the event’s host city stood as a backdrop of stark inequality. From the forced eviction of the community of Vila Autódromo to give way to the Olympic Park to deplorable working conditions, myriad rights violations underlay the spectacle.
It might have been easy for these abuses to be swept under the rug as the media’s light shone on medals and pageantry, but activists harnessed the power of new technology to compile and share evidence of the cost of Rio 2016.
CrowdVoice.by is a new tool that enables activists and grassroots organizations to collaboratively curate media related to their causes. It streamlines the task of collecting and disseminating evidence, drawing in content from multiple sources for distribution across many different platforms. It encourages users to harness the power of their networks to work faster and smarter.
WITNESS, an international organization that trains citizens in the documentation of rights violations, used CrowdVoice.by to curate live streams and information shared on social media regarding the the conditions faced by residents of Rio de Janeiro for its feature “Rio 2016 Human Rights Live.” Because CrowdVoice.by employs embeds, it can be easily used in conjunction with other tools within the framework of an organization’s webpage. In the Witness feature, a CrowdVoice.by media feed is used alongside a Timeline tool from the news media innovation Knight Lab.
Another movement, Rio2036, used CrowdVoice.by to showcase background information regarding its cause. The campaign formed in opposition to proposed legislation that would freeze government spending on social services in the city. A media embed appears on the site alongside printable stickers to promote street-level awareness of the issue during the height of the Olympics, exemplifying an intersection of digital and on-the-ground activism. CrowdVoice.by allows visitors to the page to browse realtime information from multiple sources within a single space, and even contribute media directly to the stream.
Screenshot of the Rio2036 website.
Though CrowdVoice.by is only in its beta iteration, it is already seeing adoption by the technology-savvy activists of Rio de Janeiro to ensure that the issues they work to address are not eclipsed or overlooked. CrowdVoice.by and tools like it have countless applications in countless communities beyond Brazil and beyond the Olympics. Technologies tailored specifically for the needs of human rights defenders have the ability to empower citizens everywhere to tell their own stories, and use the evidence they gather to demand culpability and change.

author: Abir Ghattas


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Breaking the Siege of Aleppo · Global Voices
Leila Al Shami

“In the days of intense fighting last week, in a tragi-comic display of defiance, the people of Aleppo burned hundreds of tires, sending plumes of black smoke into the air to create their own No Fly Zone.” IMAGE: Graphic shared widely on social media.
The people of eastern Aleppo celebrated on August 6 after rebels broke through the siege that had been imposed on them by the Syrian regime and its allies since July 17. For almost a month, the areas of the city held by the revolutionaries since July 2012 had been turned into an open-air prison where some 300,000 people stockpiled food and supplies for fear of starvation.
It required a great feat of unity on the part of the rebels, with their vastly inferior arsenal, to break the siege. The democratic nationalists of the Free Syrian Army joined together with Islamist militias and, crucially, Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, which until earlier this month had been known as the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.
“It required a great feat of unity on the part of the rebels, with their vastly inferior arsenal, to break the siege.”
Syrian civil society was not generally impressed by the rebrand. Whilst Nusra has avoided the strict imposition of Islamic law in areas where it has a presence, there has been popular opposition to the group due to its attempts to undermine local civil administrative structures, and its establishment of parallel structures such as Sharia courts. Nusra has also arrested civil society activists, including journalists and local council members, and has been responsible for sectarian attacks. Indeed, revolutionaries in Idlib province—site of the revolution’s first large-scale attack on Assadist forces—have been protesting for over five months against Nusra’s refusal to submit to independent courts and calling for the release of Nusra’s detainees.
Nusra was pushed out of Aleppo in 2014 by popular pressure, but returned recently. It has clashed with other rebel groups, and its attempts to dominate institutions and the provision of services such as electricity and food supply have made the group unpopular among city residents.
But the demands of survival supersede political principles. Many democrats—who are terrified by the prospect of jihadist rule—find themselves celebrating jihadist advances. Nusra is a key component of Jaish Al Fath, the Army of Conquest, which freed the city of Idlib from the Syrian regime last year. And Jaish Al Fatah led the assault that broke the siege of Aleppo.
Residents of liberated Aleppo demonstrated in support of the counter-offensive. In the days of intense fighting last week, in a tragi-comic display of defiance, the people of Aleppo burned hundreds of tires, sending plumes of black smoke into the air to create their own No Fly Zone. The successful breaking of the siege only increases the importance of Nusra in the eyes of the local population. This is where abandonment has led.
If Aleppo had fallen, which seemed imminent in the days before the siege was broken, it wouldn’t have ended the war. But it may have signaled the death of a revolution which has already been betrayed and abandoned. A free Aleppo embodies the aspirations of the continuing but increasingly marginalized popular struggle for freedom.
“If Aleppo had fallen, which seemed imminent in the days before the siege was broken, it wouldn’t have ended the war. But it may have signaled the death of a revolution which has already been betrayed and abandoned.”
With little beyond rhetorical support from their supposed friends in the West, the people of Aleppo had pushed out the Assad dictatorship in July 2012 and pushed out Daesh (ISIS) extremists in January 2014. The liberated districts in the east ran their own affairs and struggled to keep basic services operating through their democratically elected local councils. One of the largest concentrations of active civil society groups anywhere in the country came into existence, including dozens of free media groups and emergency and relief organizations such as the ‘White Helmets’ Civil Defense Force. A group of women set up the first women-owned independent radio station, Radio Naseem, whose programming addresses human rights issues, women’s role in the revolution and the dangers posed by extremism. This is the legacy of the revolution, the embodiment of its democratic ideals and its resilience, and it is all this that is currently being bombed out of existence.
Aleppo has suffered years of artillery strikes, barrel bombs and scuds, but the current bombing is the most intense ever. Hospitals and camps for displaced people have been bombed repeatedly by the Russian or Syrian air forces. Attacks on residential areas by the regime and its allies have driven thousands from their homes. With nowhere else to go, many are now sleeping in public buildings or outdoors. Water, electricity and healthcare facilities are being deliberately targeted. These war crimes have brought essential and life saving services to the brink of collapse. Critical shortages of medical supplies and physicians leave little help for the daily wounded.
In retaliation for the rebels’ recent success, Idlib is being pounded by airstrikes, with reports of Russian jets dropping incendiary thermite bombs on civilian areas. Last night there were reports of chlorine gas attacks on rebel held Aleppo.
In such a context, regime/Russian claims of establishing ‘humanitarian corridors’ for people to flee are seen for what they are: an attempt to depopulate the opposition held area and signal that those who remain are a legitimate target for the mass slaughter now taking place. The bombs need to stop and aid desperately needs to be allowed into the city.
“In such a context, regime/Russian claims of establishing ‘humanitarian corridors’ for people to flee are seen for what they are: an attempt to depopulate the opposition held area and signal that those who remain are a legitimate target for the mass slaughter now taking place.”
The US administration, never a true ally of the popular struggle, is now pushing for greater military cooperation with Russia in the ‘fight against terrorism’. According to Russia’s definition this includes any opposition to the regime. This short-sighted policy suggests it trusts Russia to pressure the regime to end its assault on moderate rebel groups and opposition-held territory, despite Russia and the regime’s failures to abide by any agreements made relating to ceasefires or access for humanitarian aid. The perception on in the ground is that the US is collaborating with the attackers. If democratic anti-regime forces are crushed by foreign powers and sectarian Shia militias, violent extremism will only grow in their place.
The West doesn’t need to intervene militarily against the regime or Daesh. Syrian revolutionaries have been successful in defeating them in the past and they could do so again. But much stronger political and economic pressure is needed on countries propping up the regime (the main cause of the bloodshed and extremism) to end their support. Assad can’t hold ground alone and is completely dependent on foreign forces for survival (Russian airstrikes, and Iranian-backed Shia militias on the ground). The regime is desperately attempting to recruit prisoners and teachers to fight as regime loyalists try to avoid conscription or flee.
As Aleppo burned, then starved, the United States appeased Russia and Iran, turned a blind eye to Iran’s Shia jihadists, vetoed anti-aircraft weapons to the rebels and failed to give adequate support to democratic civil initiatives. Al Qaeda’s former affiliate, on the other hand, are giving their blood to save the city. The ramifications will be enormous.

source: news-globalvoices

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

author: Leila Al Shami


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In India, a Nationalistic ‘Witch Hunt’ Targets Journalists Who Exposed #BabyLift Trafficking Operation · Global Voices
Qurratulain (Annie) Zaman

