A girl from the Nat community performing – Credit: Department for Social Justice

By Mariya Salim
NEW DELHI, India, Jul 30 2021 (IPS)

Branded as being born ‘criminal’ 150 years ago under British colonial rule, De-Notified Tribes (DNTs) continue to bear the brunt of the various laws that stigmatised them since 1871.

Dakxin Chhara, the award-winning filmmaker and DNT activist, shared how the DNT community in India continues living an abysmal existence because of a centuries-old criminality stigma. Chhara calls his community an “invisible population” owing to their absence from government records, welfare schemes and a complete lack of political will to address their marginalisation.

“Even within a village in India, one can see the clear demarcation of localities based on caste, religion etc. One of the most marginalised, Dalits (former untouchables) also have an area where they stay, but for DNTs, there is no space within this structure,” Chhara said in an exclusive interview with IPS. “They are not considered worthy of being part of the village, and most end up living in jungles, moving from one place to another, isolated and stigmatised.”

Filmmaker and activist Dakxin Chhara. Credit: Handout

In 1871, nearly 150 tribes were notified to be criminals by the ‘Criminal Tribes Act’ passed by the British, meaning, just being born into one of these tribes made one a criminal. The absurdity of the rationale behind this discriminatory law, introduced in 1871 in India, a society largely based on caste and caste-based discrimination, can be seen in the British official’s introduction to the bill. He said: “People from time immemorial have been pursuing the caste system defined job-positions: weaving, carpentry and such were hereditary jobs. So, there must have been hereditary criminals also who pursued their forefathers’ profession.”

Academics say the creation of these criminal tribes was a “colonial stereotype”. It was to justify the British to discipline or control a section of the population who did not fit into the colonial power’s moral order they were trying to enforce on rural society. Among the worst victims were communities like the DNTs, who did not have a sedentary lifestyle. This made it more difficult to demand their subservience.

The Criminal Tribes Act, 1871, was repealed on August 31, 1952, resulting in the former criminal tribes ‘de-notified’ of this discriminatory tag. However, this was only on paper.

As in most groups, the women from these communities bear many layers of marginalisation. Sakila Khatoon from the north Indian state of Bihar belongs to the Nat community. Married off at a very early age, Sakila pursued her education and worked within the development sector on issues concerning her community. Most women she works with, however, have not had that opportunity, she told IPS.

Women from the Nat community face prejudice and stereotypes because of their involvement in sex work, and those who wish to explore other avenues of livelihood are discouraged and not treated with dignity. Sex workers from the community not only face stigmatisation but also are targets of police excesses. Khatoon shared how children of these women are often discouraged from pursuing higher education and are recipients of undignified comments from people who know that their parents are sex workers.

“Encouraging and supporting women from our communities to pursue higher education is the key to their upliftment,” Khatoon says.

Vijay (name changed) from the ‘Pardhi’ community in the state of Madhya Pradesh shared how harassment by police led to many people belonging to his community commit suicide and how the authorities continue to ostracise them. Youth are arbitrarily arrested on mere suspicion because they are seen as habitual offenders.

Over the years, there haven’t been any genuine attempts to address the plight of the DNT communities, and commissions aimed at improving their condition have failed.

Shiney Vashisht, a PhD research scholar at the Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi, who worked as a researcher at the National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi Nomadic tribes, confirms this.

“The National Commissions established and re-established over the years, have done nothing close to substantial for the DNTs except for half-heartedly recommending welfare steps, that are a mere compilation of suggestions from previous commission reports, based on population projections of decades-old data,” Vashisht says.

Based on her engagement with leaders from the community and field research, she argues that these communities deserve a designated commission, having a constitutional status on the lines of National Commissions for Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The commission should generate a database from a national survey of DNTs. The inquiries should have a strong mandate to recommend DNT specific welfare schemes.

Chhara adds that one of the demands of the DNT community is separate reservations. He gives the example of the state of Maharashtra, where within the OBC quota, there is a separate reservation for DNTs and says that a model similar to this should be applicable throughout the country.

Chhara remembers how as children, his sister eventually gave up going to school after the humiliation of being falsely called a thief in front of the entire class and teacher when a few marble balls went missing.

Years later, little has changed. Chhara had to remove his children from their school after the principal told him that because the school’s trustees belonged to the upper caste, the school had clear instructions of not admitting any children from communities that Chhara came from.

“It is not hard to guess that when something like this can happen to a man like me who has won national and international awards, what would the fate and plight of others belonging to our communities be.”

• Mariya Salim is a fellow of IPS UN Bureau

Scenes from the Apollo 11 television restoration press conference held at the Newseum in Washington, DC on July 16, 2009. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/cc by 2.0

By Nora Happel
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2015 (IPS)

Although the United States as a whole is becoming more ethnically diverse, newsrooms remain largely dominated by white, male reporters, according to a recent investigation by The Atlantic magazine.

It found that just 22.4 percent of television journalists, 13 percent of radio journalists, and 13.34 percent of journalists at daily newspapers came from minority groups in 2014.

Another new census, by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), found just 12.76 percent minority journalists at U.S. daily newspapers in 2014.

While the percentage of minority groups in the U.S. has been steadily increasing, reaching a recent total of 37.4 percent of the U.S. population, the number of minority journalists, by contrast, has stayed at a constant level for years.

This is particularly true for the share of minority employment at newspapers, which has been staggeringly low – between 11 and 14 percent for more than two decades, as illustrated in a graphic by the Pew Research Center and ASNE.

