Displaced Somali at a camp on the outskirts of the city of Dire Dawa in eastern Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Feb 11 2018 (IPS)

In Ethiopia social media is a double-edged sword: capable of filling a sore need for more information but also of pushing the country toward even greater calamity.

Thousands of Ethiopians remain displaced after ethnic violence last September drove an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 from their homes in the neighbouring Oromia and Somali regions.“The problem is a lot of things people view as gossip if heard by mouth, when they read about it on social media they take as fact." --Lidetu Ayele, founder of the opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party

From many of the displaced and those assisting them came accusations of the ethnic unrest being leveraged for political ends, suspected perpetrators ranging from powerbrokers at the regional and federal government levels, all the way to the likes of Ethiopian cab drivers coming off shifts in Washington, D.C., in the United States to Tweet ethnic-laced vitriol on their smartphones.

“It’s political and is hidden—this violence is all man-made,” says Abdishakar Adam, a Somali regional zone vice administrator, at a camp housing ethnic Somali who had to flee Oromia. “Federalism isn’t the problem—people are doing what they are being told to do on social media.”

Since 1995, Ethiopia has applied a distinct political model of ethnically based federalism to the country’s heterogeneous masses—about 100 million people speaking more than 80 dialects.

This political model had proved a successful formula for maintaining stability and generating huge economic growth—but both achievements contain crucial flaws.  Authoritarian rule and lack of civil liberties underpin the stability, while economic growth has barely touched millions of poor Ethiopians, instead benefiting a tiny elite in cahoots with the government.

This reality of life in the so-called Federal Democrat Republic of Ethiopia, proclaimed as one of the fastest growing economies in the word, fed resentment and frustrations.

These reached such levels that since protests broke out over the maladministration of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) party at the end of 2015 among the Oromo—Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, representing about 35 percent of the population—the turmoil hasn’t stopped.

The unprecedented duration of these protests and their scope—the Amhara began protesting in 2016; together the Oromo and Amhara account for over 65 percent of the country’s population—has rendered the country’s inherent ethnic fault lines more fragile and susceptible.

“The problem is a lot of things people view as gossip if heard by mouth, when they read about it on social media they take as fact,” says Lidetu Ayele, founder of the opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party.

Successive waves of emigration during decades of tumult in Ethiopia have formed a worldwide Ethiopian diaspora of around two million people. The largest communities are in the U.S., with estimates varying from 250,000 people to about one million.

The diaspora, understandably, follow events in Ethiopia very closely. They loathe the current authoritarian government—many overseas Ethiopians fled their homes after suffering at the hands of Ethiopia’s authoritarian government and have enough reasons to wish it ill—and embrace satellite television and the internet to influence the political process at home .

The protests are seen by many as a pathway to bringing down the government, hence a growing diaspora movement of writers, bloggers, journalists and activists shaping the coverage of events back in the motherland.

With limited press freedom and frequent blanket shutdowns of mobile internet and the banning of posting on social media in Ethiopia, these diaspora activists, using their contacts in Ethiopia, have offered sources of news on the protests by flooding Twitter and Facebook with videos and photos disputing what they say are inaccurate accounts of protests pushed out by the mostly state-owned media in Ethiopia, or by muddled foreign correspondents unable to gain sufficient access.

“The diaspora does not create news stories, it reports what is reported to them from back home by protesters and protest organizers operating under tough conditions,” says Hassan Hussein, a Minnesota-based Ethiopian academic and writer. ”If anything their greatest desire is to see calm return to their loved ones left behind.”

Displaced Oromo sheltering on an industrial park on the outskirts of the city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

But there is another side to diaspora social media coverage. After clashes between police and protestors at the Oromo Irreecha festival in October 2016 left more than 100 people drowned or crushed to death during a stampede, social media sites buzzed with claims that a police helicopter had fired into the panicking crowd—it was circling dropping leaflets wishing participants a happy festival.

Overseas activists called for “five days of rage.” Although it is not clear what effect this call may have had, the following week, foreign-owned factories, government buildings and tourist lodges were attacked across the Oromia region. The government declared a six-month state of emergency.

That was only finally lifted in August of 2017—having been extended at the six-month point—with the government judging the country’s situation stable enough. By Sept. 12, however, a riot in the eastern city of Aweday that left up to 40 dead triggered further ethnic violence and mass displacements.

“They were crossing their arms and shouting ‘Jawar! Jawar!’” 52-year-old Adamali Meagsu says about local Oromo running amok and burning Somali houses in his village.

When Ethiopian runner Feisal Lyles finished the marathon at the 2016 Rio Olympics, he crossed his wrists above his head in a gesture widely adopted through social media to symbolise the Oromo’s struggle against the government, and mimicked throughout Ethiopia and around the world outside Ethiopian embassies.

Jawar Mohammed is a prominent U.S.-based Oromo opposition activist commanding a huge social media following. To many he is an inspiration. To many in Ethiopia—both local and foreign—he’s a highly dangerous figure.

“They live in a secure democracy and are at liberty to say whatever they want to cause mayhem in Ethiopia,” says Sandy Wade, a former European Union diplomat in Addis Ababa during the protests.

Diaspora satellite television channels broadcast from the United States, such as Oromia Media Network and Ethiopian Satellite Television, do produce decent original reporting. But they are one-sided and virulently anti-EPRDF, as are the views and stories their followers propagate on social media.

The cumulative effect should not be estimated in a country as diverse as Ethiopia, where historical grudges exist between main ethic groups.

In Rwanda, radio programs such as Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines spread much of the toxic hatred that fuelled the country’s genocide. Social media appears similarly capable in spreading untruths and ethnic barbs in Ethiopia.

Many of these have an anti-Tigrayan slant due to the firmly held belief that a Tigrayan elite runs the EPRDF and is to blame for all of Ethiopia’s corruption, inequities, ills and wrongs.

“I hope the women who puked #EPRDF members out of their bodies have their wombs filled with cement and buried like dogs with rabbis,” said one Tweet posted online, a relatively common example.

Making up only 6 percent of the country’s population, ordinary Tigrayans are highly vulnerable to ethnic-based agitation.

Amidst the tragedy, rage, intrigue, blocked communications and difficult travel, it is difficult for the likes of journalists, foreign diplomats and the average Ethiopian to understand what is actually going on.

Hence social media can provide an opening for sorting through the noise and confusion. But it can be used for more nefarious means too, especially in a volatile situation like Ethiopia’s when so many are on edge.

As throughout Ethiopia’s turbulent history, it is ordinary Ethiopians—typically poor, eking out lives of subsistence—who are bearing the fallout from Ethiopia’s current political machinations as different interest groups jostle for power, many of them regardless the human cost.

Ethiopia is not unique in that regard. The political elites of many African countries appear to specialize in this modus operandi. But the overbearing influence of Ethiopia’s diaspora may well be unique, and not appreciated until too late.

Ethiopians are quick to smile but just as quick to anger. Colossal resentment and bitterness seethes beneath the country’s surface waiting for an outlet. Swathes of unemployed young men have no hopes or prospects. This has all played out before in other man-made African infernos.

“I thought my husband was going to kill me, he grabbed my hair and started cutting it with a knife,” says a displaced Somali woman kicked out of her home by her Oromo husband. “He told me, ‘This is Oromia, you must leave now’.”

One of KANA TV’s dubbing team in a specially equipped sound-proof studio reading from his Amharic script to dub over a Turkish actor. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Dec 21 2017 (IPS)

On a Saturday afternoon in one of Addis Ababa’s khat houses, a group of men and women chew the mildly narcotic plant while gazing mesmerized toward a television featuring a South Korean soldier stripped to his waist and holding a young lady’s hand while proclaiming his undying love—somewhat incongruously—in Amharic.

Broadcast exclusively in the lingua franca of Ethiopia—a necessity with 80 dialects across the country—and after decades of drab Ethiopian state-owned television, KANA TV marks a breakthrough in Ethiopian televised entertainment. It may also signal a shift in Ethiopia’s much criticised media environment.The government appears to finally realise that squeezing private media is a mistake and self-defeating, leaving the field open to the likes of social-media activists with their own agendas.

“Kana” translates as something between taste and flavour, and Ethiopia’s estimated 4 million television households have found that this new private satellite TV channel carrying international standard programming very much to their taste. When it first aired, KANA seized a 40-50 percent share of the prime time market.

“It’s a crazy operation,” says co-founder Elias Schulze, the only non-Ethiopian amid the 180 staff. “At the beginning it took up to 50 man hours to dub one hour and we had to produce 200 man hours of content every day.”

So far KANA has dubbed 2,300 hours of foreign content, requiring a highly coordinated operation: research and analysis to select which shows to secure, then negotiations and purchase, followed by translation, casting, acting, syncing, audio editing, video editing, quality control and then scheduling. Finally, everything is uplinked to satellite.

“TV here used to be so boring, all the channels showed mainly news,” says an Addis Ababa resident and television viewer in her early twenties. “But KANA is pure entertainment, and people really like it.”

Ethiopia’s Amhara, the native speakers of Amharic, only constitute about a quarter of Ethiopia’s 100-million population. But before its launch, KANA conducted research that showed 70 percent of the country’s television viewers understood the language to a reasonable level.

That was an improvement on the 50 percent who couldn’t understand the Arabic-language satellite channels that had come to dominate Ethiopian viewing.

“People watched them because they enjoyed the quality and good storylines,” says Hailu Teklehaimanot, a producer and head of communications at KANA, and a former newspaper editor. “So we thought why not make that quality understandable through dubbing, while at the same time, our staff got on-the-job training we could eventually use for original productions.”

About 90 percent of KANA’s current output is dubbed foreign shows. The eventual goal is for half of output to be home-grown productions like KANA’s new Masters at Work series, which showcases the works of Ethiopian singers, poets, fashion designers, photographers and the like.

“There’s a narrative in mainstream media—both local and international—focusing on development or lack of development at the macro level,” Teklehaimanot says. “But there is a different narrative at the micro level in which inspired young people are doing new things.”

One example of this on Masters at Work is photographer Girma Berta, who specialises in taking photos on his mobile phone of simple images such as street kids and street vendors going about daily life.

“The message I want to send out to young people with interests in photography is not to be scared to try new things,” Berta says during his Masters at Work appearance. “Also, I would advise them to use social media properly to share their pictures, because they can show their pictures to the rest of the world easily; I think until we can find the style of photography that defines us, we must search for it ourselves.”

Staff working at KANA TV. Photo courtesy KANA TV.

Despite such offerings of inspiration, the majority of KANA’s audience watch its shows like viewers anywhere—for entertainment or as escapism from the daily grind.

Others, meanwhile, would rather not watch it at all.

“I don’t let me family watch KANA TV otherwise we’ll never talk to each other when I return from work,” says one taxi driver in Addis Ababa.

Meanwhile, conservative commentators have decried KANA’s foreign soap operas for corrupting Ethiopian culture, while others have similar concerns.

“I believe [the Ethiopian Broadcasting Service] has been doing a far better job than KANA in representing Ethiopia’s indigenous and diaspora [populations],” Addis Ababa-based Mahder Sereke says on Twitter. “Also KANA’s soaps are debasing, not to Ethiopia’s culture but to Ethiopia’s women [through] their false—negatively—gendered depiction.”

EBS is a privately held media company based in the U.S. that targets the global Ethiopian market resulting from successive waves of emigration during decades of tumult in Ethiopia forming a significant Ethiopian diaspora of around two million people. The largest communities are in the U.S., with estimates varying from 250,000 people to about one million.

KANA has also been criticised for undercutting local production and poaching viewers from other TV outlets, thereby actually reducing opportunities for local artists and creative types to illustrate their works.

Meanwhile, some viewer fatigue has seen KANA losing some of its grip on the prime time market. But KANA’s emergence appears to indicate Ethiopian television could be finally changing for the better—albeit not as fast as many would wish.

In the past, Ethiopian government spokespersons haven’t been shy of explaining that media reform shouldn’t be rushed due to Ethiopia’s developmental state.

But now the government appears to finally realise that squeezing private media is a mistake and self-defeating, leaving the field open to the likes of social-media activists with their own agendas.

“The problem is a lot of things people view as gossip if heard by mouth, when they read about it on social media they take as fact,” Lidetu Ayele, founder of the opposition Ethiopia Democratic Party, says of social media’s influence during protests in Ethiopia.

And so, whether out of acknowledgment of the rights of Ethiopians not to be spoon fed state-sponsored propaganda or out of its own self-interest, the Ethiopian government is letting some winds of change finally blow through Ethiopian media.

“We don’t agree with the characterization that Ethiopia’s media landscape is repressed,” says Nazrawi Ghebreselasie, KANA’s managing director and co-founder. “It’s true that the industry in general is in its infancy; however, due to conducive policy environment, we are seeing massive investment going into media.”

Others, however, note that a new entertainment channel like KANA doesn’t connote Ethiopia’s media being unshackled—a fact emphasised by Ethiopian journalists and bloggers arrested for their journalism, often on the basis of terror charges, as highlighted by the international Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Media freedom depends on which yardstick you use,” says Daniel Berhane, a prominent Addis Ababa-based blogger. “The government appears to be relaxing about online and television media, but there are still no opposition newspapers.”

Ethiopia ranked 150th out of 180 countries in the 2017 press freedom index rankings by Reporters Without Borders. The international non-profit organization that promotes and defends freedom of information and the press states that the Ethiopian regime systematically uses the country’s anti-terror law against journalists.

Contrary voices, as a result, often have to come from the likes of ESAT, a popular Ethiopian satellite channel also broadcast from America. It is highly critical of the Ethiopian government and advertises itself as speaking for those who can’t speak in Ethiopia.

But part of KANA’s expanding original production base includes plans for a new news show, hence a whiteboard in the company’s offices covered in green marker pen hashing out its development.

Whether this news platform can be as insightful and demonstrate as much editorial freedom as news channels coming from outside Ethiopia will have to be seen.

But, at the same time, there appears reason for some optimism.

“The [negative] international view of media in Ethiopia is a bit exaggerated,” said Zekarias Sintayehu, editor in chief of Addis Ababa’s Reporter newspaper. “It is not a cakewalk to be journalist in Ethiopia but nobody can deny the prospects of a better media environment in the future.”

Journalists call for the freeing of a colleague at a UNESCO colloquium in Paris. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Mar 24 2017 (IPS)

With widespread attacks on professional journalists and the rise of a fake-news industry, media experts agree that journalism is increasingly under fire. But how can the press fight back and ensure its survival?

Judging by the stubbornly defiant tone at a one-day colloquium held at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters on March 23, there may still be reason for hope in a media landscape ravaged by the killings of journalists, verbal abuse of reporters, job losses, low pay and “alternative facts”.The business model that has long served the press in general is changing, and the sector is universally scrambling to adapt in ever-transforming terrain.

“When [U.S. President] Trump said that the media is the enemy of the people, it’s perfect for journalism,” said Vicente Jiménez, director-general of the Spanish radio network Cadena SER. “We can eradicate some bad practices. It’s a great opportunity.”

Jiménez was one of several media professionals calling for journalists to clean up and protect their own sector, during the colloquium titled “Journalism Under Fire: Challenges of Our Times”.

“Journalism used to be a pillar of democracy,” Jiménez said. “But that model is changing with social media.”

He said the dependence on “clicks” for on-line-media income was leading to “stupid” and “vile” stories, and he told participants that the three most-read stories in Spain over the past year were fake ones. He warned that the media would lose its relevance if this situation continued.

Carlos Dada, co-founder and editor-in-chief of El Faro digital newspaper, based in El Salvador, stressed that a distinction had to be made between “media” and “journalism”. As an example, he said that during a certain period in his country, journalism was under fire while media companies grew rich, partly by being politically compliant and going about business as usual.

Dada said that technology was “not only a threat” but that it was also a “huge opportunity” in areas such as using data in investigative stories, for which El Faro is known in Latin America.

Still, the business model that has long served the press in general is changing, and the sector is universally scrambling to adapt in ever-transforming terrain, participants pointed out.

According to UNESCO, “technological, economic and political transformations are inexorably reshaping” the communications landscape.

“Major recent elections and referenda have raised many questions about the quality, impact and credibility of journalism, with global significance,” the agency said.

In organizing the colloquium, UNESCO said it hoped to “strengthen freedom of expression and press freedom, since modern societies cannot function and develop without free, independent and professional journalism”.

As some panellists noted, however, many journalists work under political dictatorship – in countries that are United Nations member states – and they “pay with their lives” or with their liberty for telling the truth, as one speaker put it.

UNESCO statistics show that more than 800 journalists have been killed over the past decade, and although the agency has been working with governments and the press on ways to end impunity for the killers of media workers, attacks on journalists continue on a daily basis.

Yet killing, imprisoning or abusing the “messenger” is only one aspect of the assault on professional journalism. The dissemination of so-called fake news, with “mainstream” media companies sometimes involved, has led to confusion among the public about what is real and what is false and contributes to the overall distrust of the press.

While critics have particularly slammed social media company Facebook for its role in spreading false news stories, the company is adamant that the responsibility lies with its users.

“You’ll see fake news if you have signed up to fake news sites,” said Richard Allan, a former politician and Facebook’s Vice President of Policy for the European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, who participated in the colloquium.

Explaining how the company’s “algorithm” works for showing content, Allan said that the “vast majority” of what users saw in their feed was the “sum” of material to which they connected.

He told the colloquium that Facebook was trying to address the issue of fake news, but he added: “We don’t want to be the world’s editor.”

If Facebook is unwilling to be a gatekeeper, who would take action though, asked Maria Ressa, a former CNN correspondent and now editor-in-chief and CEO of on-line news site Rappler in the Philippines.

“We have not only misinformation … we have disinformation,” she said, describing the deliberate spreading of false stories in targeted attacks against individuals, groups or policies.

For Serge Schmemann, a New York Times writer and editor, “fake news is more a symptom than the real problem”. A crucial issue is how journalists are now expected to produce news, with often too little time or resources to work on an in-depth story.

But, said Schmemann, “We will adapt, we will survive… We have to remain honest reporters.”

A key to survival may be getting the public involved, according to David Levy, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

In an interview on the sidelines of the colloquium, he told IPS that for professional journalism to continue, it will have to get people to value the service enough to pay for it.

“Sometimes ordinary people see journalists as part of the problem, rather than the solution, and journalists have to change this image by getting rid of bad ethics and practices,” he said.

Financial support is already a possibility through crowd-funding, subscriptions and philanthropy, Levy said. In addition, the proper functioning of publicly funded media – where politicians refrain from interference while still holding the media accountable – was an essential part of the solution, he added.

Despite all these views and the organizing of one conference or colloquium after another (there will be a slate of them on World Press Freedom Day, May 3), the outlook remains troubling, even dire, for many journalists in the field.

“We don’t have jobs. We’re badly paid,” said Paris-based Burundian journalist Landry Rukingamubiri. “Then there’s fake news and pretend-journalism. Where do we go from here?”

Journalists from the weekly Sunday Mail as they were arrested on Nov. 4, 2015 on charges of reporting falsehoods. Pictured from left to right in handcuffs are the journalists, who included the Sunday Mail reporter Tinashe Farawo, the paper's investigations editor Brian Chitemba and The Sunday Mail editor Mabasa Sasa. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Busani Bafana
HARARE, Nov 9 2016 (IPS)

Four years ago, a faceless writer using the nom de guerre Baba Jukwa set Facebook agog with detailed exposes of machinations within the ruling Zimbabwe National People’s Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF).

Garnering over 400,000 followers on Facebook, Jukwa pierced the veil over freedom of expression in a conservative Zimbabwe. The enigmatic character, thought to be a mole within ZANU PF, remains unknown and has never been caught."The government is afraid the social media might be used the same manner it was used during the Arab Spring revolutions.” -- Njabulo Ncube, chair of the Zimbabwe National Editors Forum

Now the government – with a history of intolerance to dissent – is not taking chances with social media ‘dissidents’ in the ilk of Baba Jukwa. It is crafting a bill to clamp down on cybercrime and terrorism, but journalists fear the bill will trample the fragile freedoms of the press and expression in the country.

Should it become law, the Computer and Cyber Crime Bill will ensure that ‘abusers of social media’ are stopped dead in their tracks if statements by the government, the police and the army are anything to go by.

Commander of the Zimbabwe National Army, Lieutenant General Valerio Sibanda, recently told the government-run Herald newspaper that the army was training its officers to deal with “cyber warfare where weapons – not necessarily guns but basic information and communication technology – are being used to mobilise people to do wrong things.”

The country’s Information Media and Broadcasting Services Minister, Chris Mushowe, has dismissed fears that the Computer and Cyber Crime Bill will be a death knell for press freedom, but his threats reflect the opposite.

“This Bill is not intended to kill freedom of expression, it is not intended to silence people…If anything, this is intended to ensure we join other nations in fighting the threat of terrorism,” Mushowe told the local media following a briefing with the British Ambassador to Zimbabwe Catriona Laing in August. “We do not want information to be transited through Zimbabwe or information here that threatens the national security of other countries.”

Despite guaranteeing freedoms of expression and of the press under its new Constitution, Zimbabwe is not the most conducive of places for journalists to do their jobs freely, especially those working for the independent press.

The Washington-based media advocacy organisation Freedom House named Zimbabwe, alongside Bangladesh, Turkey, Burundi, France, Serbia, Yemen, Egypt and Macedonia, as countries which suffered the largest declines in press freedom in 2015 in its Freedom of the Press report for 2016.