Screenshot from Outlook magazine
Journalistic exposé Operation #BabyLift, a groundbreaking investigative piece about child trafficking allegedly by the Hindu organisation Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sangh (RSS) in India, was published by Outlook magazine on July 29, 2016. The 11,000-word article, which went viral, explores how Operation #BabyLift allegedly broke Indian and international laws by trafficking 31 girls — between three and 11 years of age — from Assam to Punjab and Gujarat in order to ‘Hinduise’ them.
What happened next was quite extraordinary. The journalists who broke the story have since become the target of an investigation, with an onslaught of vilification, defamation and threats being hurled against them.
A criminal complaint for inciting hate against different ethnic groups has been lodged against an independent Indian journalist, Neha Dixit, as well as Indranil Roy and Krishna Prasad, the publisher and editor of Outlook magazine. The complainants are Subhash Chandra Kayal, an assistant solicitor general of the government of India at the Gauhati High Court, and Bijon Mahajan, a spokesman for the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is a political offshoot of the right-wing RSS.
Now, instead of a follow-up on the trafficking issue, Dixit and Outlook magazine are being trolled and their patriotism and journalistic ethics are being called into question. Neha Dixit has been intimidated online and there is a fake Facebook account in her name.
Journalist Neha Dixit's fake profile on Facebook
Pictures of Dixit's husband are also being shared; he is being labelled as a Naxalite, a member of a violent guerrilla group in India.
Ok So Naxalite Sawhney is Spouse of @nehadixit123!
So Piece of SHIT Is indeed Motivated 2 Overcome Family Expenses pic.twitter.com/AjvvynSdam
— Mahaveer (@MahaveerM_) August 8, 2016
The complaint against Dixit and Outlook was lodged under Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code, whereby it is an offence to promote disharmony and enmity between different ethnic groups. This section has been used against renowned literary figures, artists and freethinkers such as Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses, which is banned in India; M.F. Hussain, a Muslim painter who liberally drew on Indian mythology and in 2006 was booked for her painting of a nude Hindu goddess; and Indologist Wendy Donegar for her critical historical work The Hindus: An Alternative History. In Donegar's case, Penguin had an out-of-court settlement, and the book, though not banned, was voluntarily recalled from India by the publisher.
The Delhi Union of Journalists and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists have both condemned this “witch hunt” against the reporters. A group of like-minded journalists, activists and academics have also issued a statement to condemn the attacks on Dixit and Outlook magazine:
Journalists are particularly vulnerable, as their investigative reports that reveal RSS organizations’ strategies to attack minorities, Hinduise tribals and created hatred between communities, are themselves targeted as ‘inciting communal hatred’.
The RSS issued a press release denying these accusations. It called the Outlook article “baseless” and said it was “defaming the organisation”. A rebuttal to Dixit's piece, also published in Outlook and entitled ‘Conjured Crime’, was written by Monika Arora, a supreme court advocate and a member of RSS:
None of these Indian and international guidelines are violated by RSS outfits. The parents have given their consent to the RSS outfits to take their children for education – then how on earth are the Juvenile Justice Act 2000 or other laws are applicable in this case?
A few days after publishing the rebuttal, the news magazine fired its editor, Krishna Prasad, sharing the news with employees through an email. Earlier, Prasad reacted to the First Information Report (FIR) lodged against him and told media watch website The Hoot:
Threats against journalists may be an occupational hazard but what we are seeing today is a more serious attempt to shoot the messenger. The country is fast hurtling down a fascist mode and this fiction of public narrative of demonizing journalists is dangerous for free speech.
There were instant reactions on Twitter:
https://t.co/xN03P0oJke
Intolerance of BJP/RSS combine. Are we on the path of Fascism as predicted by Krishna Prasad ?
— digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) August 14, 2016
The media in India is happy crawling for bullies, turning blind eye on Una protests & then staying silent on Outlook editor! #UnitedWithUna
— Gaurav Pandhi (@GauravPandhi) August 16, 2016
Veteran journalist Pamela Philipose — senior fellow with the Indian Council of Social Science Research, recently appointed public editor for news site The Wire and former director and editor-in-chief at the Women’s Feature Service — shared her perspective about the removal of Outlook's editor and the pressure on Indian media houses and journalists:
This climate of impunity and fear will lead to greater self-censorship on the part of individual journalists and enormous pressure being brought to bear on managements to clamp down on independent reportage. For instance, while it was claimed that the change of the editor-in-chief at Outlook was a decision that had already been taken, the timing of the announcement clearly indicates an anxiety on the part of the management to appease the powers-that-be.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International is also facing sedition charges in India over holding an event about Kashmir — territory in the north of the country where dozens have been killed by Indian security forces recently while protesting the death of a separatist leader. The group's India office, which is at present closed because of security concerns, was attacked by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) workers armed with petrol can bottles. ABVP is a nationalist student organisation affiliated with the RSS.
Kuldip Kumar, an Indian journalist, suggested that the country has “reached a stage where a Hindu’s nationalism is never in doubt even if he debunks the Constitution, glorifies Gandhi’s assassin and mourns India’s independence; but the nationalism of Muslims and Christians is always suspect”. In a recent article, he deconstructed the influence that the RSS is enjoying under the current BJP administration:
The RSS is enjoying political power and the BJP, its subsidiary, enjoys a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha [lower house of Indian parliament] – it is in power in as many as eight states. This power has rekindled the RSS’s dreams and aspirations, although even now it knows that refashioning India into a Hindu nation is not such an easy task.
The case of Indian secularism and free speech is not clear. According to its constitution, the country is a secular republic with freedom of expression, but the same constitution also prohibits anything that hurts religious or ethnic sensitivities. There are many journalists, artists and authors who are suffering for asking critical questions about free speech. Is the space for liberal free thinkers in India shrinking?

author: Qurratulain (Annie) Zaman


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Say Hello to Thailand’s New Constitution. And Say Hello Again to Thailand’s Military Rule. · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Thailand, Bangkok. September 24, 2006. M41 Walker Bulldogs parked within the Ministry of Defense's compound. Photo by Roger JG. CC 2.5.
Earlier this month, Thailand’s voters approved a new constitution in a nationwide referendum. Supporters of the new document, which was drafted by the military-backed government under the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), say it paves the way to the restoration of civilian rule. Critics, however, worry that the new constitution only institutionalizes Thailand's military dictatorship and its crackdown on the media.
When the army grabbed power in 2014, it assured the public that elections would be held once political and electoral reforms have been implemented. Two years later, the junta remains in power. Political demonstrations are banned, the media is heavily regulated, and activists detained by police are often subjected to “attitude-adjustment” sessions.
The NCPO urged the public to approve the draft constitution, saying it would expedite Thailand's political “normalization,” making elections possible in 2017 or 2018. Any campaigning for or against the constitution was prohibited, however, and critics say voters were deprived adequate information about the content of the document. Fearing punishment for illegally trying to “persuade” people, both journalists and scholars avoided discussing the draft constitution publicly in significant detail.
Those who expected the military to step down and recognize civilian supremacy in government will be disappointed to learn that the constitution allows the military to rule the country through various means. For example, 194 senators will be selected by the NCPO.
The infographic below, published by independent news website and Global Voices partner Prachatai, explains the various constitutional mechanisms that will allow the military to retain control of the government:
Infographic by Prachatai
The military's restrictions on the media don't appear to be going anywhere, either. The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) warns that the constitution “provides the state with potentially more power to intervene on press freedom and freedom of expression.” It added that the new constitution is a “regression” compared to the 2007 constitution, when it comes to upholding the freedom of the media.
SEAPA says sections 34, 35, 36, 41, and 60 of the new constitution all undermine free speech.
Section 34, for instance, guarantees academic freedom but also states that this right “shall not be contrary to the duties of Thai people or good morals of people and shall respect and not impede differing opinions of other persons.” According to SEAPA's analysts, the phrase “shall not impede differing opinions of other persons” is antithetical to the foundations of academic study.
Section 35, meanwhile, abandons certain media protections found in Thailand's 2007 constitution, jettisoning the right of media outlets to organize their own personnel ranks, self-regulation, and promotion of professional ethics. According to the newly adopted constitution, state-media journalists also lose guarantees of editorial independence. The 2007 constitution classified interventions by the state in the media as “misuses of power.” The new constitution does not include this language.
Infographic by the Southeast Asian Press Alliance
By all accounts, Thailand’s new constitution boosts the dominance of the military, threatening to institutionalize even further a culture of censorship and state control over the media.

author: Mong Palatino


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A Brazilian Judge Says a Photographer Has Himself to Blame for Getting Shot in the Eye by Police · Global Voices
Raphael Tsavkko Garcia

On the left, Sérgio Andrade da Silva with a glass eye. On the right, Silva with a sign that reads, “Rubber bullets blind, but won't silence”. Photo taken by Silva, free to use.
In June 2013, Brazilian photographer Sérgio Andrade da Silva lost his left eye after being shot with a rubber bullet by a military police officer while covering a street demonstration. He sued the state of São Paulo and demanded 1.2 million Brazilian reais (375,000 US dollars) in damages and a pension of 2,300 reais (720 US dollars) a month for the rest of his life, as well as coverage of all his medical expenses.
This week, his suit finally went to court — and a judge denied his request.
Massive street demonstrations flooded Brazilian cities in June 2013, with millions turning out to demand better public services. Journalist Juliana Vallone, from the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, was also shot in the eye during the protests, but unlike Silva, she made a full recovery.
Alternative website Ponte Jornalismo reproduced part of judge's Olavo Zampol Júnior's decision:
as possíveis consequências do que pudesse acontecer, surgindo desse comportamento causa excludente de responsabilidade, onde, por culpa exclusiva do autor, ao se colocar na linha de confronto entre a polícia e os manifestantes, voluntária e conscientemente assumiu o risco de ser alvejado por alguns dos grupos em confronto”.
the possible consequences of what could happen, stemming from this behavior, leads to exclusion of responsibility, where the subject by his own exclusive fault, putting himself in the line of confrontation between police and protesters, voluntarily and knowingly took the risk of being targeted by some of the opposing groups.
In other words, the judge deemed Silva guilty of losing his eye because he put himself in danger.
On social media, many Brazilians reacted to the ruling by arguing that journalists simply get no protection from police violence while covering demonstrations, and are sometimes even targeted on purpose. Brazil’s military police often act with violence, not only against journalists but also the country’s black population in favelas, where officers have murdered residents with impunity, according to human rights groups.
Silva created a petition on Change.org demanding that São Paulo's court of appeals review the judge's decision. So far it gathered more than 3,000 signatures. In the petition, Silva comments:
A decisão do juiz Olavo Zampol Júnior é mais um episódio vergonhoso e monstruoso de violência judicial contra as vítimas da Polícia Militar. É mais uma demonstração de que o Estado defende apenas seus próprios interesses – e de que esses interesses definitivamente não são os mesmos interesses da cidadania. O que fazer diante de tamanha injustiça? É difícil saber ao certo. É chocante ler um documento público escrito com tal nível de desfaçatez. Mas eu escolho resistir, e sei que tenho muitas pessoas ao meu lado.
The decision of judge Olavo Zampol Júnior is another shameful and monstrous episode of judicial violence against the victims of military police. It is a demonstration that the state only defends its own interests — and that these interests are definitely not the same interests of the citizenry. What to do in the face of such injustice? It is difficult to know. It is shocking to read a public document written with such a level of effrontery. But I choose to resist, and I know I have many people by my side.
Some online commenters compared the judge's decision to another incident of protest-related violence in which the assailants were promptly punished. In February 2014, a cameraman from a Brazilian TV station, Santiago Andrade, died after being hit by a firecracker while covering a demonstration. It was later found that the firecracker was launched by two protesters, who spent a year in jail while awaiting trial (they were released on bail last year and are expected to be found guilty and sentenced to between two and eight years in prison).
Journalist Ignacio Aronovich posted on his Facebook page:
Ignacio Aronovich posted a photo of the moment Santiago Andrade was hit by a firecracker in 2014, taken by Domingos Peixoto/AFP. Andrade died of his injuries. Screenshot from Facebook.
Na foto de Domingos Peixoto/AFP, Santiago Andrade (TV Bandeirantes) é atingido por um rojão.
Quem a justiça considerou culpada?
Quem lançou o artefato.
Em SP, no dia 13 de junho de 2013, Sérgio Silva foi atingido por uma bala de borracha.
Quem a justiça considerou culpada?
O fotógrafo.
Quem estava presente no dia 13 de Junho de 2013 na esquina da Maria Antônia com a Consolação sabe muito bem o que aconteceu ali.
Eu estava.
#culpadoporfotografar
In the photo by Domingos Peixoto/AFP, Santiago Andrade (Bandeirantes TV) is hit by a firecracker.
Who does the court consider guilty?
The people who launched the device.
Is São Paulo, on June 13, 2013, Sérgio Silva was hit by a rubber bullet.
Who does the court consider guilty?
The photographer.
Those who were present on June 13, 2013, at the intersection of Maria Antonia and Consolação streets knows very well what happened there.
I was there.
#GuiltyOfPhotographing
Davi Duarte, a professor, also commented on his Facebook page:
O Policial que mira uma bala de borracha no olho de uma pessoa, atira e o deixa cego não é nada além de um psicopata que reforça o repúdio à farda merecido pela população.
Covarde.
The police officer who aims a rubber bullet at a person's eye, shoots and leaves him blind is nothing but a psychopath who reinforces the people's rightful rejection of the uniform.
Coward.
Maycon Nunes, who is also a professor, showed his support to Silva on Facebook:
O Juiz culpa o fotografo Sérgio Silva, por estar na linha de tiro. Culparam a vítima!
Se o Sérgio Silva é culpado por exercer a sua função, por fazer o que é pago para fazer, por fotografar, fica aqui o meu manifesto!
Eu sou cúmplice
http://www.conjur.com.br/2016-ago-17/fotografo-culpado-tiro-deixou-cego-protesto-juiz?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Manifeste-se!
Um povo calado, é um povo aprisionado!
#culpadoporfotografar
The judge blames photographer Sergio Silva for being in the line of fire. They blame the victim!
If Sergio Silva is guilty for doing his job, doing what he's paid to do, for photographing, here is my manifest!
I'm an accomplice
[…]
Speak up!
A silent people are an imprisoned people!
#GuiltyOfPhotographing
“The police officer had his gun pointed to people's heads”. Photo by Alice V/Democratize, used with permission
On Twitter and Facebook, users are using the hashtag #culpadoporfotografar (guilty of photographing) to show support for Silva and to protest against the São Paulo judge's decision. NGOs such as Article 19 have also stood by the photographer. Silva will appeal the decision in higher courts.