Many say it is a major problem for a field that strives to represent and inform a diverse public, and worrisome for a medium that has the power to shape and influence the views and opinions of mass audiences.

“Journalism must deliver insight from different perspectives on various topics and media must reflect the public they serve. The risk is that by limiting media access to ethnic minorities, the public gets a wrong perception of reality and the place ethnic minorities have in society,” Pamela Morinière, Communications and Authors’ Rights Officer at the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), told IPS.

Under-representation of minority journalists has negative effects on the quality of reporting.

Speaking to IPS, Alfredo Carbajal, managing editor of Al Dia (The Dallas Morning News) and organiser for the ASNE Minority Leadership Institute, said, “The consequence [of ethnic minority groups’ under-representation] is that news coverage lacks the perspectives, expertise and knowledge of these groups as well as their specific skills and experiences because of who they are.”

ASNE President Chris Peck added: “If newsrooms cannot stay in touch with the issues, the concerns, hopes and dreams of an increasingly diverse audience, those news organisations will lose their relevance and be replaced.”

Commenting on the underlying reasons, both Carbajal and Peck underscored the lack of opportunities for minority students compared to their white counterparts.

“Legacy journalism organisations have relied too long on an established pipeline for talent. It’s a pipeline dominated by white, mostly middle class and upper middle class connections – schools, existing journalism leaders, media companies. It’s something of a self-perpetuating cycle that has been slow to evolve,” Peck said.

This argument is echoed in a recent analysis by Ph.D. student Alex T. Williams published in the Columbia Journalism Review. Confronted with the claim that newspapers cannot hire more minority journalists due to the lack of university graduates, Williams took a closer look at graduate and employment statistics provided by Grady College’s Annual Graduate Surveys.

He found that minorities accounted for 21.4 percent of graduates in journalism or communication between 2004 and 2013 – a number that is “not high” but “still not as low as the number of minority journalists working in newsrooms today.”.

The more alarming trend, he says, is that only 49 percent of graduates from minority groups were able to find full-time jobs after their studies. Numbers of white graduates finding employment, by contrast, amounted to 66 percent. This means the under-representation of ethnic minorities in journalism must be traced back to recruitment rather than to graduation numbers, he concluded.

A main reason why minority graduates have difficulty finding jobs, according to Williams, is that most newsrooms look for specific experiences such as unpaid internships that many minority students cannot afford. Also, minority students are more likely to attend less well-appointed colleges that might not have the resources to keep a campus newspaper or offer special networking opportunities.

Another reason is linked to newspapers’ financial constraints. Peck told IPS: “There is a challenge within news organisations to keep a diverse workforce at a time when the traditional media are economically challenged, even as new industries are actively looking to hire away talent that represents the changing American demographic.”

Further, union contracts favour unequal employment, according to Doris Truong, a Washington Post editor and acting president of Unity, who was quoted in 2013 article in The Atlantic.

“One piece of this puzzle is layoff policies and union contracts that often reward seniority and push the most recent hires to leave first. Many journalists of color have the least protected jobs because they’re the least senior employees.”

Different ideas and initiatives have been put forth to increase the representation of minority journalists.

Amongst the ideas expressed by Pamela Morinière are the inclusion of diversity reporting in student curricula, dialogues in newsrooms on the representation of minority groups, making job offers available widely and adopting equal opportunity and non-discrimination policies.

Chris Peck emphasises the importance of “home-grown talent”: “Identifying local students who have an interest in journalism and that have a connection to a specific locale will be a critical factor in the effort to diversify newsrooms. It’s a longer term effort to cultivate local talent. But it can pay off.”

“Second, I think it is important to tap social media to explain why journalism is still a dynamic field and invite digital natives to become part of it,” he said.

Civil society organisations such as UNITY Journalists for Diversity, a strategic alliance of several minority journalist associations, aim at increasing the representation of minority groups in journalism and promoting fair and complete coverage about diversity, ethnicity and gender issues.

The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) is part of the alliance. It seeks to advance specifically Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) journalists. Its president, Paul Cheung, told IPS: “AAJA believes developing a strong pipeline of talents as well as diverse sources are key to increase representation.”

“2015 will mark some significant milestones in AAJA’s history. AAJA will be celebrating 15 years of training multi-cultural high school students through JCamp, 20th anniversary of […] our Executive Leadership programmes and 25 years of inspiring college students to enter the field of journalism through VOICES.”

Ethnic minority journalists are not the only under-represented group at news outlets in the U.S. and around the world. The Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media states that women represent only a third of the journalism workforce in the 522 companies in nearly 60 countries surveyed for the study. Seventy-three percent of the top management jobs are held by men, while only 27 percent are occupied by women.

“When it comes to women’s portrayal in the news, the situation is even worse,” Pamela Mornière told IPS.

“Women make up only 24 percent of people seen, heard or read about. They remain quite invisible, although they represent more than half of the world’s population. And when they make the news they make it too often in a stereotypical way. The impact of this can be devastating on the public’s perception of women’s place and role in society. Many women have made their way on the political and economic scene. Media must reflect that.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Fed up with poverty, unemployment and broken promises on a political settlement, Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province voted overwhelmingly in support of opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena at the Jan. 9 presidential elections. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
COLOMBO, Jan 9 2015 (IPS)

When the initial results started trickling in a little after midnight on Jan. 9, it still wasn’t clear exactly which way the country would swing: had Sri Lanka’s 15 million eligible voters thrown in their lot with incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa for a third term? Or would the desire for change put common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena at the helm?

