A community radio station in Thailand is helping migrant workers access crucial information about their rights. Credit: Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau/IPS

At the age of 23, Gao travelled to Thailand to escape intense fighting in his native Shan State in the east of Myanmar (Burma) and possible recruitment into the Shah army.

“When I arrived in Bangkok, I started working in a garment factory. We didn’t have proper food. I was surviving on a handful of rice and a half packet of ramen noodles,” Gao told IPS.

The young boy soon fell very ill but could not afford to see a doctor. It was not until his co-workers pooled all their resources together and put him on a bus to the northern city of Chiang Mai that he managed to get a free consultation through a Shan temple.

Gao was one of the lucky ones. Isolated by language and ethnic barriers, most migrants in Thailand lead secluded lives, unable to access resources or information that would help them secure their basic rights – such as healthcare, minimum wage, or proper food – in a foreign land.

To fill the gap, a local organisation known as the Migrant Assistance Programme (MAP) has created community radio stations in Chiang Mai and Mae Sot, a town on the Thai-Burma border, which have opened the doors of communication for a silenced community.

“Most of the migrant workers in Thailand, especially from Myanmar, come from various ethnicities – including the Kayin, Kayah, Shan, Mon, Rawang, Bama and Tavoyan – and speak different languages, so (our work) is really about breaking the isolation that many face when they come to Thailand to work,” MAP Director Jackie Pollock told IPS.

The broadcasts go out in four different languages – Shan, Burmese, Thai and Northern Thai. Listeners phone in requests for their favourite songs, find out about MAP’s work or how to take advantage of current migration laws and policies.

Most of the listeners are migrant workers from Myranmar who often take up what are locally referred to as ‘3D’ jobs (dirty, dangerous and demanding), and end up working on construction sites, as domestic workers, in the agricultural and fishing industry and in garment and textile factories around the country.

Mae Sot, where one radio station is based, houses an entire industrial zone along the Thai-Burma border, where garment, textile and furniture factories swallow up scores of migrants the minute they cross the border in search of work.

Women comprise the bulk of the workers in this town and are subjected to extremely poor working conditions for far less than the minimum wage, which is currently ten dollars a day.

The radio station has penetrated this community, offering programmes on occupational health and safety, women’s rights and cultural issues.

“Last year, we did three trainings with migrants who were interested in being broadcasters, DJs or journalists,” Burmese migrant worker and MAP community broadcaster Lan Moon told IPS.

Originally from the south of Shan State in Myanmar, Lan Moon came to Thailand 25 years ago at the age of six with his aunt and grandmother to escape fighting between the Shan army and the Burmese government.

He believes that radio forms a kind of “lifeline” between workers who would otherwise live and labour alone and whole communities that can offer support and information or simply commiserate about long hours or reminisce about home.

According to Pollock, cultivating a community of listeners did not happen overnight. MAP spent many years conducting weekly visits to areas where migrants live and work to distribute information about health and childcare, and used word of mouth to keep migrants up to date with national policies that might affect their jobs.

Now, in addition to the radio stations, the organisation has created 19 spaces along the border specifically for women to come together. “They organise themselves, sometimes invite speakers or hold discussion groups,” Pollock added.

Currently there are an estimated 2.5 million migrant workers in Thailand. The vast majority originates from Myanmar due to confiscation of land, human rights abuses or a lack of jobs and economic opportunities back home.

Although Article 2.2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Thailand is a signatory, ensures the equality of rights between nationals and non-nationals, the majority of migrants here are subjected to poor working and living conditions, lower wages and long working hours.

Registered migrants are also eligible for state health insurance schemes and are technically allowed to avail themselves of state medical services for a low fee. However, for most foreign workers, language barriers and the constant threat of discrimination or deportation hinders access to even these most basic rights.

For people like Gao, MAP has not only been a source of relief in times of distress – providing meals, shelter and necessary documents — it has also provided him an alternate occupation.

Following a crackdown on migrants in Chiang Mai, Gao says he “started volunteering with MAP’s crisis support group”.

“We help migrants get to the hospital or gain access to health care. It’s really important that migrants are informed about how to access proper health care because if one’s health isn’t good then life isn’t good.”

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A combination of an abundance of bamboo and eager foreign investment is making Ethiopia a frontier for the bamboo industrial revolution in Africa, according to this country’s government.

“Ethiopia has the resources, the investment, a rapidly-developing manufacturing industry and a strong demand for our bamboo products from foreign markets. We have what we need. The expansion of Africa’s bamboo sector has begun,” Ethiopia’s State Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development Mitiku Kassa told IPS. 

Ethiopia currently has the largest area – one million hectares – of commercially untapped bamboo in East Africa, making it attractive to investment partners from the bamboo industry. However, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development told IPS that they were unwilling to disclose any figures on the bamboo economy, but added that there had been no formal bamboo economy in Ethiopia until 2012.

“The market potential of bamboo in Europe is massive. We believe that there can be a reliable and effective supply chain built here in Ethiopia to create a bamboo manufacturing industry,” said Felix Boeck, an associate engineer at Africa Bamboo PLC, a public-private partnership set up with Ethiopian partners and supported by the German Development Cooperation in 2012.

The partnership plans to invest 10 million euros over the next five years in their Ethiopia-based manufacturing operation, which will supply competitive flooring products to European and United States markets. The company plans to export 100,000 square metres of bamboo flooring products by 2014. By 2016 this figure is expected to rise to 500,000 square metres.

“The fastest-growing market in Europe for the wood industry is flooring and outdoor decking. We expect our products to play a large role in this market,” Boeck told IPS.

In comparison to soft wood trees that can take 30 years to reach maturity, bamboo is a fully mature resource after three years, making it commercially and environmentally sustainable.