author: Raphael Tsavkko Garcia


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A Citizen Journalist in India Took on the Local Government Over Pensions—and Won · Global Voices
VideoVolunteers

Screenshot from YouTube Video
This post originally appeared at VideoVolunteers, an award-winning international community media organization based in India. A redacted version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.
One woman’s insistence for justice has brought change for almost 3,000 people in the Indian state of Bihar. They received their pension arrears by the authorities, after a Video Volunteers community correspondent recorded the testimonies of the victims, showed them authorities and pursued the case for months.
India has a number of centrally sponsored national social assistance schemes, which provide financial assistance to the elderly, widows and persons with disabilities in the form of social pensions. India's social security system is woefully inadequate compared to other countries. For example, 16.5 million senior persons (65 years and above) below the poverty line receive a pension as low as 400 rupees (US $6 only) per person per month. The benefit is small, and corruption and negligence prevent many from receiving them on time.
One year ago, community correspondent Tanju Devi made a video on the year-long pension arrears of the disabled, widows and senior citizens in Gaunaha, West Champaram district of the state of Bihar in eastern India.
Even after making repeated pleas to the authorities, the citizens of Gaunaha still hadn't received their rightful pension. This is when Bhuri Devi, Tanju’s neighbour and a physically challenged person, approached Tanju with the problem and urged her to take action for the issue.
According to Tanju:
When Bhuri approached me with this problem, I could relate to her. I have a physically challenged husband and an aging mother-in-law. I know how important are a few hundred rupees in an impoverished person’s life. It means food, medicine and security.
With a resolve to bring justice to all, Tanju set forth to show her community how persistence and harmony can bring accountability and change to the authorities. She recorded video testimonies of several affected residents and met with the Gaunaha Block Development Officer (BDO), bringing along with her the video and a requisition letter for the pensions:
Tanju Devi is a Video Volunteers correspondent from West Champaran, Bihar, India.
Initially, the BDO gave assurances but there was no action from the department. But I was resolved to get the pensioner’s arrears cleared. I kept increasing the pressure on the BDO – sometimes with a women’s group, sometimes alone and sometimes by showing her pictures of the village meeting I had organised.
Finally, after five months of relentless trying and community pressure, the BDO was forced into action, assigning officers to conduct an investigation into the local government’s actions and clearing the arrears.
On 14 May 2016, as many as 3,000 beneficiaries were called to a community gathering in Gaunaha and were given their due arrears. “I shall buy ration and medicines with this money,” Bhuri, Tanju’s neighbour, said.
While Bhuri felt relieved that her pension had started once again, it's necessary to ask how a disability pension of 300 rupees (US $4.50) per month covers the cost of the most basic needs such as health, shelter, electricity, clothing and so on. The question remains the same for the pension of 400 rupees (US $6) for widows and elderly people.
For example, the failure of pension schemes to support the survival of those in need is demonstrated by the ‘revised’ old-age pension scheme. In 2008, the government of India raised the old-age pension from 300 to 400 rupees. However, its inability to cover the most basic needs is evident by data from the 2011 census. According to the data, more than 11.7 million people over the age of 70 are still working in India, with a majority of them as full-time employees. Of these, 2.5 million people are over the age of 80, the report adds.

author: VideoVolunteers


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Peruvian Pokémon Go Players Eager to Cover More Ground Are Hiring Motorcycle Taxi Drivers · Global Voices
Gabriela García Calderón Orbe

Pokémon Go, the trendy mobile game that sent Nintendo's stock values on a rollercoaster ride lately, is pumping money into another industry in the Peruvian Amazon, where motorcycle taxi drivers in Iquitos, the capital city of the Loreto region, have seen a spike in demand, as the game's players hire drivers to move around town more efficiently. For eight to twelve soles (between $2.50 and $3.60) an hour, a Pokémon hunter can hire a typical three-wheel ride to drive them around the streets of Iquitos, so they can catch the elusive virtual creatures.
en #Iquitos ►►https://t.co/rv3dpzavBO pic.twitter.com/JfyyaKBTDp
— Akaza Akari (@Akkarinnnnnnn) 7 de agosto de 2016
In Iquitos.
#MototaxistasGo en iquitos son el éxito de la creatividad peruana. Mis respetos.#PokeMongo
— mariotiago (@mario_tiago) August 7, 2016
Motorcycle taxi drivers in Iquitos are the peak of Peruvian creativity. I pay my respect to them. [I am] #PokeDumb.
@MiguelChirinosx no es floro, https://t.co/mktT23lKjf
— Neiser (@neiser1208) 8 de agosto de 2016
This is not floro.
(In colloquial Peruvian speech, floro means trying to convince someone using lies or exaggerating reality.)
In a text republished by several different media outlets, a driver named Luis López explained how the Association of Motor Taxi Drivers of Iquitos has embraced the trend:
Nosotros brindamos el servicio y el usuario con su celular nos pide que vayamos por el centro de Iquitos, donde existen mayor aglomeración de pokemones y pokeparadas. Los pokemones más raros están en avenidas fuera del centro, entonces nosotros conducimos, sin distraernos y el usuario puede atraparlos.
We provide the service and the user, with their mobile phone, asks us to drive around Iquitos downtown, where most Pokémons and pokéstops are located. The rarest Pokémons are found in avenues outside downtown, though, so we drive without distractions while the user catches them.
López also said the association is working in coordination with the police to avoid traffic collisions, and pointed out that some younger players have risked their lives while playing, out of eagerness for the game. Police have also stepped up patrolling efforts to protect players from mobile-phone thieves.
Unfortunately, despite these efforts, the city has seen an increase in traffic collisions:
En las últimas horas se ha registrado un incremento de accidentes de tránsito relacionados a Pokémon Go en la ciudad, según reveló la policía de Iquitos. El General PNP Julio Mercado, jefe policial del Oriente, dio a conocer que los peatones que vienen jugando se distraen constantemente en las vías llenas de vehículos.
Además, muchos de los usuarios son víctimas de accidentes pues utilizan motocicletas para atrapar a las criaturas y otros son blanco de malhechores que les arrebatan sus celulares.
In the past few hours, the number of Pokémon-Go-related traffic collisions in the city has increased, according to Iquitos police. General of Peruvian National Police of the East, Julio Mercado, said that pedestrians playing [the game] are constantly distracted in the roads full of vehicles.
Also, many users become involved in accidents while driving motorcycles to catch the creatures and others have become targets for wrongdoers who take their mobile phones.
Drivers aren't limiting themselves to motorcycle taxis, however, and some services are making boats available to players who want to find Pokémon on the Amazon river.
A 20 soles la hora, no más. #PokemonGo #Iquitos pic.twitter.com/NYMX7bN0AR
— Victor Mantilla (@yourjournalist) August 9, 2016
20 soles ($6.00) per hour. That's it.
Iquitos, incidentally, isn't the only city offering Pokémon-Go-related services. In Fortaleza, the Brazilian state capital of Ceará, there are similar reports of motorcycle taxi drivers earning extra money thanks to the search for Pokémons.
Thirty-two-year-old driver Denis Paz, for instance, used Facebook to announce that he is making his vehicle available to “Pokemaniacs,” so they can visit various spots around the city:
Segundo entrevista ao Estado, em apenas 24 horas ele recebeu mais de 50 pedidos para agendar “tours” através da cidade. “Inicialmente quero cobrar R$ 25 por hora”, disse. “Acho que pode ser um negócio promissor.”
According to an interview with [the Paulista news outlet] Estado, in only 24 hours [Denis] got over 50 requests to reserve “tours” all around the city. “At first, I'd like to charge R$25 (about $7.80 in US dollars) per hour,” he noted. “I think this can be a promising business.”
On Twitter, the new industry is also getting some notice:
Mototaxistas em Fortaleza aproveitam febre do Pokemon Go para realizar corridas extras https://t.co/dSlfMbNlK8
— Ceará News 7 (@cearanews7) 5 de agosto de 2016
Motorcycle taxi drivers in Fortaleza take advantage of Pokémon-Go fever to score some extra rides.
It remains to been seen if these are isolated cases when it comes to Pokémon Go boosting local transport markets, or perhaps this is a sign of things to come elsewhere, as the Japanese game and augmented reality in general grow more mainstream.