It seemed close at first, with the bulk of the Sinhalase masses in the southern and central districts of Hambantota and Ratnapura polling in favour of Rajapaksa and his United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA).

But when newscasters began reading out the final tally of votes from the Tamil and Muslim-majority Northern and Eastern Provinces, it became clear that this was no repeat of the 2010 presidential race.

“This year the Tamil people seemed to have taken an oath for change." -- Dr. Jeyasingham, a senior lecturer at the Eastern University of Sri Lanka in Batticaloa
Symbolised by a swan, the ‘rainbow coalition’ National Democratic Front (NDF) swept the 12 electoral divisions in the northern Jaffna district with 253,574 votes, roughly 74.42 percent of the largely Tamil electorate.

The Tamil-majority northern Vanni district saw a landslide win for the NDF, with majority votes in the Mannar, Mullaitivu and Vavuniya polling divisions bringing in 78.47 percent of that region’s total ballots, while the eastern Batticaloa district also voted overwhelmingly in favour of the opposition, bringing Sirisena 81.62 percent of the total.

By six a.m., as daylight crept over the island, longtime President Rajapaksa had accepted defeat, and the new leader was making plans for a swearing-in ceremony at the Independence Square in Colombo.

Despite both candidates hailing from rural Sinhala communities and campaigning largely on a platform of promises to the Sinhala masses, experts say it was the minorities who decided this election.

“This year the Tamil people seemed to have taken an oath for change,” said Dr. Jeyasingham, a senior lecturer at the Eastern University of Sri Lanka in Batticaloa. “People in the North and East voted early – always a sign that change is in the air.

“Today, one thing is clear,” he told IPS, “and that is: minority votes decided this president. Tamils and Muslims [who account for 15 and nine percent of the population, respectively] are an important part of this democratic system and they had enough grievances to vote against the existing government.”

Silent discontent

Few could predict with certainty the outcome of the polls.

Since coming to power in 2005, Rajapaksa has enjoyed widespread popular support, bolstered by his decisive defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009, which brought an end to Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil conflict.

Riding on the war victory, Rajapaksa proceeded to consolidate his position by appointing his flesh and blood to prominent political posts. His three brothers serve, respectively, as the minister of economic development, the defence secretary and the speaker of parliament.

He also embarked on ambitious infrastructure projects, including the construction of major highways and reconstruction of the rail-line linking southern Sri Lanka with the north.

Still, experts say he neglected crucial issues, including delivering on promises to the minority Tamil population to allow them greater political autonomy, initiating a meaningful reconciliation process in the aftermath of the bloody conflict, and ensuring the independence of democratic institutions such as parliament and the judiciary.

Faced with a surprise challenger in the form of his one-time health minister and party secretary Sirisena, Rajapaksa fell back on his post-war rhetoric, ‘defeating terrorism’ in Sri Lanka being the regime’s greatest claim to fame.

Unfortunately for him, the public did not bite. Ironically, the lack of efforts to reconcile with the people of the north and east – who bore the brunt of the final stages of the war for which both the government and the LTTE stand accused of war crimes – proved to be the nail in his coffin.

“The last government failed with respect to any kind of meaningful reconciliation,” Dr. Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), told IPS.

“They engaged in land grabs [in the North], got the army involved in the economy, from buying and selling vegetables to running hotels, [and] engaged in human rights violations, in which they were getting away with impunity.”

Voting for change

Grassroots activists on the ground in the North and East have long called attention to wounds left untreated for too long. Many thousands still live with trauma, while others say there was never formal recognition of civilians’ suffering in a battle that claimed between 8,000 and 40,000 lives.

“[People in the North] were not even allowed to mourn their kith and kin,” Jeyasingham asserted. “Burial grounds were demolished. These are all things people have been keeping inside but they couldn’t raise their voices because of state oppression.”

And while press releases boasted of rapid rehabilitation and development in the former war zone, the majority of residents here struggled to find three square meals a day. Unemployment in the Northern Province stands at 5.2 percent, with the Kilinochchi District boasting the highest unemployment rate in the island, at 7.9 percent.

Poverty is also widespread, with government data pointing to a 28.8-percent poverty headcount in the Mullaitivu District, six times the national rate of 6.7 percent. In Mannar, the poverty rate is 20.1 percent, while Jaffna and Kilinochchi each nurse poverty headcounts of 8.3 percent and 12.7 percent, respectively.

“Even government servants struggle to survive on a 30-day basic salary,” Jeyasingham said. “This was clear from the postal votes in the North – it appears almost all public servants had voted against the government.”

Seen against this backdrop, many felt that Rajapaksa’s pre-election appeal to Tamil voters in the North to choose “the known devil” over the “unknown angel” to be in poor taste.

In Muslim-majority areas, too, it was plain where minorities stood.

A spate of violent attacks against Muslim communities in the last year – including a deadly riot in the southern town of Aluthgama that left eight people dead, 80 injured, and several shops in smoldering ruins after being torched by Sinhalese mobs – had many fearing for the future of religious and ethnic plurality in the country.

Public sentiment soured further at what many perceived to be indifference on the part of the government to attacks on Muslim shops and businesses, while tolerance towards the hard-line Buddhist monk-led Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Task Force, or BBS), widely believed to be instigators of the inter-religious tensions, pushed many Muslim communities away from the Rajapaksa regime.

