The international Informática 2013 Fair, held in Havana Mar. 19-22, 2013. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, May 28 2013 (IPS)

Cuba will continue to prioritise public Internet access over connectivity in private homes, as indicated by a government announcement Tuesday that 118 new public cyber salons would open nationwide as of early June.

The new Internet outlets were reportedly made possible by the “full functioning” of a fibre optic cable laid between Cuba and Venezuela.

The government-controlled press reported on a communications ministry resolution Tuesday that said one hour online in the new outlets would cost the equivalent of 4.50 dollars, payable in 4.50 CUCs or convertible pesos, to which only a small part of the Cuban population of 11.2 million has access.

That amount is equivalent to 108 Cuban pesos, the currency earned by most Cubans. “I cannot possibly afford that on my pension of 270 pesos a month,” retired journalist and university professor Enrique López Oliva told IPS.

Readers of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, which expanded on the information, had similar complaints. “It looks like whoever set these prices lives in another country or earns a salary wholly in CUCs,” commented one reader who identified himself as J. Pérez.

But the price for surfing the domestic Intranet will be 0.60 CUCs (14.40 pesos) an hour. And access to the international email service will cost 1.50 CUCs (36 pesos) an hour.

Internet, Intranet and email services in Cuba are provided by the state-owned telecoms company ETECSA, which has a monopoly over the informatics and communications sector.

The official resolution specifies that clients cannot use Internet services to carry out actions harmful to “public security, the economy, independence and national sovereignty” – a warning apparently aimed at dissident groups, which the government considers “mercenaries in the pay” of a hostile foreign power, the United States.

Juventud Rebelde wrote that the expansion of connectivity was in line with the Cuban strategy of facilitating growing access to new technologies, depending on the availability of funds and resources, and based on an approach that puts a priority on the social good.

It added that the new cyber salons were made possible by the underwater fibre optic cable running from Guaira in northern Venezuela to Siboney in eastern Cuba, which permits the high-quality, high-speed and stable transmission of a large amount of information.

Authorities in Cuba blame the five-decade U.S. economic and technological embargo for the high local cost of Internet connections, and for the serious problems in web services in this Caribbean island nation.

The newspaper added that “the fibre optic cable, while it improves international communications (up to now carried mainly by satellite) is not a free service, which explains the initial cost of the expansion of the service of navigation on the Internet.”

The cable reached Cuban shores in 2011, and Venezuela’s authorities declared it operational in May 2012, although Cuba’s official media maintained a discreet silence.

Cuba has a minimum bandwidth of 323 megabits per second via satellite, but various sources say the fibre optic cable will increase the current transmission speed by a factor of 3,000 and will cut operating costs by 25 percent, although the satellite services will continue to function.

Cuban authorities have repeatedly made it clear that the country will continue to put a priority on the “social use” of the new technologies – in other words, on connectivity in schools, research and work centres, professional associations or recreational and community centres.

A tiny minority of Cubans have access to the Internet, the Intranet or email service in their homes, basically by dial-up. Another small minority can afford the steep prices of cybercafés, mainly in hotels, which charge around eight dollars an hour.

In its report this year to the Universal Periodic Review of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Cuban delegation stated that the country had 783,000 personal computers as of the end of 2011. Of that total, an estimated 18 percent were in homes and more than 33 percent were in the health, education and culture sectors.

“In addition, 2,610,000 users employ Internet services, 622,000 with full navigation,” added the document, which did not differentiate between “social” and private access – the latter of which is limited, by means of payment in national currency, to intellectuals and professionals such as journalists, academics, artists or doctors.

Jobs in the industry are hard to find for new computer engineering graduates in Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Mar 26 2013 (IPS)

Thousands of young Cubans are graduating in computer engineering, a sector the government decided to strengthen over the past decade. But their professional future is uncertain because of failures of organisation and of internet connectivity.

“I haven’t been able to work as a computer engineer,” a 24-year-old woman who graduated in 2011 told IPS. She attended the University of Information Science (UCI), a centre for development and training that was planned as Cuba’s great stride forward in 2002 to boost the field of software programming.

While she was studying, the young woman imagined she would have a secure future in the field of computing. But instead she has been posted for training in a state institute of statistical analysis, where the work is suitable “neither for a computer engineer nor an information technologist.

“I am not learning anything in my specialty, and at the office I just work on statistics,” the engineer, who requested anonymity, complained. Only a few of her fellow students got jobs in software development, while many others are teaching in secondary schools or institutes.

A total of 1,600 computer engineers graduated in her year.

Juan Triana, at the state Centre for Studies on the Cuban Economy, said this Caribbean island nation needs to make better use of the human capital educated over decades at its universities.

The country has the potential to make progress in the knowledge economy, but it must be more innovative in science and technology, and organise regional and local innovation systems that make use of its human resources, Triana says in his 2012 article “Cuba: la economía del conocimiento y el desarrollo” (Cuba: the knowledge economy and development).

That way, he says, computer engineers and technicians from the Havana-based UCI could play an important role in the economic reforms set into motion by the government of President Raúl Castro in 2008.

Up to July 2012, 10,021 computer engineers had graduated from UCI in Havana, not counting graduates from the university’s campuses in three other cities.

Other universities also teach information science, but have fewer students.

Technical education also includes this specialisation. The National Office of Statistics and Information reported that in 2011, 1,466 students graduated in electronics, robotics and communications.

But there are more computer professionals than jobs generated by the industry, according to observers.

However, Luis Guillermo Fernández, the head of Softel, a company creating computing solutions for healthcare, disagreed with this analysis in conversation with IPS at the international Informática 2013 Fair, held in Havana Mar. 19-22.

The fair has been held for the past 15 years for the exchange of ideas and knowledge with companies and researchers from other countries, and to boost business deals and cooperation. This year it was attended by some 1,400 experts from 30 countries, with China in the lead.

Fernández maintained “there is no surplus of graduates; on the contrary, we will need more of them when we get organised.” He pointed out that “almost all undertakings nowadays use computer science.”

In his opinion, “it is essential to organise and update the computer industry. We have not properly organised what we need or defined what our goals are.” The industry veteran said it was urgent “to expand information science culture in order to use human resources more effectively and open up more opportunities.”

Among the problems, Fernández mentioned the need to set clear development goals and priorities, attract investment, bolster competitiveness, quality and efficiency in order to increase service exports and attract foreign companies to manufacture some components in Cuba.

The country only has a bandwidth of 323 megabits per second via satellite, which limits connectivity to internet by institutions, companies, and even more so by households. Since 2012 a fibre optic cable has been operational thanks to an agreement with Venezuela, which, it is hoped, will gradually improve matters.

Exporting goods and services was one of the aims in 2003 when the sector was expanded. Although centres like UCI sell some of their products and computer engineers are working on projects with countries like Venezuela, experts say there is still a long way to go.

Import substitution and export promotion were other goals, but not enough progress has been made, participants in the fair said.

At the end of 2003, the country had 44 software production firms, 24 of which belonged to the ministry of Informatics and Communications. The ministry has since reduced that number to 22.

Most of the companies are devoted to supplying demand from Cuban institutions and the local economy, which is still heavily centralised.

Young people are finding employment in firms like Desoft, which is dedicated to computerising business management and is present in the 15 provincial capitals and 139 municipalities, according to Anabel García, a spokeswoman for the state company. However, the average age of its employees is still around 40, she told IPS.

But it was the young who were actually more in evidence at the fair. Among them was 27-year-old Abel Fírvida, who works on Nova, the Cuban adaptation of the Linux operating system, a free and open source software system created in 1990 by Linus Torvalds of Finland.

Version 3.0 of Nova was presented at the fair. Owing to Fírvida’s excellent grades, he joined the project while he was still a student, and in his view, graduates with the best academic records do have good job opportunities.

Nova was developed by UCI and a company created by the armed forces. At present it is available free to anyone interested in installing it, Fírvida, who is also a teacher, told IPS. The 60-member Nova team is thus contributing to migration to open-source digital systems that guarantee greater security and sovereignty.

Reporters say journalism is "not more fun" in the Philippines. Credit: Keith Bacongco/CC-BY-2.0

By Dennis Engbarth
MANILA, May 10 2012 (IPS)

Reporters working in the Philippines, the world’s third most dangerous nation for journalists, are having difficulty identifying with the “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” tourism promotion campaign launched by the Liberal Party-led government of President Benigno Aquino III.

The Southeast Asian nation’s reputation for press freedom and safety has yet to recover from the notorious Ampatuan Massacre of Nov. 23, 2009 in Maguindanao, Mindanao, in which 58 persons, including 32 reporters, were slaughtered by the private army of a local political clan chief, Andal Ampatuan Sr.

A total of 196 persons have been charged in the massacre, including clan patriarch Andal and his grandson, Anwar Ampatuan Jr, but less than 100 have been arrested and not a single one convicted of any crimes.

While the government attempts to paint over the tragedy with billboards proclaiming the joys of holidaying in the Philippines, media workers are continuing the fight for accountability.

A formal statement issued by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3 declared, “There is little reason for celebration since not a single mastermind in any of the 152 murders of journalists since 1986 has been arrested, prosecuted and convicted.”

Most of these killings occurred during the nine years of rule from 2001 to 2010 under former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who is now in detention on charges of electoral sabotage, but at least 12 have occurred in the past two years under the Aquino administration.

“Murders of media workers, just like all other extrajudicial killings, are a matter of State accountability,” declared the NUJP. “If the Philippine press remains free despite all the threats against it, it is not because of the government but because the press insists on being free.”

Nevertheless, the presidential office in the Malacañang Palace publically marked the country’s improved ranking in the annual Freedom of the Press index, published by the Washington-based human rights advocacy group Freedom House on May 1.

The index cited a reduction in violence against journalists, attempts by the government to address impunity and expanded diversity in media ownership among its reasons for the improved rating.

Communications Development Secretary Ramon Carandang acknowledged on May 2 that “more needs to be done”, but stated that the improved ranking had recognised the Philippine government’s attempts to strengthen press freedom.

On the following day, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda vowed that the Aquino administration would not tolerate extralegal killings, especially attacks on journalists.

Beneath the façade

NUJP Vice Chair Joseph Alwyn Alburo disputed the presidential spin on press freedom during an interview with IPS.

“After the Ampatuan Massacre, there has been no improvement on the issue of journalist killings or in the overall plight of journalists in our country,” he said.

Alburo told IPS that 124 Filipino journalists have been killed on the job since the end of the former dictatorship of the late Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, but only 10 of those cases have been solved.

“We are one year away from mid-term legislative and local elections next May and, based on our information, the family that perpetrated the (2009) massacre still have relatives in power and are still amassing private armies even as their patriarch and other senior clan members are facing trial,” he added.

“The Philippines has the (unfortunate) distinction of being rated the third most dangerous country for journalists, behind Iraq and Somalia and the only one of the three which is a democracy. Nov. 23 has been designated as the World Day Against Impunity, but the current president (has not even blinked) an eye about the impact of these notorious distinctions on our country.”

“It is with great sadness that I say things are not going to improve because all the factors that give rise to a culture of impunity are still present. Journalists in this country are still very much in danger.”

Another channel for powerful politicians and tycoons to restrict media freedom is through frequent filing of criminal libel charges against journalists, he said. The NUJP and other media unions and associations are currently leading the movement to decriminalise these charges.

Significantly, on Jan. 28, the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolved that the laws in the Philippines that criminalise libel are incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The decision came in response to an appeal by Davao broadcaster Alex Adonis, who was jailed from 2007-2008 for reporting correctly that a leading local politician had been caught in bed with his alleged mistress by the latter’s husband.

Another major concern for reporters is the concentration of media ownership. Alburo confirmed that NUJP is “closely watching” the widely reported drive by First Pacific Group Chief Executive Officer Manuel Pangilinan to acquire the television network ‘GMA 7’ for approximately 1.2 billion dollars.

The businessman already owns one TV network, telecommunication and power utilities and shares in three major newspapers.