author: Gabriela García Calderón Orbe


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Philippine Sugar Farmers Facing Another ’Dead Season’ Turn to Government for Help · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

A farmland in Negros. Photo courtesy of UMA Pilipinas.
Tiempo Muerto, or “The Dead Season,” visits sugar plantations across the Philippines, when many farmers struggle with hunger and deprivation because there’s no work during this off-milling period of the year. The season can be so brutal on farmers that more than a quarter of a million people—a whopping 385,000 sugar workers, known as “sakada”—are affected on Negros Island alone.
Despite the passage of numerous land-reform laws mandating the distribution of lands to farmers, many of the haciendas (plantations) in Negros have remained intact and in the hands of politically powerful family dynasties.
Farmers in these lands are given work during planting and harvesting time, but they have no income during off-milling season. Many struggle to find alternative work, but there are few other employment opportunities on the island. Peasant leader Danilo Ramos explains why the season is so traumatic for farmers:
Sugar workers bear the brunt of Tiempo Muerto every year. They try to look for other modes of decent employment or livelihood but these are obviously scarce because Negros—in this day and age—is still dominated by a decrepit monocrop industry and by centuries-old feudal oppression.
Carabao farming symbolizes the backward agrarian system in the Philippines. Photo courtesy of UMA Pilipinas.
A farming village in Negros during Tiempo Muerto. Photo courtesy of UMA Pilipinas.
Government statistics show that 30.5 percent of families in Negros Occidental (the island's western side) live in poverty, while the figure jumps to 46.6 percent of families in Negros Oriental (the eastern side).
Since early August, farmers across Negros have staged protests in the province's capital, demanding the immediate release of disaster funds and other forms of assistance allotted by the national government.
One of those who joined the protests was Nanay Lani, who summarized how many families are plagued by debt burdens during Tiempo Muerto.
Now it’s Tiempo Muerto and work is scarce. Even if we get some work, we no longer take home any cash. We even incur so much debt during this tiggulutom (season of hunger).
Farmers hold a protest in front of a government agency to demand the release of disaster funds. Photo courtesy of UMA Pilipinas.
Protesting farmers tear up their pay slips, showing the meager salary they receive by working in the sugar plantations. Photo courtesy of UMA Pilipinas.
The disaster in Negros has been multiplied by an El Nino—an extreme drought—that hit the island earlier this year.
Further exacerbating some farmers’ problems is the government's campaign to evict some farmers in Negros. In the town of Murcia, there have even been violent clashes between resisting farmers and police and soldiers.
Police and soldiers are seen ordering some farmers to vacate a property being claimed by the provincial government. Photo courtesy of UMA Pilipinas.
The video below features an interview with a farmer who explains the impact of poverty and militarization in his village:
At a protest staged in the provincial capitol, Negros farmers urged the country’s new president to implement land reform and extend assistance to farmers affected by Tiempo Muerto.


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Put Down the Marvel and DC, Kids: Russia Just Bought You a Patriotic Comic Book. · Global Voices
Kevin Rothrock

A battle for the hearts and minds of Russia's comic-book-consuming youth. Image by Kevin Rothrock.
Timur Amirkhanov, a young man living in Siberia, is the proud recipient of a new 200,000-ruble ($3,100) grant from Rosmolodezh, the Russian federal government's agency for youth affairs. Amirkhanov participated in Rosmolodezh's educational forum “Terra Scientia,” where his proposal to create a “patriotic” comic book was a big hit.
According to Amirkhanov's Vkontakte page, the comic book, titled “Time of Heroes,” is part of another project called “Honorable Choice”—a “military-sports” club for children that pits teams of youngsters against one another in competitions that test “tactical” skills, a knowledge of the armed services, and general physical fitness. The winners of a competition scheduled for this fall will win a free trip to Russia's naval base in Crimea.
A “prototype” for the heroines of Russia's new subsidized patriotic comic book. Photo: Vkontakte
Amirkhanov, who graduated from the Tver State Agricultural Academy last year with a degree in mechanics and technology, says the comic book represents a “new cultural trend in the development of military-patriotic education in Russia.” On Vkontakte, he writes that the project will make it possible to “speak with children in their language and also convey to them important and useful information.” Amirkhanov also lists three “primary goals” for the “Time of Heroes”: creating alternatives to foreign superheroes, increasing incentives for teenagers to become active in sports, and raising basic levels of knowledge about military service.
There are no drafts available showing what to expect from “Time of Heroes,” but Amirkhanov has published nine photos that he describes as “prototypes” for the heroes to be featured in the final product. There are six images of serious, large men aiming their rifles in different directions, and three pictures of attractive women posing seductively with guns.
Eighty-four people have written on Amirkhanov's page to say that they want a copy of the comic book, when it's published.

author: Kevin Rothrock


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Tremors Hit Southern Peru, Leaving Thousands Without a Home · Global Voices
Juan Arellano

Photo: Cross with geraniums in Malata, Tapay District. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.
A 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit southern Peru on Sunday, August 14. The quake came at night, centered in the village of Chivay, Caylloma province, in the region of Arequipa. Four people were killed in the disaster, and the number of locals affected is much larger.
Chivay, nestled in the Colca Valley, which is a well-known tourist destination, endured more than 60 aftershocks of varying intensity in the hours that followed the initial earthquake.
Sismo en #Arequipa: nueva réplica de 3,4 grados en Chivay https://t.co/8IMxKyVssP pic.twitter.com/yy2uniA8Vj
— Sociedad El Comercio (@sociedad_ECpe) August 15, 2016
Earthquake in #Arequipa: new magnitude 3.4 aftershock in Chivay
The epicenter would have been very close to Maca, a settlement that has already suffered previous earthquakes, as it is located between geological fault lines on muddy terrain:
El epicentro fue en Maca, un pueblo artesano en plena falla, que ya se estaba hundiendo y que tuvo algún intento (fallido) de reubicarse.
— Diana Chávez (@dchavezd) August 15, 2016
The epicenter was in Maca, an artisan village on fault lines, which still is sinking and had made an (failed) attempt to relocate.
In Caylloma, the earthquake hit during the celebrations of the Assumption of Mary, one of the most important of the region. The Christian site Aleteia describes how those who were out of their houses felt they were saved for being outside during the earthquake:
Los pobladores de Chivay agradecieron en todo momento a su patrona por haberlos mantenido fuera de sus casas [Durante el terremoto] Horas antes de iniciarse el movimiento telúrico […] la fiesta popular con música y bailes al aire libre estuvo dispuesta… [Para algunos] resulta sorprendente cómo los habitantes dejaron de pensar, por unos minutos, en el estado en que se encontraban sus viviendas, para expresar su fe a través de la danza.
Chivay's villagers thanked their patron for keeping them out of their houses [during the earthquake]. Hours before the telluric movement […] celebrations with music and dances were out in the open… [For some] it was surprising to see how the villagers stopped thinking about the state of their homes for some minutes, so they could express their faith through dancing.
According to social media, other surrounding villages, like Yanque and Ichupampa, suffered great damage to their infrastructure, as well.
Ya son 3 réplicas asociadas al sismo en el Valle del Colca todos superficiales. Yanque totalmente destruido. pic.twitter.com/njZwhqPrSX
— Patricio Valderrama (@patriciov) August 15, 2016
Already there have been three aftershocks associated with the earthquake in the Colca Valley all superficial. Yanque is totally destroyed
Distrito de Yanque es el más afectado por sismo en Caylloma: Arequipa https://t.co/E96M6dtNnipic.twitter.com/8RW0ECCmSC
— CONTROVERSIA (@CONTROVERSIAA) August 15, 2016
The district of Yanque is the most affected by the earthquake in Caylloma: Arequipa
@VeroLinaresC iglesia de ichupampa caylloma Arequipa pic.twitter.com/VNT45gSdIX
— elvis ccama (@elvishamil) August 15, 2016
Church of ichupampa caylloma Arequipa
Ichupampa nos necesita.
158 casas destruidas
Más de 600 damnificados
Las temperaturas están bajo 0 en la noche…. https://t.co/StWgaJj1ve
— Zoe P. Massey (@ZoePix) August 16, 2016
Ichupampa needs us.
158 houses destroyed
More than 600 victims.
The temperatures are below freezing at night….
To help those who were affected, the government activated humanitarian aid programs that start assisting communities in need:
En estos instantes llega primer camión de ayuda humanitaria a Yanque desde la Ciudad de Arequipa #JuntosPorCaylloma pic.twitter.com/2aB1eyGYcI
— ADRA Perú (@adraperu) August 23, 2016
Right now, the first truck of humanitarian aid is arriving at Yanque from the city of Arequipa
Many vital roads were closed thanks to landslides caused by the quakes. Water and food are scarce and the access to the towns is difficult. The growing number of the affected can be translated in people sleeping in the open, under freezing temperatures; and also families standing helpless next to the remains of their homes, waiting impatiently for aid.
The planned reconstruction of the towns that were destroyed is scheduled to get underway by the end of this year. This should include 693 of the houses that collapsed and 1,358 of those declared inhabitable. Also, since the affected towns are home to a considerable amount of the colonial-era patrimony in the Colca Valley, the reconstruction is expected to respect these cultural landmarks as well as the region's natural landscape.

author: Juan Arellano


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Where’s the Party At? Trinidadian Developers Created an App for That! · Global Voices
Atiba Rogers