It is yet to be seen how the new president will do justice to the huge voter turnout in the North and East. Sirisena’s 100-day work programme promises equality and an end to religious intolerance, Saravanamuttu said, but some political observers fear he may renege on these pledges in favour of placating the Sinhala vote-base.

As for the minorities, they have put their shoulders to the wheel of democracy and forced open the space to air their grievances. They can only hope they will be heard.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Young inclusion leaders participating in a workshop session to discuss the setting up of a diversity and inclusion network for future leaders from among Germany’s ‘people of color’, Berlin 2014. Credit: Ina Meling/Integration Commissioner Büro Tempelhof-Schöneberg

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Dec 23 2014 (IPS)

A unique initiative – the Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE) project – has just held its second workshop here to set up a diversity and inclusion network for future leaders from among Germany’s ‘people of color’, or persons from different ‘non-white’ cultural backgrounds.

The event was held from Dec. 9 to 13in Berlin’s Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy delivered his iconic “Ich bin ein Berliner” freedom and solidarity speech to 400,000 West Berliners in 1963.

The workshop brought together 15 talented game changers aged between 18 and 28 from Afro-German, Turkish, Kurdish, Latin American and German-Asian backgrounds, selected from across the country to engage with illustrious key speakers from Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom in sessions designed to discuss instruments for promoting anti-racism, diversity and migrant-friendly agendas."Democracy needs strong, well-networked minorities. When you look around Germany, from parliament to media, public and private sectors, well it's still pretty white, there's a lot of work to be done" – Gabriele Gün Tank, Commissioner for Integration in Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg and co-founder of Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE)

The speakers  included Simon Woolley, Director of Operation Black Vote (UK), Mekonnen Mesghena, Director of Migration and Diversity at Berlin’s Heinrich-Böll Foundation, Kwesi Aikins, Policy Officer at the Centre for Migration and Social Affairs, Nuran Yigit, expert in anti-discrimination and board member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Migration Council, Terri Givens, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a specialist in the politics of race, and Professor Kurt Barling, a BBC special correspondent.

NILE is the brainchild of two alumni of the 2013 German Marshall Fund’s (GMF) Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network (TILN) – 35-year-old Gabriele Gün Tank, Commissioner for Integration in Berlin Tempelhof-Schöneberg, and 28-year-old researcher and social activist Daniel Gyamerah, head of Each One Teach One (EATO), a black literature and media project in Berlin.

“Democracy needs strong, well-networked minorities. When you look around Germany, from parliament to media, public and private sectors, well it’s still pretty white, there’s a lot of work to be done,” Tank told a GMF alumni reception.

NILE was set up through collaboration with NGOs, top institutions including federal ministries and assistance from the influential Heinrich-Böll Foundation which is affiliated with the Green Party, the U.S. embassy and the Eberhard-Schultz-Stiftung (Foundation for Human Rights and Participation).  

“We are moving forward with inclusive governance, inclusion best practices and empowerment training,” said Tank.  “This is of critical importance if we are to bridge the migration gap for a fairer, social and political representation of minorities at all levels.”

Engaging young Muslims within a climate of hostility

Mersiha Hadziabdic, aged 25, said that she joined the NILE initiative confident that networking and coalition building plays a crucial role in steering change relevant to her generation.

Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, she came to Berlin as a three-year-old refugee when her family fled the Prijedor massacre, one of the worse war crimes along with the Srebrenica genocide perpetrated by the Serbian political and military leadership’s ethnic-cleansing drive, which killed 14,000 civilians.

“My background means a lot to me, and for this reason I am involved with the Bosnian community in Berlin, my home town,” she told IPS.

Wearing a headscarf in Berlin, Mersiha is often mistaken for a Turkish woman, with its attendant stereotypes of submissiveness and low expectations.

But, like 25-year-old Soufeina Hamed, a Tunisian-born graduate in intercultural psychology from the University of Osnabrück, who is active in Zahnräder Netzwerker, an incubator for Muslim social entrepreneurship, Mersiha is an internet savvy and project team member of JUMA (Young Active and Muslim), which offers management, rhetoric and media skills training to young German Muslims.

”I see myself as part and process of this vibrant, committed and capable Muslim youth which has something important to contribute and wants to be involved in the conversation,” she said.

Just like Ozan Keskinkilic, an MA student in international relations from a Turkish-Arab background who is active in the Muslim-Jewish Conference (MJC) for peaceful inter-religious dialogue, she noted that this conversation involves engaging in a climate of anti-migrant and refugee hostility.

That hostility is currently finding expression in populist rallies, such as the Dresden march on Dec. 8, where 15,000 anti-immigrant protesters, mostly from PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), marched to the former 1989 freedom rallying cry of “Wir Sind das Volk” (We are the People).

Young, talented and ambitious, Mersiha, Soufeina and Ozan are part of Germany’s four million Muslims residents and citizens, about five percent of the country’s population, of whom 45 percent have German citizenship.

According to the Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s intelligence agency, approximately 250,000 Muslims live in Berlin, 73 percent of whom are of Turkish background and one-third of whom have German citizenship. They belong to that population sector whose qualifications and skills are raising inclusion and access expectations which demand more level playing fields.

Creating a critical mass for change

The NILE initiative aims to channel personal issues relating to emotional damage inflicted by racism, discrimination or the traumas of fleeing from conflict zones into a process of empowerment towards common, personal and professional goals.

Empowerment and leadership tools are taught as means of engaging with the world as it is, gaining an understanding that ‘persons of color’ are neither powerless nor invisible.