“Such a concentration (of the media) often compromises journalist ethics and editorial independence,” Alburo said.

NUJP aims to “jump start” campaigns to stop the killing of journalists, push for the decriminalisation of libel against journalists and promote passage of a robust Freedom of Information Act in May, when the UNHRC is conducting a review of the Philippines’ human rights record under the ICCPR.

The NUJP and other newspaper, television and broadcast journalist unions held a meeting on May 3, which resulted in the ‘Manila Declaration on Media Workers’ Rights and Welfare’, to be used as a platform for future unity and campaigns.

Despite a pervasive mood that there is very little to celebrate, over 40 NUJP members gathered at the fifth consecutive annual ‘Press Jam’ to commemorate World Press Freedom Day at the Skarlet Jazz Club in Quezon City on the evening of May 2.

“It has always been a trait of Filipinos to be able to laugh amidst very serious situations and troubles, so we hold a Press Jam (where) we can sing and be carefree for at least one night,” said Alburo.

Still, the festivities were not completely lighthearted; the event featured drawings by the children of journalists who were murdered in the Ampatuan Massacre and other incidents.

The artwork expressed the fear and sadness that still surrounds the tragedy, such as a drawing with the plaintive question, ‘Why is Daddy sleeping so long?’

On an ironic poster asking ‘Is it more fun in the Philippines to be a journalist?’ one NUJP member wrote, ‘Yes, you feel like a survivor all the time’.

Another pundit had added, ‘With criminal libel, 152 killed since 1986, what more can you ask for?’

A more hopeful note was stuck by one NUJP member, who wrote, ‘Yes, so much to write about, so much to change’.

Two years ago, Ashkan Delanvar was arrested by Iranian authorities and held in poor conditions for 14 days before he was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

Criticising authorities online has now become so dangerous that 2011 was considered the deadliest year for online activists in many countries. Credit: Antonella Beccaria/CC BY 2.0

His crime? The student, blogger and computer technician had provided software to overcome the authorities’ internet filters and trained people how to use it.

Delanvar was eventually able to flee the country and is currently seeking asylum in Germany. He was the first person identified by the rights group Amnesty International who was tried and sentenced to prison under the 2009 Law on Cyber Crimes in Iran.

“Bloggers see it as their duty to inform other people, but in Iran (they) are seen as a threat to the government because they provide analysis of daily life and politics, and reflect news that is blocked,” Delanvar told Amnesty.

On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, human rights defenders say that journalists and cyber activists are being increasingly persecuted in countries where press freedom is either not a constitutional right or the law is simply ignored.

2011 deadliest year yet

According to Amnesty International, criticising authorities online has now become so dangerous that 2011 was considered the deadliest year for online activists in many countries.

With social media now firmly established as a tool to organise protests such as during the Arab Spring, netizens – citizens who use social media networks such as twitter or facebook – are facing the same dangers as journalists.

“Since the beginning of 2012, one journalist is killed every five days,” Delphine Halgand, Washington director of Reporters Without Borders, said during a reception to celebrate World Press Freedom day on Thursday.

Another 161 journalists have been jailed, together with 121 netizens, for conducting their rights and duties around the world, she said.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists puts the number even higher: 179 journalists detained in 2011, a 20 percent increase over 2010 and the highest level since 1990.

Governments pulling the plug

State authorities from China to Syria and Cuba to Azerbaijan are blocking search engines, charging exorbitant fees for internet access, torturing activists to obtain their facebook and twitter passwords, and passing laws that control what people can talk about online.

This was clearly evident during the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt, where the government shut down mobile phone services and the internet.

“The opening of the digital space has allowed activists to support each other as they fight for human rights, freedom and justice around the world,” said Widney Brown, senior director for international law at Amnesty International, in a press realease.

“States are attacking online journalists and activists because they are realizing how these courageous individuals can effectively use the internet to challenge them,” he added.

Yet journalists, bloggers and activists are coming up with new ways to bypass internet controls and ensure their voices are heard by millions across the world.

In some countries, activists have switched to using the twitter and facebook accounts of their imprisoned or murdered fellows in order to protect their own identities.

A global trend

This year already has seen autocratic regimes across the former Soviet Union strengthen their grip on power, choking dissent, muzzling criticism and clamping down on protest.

In Belarus, which held widely criticised presidential elections at the end of 2011, several prominent opposition activists and leaders of non-governmental organisations have been put behind bars.

Hungary’s parliament passed strict media-muzzling legislation in 2011 which was condemned by fellow member states of the European Union.

In Latin America, Honduras and Mexico are the most dangerous places for journalists.

Dina Meza, a Honduran journalist and human rights activist, received a series of threats of sexual violence against her in early 2012. On Apr. 6, she was walking in her neighbourhood with her children when she noticed two men taking photos of them.

On Apr. 28, the body of journalist Regina Martinez was found at her home in Veracruz, Mexico. Regina was a reporter with political magazine Proceso and, for over three decades, had reported on issues of insecurity, drug trafficking and corruption. Local authorities vowed to investigate the killing.

“Whilst new media is being more and more used in Mexico, last year also saw that this new era was facing attacks which hadn’t been imagined only a few years ago,” Karin Deutsch Karlekar, project director of freedom of the press of the non-governmental Freedom House, based in New York, told IPS.

Since 2000, at least 65 journalists have been killed in Mexico and at least 10 remain missing, according to human rights organisations.

On Thursday, the eve of Press Freedom Day the bodies of two news photographers were found dismembered in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz.

“We have seen some decline of freedom of the press in México. We are very worried about that. One of the main issues is the impunity, because the killings are not investigated,” said Deutsch Karlekar.

The Mexican Senate has approved a new law to protect journalists and human rights activists who receive threats, but the situation remains dire.

“Impunity for those who attack or threaten journalists remains disturbingly prevalent,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at a World Press Freedom day reception at U.N. headquarters Thursday.

“The U.N. will now intensify our efforts to help member states strengthen legal frameworks and investigate attack against journalists,” Ban said.

*With additional reporting by Rousbeh Legatis at the United Nations.

According to a book published in the Argentine capital, major Latin American newspapers with access to the secret cables obtained by Wikileaks decided not to print them because doing so would run counter to their own interests.

“Wiki Media Leaks”, by journalists Martín Becerra and Sebastián Lacunza, analyses the information about the relationship between the region’s newspaper companies and the United States, through its embassies.

“Many media outlets have communicated the leaked material, but only on extremely few occasions have they dared to publish diplomatic documents that could harm them, let alone any that specifically refer to them,” the book says.

Hundreds of thousands of secret, confidential and unclassified United States diplomatic communications were obtained by Wikileaks, a not-for-profit organisation, and handed over to large newspaper companies in 2010 for publication.

The cables span the period from December 1966 to February 2010, although the vast majority of them are from 2008-2010.

Lacunza, an IPS contributor with a degree in communication sciences, said the idea arose when he and his colleague saw that media with access to the cables “were reluctant to publish some ‘juicy’ ones that referred to themselves.”

Of the total of 251,287 cables sent by the U.S. Department of State and U.S. embassies around the world that came into the possession of Wikileaks, some 32,000 originated from Latin America, five to 10 percent of which refer to news media, Lacunza estimated.

Among their most notable findings was the “moderate nature” of ambassadors’ responses to “the tremendously audacious, illegal proposals of the media élites,” Lacunza told IPS.

According to the book, U.S. diplomacy has in certain circumstances been less aggressive, more accommodating, and less radical in its preferred options than local élites.

Beginning with an overview of the media in Latin America, Wiki Media Leaks goes on to detail which outlets in different countries had privileged access to the cables that were leaked by the organisation headed by Australian activist Julian Assange.

The investigation emphasised the concentration of news media ownership in very few hands in most countries of the region. However, as the authors point out, this is not generally a concern for Washington.

The book includes a chapter specifically on Argentina, which sheds light on clashes between the main newspaper companies and the centre-left government of President Cristina Fernández.

Another chapter deals with the strategies employed by the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires with friendly countries like Peru, Colombia and Chile.

Later on, the text focuses on countries with more problematic relations with Washington, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Honduras. And finally it analyses the cases of Brazil and Mexico, the region’s largest economies.

The book by Lacunza and Becerra, who holds a doctorate in information sciences, shows that in some countries like Argentina and Brazil, renowned columnists from newspapers and television programmes have taken their protests against their (left-wing) national governments to U.S. embassies, where they have sought support for their opposition arguments.

These arguments, expressed in the media, are collected by the embassies and sent to the U.S. State Department as part of their analysis, in a circle Becerra describes as “information endogamy.”

One of the journalists mentioned in the book is Joaquín Morales Solá, a columnist with Argentina’s La Nación newspaper, and a programme presenter on a pay channel belonging to the Clarín consortium; another is William Waack, with Brazil’s TV Globo. Both were quoted by the respective U.S. ambassadors “to keep the cables from appearing to be completely subjective,” the book says.

Lacunza told IPS that the practice of appealing to the embassies, while governments were attempting to create more progressive laws on the media, had turned out to be “a failed strategy” by the media, “belonging to bygone decades.”

In the chapter on Argentina, former U.S. ambassador to this country Earl Anthony Wayne says the Clarín media group “is not always managed as responsibly as we would like,” and adds that the Clarín newspaper, the flagship of the consortium, which boasts the highest circulation in the country, “can topple governments.”

“The (Fernández) government has a point about the Clarín group. It does have a tremendous amount of clout because of its dominant presence in print, TV, cable, and radio,” the ambassador said. He also said there is still plenty of press freedom in Argentina.

Wayne said that in the Argentine media, “there is more focus on rumours and unchecked assertions than the best media standards would call for.”

U.S. cables about Peru, Colombia and Chile are magnanimous, but not bereft of criticism of the media in these countries.

Peruvian newspapers that campaigned against now President Ollanta Humala were termed “sensationalist.”

In Colombia, the embassy said the media were “closely aligned with the government” of former right-wing president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), the predecessor of current conservative President Juan Manuel Santos, and were restrained in their stance on Uribe’s confrontation with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The embassies were generally more critical of media policies in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador – all of which are governed by leftist presidents – but they also criticised the lack of rigour or independence of media outlets aligned with the political opposition.

“(Bolivian President Evo) Morales is correct that wealthy families are the primary owners of Bolivia’s media outlets and that they generally have a conservative, pro-business outlook. These families often do not share President Morales’ political views,” one cable says.

In Ecuador, former U.S. ambassador Heather Hodges acknowledged there was “a grain of truth” in the observations of President Rafael Correa to the effect that “the media play a role here, in this case, of opposition,” another dispatch says.

“Many media owners come from the élite, from the business world, and they feel threatened and defend their own interests through the media,” said Hodges.

Cables from the U.S. embassy in Venezuela expressed surprise over a visit by Miguel Henrique Otero, the head of the newspaper El Nacional, asking for funding from Washington to counteract the withdrawal of government advertising.

As for Honduras, the book says that U.S. ambassador Hugo Llorens spoke out from day one about the “coup” perpetrated Jun. 28, 2009 against former president Manuel Zelaya, and criticised the media for their stance against the government and against democracy in the country.

Romeo Langlois, a French reporter in Colombia, removed his helmet and bullet-proof vest and ran towards the guerrillas during fighting between them and Colombian army troops on Saturday, Defence Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón reported.

The fate of Romeo Langlois, a French reporter who has worked in Colombia for 12 years, is unknown. Credit: Courtesy Simone Bruno

The Colombian government classifies Langlois as “missing,” while the French government said he was “kidnapped” or “taken prisoner” during the clash.

“Romeo was shot in his left arm and is wounded. And because of the pressure at the scene, he took off his helmet and vest and headed towards the area where the guerrillas were located,” Pinzón said.

Langlois was wearing the military gear because the Colombian army requires that it be used by journalists who are accompanying troops to cover war operations.

But reporters’ advice among themselves is to take off the military gear immediately in case of attack, to avoid being taken for combatants.