Sub-Saharan Africa has three million hectares of bamboo forest, around four percent of the continent’s total forest cover. Ethiopia plans to increase its bamboo cover to two million hectares over the next five years.

Small-scale Ethiopian bamboo farmers like Ghetnet Melaku are enthusiastic to participate in the development of the bamboo sector, if investment in its expansion is inclusive of small farmers.

“I am just making enough money to subsist by producing bamboo for the local craft market and, if I had the opportunity, I would like to increase my capacity for skilled production and a better financial return,” Melaku told IPS.

The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) is an intergovernmental organisation that assists governments, businesses and local communities to identify innovative bamboo-based opportunities for human development.

It is helping sensitise African governments to the high potential of bamboo as a versatile and renewable resource that can generate sustainable development. According to INBAR, one billion people around the world use bamboo in their daily lives as housing material, fencing and food, and in craft production, etc.

“If properly managed, this highly versatile resource could spur economic growth in a world export market valued at two billion dollars in 2011, reduce deforestation and cut carbon emissions,” INBAR director general J. Coosje Hoogendoorn told IPS.

Deforestation has ravaged Africa’s environment – the carbon emissions from burning timber on the continent alone are expected to reach 6.7 million tonnes by 2050. As 90 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa use firewood or charcoal to cook, the development of an alternative resource like bamboo has become essential.

“Sourcing fuel for cooking food is integral to food security,” said Hoogendoorn. “Rice, maize and pulses all require heat to become edible. Renewable alternatives like bamboo can help minimise deforestation caused by the logging of soft timber wood for cooking fuel and house materials.”

Ethiopia’s government has prohibited the creation of charcoal from burnt wood for retail and is actively advocating sustainable alternatives such as bamboo.

“Bamboo is a major untapped resource for Ethiopia. We are pushing to grow and conserve our bamboo resources. We are starting to work with farmers and enterprises to encourage and develop this sector for the country’s economic and environmental benefit. We are working to undo unsustainable practices and advocate new alternatives,” State Minister Kassa told IPS.

Although Ethiopia has one of the highest deforestation rates in Africa, it has increased its national forest cover to seven percent from three percent a decade ago, out of an original 40 percent. Hoogendorn said that governments needed to make financial resources available to enterprises that wished to develop Africa’s bamboo industry.

“We want governments to put structures in place that offer financial support such as micro finance and that remove any hindrance for investors in the bamboo market, so that when companies want to set up a bamboo industry they have access to financial support,” he said.

High demand for Ethiopia’s agricultural output such as bamboo can drive growth and development for the country’s poor if it generates employment opportunities and remains non-exploitative towards farm workers and the land, said research fellow Steve Wiggins from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). The ODI is the United Kingdom’s leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues.

“It is good if there is another source of demand for farm produce, so long as the economics of bamboo offer decent returns to land and labour, equitable deals can be struck in the supply chain, and the crop is environmentally sustainable,” Wiggins told IPS.

While bamboo production in Asia carries connotations of unsustainable forestry practices and illegal logging, INBAR is working to share lessons learnt and bring bamboo production in Africa’s market up to the highest standards.

“Sustainable management of a country’s bamboo sector is extremely important to the future of a country’s market, especially if that country is wanting to export its products to the European market where laws stipulate conformity to high sustainability standards,” Hoogendoorn said.

As the industrial development of bamboo in Africa is in its infancy, investors have until recently been cautious about ploughing large amounts of money into a market whose dividends are relatively unknown.

“We are ready for the same industrial revolution in bamboo development that Ethiopia is currently experiencing,” Andrew Akwasi Oteng-Amoako, the chief research scientist at the Forestry Research Institute in Ghana, told IPS.

He lamented that although his West African country had an abundance of bamboo, it failed to secure the same investment as Ethiopia.

“We anticipate a revival of investment interest in Ghana’s bamboo industry in the near future thanks to Ethiopia’s success,” Oteng-Amoako said.

The Palestinian village Zaatara at the foot of Herodion. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

If Herod the Great was a controversial figure of his time, 2,000 years on the controversy isn’t about his legacy; it’s about who holds the rights to excavate and preserve his artefacts.

A new exhibition at the Israel Museum which, for the first time, displays the king’s relics, might serve as a great tribute to him, but is also a powerful reminder of how the history of the Holy Land and today’s conflict between Israel and the Palestinians have become intertwined.

On top of a hill “raised to a greater height by the hand of man; rounded off in the shape of a breast,” as Flavius Josephus, Jewish historian of Rome described it, the old monarch had a fortress-palace erected as memorial for himself; and named it after himself – Herodion for Herod.

Herodion, from where the bulk of the exhibition originates, is visible from Jerusalem and dominates the Judaean desert, since 1967 part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank which the Palestinians seek as part of their future state.

Herodion is in Area C, namely 62 percent of the West Bank maintained under full Israeli control since the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords. An Israeli military base protects the site.

The Holy Land changed hands time and again since Herod’s time, but at 758 metres high, the lay of the land looks unchanged – at first glance.

Dotting the surroundings, Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages vie for rights to the land.

Appointed by the Romans, Herod ruled the vassal kingdom of Judaea, part of the Palaestina province of the Roman Empire, for 33 years between 37 and 4 BCE.

“He was a cultural bridge, working on both sides, caught between the exigencies of the Roman Empire and that of Judaism,” says David Mevorah, the exhibition’s curator. “By his people he was regarded as a convert Jew; by Rome as a client king. But Judaea prospered in his time.”

Exquisite tableware from glass and fine and glossy red roman pottery; a statue of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt; a decorated basin, a gift from his patron Emperor Augustus, whose bust is on display; his royal highness’s bath – all were found in situ.