Already burdened by a raft of laws that restrict access to information, journalists have reason to worry. The Computer and Cyber Crime Bill could be the biggest and meanest strategic weapon the government has yet unleashed on free expression and press freedom.

Information has become the political currency for self-expression. Social media, especially Facebook and WhatsApp, has given Zimbabweans an affordable platform to gather and share information, vent about their daily grind and even organise public actions against a deteriorating economic and political situation at home.
Crippled by a severe drought, Zimbabwe has made a global appeal for 1.6 billion dollars for food and other humanitarian aid as more than four million people will need food until the next harvest season in March 2017. Fears abound about a worsening economic situation when government introduces its own bond notes later this month as a measure to ease the current shortage of cash since dumping the Zimbabwe dollar and introducing a multi-currency regime in September 2009.

Editor of the privately owned Zimbabwe Independent weekly Dumisani Muleya says life in the globalised and technology-driven 21st century presents two great challenges to governments across the world: thwarting terrorism and protecting national liberties. Technology, Muleya says, has played a part in making these challenges tougher, necessitating governments to balance security and liberty.

“The Zimbabwe government, which has a history of stifling political and civil liberties, particularly media freedom, must do the same,” Muleya told IPS. “The current Computer and Cyber Crime Bill must thus not be used as tool to snoop on citizens unduly and reinforce Zimbabwe’s image as a police state, but mainly protect people’s rights.”

Making a joke about President Mugabe, who is now 92, is no laughing matter in Zimbabwe and can land you in court or jail. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights has represented more than 150 defendants since 2010 charged with insulting President Mugabe. In most cases the charges were dropped. Videos pocking fun at President Mugabe have gone viral, prompting the government to denounce ‘the gutter journalism’ on social media it says should not be allowed in the mainstream media.

“Government is aware of activists in the country collaborating with the diaspora cyber terrorists. They must be warned that the long arm of the law is encircling them,” Mushowe told the Zimbabwean press.

Acting chairman Zimbabwe National Editors Forum and past Chairman of the Media Institute for Southern Africa- Zimbabwe Njabulo Ncube describes the Computer and Cyber Crime Bill as a nullification of press freedom.

“The future looks bleak with the seemingly proliferation of harsh media laws that seek to criminalise the practice of the journalism profession in Zimbabwe,” Ncube told IPS. “The government is afraid the social media might be used the same manner it was used during the Arab Spring revolutions.”

Ncube believes government has muddied the waters by creating the impression that cyber terrorism is the production of subversive, inflammatory and inciting messages shared through the social media, which was in fact misconduct online or abuse of social media in breach of the country’s contentious laws such as the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform Act), the Interception of Communications Act and Postal and Telecommunications Act (PTA).

“This continuous misleading of the citizenry on what constitutes cyber terrorism is aimed at instilling fear and self-censorship among citizens when exercising their rights to free expression, access to information and freedom of conscience,” Ncube said.

Despite government underplaying its effectiveness, social media has given Zimbabweans a loud voice to amplify their struggles. The crackdown on the social media is meant to deal with activists calling for reforms within the government, Executive Director of the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe and Secretary-General of the World Association of Press Councils, Loughty Dube, argued.

“If the government intends to use the law to curb internet crimes there should be a clear demarcation that should show that there are no sinister intentions by the state to snoop on citizen communications and to criminalise those that are using internet platforms to seek reforms and expose government excesses.”

Last August and two months after the online campaign led by Pastor Evans Mawawire using the #This Flag successfully mobilized Zimbabweans to stay away from work, Zimbabwe passed the National Information Communication Technology (ICT) policy. The policy which allows government to snoop on its citizens and control cyberspace by putting all internet gateways and infrastructure under a single company it controls.

It is the cohesive power of social media that the Zimbabwe government seeks to weaken through a carte blanche law to snoop on and even shut down social media. While it may raise the cost of accessing social media, block its operation and resort to threats, government cannot control social media, argues, lawyer and political strategist, Alex Magaisa.

“In physical spaces, the state can always deploy anti-riot police and use physical force to drive away demonstrators expressing their view,” Magaisa wrote on his blog, The Big Saturday Read. “However, on social media, the state is not well equipped to handle users…Social media presents a new terrain over which the state has no control.

Magaisa said the Computer Crime and Cybercrime Bill would create very wide, vague and indeterminate offences in respect of social media activity, while giving police extensive search and seizure powers. Measured against the Constitution, which protects freedoms of communication and the right to privacy, Magaisa said the Bill falls woefully short and a number of its provisions in the present form could be stuck down by the Constitutional Court if challenged.

“While some of the purported reasons for introducing the Bill, such as protecting children, preventing racial and ethnic hatred sound noble, most critics believe the real motive which has promoted the rapid response is political. This is the cause of the citizen’s mistrust, suspicion and resistance in respect of the Bill,” wrote Magaisa.

President Robert Mugabe. Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera English/cc by 2.0

By Dominique Von Rohr
ROME, Oct 25 2016 (IPS)

In a WhatsApp video that went viral in September, a middle-aged Zimbabwean man addresses President Robert Mugabe, telling him that 90 percent of the people in the country are unemployed and do not contribute to the economy because Mugabe cannot provide jobs.

“You are assaulting children for expressing their heartfelt disappointment because of your misrule. We are tired of that,“ the man continues, speaking about high-level corruption, injustice and police brutality, and deteriorating social service delivery.

He asks Mugabe: “You wear spectacles, but you can’t see. How many spectacles do you need to see that you are destroying the country?”

In a country that reportedly suppresses the traditional media, Zimbabweans have found another way to communicate their frustrations towards the government.

Social media platforms as well as texting services such as WhatsApp have become steadily more popular as means to criticise, but also address Mugabe, who appears to not be easily accessible to ordinary citizens.

The use of social media has especially increased after evangelical pastor Evan Mawarire posted a video earlier this year in April in which he appeared with the national flag around his neck, criticizing the government’s economic strategy.

The video led to the larger social media campaign #ThisFlag in which thousands of Zimbabweans participated, bringing the situation the country into the international spotlight and reaching millions of people on a global level, much to the displeasure of Mugabe.

By using the internet to communicate, Zimbabweans become empowered to relatively safely speak out against the government, and at the same time, state propaganda starts to lose its effectiveness.

The worsening economic situation in Zimbabwe has led to multiple protests against the president and his government. Depending on the source, estimates of Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate range from 4 per cent to 95 per cent, many of the figures not being backed up by reliable data.

Given the precarious state of the economy, unemployment levels however are certainly high.

Economic growth decreased from 3.8 per cent in 2014 to an estimated 1.5 per cent in 2015. Large public expenditures, underperformance of domestic revenues and low export figures have increased the state dept and have had a negative effect on urban development such as housing and transport, as well as social services.

In July, countless Zimbabweans gathered to protest against these issues. Since then, unrest has spread across the whole country.

The Zimbabwean government in return has been accused of blocking social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp to prevent people from gathering to protest.

Zimbabwe, constitutionally a republic, has been under the control of President Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) since the country’s independence in 1980. While the latest presidential and parliamentary elections were held without violence, the process remained neither fair nor credible.

According to Human Rights Watch, Mugabe’s government has been accused of routinely violating human rights. Abduction, arrest, torture and harassment, as well as restrictions on civil liberties such as freedom of expression are daily practices, Human Rights Watch says.

Under Mugabe’s regime, hundreds of civil society activists and members of opposition parties have been arrested for holding meetings or participating in peaceful protests. Newspapers viewed as critical of the government are repressed, journalists silenced, and the ‘Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act’ established, making the practice of journalism without accreditation a criminal offence which can be punished by up to two years in prison.

The Daily News, Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper with a critical view of Mugabe’s government, had to shut down in 2001 after a bomb exploded in its printing plant, and it failed to receive a government licence needed to publish content legally.

Acknowledging the threat social media poses to his government, Mugabe has activated laws that limit the free flow of information and subject private communication to state surveillance.

At the same time, he warns his citizens against abusing social media, threatening that all SIM cards in Zimbabwe are registered in the name of the user, and perpetrators could easily be identified. Any person caught in possession of, generating or passing on what Mugabe calls abusive, threatening or offensive content aimed at creating unrest or inciting violence will be arrested.

Wanting to use social media to his own advantage, Mugabe has called on the youth of his ZANU-PF to promote the ruling party using social media platforms: “Brand Zimbabwe, the image of Zimbabwe, a Zimbabwe that is democratic, hardworking and peaceful.”

The dissemination of regime-critical content through social media, however, appears to be a Pandora’s Box that may prove impossible to close.

The chance to make an impact seems just a few mouse clicks away. Credit: Dorian V./cc by 2.0

By Britta Schmitz
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 20 2015 (IPS)

In recent years, online activism platforms have multiplied to the degree that they are starting to have a significant real world impact in areas like environmental protection, human rights and public policy.

The most important decision-making instrument of these platforms is the online petition. In the age of social media, the chance to make an impact seems just a few clicks away.“There are many metrics for success. Victory is the most obvious of metrics, but not all campaigns win and that does not necessarily mean that they are failures." -- Michael Allen Jones of Change.org

One can easily sign existing petitions or launch his or her own petition in an instant. Organisations such as 38 Degrees, Avaaz, Causes, Care2 Petitions, Change.org, ipetitions or MoveOn, just to name a few, have spread across the world and provide the option to start a free petition. Even the White House has launched an official online petition initiative called We The People.

Two big platforms that primarily provide the service of online petitions are Avaaz and Change.org, both eight years old.

“Democratic accountability is hardwired into our model. While the Avaaz team and supporters suggest campaigns, each campaign is polled and tested with a randomized sample of the Avaaz community,” Aften Meltzer, a spokesperson for Avaaz, told IPS.

Transparent monitoring of a campaign’s impact on social change might be the key to gaining more influence and going beyond primarily raising awareness, she said.

Avaaz is a democratic network of over 41 million members which was founded in New York. It has become a global movement within just a few years. Eighteen national teams on six continents launch campaigns all over the world by mobilising individuals to participate in decision-making processes on a local, national or global level.

According to their website, more than 253 million actions have been taken via Avaaz since its launch in 2007. Avaaz solely depends on individual online contributions up to 5,000 dollars.

Change.org is a similar online initiative with over 113 million participants and more than 13,000 successful petitions in 196 countries. It works in the same way by giving people the chance to make a contribution by participating in online petitions. Change.org is a social enterprise and certified B Corporation.

“Our mission is to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see, and we believe the best way to achieve that mission is by combining the vision of a non-profit with the flexibility and innovation of a tech startup,” said Michael Allen Jones, Deputy Managing Director for North America at Change.org.

Some measurable successes

Global online networks attract a lot of international attention. Avaaz has collected online signatures and sent personal messages to Ministers of the European Commission, asking for a European Agenda on Migration.

“450,000 EU members called for urgent action, and the petition was delivered to key EU decision maker,” said Meltzer. “Our members’ voices were heard, and the EU struck a deal to boost its search and rescue budget and offer sanctuary to over 50,000 refugees.”

A one million strong petition organised by Avaaz had an impact on clothing company Benetton’s decision to reimburse the victims of the severe accident in Bangladesh’s garment factory house Rana Plaza in 2013.

Benetton decided to contribute 1.1 million dollars to the Rana Plaza Trust Fund. Besides the online petition, Avaaz put up billboards outside Benetton’s headquarters, initiated various negotiations with the CEO and company executives, and launched awareness campaigns in social media networks.

Change.org also provides information on its online petition highlights: for example, the video game company EA sports will finally include women players in their soccer games starting from September 2016. The online petition which led to this success was initiated three years ago by 13-year-old soccer fan Rebekah Araujo.

Another successful petition is the one conducted on behalf of Jeff Mizanskey, who had spent 20 years in prison. Mizanskey was the only man in Missouri serving a life-sentence without parole for non-violent marijuana offenses. As a result of collecting almost 400,000 signatures for an online petition initiated by Mizanskey’s son, he was granted clemency by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon on May 28 this year.

Raising awareness vs. lack of transparency

Given the fact that the signing of online petitions is the most important instrument of these organisations, their networks seem quite loose. All around the world, people who are normally not interconnected can make a one-time contribution and organisations like Avaaz or Change.org have little influence on whether contributors will engage in further campaigns or not. Participants might not necessarily want to learn more about the cause of a petition.

“The network here isn’t as loose as it may seem,” Jones told IPS. “They [the signers] join forces with a petition starter and want to be kept in the loop about a campaign’s narrative and progress.

“Sure, the numbers might be big, but we’ve found that petition signers actually crave updates on petitions – they want to see news articles written about the campaign, see photos from a petition delivery that a starter might do, or hear about whether a campaign wins or makes progress. That’s a level of engagement that goes far beyond just signing a petition, and really makes signers part of the story in a petition’s life cycle.”

The impact of online petitions cannot always reliably be monitored. Other groups or individuals work on social issues as well, so it is hard to say who is responsible for a change.

Jones of Change.Org told IPS: “There are many metrics for success. Victory is the most obvious of metrics, but not all campaigns win and that does not necessarily mean that they are failures. Campaigns have the power to influence a narrative on an issue, introduce new thought and emotion into a debate, and of course raise the volume on issues important to marginalised communities.”

When anyone can start a campaign and mobilise a vast number of participants, the rising number of online petitions might lead to a decline in their value. The White House already had to raise the threshold for petitions via We The People from 5,000 to 100,000 signatures, as the platform was flooded with petitions.

Nevertheless, when looking at the outcome of online petitions, they are a perfect example of the strength of weak ties. People can easily and collectively interact on the same social causes. Online petitions raise awareness. They enable immediate action, as they spread through social media. Online campaigns can be started anytime, anywhere and by anyone who has access to the internet.

With their polished web appearances, these organisations continuously expand their communities, especially attracting young web-savvy individuals who want to make a difference in some way.

Besides online petitions, some platforms also conduct on-the-ground campaigns. As long as they continue offering the option to participate in such initiatives and deliver reliable monitoring when it comes to the impact, they have the chance of transforming political decision-making processes in the long-term.

Of course, the end goal is that activism goes beyond the realms of the internet, and mobilises people to get involved in their communities and beyond. Effective and transparent monitoring that shows the impact of an online petition could attract more citizens and transform the online petition into an established instrument of modern democracy.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Some organisations are developing alert applications that journalists, human rights defenders and others can use to send an emergency message (along with GPS co-ordinates) to their friends and colleagues if they feel in immediate danger. Credit: Johan Larsson/ cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 23 2015 (IPS)

The widespread use of digital technology – including satellite imagery, body cameras and smart phones – is fast becoming a new tool in monitoring and capturing human rights violations worldwide.

Singling out the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions Christof Heyns says: “We have all seen how the actions of police officers and others who use excessive force are captured on cell phones and lead to action against the perpetrators.”“We must guard against a mind-set that ‘if it is not digital it did not happen.'" -- Christof Heyns

Billions of people around the world now carry a powerful weapon to capture such events in their pockets, he said.

“The fact that this is well-known can be a significant deterrent to abuses,” Heyns said, in a report to the 29th session of the 47-member Human Rights Council, which began its three-week session in Geneva June 15.

Heyns said the hardware and software that produce and transmit information in the digital space can play an increasing role in the protection of all human rights, including the right to life, by reinforcing the role of ‘civilian witnesses’ in documenting rights violations.

In his report, Heyns urged the U.N. system and other international human rights bodies to “catch up” with rapidly developing innovations in human rights fact-finding and investigations.

“The digital age presents challenges that can only be met through the smart use of digital tools,” he said.

Javier El-Hage, General Counsel at the New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF), told IPS that HRF can corroborate the special rapporteur’s findings that ICTs, like cellphone cameras or even satellite imagery, play a key role in documenting extrajudicial executions.

From democratic societies like Germany or the United States where ‘civilian witnesses’ documenting instances of police brutality and extrajudicial executions create an effective check on law enforcement abuse, to societies under competitive authoritarian regimes like Kazakhstan or Venezuela where witnesses themselves can face extrajudicial execution for filming police brutality, ICTs play a huge role in documenting this egregious type of human rights violation, he said.

“Even in North Korea, the world’s most repressive and tightly closed society, satellite imagery has long helped determine the exact location and population estimates of prison camps, and recently helped uncover a disturbing case of executions by firing squad, where executioners used anti-aircraft machine guns.”

In his report, Heyns told the Human Rights Council the hardware and software that produce and transmit information in the digital space can play an increasing role in the protection of all human rights, including the right to life, by reinforcing the role of ‘civilian witnesses’ in documenting rights violations.

He said various organisations are developing alert applications that journalists, human rights defenders and others can use to send an emergency message (along with GPS co-ordinates) to their friends and colleagues if they feel in immediate danger.

“New information tools can also empower human rights investigations and help to foster accountability where people have lost their lives or were seriously injured,” the Special Rapporteur said.

The use of other video technologies, ranging from CCTV cameras to body-worn “cop cams”, can further contribute to filling information gaps.

Resources such as satellite imagery to verify such videos, or sometime to show evidence of violations themselves, is also an important dimension, he noted.

But despite the many advantages offered by ICTs, Heyns said it would be short-sighted not to see the risks as well.

“Those with the power to violate human rights can easily use peoples’ emails and other communications to target them and also to violate their privacy,” he said.

The fact that people can use social media to organise spontaneous protests can lead authorities to perceive a threat – and to over-react.

Moreover, there is a danger that what is not captured on video is not taken seriously. “We must guard against a mind-set that ‘if it is not digital it did not happen,’” he stressed.

El-Hage told IPS his Foundation also agrees with the special rapporteur that ICTs are a double-edged sword because through them governments can “easily access the emails and other communications” of law-abiding citizens, especially political opponents, journalists and human rights defenders, “to target them and violate their privacy.”

HRF has recently denounced the cases of targeted surveillance and persecution against pro-democracy activists Hisham Almiraat in Morocco and Waleed Abu AlKhair in Saudi Arabia, and was among the organisations that submitted a white paper to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression to inform his own report on the way ‘encryption’ and ‘anonymity’ can protect both the rights to privacy and free speech.

In his report, Heyns also cautioned that not all communities, and not all parts of the world, are equally connected, and draws special attention to the fact that “the ones that not connected are often in special need of protection.”

“There is still a long way to go for all of us to understand fully how we can use these evolving and exciting but in some ways also scary new tools to their best effect,” Heyn said pointing out that not all parts of the international human rights community are fully aware of the power and pitfalls of digital fact-finding.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Srun Srorn, a trainer for the E-learning project, walks teachers at Koh Kong High School in Cambodia through a new online sexual education curriculum. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Branislav Gosovic *
VILLAGE TUDOROVICI, Montenegro, May 28 2015 (IPS)

The Internet – and the applications that it has spawned – is the single most important technological innovation that has brought together and interlinked humankind in a real, tangible and interactive way.

Among other benefits, it has:While having a universal presence in each country and in the life of the majority of humankind that enjoys its amenities, the Internet is untouchable, controlled by someone somewhere who is invisible and unknown.

• Made possible instantaneous worldwide communication and interaction
• Simplified and facilitated many previously time consuming, onerous and costly tasks
• Enabled a networking that can serve as a means for building a global community, and developing understanding and cooperation
• Created the “Internet dependence” for the well-being and functioning of society, economy, and daily life and existence of individuals, which has generated a common and shared interest in keeping the Internet functioning, in good order, and continuously improving it.

The Internet has meant a “great leap” forward for humankind and made it possible for it to “leap-frog” and “short-circuit” many of the obstacles and challenges that it had faced earlier on its road to a shared but uncertain future.

However, this great technological communication advance has not been accompanied by a corresponding socio-political leap of systemic change, and the Internet has been weighed down by the legacies of the past and the nature of the existing world order.

Rather than aiming to place the promise and capabilities of the Internet at the disposal of enlightened, common global objectives of humankind and to subject it to democratic multilateral governance, some of the key actors seem to view it primarily as their own property.

They want to be in charge of it and use it for their own strategic ends and objectives, for global expansion and dominance, and the exploitation of new technological possibilities to harvest the planet for what amounts to unlimited creation of wealth, including via virtual means, and massive “invisible” transfer of resources to the core countries of the North.

The resulting situation has been depicted aptly in the recent draft, “Tunis Call for a People’s Internet”, circulated at the Workshop “Organizing an Internet Social Forum – A Call to Occupy the Internet”, held at the April 2015 World Social Forum. It merits to be quoted:

“The Internet today has become an integral and essential part of our daily lives, more and more of our activities are organized through and around the virtual spaces, the networks, online services and the technology it comprises.  It has restructured the very way in which we live, work, play and organise our societies. In many aspects, this is so even for people who at present have no direct Internet access.

At the same time, we are alarmed to see how both our private and public spaces are being co-opted and controlled for private gain; how private corporations are carving the public internet into walled spaces; how our personal data is being manipulated and proprietised; how a global surveillance society is emerging, with little or no privacy; how information on the Internet is being arbitrarily censored, and people’s right to communicate curtailed; and how the Internet is being militarized. Meanwhile, decision-making on public policy matters relating to the Internet remains dangerously removed from the mechanisms of democratic governance.”

The Internet has become controversial not only because of the hegemonic attitude of the key country and because of the free hand given to its monopolistic global Internet-based corporations, but also because it is rooted in and fueled by larger controversies, including decades-old, unresolved development issues.