According to several members of the army who were taking part in the antinarcotics operation, Langlois abandoned his camera and, shouting that he was a journalist, ran towards the place where the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were shooting from.

“I don’t think there has ever been a kidnapping of a correspondent by the guerrillas,” Alfredo Molano, a local journalist who is a sociologist by training, told IPS.

“As far as we know, from the official sources, the reporter voluntarily gave himself up to those who were winning the fight, who at that moment were the guerrillas,” he added. “He couldn’t run to the police or the army, because they had been defeated. So he waved a white flag to the winners of the clash.”

Langlois, who works for the global television network France 24 and the French newspaper Le Figaro, has lived in Colombia for 12 years. He has a reputation among his fellow foreign reporters as a courageous journalist with great expertise on this country’s decades-old armed conflict, the economic interests underlying the war, and its victims.

He and another French reporter, Pascale Mariano, made the documentary “Pour tout l’or de Colombie” (For All the Gold in Colombia), which is currently being shown on many television stations around the world.

The incident occurred on Saturday Apr. 28 near the village of Buena Vista in the southern region of Caquetá, which formed part of the 42,000-square-km area demilitarised by the government of Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) for peace talks with the FARC, which collapsed in 2002.

Langlois was working with Italian documentary-maker Simone Bruno on an assignment about drug trafficking for France 24 and Le Figaro. They reached the Larandia military base in Caquetá on Tuesday Apr. 24.

A team of reporters from the National Geographic Channel was also there, to film the antinarcotics operation.

But the operation, originally scheduled for Tuesday, was postponed on Wednesday, and again on Thursday and Friday. The National Geographic team left, and Bruno returned to Bogotá because he had other work to do.

IPS learned on Sunday that approximately one week ago, the FARC refused entry into the region by a team of human rights defenders on a routine mission because, according to rumours, the rebel group was planning operations in the area.

A joint army-police antinarcotics force finally made the incursion on Saturday in Unión Peneya, where the village of Buena Vista is located.

Official reports differ as to what happened, and on the number of casualties – reported as anywhere between four and 21 – when an armed forces helicopter was shot.

Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Monday that “The war of words and half-truths is an intrinsic part of the Colombian civil war, and the consequences can be dangerous for its victims. The search for the facts must continue and no statement liable to expose Langlois to more danger should be made until the exact situation has been established.”

Bruno, whose computer was stolen in Bogotá in strange circumstances Saturday, returned to the region early on Sunday.

That afternoon, speaking from Caquetá, he told the television news station Canal Capital that the army had said they would give him Langlois’ video camera, but without the memory sticks – in other words, without the footage he had taped.

Bruno said he did not know where the reports that Langlois had been kidnapped came from, and stressed that the Colombian government reported him as “missing.”

Journalists who cover such operations are given workshops by the military on the risks they will face.

Although journalists travelling in a military vehicle do not in theory lose their protection as civilians under international humanitarian law, according to the same law, they accompany troops under their own risk.

Jesuit priest Javier Giraldo, a prominent human rights defender, pointed out that this kind of reporting “is very dangerous and can be misinterpreted by the other side.”

“Romeo Langlois is well-known by Colombianas y Colombianos por la Paz (Colombians for Peace),” said Gloria Cuartas, a member of that civil society group which helped broker the release of 30 civilian and military hostages held for years by the FARC, and which got the rebel group to promise in February to stop kidnapping civilians for ransom.

“I can attest to his commitment to covering Colombia’s complex armed and social conflict, and to his efforts to reach the victims and the communities that have been affected the most,” Cuartas, who won the 2008 Edict of Nantes prize granted by that French city to those who stand out for their fight for the rule of law, civil peace and freedom of conscience, told IPS.

“Human rights defenders have known Romeo Langlois for years,” said Claudia Girón, a psychologist who is the coordinator of projects with the Manuel Cepeda Vargas Foundation, a local human rights group.

Langlois’ most outstanding journalistic work has included “Galerías de la memoria” (roughly, galleries of memory) – travelling exhibits that seek to draw visibility to victims of state crimes, Girón said.

“Langlois is one of those people who, from an ethical standpoint, has shown all sides of the conflict, has pushed for peace in Colombia, and has shown the complexity of this conflict, in which there are victims on all sides, caused by all of the armed groups,” said Girón, who appealed for his safety.

Young people learning computer skills at Campus Tec. Credit: Danilo Valladares/IPS

By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Apr 26 2012 (IPS)

“We’re making a three-dimensional educational video game. The idea is to create virtual worlds where children can explore and interact with other people and objects,” said Carlos Villagrán, seated at a computer in the Campus Tecnológico in the Guatemalan capital.

The Tec, as it is better known, was conceived as “a physical space where innovation and technology can find a place to flourish at world-class levels of competitiveness,” according to its web site.

The campus is inspired by Silicon Valley, the technology park in California that is home to hi-tech giants like Adobe Systems, Cisco Systems, Intel, Apple Inc. and Hewlett-Packard.

So far, the Guatemalan campus is thriving. The Tec’s seven-storey building, inaugurated in June 2010, is fully occupied by 100 companies in the information technology (IT) sector, most of whose personnel are young people.

They specialise in producing special effects for movies, video games, and software for mobile telephones and the internet.

The Tec building, located in Cuatro Grados Norte, a cultural district with pedestrian areas, parks and restaurants, also houses the technology institute of the private Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, all of which has generated great anticipation and enthusiasm.

“We were about to throw in the towel because of lack of support, but then we came here and found plenty of people developing their own projects and companies,” Villagrán told IPS.

“There are three dimensional designers and modellers here who are collaborating with us,” he said.

“We have found a place to work, and we are more enthusiastic now,” said this 26-year-old computer science engineer, who wants to see his project “expand all over the world.”

Villagrán participates in the Tec’s “business incubator”, a sort of technological seedbed for entrepreneurial startup companies that is also part of the campus.

The incubator programme “accelerates the process of creation, growth and consolidation of innovative projects and businesses,” María Mercedes Zagui, in charge of business development at the Campus Tecnológico, told IPS.

“We have over 200 enterprise projects that are constantly buzzing around us. These are people who are allied to and interested in us, but we do not have enough space in the building for all of them,” she said.

To cope with the demand, a new 14-storey building is under construction to house more companies, including international firms, while strategies to attract the attention of potential clients abroad are growing.

Zagui said plans are in motion to open a Campus Tec office in the U.S. Silicon Valley technology complex in August.

“That will give us a global presence, because having an address here is not the same as having one in the United States, in the world’s largest business incubator. In addition, there are opportunities for making contacts and securing financial resources there that we do not have here,” she said.

According to the Ibero-American and Inter-American Network of Science and Technology Indicators (RICYT), this impoverished Central American country of 14 million people invests 12 million dollars a year on research and development, equivalent to 0.04 percent of GDP.

Direct government investment in science and technology represents only 27.9 percent of the country’s total investment in this area, while 21.7 percent is contributed by higher education, and the remaining 50.4 percent comes from abroad, the network says.

Meanwhile, the businesses at the Tec continue their struggle to innovate and open up a niche for themselves in the field of technology.

One of them is BigoMo, which does video postproduction and visual effects and is renowned for its work in “The Chronicles of Narnia” film series. Source Tour, meanwhile, has launched a virtual shopfront for tours and tourist activities in Guatemala.

“Being here has been good for our growth. I have met lots of people who work in the same field, but I see them as collaborators, not competitors,” said Mauricio Macal, the head of CG Armada, a multimedia production unit.

But the challenges are great. For one thing, the local market tends to undervalue these technological products, to the point that clients often do not want to pay the real value of their work.

Macal blames this on the fact that many people sell their work at far below market prices.

“There’s a lot of undercutting in the business. Some young people are making logos for 150 quetzals (20 dollars), and they are competing with companies that have fixed overheads, like office rent, and that use brand-name computers and legal software,” he complained to IPS.

In spite of the hurdles, the IT industry seems to be taking off at the Tec, for instance at Milk ‘n Cookies, another Guatemalan company devoted to multimedia production, web platforms and applications for cellphones.

“We have just tripled our office space,” Nelson Melville, the company’s project developer, told IPS.

The firm created the Minimundi site, an educational tool on the internet that teaches children about recycling and respect for the environment.

The site is sponsored by Ecoembes, a Spanish nonprofit association that works in the management and processing of recycled materials. Other companies like MTV and Discovery Mobile have also contracted services from the Guatemalan firm.

“The creative artists working here are expert at what they do, and their work is a labour of love. We have no reason to envy designers anywhere else in the world,” Melville said.

As the May 6 date for Serbia’s general election inches closer, two young Belgrade playwrights have capitalised on the electoral war of words between the pro-European camp and conservative nationalists to highlight the dark side of propaganda and expose the omnipotence of party membership.

For the last few months, the airwaves and newspapers in Serbia have been thick with promises of a ‘better life’ for a nation struggling with aftershocks of the economic crisis, high unemployment and a painful transition to a market economy.

Election pledges also touch on rebuilding democracy and all its attendant institutions, which came into being only after the downfall of the country’s former leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 and have since suffered from a lack of efficiency, transparency and accountability.

Amidst the turmoil, Maja Pelevic (31) and Milan Markovic (33), whose plays are staged in several prominent Belgrade theatres, offered what they described as a new “cultural and marketing strategy”, which was quickly snapped up by every major political party in Serbia and propelled the two young artists into positions of political authority.

What politicians and the media failed to recognise was that the duo’s text, ‘Idea, Strategy, Movement’, was lifted right out of a 1928 speech by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, entitled ‘Knowledge and Propaganda’.

“Everyone reacted positively,” Pelevic told IPS. “The nationalists and conservatives were the most open to us, as they have few young people in their parties. Others put us on their ‘cadre lists’,” she added.

The two presented their work to the broader public last week in Belgrade and in return were offered high positions in the various cultural councils of ruling coalition members including the centrist Democratic Party (DS), the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), and the pro-European Union Social Democratic Party (SDP).

The playwrights were also invite to advise the nationalist, opposition Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and the biggest opposition group, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). The newly formed United Regions of Serbia (URS) also took them in, as did the increasingly popular leftist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

The LDP even put the young dramatists’ strategy on its website.

Culture trumps politics

The playwrights said it would be intriguing to see if anyone would recognise Goebbel’s text.

“We replaced Hitler’s name with Vojislav Kostunica (the DSS leader), as his party asked for a text to explain our ideas on development of culture,” Pelevic said.

“We also replaced the words ‘national socialism’ with ‘democracy’ and ‘propaganda’ with ‘political marketing’ and it worked fine,” she added.

The excerpts the playwrights chose to pull from the speech deal with Goebbels’ ‘theory’ of propaganda, in which he stresses that people are drawn together and then slowly indoctrinated with “creative ideas”; a theory that rests largely on the importance of political power to get ideas across to mass audiences.

None of the parties seemed disturbed by the text’s totalitarian ideology that most democratic societies now fight against, “such as gaining power at any cost; spreading one’s idea into the very pores of society and (carrying) out a ruthless propaganda campaign,” Markovic said.

“Another of our aims (with the social experiment) was to see if we could move up (the economic ladder) if we joined political parties,” Markovic said, since “it is impossible to work in Serbia now as an art director, or even a writer without the support of the party.”

For many years, Serbian culture has fallen victim to the tough economic climate, constantly side- tracked by one regime after another since Milosevic’s downfall. Budgetary cuts for culture are huge, with dozens of theatres, movies production houses and even the Philharmonic orchestra being left with small sums of money, barely enough to cover staff salaries.

On the other hand, party membership has become extremely important, swallowing up various aspects of social and economic life. Employment has been tied so tightly to party membership that, now, some of the biggest opposition parties are brandishing slogans such as ‘Jobs for all, not only party members’, or ‘No more employment through party membership’.

For sociologists, the link between party membership and the playwrights’ success comes as no surprise.