Adorned with stucco and rare frescoes of sacred landscapes and navy battles painted with pigments on plaster, also imported from Herodion is the royal chamber.

The jewel of Herod’s crown, so to speak, is the reconstruction of his mausoleum which sheltered what archaeologists believe is the sarcophagus in which his body was placed. The man surely possessed a taste for the arts – even on his deathbed.  “He was very aware of historic memory,” comments the curator.

Here nowadays, historic memory refers mostly to competitive national quests.

Excavations at Herodion began in 1972 under Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer. “No one asked us or consulted us, then or now,” protests Jamal Amro, a Palestinian scholar from Bir Zeit University familiar with the site.

“The Israelis plundered Herodion,” he adds. “Israel uses archaeology to shape history and validate the country’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

After prolonged exploration, Netzer uncovered Herod’s tomb in 2007. Two years later, he died in tragic circumstances at the site.

It took three more years to move some 30 tonnes of carved masonry from Herodion to the museum. “We actually moved thousands of fragments to our laboratories, working intensively from here on restoration and reconstruction,” says Mevorah.

“We’ve performed quite an important role for world cultural heritage,” says Israel Museum director James Snyder. But the self-complimentary effusion has been short-lived.

Palestinians complain that Israeli archaeological activities in Palestinian territories are illegal. “According to international law, this is a crime,” declares Amro. “Israel must recognise the rights of the Palestinian nation to their historical sites.”

The Israeli government lists Herodion as a national heritage site. Granted full membership of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the Palestinian Authority now wants to nominate Herodion for recognition as a world heritage site.

“The Oslo Accord makes Israel responsible for custodianship over archaeology in the West Bank until a final settlement is reached,” retorts Snyder.

A ruthless ruler who had the last lineage of the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled before him executed, including high priests, opponents, his beloved second wife and three of his children, Herod was feared by his subjects. In Christianity, he’s ‘Horrid Herod’, thought of as a serial baby killer.

At the museum, he is mostly remembered as a master builder for his colossal projects, including expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem revered in Judaism. Centuries later, the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary would be edified on its ruins.

For Amro, “Herod and Herodion are important not only to Jews but to Christians and Muslims. We should be in charge.”

“We borrowed the artefacts as authorised loans; we’ll retrocede them once the exhibition wraps by year’s end,” assures Snyder.

The question is where the relics will be returned to, and to whom. “To the authority in charge of archaeology in the West Bank,” clarifies Mevorah. That is, to the ‘Civil Administration’, a well-known euphemism for Israeli military authorities in the West Bank.

“They’ll never give back the artefacts to us, forget it,” protests Amro, not sure himself whether “it” refers to the site and its treasures or to the West Bank.

“When Israel signed the Camp David peace accord with Egypt in 1979 and withdrew from Sinai,” recalls Snyder, “there was a very intelligent division of material: what related to Egyptian heritage was returned to Egypt; what related to Jewish heritage stayed with Israel.”

Would such a model be applicable to Israel and Palestine were peace to be signed between them? “I’m just a museum director, but it was well done,” says Snyder.

Mario Martínez beginning broadcasts in the Radio Mangle studio in El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

For the first time in El Salvador, a community radio is broadcasting under its own licence. The struggle continues, however, for legislative change that will give these kinds of broadcasters more airspace.

After years of challenges, Radio Mangle finally began broadcasting this week to over 200 communities in the area known as Bajo Lempa, in the municipality of Jiquilisco, in the south of the province of Usulután.

“This is a historic moment, the result of years of hard work and social pressure,” radio presenter Mario Martínez, coordinator of the Mangle Association, which developed the project, told IPS. As of Jan. 14, the radio station is broadcasting on 106.1 FM from the community of Ciudad Romero, in the El Zamorán district of Jiquilisco.

In October, the state-run General Superintendence of Electricity and Telecommunications (SIGET) awarded this frequency to a public agency, which transferred it to Radio Mangle, making it the first community radio in the country to obtain a licence. Since then, the Mangle Association has been busy preparing for its maiden broadcast.

The emergence of community radios in El Salvador dates back to 1992, at the end of the 12-year civil war, when opportunities for sharing opinions and dissent opened up. But these radios have faced issues for lacking permits; some radio stations have been closed down and violently evicted from their premises by the police.

The Telecommunications Law of 1997 tacitly allows community radio stations to operate, but they must acquire their frequencies through public auctions, putting them at a disadvantage with respect to business media groups.

“It is one of the most anti-democratic and malicious laws ever approved in this country,” Leonel Herrera, head of the El Salvador Association of Participatory Radios and Programmes (ARPAS), told IPS.

Unable to afford individual frequencies, the 18 community radios belonging to ARPAS pooled their resources and with the help of international funding purchased the frequency 92.1 FM in 1998. They split it so that each radio station could broadcast in its specific location, but this method caused interference problems.

Since 2000, Radio Mangle has broadcast on the frequency of Radio Maya Visión, a station linked with the leftwing Farabundi Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), the government party since 2009, when President Mauricio Funes took office. Funes was a popular television journalist who began his professional career in radio.

The Radio Mangle project was born as part of the early warning system promoted by the communities of Bajo Lempa, one of the country’s most vulnerable regions. Every rainy season, floods cause fatalities and crop losses and displace the population.

But interference prevented their broadcasts from working, and the radio shut down in 2010. The Mangle Association applied to SIGET for a broadcasting licence that same year, but the application was refused even though the frequency had not been offered at auction.

In 2011 the Association tried again to obtain 98.1 FM, but a commercial company won the auction with a bid of 20,000 dollars, Martínez told IPS during an interview at the radio station.

“Some people just wait for frequencies to be offered at auction, and then they show up,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time that they win a frequency and then do not use it. They do this just to block us,” he said.