This includes the questions of transfer of science and technology, intellectual property regimes, and international regulation of transnational corporations, all of which have been on the international agenda for five decades without any visible progress having been made.

There is also the question of “ownership” and “participation”. There is a complete dependence on the Internet worldwide, an addiction that cannot be shaken off. While having a universal presence in each country and in the life of the majority of humankind that enjoys its amenities, the Internet is untouchable, controlled by someone somewhere who is invisible and unknown.

This dependencia when it comes to the Internet governance and control exercised by the interlinked centres in the North, which include military and security apparatus as well as cyber-corporations, produces a palpable feeling of discomfort, frustration, helplessness, exposure and loss of sovereignty, especially but not only in the developing countries.

Drawing on past experiences, principles of the U.N. Charter, and the developing countries’ initiatives for the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and New International Information Order (NIIO), one can arrive at some conclusions and recommendations regarding a reform of the Internet and the bolstering of its usefulness to the international community and its common goals, including improved functioning of human society.

The aim should be to defuse the mounting conflict and discontent through political and conceptual liberation of the Internet by making it into a global public good and service within the U.N. framework, with specific objectives and functions directed at satisfying the needs of humankind and helping to overcome problems and challenges, including those stemming from past history and uneven progress and development of the international community.

The Internet should be declared as the common heritage of humankind, a global public good and service embedded within the framework of the United Nations.  This implies and requires, among other things:

• That the Internet becomes part of the U.N. family by creating a UNINTERNET organization in the framework of the U.N. General Assembly, one inspired by democratic governance and solidarity of humankind
• That the Internet management and innovation be shared and participatory, and that they involve both public and private entities in cooperative endeavours
• That current international intellectual property regime undergoes a major review and fundamental modifications
• That income generated by the Internet, including by global taxation of profits made by services that it enables, be used for global causes of public good within the framework of the United Nations and that in this manner the Internet becomes a major source of international funding for public purposes, including those related to overcoming poverty, sustainable development and climate change, food security, education and health, which now get a few drops from these massive global flows via philanthropic gestures of some who have become enormously wealthy thanks to the Internet
• That the Internet global infrastructure be public property of the international community and that international non-profit enterprises be established under the U.N. auspices to provide Internet services, software and applications that would be in the public domain
• That new modes of international accounting and regulation be evolved, as a means to obtain a global overview and control of the financial flows and services via the Internet
• That a set of goals and objectives of the Internet be elaborated and adopted as the U.N. Declaration or Charter on the Internet, which would serve as the basic reference and guide for the Internet’s future development, management and operation.

Given the recent developments on the world scene, the overall context seems to be ripening for advocating the above approach, which implies a major departure from the present practices and would be a serious competitor to the existing North- and private corporations-dominated Internet.

It would also represent a return to the basic values embodied in the U.N. Charter and the decades-long U.N.-based efforts to evolve democratic and equitable world economic and political order.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Islamic State fighters pictured here in a 2014 propaganda video shot in Iraq's Anbar province.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 26 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations is quick to point out the increasing pace at which digital technology is racing across the world.

Six out of every seven people are armed with mobile phones – and more than three billion, out of the world’s 7.1 billion people, have access to the Internet.In February, ISIL posted a polished, 50-page guide online called “The Hijrah to the Islamic State,” that instructs potential recruits how to make the journey to its territory – including everything from finding safe houses in Turkey, to what kind of backpack to bring, and how to answer questions from immigration officials without arousing suspicion.

Still, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns that while advanced technologies are accelerating progress, there are also emerging threats.

“Extremist groups are using social networks to spread their hateful ideologies,” he told a Digital Forum in South Korea last week.

And despite the wide digital divide, he said, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are fast shaping the U.N.’s future sustainable development agenda.

“Our food agency uses mobile phones to help farmers set prices. Our relief operations communicate emergency information over online networks. And our messages go directly to the global public over Twitter and Facebook,” he said.

But there is also an increasing downside to the wide use of Twitter and Facebook: the world’s terror networks have been more adept at spreading their politically-loaded messages of hatred and religious extremism through the use of modern communication technologies – and keeping one step ahead of the governments pursuing them.

Ambassador Samantha Power, the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told the Security Council last month that groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and Al Shabaab are using the latest tools of modern technology to boost their cause.

“ISIL is showing increased sophistication in recruiting young people, particularly in virtual spaces,” Power said.

She said the group disseminates around 90,000 tweets each day, and its members and supporters routinely co-opt trending hashtags to disseminate their messages.

Nick Ashton-Hart, executive director of the Internet & Digital Ecosystem Alliance (IDEA), a Swiss non-governmental organisation (NGO), told IPS winning the digital argument, with those whose objective is the destruction of open, pluralistic societies, is a challenge.

“But online or offline it always has been,” he added.

Winning that argument requires demonstrating that secure, pluralistic societies have a better future to offer. “With respect to digital security, frankly, we are failing,” he said.

“Just look at basic international cooperation to protect people in their daily lives, from crime, fraud, and identity theft – as well as crimes like terrorism.”

The United States, he pointed out, has a backlog of more than 11,000 requests for legal assistance on all kinds of crime from the law enforcement officials of countries worldwide – and it is far from alone.

The international mutual legal assistance (MLAT) framework is simply not fit for digital purpose, said Ashton-Hart, the senior permanent representative of the technology sector to the U.N., its member-states, and the international organisations in Geneva.

Powers said ISIL even reportedly developed a Twitter app last year that allows Twitter subscribers to hand over control of their feed to ISIL – allowing ISIL to tweet from the individual subscriber’s account, exponentially amplifying the reach of its messages, Power said.

In February, ISIL posted a polished, 50-page guide online called “The Hijrah to the Islamic State,” that instructs potential recruits how to make the journey to its territory – including everything from finding safe houses in Turkey, to what kind of backpack to bring, and how to answer questions from immigration officials without arousing suspicion, she said.

“And it’s not just ISIL that is aggressively targeting children and youth – but al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and other groups,” Power told delegates.

Last week, ISIL released a 34-minute video, purportedly from its recluse leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in which he appealed to Muslims to either join ISIL or carry out attacks in their home countries.

The online recording, the New York Times reported, was translated into English, French, German, Russian and Turkish, “an unusual move suggesting that the group was hoping for maximum exposure.”

According to the United Nations, some 600 million people were victims of cybercrimes two years ago.

And U.N. experts estimate these crimes will cost the global economy about 400 billion dollars every year.

Ashton-Hart told IPS the main global crime prevention treaty, the Convention on Transboundary Organised Crime, is starved of the funding necessary to fully implement it.

“Senior judges in the Hague tell me they cannot get the cooperation they need in basic digital evidence-gathering integral to prosecute monstrous crimes, in some cases the most grave crimes in existence.”

“If the international framework that ISIL want to tear down cannot manage these fundamentals, how can we expect to win the broader argument over extremism?” he asked.

He also said creating the practical measures that underpin trust between societies in basic law enforcement and baseline cybersecurity is not optional “and yet we still have more than 200 processes related to these issues without any structured, effective coordination between them to ensure sustainable, win-win outcomes.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The collapse of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt broke the state's stranglehold on the local press, but journalists and bloggers must still be careful what they say. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 2015 (IPS)

While technology has given millions greater freedom to express themselves, in the world’s 10 most censored countries, this basic right exists only on paper, if at all.

According to a report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which will be officially released at U.N. headquarters on Apr. 27, the worst offenders are Eritrea and North Korea, followed by Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, China, Myanmar and Cuba."Countries that were on our list in previous years continue to be on the list. But the forms of censorship have changed." -- CPJ's Courtney Radsch

Courtney Radsch, the advocacy director of CPJ, told IPS, “These countries use a wide range of traditional tactics of censorship, including jailing of journalists, harassment of journalists, prosecuting local press and independent press.”

According to CPJ’s 2014 prison census, Eritrea is Africa’s leading jailer of journalists, with at least 23 behind bars – none of whom has been tried in court or even charged with a crime. Among the other most censored countries on the list is China with 44, Iran with 30, and 17 jailed journalists in Ethiopia.

In countries where governments jail reporters regularly for critical coverage, many journalists are forced to flee rather than risk arrest, said the report.

Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Felix Horne, told IPS, “If you are a journalist in Ethiopia, you are faced with a stark choice: either you self-censor your writings, you end up in prison, or you are exiled from your country.”

According to the report Journalism is not a Crime, released by HRW in January 2015, over 30 journalists fled Ethiopia in 2014. Six of the last independent publications have shut down and there are at least 19 journalists and bloggers in prison for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

In both Ethiopia and Eritrea, anti-terrorism laws have been used to effectively silence dissenting voices and to target opposition politicians, journalists, and activists, Horne said.

“This law is the ultimate threat for Ethiopian journalists and its use against bloggers and journalists has led to increased rates of self-censorship amongst what is left of Ethiopia’s independent media scene.”

Traditional forms of censorship are going hand in hand with new subtle, modern, and faster strategies such as internet restrictions, regulation of media and press laws, and the limitation of mobile devices.

Radsch underlined, “The situation has gotten worse. We have seen a historical level of imprisonment of journalists and an increasing expansion of censorship (which) developed more sophisticated forms, including pre-publications censorship, restricted access to info content, and content regulations.”

The CPJ report says that in order to avoid an “Arab Spring” in Eritrea, the authorities have strongly limited internet access, with no possibility of gathering independent information.

Radsch highlighted that gathering public information through local internet access – the right to broadband – is recognised by the U.N., as a fundamental human right. But, in Eritrea and North Korea, as well as Cuba, the internet is essentially not permitted.

Access to mobile phones is also restricted.

“There are virtually no phones in Eritrea and there are limited phones in North Korea, where they can get in through smuggling networks from China,” she said, adding that these kind of restrictions are applied not only to reporters, but to the general public more broadly.

According to CPJ, globally, Eritrea has the lowest rate of cell phone users, with just 5.6 percent of the population owning one. In North Korea, only 9.7 percent of the population has cell phones, excluding phones smuggled in from China.

Other countries, including Saudi Arabia, China, Vietnam and Azerbaijan, have internet, but its access is strongly limited through the blocking of web content, restrictive access regulations, and persecuting those who violates the rules, added Radsch.

Censorship in the 10 listed countries affect mainly local journalists, apart from the case of Egypt where foreign reporters have been imprisoned, said Radsch. But censorship is also applied to foreign correspondents in other ways, such as denying entry visas to those countries or by deporting them.

The previous two lists of most censored countries compiled by CPJ date back to 2006 and 2012.

Radsch said, “One of the reasons why we cannot publish these lists every year is because censorship tactics have not changed much from year to year. In general, countries that were on our list in previous years continue to be on the list. But the forms of censorship have changed.”

To keep track of government data is difficult due to their lack of transparency, explained Radsch.

Although the international community is aware of human rights violations in repressive countries, concrete action to protect freedom of expression is still lacking.

Horne underlined that in Ethiopia, for instance, despite its dismal human rights record, the country continues to enjoy significant support from Western governments, both in relation to Ethiopia’s progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and its role as a regional peacekeeper.

“But ignoring Ethiopia’s horrendous human rights situation and the internal tensions this is causing may have long-term implications for Western interests in the Horn of Africa,” Horne concluded.

CPJ is also calling on the international community to ensure that anti-terrorist laws are not used illegitimately by states to strengthen censorship even further against the press.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Behind the scenes at the UNTV studio where Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was recorded answering some of the 5,000 questions sent to him via Twitter and Chinese network, Weibo. Mr. Ban’s response to the questions, some of which were asked on-air, was streamed live on Facebook, Livestream, Tumblr and UN Webcast. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Josh Butler
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 5 2015 (IPS)

Formerly derided as the domain of time-wasting and self-obsession, social media has emerged as an unlikely shining light for international relations and social activism.

The trend has been dubbed ‘twiplomacy’ – Twitter diplomacy – with world leaders, diplomats and non-governmental organisations alike harnessing the people power of social media to amplify their own messages and goals.“Social media is a megaphone. You won’t reach everybody, but it levels the playing field." -- Anna Nelson

“[Today] 84 per cent of governments have a Twitter presence. There are 130 heads of states and government on Twitter,” said Adam Snyder, global digital and social media strategist with the communications firm Burson Marsteller.

“It is giving people accessibility to their leaders. It takes activism and communicating with your government to a new level.”

Snyder was speaking on the results of his firm’s latest report, also titled ‘Twiplomacy,’ at the United Nations’ first ever Social Media Day on Jan. 30 in New York City.

That an entire day was devoted to the likes of Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter shows the degree to which the U.N. considers social media a tool for diplomacy and change.

“There’s the old-fashioned idea of diplomacy, having a hotline between one country and another. Now there’s a Twitter line between countries,” Snyder said.

The U.N.’s Social Media Day heard from diplomats, advocacy groups, strategists, executives and journalists on the effect of technology on political and social discourse.

“[Social media] is helping to demystify diplomacy, and opening doors to what we do,” said Michael Grant, deputy permanent representative of Canada to the U.N.

Advocacy groups

Through harnessing the power of viral videos, Twitter hashtags and strategic outreach, even the smallest of social campaigns can become globally ubiquitous.

Recent notable examples, including ‘black lives matter’ (protesting the deaths of black men at the hands of police), and ‘bring back our girls’ (calling for the release of 270 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram), saw the transformation of essentially local campaigns into slogans recognised worldwide.

Anna Nelson, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and editor of its Intercross blog, told IPS social media had radically changed the way her agency and many others executed campaigns.

“When a crisis or disaster happens, people want to do something. It’s hard to give them an outlet to do anything, especially in a war zone, but social media gives people the opportunity to participate in fundraising or awareness,” Nelson said.

“People want to make a difference, but it was sometimes impossible before. For aid agencies, social media is a very powerful tool.”

Nelson spoke on Friday about the ICRC’s efforts in using social media to highlight issues around conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine.

She said social media has been hugely effective in helping ICRC reunite families separated in crises. She also singled out a 2011 TEDx event the ICRC curated in Geneva, which included a talk by an Afghan man with no legs and one arm.

A video of the talk, raising awareness of the Afghanistan conflict, has since been translated into many different languages and viewed 700,000 times. She said social media allowed even smaller organisations to bring global attention to their causes.

“Social media is a megaphone. You won’t reach everybody, but it levels the playing field,” Nelson told IPS.

Andre Banks, executive director of LGBT advocacy group All Out, also spoke on Friday about awareness and activism successes achieved through social media. He outlined a recent campaign that was successful in forcing a prominent hotel chain to discontinue their indirect funding of anti-gay groups, through mass mobilization of All Out’s social media supporters.

“Social media is the critical way we ask people to get engaged, and also get their own networks engaged,” Banks told IPS.

“Without social media, it would have been impossible for us to be the kind of success we have been.”

Banks also said the new technology allowed the messages of All Out and other advocacy groups to be placed in front of a wider, larger group of potential supporters than ever before.

“The most interesting thing is that social media helped us get supporters we wouldn’t have been able to get. Half our network are straight people,” he said.

“They’re not in LGBT communities, but their friends, family or colleagues are. People who don’t identify as LGBT still see our messages. It lets us reach outside that community.”

Nelson and Banks both also acknowledged the pitfalls of ‘clicktivism’ or ‘slacktivism,’ a term denoting the online sharing of social or political issues without any material support of that issue; however, Nelson said she did not consider the trend as a concern to aid agencies or charities.

“If someone wants to use social media and tell their friends about something happening somewhere, I’m all for that. I don’t see that as lazy or incidental,” Nelson said.

“If that’s all you can do, that’s still something. Anything that leads to people giving a thought to something, or getting motivated, is good.”

Diplomats

“International diplomacy no longer takes place exclusively behind closed doors,” said Maher Nasser, acting head of the U.N. Department of Public Information, in opening a panel on how diplomats use social media.

The Twiplomacy report states more than 3,500 embassies and ambassadors are active on Twitter, and that all but one of the G20 governments have an official Twitter presence.

As of November 2014, world leaders had sent a total of 2.2 million Tweets, averaging four posts each day.

While no speaker at the Social Media Day could point to a specific example of social media being used directly for negotiations, official correspondence or decision-making, it was agreed unanimously that social media is today almost essential in spreading information and messages.

Grant said, in his position as deputy permanent representative of Canada, he uses Twitter daily to both find and spread information.

“Is social media absolutely 100 per cent required? No, it isn’t. But I think you can do your job better by engaging with social media,” Grant said. “Is it 100 per cent part of diplomacy? Yes it is.”

Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has 420 social media accounts in 91 countries, on platforms including Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Weibo.

There are more than 50 Canadian heads of mission active on Twitter.

Grant said Canada uses social media to “replicate and amplify messages,” such as diplomats’ speeches and public appearances, as well as more practical information such as warning Canadians overseas of conflict or natural disaster.

“We use Facebook and Twitter in emergencies, to target Canadians in affected areas… it’s very much part of our mainstream,” he said.

However, despite the name and the aim of the day, Grant said social media was not yet materially changing diplomacy or international relations.

“It is changing, but not as dramatically as one would think,” he said.

Masood Khan, permanent representative of Pakistan to the U.N., was even blunter in his assessment.

“My participation [in social media] is static. I don’t have any clear directions from my government. It’s a grey area, they haven’t made up their mind,” he said.

Khan said “digital wars” had already started between some members of the Security Council, with confidential information allegedly leaked to journalists through social media.

“You have all these allegations about espionage… In the Security Council, members love to Tweet. Even the most confidential information would appear in the newspapers, New York Times and Washington Post, and usually the source would be a Tweet,” he said.

“[Members] would blame each other, that it was done by the others… In that sense, Twitter wars have started, and we have to find ways to resolve those conflicts.”

With social media becoming an evermore pervasive facet of modern life, and a growing force in diplomacy and non-governmental work, this will not be the last we hear of Twiplomacy in action in international relations.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Samah Shaheen (right), one of Gaza’s many disabled young people, joined the Irada programme to acquire expertise, learn computerised wood carving and escape social marginalisation. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Jan 17 2015 (IPS)

The Israeli attacks that the Gaza Strip has suffered in recent years have left in their wake a large number of young people who have come up against a further barrier to their creative energies – physical disability caused by military aggression.

Institutions here are increasingly facing the challenge of developing rehabilitation programmes to help support these physically disabled Gazan youth cope with living under the existing harsh political, economic and social conditions.

One of these programmes – known as “Irada” (“will” in Arabic) – is providing young people who have been disabled by war with vocational training with the ultimate objective of helping them earn their own livelihoods.

Launched by the Islamic University of Gaza, the Irada programme aims to support, train and reintegrate physically challenged young people in social and economic terms and boost community trust in the abilities of this so far marginalised group. More than 400 persons with all types of disabilities have already received rehabilitation and training.“After I joined the [Irada] programme and learnt computer skills for carving and decoration on wood, I now have a career, earn well and I am seriously thinking of opening a workshop” – Samah Shaheen, a 33-year-old physically disabled woman from Al-Bureij refugee camp

Irada project director Emad Al Masri told IPS that the project concept was initially developed for the massive number of young people who became disabled as a result of the Israeli war against Gaza in 2008. The project received support from the government of Turkey for the building construction to house Irada’s academic and vocational training programmes.

“The basic idea of the project is to help disabled people and reintegrate them into the community and help them to be productive instead of being seen as a burden,” Al Masri said.

Samah Shaheen, a 33-year-old from Al-Bureij refugee camp, has a physical disability that makes it difficult for her to engage in community activities. She joined the Irada programme in an attempt to acquire expertise and learn computerised wood carving. She spent more than six months in training before moving on to practice her new skills within the community under Irada supervision.

“I spent several years of my life jobless due to my disability, and also because I had no experience,” Samah told IPS. “After I joined the [Irada] programme and learnt computer skills for carving and decoration on wood, I now have a career, earn well and I am seriously thinking of opening a workshop because of the overwhelming response to the ornate wood furniture products that I have made.”

Central to the Irada rehabilitation programme is to follow up with the disabled people who have received training after leaving the programme in order to ensure their integration and participation in the labour market.  Part of this follow-up strategy also includes monitoring their progress in the workshops and factories where they are employed, and offering professional support if needed.

Because of its success, the Irada programme has been awarded funding by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help programme graduates start up small business projects, develop their economic independence and enhance their production profile.

Tariq Sha’at, NGO Coordinator for UNDP, told IPS that “UNDP allocated 150,000 dollars to establish centres for the production of home furniture throughout the governorates of the Gaza Strip and help 90 disabled trainees to manage their own businesses, continue their lives and reintegrate into the society naturally.”

Adding further success to the promising and successful Irada programme, three female information technology (IT) students from the Islamic University of Gaza have designed the first application to enable visually impaired people to write in Braille language on smart phones in Arabic.

Seen as a major breakthrough, visually impaired people can now download and install the application for performing all operations, including calls and text messaging. It also allows physically impaired people to use smart phones with high efficacy and facilitates communications with people in the wider society.

Dr. Tawfiq Barhom,  Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology, explained to IPS that “this group of female students was able to provide a great service to the community of visually impaired people, in addition to winning a global competition in which the application was selected as one of the five best projects for developers from among 2500 projects.”

Students are now trying to develop this application even further by increasing the number of languages supported to facilitate use by larger groups worldwide. Israa Al Ashqar, one of the students on the project team told IPS that the project came about because of the marginalisation experienced by visually impaired people in society and their increased isolation as a result of their inability to use social media and smart phone applications.