“Old habits die hard,” cultural sociologist Stjepan Gredelj told IPS. “In the communist era, party membership was important for employment. Although we have had a multi-party system for more than 20 years now, the line of thought remains much the same in the generation of new politicians as well.”

“Party loyalty works two ways,” added sociology professor Ratko Bozovic. First, by placing its own members and supporters in key positions, the party ensures its line is followed closely, while also “keeping an eye on its workers”.

Secondly, “party members are safe in their positions and privileges. Democracy is a feeble plant that has yet to develop and grow here…we still live in partocracy. The cultural (stunt pulled) by Pelevic and Markovic has only confirmed that,” he added.

Both sociologists agree that the situation is the same in nations of former Yugoslavia, such as Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina and even Slovenia, the only country from the former bloc to become a member of the European Union (EU).

Ivan Tasovac, director of the Belgrade Philharmonic, has also seized on the moment of controversy to expose just how far politics have infringed on cultural space in the country.

Tasovac, who has been selected as “man of the year” several times in the past decade by media workers, promised the votes of all 100 musicians from the prominent cultural institution to the political party that could provide the most money for the new Philharmonic concert hall – a promise that every regime has made for two decades – and prove that one of its top officials attended a single Philharmonic concert in the past four years, since the last elections were held.

A pioneer of citizens’ journalism in Vietnam is risking 20 years in jail for defending Internet freedom and exposing the draconian censorship laws in this communist party-ruled country.

Nguyen Van Hai, who writes under the pen name ‘Dieu Cay’ (Peasant’s Pipe), has refused to accept the charges brought up against him, limiting the possibility of an acquittal, his lawyers have told human rights groups.

The lawyers fear that if Dieu Cay persists with his attitude, “they would have little chance of obtaining an acquittal or even a light sentence,” the Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR) said ahead of his impending trial.

Dieu Cay’s refusal to sign on the dotted line comes as Hanoi gears up to implement in June the new ‘Decree on the Management, Provision, Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online’.

The 60-year-old war veteran has been detained for the past 17 months for postings critical of the Vietnamese government on the Club for Free Journalists (CFJ), a blog established in September 2007 to promote independent journalism in a country where media are in the iron grip of the one-party state.

“He should have never been arrested in the first place,” Vo Van Ai, president of VCHR, said in a statement on the charges Dieu Cay faces for violating Vietnamese criminal laws on “spreading propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

The maximum sentence for those charged under this law is 20 years in prison.

“Courts in Vietnam are kangaroo courts because the entire outcome is fixed ahead of the trial. What is decided at the trial is the extent of the sentence,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based global rights campaigner, told IPS.

“Nguyen Van Hai may be slapped with the maximum 20-year prison term by refusing to sign any papers that he committed any crime, which rules out the option of negotiating a lower sentence,” Robertson said.

The plight of this famous blogger is shared by two other founding members of the CFJ, Phan Thanh Hai, 42, and Ta Phong Tan, 43. The former has been detained for 16 months and the latter for seven months.

The one-day trial for all three scheduled for Apr. 17 was suddenly postponed, a human rights activist said. “The government wanted to avoid negative media coverage ahead of the Apr. 30 (1975) anniversary (when the communist forces finally took complete control of the country after decades of war).”

The state’s prosecutors are armed with 421 blogs posted by all three on the CFJ’s website from September 2007 till October 2010, as these accounts were “distorting the truth (and) denigrating the (communist) party and the state,” said a report this month in the state-run ‘Thanh Nien’ newspaper.

That charge runs along lines that the only woman among the victims predicted two years ago.

“The government endlessly repeats that ‘Vietnam respects and promotes human rights’. But the way they have treated me proves that they do the opposite of what they say to the international community,” Ta Phong Tan, a former police officer and former communist party member, blogged on Apr.4, 2010.

“Everybody knows that I don’t belong to any organisation, no political party. I don’t call for the overthrow of the regime and I have violated no laws,” she wrote in the blog titled: “I am facing a plot (against me).”

“I am just a journalist, a free-thinker … I denounce anything I believe is unjust, things that my friends and I have suffered directly, and I speak out for ordinary people who are victims of injustice. That is what the state holds against me,” she then wrote.

Her words reflect the mission of the CFJ, which broke new ground to tap cyberspace, the only avenue available for free expression. It drew a huge following in the months that followed its launch, because it covered topics that the mainstream media barely touched.

Issues that CFJ took up ranged from local anger at China’s role in a controversial bauxite mine to China’s pressure on Hanoi regarding claims over the South China Sea, growing labour unrest, illegal land confiscation and heavy taxation of the poor.

Vietnam’s relationship with China has been fertile ground for critics who accuse its rulers of kowtowing to the more formidable communist party that governs from Beijing. And blogging has provided Vietnamese an “escape route” to air their views.

“Many blogs vocally supported public protests held in Hanoi last year about Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea,” Vo Tran Nhat, executive secretary of Action for Democracy in Vietnam, a Paris-based group of Vietnamese political exiles, told IPS. “They were surprisingly bold in their criticism of the government and the party.”

The CFJ was a new phenomenon in Vietnam and the authorities took some time before striking out at these pioneers of blogging in the country, said Robertson of HRW, whose organisation informed the European Union earlier this year of the 33 bloggers and rights activists convicted in 2011 “of crimes for expressing their political and religious beliefs.”

Such crackdowns come at a time when Internet usage in Vietnam is growing. “Internet penetration grew to 24.2 million users, representing 28 percent of the population,” the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based media rights campaigner, said in its annual report last year.

But the space for bloggers is bound to shrink further, warns another media rights watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), once the Decree on the Management, Provision, Use of Internet Services and Information Content Online is implemented.

“(It) would increase online censorship to an utterly unacceptable level and exacerbate the already very disturbing situation of freedom of expression in Vietnam,” RSF added in a mid-April statement. “It could criminalise any expression of dissident views and reporting of news that strays from the Communist Party official line.”

By Charundi Panagoda
WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2012 (IPS)

About 140 million Africans are now on the internet. With half of the population under age 15 and 70 percent of the population under 30, social media is becoming an important feature in the continent’s development path.

Teddy Ruge Credit: Courtesy of Teddy Ruge

Teddy Ruge, lead social media strategist for the World Bank’s Connect4Climate campaign and co-founder of Project Diaspora, an online platform for mobilising members of the African diaspora, calls this Africa’s “renaissance of access to information”.

“In 2012, there are about 600 million connected mobile devices in Africa,” he said. “Demographically, we have 300 million on the continent now moving to the middle class who can afford smart phones, laptops, connectivity.

“I look at that in terms of local voices beginning to have a conversation in development. I see this as an opportunity to look at issues of climate change, self- government, economic development and youth employment.”

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What does it mean that Africans are using social media and that they are connected more than ever before? A: There are frank discussions in development. What I like about social media is that Africans are connected, that they are able to read information about good governance and issues from a global perspective. They are also able to see how their country fares and compare themselves to other groups.

There is still a huge divide between participatory government – we have this connected youth, then we have these older people in governing ranks, some of them are remnants of colonial rule who’ve stayed in their positions for decades who really don’t have a connection to these youth voters yet. Hopefully, we can use social media to bridge that divide and say these are the voices of the youth of your country, this is what they need to move forward.

Q: You have called this the “legitimacy of social media for global engagement”. With the Rio+20 sustainable development conference coming up, what are African youth most concerned about? A: The conversation is still the same – are policymakers going to make policies to help us Africans who didn’t contribute a lot to climate change but are going to pay the most? Green energy is expensive, solar isn’t that cheap yet. Those coming out of university and high school are wondering where the jobs are going to be.

You see African youth beginning to ask the tough questions. If you want green job creation, who is going to pay for that? If you want us to stop cutting down trees, how are the villagers going to have energy access? Those are the critical questions. We anticipate a lot of commentary over social media from those who are not able to attend Rio. We expect the same questions for COP 18 Qatar as well.

Q: What could these social media savvy youth show that the policymakers can’t? A: We saw the actual people behind the numbers. We wanted to make it real for those sceptical about climate change. We wanted to provide this information to see if they can drive the local changes, that it simply isn’t about policy.

(For contributions for Connect4Climate) we asked to share with us what climate change means in your community. People sent us pictures of dead cows because of droughts. It wasn’t just the picture, it was the story that came with the picture. We saw energy, water and forestry were the biggest concerns.

We saw stories about women. In Africa, women do most of the domestic work, when there’s no water or firewood they have to walk miles to get some. We got pictures of women lining up to dig for water, walking into the woods.

Q: Do you see a disconnect between people who funnel money into Africa and the real Africans concerned? A: If we are looking at it from a policy and finance perspective, it’s very different. The World Bank is not necessarily communicating with the villager in Africa, they are connecting with the government and asking ‘what is it that you are working on and how can we connect you to funders?’ That’s the type of high-level conversation.

I think Connect4Climate falls somewhere between low- level and high- level conversation. Connect4Climate is able to say this is what the conversation is about in relation to climate change, how this goes through to the decision making depends on the veracity of these voices and how sustainable they are in calling for better solutions.

We do have people who pay attention to these voices and say perhaps we can aggregate these voices and craft a policy. I can say the voices are rising up and saying ‘we need solutions from an economic development perspective.’

For example, in Kenya youth are going into junkyards and retrofitting little engines and mechanical contraptions and building faster and more efficient windmills to recharge their electronics rather than rely on the grid. They were able to actually build working prototypes to generate electricity.

Solutions are already happening on the ground with youth. Can we find a way to fund these kids and their ingenuity and replicate that kind of spirit across the board?

Q: In the past you have spoken about the “White man’s burden”, about paternalistic attitudes toward Africa. Is this something the online Africans also talk about? A: I think they talk about it from a corruption standpoint. Aid isn’t really going to create jobs. Aid should be about creating infrastructure to help job creation. That’s what the entrepreneurs I talked to think, how to get financing so they can expand their operation and hire more people and move to the middle class.

We are becoming a lot more vocal because of the connectivity; we are a lot louder and so is our role in our solutions. We have issues but it’s not necessarily your job to fix them. It is our job to say ‘this is what we are working on, we can work together to solve this problem.’ The full-scale hijacking of African agency is going to be a thing of the past.

Excerpt:

In a major speech commemmorating the Nazi Holocaust, U.S. President Barack Obama Monday announced several steps his administration will take to curb mass atrocities abroad, including in Syria where he is under continuing pressure to intervene with military force.

Among other measures, he announced that Washington will now impose sanctions against individuals, government agencies and private companies that use or provide advanced communications or computer technologies to track, disrupt or target opposition activists for violent repression.

In the first use of such sanctions, the U.S. Treasury said Monday it was applying the new measure against Iranian and Syrian intelligence agencies, Syria’s state-controlled mobile phone company, an Iranian internet provider, and several individuals for their involvement in repression in both countries.

“These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them,” Obama declared at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “It’s one more step that we can take toward the day that we know will come – the end of the (Bashar al-) Assad rebime that has brutalised the Syrian people.”

In his speech, Obama also announced the formation of a much- anticipated Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), a high-level inter- agency body that will report directly to the White House on the potential outbreak of genocide, war crimes, or other mass atrocities and possible options to prevent or contain them.

The Board, which will meet at least monthly, will be chaired by the senior director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs, Samantha Power, a long-time close adviser to Obama who authored a book about the 1994 Rwanda genocide and reportedly played a key role last year in persuading him to intervene militarily as part of a NATO force in Libya.

In addition, Obama announced that the 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. intelligence community will for the first time prepare a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the risk of mass atrocities and genocide as part of an effort to, in his words, “institutionalise the focus on this issue”.

“In short, we need to be doing everything we can to prevent and respond to these kinds of atrocities – because national sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people,” Obama said.

On his visit to the museum, Obama was accompanied by the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who, in an interview with the Times of Israel last week, had rebuked Benjamin Netanyahu for repeatedly comparing the alleged threat posed by Iran to Israel with the Holocaust, as the Israeli prime minister did last Thursday at a memorial in Jerusalem in a particularly hawkish speech that drew widespread notice in elite foreign policy circles here.