In order to circumvent the auctions, Radio Mangle approached the Communications Secretariat of the Presidency, which in July 2012 asked SIGET for a frequency for official use. It then transferred the frequency to ARPAS, which handed it to the Mangle Association.

In August, ARPAS, the “José Simeón Cañas” Central American University (UCA) and the Foundation for Law Enforcement Studies (FESPAD) filed a constitutional appeal at the Supreme Court against several articles of the Telecommunications Law.

They requested that auctions be revoked as the only method of acquiring radio and television frequencies, claiming that the system violates constitutional principles such as equality under the law by not allowing community radios to compete equally with business groups for frequencies.

Other articles of the constitution that guarantee freedom of expression are also being breached when radio licences are blocked, they complained.

But commercial radios counter that if frequencies are allocated to community radios, interference from these would affect programmes on already established radios.

“I don’t understand why they want to do away with auctions, when there are no spare frequencies available on the spectrum; it’s a technical problem,” Ana María Urrutia, executive director of the Salvadoran Broadcasting Association (ASDER), told IPS.

ASDER represents over 210 commercial radios in El Salvador and as such defends the interests of commercial broadcasting.

Community radio stations point out that their main purpose is not to generate profits, and so there should be a different route for them to be granted licences.

ARPAS argues that if the frequency bandwidth were divided in two, with a reduction from 400 KHz to 200 KHz, there would be twice the space to allow room for new broadcasters.

But Urrutia disagreed, saying, “Dividing the bandwidth would mean repossessing some of the frequencies that are already occupied by owners, and that cannot be.”

SIGET Superintendent Luis Méndez did not respond to IPS’s request for a statement regarding this question.

In Martínez’s view, the broadcasting association’s refusal to share the spectrum with community radios is based on ideology rather than technical or commercial considerations. They do not want people voicing thoughts and discourse different from the dominant messages on commercial radios, which are mainly in the hands of business groups, he said.

In December, ARPAS, FESPAD and UCA jointly criticised SIGET for not including alternative media and community radios on a commission set up to determine how the Salvadoran frequency spectrum will be digitalised.

The organisations say that digitalising the spectrum is an opportunity to open up the space needed by community broadcasters, but worry that on the other hand it could strengthen business groups’ current domination of the spectrum.

“The debate on digitalisation is…essentially political, because it represents an opportunity to democratise access to the frequency spectrum, or the threat of greater concentration of media ownership,” the three organisations said in a statement.

Donato Ayma in the Atipiri radio station booth. Credit: Franz Chávez /IPS

Every morning from 6:00 to 8:00 AM, native people in this sprawling working-class suburb of La Paz, Bolivia listen to the programme broadcast by former education minister Donato Ayma in the Aymara language.

He starts his programme every day on the local Atipiri radio station saying “Mä amuyuki, mä ch’amaki” (“with one single thought, one single force,” in Aymara).

In an interview with IPS, Ayma explains the importance of the radio to Bolivia’s predominantly indigenous rural highlands population.

Ayma, one of Bolivia’s best-known native broadcasters, says “the radio is still the most accessible and easily operated media” in this geographically diverse country of high mountains peaks, altiplano, valleys, lowlands and Amazon jungle.

He describes campesinos ploughing their steep fields in the bleak Andes highlands, where the ploughs are still pulled by oxen, accompanied by the songs on their portable radios.

“The young women prefer to hear programmes in their mother tongue – they’re bilingual, but they tend to choose music that reflects the thinking and experiences of their people,” he says, describing life in the highlands.

Electricity is often unavailable and newspapers rarely reach remote villages, where the radio is listened to “by illiterate people; people can listen to each other, using their ears.”

The Aymara academic and researcher describes his childhood in the frigid altiplano, in Toledo, a village in the western department or province of Oruro. That is where he began his career behind a microphone, in 1969, and began to develop what he calls a New Model of Communication (NUMOCOM) for Bolivia.

“I’m a radio aficionado,” he says enthusiastically, discussing his seven-month stint in the cabinet of President Carlos Mesa (2003-2005), his 15 years at the San Gabriel Radio station, and his experience now in Atapiri, a station launched to discover radio broadcasting talent among indigenous people.

Since 2006, Atipiri has been putting into practice the ideas of the Centre of Education and Communication for Indigenous Communities and Peoples, of which Ayma is a founder. Like the San Gabriel station, it broadcasts from El Alto, a city of one million in the highlands next to La Paz.

El Alto is home to many of the indigenous Bolivians who have come to La Paz, the seat of government, from rural villages.

Initiatives to keep native culture and values alive and to help indigenous people in rural areas integrate have, paradoxically, mushroomed in El Alto.

Ayma pointed out that in the 2001 census, 62 percent of the population of Bolivia identified themselves as indigenous.

That census not only asked people for the first time whether they saw themselves as belonging to an indigenous group, but it also found that the mother tongue of half of the population was an indigenous language.

Based on these and other figures, the National Statistics Institute estimates that 66 percent of the population has an indigenous “ethnolinguistic” origin.

The 2009 constitution declared Bolivia a “plurinational” state, with 36 different ethnolinguistic groups.

Ayma bases his new model of communication, NUMOCOM, on the concept of “community radio stations as instruments of communication and development” which offer programming that comes from “the deep roots of the people.”

The first commercial radio station in this country was Radio Nacional de Bolivia, which began to operate in March 1929. But broadcasting in the Aymara language – the most widely spoken indigenous tongue in Bolivia, after Quechua – only dates back to the 1960s, when a programme in that language was on the air from 5:00 to 7:00 AM.

Under the NUMOCOM model, experienced, university-educated journalists become communicators speaking in their mother tongues and producing programming tailored to their communities.