Kurt Barling, who has carved a role of influence for himself by exposing stories which shape communities but too often remain hidden by a majority oblivious to the perspectives of others, had a clear mentoring message:

Group photo of participants in the Network Inclusion Leaders (NILE) 2014 workshop held in Berlin’s Rathaus Schöneberg, where John F. Kennedy delivered his iconic “Ich bin ein Berliner” freedom and solidarity speech to 400,000 West Berliners in 1963. Credit: Ina Meling/Integration Commissioner Büro Tempelhof-Schöneberg

“Take control, shape your narratives with the new digital space available and build trust relationships with the authorities to change how the media frames and reflects our communities and our issues.”

Participants learned to be part of a critical mass for change, a “majority complex”, to build strategic coalitions to reduce marginalisation, reframe the migration debate as a socio-economic asset, and challenge discrimination and racism with the tools provided by human rights instruments such as the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a monitoring body of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

“Freedom of speech definitely stops at racial slander and incitement,” explained Kwesi Aikins, “and you can challenge that in the courts. Even human rights education is a human right.”

“Martin Luther King did not just have a dream, he had a plan,” said Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote (UK). Woolley was invited by NILE to explain to the young participants how they can take advantage of the torch handed to them all the way back from the civil rights movement, including harnessing their own electoral muscle because the black vote counts. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that power talks to power”.

NILE workshop participants agreed that the challenge facing young leaders is to find their role within the constraints of conflicting choices on offer between blending, assertiveness and the tiring fight for a fair share.

Maria-Jose Munoz a native of Bolivia, whose research interests focus on the Madera river energy complex on the Bolivia-Brazil border, knows she has an uphill struggle ahead of her – emerging in a white, male-dominated energy policy field.

Wrapping up her experience at NILE, she said: “We are all just looking for belonging and a way to engage in a personal and public dialogue, building bridges between our often conflicting identities.”

“As minority communities, we often find a blocked path towards common goals. NILE helped me understand that I can be strong and that, by coalescing with others, I can tear down these walls.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Amid calls from world leaders for media diversity and plurality to be strengthened to combat a rising tide of extremism and intolerance, media experts have warned that change should not be expected overnight and that governments and states have a crucial role to play in the process.

Heads of state, government representatives and experts are meeting in the Austrian capital, Vienna, at the fifth United Nations Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC) Global Forum in a bid to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding as a path to reduce global conflict.

The role of the media in encouraging such dialogue, specifically in its representation of diverse communities, minority groups and cultures, has been one of the central discussion points over the two days of the conference.

UN officials and world leaders all spoke on the importance of using media as a tool to bring nations closer together at a time when, as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, “intolerance and extremism are growing”, emphasising the responsibility media has in fostering understanding and defusing conflict.

Leaders from the conflict-plagued Middle East were among the strongest voices calling for media to recognise its responsibility in reporting on diverse cultures fairly and accurately.

Emir of Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, said: “Understanding others and respecting their cultures and beliefs and the renunciation of extremism, hatred and racism are the most effective ways to plug the pretexts used by those who try to exploit these manifestations to encourage violence and terrorism. There is a growing responsibility of media in portraying the right image of ‘the other’ while avoiding prejudices and stereotyping others, and looking at the facts to judge accordingly.”

He added: “Even under the domination of market laws the media’s mission should go beyond excitement and to secure high rates of audience, and (be aware) that their writers and journalists might be carrying preconceived notions as a result of their own upbringing and nurture, and that freedom of expression is vital but not enough, and must be coupled with responsibility.”

But journalists and media experts at the conference said that while the goal was a laudable one, effective change was unlikely to come quickly.

Speaking to IPS at the UNAOC summit, Alison Bethel McKenzie of the International Press Institute based in Vienna, said: “It is possible that eventually media across the world will be fully diverse and will have adequate plurality.

“But it will take a long time and it will be an uphill struggle because there are differences between what some communities will want, for instance indigenous peoples wanting their own separate media instead of being inclusive, and by nature I think that human beings just don’t reach out to people who are different to them and the media is no different in that respect.”

She added: “In fact sometimes it appears that we are going in the opposite direction and are not embracing people’s differences and being inclusive towards them.”

Other journalists at the summit highlighted that a number of issues the media needed to address itself to related to a lack of diversity and inclusiveness in its reporting, including the need to widen the representation of cultures and minorities in newsrooms, improving the accuracy of reporting on minorities and diverse cultures, and strengthening the implementation of ethical codes and reporting guidelines.

Milica Pecic, executive director of the London-based Media Diversity Institute, said there remain stark deficiencies in many media organisations in all these areas, pointing out that in media in western countries, which encourage social inclusion in legislation and policy practice, minorities are often sorely underrepresented in newsrooms.

“These are issues that really need to be addressed. For instance, if you look at news organisations, there may be many female reporters, but how many women hold senior positions in those organisations? Not very many,” she said.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, three Middle Eastern states – Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran – currently have the most repressive state restrictions on reporting. State censorship of news outlets remains omnipotent in China while most established media outlets in Russia are either controlled by or heavily influenced by the state.

In Western states the independence of media in the face of ever-concentrating media ownership – which critics say threatens diversity of opinion and plurality as owners could push their own interests in their media – has been increasingly questioned.

In the U.S., investigations were undertaken into cable provider Comcast over claims it was limiting competition. This came after it was bought by the NBC network – a move which third sector groups said could see Comcast favouring content from NBC to the detriment of others.