“The application will provide a Braille keyboard for every programme used by visually impaired people on mobile phones which will allow them to use social media and communicate with their community naturally. This will in turn increase the chances for this marginalised group to integrate into local and global society,” she said.

Together, the Irada programme and the Braille smart phone application represent a serious attempt by universities and students in Gaza to support an important section of the community that has not only suffered from wars and traumas but also hopelessness and isolation within Gazan society.

They are a tangible demonstration that the people of Gaza have the will and the talent to work together and develop opportunities, where possible, for an inclusive society.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Drawing for peace - a signature cartoon by Plantu

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Jan 8 2015 (IPS)

“They are cowards who react to satire by going for their Kalashnikovs.” That was how renowned French cartoonist Plantu described the killers of 10 media workers and two policemen in Paris Wednesday.

One of the murdered journalists, cartoonist Bernard Verlhac who went by the pen name of Tignous, was a member of Cartooning for Peace, the organisation that Plantu founded with former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, following the protests sparked by the controversial Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Tignous worked for Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine that the murderers targeted.

According to police and eyewitness reports, two hooded gunmen entered the premises of the magazine and opened fire in the late morning. After they fled the scene, in a car driven by a third participant, 12 people were confirmed dead and at least 11 injured, some critically.“Cartoonists – Christian, Muslim, Jewish cartoonists – are scandalised and angry. And to express ourselves, we take up a marker and we draw” – Plantu, co-founder of Cartooning for Peace

Video footage, filmed from neighbouring buildings, showed the attackers killing an injured policeman as he lay in the road. On Wednesday night, the police presence in France’s capital city was huge as security officials tried to track down the attackers who reportedly had been identified.

French President François Hollande said in a public address that the killers would be brought to justice and “severely punished” for their actions. Appealing for unity, he said the attack was an assault on national ideals and freedoms, including freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, many French residents took to social media to express solidarity with the magazine’s staff, posting images with the words “Je suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), and thousands gathered on the historic Place de la Republique in Paris, and in several other cities in France.

The magazine had been a target for several years, since it published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. In 2011, assailants firebombed its offices in the city’s 11th district, and its cartoons have been considered offensive by various groups over the past two years. Its cover this week featured the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose newly published novel “Soumission” portrays a future France living under an Islamic regime.

But condemnation of the murders came from all sides of the religious and political spectrum on Wednesday. The French Muslim Council said the “barbaric action” was also an attack “against democracy and the freedom of the press,” while the Protestant Federation of France expressed “revulsion” and said the “hateful” acts could have no justification in any religion.

Irina Bokova, the director-general of Paris-based UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, said she was “horrified” by the attack. “This is more than a personal tragedy,” she stated.  “It is an attack on the media and freedom of expression.  The world community cannot allow extremists to silence the free flow of opinions and ideas.  We must work together to bring the perpetrators to justice and stand together for a free and independent press.”

Rights group Amnesty International said the attack was a “black day” for freedom of expression and a free press, while the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) called the assault a “barbaric act of violence against journalists and media freedom.”

EFJ president Mogens Blicher Bjerregaard stressed that journalists today face a greater range of dangers and threats than ever before.

Last year, 118 journalists and media workers died for doing their jobs, according to the EFJ and other organisations, bringing the total to more than 700 deaths over the past decade.

On Nov. 2, the United Nations marked the first international Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. The organisation said that the majority of the killings “were deliberate murders committed in connection with journalists’ denunciation of crime and corruption.”

Charlie Hebdo’s recent cartoons had poked fun at the head of IS, or the Islamic State, and had even seemed to forecast an attack, saying that fighters had until the end of January to “present their wishes” – a reference to the French tradition of government ministers presenting their “voeux” to the press each new year.

From around the world, condemnation of the acts and condolences for the victims’ families were transmitted to France by heads of state and foreign ministers. But perhaps the most profound messages came from colleagues in the media world – cartoonists.

Plantu said that Cartooning for Peace, where staffers worked late into the evening, had received thousands of messages and drawings.

“We are angry,” he said on French television. “Cartoonists – Christian, Muslim, Jewish cartoonists – are scandalised and angry. And to express ourselves, we take up a marker and we draw.”

He said that Cartooning for Peace had been created for the very purpose of creating bridges between people, religions and regions and that cartoonists’ work was “stronger” than the “barbaric acts” committed by the “cowards” on Wednesday.

Plantu told IPS at a conference last year in the southern French city of Montpellier that the work of the non-profit organisation was important in promoting dialogue, understanding and mutual respect by using cartoons as a universal language.

At that conference, one of the featured participants was Tignous, who showed himself to be funny in both speech and drawing. As he and a journalist got lost trying to make it to the conference centre, he cracked jokes about his legs being too short to jump fences, but he ended up being the one to find the right direction.

Later at the conference, he produced cartoons that had the audience laughing out loud. For him, and other cartoonists, the work was about freedom to poke fun at extremists and political hypocrites.

At the creation of Cartooning for Peace, the founders said the initiative was meant to highlight the notion that cartoonist’s influence comes with a “responsibility to encourage debate rather than inflame passions, to educate rather than divide.”

According to commentators, Charlie Hebdo may have inflamed passions with its satire, but the killings on Wednesday seemed an attempt to end all debate, and to foster further division in France, where the extreme-right National Front party has been rising in popularity.

“The targeted assassinations were staged in order to establish terror and muzzle journalists, cartoonists but also every citizen,” Cartooning for Peace said in a statement. It added that the attackers would not have the last word because “art and freedom will be stronger than any intolerance.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Credit: Proyecto Diez Periodismo con Memoria, via Ilustradores con Ayotzinapa

By Charlotte María Sáenz
MEXICO CITY, Nov 20 2014 (IPS)

“Alive they were taken, and alive we want them back!”

That’s become the rallying cry for the 43 student teachers abducted by municipal police and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang last September in Iguala, Mexico. None have been seen since.In Mexico’s unraveling, there is an opportunity for the rest of the world to witness—and support—the emergence of more direct and collective forms of democracy.

It remained the rallying cry even after federal officials announced that the missing students had most likely been executed and burnt to ashes.

Since then, Argentine forensic experts have concluded that burned remains found in Iguala do not belong to the missing young men—and so the 43 remain undead. The findings speak to a growing scepticism about the Mexican government’s competence—not only to deliver justice, but also to carry on an investigation with any kind of legitimacy or credibility.

It has become ever clearer that the state is in fact deeply implicated in the violence it claims to oppose. The student teachers were originally attacked by municipal police—allegedly at the orders of Iguala’s mayor and his wife, who were at a function with a local general when the attack took place.

Although the exact details of who ordered the attack are not yet clear, the handing over of the student teachers to a violent drug gang betrays a thorough merger of the police force, local officials, and organised crime.

This growing realisation has ignited rage all over Mexico, with social media campaigns flaring up alongside massive street protests. Peaceful marches happen almost daily in Mexico City, while elsewhere there are starker signs of unrest. Some demonstrators even set fire to government buildings in the Guerrero state capital.

Meanwhile, the government has carried on an increasingly clumsy investigation, first purporting to have found the students in nearby mass graves—as The Nation reports, plenty of mass graves have turned up, but none has yet been proven to contain the missing teachers—and then claiming to have extracted confessions from the alleged killers.

In a November press conference, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam showcased detailed video testimonies from three alleged hit men who claimed to have burned the 43 at a nearby garbage dump. Parents of the missing went to inspect the alleged site and found evidence lacking. Many doubted that a fire of such magnitude—the supposed killers claimed that they had spent 14 hours burning the bodies—could have happened due to the rain of that night.

When Argentine forensic specialists disproved Karam’s narrative, the federal government pledged to “redouble efforts” to find the students. Now President Enrique Peña Nieto is hinting at a conspiracy against his government. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mexican officials want this issue put to rest as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the mounting number of mass graves investigators are turning up serves as a reminder that this kind of violence has been going on for years. Police round up, detain, beat, arrest, and shoot at student activists routinely, as when state police shot and killed two Ayotzinapa students during a protest action on the highway in 2011. As with over 90 percent of such crimes in Mexico, no one has been punished.

These kinds of killings and disappearances have a long and sordid history as a practice of state violence in Mexico—and particularly in Guerrero—since the so-called Dirty War of the 1970s.

The many discrepancies in Karam’s press conference are feeding into a growing popular refusal to trust the government’s ability to investigate the disappearances independently.

In response to a reporter’s question about whether the parents of the missing believed him, Karam quipped that the parents are people who “make decisions together.” The question was not so much about whether the parents, as individuals, believed or disbelieved Karam’s evidence—although they have since visited the alleged crime scene and reaffirmed their scepticism.

Instead, ordinary Mexicans are increasingly employing their collective intelligence in making sense of the events and refusing to accept the state’s evidence on the grounds that the state itself is compromised. And just as importantly, they’re condemning the government’s silence about its own complicity in the probable execution of their sons.

In their increasing rejection of the Mexican narco-state’s legitimacy, the parents of the missing 43 are signaling their membership in what anthropologist Guillermo Bonfíl Batalla famously termed México Profundo—that is, the grassroots culture of indigenous Mesoamerican communities and the urban poor, which stands in stark contrast to the “Imaginary Mexico” of the elites.

Recalling the Zapatista movement, the rumblings from below in the wake of the mass abduction in Guerrero are merging with older modes of indigenous resistance to give new life to Mexico’s deep tradition of popular struggle.

Bolstered by social media, this new life is expressing itself in a number of colourful ways. Defying the government’s theatre of death, artists from all over the world are creating a “Mosaic of Life” by illustrating the faces and names of the disappeared. Mexican Twitter users have embraced the hashtag #YaMeCansé—“I am tired”—to appropriate Karam’s complaint of exhaustion after an hour of responding to questions as an expression of their own rage and resilience.

Gradually, a movement calling itself “43 x 43”—representing the exponential impact of the 43 disappeared—is rising up to greet the undead, along with the more than 100,000 others killed or disappeared since the start of this drug war in 2006 under former President Felipe Calderón. This refusal of the dead to remain dead made for a particularly poignant Dia de Muertos celebration earlier this month.

This form of resistance recalls what happened last May in the autonomous Zapatista municipality of el Caracol de la Realidad in the state of Chiapas, where a teacher known as Galeano was murdered by paramilitary forces. At the pre-dawn ceremony held there in Galeano’s honor on May 25, putative Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos announced that he, Marcos, would cease to exist.

After Marcos disappeared into the night, the assembled then heard a disembodied voice address them: “Good dawn, compañeras and compañeros. My name is Galeano, Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano. Does anybody else respond to this name?”

In response, hundreds of voices affirmed, “Yes, we are all Galeano!” And so Galeano came back to life collectively, in all of those assembled.

And now 43 disappeared student teachers have multiplied into thousands demanding justice from the state and greater autonomy for local communities, which are already building alternative healthcare, education, justice, and governmental systems. A general strike is scheduled for the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution on November 20th.

In Mexico’s unraveling, there is an opportunity for the rest of the world to witness—and support—the emergence of more direct and collective forms of democracy. As the now “deceased” Marcos said: “They wanted to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Srun Srorn, trainer for the E-learning project, shows teachers at Koh Kong High School how the sexual education curriculum works. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
KOH KONG PROVINCE, Cambodia, Nov 5 2014 (IPS)

The transition to puberty can be an awkward experience for youth to navigate. In Cambodia, sex education is moving increasingly into the virtual realm, with the Internet and mobile phones providing welcome spaces for young people to learn, seek help and stay safe.

Cambodia is classified as one of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs), with 20 percent of the population living below the poverty line, while another 20 percent are just 0.30 dollars a day above the poverty line, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Illiteracy has been linked with poverty and only 74 percent of rural communities are literate. Cambodia has been heavily influenced by the NGO culture, which has helped bring about some improvements, yet when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), these organisations have tended to focus on addressing poor maternal health or at-risk groups, such as entertainment workers.

"This is the difficulty that we experience [in Cambodia: making people aware that counseling is a way of providing emotional support and empowerment as well as exploring options without judgment or assumption.” -- Sean Sok Phay, executive director of Child Helpline Cambodia
Youth, on the other hand, particularly those from poorer families and in rural areas, have not received much attention, particularly those who engage in romantic relationships outside of marriage.

Now, a wave of online learning is filling crucial gaps in the knowledge system.

One such initiative is a major E-learning platform being rolled out with support from the ministry of education, youth and sport (MoEYS), aimed at improving young people’s access to vital information.

“NGOs focus on the population in general, birth spacing, maternal health, but not sweetheart relationships that youth have,” Kuth Sovanno, administrative officer in the school health department of the MoEYS said recently to a roomful of teachers at Koh Kong High School during the launch of the E-learning initiative.

It is being piloted in 24 secondary schools in the provinces of Bantey Meanchey, Battambong, Pursat, Kampong Chhnang, Takeo, Kampot, Koh Kong and Sihanoukville (Kampong Som province) and Phnom Penh. At present, the plan is to expand the programme to reach 100 schools.

Sovanno tells IPS that tapping into social media is a way to get the information out to youth who flock to Facebook to socialise. Youth are beginning to see online access as an important source of information, so the MoEYS maintains an up-to-date website, which is not always the case with the other ministries.

Cambodia’s mobile phone sales have mushroomed, resulting in an estimated 134-percent mobile phone penetration, with cell phones being cheaper than land lines, while social media – accessed through Internet cafes and mobile devices – was believed to have played a major role in the 2013 elections.

In this same way, youth are breaking away from traditional restrictions on sexual and reproductive health education, says Srun Srorn, advisor to One World UK, partnering with the MoEYS to launch the E-learning programme.

Srorn is an activist who uses social media to reach marginalised youth, including the LGBT community, drug users, sex workers and migrant workers. His volunteer-led organisation, CamASEAN, reaches 2,000 members through social media.

Chheon Rachana, a 28-year-old female activist for LGBT issues who teaches about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression for Rainbow Community Kampuchea (RoCK) and CamASEAN, tells IPS that many girls do not talk to their parents or female teachers for advice on seemingly basic topics like menstruation; instead, most reach out to friends.

While some schools make use of NGO support to supply poor rural students with feminine products at school, many girls continue to face challenges in acquiring the most essential products and services.

“Poor girls ask for money from their parents or from someone close to them in their family,” explains Rachana. She herself did not tell her parents when she started menstruating, but had a sympathetic relative help buy her monthly feminine products.

Things become even more challenging for teens learning about safer sex, abortions and sexual orientation.

“The traditional Cambodian style of reproductive and sexual health education means that most youth have to find out by themselves by book, [and] share [this information] with their friends because they don’t learn this at school,” Rachana says.

She thinkx the Internet is changing this, though she maintains the importance of accurate information – something that is not always possible given the very nature of the Web.

NGOs such as the Reproductive Health Association of Cambodia (RHAC), which also supports the E-learning initiative, trains peer educators to provide accurate information and emotional support in several provinces but adolescents without access to this especially benefit from mobile, SMS and online counseling.

Sean Sok Phay, executive director of Child Helpline Cambodia, which, along with Inthanou, provides counselors for the new website www.youthchhlat.org, tells IPS, “Online and phone counseling is a new concept in Cambodia. Many people often refer [to] counseling as giving advice or instructing people to do certain thing. This is the difficulty that we experience: making people aware that counseling is a way of providing emotional support and empowerment as well as exploring options without judgment or assumption.”

He describes the service as “pro-poor” and especially helpful for youth in rural areas, as one-on-one counseling can be expensive, while this service is free. The use of mobile phones allows for privacy to talk about these topics either online, by calling or through SMS.

The MoEYS recently published a life skills book for youth that tackles changes in adolescents’ bodies, but also social issues such as drug use and learning about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which is paired with the E-learning project that has its own curriculum as well.

“Each student has time at the computer already so it will be easier because they are shy to learn [about sexual reproductive health],” Theary, a high school teacher who has taught grades 7-9 at Koh Kong High for the past seven years, tells IPS.

Computer labs, such as the one in Koh Kong High School, will introduce the website’s lessons to students offline first because of the school’s slow Internet connection but they can also access the lessons online at Internet cafes or through mobile phones.

The new website was launched in March of this year.

“Many youth have sex before marriage now, compared to traditional times,” adds Srorn of One World UK, who trains teachers on how to use the E-learning platform.

“Girls already learn by themselves and use porn videos for this. Internet cafes are not expensive, just 1000 riels [0.24 dollars] an hour so poor girls can learn this way. Males use karaoke bars, beer gardens, massage parlors.”

Koh Kong town, situated close to the Thai border, has many massage parlors and some casinos.

“Middle-class and [upper]-class girls can walk or take a moto bike along the riverside in cities [to meet potential sex partners], while high-class girls go to hip-hop clubs where they can meet a guy. But youth also use the Internet for this. They can use Skype, Facebook messenger and phone sex to hook up.”

Chheon agrees that meeting girlfriends and boyfriends online is common these days. But she says it is important that they meet in public places first and not away from other people for safety reasons.

According to a 2013 U.N. report, 20 percent of men in Cambodia said they had forced a woman to have sex, half of whom claimed to have done so as a teenager.

For those surviving an assault, phone and online counseling can be a lifesaver.

“A girl in a village [who has] been raped … will not only face discrimination, she will have a very difficult time in terms of trauma, stress, and feelings of suicide. Phone counseling, online and text message counseling is playing a role to create the means or opportunity for such a community,” points out Sok Phay from the Child Helpline.

But perhaps what is most urgently needed is information about practicing safer sex.

Monyl Loun, executive director of Inthanou, the other counseling service supporting the project, tells IPS that while love and relationships are “natural” at the age of puberty, the important thing is to learn about the “responsibilities of love, and information to prevent … unintended pregnancy, HIVs and STIs.”

Karaoke videos that play on televisions in buses and even the simplest cafes show romantic partners ending their lives over relationship problems.

“KTV songs and dances are about love, broken hearts and marriage,” explains Srun, adding that most music videos depict couples killing or hurting themselves as a solution to their problems.

But counselors working round the clock in Cambodia hope the new technology-savvy mode of sex education will remind youth that love does not have to end in tragedy.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

“Strong together, we love Israel and trust the army” banner in Jerusalem. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Aug 7 2014 (IPS)

“Strong together, we love Israel and trust the army” – while a tentative truce takes root, banners adorned with the national colours still dominate cities and highways across the country.

Calling for unquestioned patriotism and solidarity, the embrace is a bear hug in the minds of those who question the merits and morality of Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza.

It is tough to subscribe to the credo of peace when nationalist emotions are exacerbated by plaintive sirens and the deafening sound of Iron Dome missiles slamming incoming rockets, when rational judgment is mobilised for the war effort and crushes rational assessment of the effect of war.

War is the antithesis of peace is a tautology. Challenged by war, Israeli peace activists grapple with dilemma.... ordinary Israelis took refuge in the safety net of their emotions, seeking comfort in national anxiety, pronouncing moral judgment on the “sanctimonious” critics at home who contest the axiomatic assertion proclaimed time and again that “the Israel Defence Forces is the world’s most moral army”

A war, when launched, must be won. Yet this war results neither in victory nor defeat, is not a war to end all wars, but a war to avoid the next war by means of deterrence, maybe. In war, there is only loss, and losers, peace activists reckon.

If war will not have solved the conflict – it contains the seeds of the next round of violence – peace will, they assert.

But when the cannons roar, peace is silenced.

Stressing that there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Peace NGO Forum called for a ceasefire and a resumption of the negotiations towards a two-state solution on Day 22 of the operation.

The Peace NGO Forum is an umbrella platform for Jewish and Palestinian civil society organisations dedicated to peace within a two-state solution to the conflict. The partner organisations, which include the women’s peace coalition Bat Shalom and the Combatants for Peace movement, partake in networking, capacity-building and joint demonstrations,

The belated statement generated by the Israeli wing of the forum exposed the dilemma: “Israelis reserve the right to self-defence and deserve to live in security and peace, without the threat of rockets fired at them and enemy tunnels dug into their midst.”

And so, at its height, the war was justified, enjoying quasi-consensual approval ratings among Jewish Israelis. Social media brimmed with racist, intimidating, “Kill Arabs”, “Kill leftists” comments.

“No more deaths!” On Day 19 of the operation, 5,000 Israelis joined a rally organised by pro-peace civil society organisations. The emblematic Peace Now movement was absent, as was the liberal Meretz party. The protestors dispersed after rockets were fired at the Tel Aviv metropolis.

Succumbing willingly to the 24 hours a day news coverage on TV, ordinary Israelis took refuge in the safety net of their emotions, seeking comfort in national anxiety, pronouncing moral judgment on the “sanctimonious” critics at home who contest the axiomatic assertion proclaimed time and again that “the Israel Defence Forces is the world’s most moral army”.

Left-wing Israelis counter that self-righteousness is intrinsic in such proclamation.

“How can you not identify with our national pain when we’re under threat” is a blame often levelled by right-wingers against fellow Israeli peace activists.

The Israeli public which, in its overwhelming majority, is at the centre and right of the political spectrum, charges that the country is falling victim to ‘victimology’, the victim-focused coverage of the conflict.

Supporters of the peace movement see respect for “human rights as our last line of defence”, as Amnesty International director Yonatan Gher put it in the liberal daily Haaretz on Wednesday. They object to the disproportionate reaction of the military. Israel must understand the weakness inherent in its own military might, they suggest.