The reality these communicators address and reflect in the community radio stations is ignored by the mainstream press and broadcast media, Ayma said.

“The pages of any Latin American newspaper are full of news about the European royalty, their weddings, their pregnancies,” he says. “But we don’t see news from
Charaña (on the western border with Chile), the foothills of Anallajchi (a snow-capped mountain), the llama grazing areas, or the Amazon jungle.

“At this very moment, a herder is coming home thirsty after a long day of work, and he’s listening to us,” says Ayma, who adds that the herder complains that his life isn’t reflected in the media, which are dominated by the homogeneous popular entertainment programming of the transnational media corporations.

Ayma criticises the commercial radio stations of El Alto because they ignore traditional Bolivian Andean music, played with pan pipes, charango, guitar and drums, and only play cumbia combined with techno and rap.

He cited Bolivian journalist Luis Ramiro Beltrán, 1983 winner of the McLuhan Teleglobe Canada award for his theories on communication for development, which were predominant in Bolivia in the 1960s and 1970s.

Taking these theories as a basis, Ayma developed his NUMOCOM model of communication, incorporating other values like environmental conservation, preservation of Pachamama or Mother Earth, and the appropriate use of water for human consumption and irrigation.

He also urges people to fight the use of synthetic products that end up in garbage dumps or the water, and kill livestock.

Finally, he advocates horizontal communication, to be used in the organising and empowerment of communities, in which the communicators are part of the action.

He says, for example, that while vertical communication gives orders, like “sweep the streets,” horizontal communication gets the broadcaster involved, who joins in the task and says “let’s sweep the streets.”

Radio Pachakuti is the first indigenous station to be licensed under the media law that was passed by the Argentine Congress three years ago and which is designed to guarantee access to the media by all segments of society and fight the growing concentration of media ownership by limiting the number of broadcasting licenses in the hands of media giants.

Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, commented on his recent visit to Buenos Aires that the law “is a model for the continent and other regions of the world.”

But the new law was staunchly opposed by conservative opposition parties and mainstream media outlets like Clarín, which has a monopoly over subscription television in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. The justice system has set a deadline of Dec. 7 for Clarín to present a disinvestment plan.

The new law regards communication as a public service, and provides for the distribution of licences in three equal parts: to state, private and not-for-profit broadcasters.

In particular, new actors are to be incorporated, such as native communities and national universities and other educational bodies, the law says.

In the case of not-for-profit organisations, the law does not require a competitive tendering process, but merely an application for authorisation to use the frequency.

Kispe already had some experience in radio, but he took a course given in 2011 by the Higher Institute of Radio Studies (ISER) in Abra Pampa, in the Puna highlands in Jujuy. Now he is one of Radio Pachakuti’s 12 operators and presenters.

“We’re on the air 16 hours a day, with community news programmes, education and indigenous people’s history programmes and also music – mostly Andean music but also other genres that people enjoy,” he told IPS.

“Having a radio station of our own means we no longer need other people to speak for us. In other media outlets, we were censored. Now we have our own voice, and we can fight for our territory and for the environment,” Kispe said.

Training new voices

Cecilia Aguilar, a professor at ISER, told IPS what it was like to teach the introductory seminar on radio broadcasting in Abra Pampa and other indigenous communities. “We emphasised the importance of organising and managing the radio station on the basis of their own identity, language and culture,” she said.

The same seminar was offered this year in El Huecú, a village of 1,000 people in the southwestern province of Neuquén, 1,200 metres above sea level and 600 kilometres from the provincial capital. In El Huecú a heterogeneous group of representatives of the Mapuche Mañke community took an interest in training to work at the radio station authorised by the new law, Aguilar said.

The Buenos Aires-based coordinator of the courses, Sebastián Peiretti, who is director of education at ISER, told IPS that the workshops were part of a training agreement that arose as a result of the new law.

The agreement is with the new Federal Authority of Audiovisual Communication Services (AFSCA), created under the law to regulate broadcasting, promote decentralisation and open up the media to different voices. The director of AFSCA is Martín Sabbatella, the leader of the leftwing Nuevo Encuentro party.

Peiretti said the goal of the training seminars for native people was to “provide them with tools to create their own programmes and content.”

In addition to workshops for indigenous communities, he said, ISER has also taught courses in the rural areas of Argentina since the law went into force three years ago, to empower presenters and operators.

“It was unfair and inequitable that many people who had worked in radio broadcasting for years lacked the proper qualifications, so we provided a minimum amount of training and granted them their permits,” he said.

Resistance from media companies

In Sabbatella’s view, the new law, which replaced legislation dating from the 1976-1983 dictatorship, “guarantees greater diversity and plurality, restores the right to information and furthers democracy.”

This statement was at the heart of his address to a press conference with foreign correspondents called to explain details of the law in the midst of the growing confrontation between the Clarín Group and the centre-left government of President Cristina Fernández.

Since the law passed, 365 new radio stations have come into being, as well as over 40 new content producers, which are small and medium independent businesses that are creating fictional TV programming, Sabbatella said.

“In order to guarantee the right to information and freedom of expression, the tendency towards monopolies and the concentration of the media must be opposed, which is why the law sets limits on licences,” he said.

Sabbatella said that at present there are about 5,000 radio and television licences, 4,500 of which are in the hands of 2,500 licencees whose holdings are within the permitted limits. The other 500 licences are controlled by some 20 media groups that exceed the limits.

One of these consortiums is Clarín. “It is the group that is most in excess” of the limits, he said.

In fact, the law has not yet fully entered into force because of legal action brought by Clarín to avoid having to give up a large part of the over 240 radio and television licences it owns around the country.