In the UK, there has been repeated concern over global broadcast giant News Corporation’s relationship with the country’s largest pay-TV broadcaster, BSkyB. The Murdoch media group controls 39.1 percent of BskyB, and is the dominant influence on its board.

This remains a serious problem, McKenzie told IPS. And while the summit showed that media experts were split on the need for legislation to ensure accurate and fair depiction and reporting of diverse cultures and minorities in the media, this was an issue where governments needed to take decisive action.

She told IPS: “Governments absolutely have got to crack down on media monopolies because it allows media to give only one perspective. It’s not fair to people and it’s ridiculous because these media then become just a propaganda tool.”

But there remains some hope that even if governments do not, or cannot act, a young media and technology-savvy generation is ensuring, if not complete plurality and diversity, at least independence in information provision.

McKenzie said: “In some developing countries, and certainly in the Middle East following the Arab spring, more people are really insisting on independent media even if they have to create it themselves.

“Young people are becoming more media literate, they are creating media themselves. Independent media is mostly online and when I talk to young people it’s amazing, it seems like they just woke up to the media, its importance what news is being covered and how they themselves are being represented. That’s a really good thing for the future.” (end)

Since the restoration of democracy in 2008, Pakistan has undertaken steps to uphold human rights, but the situation of minorities has only worsened, according to a group of NGOs. Dalits are in the worst state, facing both religious and social discrimination, they say.

The Pakistan government claims otherwise. “2008-2012 has been the most active period of legislation-making on human rights in the 65 years of the history of Pakistan,” Hina Rabbani Khar, Pakistan minister for foreign affairs told the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva this week. After a first assessment in 2008, Pakistan was scrutinised again by the peer review mechanism of the Human Rights Council that all UN member states undergo every four years.

A new law was enacted in May 2012 to create a national independent commission on human rights, one member of which will be from the minorities. Pakistan has also ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture and it is now focusing on implementing them at the national level, the minister said.

“Our constitution is crystal clear on the rights of minorities to freely profess their religion and visit their places of worship,” the minister added. “They are an integral part of the Pakistani society and all citizens are guaranteed equal rights and status, irrespective of religion or caste.”

Independent groups cast their doubts. “Since the last review there has been some progress, but it is clearly not enough in terms of minority rights,” Shobha Das, director of programmes at Minority Rights Group International stressed in an interview with IPS.

“Pakistan has ratified ICCPR, but its implementation is very slow. It has a quota system in politics where 4 percent of the seats in the upper house are reserved for non-Muslims – which reflects their percentage in the population. But in the lower house, the national assembly, only 10 seats out of 342 are reserved for non-Muslims. Non-Muslims are not safe in Pakistan, particularly those who speak out for their rights. We are very concerned about religious freedom.”

Minority Rights Group International is particularly worried about direct, physical attacks on members of the minorities, and the inability, or unwillingness, of a “weak state” to protect them. It is also concerned over what it calls the institutionalised erosion of religious freedom – like having to declare one’s religion when applying for identity papers.

“Even if religious minorities are not directly affected by violence, there is a pervasive atmosphere of fear because the state does not provide adequate response,” Shobba Das said. “These people feel insecure. They feel Pakistani, but the message they get is that they are not.”

NGOs are concerned also over the blasphemy law, that they say constitutes a fundamental erosion of human rights. Instituted in the 1860s by the British to protect all religions against blasphemy, it has been amended so often that today it protects Islam and not other religions. The law is often misused to settle personal disputes with members of religious minorities.

Zulfiqar Shah from the Pakistan Dalit Solidarity Network told IPS that members of supposedly ‘lower’ castes, the Dalits, suffer acutely in Pakistan. “Dalits are discriminated against as much as in India and, in addition, they have the double disadvantage of being non-Muslim. Currently, there is no law against discrimination.”

In 1947, at the time of the partition of India when Pakistan was created, about 24 percent to 27 percent of the population in the area that is present day Pakistan was of the minorities. The majority of Hindus migrated to India, others converted to Islam. Today the minority population in Pakistan is only 4 percent, which is 7.2 million people. Most members of the minorities who are still in Pakistan belong to Dalit groups. Their numbers are 330,000 according to the 1998 census, but minority groups say the real number is between two and four million.

Getting the real figures is politically fraught. But it is also difficult since most Dalits live in rural areas, and with very poor access to health, education and employment. They are confined to jobs like agricultural work in bondage labour. “Forced labour goes on from generation to generation because these landless peasants cannot pay off their debts,” Shah said.

Currently, there is only one Dalit in Parliament and not a single one in a provincial assembly. “The government should set up a commission to implement affirmative action. Discrimination is built in Hinduism, not in Islam. Theoretically Dalits should have a better position in Pakistan than in India, but unfortunately it is even worse. India, at least, guarantees legal protection and affirmative action,” Shah said.

One of the most pressing issues is the kidnapping of young girls who are forcibly converted to Islam. In March this year, Rinkal Kumari, a 19-year-old Hindu girl, was kidnapped and forcibly converted. A few months later, 350 people from the upper Sindh left for India.

“Pakistan should set up a faith conversion commission with members from all religions. Whoever wants to convert should approach this commission first,” Shah said.

States participating in the interactive dialogue with Pakistan asked the government to adopt steps to amend the law on blasphemy and to uphold the rights of religious minorities. They asked it to investigate attacks against religious minorities and to hold those responsible for those acts accountable.

Minority neighbourhoods have been targeted by groups who rebelled against Gaddafi. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
TRIPOLI, Jul 14 2012 (IPS)

“The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi,” Nasser al-Hawary, researcher with the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights tells IPS.