Trinidadian software developers Andel Husbands and Jonathan Agarrat in New York. Photo used with permission.
From a country widely known for its “feteing” (partying) and “liming” (hanging out) comes an app that points partygoers in the direction of the action. Childhood friends Jonathan Agarrat and Andel Husbands, both 21, developed — and then launched this past June — the WhereDPump app, taking partying and technology to another level.
With Carnival 2017 fast approaching, Trinidad and Tobago's party enthusiasts will no longer have to search for hip events by scouring through social media or hearing about them by word of mouth. The app gives party-promoters the chance to list their events, collecting in a single space entertainment options for club hoppers.
Global Voices spoke to the creators of WhereDPump, and learned more about the new service.
The app's home screen, showcasing the different events.
Global Voices (GV): What inspired you to create the app? What need do you think it fulfills?
Andel Husbands (AH) and Jonathan Agarrat (JA): Our love for partying! We found it strange that a lot of businesses in Trinidad still do many things manually and on paper. We thought that it required too much effort to find out what each club is doing tonight, who’s listing, what’s the cover charge, are there any drink specials and how many people are going? With that in mind, we decided to solve those problems using technology.
GV: Was it a completely original idea or are there apps on the market similar to yours?
JA: There are similar apps but they aren’t the same. Let me explain: Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter — they are all blogs at the end of the day so they are similar — but are they the same? No, right? There are other events apps: not sure if there’s any app that only deals with parties, but that’s what we do.
What I am sure of is that no other app allows you to get listed for clubs, message committee members for tickets and earn points which can be redeemed for complimentary party tickets. That’s original.
Upon selecting an event, you can see more details about it and — if offered — even list yourself as an attendee right from this screen!
GV: What has been the response since the launch of WhereDPump on iOS, and did anything surprise you?
AH: The response has been terrific. We actually weren’t surprised, as a lot of time and effort went into ensuring we were building something people would find useful and enjoy using. What was surprising though, is the amount of people asking for it to be available in places like New York and Miami.
GV: What kind of impact or difference are you hoping to make with this app?
AH & JA: We hope to set a standard for developing in Trinidad and inspire other developers to execute their ideas. Additionally, we hope we can create an interest in students across the island to learn computer science and really take Trinidad forward with technology. We have a lot of brilliant minds.
GV: What's next for WhereDPump? Any exciting upcoming events?
JA: Our #1 question, ‘What’s next?’ We’ll never actually say. There’s a lot still to be done and as the needs of users change, so will the app. Just remember to always keep your app up to date to enjoy our latest features.
GV: How did you get into coding and did websites like Codecademy help to sharpen your skills?
AH & JA: We’re both self-taught. The funny thing is, to build a simple website all you need is a word editor. So we’d just read the documentation for HTML (a markup language for coding websites) and play around in a word editor. Codecademy wasn’t what it is today. It was a bit too beginner for us when we discovered it. One of the best ways to learn development is to look at existing code and try to understand it and/or manipulate it. In our early development stages, it was a lot of copying and pasting code from existing websites. We eventually found out how it worked.
GV: What life or entrepreneurial skills does coding help to nurture? What would young people gain from learning the skill, and would you consider setting up coding programmes for youth in Trinidad and Tobago?
JA: Steve Jobs already said it best, so I’ll just quote him. ‘Everyone in this country should learn to program a computer because it teaches you how to think.’ There’s really no better way to put it. At a young age you’re less likely to fear failure; you’re more interested in trying than failing so young people coding is generally where we see really innovative solutions to problems. We actually started setting up a coding programme for our Alma Mater this July/August vacation. However, due to some complications, we were unable to run the programme but we’ll be up and running soon.
This is the users’ profile. Here they see their points and manage their lists and tickets if they are a seller or committee member.
GV: Is there life beyond the app? What should consumers look out for in the future?
AH: Consumers drive the app, so as long as they voice their problems or opinions, they can expect to see solutions.
JA: Also, in addition to all we have in store for WhereDPump, we have many other ideas we’re waiting to execute.
GV: How has being in this business together affected your friendship?
JA: We’ve been friends for 17 years, so not much has changed. We both bring a lot to the table. The thing with running a company and having two people able to make decisions is to have mutual respect and not to compete with each other. What’s fortunate for us is that’s never the case, as our skills compliment each other.
GV: What are your other professional interests? Do you see yourselves as app creators or inventors?
AH & JA We’d both like to be somewhere to the front — if not at the front — of technology in the Caribbean. We plan to grow a tech company in Trinidad and Tobago.
AH: I’d also like to build my skills more in various areas of computer science, mainly web design, app development and graphic work.
JA: I plan to build software focused on the educational system in the Caribbean and also work on medical devices.

author: Atiba Rogers


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Activists and Government Divided Inside and Outside of Honduras About the “Berta Cáceres” Law · Global Voices
Lully

Mural honoring Berta Cáceres in Tegucigalpa. Public Domain image.
US lawmakers have proposed new legislation meant to pressure the Honduran government into doing more to find and prosecute those behind a slew of assassinations of prominent environmental leaders in the country. Named after an indigenous leader murdered earlier this year, the “Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act” (HR5474) was brought before the US Congress on June 15 by five Democrats.
The proposal has become a growing source of international controversy.
Lawmakers are asking Washington to “suspend US aid to Honduran police and military until human rights violations by security forces cease and those responsible for of such crimes are brought to justice.” The objective of the law is to weaken government security forces and paramilitaries, who have frequently been implicated in the human-rights violations of environmental activists, union leaders, journalists, lawyers, activists, Afro-indigenous community members, farmers, LGBTI activists, and people who criticize the government.
According to the proposed legislation, the majority of these abuses go unpunished. The law would also cease all US aid for arms acquisitions and jeopardize the hundreds of millions of dollars now earmarked for Honduras in the Northern Triangle’s Alliance for Prosperity Plan.
Under this proposal, aid would be suspended until certain conditions are met, including a complete investigation of Berta Cáceres’ assassination and the killings of several other activists and small farmers associated with the struggle for land in Honduras. Only a future investigation by US State Department would be able to determine when to end the sanctions.
Hank Johnson, one of the congressmen pushing the initiative, shared his reasons for supporting the law:
We provide millions of dollars in security assistance to Honduras every year but these same forces have been found to attack and kill environmental, labor and human rights activists like Cáceres without any effective response from the Honduran authorities […] It’s time for our government to send a stronger message by leveraging security assistance and multilateral loans in order to put real and lasting pressure on the Honduran government to protect its activists and pursue those responsible for these outrageous crimes.
The initiative is designed to grab the Honduran government's attention and alert the international community. Some European entities, in fact,such as the Dutch Development Fund (FMO), have already decided to abandon financial-support projects in Honduras:
FMO está consternado a raíz de la noticia que Nelson García, otro miembro del COPINH, ha sido asesinado en Honduras.  Después de la reciente muerte violenta de Berta Cáceres, hemos solicitado al gobierno hondureño hacer todo dentro de su poder para detener la continua violencia y asesinatos que se viven en el país.
FMO is concerned about the news that Nelson Garcia, another member of COPINH, has been assassinated in Honduras. After the recent violent death of Berta Cáceres, we have asked that the Honduran government do everything in its power to stop the violence and assassinations that are happening in the country.
The Honduran government has criticized the US draft law, warning that it will damage bilateral relations with the United States. President Juan Orlando Hernández, complaining that the legislation unfairly casts Honduras in a negative light, recently traveled to Washington, DC, to reaffirm ties with the US.
According to Tomás Zambrano, a member of the Honduran Security Commision, the Berta Cáceres law will weaken the fight against drug trafficking.
And Zambrano isn't the only one who fears the law's unintended consequences. The website Critics of the Hidden Truth has written about other potential dangers of the US law:
Mientras esta Ley se debate, los criminales se están re armando y preparan de nuevo sus planes de contingencia para abrir nuevas rutas por donde puedan maniobrar y continuar inundando de droga un mercado altamente consumidor, mientras en el camino van quedando miles de muertos en un fuego cruzado.
While this law is being debated, criminals are rearming themselves and again they are preparing their contingency plans to open new routes where they can maneuver and continue inundating a high consumption market, while in the meantime leaving thousands of deaths in the crossfire.
Many social-justice activists have embraced the proposal US law. Laura Zúñiga, one of Berta Cáceres’ daughters, has met with fellow activists in the United States to discuss the initiative. Julio Ricardo Varela shared a video from a demonstration in Philadelphia where Zúñiga called on Americans to support the proposal:
A #BertaCaceres rally in Philly. This is Berta's daughter speaking. #DNCinPHL pic.twitter.com/vgLhlo5MnC
— Julio Ricardo Varela (@julito77) July 25, 2016
[En América Latina, hoy, están] pudriendo las montañas, envenenando los ríos y saqueando nuestros bosques para sostener el consumo de los EEUU […] Para sostener ese consumo y para poder despojar a los territorios, se necesita la fuerza de la violencia; y la fuerza de la violencia en nuestros países. [Esta violencia] está representada por los militares y policías. Entonces estamos acá para pedir, para exigir, que se corten inmediatamente los fondos y las ayudas a los militares y policías que nos están matando. Estamos poniendo nuestros cuerpos ¡Estamos poniendo nuestras vidas!
[In Latin America, today, they are] destroying mountains, poisoning rivers, and razing our forests to support consumption in the United States. […] To support this consumption and to clean out territories, violence is needed; and the violence is in our countries. [This violence] is represented by the police and the military. So we are here to ask—to demand—that aid be immediately cut for the military and the police who are killing us. Our bodies are being taken! Our lives are being taken!
While the legislation doesn't appear to be headed for adoption anytime soon, support among environmental activists seems to be rising. Also growing are the complexities of Honduras’ problems with drug trafficking, public safety, and the often exploitative role played by large multinational corporations.

author: Lully


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Ahmad Abughaush, Jordanian Gold Medalist, and the Erasure of Palestinian Identity · Global Voices
Guest Contributor