The law, long demanded by civil society organisations and approved by a broad majority in Congress, stipulated that no group or individual could hold more than 10 open-air radio and TV licenses or 24 cable television licenses.

The various appeals accepted by lower court judges at the request of the group, which owns the flagship Clarín newspaper, have extended the deadlines for it to comply with the law, which the consortium alleges violates its right to free expression.

But the Supreme Court has now ruled that Dec. 7 is the final date for the companies to submit their disinvestment plans, making further legal manoeuvring impossible. The ruling also indicates that there is nothing in the law that affects freedom of expression.

Sabbatella said Clarín is the only group operating a large number of licences that has not shown a willingness to comply with the law by the deadline set by the Supreme Court.

If it fails to comply, the government “will not expropriate, nationalise or confiscate it,” but may auction off the licenses, while guaranteeing continuity of service and employment, he said.

“In Egypt, if you want to start an ordinary radio station, the government demands a lot of licenses and money,” Youssef Mohamed, campaign and activities coordinator at the Egyptian Democratic Academy (EDA), told IPS. “Mubarak’s National Democratic Party controlled everything, but the Internet offered more freedom.”

EDA, a youth NGO aimed at fostering a culture of political participation, had, by 2009, established its online community-run radio station, Elma7rosa, to disseminate views gathered through community reporting, on subjects like freedom of speech, democracy, tolerance and human rights.

“In terms of Internet radio before the revolution there was Elma7rosa, and also Radio Horytna and Radio Bokra,” said Mohamed. “The relative freedom on the Internet allowed online radio stations to emerge as the voice of a new generation fighting for its place in society.”

Radio Horytna, established in 2007 by a group of young journalists as Egypt’s first Internet radio, was first on the scene during the 18-day revolt, providing uncensored news and taking controversial topics head on.

“We were open 24 hours during the revolution. We set up a tent in Tahrir Square so that those documenting the events could give us material to publish online,” Mostafa Fathi, editor-in-chief of Radio Horytna, told IPS.

“They tried to control our material, but we resisted,” recalls Fathi. “They would threaten us if we published material that wasn’t to their liking and they arrested one of our reporters, Mohammed Al Arabi, while he was covering a protest.”

Fathi said Radio Horytna managed to stay afloat “because we have a lot of partnerships with Egyptian and International non-government organisations (NGOs).”

Since the spring of 2011, the EDA has been expanding its role, conducting audio training to raise awareness on being active citizens and evaluate platforms of election candidates.

Prominent figures at EDA include Esraa Abdel Fattah, 29, who rose to prominence in 2008 as a co-founder of a Facebook group to support industrial workers. EDA’s editor-in-chief, Bassem Samir, is a prominent blogger who faced detention on several occasions.

“EDA’s ‘Political Academy’ is a programme about democracy where we teach the youth how to vote, their rights as citizens, how to be a politician, form a political party or join parliament,” Mohamed told IPS. “Another project that we initiated, ‘Free Egyptian’, offers training to women on how to participate in political life.”

Radio is seen as an important means of fostering community participation. Radio Horytna runs an array of workshops on tolerance between Christians and Muslims.

“We recently started a project called ‘Reporter’ where we gathered ten young people from all over Egypt and taught them how to use the new media tools and how to work as a digital journalist,” adds Fathi.

“Independent media is very important because it gives young people the opportunity to publish, create and broadcast their own programmes. We offer an alternative to traditional outlets like Al Masry Al Youm where it’s very difficult to get published,” Fathi said.

Banat wa Bass (Girls Only), which became the region’s first online radio station catering to the issues of Arab women when it was established in April 2008, now has a fan base of nearly five million listeners across the Arab world.

“On a daily basis, women in Egypt face a lot of harassment, violence and gender inequality,” editor-in-chief of Banat wa Bass, Amani Eltunsi, explained in an interview with IPS.

“Arab media and movies always portray women as being weak and it’s important to counter this by showing the positive side of Arab women, which also empowers us,” Eltunsi said.

“On one occasion, national security wanted to know what we were doing. I told them that I was running an Internet radio station. They didn’t understand so I showed them the website and they told me that I can’t talk about politics, sex or religion,” adds Eltunsi.

“Unlike bloggers whose material is archived online, Internet radio stations have more freedom because the officials can’t access us easily or know who our listeners are,” Eltunsi said.

Last March, Reporters sans Frontières moved Egypt from its ‘Internet enemies’ list to countries ‘under surveillance’ due to the success of the country’s uprisings.

“Before and after the revolution there was a lot of monitoring. The military council investigated us and many lives were lost. We are using our voices for Egypt. This means that we’ll do more and pay more if it means freedom,” adds Mohamed.

Citizen journalists and community media played a leading role in producing and disseminating news during the Arab uprisings as the expansion of digital technology provided innovative ways of expressing freedom.

Well before the wave of pro-democracy uprisings swept the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Arab activists were harnessing the power of new media to circumvent the stifling of dissent by authoritarian regimes. Within MENA, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates continue to have laws regulating Internet activities.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO

Fishers benefit greatly from community radio. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

Community Radio (CR) broadcasting in India, long bound by red tape, has received a fillip with the government announcing a hike in advertising tariffs and the auction of licenses.

“The increase in advertising tariffs will improve revenue generation for CR stations and make them sustainable,” Sajan Venniyoor, founder member of the New Delhi-based CR Broadcasters Forum, told IPS.

On Mar. 25, the Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP) announced a quadrupling of advertising revenues for CR stations to Indian rupees 240 (4.5 dollars) per minute.

Venniyoor, who is on the expert committee of the government’s CR Broadcast Support Fund, said although CR stations have support from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral funding, things will vastly improve once advertising revenues roll in.

“Besides, large infusions of money from government sources could prove to be a double-edged sword and completely skew the programming of a CR station,” Venniyoor said.