Hawary showed IPS testimonies from families whose loved ones have been beaten to death in the custody of the many militias that continue to control vast swathes of Libya.

“At least 20 people have been beaten to death in militia custody since the revolution, and this is a conservative figure. The real figure is probably far higher,” says Hawary, pointing to photos of bloodied bodies accompanying the testimonies.

Hawary is no fan of the Gaddafi regime. The former Salafist and political oponent of Gaddafi was imprisoned numerous times as a poitical dissident by Gaddafi’s secret police.

Hawary emerged from his periods of incarceration beaten and bloodied, but not broken. Far worse happened to his Islamist friends under the Gaddafi regime which was fiercely opposed to Islamic fundamentalism.

Hawary eventually escaped to Egypt where he remained until Libya’s February 17 revolution in 2011 made it safe for him and other Islamists to return.

Revenge attacks, killings and abductions against former Gaddafi supporters and against black men, who the rebels perceive as having worked as mercenaries for Gaddafi during the war, continue well after the “liberation” of the country.

Several months ago Muhammad Dossah, 28, was abducted by armed militia men at a checkpoint in the northern city Misrata as he was driving his employer Forrestor Oil Company’s car from the city Ras al Amoud to capital Tripoli.

“I don’t know if he is dead or alive. We haven’t heard from him since he disappeared from the militia checkpoint and the police investigating his disappearance say the trail has gone cold,” his brother Hussam Dossah, 25, tells IPS.

The police managed to trace the car through several cities down the eastern side of Libya but there the trail ended. There has been no sighting of Muhammad since then, and his family have no idea what has happened to him.

“He could have been abducted because he is black or because the gunmen wanted the car he was driving. We are Libyan but my father is from Chad,” says Hussam.

Hussam’s story is one of many of abductions, random killings, torture and robbery as militia men continue to take the law into their hands.

Despite the interim National Transitional Council’s (NTC) pledge to bring the more than 6,000 detainees currently in detention to trial or to release them, only some have been freed while the atrocities committed by pro-revolutionary rebels have been overlooked.

Armed militias controlling the streets and enforcing their version of law and order is a problem even in the major cities where the NTC has supposedly retaken control.

Gunfire punctuates the night regularly in Tripoli, and sometimes the day. “All the young men here have guns,” former rebel fighter Suheil al Lagi tells IPS. “They are accustomed to sorting out political differences and petty squabbles this way, or they rob people using weapons. The high unemployment and financial hardship is aggravating the situation.”

While security is an issue in Tripoli, the situation in the provinces is worse. Unshaven, ragtag militia men dressed in mismatching military fatigues often extort money from people travelling through their checkpoints, particularly if they are foreign or black.

Travelling from the Salloum border crossing with Egypt to Tripoli involves crossing dozens of checkpoints manned by numerous militias, comprising local clans with divided loyalties.

At a Misrata checkpoint that this IPS correspondent passed, a bearded militia man decided that foreigners would have to undergo Aids tests before they could have their travel documents returned. Only intervention by others prevented this.

At a number of checkpoints in the Tobruk area, migrant Egyptian labourers were forced to pay bribes of up to 30 dollars each by militiamen before their passports were returned.

“We are aware of the problems facing our country and are trying to resolve the issues,” says Hassan Issa, member of the NTC from Ajdabia city. “It is not easy for us to bring all the groups under control at this point in time,” NTC member Abdel Karim Subeihi tells IPS.

“This is not the new Libya we fought for and we may have to take up arms again if the corruption and greed continue. This time against the new government,” warns al Lagi.

As the Latino population in the United States rises, the demographic shift will affect future as well as current voting habits, and therefore election outcomes, in the United States, according to several experts.

In the highly competitive upcoming presidential elections, “a couple hundred of Latino voters can make a difference,” Roberto Suro, director of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at University of Southern California, said Monday. The impact is especially significant in battleground states like Florida, which holds 29 electoral votes, and where 22.9 percent of the populace is Latino.

The Hispanic and Latino population in the United States is projected to more than double by 2050 and will account for 24 percent of the future population – more than 102 million people – according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

American denizens have long been predominantly white and of European descent. However, 2012 marked the first time that minorities – such as Latinos and blacks – have outnumbered the majority – non-Hispanic whites – in the U.S.

According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the rising Latino voting populace “solidifies this emerging electorate as an important voting bloc among U.S. voters”. Every month, an estimated 50,000 Latinos in the United States turn 18 and thus are legally allowed to vote in the country.

A record number of Latinos voted in the 2008 presidential election, where 9.7 million Latino voters cast ballots in a marked increase from the 7.6 million who voted in 2004.

Yet the voting bloc represents only a small percentage of potential voters in the Latino demographic. According to a U.S. Census Bureau finding on voting patterns, 40 percent of Latinos did not register to vote and 50 percent did not vote in 2008.

Nevertheless, the Latino population might be the deciding factor in this year’s elections. Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, an organisation focused on immigration reform, called the Latino influence in the election “the whisker that wags the dog”.

In 2010, three Latino candidates, all Republican, ran for and won political offices. In Nevada, Brian Sandoval became the state’s first Hispanic governor. In New Mexico, Susana Martinez became the first Latina governor in U.S. history, and in Florida, Marco Rubio won a U.S. Senate seat.

One of the most intriguing candidates in this elections cycle has been Rubio, who has been named as a potential – though unlikely – candidate for vice president on the Republican ticket with Mitt Romney, the party’s presumptive nominee.