The mainstream’s assumption is that peace activists too often give in to ‘the mother of all tautologies’ – that “war is hell” and “evil” and, in essence, a war crime. Any sign of soul searching that this war is not just is resented as vacillation and unwanted self-flagellation.

Peace activists hold Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories as the source of evil.

The 47-year occupation, most Israelis argue, reduces their predicament to a simplistic imagery, because the occupation does not justify the hatred of Israel professed by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, and the repetitive cycle of violence. The occupation continues because peace is unattainable, they stress.

“Try,” retort peace activists, “We’ve proven enough that we’re strong enough to take a risk for peace.”

Israelis have been stuck in this perennial debate for 14 years.

During this time, they have experienced a flurry of conflicts with no end in sight: the 2000-2005 Palestinian Intifadah uprising, the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah, onslaughts on Hamas in Gaza in 2006 (“Summer Rains”), 2008-2009 (“Cast Lead”), in 2012 (“Pillar of Defence”), and now.

Disillusion and despair are all the more potent that, during the years of the Oslo_Accords, a process of mutual reconciliation engaged both Israelis and Palestinians towards tentative recognition of the other’s pain.

With the ensuing confrontations, both people quickly backpedalled to the existential, elemental, dimension of their conflict.

In adversity, it has become necessary for both Israelis and Palestinians not only to exclude any identification with the other’s pain but also to inflict pain on the other as the sole way to assuage one’s pain and deter the other from inflicting pain.

What, however, unifies the overwhelming camp of war supporters and the dedicated ranks of peace supporters is the acknowledgement that the reality is complex.

Mainstream Israelis realise that their argument that an assessment of the situation requires not being focused solely on the body count in Gaza is a lost cause.

Peace activists understand that the threat that triggered Israel’s operation is tangible, but also the direction in which its outcome might be leading, its consequences and implications for Israel, and, by correlation, for the Palestinians and for peace between the two peoples.

Their ideal of co-existence grinded by years of wars, peace activists reject the focus on suffering if it only serves the hackneyed precept that, on one hand, in war, the end justifies (almost) all means, or, on the other, that war cannot be justified.

They draw fine lines between exercising a legitimate right of self-defence against an unwarranted act of aggression and ever greater use of force, and between the morality, rights and laws of war and the wrongs of the Occupation.

And now that the war seems over, they hang their hope on the realisation by their national leaders that they will urgently initiate a bold diplomatic move towards peace with the Palestinians, and will not let the same amount of time since the previous operation be wasted lest the same, recurring, reality blows up in both peoples’ faces.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A teenage girl surfs the internet at a resource centre in Nairobi. Credit: David Njagi/IPS

By Julia Hotz
WASHINGTON, Jul 16 2014 (IPS)

“My cousin was a very successful and distinguished student. She said that she finished high school with excellent grades and enrolled in college, but a month later, her parents forced her to leave school and burned all her books and studying material. So, the girl set fire to herself.”

As gruesome as this particular story’s outcome may be, such a narrative – in which a female student pursues education and subsequently faces generational resistance – is common in the anonymous storyteller’s home of Iraq.The Middle East and North Africa lead the world in both their population of active Twitter users and number of registered YouTube accounts.

Yet thanks to the digital STOP-GBV (gender-based violence) campaign launched by AMAR U.S., an international peace-building non-profit, women who witness or experience human rights violations such as this one are now able to share their stories via social media platforms.

Christopher Kyriacou, the chief executive officer of AMAR U.S, says that social media has allowed his group’s women’s rights initiative to “blossom”, such as through the remarkable youth participation in AMAR’s Facebook pages.

“Many students undertake the responsibility of searching and investigating cases of gender-based violence and discrimination, and select the topics to be discussed during the lectures,” Kyriacou said, citing the testimony of a STOP-GBV project manager.

He adds that the Facebook pages allow students to “publish articles and pictures related to the issue [of Gender-Based Violence]…and participate in the dissemination of these subjects.”

AMAR’s digital dialogue represents just one instance of how technology’s presence has expanded in the world’s historically voiceless regions.

According to a 2013 Infographic collected by Squared Online, a UK-based digital marketing initiative, the number of social media users in the Middle East and North Africa is projected to increase 191 percent from 2011 to 2017. The study also notes how the Middle East and North Africa lead the world in both their population of active Twitter users and number of registered YouTube accounts.

It is this trend that has prompted many international development organisations to harness the rise of technology and social media in their respective education, public health and human rights initiatives.

Given that the theme of this year’s recently-celebrated World Population Day is to “’invest in the youth,” the international community has increasingly recognised the importance of using innovative digital techniques to engage the world’s enormous cohort of 15-to-35 year-olds – the largest ever- in their democracy-oriented agenda.

Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N.’s Population Fund (UNFPA), said in a statement that if young citizens are “skilled and informed”, then they can “contribute more fully to their communities and nations.”

With this goal in mind, he is enthusiastic about the potential of technology to help provide young people with a voice, calling it “unethical” for such a large youth population to be neglected in the democratic process.

“We believe the possibilities with technology are enormous, and thus we see an urgent need to work with those in technology,” UNFPA’s Osotimehin told IPS. “We see people in international communities who have not yet been to school, but are carrying around smart phones … In 1999, Nigeria had only 400,000 landlines, whereas today there are more than 100 million cell phones.”

In order to unite this global tech explosion with its focus on youth, the UNFPA has launched a “selfie campaign”, in which young people from around the world can submit self-taken photographs of themselves to social media platforms using the tag #WPD2014.

The symbolic meaning behind this digital petition, which is scheduled to run through September, is to give young people a central role in crafting the United Nations’ post-2015 global development agenda.

“When you are isolated from global meetings like the U.N. General Assemblies to which your governments go to as member states … your selfies are saying you want to be in the picture of future development frameworks,” Laurent Zessler, a UNFPA representative, said as she premiered the campaign to youths in Fiji.

In addition to providing a medium for youths to share their stories and advocate for a role in future U.N. decision-making, technology has also facilitated the faster and more widespread transmission of practical information to youths.

A prime example of this strategy is the Text to Change (TTC) campaign, which is described as a social enterprise that “sends and receives information via mobile telephony in emerging countries.”

Josette de Vroeg, communications manager of the Netherlands-based campaign, said TTC was conceived on the premise that “every citizen in this world should have access to information, no matter if you’re rich or poor.

“We send participants the right personalised message at the right time, providing them with crucial information at the moment when they need it most,” de Vroeg told IPS. “The main objective is reducing infant and maternal mortality.”

Noting how TTC has been particularly effective in providing important health information to young pregnant women in Tanzania, de Vroeg concluded that, with the help of partners such as the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Tanzania Ministry of Health, more than 30 million free text messages have been sent out and 500,000 women have participated.

With the initiative’s presence now in 16 countries, de Vroeg added that TTC is currently running “the biggest interactive SMS campaign ever.”

“Over 80 percent of the African people now have access to a mobile phone. That’s why this is the most important medium for making a connection,” de Vroeg told IPS. “TTC connects organisations with their hard-to-reach target group, via mobile.”

Asked about how the campaign’s target populations have reacted to such an innovative technique, de Vroeg said that the feedback has been nothing but positive, with TTC’s beneficiaries saying that the text messages have helped them run businesses, learn about HIV, and improve their self-esteem.

Supermarkets and other stores in Argentina have joined the Precios Cuidados price watch programme. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 20 2014 (IPS)

Argentine consumers have responded to calls on social networks to mobilise against price hikes that threaten the country’s major advances towards poverty reduction and greater social equality.

A consumer boycott has had encouraging results, according to some consumer associations and government spokespersons.

The results were not quantifiable, but the campaign not to make purchases for 24 hours on Feb. 7 in supermarkets, appliance stores and gas stations was supported by 280,000 people on internet and visibly emptied many establishments.

“I started to go to different places to check prices. There are enormous differences,” psychologist Ester Vallez told IPS. She said she paid 30 percent more for a key for a lock from one week to the next, something that “obviously affects other products, too.”

“The government must control prices and we should all seek a strategy to exert pressure together,” Javier Sequeira, a maintenance worker who lives in La Matanza, in the west of Greater Buenos Aires, told IPS.

Sequeira’s wages are no longer enough to support his family. He is thinking of joining together with neighbours to buy food in bulk more cheaply at the Central Market.

“If we stop buying some products because they are too expensive, the factories will soon feel the difference. Many people use the dollar as an excuse to take unfair advantage,” said this father of two “with another on the way,” whose annual wage increase has evaporated because of inflation.

The consumer boycott is one of several initiatives called for in the media, including comparing prices, denouncing price increases and checking that products on the Precios Cuidados price watch list are available in stores.

The price watch list is the result of an agreement between the government of President Cristina Fernández and chains of suppliers and traders, to offer food drinks, cosmetics, cleaning, educational and construction products at accessible prices.

Mobilising against speculative prices emerged after the devaluation of the Argentine currency, the peso, which in January alone was devalued by more than 34 percent against the dollar, its largest fall since 2002, triggering indiscriminate price hikes.

In 2013, the official value of the peso fell by 25 percent against the dollar and the parallel peso by 47 percent, according to consulting firms.

“It’s time for all sectors to take their share of responsibility for things to keep working,” said President Fernández, criticising influential economic interests she blames for speculative attacks and capital flight.

Ernesto Mattos, an economist at the Centro de Investigación y Gestión de la Economía Solidaria (Economic Solidarity Research and Management Centre), told IPS that devaluation of the peso is an “excuse” to increase prices, speculate and reduce real salaries.

He said that between June and December 2013 companies selling food “had already increased prices by 200 percent,” even for many products that had no imported ingredients.

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Census, inflation in 2013 was 10.9 percent, whereas private consulting firms put it at 28.3 percent.

“At stake is not only speculation and workers’ wages, but the national project and the kind of country we want,” said Mattos.

The choice is between a country at the mercy of the big transnational corporations, or one that is capable of supplying its own basic needs and “joining forces” with the rest of the region “to make progress on social inclusion and reducing inequality,” he said.

Mattos backs popular participation in price watching in supermarkets, because that is where the “consumption pattern of Argentines in the big cities” is set, as well as the creation of “complaints mechanisms that allow sanctions on companies not only in the sales phase but also in production.”

Vallez said the government should “put more people on the street to control prices, and we as citizens should do our part, by not taking things lying down but reporting and not buying products that are overpriced.”

The government has responded with a battery of measures to counteract the results of devaluation and social discontent over its effects on prices.

As well as the Precios Cuidados price watch programme it has instituted new social programmes like Progresar (Progress), which provides a monthly allowance for unemployed or precariously employed young people aged 18 to 24 to start or complete their studies.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Argentina has the lowest poverty rate in the region (4.3 percent) and the second lowest extreme poverty rate (1.7 percent), after Uruguay.

In December, ECLAC ranked Argentina as one of the countries in the region that most decreased inequality during the period 2008-2012.

But the loss of value of salaries and purchasing power could reverse those achievements.

“The main source of the reduction of inequality over the past decade was the increase in the component of non-labour income (like subsidies and other assistance programmes) in the poorest households, but not improvement in work-related income in the same households,” said Agustín Salvia, the head of the Programa Cambio Estructural (Structural Change Programme) at the “Gino Germani” Research Institute of the University of Buenos Aires.

The inflationary spiral will tend to increase poverty, as well as inequality, he told IPS.

This is “precisely because of the impoverishment of wage-earners and non-wage-earners who are least protected by labour regulations,” said Salvia, a researcher for the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).

In spite of government moves to neutralise the impact, it will not be able to “prevent a negative effect on workers in informal sectors” and also on pensioners, he said.

“The government must take strong measures to prevent inflation from creating a wider distribution of incomes, by continuing and deepening the existing policies for these social sectors,” Jimena Valdez, an economist and political scientist, told IPS.

In her view, “this entire situation would be exacerbated if there is an inflationary spiral, which is why it is in the primary interests of the government that this should not happen.”

To prevent it, Valdez said, the government could call for a dialogue with the business community and trade unions to discuss labour policies and wage increases. It should also increase the payments made by the social programmes in line with inflation.

Salvia said it is “very important to raise awareness and mobilise the public to put pressure on price setters so that there are no excesses.”

However, he pointed out, price movements “will be determined, fundamentally, by factors like the money supply, the level of demand (which is dropping), devaluation and inflationary expectations.”

The Muslim Brotherhood has its own army of the young that will not easily be defeated. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS.

By Emad Mekay
BERKELEY, California, Sep 29 2013 (IPS)

Gory social media images that fueled the global Jihadist influx into Syria 18 months ago are back. But this time the outpouring is coming from Egypt.

Pictures on Facebook and Twitter show dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial sheets lying in rows in morgues, hospitals and even mosque hallways. Others show charred bodies with the victims’ brains visible from sniper shots to the head. Most of the posts urge one thing: justice."There's a valid fear that some of them may turn to violence after they have despaired that democracy could ever be a means towards meaningful change.” -- Sami Al-Dalaal

“Our self-control now is not out of fear. It’s out of respect for human blood and for the safety of our country,” said one post on an Islamist Facebook page. “If we are pushed too hard and our back is to the wall, we’ll defend ourselves.”

Three months after a Jul. 3 military coup that removed Egypt’s first elected government, hundreds of anti-coup activists have been killed, thousands injured and many more, mostly Islamists, thrown behind bars without charge or trial. The achievements of the country’s brief two-and-a-half years of freedom have been all but erased.

Amnesty International estimates that at least 1,089 people were killed in just four days – the period between Aug. 14 and 18 during the military operation to disperse anti-coup protestors at Rabaa square and Al-Nahda square in Cairo.

Human Rights Watch called the carnage the largest mass killing in Egypt’s modern history.

Weeks later, the military crackdown is still raging, with casualty numbers reportedly rising almost by the day, prompting calls for self-defence among the country’s targeted Islamists.

Al-Qaeda’s ideology of violence as the only path to change, which was discredited by the mostly peaceful changes of the Arab Spring in Egypt, has now received a new lease on life as a possible and viable option after all, according to several observers of Islamic political movements.

“We followed Western democracy prescriptions to the letter, but the minute a Muslim man comes to office, the world looks away. Nobody really respects democracy,” said one Islamist’s Facebook page.

The urge to resist the bloody crackdown has been most pronounced among young people. In private discussions, many of them, especially from the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest Islamist organisation, express frustration with their leaders for preaching gradual rather than “revolutionary” change.

Some activists described the top policy-making body of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Group’s Shura Council, as “dervishes”, an Arabic word connoting being detached from reality.

“The Iranian revolution model might not be so bad after all,” said one activist who asked not to be identified.

The current military crackdown is so ruthless, sweeping and indiscriminate that it has become a personal daily story for many young people, especially the Islamists. There’s hardly anyone who hasn’t had a brother, father or sister killed, arrested or tortured since the coup, the activist said.

If the young decide to take up arms, it will be on a massive scale. Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Salah Sultan, before his arrest earlier this week, estimated the group’s active membership to be between 800,000 and a million, not including their families and sympathisers.

Pressure on Islamists towards self-defence comes from unlikely outside corners as well.

The militant Somali Shabab group, which was at the receiving end of preaching from the Muslim Brotherhood that violence was counter-productive, got a chance for payback.

In August, the Somali militant group issued a statement taunting the Brotherhood and urging them to condemn democracy. The call was spurred by the scenes of carnage against defenceless anti-coup protestors in Cairo.

“You are leading Muslims to extermination by your insistence on democracy,” the Shabab said.

The pressure on the Brotherhood’s aging leadership has been so intense since the coup that Essam Erian, parliamentary majority leader before the coup, had to issue several audio messages urging a continuation of “peaceful protests”.

On Sep. 25, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement insisting on “peaceful resistance”.

“We all should resist the coup and resist oppression peacefully and without any violence and in a civilised manner,” the group said. “The coup leaders and the oppressors want to create waves of violence that they can use as a cover for their murderous police practices that they excel at.”

Elder Islamists justify their pacifist position on the grounds that there are religious admonitions against bloodletting. From a political standpoint, taking on the U.S.-backed and armed military and their pro-government militias will drag both sides into a civil war that would only strengthen U.S. and Israeli hegemony, they argue. Impoverished and violence-torn Somalia is hardly a model, they say.

“Democracy is still the main option for most Islamists now,” Sami Al-Dalaal, an expert on Islamic movements in the Middle East, told IPS. “Yet there’s a valid fear that some of them may turn to violence after they have despaired that democracy could ever be a means towards meaningful change.”

Dalaal said excluding political groups by force often leads to violence.

“There’s a precedent to that. When the military thwarted democracy in Algeria after Islamist democratic wins, they found no option but to start an armed revolution,” he said.

Dalaal was referring to a bloody civil war two decades ago in Algeria that started after army generals launched a coup and denied the Islamists the chance to take power in elections. Some 100,000 people died in the violence that ensued. The Syrian pro-democracy protests also started peacefully until Bashar al-Assad reacted violently and bloody pictures went viral on social media, starting another civil war.

In Egypt, with the military showing no sign of letting up on use of excessive force, it might be only a matter of time before at least some young Egyptians decide to do what their elders have refused to do: defend themselves.

Glimmerglass, a northern California company that sells optical fibre technology, offers government agencies a software product called “CyberSweep” to intercept signals on undersea cables.

The company says their technology can analyse Gmail and Yahoo! Mail as well as social media like Facebook and Twitter to discover “actionable intelligence”.

Could this be the technology that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is using to tap global communications? The company says it counts several intelligence agencies among its customers but refuses to divulge details. One thing is certain – it is not the only company to offer such capabilities – so if such data mining is not already taking place, that day is not far off.

“Revolutions in communications technologies are usually followed by revolutions in collection capabilities,” said Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archives and the author of the definitive guide to the U.S. intelligence agencies.

The recent leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden to the Guardian newspaper specifically suggest that the NSA is tapping undersea cables, although no details on the specific technology have yet been published. Notably Snowden has revealed evidence that the NSA paid 15.5 million pounds (25 million dollars) in 2009 to “radically” upgrade a listening station operated by its U.K. equivalent – the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) in Bude, north Cornwall, England, where many of the cables surface.

If GCHQ and the NSA installed Glimmerglass’s commercial optical fibre switching technology on the undersea cables to tap the torrent of data that crosses the Atlantic, they will be able to pair it up with CyberSweep to make sense of the information, according to advertising claims made in a treasure trove of documents on dozens of surveillance contractors released by Wikileaks.

Privacy experts say that if the NSA is using this Glimmerglass technology, it will prove whistleblower Edward Snowden’s claim that the government is collecting everyone’s communications, regardless of their citizenship or innocence.

Vanee Vines, a spokesperson for the NSA, declined to comment to IPS on either Glimmerglass or the tapping of the undersea cables. Glimmerglass officials did not return multiple email and phone calls.

CyberSweep

On the Glimmerglass website, the company claims that CyberSweep can process optical signals to “extract the data source format” and aggregate the data for “probes” to uncover “actionable information from the flood of data on persons of interest, known and unknown targets, anticipated and known threats.”

More details on what Glimmerglass claims CyberSweep can do are explained in “Paradigm Shifts” – a confidential 18 page Powerpoint presentation made in 2011 by Jim Donnelly, the Glimmerglass vice president of North American sales. The document was released by Wikileaks as part of the Spy Files series in December of that year.

On page five of the presentation, Glimmerglass notes that CyberSweep is an “end to end cyber security solution” that can “select, extract and monitor” all “mobile and fixed line data, voice and video, internet, web 2.0 and social networking” with “probes and sniffers.” On the following page, it notes that its product can be used at “submarine landing stations” – a reference to the locations where the undersea cables are connected to terrestrial systems.

On page eight, Glimmerglass provides specific examples of what it can gather – like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail as well as Facebook and Twitter. Over the next four pages it offers screenshots of these capabilities.

One display of what CyberSweep is capable of is a visual grid of Facebook messages of a presumably fictional person named John Smith. His profile is connected to a number of other individuals with arrows indicating how often he connected to each of them. Each individual can be identified with images, user names and IDs. Another pane shows the detailed chat records. Yet another graphic shows Facebook connections between multiple individuals, presumably to identify networks.

A third graphic is a grid of phone calls made by an individual with a pane that allows an operator to select and listen to audio of any specific conversation. Other images show similar demonstrations of monitoring webmail and instant message chats.

Where is this product being used? In a product video on the company website, Glimmerglass states that their optical data management products have been used by the U.S. intelligence agencies for the last five years. The video specifically mentions data transmissions from Predator drones and well as the tapping of undersea fibre optic cables, but it does not go into any details.

“The challenge of managing information has become the challenge of managing the light,” says an announcer. “With Glimmerglass, customers have full control of massive flows of intelligence from the moment they access them.”

The description mirrors the technology described in documents provided by Edward Snowden to the Guardian newspaper.

Collecting all the signals

In a document released by Snowden, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, the NSA director, was quoted on a June 2008 visit to an intelligence facility in the U.K., saying: “Why can’t we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project.”

According to the leaked documents, a three year trial project was soon set up with a 25-million-dollar grant from the NSA to “radically enhance the infrastructure” at the Cyber Development Centre in Bude, Cornwall, as well as potentially at other sites like the GCHQ base in Cheltenham.