But, in introducing the president Monday, Wiesel echoed some of Netanyahu’s themes. Reciting the West’s failure to challenge the Nazis as they perpetrated “the greatest tragedy in history”, he suggested that the West was playing a similar role today with respect to Assad and Iran.

“How is that Assad is still in power? How is that the Holocaust’s No. 1 denier, (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad is still president?” he asked. “He who threatens to use nuclear weapons destroys the Jewish state.”

“Mr. President, we are here in this place of memory. Israel cannot not remember. And because it remembers, it must be strong, just to defend its own survival and its own destiny,” he said.

In his remarks, Obama noted that his administration had repeatedly rejected attempts to condemn Israel at the U.N. and other international forums.

“When faced with a regime that threatens global security and denies the Holocaust and threatens to destroy Israel,” he said, “the United States will do everything in our power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” he stressed.

But most of his remarks were directed both at his administration’s efforts to prevent mass atrocities around the world – in Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, and in Central Africa with the ongoing hunt for Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – and his promise last August to make “preventing mass atrocities and genocide …a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.”

It was in that context that he also cited the steady build-up of U.S. sanctions against Damascus – including its documentation of atrocities allegedly committed by the Assad regime and its backing for the multinational “Friends of Syria” that supports the opposition – and announced the latest measure to punish those who use or supply “technologies to monitor and track and target citizens for violence”.

The U.N. estimates that more than 9,000 Syrians have died in the violence of the past 13 months.

The use of information technology by repressive governments constituted a “new and growing human rights threat”, according to a White House fact sheet distributed to reporters.

The new sanction, it stressed, is aimed not only against governments, but also “the companies that enable them with technology they use for oppression and the ‘digital guns for hire’ who create or operate systems used to monitor, track, and target citizens for killing, torture or other abuses.”

While this sanction is directed exclusively at Syrian and Iranian companies for now, it could potentially apply to others that sell technology to repressive governments, if there is reasonable ground to believe that the technology will be used to track and target dissidents, according to independent analysts.

“The Obama administration has made a significant decision today to attack the accomplices of mass atrocities by employing targeted sanctions against high-tech industries abroad and enforce such controls here when such trade empowers regimes that kill their own people,” said George Lopez, of the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

“These U.S. actions have real potential to disrupt, if not end, (commerce in) such goods and services.”

At the same time, the fact sheet stressed the administration’s recognition of the “importance of preserving the global telecommunications supply chains for essential products and services.”

Human rights and conflict-prevention groups, meanwhile, hailed the formation of the APB, which held its first meeting Monday afternoon, as a major bureaucratic breakthrough. First introduced by a bipartisan commission headed by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former Pentagon chief William Cohen in 2008, the idea of the APB has won approval from both sides of the aisle in Congress.

“It will be coordinating all the information both in and outside the government and meeting on a regular basis,” Mark Schneider, vice president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told IPS. “And the aim is not simply to bring together the information, but to force a response. That’s new. The U.S. government has never had a focal point on this issue in that way.”

“This new ‘all-of-government approach’ reflects hard-learned lessons from tardy responses to past humanitarian crises,” said Frank Jannuzi, a former top Congressional staffer who heads advocacy for the U.S. chapter of Amnesty International.

Albright and Cohen also praised the initiative but cautioned that it “should not be viewed as a new doctrine for humanitarian intervention or global adventurism, as some might suggest.

“Rather, it is a clear-eyed and pragmatic attempt to expand our government’s toolbox to meet the challenges posed by tyrants who pose an extraordinary threat to their civilian populations. This toolbox is about more than sending in the Marines,” they added.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Over the past few years, the political landscape of the Middle East was wholly transformed by the diffusion of social media across the region. Accounting for 50-65 percent of the region’s population, young Muslims quickly embraced these new platforms of mass communication and soon thereafter, they became leaders of revolutions.

Social media has enabled citizen journalists with the ability to create and distribute content across the globe. It allowed millions of strangers to unite behind the cause of greater freedom and economic opportunity and organize mass demonstrations that would forever change the autocratic Middle East.

Social media along with Arab satellite television provided a real information alternative to the state-controlled media outlets that for generations engaged in pro-regime propaganda often at the expense the truth.

It is hard to imagine that Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter) ever foresaw the liberalising impact and magnitude that their creations would one day have on the Middle East. Social media was instrumental in the mass communication and organisation of the Arab Spring movement that expressed the aspirations of millions of young people for meaningful political change.

The Obama administration has time and again expressed its commitment to genuine relationship building with Muslims around the world. Through social media, it launched an ambitious multiplatform public diplomacy campaign that allows for direct two-way communication between the State Department and Muslims.

Through videos and blogs, Facebook pages, and mobile phone applications, America can now both talk and listen. It seems like technology is reinventing the very essence of international relations.

Yet, recent evidence indicates that launching a successful public diplomacy campaign via social media may be easier said than done. An innovative global digital outreach campaign was recently introduced by the U.S. State Department. Their campaign allowed citizens from across the world to ask under-secretary for public diplomacy, Judith McHale, questions in 10 different languages using the #AskUSA Twitter hashtag.

This campaign turned out to be a bust. Most of the tweets consisted of either spam or communication from American officials from outside the USA.

Yet, the American State Department should not let one failed effort deter them. All relationships both off and online take time to develop.

The American State Department understands this. Just last month it reached out to young Iranians with its “Ask Alan” campaign through the USAdarFarsi social media platform that combines Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Will “Ask Alan” fair better than previous campaigns? Only time will tell.

One key point that all public diplomacy officials should keep in mind is that communication does not take place in a vacuum. This is especially true in the Middle East.

Recent scholarship on Anti-Americanism reflects a key challenge to American public diplomacy. Public opinion data collected in the Muslim world points to perceived inconsistencies between the values that America communicates regarding its commitment to freedom and democracy and its regional policies. Such perceptions were often related to America’s support of autocrats past and present day.

As the struggle for democracy continues throughout the Muslim world, millions of young people look to the social sphere as a virtual meeting place where they can share ideas, frustrations, and hopes regarding the struggle for greater freedom in their nations.

America’s digital outreach campaign can both guide and support the cause of democracy.

But no matter how many Twitter followers or Facebook friends America will have in the virtual world, it will ultimately be judged on the basis of its actual policies.

As the old Arab proverb goes: A promise is a cloud; fulfillment is rain.

*Dr. Guy J. Golan is an associate professor of public diplomacy at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. You can follow him on Twitter @GuygolanEmail: gjgolan@syr.edu

© 2012 Global Experts, a project of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.

Afghanistan is quickly becoming one of the deadliest countries in the world for foreign and local journalists. In the last decade alone, 16 journalists have been killed on the job and so far no one has been brought to justice for these murders.

The presence of 200 print news outlets, 44 television stations and 141 radio stations in Afghanistan has done little to improve press freedom Credit: Giuliana Sgrena/IPS

The silence of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in the face of such impunity is also a serious cause for concern for press freedom advocates.

After the fall of the Taliban and the arrival of foreign troops in 2001, Afghanistan experienced a ‘media boom’ that led to the rapid proliferation of publishing and broadcasting houses. The country is currently home to 200 print news outlets, 44 television stations (25 of which are in Kabul), about 141 radio stations and eight news agencies, all of which are increasing steadily.

Sadly, this increase has done little to improve press freedom in the country, since most media are linked to the government, warlords, the governments of occupying forces, or powerful, wealthy men – none of whom allow journalists to carry out their work properly.

Add to this the Taliban-imposed censorship of all media, including images of nudity that appear in soap operas, and the press landscape in Afghanistan bears striking resemblance to a battlefield on which journalists must wage a daily war to report the truth.

Widespread censorship

Nazir Fayaz, a 34-year-old journalist who has been working for years at Ariana TV, was forced to resign three months ago because of a dispute with the Iranian ambassador.

During an interview the Iranian diplomat accused Afghan people of “accepting the foreign occupation”, a statement which Fayaz openly criticised.

Because his harsh response to the ambassador was broadcast nationwide, Fayaz was put in jail for two days, then forced by Iranian and Afghan authorities to resign.

Now, Fayaz gets threatening phone calls not only from the Iranian embassy but also from “the government, warlords, drug traffickers and Taliban. It’s very risky to be a journalist in Afghanistan,” Fayaz told IPS.

“There is no freedom of press in Afghanistan because all the media are in the hands of warlords, mafia and banks. Censorship is even stronger in governmental media. Ariana TV was (independent) until the Afghan-American owner, Ehsan Bayat, became senator,” Fayaz told IPS.

Fayaz is now considering leaving the field altogether to become an activist with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission because “there is no chance of doing an honest job in media in Afghanistan.” He believes that free media is crucial to bringing peace to the country, “but if there is no freedom of expression the result will be the opposite,” he predicted ominously.

Some provinces in the south and east of Afghanistan, like Helmand, Uruzgan, Paktika and Farah, are no-go areas for journalists.

On Feb. 22, 2011, the decapitated body of Sadim Khan Bhadrzai, who had been kidnapped the previous evening, was found in Urgun, in the southeastern province of Paktika. He was the manager of Mehman- Melma, a local, very popular radio, and his death was just the latest in a series of targeted assassinations of media personnel over the years.

Every year there are hundreds of cases of violence against journalists, most of them in Kabul, Herat and Helmand.

Women journalists solider on

Women journalists have increasingly become the target of threats. In 2007 Zakia Zaki, the owner of Radio Peace in Kandahar, was shot and killed in her bed, where she sleeping with her young son.

But despite the dangers of the job, women haven’t given up.

Najeeba Feroz is a frail but resolute 24-year-old journalist working for BBC Afghanistan, which broadcasts in Dari and Pashto. Her office in Shara Now, in the centre of Kabul, is a well protected building surrounded by armed guards.

Feroz earned her degree at Kabul University and worked at a string of independent print and broadcast outlets, including Tolo TV, but was soon frustrated by the lack of independent reporting and the heavy- handed political control of all media.

“The only choice you have is between censorship or self censorship. That’s why I moved to the BBC,” she told IPS.

Here, “we verify all our sources and we don’t care if we have to report on corruption involving the government or warlords, as long as the reporting corresponds to reality,” she said.

Feroz, like many other journalists, wants to leave the country.

“After three years of work here (at the BBC) we have the opportunity to spend one year outside, this will be a good chance, but after that I will come back to help my people,” said Feroz, whose beat is covering women’s issues that often go unreported.

Senator Belqis Roshan, another intrepid female journalist, told IPS she travels around her province of Farah, collecting news about violence against women and raising the voices of victims in the senate, because “in Farah we have no media at all,” she said.

Afghanistan has a stubbornly high illiteracy rate of 72 percent, so TV and radio are the most effective ways of spreading news around the country.

La Casa de Internet de Latinoamérica y el Caribe on the seaside avenue in Montevideo. Credit: LACNIC

By Álvaro Queiruga
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 18 2012 (IPS)

The capital of Uruguay has become the headquarters of Latin America’s six leading Internet organisations, brought together in the same building.

The Tuesday Apr. 17 inauguration of the Casa de Internet de Latinoamérica y el Caribe, the regional Internet centre, on the seaside avenue along the Río de la Plata (River Plate) estuary in the upscale neighbourhood of Carrasco, makes Montevideo the foremost hub of organisations of this kind in the world.

“There is no other city in the world, or building, where so many organisations involved in this issue come together,” Raúl Echeberría, chairman of the Internet Society (ISOC) and executive director of the Internet Address Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC), told IPS.

The first of the six organisations is the regional chapter of ISOC, an international non-profit founded in 1992 dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world.

LACNIC, for its part, allocates and administers IP addresses in the region.

The Red de Cooperación Latinoamericana de Redes Avanzadas (Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks) develops and operates the only advanced Internet telecommunications network for research, innovation, and education in Latin America.