Ahmad Abughaush kisses the gold medal he won for Jordan in the 2016 Olympics in RioTaekwondo PHOTO: Salem Khamis (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons
By Huda Ziade
When taekwondo athlete Ahmad Abughaush clinched the first ever gold medal for Jordan in the recently concluded Olympics in Rio, Jordanians, Arabs, and the world erupted in joy to celebrate the accomplishment and his brilliant performance. But or many Jordanian-Palestinians like myself, the initial burst of joy was followed by a bitter-sweet aftertaste. Most of us didn’t know Abughaush before his win, but for Arabs, it didn't take more than his last name for us to know his story. After all, it’s on our last names that we are constantly being judged.
As Jordanian and global media shared the news of Abughaush’s win, they neglected to mention his Palestinian roots or the fact that he was the son of Palestinian refugees. I felt this was an active erasure of Abugaush’s Palestinian identity, but the full impact didn’t really hit me till I saw how Israeli media reported it. “His family decamped for Jordan shortly after the birth, but a number of relatives still live in the picturesque town, famed for its hummus restaurants.”
“Decamped.”
The reality is that the Abugaush family were forcefully expelled from their village on two occasions: first, when they destroyed Saeed Abugaush’s homestead in April 1948; and then again, when the Abugaush family fled, along with thousands of other Palestinian families, in the aftermath of the Deir Yassin Massacre, what Palestinians now call now the Nakbeh (“Catastrophe”). In the years after the Nakbeh, as many members of the Abugaush family tried to return to their hometown, they were killed by the Israeli army as “infiltrators”.
Palestinian refugees leaving Galilee during the period of the Nakba in 1948. PHOTO: Public Domain.
In Jordan, the context is slightly different, but the erasure is the same. The Nakbeh in 1948 forced many Palestinians to move to Jordan, as well as the West Bank, which was annexed by Jordan after the war. This was when many Palestinians were naturalised and given Jordanian citizenship. After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, another wave of Palestinians was forced further into Jordan.
In July 1988, Jordan unilaterally surrendered its claim to the West Bank, a decision which opened the door for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation to become the sole representative of the Palestinian people. For Jordanian-Palestinians, it meant that we could become stateless people overnight.
The mandatory visits to the Jordanian Department of Followup and Inspection became a nightmare for Palestinians living in the country. The Department was established under the Ministry of Interior and tasked with categorising West Bank citizens as separate from Jordanian citizens. How it did so was opaque, and split many families apart. Thousands of Jordanian citizens were stripped of their national identification numbers and were issued temporary passports instead.
Identification Card of Ahmad Said, a Palestinian refugee. PHOTO: mickyx09 (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons
So while many of us Jordanian-Palestinians love the country where we grew up, Jordan doesn’t necessarily love us back. We navigate this complex identity as if we are walking on hot coals, getting burned whatever direction we take.
Being Palestinian in Jordan is about facing systematic discrimination. It’s knowing that while your accomplishments belong to the collective, your failings are your own. As a Palestinian, you do not truly belong; but you have nowhere else to go because you are Jordanian. You are an incomplete citizen and a permanent refugee. As people celebrate Scottish football fans carrying Palestinian flags in a stadium, we Jordanian-Palestinians are prohibited from carrying Palestinian flags in the open in the country where we live. We celebrate our national identity in private and are excluded when other Jordanians celebrate theirs—which should also be ours.
But we don’t know any other way but to be who we are. Being Palestinian is about remembering the place we came from, the place to which we are not allowed to return. Being Jordanian for us is about where the place where we’ve grown up, our friends and family, and the life we’ve built together here.
So forgive me if I feel a bit incredulous towards the nationalistic adulation showered on Ahmad Abughaush, particularly when it comes from the same people that who make fun of Gulf Olympic teams from the Gulf for “buying” athletes from other countries to compete for them. After all, as fans of the Wehdat refugee camp football club know, our Palestinian identity, and the fact that we are naturalised and not native Jordanians, is always used against us, and constantly pitted against an incomplete, exclusionary version of Jordanian identity. It must be convenient to be able to erase and rearrange the identities of people as you wish.
People like me know that being Jordanian and being Palestinian are not incompatible, because we are in fact both. Either by choice or because of external forces, we were part of this country from the start, working hard, like all Jordanians, to build it into what it is today. We believe in a Jordanian identity that includes us and empowers our struggle for national liberation, not one that erases us. It’s unfair that we should have to hide our Palestinian identify to serve an agenda that excludes us.
When Jordanian-Palestinians succeed, we want to be able to celebrate our whole identity, and most importantly, our story. That starts by celebrating Ahmad Abughaush, the Jordanian-Palestinian who fought his way up to the top of the podium.

author: Guest Contributor


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American University of Afghanistan Besieged in Suspected Militant Attack · Global Voices
Akhal-Tech Collective

The American University of Afghanistan in Kabul plays an important role in the country's higher education system. Wikipedia image.
Students at the American University of Afghanistan in the country's capital Kabul sent out heartbreaking tweets August 24 amid an armed attack on their campus by unknown assailants.
Police said August 25 at least 12 were killed in the attack — seven students, three policemen and two security guards — which was perpetrated by at least two gunmen.
The day before, police had confirmed only one death and attributed the attack to a lone shooter. Unknown numbers are hospitalised following an attack that took place in the evening.
#AUAF under attack. I along with my friends escaped and several other of of my friends and professors trapped inside.
— Ahmad Mukhtar (@AhMukhtar) August 24, 2016
Younger brother, a #AUAF student, stuck inside campus. Some students escaped via the adjacent UN office through backdoor. #AUAFAttack
— Javid Ahmad (@ahmadjavid) August 24, 2016
Students trapped inside @AUAfghanistan seeking help during the attack. Many have escaped reportedly. #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/Pe73oDuI9B
— Malali Bashir (@MalaliBashir) August 24, 2016
Confirmation that all students had been safely evacuated came later.
All #AUAF students are now safely evacuated.
— Hadi Marifat (@HMarifat) August 24, 2016
The attack comes after the abduction of two of the university's teachers, an Australian and American, in central Kabul earlier in the month.
The teachers’ whereabouts are still unknown.
The university is widely regarded as Afghanistan's finest while also being a glaring symbol of American ‘soft power’ in a country rocked by a strengthening insurgency that neither the government nor its international partners appear to have an answer to.

author: Akhal-Tech Collective


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An Ethiopian Runner Makes a Brave Gesture of Anti-Government Protest at the Olympic Finish Line · Global Voices
Ndesanjo Macha

Students at Haromaya University displaying the anti-government gesture in December 2015. Photo shared widely on social media.
Defying Olympic rules and risking the wrath of his country's government, Ethiopian runner Feyisa Lilesa made a political gesture in support of the Oromo people after competing in a marathon during the last weekend of the Olympic Games in Brazil.
Lilesa, who won a silver medal, crossed his arms to make an “X” at the finish line and during medal presentation. The sign is used by the Oromo people and their supporters in their protests against their repression by the Ethiopian government.
The International Olympic Committee, however, bans political protests. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for example, two black athletes from the United States, were famously expelled after they did a black power salute in the 1968 Games.
Lilesa, who told reporters that if he returns to Ethiopia he would be killed, plans to seek asylum in Brazil, the US or Kenya.
The Oromo people have been protesting since November 2015. The protest in Oromia, Ethiopia's largest administrative region, started when students asked the government to stop its plan to expand the capital city Addis Ababa into Oromia's surrounding farm lands. The students believe that the controversial expansion would result in mass evictions of farmers mostly from the Oromo ethnic group.
The government argued the plan was meant only to facilitate the development of infrastructure such as transportation, utilities, and recreation centers.
Although the government has scrapped the plan to expand Addis Ababa, the protesters are demanding action on the greater questions of self-rule, freedom and identity. For example, the students want Oromo to be made a federal language. Oromo, the language of the Oromo people, is the most widely spoken language in Ethiopia and the fourth largest African language. However, it is not the working language of the federal government.
Both Oromia and Amhara regions are challenging the dominance of the Tigray ethnic group in Ethiopia's politics. The Tigray make up 6% of the population, but have an overwhelming hold on power in the country, while the Oromos, who are the country's largest ethnic group, representing 34%, and the Amharas at 27% have very little representation in key government positions.
Dissent, both physical and virtual, is not tolerated in Ethiopia. Early this month, security forces used live bullets to disperse protesters in Oromoa and Amhara, another administrative region, killing about 100 protesters, according to news sites and social media reports.
On April 25, 2014, nine bloggers and journalists were arrested in Ethiopia on accusations of “inciting public disorder via social media” and “receiving support from a foreign government.” The detainees had all worked with Zone9, a collective blog that fostered political debate and discussion.
On July 8 and 9, 2015 several days prior to Barack Obama's historic visit to the country, five of the nine writers were released from Kilinto Prison in Addis Ababa. On October 16, 2015, the remaining four bloggers — Befeqadu Hailu, Natnael Feleke, Atnaf Berhane and Abel Wabela — were acquitted of terrorism charges. Three of the four bloggers were released on October 19, and Befeqadu Hailu was released on bail on October 21, pending a separate charge of incitement to violence.
And in May 2016, the Ethiopian Federal High Court sentenced young Ethiopian blogger and activist Zelalem Workagegnehu to five years and four months in prison for “supporting terror” because of an alleged link to Ginbot 7 Movement, a pro-democracy political party labelled a “terrorist organisation” by the Ethiopian government in 2010. Zelalem is a human rights advocate and a scholar who regularly contributed to the diaspora-run website DeBirhan.
After Lilesa made headlines with his gesture, one Facebook user observed that the Olympics have exposed two things about the state of politics in Ethiopia: repression and favouritism:
This Rio Olympics has made two political revelations about the savage Ethiopian government. That guy who came 59th out of 59 swimmers showed how corrupt the Ethiopian government is. That loser guy was sent to the Olympics by his own corrupt father. Now the Marathon Silver Medalist showed a sign of the Oromo Protest which has exposed to the whole world the continued protest in Ethiopia against the brutal Ethiopian government. This is a good mix of politics with Olympics. Shame on you, the despicable government of Ethiopia!
Overweight Ethiopian Olympic swimmer Robel Kiros Habte became an object of ridicule after he came last in the preliminary men’s 100-meter freestyle heats. Some Ethiopians argue that the swimmer was included in the Ethiopian Olympic team because of his tribe and political affiliation.
Given Lilesa's decision not to return home for fear of his life, Ethiopians online raised US$54,433 in less than 24 hours to help him seek asylum.
The Ethiopian government officially says the runner will not be prosecuted over his protest gesture but “will be conferred a heroic welcome along with his team members.”
Endalk, an Ethiopian free speech advocate in exile and a Global Voices author, reacted to the government's statement by saying:
Ethiopian gov't is saying please come home so that we will torture you,nothing else #OromoProtests https://t.co/V0VWz7KhK4
— endalk2006 (@endalk2006) August 22, 2016
He continued:
Ethiopian gov't tells #FeyisaLilesa he will be welcomed as hero while they refuse to broadcast his protest images https://t.co/GZVhCYGJJg
— endalk2006 (@endalk2006) August 22, 2016
While the Ethiopian government spokesperson congratulated Lilesa, state TV did not show footage of him at the finish line.
Jeffrey Smith, a human rights activist, declared Lilesa's anti-government gesture a “profoundly courageous moment”:
#FeyisaLilesa put his life on the line to expose the brutal, murderous regime in #Ethiopia. A profoundly courageous moment. #OromoProtests
— Jeffrey Smith (@Smith_JeffreyT) August 21, 2016
Freelance journalist Mohammed Ademo further praised Lilesa:
#FeyisaLilesa used the biggest stage of his life to express a muzzled generational cry for freedom. He spoke without words. #courage
— Mohammed Ademo (@OPride) August 21, 2016
Responding to those saying that he should go back to Ethiopia, Gebreslassie Kiros wrote on Facebook:
It is up to him to decide what he wants to do. We have thousands of feyisa and thosands of feyisas might be also produced. Hence, what is best is allowing feyisa wherever he needs to live
Ken Smith noted:
this nation has had its share of wars and genocides…but they still produce tremendous Olympians…especially marathoners. He deserves to be respected for this sign of protest…humanity needs more like him.
Hani Teshe wrote:
there is a genocide going on in Ethiopia .. the world must know what's going on in Ethiopia.
And Nardos Kefle observed:
Best moment from Rio De Jenero Olympic. Respect for Feyisa Lilesa, Ethiopian Olympic Silver medal winner in Men’s Marathon. If the 42.195 kilometres (26.219 miles, or 26 miles 385 yards) didn’t kill you the Ethiopian government, [the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front] can’t kill you.
Not everyone supports Lilesa. On Facebook, Nicola Dotto said the Olympics are not a stage for personal views:
any and all Olympic athlete who shows any sign of political or religous protest in any form should be stripped of they're medal if they won,,these are world SPORTING EVENTS,not a stage for personal views..
Lina Aya also argued the event is not a “political showcase”:
The olympic isnt a political show case. You want to make difference you seat down in your country & create a solution. To Go out on olympic & lying and asking & a visa in a different country is a against the olympic law
Gebremeskel Tesfay Kidanu, an Ethiopian student, wanted Lilesa to go back to Ethiopia to apologise:
His act was dirty, & guilty. But, still we expect you to come to your homeland and saying excuse to the Ethiopian people that you ignored unknowingly.
It is curious to note that on 7 August, long before Lilesa made the gesture, one Twitter user, Ashe, said that she hoped that one athlete would make a solidarity gesture with the Oromo protests:
I hope one of #Eth prominent Olympic athletes chooses to make a gesture standing in solidarity with the protests.
— Ashe (优胜者) (@Ashe_Q) August 7, 2016