“As things stand CR growth has been stymied by security concerns and a telecom ministry which treats a wireless license application from a small, rural CR station in exactly the same way as it treats a mobile tower application from a telecom major, leading to a merry paper chase,” Venniyoor said.

R. Sreedhar, director of the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), calculates that the new tariff will allow CR stations to more than break even, given that the average running expenditure is about 2,000 dollars per month.

CEMCA works to encourage the development and sharing of open learning, distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.

“A CR station is supposed to broadcast a minimum of eight hours, though the license is for 24 hours. Even if they manage to get advertisements for about 50 percent of the allowed time, the station becomes sustainable,” Sreedhar told IPS.

If a CR station gets advertisements for 20 minutes per day, it means it can earn about 2,838 dollars a month with enough to pay the advertisement managers, said Sreedhar, adding that advertising on CR has the potential to boost the local economy and human resources.

The reluctance of the government to allow expansion of CR can be seen from the fact it issued the first license seven years after a Supreme Court ruling in 1995 declaring airwaves to be public property.

News reporting has remained banned on CR and a new policy announced in 2006 stipulated that 50 percent of the content had to be created by and for the community.

Supporters of CR consider 2011 to be a landmark year because that was when CEMCA announced that as many as 231 licenses were in the pipeline and a CR Broadcast Support Fund was mooted.

Given the lack of ‘definition of news’, CR broadcasters fear that airing anything remotely connected to current affairs could result in the revocation of license.

Ajith Lawrence, who started Radio Alakal (Radio Waves) in 2006 on the strength of the Supreme Court ruling, came to grief after being on the air for just a few months, thanks to narrow interpretations of what constitutes news.

Lawrence said Radio Alakal was started with a view to providing fishers and their families living on the Thiruvananthapuram coastal belt with vital information such as weather conditions and the availability of catch along with music and entertainment.

Radio Alakal quickly caught on because the fishers were already sensitised to the value of timely information through having lived through the devastation of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

“Even the tsunami experience did not stop local officials from withdrawing the license,” Lawrence told IPS. “It is time the government woke up to the huge potential of CR in disaster management and in improving the lives of marginalised coastal communities.”

In such circumstances, CR stations have desisted from reporting even earthquakes.

Ashish Sen, president of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMRC) in Asia Pacific says that “without definition of what comprises news, confusion reigns – the digging of a well or a marriage can be news in a small village.”

Sreedhar believes that there is now new thinking in government on CR going by a bold plan to auction FM licenses and earn revenues. In a statement on Mar. 20, the DAVP announced that it expects to earn over 341 million dollars from the auctions.

There are fears, however, that some CR stations have huge advantages over others when it comes to attracting advertisers.

Arti Jaiman, station director of Gurgaon Ki Awaaz (Voice of Gurgaon), says that the mission of his CR, to articulate the rights of marginalised communities, is not likely to attract advertisement revenue.

On the other hand Gurgaon ki Awaaz, which started broadcasting in November 2009, is located in Gurgaon which falls in the state of Haryana but has the advantage of being part of the National Capital Region of Delhi.

Other CR stations do not have such advantages of location and, given the government’s restrictions on range and power of transmitters, may not reach the kind of audiences that will attract advertisers.

“We will just have to wait and see how all this plays out,” Venniyoor said.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

A broadcast session at Radio DC, Thiruvananthapuram. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS

Security concerns appear to have stymied the growth of community radio (CR) in India, a vast and diverse country of 1.2 billion people, the bulk of them living in remote, rural areas.

“There are too many ministries and departments involved in the CR licensing process, and remote border states in the northeast adjacent to Burma have been left out, for example,” says Sajan Venniyoor, member of a government committee constituted to fund new stations.

Also left out are the Kashmir valley, racked by a separatist movement, and the largely tribal states of Jharkhand and Chattisgarh in central India that have been hit by Maoist insurgency.

Radio Ujjas, licensed to the non-profit Kutch Women’s Development Organisation, became India’s first CR station close to its international border when it started broadcasting on Mar. 10, 2012. Located in Gujarat’s Bhimsar village, close to the Pakistan border, it applied for a license five years ago.

Prof. Kanchan Malik, at the department of communication, University of Hyderabad, told IPS that the processes to set up CR stations should be simplified if they are to play their mandated role of empowering marginalised communities and helping conflict resolution.

“Cumbersome licensing processes, a ban on news programmes, lack of cost-effective technology, funding restrictions, inadequate capacity building and spectrum allocation delays or denials are some of the hurdles in the way of CR stations coming up,” she said.

The campaign to give space to CR in India – in addition to commercial and public broadcasting – began in earnest after the Supreme Court ruled in February 1995 that airwaves are public property and could not be government monopoly.

But, it was not until 2004 that India’s first CR could be launched, run by the Education and Multimedia Research Centre of Anna University in southern Chennai city.

The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry has so far approved 363 proposals to set up CR stations in the country and, of these, 126 stations are operational.

Of those running, 76 are owned by colleges, institutes and other educational organisations, while only 36 are run by non-governmental organisations, showing limited civil society involvement.

Existing CR policy limits the award of licenses to not-for-profit organisations with a proven track record of community service and registered for not fewer than three years. Stringent restrictions have also been placed on fundraising.

CRs may operate a 100-watt radio station, with coverage limited to a 12-km radius and antenna height to 30 metres. Fifty percent of the programmes are expected to be produced locally and in the local language or dialect.

News programmes are banned, except items concerned with sports, traffic, weather conditions, cultural events and festivals, academic events, electricity and water supply, disaster warnings and health alerts.

Five minutes of advertising per hour are allowed, but CR programmes cannot be sponsored except by the government.