The LACTLD (Latin American and Caribbean TLD Association) is a non-profit organisation that groups country code top-level domains administrators of Latin America and the Caribbean as well as administrators from other regions that have ties to this continent.

The Latin American and Caribbean Federation for Internet and Electronic Commerce (eCOM-LAC) is devoted to promoting the development of ICTs and e-commerce throughout the region.

Lastly, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Exchange Point Operators Association was created in 2011 to strengthen regional interconnection.

The initiative of bringing these organisations together “in one place improves coordination and strengthens the institutionality of the sector and its capacity to assist in the process of development of the Internet,” a LACNIC press release says.

Broadband Internet access is key to economic development and social equality in the region, said Uruguay’s minister of industry, energy and mines, Roberto Kreimerman, who took part in the ceremony along with President José Mujica.

At the Sixth Summit of the Americas, held Apr. 14-15 in the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, Colombia, there was a consensus among the 34 participating countries that broadband Internet access is one of the keys to bolstering social equality, along with regional integration, and increasing value-added and technology in regional production.

The minister also referred to the work of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to install a fibre-optic broadband ring in the region, to cut costs and improve connectivity.

There is no doubt “about the Internet’s potential for development,” Echeberría told IPS.

Of the approximately 600 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, 40 percent have access to the Internet. Echeberría estimates that the proportion will climb to 60 percent by late 2015.

The region is in a process of “economic growth that is unique in its history,” the Uruguayan expert added. “This is the decade of Latin America. And to continue growing, we need strong, stable, secure, open Internet, with models of participative governance and the involvement of all actors.”

The average poverty rate in Latin America shrank from 44 percent in 2002 to 31 percent in 2011, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), while unemployment stands at 6.6 percent.

But many challenges remain, because Latin America still has the world’s largest gap between rich and poor.

According to ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena, “Broadband should become a regional or global public good, which is not for free but has to be for everybody.”

In Bolivia, for example, “if you are a farmer who is living away from urban areas, you have to come to the city to find out about product prices, for trading and for getting information. All that is key for your small and medium-sized businesses. Then you save a lot of money in terms of travelling, communication and paper work,” she told IPS in an interview in New York.

In that impoverished Andean nation, “if you want to have access to broadband of two megabytes you have to pay 300 dollars a month, which is 17 percent of the per capita income. That is the level of the gap. Internet access in Bolivia is thereby probably 40 times more expensive then in France and 100 times more expensive than in (South) Korea.”

In this respect, Echeberría said “we are facing the challenge of increasing the number of users, but also of reducing the internal gaps in the region. If we manage to do that, we will achieve an open, participative Internet that serves as a platform for the development of our population and as a catalyst for exercising human rights.”

Uruguay, where Internet penetration is 60 percent of the population – one of the highest rates in Latin America – was chosen to host the Casa de Internet de Latinoamérica y el Caribe because of a legal framework conducive to the installation of non-governmental international bodies, which are given tax breaks, the expert said.

The quality of telecommunications and the stability of the financial system also influenced the choice of Montevideo as a headquarters, he added.

* With reporting by Rousbeh Legatis in New York.

Wielding mobile phones and computers, the young activists across the Middle East have altered the way the world approaches popular mobilisation, social networks and Internet freedom.

The Internet can be a transformational force for societies and individuals, allowing for organisation on a mass scale and the free flow of information. However, we must remember that the Internet and social media are tools that do not bring change themselves, but act as facilitators in spreading the ideas.

The seminal use of social media as vehicles for change in the Arab Spring uprisings exemplifies the power of web-based communication and makes a strong case for Internet freedom.

Web-based communications have been used by young, tech literate activists across the Middle East for three core purposes: organisation, exposure and leverage. Youth led efforts to organise social and political movements, expose the injustices of governments and leverage internal and external stakeholders acted as catalysts for uprisings which would have otherwise remained dormant.

Social networks allow for communication across geopolitical, cultural and linguistic barriers. This tool allowed the youth leaders of Egypt, the West Bank, Jordan, etc. to organise in revolutionary new ways by creating online communities of supporters and using those networks to bring people into the streets and rally international support for their cause.

As mobile devices and smart phones become increasingly common, protesters are able to gather at a moment’s notice. This level of organisation is made possible by near instant communication and a network of vigilant, tech literate devotees.

Additionally, groups are able to develop, collaborate on and distribute content to a seemingly limitless audience. The ability of young activists to organise using technology has brought the nature of citizen action to a new level and given voice to previously unheard narratives.

Web-based communications, including blogs, YouTube and RSS allow for personal, unofficial or nongovernmental narratives to be exposed and widely consumed. Embedded in the nature of the Internet is the possibility to share multiple narratives through an array of platforms.

With the barrier to Internet access lowered each day, more people have the option to participate in self-expression via the web. However, the idea that everyone should have the ability to share their opinion over the Internet has quickly become contentious.

Citizen journalism and activists’ blogs have exposed the atrocities perpetrated by otherwise opaque regimes. In these situations, the Internet poses an existential threat to the government’s power to control a national narrative, but provides a space for free speech.

Predictably, civilians have been targeted and tracked by their governments for attending rallies, publishing anti-government content or posting footage of state perpetrated violence. Websites have been censored and attacked. Web access has been limited or debilitated. Clearly, social media and Internet-based communications are tools that hold the potential to both help and harm.

The leverage young activist have is both domestic and international. Much like the Velvet Revolution when youth mobilised across all sectors of Czech society to protest Soviet rule, the young activists of the Arab Spring brought people from across age, religious and class barriers together under a single banner.

Exposure of governmental wrongdoing through online citizen journalism can pressure the international and domestic media to focus on particular important events. However, leverage can reach even further; the protests in Tahrir Square helped pressure the United States to reassess its support of Hosni Mubarak.

Recently, the United Nations Human Rights Committee affirmed that the protections guaranteed by International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) apply to online communication. This announcement confirms that bloggers have the same protections as journalists.

Additionally, U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue issued a report which states that Internet use has become an important means by which individuals can exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression. Denying such a right is a violation of the ICCPR.

While the idea that unrestricted Internet as a basic human right is far from a reality, its use by a young generation of tech-savvy Middle Eastern activists has put web-based social media communications at the centre of the debate on freedom, democracy and change.

*Megan Martin’s specialty is ethnic identity and U.S. foreign policy in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. She has a master’s degree in politics from New York University.

© 2012 Global Experts, a project of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.

A dissident Chinese author has expressed dismay at the lack of independent and exiled authors represented at this year’s London Book Fair (LBF), where China is guest of honour. An ensuing public spat, revolving around accusations that the Fair’s organisers have bowed to Chinese authorities, has thrust the thorny issue of censorship to centre-stage.

In a letter sent to the British Council and LBF, Bei Ling, founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC), said that he is “astonished that no independent literature voice nor exiled writer from China is being represented at the London Book Fair programme.”

He goes on to state amazement that the state-run Chinese Writers’ Association have chosen the 31-strong author delegation travelling to London to represent China, which is this year’s market focus country.

“Also shocking is the London Book Fair’s cooperation with GAPP (General Administration of Press and Publication which overseas the Writers’ Association) – the very ministry that’s responsible for censorship,” Bei writes in the letter.

Missing voices at the fair Apr. 16-18 include the exiled novelist Gao Xingjian, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000, and poet Liao Yiwu, who escaped China last July. Nobel Peace prize winner and poet Liu Xiaobo, currently serving an 11-year prison sentence, will also be unrepresented.

“This is very embarrassing, because the London Book Fair should be choosing writers to join the panels independently,” Bei tells IPS. “Sure, LBF may consult the opinions of GAPP, but it doesn’t mean that it has to blindly follow GAPP’s instructions…LBF should show that they are independent instead of being manipulated.

“Exile literature, underground literature, and independent writings are also a part of Chinese literature,” he adds.

The argument echoes the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair scandal in which Bei and investigative journalist Dai Qing were cut from the list of authors invited following pressure from China. The two writers were restored after a media furore, leading to walkouts from Chinese representatives at the Fair.

Moves have been made to counter the official list in London. Bei will be sharing a stand at the LBF for the ICPC alongside a Hong Kong-based publisher. English PEN also held their own event Mar. 29 , “China Inside Out”, for authors not invited in the approved delegation.

Tibetan poet and blogger Tsering Woeser, 46, who was placed under house arrest last month, is another author excluded from LBF. Woeser was granted both the Norwegian Authors Union’s Freedom of Expression Prize and a freedom of speech medal by the Association of Tibetan Journalists in 2007. She was invited to Frankfurt in 2009, but was unable to attend because she did not have a passport.

“I am used to getting ignored,” Woeser says from her home in Beijing. “This is the reality of China. If you are a writer within the system, for example you are a member of the Chinese Writers’ Association, you will have opportunities for publishing and attending literary events like book fairs. But if you are outside the system, even if you are a good writer, the chances for publishing are few and book fairs are more unlikely.”

Woeser publishes her thoughts in an influential (and blocked in China) blog which has helped expose the rash of Tibetan self-immolations and unrest over the past year in south-west China.

Authors who are part of the delegation, however, have complained that the media furore has taken the emphasis away from literature to politics.

Alice Xin Liu, managing editor of Pathlight, a new English language literary magazine featuring translations from top contemporary Chinese writers, says the LBF features many of today’s most exciting authors. Examples include Bi Feiyu, winner of the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize.

“Writers such as Han Dong (author of the Cultural Revolution novel ‘Banished!’) are quite daring. So it’s quite murky – (Bei’s) distinctions are actually way too clear cut,” the Beijing-based translator and editor tells IPS.

She adds that while listening to the voices of exiled authors is important, “the large majority of the population are reading writers not like him – they are reading writers like Mo Yan and Sheng Keyi, the writers who are going (to the fair).”

Regardless, Bei Ling is holding out optimism that dissident writers will be heard. “I still have hope they can include an independent writer or exiled writer to join a panel,” he says.

When an Egyptian court fined former president Hosni Mubarak and two aides a total of 90 million dollars for cutting mobile and Internet services during protests that led to his ouster, it indicated the value placed on communication services in this Arab country.

The 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak in February 2011 was largely organised by groups creatively using social networking websites like Facebook and Internet radio. The fines were handed down three months later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO

Whenever I think of the youth issues, I remember: “Our youth are not failing the system; the system is failing our youth. Ironically, the very youth who are being treated the worst are the young people who are going to lead us out of this nightmare.”

– Rachel Jackson (a California, U.S. organiser with the group Books not Bars)

The youth are talented and full of energy and if channeled in the right direction, the outcome is amazing. But at the same time there are a number of problems they face which sometimes may turn them to something else.

From unemployment to public policy, Kenyan youth are turning to mobile phones and social networks to voice their concerns and encourage policy makers to address their needs.

Unemployment ranks as one of the most important issues shared by Kenyan youth. Whether highly educated or not, the unemployment is a challenge to all, more so in a developing country like Kenya.

The biggest headache for many new young graduates is the so called “Experience tag.” It is the reality that you can’t get a job without experience, and at the same time, you can’t get experience if you are not given the job. It is a Catch 22 kind of a situation. Are the employers to be blamed entirely? I don’t think so. Companies prefer to hire people that can hit the ground running.

Yet Kenyan youth are not sitting idly by to let their frustrations build. They are communicating with one another and sharing discussions on the current state of affairs the country is challenged with. The most amazing trend is the growing rate of young people who are now using mobile phones, and to a larger extent, social media to do amazing things.

With a short supply of work, they have the time to collect their thoughts and voice their opinions to others in the community, which is fostering a high level of awareness.

The same energy has not gone unnoticed by politicians and policy makers. A majority of them have joined social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to reach out to the young people.

A good example is when the current budget was being prepared by the Kenyan minister of finance, Uhuru Kenyatta. In what was a first not only in Kenya locally, but probably globally, Kenyatta asked Kenyans to share their ideas and suggestions on the budgetary interventions that they would like to see in the 2011/2012 Financial Year Budget through his social media accounts, among them Twitter and Facebook.