“It brought light to his biggest plus, which is that he could bring some (Latinos) under his tent,” Manuel Roig-Franzia, author of “The Rise of Marco Rubio”, said of Republicans’ vetting of Rubio, at a panel discussion at the New America Foundation.

Despite the fact that all three of the winning Latino candidates for office were Republicans, Latino voters generally tend to vote for Democratic candidates. According to exit polls conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center in 2010, 60 percent of Latino voters supported Democratic candidates in House races, while 38 percent supported Republican candidates.

In the last presidential election in 2008, Latinos supported President Barack Obama by a margin of more than two to one – 67 percent to 31 percent – over his Republican challenger John McCain, according to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut.

The elections cycle, however, has brought about a different set of circumstances that do not guarantee Latinos will vote according to past practices. With the economy and unemployment paramount in this year’s election, naturally the Latino population is far from exempt from political plays.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among Hispanics and Latinos is 11 percent, according to June statistics, which is noticeably higher than the national average of 8.2 percent.

Another prickly issue regarding the Latino population is the issue of deportation. President Obama addressed a less contentious part of the deportation issue earlier in 2012, a move that earned him a mixture of both praise for his efforts to push for along immigration reform as well as criticism for what some considered a political maneuver.

However, the Obama administration has deported more people than the Bush administration. According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, the United States deported nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants in 2011 fiscal year – the highest total ever.

As the United States struggles to level the racial disparities in its education system, the birth rate of minorities has been rising steadily. Experts say this confluence of statistics should compel Americans to seriously address the flaws and failures of the country’s public education system.

Public education statistics underscore an already alarming achievement gap that could widen depending on how successfully the United States addresses a host of issues, among them equal access to quality education.

Although high school dropout rates for all students between 1990 and 2010 have decreased overall, the 2010 dropout rate of African-Americans and Hispanics was nevertheless at least 50 percent higher than that of white students, according to “The Condition of Education 2012“, published by the National Centre for Education Statistics.

“Black students went from (a dropout rate of) 13 percent in 1990 to 8 percent in 2010, Hispanics went from 32 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2010 and whites went from 9 percent in 1990 to 5 percent in 2010,” the report stated.

Of children under the age of one year, 50.4 percent were minorities as of July 2011, up 49.5 percent from 2010, according to the latest census results.

Hispanics in the United States numbered 52 million in 2011. They also had the fastest growing population, boosting the Hispanic share of the nation’s total population from 16.3 percent in 2010 to 16.7 percent in 2011.

African-Americans are considered the second largest minority group, at 43.9 million in 2011. Asian-Americans numbered 18.2 million in 2011 and were the second fastest growing minority group.

Significant disparities in quality and access

“There is a twofold problem with advanced placement courses in public school system(s) because some heavily minority populated schools have limited access to advanced placement courses,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau.

“Other schools have ‘segregation’ in their advanced placement courses because the classes tend to have a majority of white students,” he noted.

States play a major role in combating education disparities in the United States, Shelton added. “It is really at the state level that we need to focus on resources,” he said. “Only 10 percent of public school funding comes from federal funds and the other 90 percent comes from the state.”

Still, the federal government remains important for changing the quality of schools and education.

Shelton advocated for the NAACP’s six-point education plan, a blueprint for public schools that calls for federal law to fund schools equally and to ensure that all students have the necessary resources and quality of teaching to achieve high standards. It also calls upon the government to “protect the voice of communities in school decisions”.

Ideally, the NAACP’s plan will evolve over time, Shelton said, because “there is enough flexibility in the plan for communities to bring in their community culture into the process….It is a blueprint for the public school.”

The organisation hopes that “the population will become more and more diverse” until eventually one “can disregard a minority group”.

The Centre for American Progress (CAP) published a report, “Increasing Education Effectiveness and Efficiency of Existing Public Investments in Early Childhood Education” on June 1 that noted “the keys to boosting program quality, efficiency, and student results rest with federal officials who already have sufficient legislative authority to continue to streamline, innovate, and improve the early learning services” throughout the country.

The report called for recognising students’ diversity and giving all students access to the same quality of education.

“We need to provide pre-school for lower income children. Right now, you have lower income children, African-American and Latino children who are disproportionately low income start school less prepared than more affluent kids and white kids who are more likely to get high quality pre-school education,” said Cynthia Brown, vice president for education policy at CAP.

Vanessa Cardenas, director of Progress 2050, a CAP project, said in a press statement, “The success of children of colour needs to be at the top of our list.”

The demise of ethnic studies

Yet the achievement gap is only one area of public education in which minorities are losing out.

In a controversial initiative, the community of Tucson, Arizona suspended its Mexican-American studies (MAS) program in a district with one of the largest populations of Hispanic students in country; during the 2009-2010 school year, 49.4 percent of students were Hispanic, according to the Harvard School of Public Health.

The curriculum is being rewritten and will be integrated into a general social studies program. The school board made the decision after a federal judge ruled that the program violated Arizona state law and ordered that what would amount to millions of dollars in state aid be withheld until the district complied and ended the program.

Sally Rusk, a MAS teacher in Tucson, Arizona explained why the program is important and why students, activities and teachers are fighting hard to bring it back.

“If young people do not see the contributions of their ancestors or see themselves as part of the fabric of this country this marginalisation is hurting society. It is desperately hurting society. It is making young people and adults not participate. It is just horrible. Killing these classes now, (when) instead they should be expanded.”