Probes were installed on 200 undersea cables and in the fall of 2011, a project code-named Tempora was launched with the help of NSA analysts who came to help at the Bude site. At least seven companies took part in the project – British Telecom, Global Crossing, Interoute, Level 3, Viatel, Verizon Business and Vodafone Cable – according to the German paper Suddeutsche Zeitung, all of whom manage major undersea cable systems.

Under Tempora, a three-day buffer of global internet traffic was held at any given time – totaling some 600 million “telephone events” a day or as much as 21 petabytes (million gigabytes) of data. While much of it was deleted through a process called Massive Volume Reduction for reasons of space, the meta-data (such as the details of who called whom, and when, but not the content) was held for as long as 30 days.

Snowden’s documents suggest that GCHQ now “produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA” which was being analysed by 300 U.K. analysts in addition to 250 NSA analysts, as of last May. The U.K. analysts were encouraged to dig deep since they had a less onerous oversight regime compared to the U.S.

“Over the last five years, GCHQ’s access to ‘light’ (has) increased by 7,000 percent,” a Tempora official is quoted as saying in another Powerpoint document cited in the Guardian. “We will have exploited to the full our unique selling points of geography, partnerships, the UK’s legal regime and our skilled workforce.”

A recent interview of a “senior intelligence official” by the New York Times confirmed that “the N.S.A. is temporarily copying and then sifting through the contents of what is apparently most e-mails and other text-based communications that cross the border” by making a “clone of selected communication links.” The official did not state where the communications were being intercepted.

Pratap Chatterjee is executive director of CorpWatch. This story originally appeared on Corpwatch.org.

For months, state-run media propaganda in Uzbekistan has warned about the supposedly detrimental effects of foreign media and culture on young people.

Now President Islam Karimov’s administration seems intent on trying to legislate morality.

On Jul. 9, the Uzbek Agency for the Press and Information, the government body responsible for regulating media outlets, announced that “in cooperation with interested state and non-state organisations” it had drafted a bill that would protect minors from information deemed harmful to their “physical and spiritual development”.

Citing vaguely similar legislation adopted in the United States and in EU countries (mostly relating to pornography), the Uzbek agency’s chairman, Amanulla Yunusov, claimed that adopting laws against the distribution of print, audio and video material, as well as computer games, “promoting violence, cruelty, drugs, pornography and other harmful information” would enable Uzbekistan to comply with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Such a claim raised the hackles of international human rights activists, who quickly pointed out a stark dichotomy in the Uzbek government’s attitude toward the welfare of its youngest citizens.

When it comes to keeping foreign influences out, the Uzbek government seems ready to take a tough, proactive stance. But when it comes to the domestic economy, specifically the use of forced child labour in the country’s cotton fields, the government is far less interested in the best interests of children.

Observers point out Tashkent has been reluctant to allow an International Labour Organisation mission to inspect whether forced child labour is used during cotton harvesting, despite ratifying the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention in 2008.

School children were not seen in cotton fields during last year’s harvesting, but human rights activists said that teenagers aged 15 to 17 were forced to work in fields in the autumn instead of attending classes. Anticipating likely criticism of their practices, authorities reportedly coerced parents into signing a pledge agreeing to their children’s cotton picking.

The morality bill is expected to be debated in Uzbekistan’s rubberstamp parliament – where its passage is almost certain – by the end of 2013. It builds on earlier efforts by the Uzbek government to limit public access to independent sources of information, especially on the Internet.

Those efforts have been on-going since the country gained independence in 1991. They were significantly expanded following the large-scale killing of mostly peaceful protesters in the eastern city of Andijan in May 2005.

New life was breathed into the government’s desire to shape public attitudes after the beginning of the Arab Spring in December 2010. A massive campaign was launched in the Uzbek media against social-networking sites, the Internet and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), along with foreign cultural imports – elements that the government feared could be used to foment social unrest in the country.

“We must pay attention to the fact that some destructive forces are seeking to control young minds and use the Internet in their own narrow goals, and this leads to negative consequences,” Karimov said in connection with a holiday celebrating media workers in June 2011.

That was two years ago, but the state propaganda barrage has continued. In July 2012 a documentary aired by the Yoshlar state-run television channel described social networking as a tool used by foreign powers to foment colour-coded revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine back in 2003 and 2004 and, more recently, in some Middle Eastern states.

To counter “destructive forces” on the Internet, Uzbekistan, which has been continuously ranked as an “Enemy of the Internet” by Reporters Without Borders in the past few years, has developed its own social-networking sites, including Muloqot.uz, Youface.uz (now defunct) and Sinfdosh.uz to “improve the moral and physical health of youth and form high morals”.

The campaign against foreign influence hasn’t been limited to the Internet. In the recent past, authorities have declared war against toys that supposedly represent foreign values, censored rap music and banned five musical acts from singing for undermining Uzbek “moral heritage and mentality.”

In addition, authorities have discouraged the observance of Western-oriented holidays, in particular Valentine’s Day and Christmas.

Internet penetration is steadily growing in Uzbekistan: The number of Internet users increased by over 250,000 to 10.1 million during the first quarter of 2013.

Meanwhile, Karimov has acknowledged that it is impossible to completely seal Uzbekistan off from outside influences.

“The Internet cannot be fenced off by an iron wall or banned – this is unthinkable,” he conceded in a speech in April.

Uzbek media outlets are nevertheless keeping up a steady drumbeat against Western culture. For instance, ahead of the announcement of the morality bill earlier this month, two flagship state channels – Uzbekistan and Yoshlar – carried separate shows on the harms of the Internet and Western influence on Uzbek children.

“There are many websites on the Internet that disseminate false information and we can observe websites that aim to manipulate social consciousness. We can also see websites that aim at racism, discrimination, and cyberterrorism, and aim to deprive people of their historical memory and destroy the historical memory.

“Of course, our young people are surfing these websites when they are using social-networking sites,” MP Shuhrat Dehqonov fumed on the “Munosabat” (Attitude) programme, posted on Uzbekistan TV channel’s website on Jul. 9.

Speaking on the evocatively-titled “Bogeyman on the Screen” programme, posted on Yoshlar’s website also on Jul. 9, actor Hojiakbar Komilov joined ranks with those seeking to hold back the Western cultural tide: “We won’t notice it [influence] right now but children are growing. What nurturing are they receiving? … [Foreign] films show violence, blood and murders. What kind of nurturing will children receive after seeing this?”

Armed with the new bill, the Uzbek government appears to be gearing up for a long battle for the minds of its youngest citizens.

Editor’s note: Murat Sadykov is the pseudonym for a journalist specialising in Central Asian affairs. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Frank Connolly, head of communications for Ireland's SIPTU, speaks to participants and is recorded by Dublic Community TV on Jun. 24, 2013, as part of the OURMedia conference. Credit: Jane Regan/IPS

By Jane Regan
DUBLIN, Ireland, Jul 1 2013 (IPS)

Communications scholars from around the world deplored the global financial crisis and called on their peers to take more active roles in the search for solutions at a recent four-day conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Over 1,400 professors and researchers from the International Association for Media and Communications Research (IAMCR) spoke, listened, lamented and argued at its Jun. 25-29 annual conference, this year centred on the theme “Crises, ‘Creative Destruction’ and the Global Power and Communication Orders.”

The term “creative destruction” comes from conservative Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who borrowed the idea from Karl Marx.

“I proposed the theme,” DCU Professor Paschal Preston, head of the organising committee, told IPS. “I chose it to get away from the media-centred and media-centric analyses… Scholars are too often ignoring the growing and glaring failures of democracy in the West.”

The Dublin conference attracted a record number of academic papers from over 80 countries. At the plenaries and in the panels, academics spoke about the challenges facing the media, communications scholars, and the planet as a whole.

Anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist speakers

Ireland’s President Michael B. Higgins opened the conference speaking Irish and then switching to English. The former head of Ireland’s Labour Party lamented the fact that media consumers get more and more “formulised, homogenised content” and criticised the concentration of media ownership at the global level by mostly U.S. corporations.

“We don’t even know which conglomerate owns which media,” Higgins told the audience.

Later in the week, scholars from Africa, Europe and the U.S. challenged the assembled academics – perhaps half of whom came from Europe and North America – to get out of the classroom and grapple with the crises facing the planet.

In a talk delivered via internet, University of Cape Town Professor Francis Nyamnjoh noted that the crisis scaring Western Europe is nothing new for those in Africa or Latin America.

“As a 50-year-old African I am used to life as a constant crisis,” he said.

Annabelle Sreberny, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a former president of IAMCR, said the world is facing “many crises… the academy is in crisis and indeed our democracies are in crisis.”

Sreberny, whose recent research focused on the U.S. government-manufactured Stuxnet computer worm, condemned the U.S. and British “cyber-military industrial complex”.

Speaking later to IPS, she warned of “the dark side of the internet”.

“I think that academics in this field, who have worked through a great period of ‘cyber-utopianism,’ need to take seriously the revelations and hypocrisy of our governments,” the professor said.

University of Oregon sociologist John Bellamy Foster was among several speakers on panels that discussed the environmental crisis. Editor of the New York-based Monthly Review and author of several books, Foster said the capitalist system “is falling apart” and urged academics to open their minds to alternatives.

“There is no existing alternative – we have to create it,” he said. “Capitalism isn’t an alternative unless you think the destruction of the species is an alternative.”

A day later, U.S.-based Professor Jodi Dean echoed his call

In a talk on what she calls “mass personalised media” – Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms – the professor and author from Hobart and William Smith Colleges urged scholars to think more critically. Explaining her theory of “communicative capitalism”, Dean explained how social media obfuscate class while intensifying individualism, and said they are not “free”.

“We pay with attention, and the cost is focus,” Dean told her audience.

Calls for new theory, renewed engagement

The IAMCR was founded in 1957, with the blessing of UNESCO, and is both an academic and an advocacy organisation, but some in Dublin voiced criticisms. At several sessions, participants called on the association to take more proactive stances on the government spying scandals and other issues.

Stefania Milan, of Tilburg University in The Netherlands, was one of several who noted the growing influence of corporate funding on universities and the fact that in the U.S., full-time professors are being replaced by part-time teachers and by MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Several studies peg the number of courses taught by adjuncts in the U.S. at about 70 percent, with Europe following close behind. Milan urged the IAMCR to speak out.

“We need to be an organisation that takes sides,” Milan said at a session called to examine IAMCR’s future.

At another forward-looking panel, this one called to “rethink” communication theory, scholars from Jamaica, China and India urged theorists to look beyond Western theory. Among the speakers was Pradip Thomas, from the University of Queensland, who said the global capitalist crisis “offers us an opportunity to deal with the underbelly: communication capitalism.”

Hopeton Dunn, director of the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, told IPS he organised the discussion in order to look at the “conceptual and theoretical crisis” of the field.

“There is a major gap between what is happening in the poor countries and the analysis taking place that is informed by thinkers in the rich countries,” he said. “The Academy is not playing enough of a role in addressing the real needs of real people.”

Crisis dominates

Panels, book launch parties and even some of the music at the IAMCR were dominated by the “crisis” theme. A song by Irish singer Clara Sidine, who entertained one evening, was accompanied by images of Rolex watches, mansions and roulette wheels, followed by photos of foreclosed houses and boarded-up shops.

Sidine told the crowd that Ireland’s economic crisis had inspired her to write “What’s a Boy To Do?” about a month ago.

Last week, Ireland’s government announced the economy had slipped back into recession. Ireland’s official unemployment rate stands at about 14 percent, and the state has one of the highest debts compared to GDP in Europe, at 118 percent.

“Ireland has gone from being the neoliberal pin-up to ‘failed state’ or bankrupt state,” explained DCU’s Preston, whose area of specialisation is political economy. “The Irish people have been carrying huge burdens of debt, way beyond other countries.”

Preston’s own department has also felt the crunch. In the past four years, DCU’s School of Communications has shrunk from 25 to 20 full-time staff, he said, and everyone has had to accept 20-percent pay cuts.

Asked what might come out of the IAMCR conference, the professor said he hoped it would help create “a more engaged community of communications scholars.”

“We need to link media issues to the deeper and structural crises of democracies in our societies,” he said.

Sochua Mu at a CNRP demonstration in Phnom Penh. Credit: Charlotte Pert/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

The violence that defined Cambodia during the years of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) may have been relegated to the realm of history, but the actions of the ruling party ahead of the Jul. 28 election smack of the dirty politics that once ruled this Southeast Asian country.

Observers and analysts predict that the ruling coalition of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the FUNCINPEC Party will win, thereby adding another five-year term to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 28-year reign.

But that has not stopped an ugly face-off between the CPP and its main competitors, the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and the Human Rights Party (HRP), which last year consolidated their power under the umbrella of the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) and now hold 27 out of 123 parliamentary seats.

In response, the 12-member permanent committee of the National Assembly, whose members all hail from the ruling CPP, decided on Jun. 5 to strip 29 legislators, 27 of whom belong to the opposition, of their political power, citing a constitutional clause that bans lawmakers from “party hopping” in order to form mergers.

Within days the ruling coalition had also launched a smear campaign against Kem Sokha, current acting president of the CNRP, claiming that he had denied the existence of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison where over 20,000 Cambodians were executed during the Khmer Rouge years.

CPP politicians claim to have a digital recording of Sokha calling the prison, which doubled up as a torture chamber, a hoax cooked up by the Vietnamese.

Local media outlets quickly ran with the story, but the CNRP vehemently denies the allegation.

“Kem Sokha, more than anybody else, knows about the reality of the Khmer Rouge as both his parents were killed by them,” Mu Sochua, president of SRP Women’s Wing and CNRP’s public relations executive, told IPS.

According to Sochua, the recording is a fabrication, designed to frame Sokha and weaken the growing strength of the opposition coalition, which has been drawing scores of supporters to its rallies, including most recently a 2,000-strong demonstration in the capital, Phnom Penh, and a 3,000-strong march in the northwestern city of Battambang.

Initial reactions to the allegation suggested that the attempt to discredit the opposition was working: on Jun. 9 the ruling coalition amassed 6,000 people at a protest in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park against Sokha’s so-called “denial” of Khmer Rouge rights abuses.

But Tola Moeun, head of the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC) who witnessed the event first-hand, said he talked to demonstrators who had been offered five dollars each to attend, a small fortune in a country where 49 percent of the population of 14 million people live on two dollars a day or less, and 26 percent lack adequate food and nutrition.

Moeun told IPS that other so-called demonstrators admitted to joining the protest simply because they had been promised a tour of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the capital, and not due to any loyalty towards the CPP.

Election observers say it will take more than a smear campaign to derail the opposition, whose strong human rights platform and support of labour and land struggles parallels burgeoning nationwide grassroots movements.

Land has become a pivotal issue in a county where 80 percent of the population is involved in subsistence farming but 20 percent of agricultural families are landless, due in part to the government’s scheme of leasing millions of hectares of agricultural land to mammoth multinational corporations.

Land rights activism is on the rise: the Cambodian Grassroots People’s Assembly (CGPA) that emerged in response to lack of civil society representation at the 2012 ASEAN Summit has collaborated with the internationally renowned Boeung Kak lake activists to mobilise thousands.

The civil society group Licadho noted that 2012 was a particularly bad year for human rights. Labour violations topped the list after a provincial governor shot three factory workers during a strike in the town of Bavet, all of them members of the growing Free Trade Union.

While activist networks are careful to avoid political affiliations in order not to be seen as “anti-government”, the strength of people’s movements has not been lost on the ruling coalition, whose decision to disempower the opposition came just a few days after a major demonstration by 3,500 workers at a Nike factory in the southeastern province of Kampong Speu.

Besides their obvious popularity among activists, the CNRP has also attracted a growing number of youth, as a quick look at social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter indicates.

According to Thida Khus, executive director of SILAKA and representative of the Cambodia Women’s Caucus, youth now comprise 36 percent of the population, representing a sizeable demographic and a crucial vote bank.

The opposition has also made good use of social media to circumvent a virtual monopoly over the dissemination of information, said Sochua.

According to Freedom House, “All television and most radio stations, the main sources of information for the two-thirds of the population who are functionally illiterate, are owned or controlled by either the CPP or Prime Minister Hun Sen’s family and associates. Opposition outlets are often denied radio and television frequencies.”

But SRP has capitalised on this media blackout: as of Jun. 18, Sam Rainsy, currently in exile due to pending prison charges that human rights groups say are fabricated, was leading the social media race with 80,000 “likes” on Facebook, compared to the premier’s 68,465.

While social media has not previously been seen as a strong indicator of public opinion, Internet penetration has grown tremendously since the last National Assembly election held in 2008, and now represents a reported 2.7 million Cambodians, according to the ministry of posts and telecommunication.

Still, Khus is concerned for the safety of CNRP members, particularly since there are “no international observers for the election,” she told IPS.

Being stripped of their status as members of parliament means the opposition lawmakers have not only lost their salaries but also their parliamentary immunity, which could impact their ability to safely speak to international press against the ruling party.

On Jun. 10, a coalition of 15 civil society groups representing labour and land rights issued a joint statement condemning the ruling party’s actions, just as the U.S. Department of State made a statement calling the move a “threat to democracy.”

The CNRP meanwhile filed a complaint on Jun. 17 with the Constitutional Council that the ruling party’s actions violate Cambodia’s constitution, adding that the CNRP is considering boycotting the election if the matter is not resolved.

A smashed NTV satellite van in the centre of Taksim Square in Istanbul highlights protesters' frustration with how Turkish media has covered their movement. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ISTANBUL, Jun 7 2013 (IPS)

Sitting with hundreds of other protesters in the centre of Istanbul’s Gezi Park Thursday night, Arzu Marsh rummages through her backpack to show off what she calls her makeshift “emergency kit”: medical masks, a red spray-bottle filled with a liquid that lessens the effect of tear gas, a scarf and some food.

But perhaps the most important item is what’s sitting in her lap, and, every few seconds, lights up with incoming text messages: her cell phone.

“I’m from Ankara, so all my friends and all my family are from Ankara, and as soon as I put [photos and videos on] Facebook, everyone saw it, and of course they also shared,” Marsh explained, referring to images of recent anti-government protests in Istanbul.

“Now, we are all following…Facebook or Twitter. We are not following any [traditional] news,” she said.

As spontaneous chants of “Everywhere is Taksim! Everywhere is resistance!” spread through the crowd, and a banner reading “Keep resisting Ankara – we are with you” hung overhead, Marsh told IPS that sharing information on social media about protests across Turkey has not only helped keep activists motivated but also built solidarity across political and geographical divisions."We all follow Facebook or Twitter. We are not following any [traditional] news."
--Arzu Marsh

“Yesterday we heard that… there was a [protest] in Rize, so we had an applause for Rize. It was very emotional, and it motivates you,” she said.

Distrust of traditional media

A smashed, bright yellow, satellite TV truck, belonging to one of Turkey’s leading broadcasters, NTV, sits in the centre of Taksim Square. Its doors are ripped off, windows shattered and tires punctured.

It is also covered in graffiti and highlights protesters’ frustration with the mainstream media in Turkey.

At the height of police violence in Istanbul’s Gezi Park last week, most local television networks ignored the events and instead continued with their regular programming, including cooking and travel shows.

While these same stations are now reporting on the protests – and NTV issued an apology for its initial lack of coverage – activists say social media continues to fill an important void and is the primary source of information for many.

“There’s a new, young generation that does not trust mainstream media broadcasts and they seek information that is independent and objective,” explained Emrah Ucar, an Istanbul-based activist who founded a popular social media network, called “Ötekilerin Postasi”, or “The Other Post”.

Indeed, as demonstrations continue across the country against the government’s increasingly authoritarian controls, protesters have developed an elaborate – and often times, humorous and creative – social media network to organise and sustain their protest.

The “Ötekilerin Postasi” now gets 1.7 million clicks per day, Ucar said, and is reaching a more widespread and politically diverse segment of Turkish society than it ever did before.

“What’s most important about social media is making people feel that they are participating in the production of news. When they get this feeling, they make it an issue for themselves and they participate in the commenting and spreading of the news,” he told IPS.

Government policies create ‘chilling effect’

Widespread arrests and detention of journalists, defamation lawsuits and government pressure on critical media outlets and columnists – including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s publicly calling out journalists for their reporting – has had a “chilling effect” on the Turkish media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Turkey jailed the highest number of journalists worldwide in 2012, often through the use of draconian and easily applied criminal laws. The government has also imposed fines on major media conglomerates, forcing them to sell off assets and downsize their operations, and helped facilitate the transfer of large news outlets to pro-AKP owners.

“We have seen changes in the editorial management of newspapers, firing of critical columnists, and a gradual but consistent shift away from commentary and news that are unpleasant or critical of the government,” Asli Aydıntasbas, a columnist at the daily Milliyet newspaper, told CPJ.

“Newspapers routinely exercise self-censorship and suppress critical information and news—even in the face of declining circulation,” Aydıntasbas added.

According to Selcan Kaynak, a political science professor at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, the media’s failure to promptly report on the Gezi Park protests reflects its overall refusal to report on issues that are critical of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party-led (AKP) government.

“It’s really, in one word, hegemony that is being established. There are some critical columnists, or independent newspapers, but they’ve been marginalised. There [have] been very strict controls [of what goes] reported and unreported,” Kaynak told IPS.