The response was overwhelming. The treasury received an unprecendented 4,000-plus submissions through Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

Collective action when faced with a crisis

Another classic example of young Kenyans setting the agenda on social media came last summer. Due to the pressing situation where many Kenyans were affected by the drought, young Kenyans grew weary of waiting for the government and other NGOs to step in. Youth took matters into their own hands.

Ahmed Salim – also known as @ahmedsalims on Twitter – in collaboration with Kenya Redcross, started a campaign on Facebook and Twitter that urged Kenyans to skip at least one meal and donate it to feed starving Kenyans residing in the Northern part of Kenya.

Donations were made through sms on the mobile money payment system, Mpesa. The campaign dubbed #FeedKe went viral on social media just within a few hours. A week later, Kenyan corporate members, among them mobile phone network operator Safaricom, Kenya Commercial Bank and Media Houses, joined the campaign.

At least Ksh.114,564,470 (1,287,241 dollars) had been raised. Not only did youth manage to raise awareness and combat a humanitarian crisis, but they bypassed the current political system and effectively solved a critical problem under one collective.

The debate continues as many young people are now outright telling the government to come up with lasting solutions for the recurring drought in Northern Kenya.

Without a doubt, the use of mobile phones and the creativity of Kenyan youth have made Kenya a shining light in Africa when comes to technology and direct action. As more youth are becoming increasingly civically engaged and drawing attention from politicians, Kenya is sure to be a country of incredible social and political growth for the next coming years.

As long as youth remain active in the democratic process, anything is possible.

*Kachwanya is the chairman of BAKE (Bloggers Association of Kenya), social media consultant based in Nairobi and lead blogger at Kachwanya.com – sharing tech ideas in Africa. He is also the content manager of Mobilemonday.co.ke, and co-founder of Maduqa.com.

© 2012 Global Experts, a project of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.

The rapid currents moving the centre of economic influence towards an emerging global order headquartered in Asia were evident at the PanIIT’s 2012 annual conference of alumni of the highly prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), which took place in Singapore over the Easter weekend.

The three-day conference hosted a diverse range of top-notch speakers representing global business, academia and the financial sector, expressing their views on developing strategies to navigate the challenging global economic environment and to create sustainable long-term growth.

Except for one Westerner, all the speakers were Asian, mainly Indian, including heads of formidable global businesses, such as Arjun Malhotra, co-founder of Hindustan Computers Limited and chairman of Headstrong USA; Shekhar Mitra, senior vice president of Procter and Gamble USA; R. Gopalakrishnan, director of Tata Sons Limited; and Ho Kwong Ping, executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings, Singapore.

Hosting the meeting in Singapore was a first for a group that, since 2002, has convened alternatively in India and the United States. But there are over 1000 IIT graduates who now work in Singapore, many in high profile jobs such as the provost of the new Singapore Management University, Rajendra Kumar Srivastava.

“Most IITians coming here have had significant work experience and they have filled a gap in Singapore’s existing skills,” S.N Venkat, secretary of Strategic Partnerships at the IIT Alumni Association of Singapore, told IPS.

The high regard in which IIT is held in Singapore was reflected in the fact that the country’s former president S.R Nathan is the patron of the alumni association here, and the current president, Tony Tan, was the chief guest at the gala dinner on Saturday night.

In his keynote speech to the conference, S. Iswaran, minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, said the high number of IIT graduates working in Singapore and across Asia “reflects more generally a fundamental shift in the global centre of gravity from the West to the East.”

Iswaran warned that as manpower costs and energy prices rise, and Western currencies weaken, Asia’s advantage as a low-cost manufacturing base will wane.

“Asian economies need to be able to move on to higher value-added economic activities in order to sustain their economic growth. They will have to leverage on design technology and a skilled labour force to create products and services for their own domestic markets, as much as for the rest of the world,” he noted.

This is where Asian institutions like IIT are expected to play a leading role.

A roundtable involving visiting directors of IITs from around India and four local universities discussed possible collaboration efforts, including the long-standing invitation from the Singapore government to set up an IIT campus here.

“As Singapore becomes an educational hub for Asia, especially for Southeast Asia, (our) emphasis is on having institutes of higher learning of global repute to be based here to attract students from the region,” explained Venkat.

Many speakers pointed out that with economic crises in Europe and the U.S. still unresolved, following the western capitalist model blindly is not the right development path for Asia, which should instead develop its own model, utilising traditional practices.

This was a theme reflected in a keynote speech given by Ho Kwong Ping, whose Banyan Tree Holdings has developed a chain of luxury hotels across the world based on Asian tastes and standards.

Still, he warned that Asia’s rise is not predetermined and argued that the continent must produce a basket of intellectual solutions to address Asia’s chronic social inequality.

“China has a deficit of democracy (while) Indian leaders have realised that democracy is not reducing inequality” and both are unable to “move beyond capital reforms,” he noted.

“As Asia continues its dynamic growth we need to delve into our own history and culture for inspiration to develop Asian values of capitalism. One resource could be the webs of mutual obligations which are present in virtually all civilisations of Asia,” argued Ping. “It is possible for Asia to develop this communitarian capitalism, if properly nurtured and developed, as an alternative to the highly individualistic model of American capitalism.”

Ping singled out India’s Tata model of capitalism, which benefits from being “stakeholder driven and not shareholder driven.”

Tata’s Gopalakrishnan told IPS that most Asian businesspeople have been reading books written by Westerners and adopting their ideas only because there are hardly any books written about good practices by Asians.

“The West is…saying we must become conscious capitalists (though) many people in Asia are saying we have always been doing that,” he said.

He said that Tata used its one billion dollar profits to set up a trust to help the poor, “so part of our profits go back to the community.” The Tata group consists of over 100 companies in seven business sectors operating in more than 80 countries around the world.

In the past two decades IIT graduates have been some of the most successful innovators and entrepreneurs in the U.S.’s Silicon Valley. If they turn their attention to the rest of Asia now, experts believe they could make a big difference.

Jignesh Shah, founder chairman and group CEO of Financial Technologies India, a world leader in creating and operating technology-centric financial exchanges, argues that new business models in Asia are opening up.

“It will create huge opportunities for the best brains from Asia like you (graduates of IITs),” he told the conference. “India and China have huge savings rates and if it gets into share markets rather than remaining in banks … Asia will generate the next Goldman Sachs.”

May 1998 was a terrible and magical moment in the history of Indonesia’s youth movement.

It was a time of deep social trauma and the start of the transformation of young Indonesians into agents of democratic change after more than three decades of living under repressive authoritarian rule.

The political moment began on 12 May when Indonesian security forces opened fire on unarmed student protesters from Trisakti University in Jakarta who demanded the resignation of President Suharto. The “Trisakti tragedy”, as it was commonly called, left four students dead (Elang Mulia Lesmana, Heri Hertanto, Hafidin Royan and Hendriawan Sie) and dozens more injured, giving birth to the first of a long line of “reformation heroes”.

Set against the backdrop of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which hit Indonesia the hardest out of the affected countries, the Trisakti riots quickly spread to socioeconomically distressed cities throughout the country and forced the collapse of Suharto’s New Order regime on May 21, 1998.

That explosion of Indonesia’s student-led reform movement onto the national political stage raised expectations among many young people that they would become active participants in the rebuilding of a more democratic Indonesia.

Indeed, Indonesian youth collectively constitute a potentially formidable force for social change with almost 40 million men and women between the ages of 15 and 24 years, comprising 18 percent of the national population.

Yet, more than a decade after the first flush of democratisation, the palpable mood of social solidarity that once united Indonesia’s youth movement in the face of a common enemy – the New Order regime and its supporters – has given way to fragmentation and diversification in the demands and expectations of young Indonesians.

The extent to which today’s youth feel able to participate in the public realm is often linked to individual experiences of inclusion and exclusion within Indonesia’s unfolding democratic framework.

There are still plenty of angry youths who see themselves as the moral pulse of the nation and as a bulwark against the New Order’s legacy of producing corrupt and self-serving local political leaders (e.g., the civil society organisation SPEAK, Suara Pemuda Anti- Korupsi/Youth Voice of Anti-Corruption, and GEPAK, Gerakan Pemuda Anti-Korupsi/Youth Against Corruption).

In every city there are also angry unemployed youths who join gangs of thugs because they feel marginalised from civil society and denied a sense of belonging and purpose within Indonesia’s democratic project. For many young Indonesians, religious activism offers a panacea for society’s moral maladies and the abrogation of responsibility for injustices in an increasingly open and capitalistic national landscape.

However, the same youth who rail against the inequitable distribution of wealth and uneven life opportunities under the current neoliberal system are frequently themselves enthusiastic consumers of free market policies rather than active participants in community cooperation programmes.

The manner in which Indonesian youth articulate their needs, aspirations and activism in the public sphere has shifted somewhat since the initiation of democratisation.

In the early years after regime change, student-led mass demonstrations about specific policy issues were commonplace, as were urban-based riots and sporadic acts of political violence by disaffected youth. While young Indonesians still take to the streets in public protest, they have made growing use of the Internet over recent years.

Like young people everywhere, Indonesian youth have been the fastest to adapt to new forms of social media. Numerically they are among the most energetic users of Facebook, twitter, foursquare and blogs in the world.

Youth organisations like the Islamic activist JPRMI (Jaringan Pemuda & Remaja Masjid Indonesia/Youth & Adolescent Network of Indonesian Mosques) and the Indonesian Youth Parliament (Parlemen Pemuda Indonesia) are continually expanding their nationwide networks by coordinating online activities with offline programs.

With mobile phones now available to even the poorest street vendor, youth activism is reaching broader public audiences and at a faster rate than ever before.

The deepening of procedural democracy in Indonesia, combined with increasing computer literacy and access to social media technologies, has created a situation in which Indonesian youth now have unprecedented opportunities to pursue their civil and political rights to freedom of expression.

This does not mean that the voices of young people are always heard by Indonesia’s decision-makers. Reform-minded youth organisations and individuals continue to encounter challenges from sections of the state bureaucracy and from family oligarchies that tend to operate above civil society and without regard for its wellbeing or environmental sustainability.

The legacy of the 1998 generation of student activists, then, is the enduring hope that today’s youth will use their increased agency to think and act creatively in the ongoing struggle for a more democratic and equal Indonesia.

*Dr. Michelle Miller is a research fellow in the Asian Urbanisms Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on the interplay between decentralisation, conflict resolution and urban change in Asia, especially in Indonesia.

© 2012 Global Experts, a project of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.

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

By Malini Shankar
BANGALORE, India, Apr 6 2012 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

The lack of adequate management of electronic waste in Guatemala is posing a serious threat to the environment and health, as demand for electronic devices has soared to the point that there are more cell phones than people.

E-waste goes untreated in Guatemala. Credit: Alex E. Proimos/CC BY 2.0

Chrome, mercury, lead, selenium and arsenic are some of the most toxic substances in e-waste, which can cause serious damages to health, Mayron España, director of E-Waste de Guatemala, an NGO that collects such products for recycling, told IPS.

Brain damage, cancer, miscarriages, reduced male fertility and genetic malformations in foetuses are some of the health effects caused by exposure to these heavy metals, studies have found.

“And all of these metals end up in the water sooner or later,” because they seep into groundwater or because e-waste is dumped into surface water bodies like rivers, said España, whose organisation collects e-waste to be recycled abroad.

“Water is the big environmental buffer. It is also a finite resource on a global level, which means it will become scarce,” he said.

Guatemala does not even have general guidelines on the handling of solid waste, the expert noted. In the meantime, he said, the use of electronic devices is growing exponentially.

In the case of cell phones, “they are used for just six or nine months, because new models are constantly coming out,” he said. “Fashion, tastes, attitudes and habits are driving people to consume more and more things, even when they don’t need them.”

According to Guatemala’s telecoms regulator, the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones, the number of mobile phones in use in 2011 reached 20.7 million in this country of 14 million people – up from just 3.1 million in 2004.