author: Ndesanjo Macha


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Chinese Volleyball Coach Lang Ping Has Spent Her Career Thinking Outside the Communist Party Box · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

China's women's volleyball coach Lang Ping. Screen capture from CCTV.
Twelve years after their last gold medal finish, China’s women's volleyball team took gold in the 2016 Rio Olympics on August 20 in a 3-1 win over Serbia. Volleyball lovers know that the team's success is in large part due to Lang Ping, the team’s coach.
Lang has made a name for herself pushing back against Chinese Communist Party sports policy and forging her own path in the world of sports. She once was even accused by trolls of being a traitor for coaching the American volleyball team to victory over the Chinese team in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The 56-year-old former spiker was a national hero in the 1980s for leading China to snatch a number of world titles, beating Japan's and Cuba's volleyball teams. The “Iron Hammer,” Lang's nickname, came to represent teamwork and persistence: the spirit of women's volleyball.
Following victory in Rio, all Chinese media outlets praised the spirit of Chinese women's volleyball, with some drawing parallels between the team's perseverance and China's economic strength.
Lang's contribution was also highlighted, but her individual journey, in particular her decision to leave the country after she retired from play in 1986, rarely made appearances in Chinese reports. That's because many of her choices have been interpreted as showing distrust in the Chinese Communist Party-led sports system.
As prominent journalist Gao Yu pointed out on Twitter:
祝贺中国女排赢得金牌，12年重新夺得金牌。没有郎平，难以想象有今天，郎平是世界级的教练，她是中国人，也是一个在世界拼搏多年的独立的中国人，不是举国体制下的机器。
Congratulations to the Chinese women's volleyball team’s gold medal win after 12 years. It is difficult to imagine today’s success without Lang Ping. She is a world-class coach and she is Chinese. She is an independent Chinese who has been exposed to the international field of sport, she is not a cog in the machine of a national bureaucratic sports system.
Indeed, unlike her contemporaries in the world of athletics who have built careers as government officials in the State General Administration of Sports, Lang rejected the government job offer in the sports bureau after her 1986 retirement and left the country to study sports management at the University of New Mexico in the US.
Her decision was related to a corruption scandal involving the construction of a volleyball training site in Hunan in southern China back in 1984. Lang helped the local authorities ask for funding from the country's Central Planning Committee. The funding was approved, but the local authorities did not use the money for the training site, and she was then dragged into a corruption investigation because of their actions. She commented on the experience in her autobiography (via Mingjing News):
这个事件的阴影在我心里好像再也抹不去。有些人是这样当官的，当了官还得顺着别人说话，不管这是不是你的思想，上面说什么，你就得说什么。我当不了这样的官，我没这个修养，我心太软，老同情人，这不是当官的料。我希望自己能学点实在的、科学的、真正有用的东西。
This incident has been buried in my heart and cannot be wiped away. Some officials are like this: they have to echo the words of others even though they became government officials. Even if they do not agree, they have to follow instructions from above. I can’t be an official like this, I could not follow an etiquette like this. I have a soft heart and have compassion. I can’t be an official. I want to learn something concrete, scientific and useful.
In her 22-year coaching career, she has led volleyball teams in Asia (including China between 1995 and 1999), Europe and the US, helping them win regional and even world championships.
When she started coaching the US volleyball team in 2005 and led them to beat the Chinese team at Beijing's Olympic Games in 2008, she was called a traitor by “patriotic” trolls online.
However, bad-mouthing Lang could not help China's volleyball team regain its former strength. In 2012, China’s women's volleyball team failed to enter the semi-finals in the London Olympics, and the team was ranked the fifth by the International Volleyball Federation in 2013.
To rescue the team, officials from the state sport bureau invited Lang to coach them again. She finally agreed on the condition that authorities could not intervene in the management of the team.
After Lang became head coach, she recruited new blood, promoted young players to key positions, formed a coaching team and expanded the support team, which includes trainers and medical staff. More importantly, she gave up the conventional semi-military training method and encouraged her players to develop their own individuality on the court.
The fact that Lang brought the China’s women's volleyball team to a Buddhist temple before the Olympics illustrates how she defies the party’s ideological line, Gao Yu suggested:
【拜佛 胜过抄党章】网传今年4月中国女排在郎平和教练组率领下，集体去了普陀山进香，中国男足本来也想去普陀山进香，结果师父说：请不要为难菩萨。8月出征前，再次集体到普陀山请师傅们加持。 pic.twitter.com/v9vsz27u1V
— 高瑜 (@gaoyu200812) August 21, 2016
Paying tribute to the Buddha is better than copying the party's disciplinary code: Lang Ping and other coaches led the team to Mount Putuo [in China] to pay tribute to the Buddhist gods. [Jokes online said] the China’s men's football team also wanted to visit Mount Putuo, but the monk said, “Please don’t make the gods feel difficult.” In August, before [the women's volleyball team] departed for the Olympics, they visited the Mount again and asked the monks to pray for them.
Chinese media is pushing the narrative that the women's volleyball team's Olympic win under Lang is a tale of patriotic conformity. But if Lang is the embodiment of women's volleyball spirit, the team's gold medal victory seems to be a success story not for the state-managed sports program, but for individuality and creativity in the pursuit of excellence.

author: Oiwan Lam


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In Syria and Beyond, Protesters Make Sure the World Doesn’t Forget the Ghouta Chemical Massacre · Global Voices
Elias Abou Jaoude