Still, the fact that there was a complete media blackout at the start of the recent protests in Istanbul was “shocking”, Kaynak said. “They thought, I guess, that by ignoring this, the rest of Turkey…would have no idea, and it would just go by and they would go on with the usual business.”

Social media ‘menace to society’

According to Aslı Tunç, head of the media and communications department at Istanbul Bilgi University, social media helped give a platform to opposition voices in Turkey that were growing online, even before the protests began.

“This didn’t happen overnight,” Tunç told IPS. “Those voices were there already. But the mainstream media did not cover [them], did not give them a voice on their televisions or [in their] newspapers, and they tried to marginalise [them].”

On Wednesday, 29 people were arrested – and later released without charge – in the city of Izmir for allegedly “inciting riots and conducting propaganda” after posting things about the protests on social media website Twitter.

In a speech last weekend, Erdogan himself called Twitter “a menace to society”. He also said “the best examples of lies can be found there”.

The defiant prime minister, who just returned from a diplomatic visit to North Africa and has refused to back down from his aggressive position against the demonstrations, has also called protesters deviants, extremists, and even looters – “çapulcu”, in Turkish.

In response, protesters quickly re-appropriated the word, and are now proudly calling themselves Çapulcu, using it in posters around Taksim Square, and in photos and updates shared online. Protesters even created a website, called ÇapulTV, where they are live streaming from Gezi Park, while an Anglicised version of the word – “chapulling” – has taken on the new meaning of fighting for your rights.

“[The protesters] proved that Twitter, social media, is a very powerful organisational tool,” Tunç said. “The young people especially proved that social media is part of media now. You cannot ignore the power of social media.”

By Silvia Romanelli
UNITED NATIONS, May 20 2013 (IPS)

“We live in a world where billions of citizen witnesses have cameras in their pockets. The opportunities are endless to document human rights violations,” Chris Michael, head of training and partnerships at WITNESS, tells IPS.

Courtesy of Chris Michael

Co-founded in 1992 by musician Peter Gabriel, Human Rights First and the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, WITNESS is a Brooklyn-based organisation that empowers citizens to use video advocacy to denounce human rights violations, through trainings and video campaigns in partnership with local NGOs.

In June 2012, WITNESS created, together with other organisations using video for activism, the ‘video4change’ international network.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What is the most important thing for an advocacy video to be effective?

A: Integrating video effectively into a human rights campaign is a complex process, so it can’t be boiled down to any single variable. However, when personal stories are a driving force behind a campaign for change, and when there is a clearly defined, accessible audience with the power to help change the situation – be they policy makers, community activists, or the media – you have a powerful recipe for change.

Q: ‘Video4change’ is working to assess advocacy videos’ impact. How can this impact be measured?

A: WITNESS has worked with over 350 partners and trained over 4,500 human rights defenders in 87 countries to develop, test and hone our model of video for change. However, our model is just one of many.

Some are audience, change-driven models like WITNESS, where the goal is policy change. Others, like our allies at Video Volunteers in India, are really focused on building capacity of citizen journalists to report on pressing issues to help effect change in their community."The power of personal stories that engage, move and inspire the audiences they are intended for is what can catapult the desired action." -- Chris Michael

This research effort, led by Dr. Tanya Notley of the University of Western Sydney and Julie Fischer from the Center for Civic Media/Open Documentary Lab at MIT, is exploring eight different models of video for change that explore the methodologies of 15 leading groups and organisations.

In addition to learning how each methodology evaluates its success – be it policy change, or shift in behaviour or attitudes, for example – the research will contribute to the development of a shared set of impact indicators, methodologies and metrics tools that will enhance the quality of future video for change initiatives.

Q: In June 2012, WITNESS co-hosted in Indonesia a global gathering of organisations that use video for activism. Do you think that human rights advocacy videos are more effective in some regions/cultures than in others?

A: Context, including but not limited to region and culture, is paramount to all aspects of video advocacy. It is critical when evaluating not only if video is the right tool, but how and when it should best be used and to what ends.

Though each situation is unique – the challenges a Syrian advocate faces in documenting war crimes is drastically different than a youth organiser using video to increase funding for her library, for example – there are universal considerations around security of all involved, as well as determining the goal, audience and primary message you want to convey to your intended audience.

Q: Part of video’s communication strength lies in its power to stimulate strong emotive reactions. Do you think this can sometimes cause an oversimplified understanding of a situation, driven only by the emotion of the moment?

A: Any advocacy effort – be it in writing, in video, or in person – runs the risk of over-simplifying a complex situation. So advocacy in all forms must be very careful to convey issues responsibly.

Because it communicates on so many levels, video has a unique and powerful way of conveying a nuanced and complete picture. Video has the power to bring its audience into a specific time and place, to connect with people affected by a situation, hear their stories and learn directly from them what changes they want to see. The power of personal stories that engage, move and inspire the audiences they are intended for is what can catapult the desired action.

At WITNESS, we consider it vitally important that those affected by human rights violations are telling their own stories. We can provide training on creating videos and on building advocacy campaigns, but we cannot and should not tell the story ourselves.

Q: In your opinion, in today’s overload of data and images, do advocacy videos risk losing their power of driving attention to human rights issues?

A: In 2012, there were over 350,000 hours of Syria-related human rights footage uploaded to YouTube alone. Is that a problem? Certainly not. But it does require that we work differently.

Oversaturation is a consideration in WITNESS’ training materials – we firmly believe that careful strategy is necessary to maximise impact. We teach activists to focus on a particular audience that can take a specific action, and we train them to create videos that will affect that audience, and to get their videos in front of those eyes.

Curation and contextualisation are two other remedies. The challenge is to make sure that viewers can make sense of what happened in the footage they see. This is one reason WITNESS, in partnership with Storyful, launched the Human Rights Channel on YouTube – to verify, curate, and amplify the most powerful human rights content.

Q: What are the challenges and opportunities ahead for WITNESS’s work? 

A: The greatest challenge for our work is scaling it up to properly educate the millions of people who now have cameras in their pockets and are willing to use them to document human rights abuses.

Video advocacy has evolved in leaps and bounds with the growth of easy-to-use and affordable cameras and the explosion of video-enabled cell phones, not to mention the growth of social media and video sharing platforms. This is creating enormous opportunities for video advocates to create, curate and share stories that we may never have seen or heard previously.

Thankfully, it is harder and harder to hide human rights violations.

Excerpt:

The social media that allowed Egyptian activists to organise the massive rallies that led to Mubarak's ouster now play a less constructive role. Credit: Khaled Moussa al-Omrani/IPS

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, May 15 2013 (IPS)

More than two years after social media networks helped Egyptian activists organise massive street protests that led to the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak, these networks are now playing a less positive role, often serving as a platform for incitement, rumour-mongering and downright disinformation.

“The same social networks that activists used in unison to bring down Mubarak are now being used to score short-term political goals, manipulate public opinion, and even incite violence,” Adel Abdel-Saddiq, social media expert at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, told IPS.

During the 18-day Tahrir Square uprising in early 2011, social networking websites, most notably Twitter and Facebook, allowed anti-regime activists to organise mass rallies while also providing platforms for articulating political demands.

“This new form of media proved essential to mobilising hundreds of thousands of protesters in multiple locations simultaneously,” Ammar Ali Hassan, a prominent Egyptian political analyst, told IPS. “It also allowed users to obtain information and news from sources other than official government channels.”

In the more than two years since the uprising, the same social media sites have become regular fixtures of public discourse. Egypt’s Supreme Military Council, for example, which ruled the country from Mubarak’s ouster until the election of President Mohammed Morsi last year, continues to issue official statements and declarations via Facebook."Social media now plays a more destructive role."
-- Adel Abdel-Saddiq

“In the wake of the revolution, Egypt’s politically active class adopted Facebook as its preferred means of communication,” Abdel-Saddiq explained. “The then-ruling military council realised this and began communicating with the public via this new medium, which had proven so instrumental to the demise of the former regime.”

Celebrated as an almost indispensable ingredient of any modern-day popular uprising, social media in post-revolution Egypt has nevertheless begun to reveal a darker side.

The anonymity of social media

“Social media now plays a more destructive role, often being used to provoke anger and hatred and spread unsubstantiated rumour,” said Abdel-Saddiq. “Since the revolution, we’ve seen it used to incite protesters against police, the secular opposition against Islamist groups, and Muslims against Christians and vice versa.”

Abdel-Saddiq went on to recall several instances in which false reports appeared online with the apparent intention of inciting violence.

“Anonymous users have posted reports online, which later proved false, stating that ‘security forces are firing on unarmed protesters’, for example, or that ‘Muslims are attacking Christians’,” he described.

“Once this is done, it’s a simple matter, again with the use of social media networks, to shepherd large numbers of angry protesters to specified venues, thereby creating fertile ground for violent clashes,” Abdel-Saddiq explained.

This phenomenon occurred more than once in the immediate wake of the uprising, when sectarian passions were enflamed by a wave of Muslim-Christian violence, behind which many observers saw the hand of an unseen third party.

“The public soon began to wake up to the fact that false reports on social media were being employed by certain parties – be they counter-revolutionary forces, political rivals or foreign intelligence agencies – to destabilise post-revolution Egypt,” said Abdel-Saddiq.

In a related incident in late 2011, an anonymous Facebook group appeared, purporting to represent “The committee for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice in Egypt.” The page, which sparked widespread fears of the emergence in Egypt of a Saudi Arabia-style “morality police”, bore the logo of Egypt’s Salafist Nour Party.

The party, however, quickly denied any link to the Facebook group, the creators of which remain unknown to this day.

“One of the drawbacks of online social media is that anonymous parties can create fake websites or social media accounts, allowing them to issue false statements on behalf of political figures or groups,” said Hassan.

Media with no oversight

Online video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, meanwhile, have also come to play a less positive role than they did during the uprising, say experts.

“Videos posted online gave the 2011 uprising additional impetus, allowing protesters in different parts of the country to see what was happening elsewhere,” said Abdel-Saddiq. “Nowadays, by contrast, videos posted online are increasingly being used to incite and subvert.”

He cited several incidents in which provocative photos or videos appeared on social media venues, which, after eliciting angry reactions, were later proved entirely false or highly exaggerated. In many cases, he said, such videos “turn out to be older than initially purported and portray entirely unrelated events”.

One such video that appeared in 2011 purporting to show an Egyptian policeman hurling a protester’s prone body onto a rubbish heap, Abdel-Saddiq recounted.

After the video triggered a wave of public outrage against the police – and after major television networks picked up the images – it emerged that the incident had not even taken place in Egypt.

More recently, in early April, a video circulated widely among Egyptian social media users showing a group of Muslim men sexually assaulting a Coptic-Christian woman in Upper Egypt. The video, which appeared at the height of unrelated sectarian tensions in Cairo and Alexandria, initially prompted a storm of popular anger. It later turned out to be from 2009 and was related to an Upper Egyptian tribal vendetta rather than sectarian conflict.

“That was a clear attempt by an unknown party to incite violence between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims,” said Hassan. “Incidents like this have happened so often in the post-revolution period that most social media users now question the source – and production date – of videos appearing online.”

Abdel-Saddiq blames this dangerous state of affairs on the lack of legal oversight of social media platforms in Egypt, where “laws against libel and slander only apply to traditional media – i.e., television, radio and newspapers – but not to the Internet”.

Following upcoming parliamentary polls slated for later this year, he hopes to see the ratification of legislation regulating social media. “But until then,” Abdel-Saddiq said, “we’ll continue to see newfound freedoms of expression, which most Egyptians still aren’t used to, being used irresponsibly and without restraint.”

Disseminating messages to local populations, especially in developing countries, is key in mobilising support for the work of the United Nations. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 3 2013 (IPS)

As the world continues to turn digital, so does the United Nations – slowly but steadily.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the world body is increasingly drawing on social media tools, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr, as well as other innovative communications technologies, to broaden its reach to the world at large.

In a report to the U.N. Committee on Information, which concluded its current sessions Friday, Ban said that efforts to harness the power of social media “have yielded impressive results in terms of reaching new audiences around the world.”

The U.N. Visitor’s website, launched in 2010, received 343,679 page views while its Facebook page has increased to over 5,800 fans and its fan base on Google Plus reached over 700,000.

And as the United Nations goes “paper smart” – drastically reducing printed reports and documents in favour of electronic versions – it is also increasing the volume of digitised documents.

Currently, the U.N. archives has over 3.7 million documents, most of them waiting to go digital.

The U.N.’s primary agenda focuses on three key issues: development, human rights and peace and security, intertwined with gender empowerment, counter-terrorism and sustainable development, among others.

Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, under-secretary-general for communications and public information, says that the U.N. libraries in New York and Geneva have processed around 340,000 documents, comprising 3.5 million pages.

“The timeline for completing the task, using current resources and methods, would be approximately 20 years,” he said.

At the same time, the United Nations has an additional 13 million official documents, mostly background reports and working papers, which are also up for digitisation.

“That might take another 60 years,” he told the Committee last week.

Still, traditional media is still the primary means of communication, especially among developing countries where internet coverage remains sparse.

Asked whether the United Nations was on the right track in harnessing social media as against traditional media, the newly-elected chair of the Committee on Information, Ambassador Lyutha Sultan Al-Mughairy of Oman, told IPS, “I believe it is, but I do not want to suggest social media is ‘against’ traditional media.”

“We need all forms of media to communicate, in the context of who our audience is and what form of communication each audience is comfortable with.”

At the session just concluded, she said, the Committee on Information has proposed that the 193-member General Assembly request the secretary-general to report to it at its next session “on the structure of the Organisation’s presence in social networks, and its strategy and guidelines for their use.

“We believe this information will be important in assessing the track we are on, and how best, as you say, to harness the power of social media”.

She said the Department of Information must tackle a number of challenges and cater to new audiences “in a worsening budgetary climate”, doing more with fast-dwindling resources.

Currently, the world body has about 63 U.N. Information Centres (UNICs) reaching out to the public at large.

Asked about the importance of UNICs in the context of the U.N.’s current austerity drive to eliminate some, or most, of these centres, Ambassador Al-Mughairy told IPS the Committee has consistently emphasised the importance of the network of UNICs in enhancing the public image of the United Nations.

And more so, in disseminating messages to local populations, especially in developing countries, bearing in mind that information in local languages has the strongest impact on local populations, and in mobilising support for the work of the United Nations at the local level.

She said her Committee has also stressed the importance of rationalising the network of UNICs, and, in this regard, requested the secretary-general to continue to make proposals, including through the redeployment of resources where necessary.

The Committee has been assured by the Department that communications and public information needs would not suffer as a result of any realignment of UNICs or their functions.

She said the Committee has also welcomed the support of some member states, including developing countries, in offering, among other things, rent-free premises for UNICs, bearing in mind that such support should not be a substitute for the full allocation of financial resources for the information centres in the context of the programme budget of the United Nations.

Meanwhile, the secretary-general’s report also says that by the end of 2012, more than 850 institutions of higher learning and research centres worldwide, have joined Academic Impact, described as a global university initiative launched in 2010 to align such institutions with the United Nations.

They’ve battled police in the streets and they’ve challenged authority the courts. Now, faced with staggering increases in fines for unauthorised demonstrations, Azerbaijani opposition activists are turning to Facebook to get their messages out.

A Nov. 10 amendment to the Law on Freedom of Assembly hiked penalties for participation in unsanctioned protests nearly 80-fold from a mere seven to 13 manats (nine to sixteen dollars) to a hefty 500 to 1,000 manats (637-1,275 dollars).

Those charged with organising such protests would incur far larger fines: depending on the extent of the individual’s alleged role, the punishment would range from 1,500 to 30,000 manats (1,900 to 38,265 dollars). The average monthly salary in Azerbaijan is currently about 388 manats (494 dollars). The penalties for organisers represent up to a six-fold increase over earlier fines.

Opposition activists predict that the changes will have a chilling effect on civic debate, and may well curb unsanctioned street protests. The new fine framework will go into effect on Jan. 1.

Officials explain that the changes are designed to ensure public order. Critics, pointing to the fast-approaching presidential election in February, note that authorities have an added incentive in the coming months to keep a lid on public displays of discontent.

“Most of our supporters are young university students, who cannot afford to pay that penalty,” said Tural Abbasli, chairperson of the opposition Musavat Party’s youth organisation. Non-payment, he continued, would mean that “the court would go after their property, their houses, which will be such a headache for their families.”

Abbasli, saying he didn’t what to bear responsibility for bringing hardships down upon young activists, indicated that he would feel “very uncomfortable” about advocating street action in 2013.

Other opposition activists agree; the new fines mean greater caution in organising protests, said Hesen Kerimov, chairperson of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan’s Supreme Council.

“The majority of our supporters are unemployed because of their political views,” Kerimov claimed. Even for those who have jobs, “their financial capabilities are not at all sufficient to pay the penalty,” he added.

While the government of Baku does allow protests outside the city centre, officials make it as difficult as possible for those wishing to participate, opposition leaders say.

“(The Baku city government) creates so many obstacles, such as stopping people from walking in the direction of the site of the protest (and) creating intended obstacles for taxis,” said Kerimov, a member of the Public Union, a coalition of various opposition parties and sympathisers which routinely holds protests without city permission. “They leave no option for us.”

With all other protest possibilities seemingly cut off, social media platforms, an increasingly popular venue among Azerbaijanis for debate about political topics, are the only realistic protest option left, noted Abbasli. Official statistics report that five million Azerbaijanis – about 54.5 percent of the population – have Internet access. The Facebook-traffic-analysis site Socialbakers claims that 900,000 of them are Facebook users.

Opposition activists hope that a social media-based opposition strategy, given Internet usage numbers and Facebook’s flexibility as a means of communications, will re-invigorate the movement – essentially taking one step back in order to take two forward.
“At the first stage, those people who are observers soon become active in discussions and build trust,” commented Natig Adilov, the founder and administrator of Xilas (Salvation), one of the largest Azerbaijani Facebook discussion groups, with over 200,000 members. “At the next stage, they feel confident enough to have their protests in the streets.”

Abbasli agrees: “Those protests in cyberspace will involve more people, will expand broader and it will not stay there forever. People will move back from cyberspace to the streets. This time more aggressive, more difficult to control.”

Practically speaking, it is no sure thing that voices of dissent will become bolder online than they are on the streets. Officials already carefully monitor Azerbaijani citizens’ web activities, and individuals already have been jailed for reasons related to their online activities.

One U.S. communications researcher who tracks developments in Azerbaijan cautions that moving criticism of the government from Facebook to the streets indeed poses a challenge. As political opponents increasingly go online to mobilise, government monitoring and surveillance will increase, in turn, predicted Katy Pearce, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Washington.

“That could easily discourage online dissent,” Pearce said in an email interview with EurasiaNet.org. “Despite the fact that the Azerbaijani government does little blocking of content, because individuals fear the repercussions of expression online, people self-censor and thus there isn’t freedom of expression online for Azerbaijanis.”

Azerbaijani blogger Ravil Asadov concedes that he often wrestles with self-censorship. “I am being threatened for my blog, which is critical of the government. It does not stop me. But it is annoying,” Asadov said. “Every time I write, I think of censoring myself so that I do not have more headaches.”

At a U.N.-sponsored meeting held in Baku in early November, European leaders castigated Azerbaijani authorities for their repressive web tendencies. Baku authorities, meanwhile, insist they are tolerant of the Internet’s diversity of views.

“The principal position of the Azerbaijani government is to create all possible conditions for ensuring full Internet-freedom,” Elnur Aslanov, head of the presidential administration’s political analysis department, told 1news.az on Nov. 8.

Activists like Abbasli have strong doubts about the sincerity of the government’s statements on Internet freedom, but they add they have no other option than to press on with a web-based campaign, despite the risks.

*This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

Politicians are becoming media savvy in Malaysia, using Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to appeal to netizens. Credit: West McGowan/CC-BY-2.0

By Kalinga Seneviratne
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 11 2012 (IPS)

Malaysia is gearing up for a general election in six months and as the campaigns enter the crucial voter-courting phase many observers are wondering if the political ‘tsunami’, which severely weakened the ruling National Front coalition (BN) at the 2008 polls, might be repeated.

That political tidal wave – which stripped the BN of its two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time since independence and handed five state governments over to the opposition – was precipitated by the spread of Internet-based social media as a campaigning tool, harnessed primarily by the opposition.

“In 2008 neither the government nor opposition expected the result they got,” Ramanathan Sankaran, author of ‘Media, Democracy and Civil Society’, told IPS.

The proliferation of independent websites and blogs such as Malaysia Today and Malaysiakini rendered the ruling coalition’s propaganda machinery less effective during the electoral race, as formidable opponents appeared in the crucial arena of cyberspace.

“Six or seven bloggers, who had been unknown (to most of the ruling coalition) got into parliament. It shocked the BN,” Sankaran added.

Three of these bloggers have now become well-known opposition figures in Malaysia. Former human rights activist and environmental campaigner Elizabeth Wong is now the minister for Tourism, Consumer Affairs and the Environment in the opposition-ruled Selangor state government that covers the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Tony Pua, who defeated a BN parliamentary secretary candidate to win the Petaling Jaya federal constituency, is now the “shadow minister” for Higher Education in the federal parliament.

Meanwhile Jeff Ooi, who won a state assembly seat in Penang, clinching another crucial win for the opposition in 2008, has taken the reigns as senior aide to the Chief Minister.