According to the ‘Compendium of Community Radio Stations in India’, published in 2011 by the New Delhi-based Commonwealth Education Media Centre for Asia in association with I&B ministry, restrictions on using high power equipment present a major difficulty.

Lack of training in handling equipment and creating programmes, inability to make strong content development, competition with mainstream commercial radio stations, limitation in airing advertisements and electricity failure are other hurdles, the compendium showed.

Activists say that women, tribal people, children, students, health workers and fishers could vastly benefit from CR, going by the experience of existing stations.

“With the arrival of CR, neglected groups have an opportunity for active participation in mainstream life,” says Chennai-based rights activist Mani Verma. “There has been, visibly, a revival of local culture and an increase in literacy rates.”

“For a thickly populated, predominantly rural country like India, reaching the masses and educating them is essential, and this can be achieved fastest by utilising CR effectively,” says P. Sajikumar, head of ‘Radio DC’ in Thiruvananthapuram.

A survey conducted by the DCSMAT School of Media and Business in this city found that there was a need to create awareness about CR and its capabilities. Often, the survey found, listeners failed to differentiate between CR and commercial radio.

“People tend to compare CR with commercial channels in every aspect,” the survey said. “Participation of listeners at every stage of production can be encouraged and importance given to young talent,” it suggested.

According to Venniyoor, the advent of mobile phones has given a fillip to CR because even the cheapest handsets come embedded with FM capability. “With digitisation, it may get even better. It will certainly get more interesting because of the explosive growth of mobile telephony.”

“Right now, however, we need to concentrate on getting licenses and setting up more stations,” Venniyoor said. “The government has promised support and we will just have to wait and see about actual implementation.”

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

A Let’s Talk listening group in Madhol Village in South Sudan. Credit: James Amuda/NDI

More specifically, they are here to listen to a community-based civic education programme on their local community station called Let’s Talk. It targets communities, and their leaders, to help promote dialogue on South Sudan’s political transition to an independent and democratic country.

And it introduces listeners to civic topics ranging from South Sudan’s transitional legal framework to strategies for combating corruption, and protecting children’s and women’s rights.
The 30-minute programme first hit the airwaves in January 2007 and uses a magazine format that includes drama, group discussions, and interviews to get its message across.

“The drama is used as a teaser segment that weaves rather complex issues or topics into the lives of characters in a fictional South Sudanese town of Jedida in a manner that is simple, humorous and more palatable to the audience. It helps ensure that the audience is entertained and informed about the topic of the day, but on a lighter note with lots of humour,” said Rehema Siama, Sudan Radio Service’s (SRS) scriptwriter for the programme.

Let’s Talk was created through a partnership between the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and SRS. It is broadcast in English, Arabic, and the two local languages of Dinka and Nuer. The programme is aired on a host of community radio stations including Sudan Radio Service, Bakhita FM, Radio Emanue, Naath FM and Nhomlau FM.

Today’s broadcast is an old one about defining free and fair elections. However, it has sparked the listeners’ apprehensions about a leader’s responsibilities. In addition to the programme, the NDI organises “listening groups” of ordinary people who gather across the country to listen to the programme and discuss its topics and themes and the impact on their communities, just like the group in Yambio.

“The session is intended to encourage democracy. If you get people together and they are able to tolerate each other’s views we believe it encourages democratic principles. We believe, in this way, people will learn to dialogue rather than to use violence to sort out issues,” said James Amuda, a programme officer at NDI.

After the broadcast in Yambio, James Gbakilingba, a listener in the group, talks about his concerns about the right to express one’s political views.

“For me, it is important that we talk to the people about political parties. We need to inform them what the views and objectives of each party are. And we need to inform people that the law allows anybody to belong to a party of his choice,” he said.

South Sudan is considered one of the most under-developed places in the world. And given the country’s vastness and biting poverty, coupled with its low level of literacy, radio is the surest way to reach the population.

In a country as remote as South Sudan, where there are only a few paved roads and many places can only be reached by air, and the airwaves, this community radio programme has been a hit.

“I think the Let’s Talk programme played a very instrumental role in the processes that led to the signing of the transitional constitution last July,” said Amuda. “We, as an institution working for democracy and good governance in South Sudan, realised that the process went well, but we realised that there was a lack of information among many people in the country about what was going on with the review. So we thought that it was important to inform people about what was happening with the constitutional review process in South Sudan.”

The programme is also helping disseminate information on new laws such as the Child and Land Acts. It is helping citizens to understand their roles in an independent country, Amuda said.

NDI has partnered with Free Voice Media to produce a new series of Let’s Talk. Marvis Birungi, a journalist involved in editing the features segment of the new programme, said there is still a need to address the information gap about the processes of democracy.

During last year’s review of South Sudan’s Interim Transitional Constitution, the Let’s Talk programme producers interviewed members of the technical committee to explain the review process and the role of citizens in it.

“So this programme will create awareness about the transitional constitution. Listeners will get to know the contents of that document. In addition, we know that a permanent constitutional review commission for the permanent constitution has been appointed, but the public need to know how they will participate in the review process,” Amuda said.

The new series will be piloted before the end of this month on four community radio stations: Radio Emmanuel in Eastern Equatoria state, Good News Radio in Lakes state, Radio Jonglei in Jonglei state, and Bakhita Radio in Central Equatoria state.

It will include a feature story, a short drama, a discussion segment, and a long interview with an expert or somebody who is knowledgeable about the particular topic.

“We know at the moment that the constitution contradicts certain customary laws. For example, the constitution says a woman has the right to have all the wealth of her dead husband but customary laws contradict this. So we will find someone knowledgeable about the constitution and somebody from the community with a cultural perspective, and they will discuss these issues,” said Amuda, about the new programme.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.