Protest held in Douma, Syria. August 21, 2016. Banner reads, “#Chemical_Assad. Three years have passed…. And the criminal runs free. 1,300 martyrs in a single night… and the world is sleeping.” Source: ‘Douma Revolution’ Facebook Page
In the early hours of August 21, 2013, residents of rebel-held Eastern and Western Ghouta in Syria, woke up to the news that rockets containing a nerve agent had hit their area. As the day wore on, the number of dead continued to rise, reaching into the hundreds. Estimates range anywhere from over 350 to over 800, while a preliminary US report claimed the attack had killed over 1,400 individuals.
A member of a media center in Zamalka described the strikes to Human Rights Watch at the time and the sensation he felt when the gas started affecting his body while he was rescuing people:
When the explosion hit I heard a very low sound, it was like the sound of a helicopter buzzing, and not the sound of explosion… I went outside the field hospital and started running towards the explosion site. I didn’t reach the explosions site because I saw injured people on the ground and people screaming and running in all directions… I remember I went into one house and saw a man with his wife on the ground. The house was not destroyed. It was not where the rocket fell or had an impact but they were dead on the ground. After around 40 minutes rescuing people, I started feeling my body aching. I was feeling weak and unable to move. Then my eyes started hurting me and headache started. There was no smoke but there was a smell… I told my friend that I have to go to the hospital. He put me in a car and drove away… I remember very well when we left al-Mazraat in my friend’s car, I saw a dog crossing the street. I shouted to my friend to be careful not to hit him but before I finished my sentence the dog by itself collapsed on the ground
Syrian Activist Razan Zeitouneh, who has since been kidnapped alongside three well-known activists who are now known as the ‘Douma 4‘, talked to US-based independent news broadcaster Democracy Now soon after the event and described the scenes right after the attack:
There haven’t been enough medical staff to treat them. There is not enough medications for more serious cases. They were just to choose to whom they will give the medication, because there is no medication for everybody. Even doctors were crying because they couldn’t help the injured people, because the lack of the medication and oxygen. […]
In cemeteries which we visited, victims were buried in mass graves, 15 or 20 dead bodies in every grave because the large number of injured people. People were—also there was hysterical between the people. Families are searching for their children. People were searching for their children in every town in Ghouta. Children in the medical points were crying and asking for their parents. It wasn’t believable.
Three years later, Syrians and their supporters around the world commemorated the tragedy and demanded that the international community take action.
From within Syria, in Douma, one of the areas that were targeted, a banner was held that read:
#Chemical_Assad. Three years have passed…. And the criminal runs free. 1,300 martyrs in a single night… and the world is sleeping
The Ghouta attack happened two years into a brutal civil war in Syria between Bashar al Assad's regime and those who want his ouster. The Syrian opposition, as well as many human rights groups and governments around the world, say Assad was responsible. They point to forensic details in the official United Nations report into the attack — which did not assign blame — that implicate forces loyal to his government.
Assad and his allies, such as Russia, blame the rebels. Nevertheless, Assad signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the development, production, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons as well as requires members to destroy their stockpiles, after the attack — although there's evidence he hasn't stayed true to the convention since then.
To mark the attack's anniversary, the US-based activist group “How Many More?” tweeted the names of every victim on their account:
#947: Mirvet Merani, a woman from Zamalka, Damascus Suburbs, gassed to death on 8/21/2013… #HowManyMore?
— How Many More? (@HowManySyrians) 22 de agosto de 2016
#948: Sary Hrateh, a man from Zamalka, Damascus Suburbs, gassed to death on 8/21/2013… #HowManyMore?
— How Many More? (@HowManySyrians) 22 de agosto de 2016
People also stood in solidarity with the victims in Gothenburg, Sweden as well as in Paris, France.
Protest held in Gothenburg, Sweden. Source: ‘Free Syria – Salam’ Facebook Page.
Global Voices attended the London commemoration in Trafalgar Square organized by the UK-based Syria Solidarity Campaign and spoke to one of its spokespersons, Abdulaziz Almashi.
Global Voices (GV): What was the purpose of the protest today?
Abdulaziz Almashi: Today, the purpose of the protest was to mark the third anniversary of the chemical massacres that took place in Ghouta back on the 21st of August, 2013, in which 1,477 people were killed and more than 3,000 were injured in three chemical attacks in Arbil, Douma and Muadamiyat. So today, we got out to show respect to the victims, to show solidarity with our people and with the families of the victims and to send a strong message to the international community that Assad has been using chemical weapons. He has used them so many times, even after he signed the chemical weapons disarmament treaty. But still, just like a few days ago, he attacked Aleppo with chlorine gas, and Idlib the same thing. So here we say to the world, you are part of this crime and Assad must be referred to the [International Criminal Court] for his war crimes
A chlorine gas attack reportedly hit the opposition-held city of Aleppo on August 10, killing at least four and injuring dozens more. Several days before, barrel bombs allegedly containing chlorine gas exploded over Idlib province; 28 people were injured.
GV: What do you expect of the international committee? You just said that someone must hold Bashar al Assad accountable.
Abdulaziz Almashi: Yes, this is why the UN exists, this is why the international law exists. But for me, I don’t believe in the UN anymore, I don’t believe in the international laws anymore, I don’t believe in humans rights anymore. Because when I needed them, I couldn’t find them to be fair. And we have been abandoned by everyone. We have been abandoned by the West, by the East by the Arabs, by literally everyone. So what we want to see, we want to see the international community to wake up and to move, to do something to stop those kinds of massacres, and to stop that tyrant from committing genocide.
GV: How can people help in this campaign?
Abdulaziz Almashi: We always say what happens in Syria doesn’t just concern Syrians, it concerns every human being. If Assad is allowed to win the war in Syria, there will be tragic consequences not just in Syria but in the whole world, because other dictators and other countries will take Assad as an example and will use chemical weapons to crush any democratic movement within their home countries. That is why it is crucial for everyone to stand in solidarity with the Syrian people because we are fighting not for democracy in Syria but for democracy in the whole world. We must teach all dictators a lesson, that all people will come together against any dictatorial regime in the world.

author: Elias Abou Jaoude


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Independent TV Station and Two Community Radio Stations Suspended Amid Disputed Elections in Zambia · Global Voices
Kunta Kelu

Image of the press release from the Independent Broadcasting Authority announcing the suspension.
Zambia's Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) has suspended the broadcasting licences of the country's biggest independent TV station as well as two radio stations for “unprofessional conduct posing a risk to national peace and stability” before, during and after the 2016 elections.
The broadcasting regulator justified its actions against Muvi TV, Komboni Radio and Itezhi Tezhi Radio by pointing to section 29 (1)(j) of the IBA Amendment Act of 2010, which states that “the IBA board may cancel a broadcasting license if the cancellation of the license is necessary in the interest of public safety, security, peace, welfare or good order”.
Immediately after IBA issued a statement about the suspension, reports surfaced that officials from the Zambia Information and Communication Authority accompanied by police officers confiscated an analogue transmitter from Muvi TV.
Biased coverage by the country's public broadcaster, Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, made Muvi TV, Komboni Radio and Itezhi Tezhi Radio the main avenues for opposition politicians to communicate with voters.
Zambians voted in the general elections on August 11, 2016. The incumbent, Edgar Lungu, was announced the winner. However, the main opposition candidate, Hakainde Hichilema, has challenged the results in the Constitutional Court.
Media bodies such as Panos Institute Southern Africa, International Press Institute, MISA Zambia and the Media Liaison Committee have condemned the suspension.
As election day was approaching, The Post newspaper, Zambia's largest independent daily newspaper, saw their offices locked up and their printing equipment seized by the Zambia Revenue Authority because of outstanding taxes alleged to be at K68 million (US$6.1 million). The move was condemned by media organizations, activists and opposition politicians, who argued that the tax body was used to silence the paper during elections.
On Twitter, Zambian human rights activist Laura Miti accused the government of trying to silence media coverage of Hichilema's petition against the election results:
Me thinks media houses have been closed down coz govt does not want the petition independently covered. Close some, scare the rest. #Zambia
— Laura Miti (@LauraMiti) August 23, 2016
Thandayo, a Zambian IT consultant, wondered about President-elect Edgar Lungu's motivations:
#MuviTv What legacy does #ECL and #PF want to leave? Mr president the root you're taking will lead to your distraction
— Thandayo (@luthan99) August 23, 2016
Some on Twitter defended Muvi TV, despite their personal distaste for the station's coverage.
Elias Munshya, a Zambian blogger and lawyer based in Canada, tweeted:
#MuviTV isn't an independent TV spreading unbiased news. It's partisan, biased, divisive. But it has the right to exist in democratic Zambia
— Elias Munshya (@eliasmunshya) August 22, 2016
He added (GRZ stands for the “government of the Republic of Zambia”):
I desire no help from GRZ about what information I should consume. Liberty entitles me to consume lies from #MuviTV & make up my own mind.
— Elias Munshya (@eliasmunshya) August 22, 2016
Twitter user Miles quipped:
“we have the right to misinformation.” #MuviTV
— M I L E S. (@Malumbo_96) August 22, 2016
@PackMuchi challenged the ruling party (PF) assertion that public broadcaster ZNBC is more professional than Muvi TV:
According to #PF, @MYZNBC is more professional than #MuviTv. Same as saying #Zambia is more of an island than Madagascar.
— Pack Muchi™ (@PackMuchi) August 22, 2016
In an opinion piece on citizen media site Zambian Watchdog, David Kapoma made the case that Zambia “is slowly becoming a court room”:
We all must be careful when we speak out on issues of national interest. Those who transmit our views to the nation and the general public are the target at the moment. […]
We have since entered a different period in Zambia. Here it’s no mercy. You mess up with the authority, you face the consequences.
The controversial Zambian musician Pilato said the following on his Facebook page:
IBA may in their shallowest imagination think they are doing President Lungu a favor but in broader perspective they are killing his good name. Democracy isn't just voting, voting is just an event. President Lungu risks going down in history as being a low voltage dictator who shut down media institutions that chose to give platform to opposing views. IBA should be reminded that the same charges they laid against the private media institutions can also be laid against ZNBC and by every interpretation of the terms used, the public media institutions are guilty. With the closure of the key private media institutions, our country has become vulnerable to rumours, speculations and propaganda.
Chinganzule noted that the “crime” Muvi TV committed was to provide a counter-narrative to the ruling's party's election message:
Be honesty and real,what security breech has Muvi TV committed.All they have done is to counter the lope sided reporting of issues which is always inclined in favour of PF led tribalism campaign against [the opposition] UPND by state controlled media houses .People do you think all Zambians are gullible or blind to deduce the real situation here?
Some Zambians, however, are in support of the IBA's decision.
Mpombo, for example, wanted the IBA to go further than simply suspending the stations:
But the IBA is also abrogating the same clause they’re quoting which says cancel not suspend Let them follow the act expenditiously if these idiots have abrogated it let their licences be cancelled go ahead & do it don’t apply the law half heartedly you may end up commiting a crime yourself the other word for cancel is ban or stop not suspend […].
Tonga said stations causing division in the country should be closed:
AS LONG AS ANY RADIO STATION WANTS TO BRING ANARCHY AND DIVISION IT MUST BE CLOSED BECAUSE ZAMBIANS LOVE PEACE AND UNITY.
And Kazim thanked the IBA for the suspension:
This is a very welcome move by IBA I mean why should a few over zealous and overly ambitious idiots threaten the peace of our nation by airing some biased statements all for the sake of their personal gain.We are tired of this lunacy and I thank the law for putting them in their rightful place.

author: Kunta Kelu