“One of the first things (then Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad) Badawi said when the results came out was ‘we lost the Internet war. We didn’t realise that was important. We relied too much on mainstream media’,” recalled Steven Gan, editor of the leading alternative news website Malaysiakini.

“When (current Prime Minister) Najib Tun Razak came to power in 2009 there was substantial focus on the Internet. He set up his own Facebook (account), along with other politicians, and he is tweeting as well.”

The Prime Minister also has a website called ‘1 Malaysia’ which is updated daily. According to Sankaran, Razak has instructed other ministers and senior government officials to make good use of the Internet and respond to emails within 48 hours.

Even the former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has set up his own blog, ‘Blogging to Unblock’, whose comments are regularly picked up by the mainstream and alternative media.

And long-term opposition member in federal parliament, Lim Kit Siang, who first entered parliament in 1969 and is currently the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party’s parliamentary leader, has his own blog through which he has been relentlessly attacking the government on corruption issues for several months.

Nudged by the outcome of the 2008 election, “BN made a concerted move to (mobilise) its own cyber-troopers,” Gan told IPS.

According to Sankaran, BN’s determination to learn from past mistakes is reflected in their decision to field Kamalananthan Panchanathen, a young Internet-savvy candidate, for the seat of Hulu Selangor, an electorate with a large Indian population.

The 40-year-old blogger won back the seat in the by-election of 2010 “partly because of his appeal to young (netizens), and he now has his own website,” Sankaran added.

“The government has opened up the Internet (to encourage better governance),” he added.

Prominent Malaysian political commentator Chandra Muzzafar, a former political ally of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, agrees that the Internet will play an important role in coming elections. “It will be a major actor in some constituencies and controlling it is difficult,” he told IPS.

Censorship rears its head

But along with the government’s attempt to become more media savvy ahead of the elections has come a desire to curtail the freedoms allowed to other social media practitioners and rights groups who utilise these channels to spread their message to civil society.

On Sep. 13, the independent Star newspaper reported that the prominent human rights group SUARAM was being investigated by the Home Ministry and five government agencies, including the Registrar of Societies, on allegations that they received funds from the Open Society Foundation (OSF), whose chairman is international financial speculator George Soros.

SUARAM’s membership includes a number of opposition MPs linked to Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice Party (PKR). The rights group has waged a long anti-corruption crusade against the government.

Government-controlled media reported that investigations by the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry found three letters addressed to SUARAM dated 2007, 2008 and 2010, detailing grants amounting to nearly 189,000 dollars from the OSF.

“Civil society is now continuously portrayed in the media as the enemy who is seeking to overthrow the government at the behest of foreign powers. These accusations have also been hurled at BERSIH (the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections), more so since July last year when we had a successful rally of more than 50,000 people on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, clamouring for clean and fair elections,” Ambiga Sreenevasan, co-chair of BERSIH, said in a commentary published by ‘Malaysian Insider’ last week.

Another alternative media outfit that has been consistently accused of receiving funds from Soros is Malaysiakini.

“While we are non-partisan that doesn’t mean we are apolitical. We are very political. We cover issues we feel strongly about such as corruption, press freedom and human rights,” Gan said in an interview with IPS.

“We will speak for people who do not have access to mainstream media. We speak for the voiceless, those who suffer human rights abuses that are not covered properly by mainstream media. That has always been our position. People see us as pro-opposition because we cover those issues,” he added.

Internet – or economy?

But though active netizens are breaking the government’s “monopoly on truth”, and the powerful Reformasi movement – comprised of a Malay core and based on exposing corruption and abuse of power within the government – is on the rise, experts like Muzzafar believe BN will have an easy victory at the polls.

He believes the economy will be the key factor in determining the outcome of the election. The Malaysian economy is currently strong and stable. Unemployment is at a low 2.7 percent as of August 2012, gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 5.6 percent in the second quarter of 2012 and industrial production was up by 4.9 percent in September 2012, according to the Department of Statistics.

Though Malaysia enjoys a strong alternative media network, a vibrant NGO sector and a robust opposition – the three ingredients necessary to topple a ruling government – Gan believes that BN will win on account of their huge state machinery and state funds – the government’s television and radio networks, along with the government-controlled mainstream newspapers, have a huge influence on Malay rural voters who form the backbone of the electorate.

Although the opposition has been targeting young voters, the recent nationwide university elections don’t bode well. According to Star newspaper, Pro-Aspirasi, a group widely perceived as pro-establishment and pro-government, “won big” in elections at eight out of 15 public universities on Sep. 25.

(END)

Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer, pushes a motorised soil tiller recently given to his farming cooperative. Before he was trained to use it, it would take him more than twice as long to do it by hand. Credit: Damon Van der Linde/IPS

By Beatrice Paez
TORONTO, Canada, Oct 8 2012 (IPS)

Youth worldwide are facing limited job prospects in the traditional channels of employment, and in the midst of the job crunch, cooperatives are seeking ways to connect with this untapped pool of talent.

It begins with reserving a seat for young, future cooperative leaders this Oct. 8 to 12 at the International Summit of Cooperatives in Quebec City. About 150 youth from across the globe have been invited to represent their respective cooperative organisations.

It’s an opportunity for them to network with their peers and learn from their cooperative elders, said Stephanie Guico, the coordinator of the Future Leaders programe at the conference. While there will be special panels and events designed around them, the young leaders, from the ages 20-35, will be expected to bring their own contributions.

“I hope they’re going to bring a youth voice, innovative ideas, new perspectives. I hope they won’t censor themselves,” Guico told IPS. “There’s a lot to be gained from listening to youth who are more in touch with integration into the virtual area and ways of collaborating and communicating that are new.”

“I think there’s a generation now that has grown up with a certain type of cooperation through social media,” said Charles Gould, executive director of the International Cooperative Association, a non-governmental organisation that strives to shape global policy on behalf of cooperatives.

“It ought to make them more receptive to the cooperative model but they haven’t heard about it as a business model,” he told IPS.

No one knows more about creating connections through social media to answer a need than social entrepreneur Dev Aujla, who will be addressing the young leaders.

Aujla, founder of DreamNow, a charitable organisation in the business of turning ideas into social goods, collaborated with Rolling Stone Magazine’s “climate hero” Billy Parrish, a climate change activist, to write a book.

Parrish and Aujla’s paths crossed online, as Facebook friends who had never met but who shared similar principles, and dedicated their lives to mobilising youth to address their community’s issues. Their book “Making Good” serves as a game plan for youth interested in pursuing careers as social entrepreneurs.

The non-linear career path often comes with the territory if you become a social entrepreneur, and while it can be daunting, it is becoming an attractive option for those wanting a job that pays well enough and is rooted in serving the community, said Aujla.

And for those interested, the cooperative model can provide a base of support, because it doesn’t require a lot of a capital, and he said, with cooperatives “you can take any industry you can imagine and reinvent in a way that does good.”

The cooperative model speaks in the language that today’s generation has been reared on, through exposure to the dialogue on climate change and other environmental issues, “this whole generation knows they want to do something good and are just being turned on the idea,” adds Aujla.

But while youth have more access to information to educate themselves on the issues of today, the cooperative model isn’t all that familiar because it’s not always included in academic curriculum, said Guico, who completed a Bachelor’s Degree in International Development.

Social media can aid the cooperative movement in its efforts to connect with youth, but more education about how they can offer an alternative route for employment is needed.

“Realistically, it’s going to take a different presentation of the model and a better explanation of it,” said Gould.

It took doing her own research and meeting the right people for Guico to find her way into the cooperative movement. The same goes for others around her. “Most people stumbled upon the movement, which said something about how good the cooperative movement is doing at promoting itself and communicating its identity.”

Part of the issue Guico finds is that cooperatives operate in a more discreet manner than corporations. “We would have to impose ourselves before there’s a perception of our importance,” she said.

Another reason cooperatives are not on the minds of many youth is that schools do not delve deeply, if at all into what the model offers, Guico notes. “Most educational institutions are geared towards the capitalist model, anything that it is too complex, they tend to simplify or minimise it.”

Without the decision to explore cooperatives on her own, Guico might have continued to presume that cooperatives are only in the trade of making crafts and operating as small-scale agricultural enterprises, as she was led to believe.

In Canada, St. Mary’s University in Halifax offers a Master’s programme designed around the cooperative enterprise. The university is sponsoring Imagine 2012, a joint event of the summit, on cooperative economics that precedes it.

But the online programme, which gathers people from around the world, is targeted at cooperators entrenched in the movement. Most students have been working in the industry for 15 to 20 years and are seeking to learn new management tools and connect with other industry leaders.

“If people were only learning about it in the ways that are more typical to how (we’re) learning, I think our sector would be much further ahead,” said Karen Miner, the managing director of the Cooperative and Credit Union Management programme at St. Mary’s.

“We would be much better educated about the sector and even on ourselves. We have a large number of managers of co-ops that come from the traditional business background, myself included,” Miner told IPS.

Laure Waridel, an ecosociologist who will also be speaking to youth at the summit, also finds that not enough value is given to the social economy in university courses, particularly in management.

Waridel, who taught a course at McGill University in Montreal, sought to incorporate some lessons on social entrepreneurship in her lectures by inviting guest speakers working in the social economy to her lectures.

The cooperative model, which prides itself in embracing democratic and participatory values, where youth can help influence and shape the future of cooperatives, has a lot of room for growth and new members, Waridel said.

“The message to future leaders is that we need to prepare a transition for another economy,” she told IPS. “It’s very clear that the dominant model in which we are now is unsustainable.”

Tens of thousands of residents in a Chinese city took to the streets last week to protest, forcing the government to scrap plans to build a copper plant. The incident is the latest in a rising number of localised protests as expression of public anger aimed at over-ambitious or corrupt officials in China over-boils.

Thousands of anti-riot police were deployed to Shifang city, located in China’s Western Sichuan province last week during the protests which turned violent as residents smashed police cars and stormed the government headquarters. Two protestors have since been reported to have died, according to NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

In a highly unusual compromise, the local government announced that plans for the metals plant, which locals said would result in heavily polluting factory emissions, would be stopped. Twenty-one of 27 people detained during the protests have been released.

A number of high-profile protests have erupted in the last few years. In December 2011, the village Wukan made international headlines after villagers rose against corrupt local officials they claimed were stealing their land. Following a stand-off, senior government officials intervened. Local officials were sacked and – in a surprising twist – Wukan residents were given the right to vote for their own village chief and officials.

In August 2011, around 12,000 residents protested against a chemicals plant in the northeastern city Dalian, leading to the plant’s closure. In September of the same year, villagers in Haining, located in Zhejiang province, protested for three days against a solar panel factory which had dumped toxic waste into a local river killing fish. The factory has since been closed.

“Official reports do chart a rising number of protests over the past five years or so,” Michael DeGolyer, professor in the Department of Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, tells IPS. “Social volatility (the potential for sudden outbreaks of mass behaviours demanding structural change) is rising due to a number of factors. Then, all it takes is a triggering event or events to unleash it.”

The rapid rise of social media has played a significant role in growing civic awareness among the populace. China’s micro-blogs have helped inspire large gatherings of protestors. Users, many who were born in the post-1990s and are well-educated, have quickly spread details and images of protests around the country, forcing the hand of the government.

“I see Chinese people’s civic consciousness budding,” says Li Yonglin, 19, an entrepreneur who travelled to Shifang from Mianyang city in Sichuan province to take part in the protests. “Several years ago when a city government decided to implement an environmentally-unfriendly project, citizens would probably bear with it. Shifang people’s fight is just the beginning. Resentment among people has been suppressed for too long.”

Li claims to have witnessed police using batons to break up gatherings. When matters escalated they used tear gas and stun grenades. Li has repeatedly tried to post reports online of what he witnessed. But they have all been deleted.

Last week, the word “Shifang” (which the government did not block online) was the most widely searched term on China’s micro-blogs. Protestors relayed details of incidents as they happened, including complaints of police brutality and the liberal use of pepper spray against protestors. Graphic photographs of protestors with blood pouring down their faces and chests – reportedly after been beaten by government forces – went viral on the micro-blog Sina Weibo. The posts have since been deleted.

“Talking about the Shifang incident, it is the government’s fault,” wrote a Weibo user named ‘Skaterboy’. “If they communicated right, would we have gone this far? The people are reasonable, the police are not bullies, it is the government who has made the wrong moves.”

Cultural commentators have waded in to fan the fires. Han Han, the millionaire race-car driving author and blogger, wrote a widely-circulated blog post supporting residents of Shifang and condemning the brute force of the police.

“People’s requests for improving their environment must be respected,” wrote Han Han in the post. “You leaders change every few years. You take on environmental destruction with nice-looking certificates of achievement. If you do well you get promoted, if you don’t you get jail. The best of you emigrate, the worst of you are shot. But none of you actually live in the pollution. Only ordinary people live there.”

“Thanks to the spread of information, more people are aware of their rights,” the 19-year-old protestor Li Yonglin adds. “The people have drawn a line between them and the government. The people will not continue believing what the government feeds them and simply follow it. I hope that the influence of Shifang will travel around. China will improve little by little.”

Kunasekaran Krishnan (43) is a member of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) who hopes his newly released CD of 10 “revolutionary songs” will help convince voters to back the Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance) in the general election that is widely expected to be held this year.

“We have always known only one government, the Barisan Nasional (National Front). My CD of songs is an attempt to convince voters to see the Pakatan Rakyat as an alternative…give them a chance to rule,” he said.

“It is also an effective way to break the stranglehold the government has over mainstream media,” he told IPS. “The CD is cheap, enjoyable and an effective form of communication.”

As Malaysia prepares for a fiercely competitive election, the opposition, which is largely barred from mainstream media, is resorting to alternative methods to reach voters, from rallies to social media campaigns to the dissemination of hundreds of thousands of CDs that could influence wide swathes of the urban and rural populations.

Besides music, the CDs also contain rarely heard political speeches by leaders like Anwar Ibrahim, head of the People’s Alliance, who is daily lambasted in the mainstream media. His recent speech, promising free education up to tertiary levels in the event of a Pakatan Rakyat victory at the upcoming polls, was ignored by most major media until a truncated version of it surfaced several weeks later as the subject of government ridicule.

Targeting the youth

Pakatan Rakyat is offering voters the first viable political alternative in over 50 years. Many voters are intrigued by the possibility of a change in government, a dream they had hitherto written off as impossible.

The 2008 general election, in which the People’s Alliance came close to unseating the 13-party National Front, winning five states and denying the ruling coalition a two-thirds majority in parliament, was the best showing by the opposition since independence in 1957.

Five years later, an intense “return match” is on the cards, in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, that will decide which coalition is left standing.

“It is a life or death struggle for us (the National Front),” he told national television on Monday.

In addition to producing CDs, the Democratic Action Party (DAP), a member of the Pakatan Rakyat, has also posted video clips on YouTube with one overriding message – ‘ubah’, or ‘complete change’, which is the party’s theme song and central message for the general election.

The Malay and Mandarin CDs are targeted at young urban voters who tend to be anti-establishment in their political leanings.

“The songs in the CD bring a message of hope for a better tomorrow under a Pakatan Rakyat government,” DAP socialist youth chief, Anthony Loke, told IPS. “We are projecting a young image for our party to target the young voters.”

Pakatan Rakyat also utilises its own bi-monthly newsletter, ‘Harakah’, to carry it’s message to the younger generation.

Universiti Sains Malaysia academic Sivamurugan Pandian believes that 40 percent of the country’s 12.9 million registered voters are aged between 21 and 39 years.

“All political parties are actively wooing them. They (could) decide the outcome of the general election contest,” he told IPS, adding that the most tech savvy coalition will have an edge.

“They cross over questions of race, religion and ethnicity. They are the true ‘Bangsa Malaysia’ or Malaysians as opposed to native Malays, Chinese or Indians,” he said. “The future is in their hands.”

Both the opposition and the ruling coalition have deployed armies of ‘cyber troops’ against one another to post songs and political messages on YouTube and Facebook, turning the social media landscape into a veritable battleground.

Wooing voters with song

Kunasekaran, the mastermind of the revolutionary music, also said that songs are a powerful way to win the hearts and minds of Tamil working class voters.

Tamils in Malaysia are the descendents of indentured labourers brought by British colonials at the turn of the 19th century to clear jungles and plant and tend to rubber trees. The community now numbers about two million, a population that can make or break either of the political coalitions in about 50 of the 222 parliamentary constituencies in the country.

Both Prime Minister Najib Razak and opposition leader Ibrahim have been assiduously courting the community for months.

“In India songs are used to convince Tamil voters. Here in Malaysia, I try to emulate the Indian politicians,” Kunasekaran said, referring to the late M. G. Ramachandran, chief minister of Tamil Nadu state who made movies and Tamil songs to influence voters.

The government too has entered the battle for hearts and minds, producing its own CDs and hiring young and popular artistes to sing about its theme ‘continuity and progress’.

“Trust the National Front, we have delivered for 50 years,” the government CDs proclaim.

(END)

A recent social media campaign encourages tourists in the Philippines to leave "nothing but footprints" on the country's beaches. Credit: Patrick Tumalad/CC-BY-2.0

By Kara Santos
MANILA, May 18 2012 (IPS)

Seashells and corals are competing with styrofoam packs, food wrappers, cigarette butts, and plastic bottles for space on some of the Philippines’ most scenic beaches. Graffiti mars tourist spots like lighthouses and caves, proclaiming the names of recent visitors.

While many of the country’s popular holiday destination sites are postcard-perfect from afar, up close the scars of irresponsible travelers shine through.

Tourism is booming in the Philippines, lifting the hopes of millions of the country’s impoverished citizens for a better life. But the influx of travelers is also bringing with it some undesirable consequences – ones that may just end up spoiling the very things that make the country’s sites worth traveling to.

“Even if we put garbage bins labeled bio-degradable and non-biodegradable trash here in our resort, there are hard-headed people who just throw their junk food wrappers and litter anywhere,” Lina Rizon, a caretaker of a private resort in Guimaras island in the Visayas region told IPS.

Littering is just one of the problems starting to plague the once pristine tourist locations. In recent months, photographs showing people abusing or mishandling wildlife and marine life have also gone viral on social networking sites.

Some of these incidents include a case of a girl standing atop a whale shark (Rhincodon typus); a fisherman posing with a dolphin pierced by a fishing hook; and a group of divers posing while holding a sea turtle underwater.

The public outcry over these photos, published online by infuriated netizens, often results in local government units or regional offices of the Department of Tourism taking quick action. However, tour operators, tourists, as well as locals who have been caught engaged in such practices have claimed they were not aware that they were doing anything wrong.

“One time, we caught a visitor trying to smuggle a plastic bag full of live starfish she had gathered from the water out of the resort. We said she would have to pay a fine of 500 pesos (11.72 dollars) per starfish, so she returned them to the water,” added Rizon.

Harnessing social media

To address this problem, two individuals named Yoshke Dimen and Vins Carlos launched a social media campaign called ‘The Footprints Project’ to promote responsible travel.

The activists initially started the website PhilippineBeaches.org to share their love for travel and the beach. The Facebook fan page has grown into one of the country’s largest unbranded travel communities with over 865,000 members.

Such awareness-building comes at a critical time, since management of the world’s oceans and seas is one of the seven critical issues that will be tackled in the upcoming Earth Summit, called Rio+20, to be held this Jun. 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“It is not enough to travel. We need to travel aware of our responsibilities to the environment,” said social media strategist and campaign co-founder Dimen during the launch last week.

The campaign targets travel bloggers, travel agents and beachgoers to help spread the word effectively.

“While we encourage people to travel and explore the many beautiful beach destinations in the country, we also want to make every Filipino a responsible traveler and an active steward of nature,” Dimen told IPS.

The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness on ways to minimise human impact on the environment and provide practical and specific guidelines to help travelers become more informed, more involved, and more in touch with the natural world.

The Project encourages netizens to Tweet with the hasthag #LeaveNothingButFootprints and #ResponsibleTravel whenever they share beach travel-related links.

Partnering with non-profit organisations like Save Philippine Seas (SPS) and Earth Island Institute Philippines, the Footprints Project envisions “a healthy, sustainable and successful tourism environment enjoyed, promoted, and guarded by people who are environmentally conscious, friendly, and responsible.”

The Project has identified tips for responsible travel, which have been shared on social media sites.

“Fish don’t use utensils. Avoid bringing disposable items to the beach. Bring your own tumblers and food containers,” proclaims one campaign poster shared over Twitter.

“Respect Wildlife: If you really want a souvenir, purchase products that are not made using threatened or endangered plants or animals,” goes another reminder posted on Facebook.

Anna Oposa, co-founder of SPS, which harnesses social media for environmental conservation and responsible tourism, stresses the need for young people to get involved.

“The most alarming environmental issue is apathy. It’s not enough for people to just complain about the problem, we have to do something concrete. What we want is to empower people to save our seas through their own actions,” Oposa told IPS.

The Philippines is the “world’s epicenter” of marine biodiversity, which means that conservation, protection, and restoration of its seas is not only of local significance, but international significance as well, according to SPS.

The group recently released a free mobile application for Android on Google Play, which will also be launched on iTunes in a few weeks to help people do their part.

“Aside from having a database of dive sites and dive shops, through the app, users can find volunteer opportunities and get in touch with different non-governmental organisations and conservation groups and report marine environment abuses and illegal practices they come across,” said Oposa.

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