And a similar increase has been seen in the case of computers, digital cameras and TV sets, and other products.

But these devices are highly polluting. A single nickel cadmium battery cell phone can pollute 50,000 litres of water, according to environmental watchdog Greenpeace.

A study on e-waste by the Guatemalan Centre for Cleaner Production, “Diagnóstico sobre la generación de desechos electrónicos en Guatemala”, concluded that by 2015, at least 13,000 tons of cell phones and 18,600 tons of computers and accessories will have been thrown out in this Central American country.

The report proposes the “three R’s”- reduce, reuse, recycle – to curb the negative impact of e-waste on the environment.

The study, carried out by two engineers, Sonia Solís and Andrés Chicol, calls for the formulation of e-waste management plans as part of a national strategy that should include activities aimed at raising public awareness about the problem.

Adriana Grimaldi, a chemistry professor at the private Mariano Gálvez University, stressed the urgent need to address the question of e-waste because of the serious risks posed to the environment and human health.

Grimaldi said PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), whose production is banned by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, are among the “most powerful and carcinogenic” substances used in electrical devices like transformers and capacitors.

She told IPS that people “should not fight with chemical elements, which can also be very useful, but must learn to manage them property, because otherwise they can pose serious dangers.”

Julio Urías, an adviser to the Red Giresol – the Guatemalan network of environmental promoters for prevention and integrated management of solid waste – says there is much to be done in the area of waste management in Guatemala, although he also mentioned important efforts by social organisations and private companies.

He said that an essential step is to draft and enforce “viable legislation.” He also called for “education and information for the population about consumption habits.”

In addition, the expert said “incentives and clear rules are needed in order to take advantage of the profits that e-waste management and recycling can generate. But just because a law is passed doesn’t mean things are going to work,” he added.

The government’s National Commission on Solid Waste Management estimates that just five percent of the 7,000 tons of solid waste produced daily in this country is recycled.

However, there are positive experiences with recycling, which show that it can generate opportunities for people who have none.

That is the case of Edulibre, a non-profit that donates old computers to public schools in poor areas.

“Companies donate their old computers to us,” Javier Hernández, a computer technician who works with Edulibre, told IPS. “We check them and install our own operating system that we have adapted for Guatemala, from free software.”

Since 2007, the organisation has also set up five computer labs in the capital and other parts of the country, which serve more than 1,000 children, while protecting the environment by reusing old equipment.

The slopes of the Blue and John Crow Mountains show the signs of deforestation and erosion. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Apr 2 2012 (IPS)

A public awareness project that aims to foster wider understanding among locals about the linkages between the global climate and their social and economic wellbeing is Jamaica’s newest adaptation strategy.

Launched on Mar. 23, the yearlong public awareness and education (PAE) campaign is a component of the 30-month European Union funded Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction project.

Its purpose is to eliminate the knowledge and awareness gaps identified in Jamaica’s Second Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), climate change negotiator Jeffery Spooner told IPS.

Writing in both the First and Second National Communication, local climate experts identified the urgent need for a PAE campaign to target and educate decision and policy makers as well as the wider community about climate change issues.

They noted that an understanding of the problems was key to implementing successful adaptation measures, particularly in relation to the “attitudes, perceptions and lack of information that were key barriers to technology transfer”.

Communications specialist Gail Hoad explained that people “need to understand the signs in order to respond effectively”.

The PAE project has partnered with “Voices for Climate Change,” a national public awareness initiative that utilises the “expertise, talents and influence” of 30 or so established popular entertainers to break down social barriers and educate Jamaicans on adaptation techniques.

The campaign will also include stakeholder consultations, workshops, training sessions and a range of tools to strengthen capacity within government, state agencies and among stakeholder groups.

Hoad hopes to increase the PAE’s chances of success by tapping into Voices’ inventive use of culture, music and drama to educate communities about the effects of climate change as well as to reinforce resilience methodologies in high-risk communities.

Speaking at the launch, Minister of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change Robert Pickersgill, spoke of the national commitment to “have dialogue and communicate at all levels to share information on climate change, its impacts and on appropriate responses to those threats”.

Scientists believe that climate change will amplify Jamaica’s vulnerability to the effects of tropical storms and hurricanes, cause economic fallout, outbreak of diseases and loss of unique Jamaican plant and animal species.

A survey in support of the Second Communication found that less than one third of the islanders knew what climate change was, or the associated risks.

Environmental activists have long argued for adequately funded and consistent public education campaigns to change local perceptions and create an appreciation of nature, the environment and their long-term economic and aesthetic value. Most Jamaicans, they argue, have no idea of the value of the island’s natural ecological resources.

They accuse government of “selling out” Jamaica’s natural wealth by approving massive development projects that call for large-scale alteration of the physical environment.

The touchiest developments have been associated with the 2,560 additional hotel rooms constructed between 2007 and 2010 to support the hotel industry.

The yearlong public awareness plan should address some of these concerns.

According to Hoad, it aims to “educate communities that are vulnerable in both the ecological and economic sense, as well as to educate leaders and policy makers in both the public and private sectors”.

Long overdue, scientists say, because they are already seeing the signs of change.

The 2nd National Communication reported, “Climate change may have already affected the island’s coral reefs. Widespread coral bleaching in 1988 and 1990 has been attributed to the increases in the temperature of coastal waters.”

According to the 2010 State of the Environment report, there are changes along the shorelines of Hellshire Bay, the Great Salt Pond and Half Moon Bay in St. Catherine. Environmental data show that since 2007, more than 40.6 hectares of wetlands have been removed or relocated to facilitate development projects.

It is not uncommon for the authorities here to grant development approvals subject to the creation or restoration of previously degraded wetlands to replace those that have been damaged or removed to facilitate the projects.

In 2008, it was reported that in addition to hillside farming, the biggest threats to the island’s 26 watersheds were poor agricultural practices, squatting and pollution – 10 watersheds are severely degraded.

Conservator of Forests Marlyn Headly told IPS in a recent interview that many farmers cultivate the often thin and erosive soils in some upper watershed areas on slopes of more than of 20 degrees.

Estimates are that more than 170,000 farmers cultivate less than 245,000 hectares using techniques that contribute to massive soil loss and the siltation of waterways.

Warmer sea temperatures may have driven the widespread destruction wrought by hurricanes Michelle (2001), Ivan (2004), Dennis, Emily and Wilma (2005) Dean (2007) and Gustav in 2008.

An increase in seawater temperatures may also have caused the bigger than normal storm surges that destroyed homes in Kingston’s seaside community of Caribbean Terrace in 2004 and 2007.

A major construction project is now underway to raise the Palisadoes road by six feet. The road that leads to Kingston’s Norman Manley Airport has been repeatedly inundated since 2004 when it was made impassable by the sea during Ivan.

Climate experts also say the resurgence of malaria in December 2006 after 40 years of absence may be another sign of a changing climate. More than 400 people in depressed areas of inner city Kingston were affected.

People living along the coast will be most impacted. An estimated 60 percent of Jamaica’s 2.7 million people live less than two kilometres from the shore. Most will lose their homes, livelihoods and incomes as commercial activities and infrastructure are damaged or destroyed by extreme conditions.

Experts and activists are agreed that an uninformed population will aggravate the problems of climate change. Spooner acknowledges that there are challenges ahead.

In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that it would take about 462 million dollars, or roughly 197 dollars per person, to protect Jamaica from sea level rise. Today, the cost would be 531.9 million dollars.

The creation of a Climate Change Ministry is seen as affirmation that the new government is committed to the process. A climate change department to coordinate and streamline activities has also been announced.

Spooner also pointed out that Jamaica’s climate fund application was advanced. “It is already before the board. The concept has been endorsed and the government has been given permission to apply for funding,” he told IPS.

“There is need to ensure that an action plan is in place, that a climate policy is developed as quickly as possible and that things are in place so we can start doing what needs to be done,” the meteorologist added.

“The need for public awareness is critical and urgent…climate change is real,” Spooner said.

*This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

By IPS Correspondents and - -
SAN FRANCISCO, California, U.S., Mar 28 2012 (IPS)

In Tunisia, a new debate is taking shape. Long suppressed by the authoritarian regime of former President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s free expression movement for many years existed on the fringe, comprised of bloggers, software developers, media aficionados and expats whose frustration at Tunisia’s Internet censorship and surveillance regime – in place for over a decade – fomented their activism.

Now, regime shackles cast off, debate about Internet censorship has become significantly more subtle as youth vie for a free Internet while navigating tricky terrain.

Prior to Jan. 13, 2011, access to the Internet was extremely inhibited, preventing young people from utilising most of the social media tools that have become popular the world over. Only Facebook was left open, and even then, was under surveillance, putting activists who used the site in danger and preventing others from doing so, out of fear.

In January 2011, just one day before he fled the country, Ben Ali declared an end to the country’s pervasive censorship and surveillance practices, leaving Tunisia’s citizens with a free Internet for essentially the very first time. But the absolute freedom was to be short-lived: Within just a few short months, the Agence Tunisienne d’Internet (ATI) had released a list of blocked sites, allowed by court order.

Though brief, the list contained links to individual Facebook pages, including one belonging to a known dissident. In an interview, ATI director Moez Chakchouk acknowledged the filter’s lack of technical sophistication, commenting that there are “a thousand and one ways to access, especially by proxy or by typing a different URL syntax”.

Not long thereafter, a Tunis court issued an order – based on a petition by a group of lawyers – forcing the ATI to block pornographic content on the grounds that it poses a threat to minors and to Muslim values. The decision prompted an appeal from the ATI, which has stated its desire to act as a neutral and transparent Internet exchange point.

It has also prompted a new wave of activism from young citizens who fear that instituting any kind of filtering could take them back to the days of Ben Ali.

Their fears are not entirely unfounded. While numerous well-meaning countries have attempted to put in place bans on online pornography, none have yet to do so without including – intentionally or by error – other, innocuous content.

Take, for example, the case of Australia, which in 2007 introduced a scheme to filter “illegal content”, including certain categories of sexual content. Not only was the filtering mechanism broken almost immediately (and by a teenager, no less), but the blacklist of sites was later found to contain the website of a dentist, as well as other unrelated content.

Furthermore, filtering is ineffective and costly. Just as Tunisians for many years utilised proxies and other circumvention tools to get around the ban on YouTube, news, and other sites, so can they utilise the same tools to access pornography. And the cost is not simply financial: Filtering can result in slowed bandwidth as well.

The youth of Tunisia deserve their newfound freedom. Just as tools like Facebook has helped activists spread information about protests and disseminate videos and photos, those same tools will help a new generation of Tunisians connect with their peers around the world as they set out to build their new Tunisia.

And, as they do, the battle for free expression is one that they should not have to fight.

*Jillian York is the director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. She also writes regularly on the Internet and society for Al Jazeera English.

© 2012 Global Experts, a project of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.

Excerpt:

By Edgardo Ayala and - -
SAN SALVADOR, Mar 23 2012 (IPS)

“You see? That’s where they were going to put the antenna,” says Alicia Suncín, pointing to a spot in the middle of a park in the Salvadoran capital where a private company was planning to erect a cell phone tower, 10 metres away from swings and see-saws where children play.

Local residents in the Salvadoran capital are fighting the installation of cell phone towers in their neighbourhoods. Credit: Karl Baron/CC BY 2.0

Some 1,000 families from Suncín’s Santa Fe neighbourhood in the north of the capital of El Salvador and from other parts of the city are taking part in the protests, because they fear the potentially harmful health effects of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the cell phone towers.

“How can I live next to a 33-metre tall antenna that emits radiation, which is a health hazard?” Suncín remarked to IPS.

After years of debate and international scientific studies producing results both for and against this claim, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said in a May 2011 communiqué that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields emitted by wireless communication devices are “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”

“They are a danger to our health and that of our children; we don’t want these cell phone towers here,” said Zulma Handal, also a member of the Coordinating Committee.

A number of studies have found evidence of symptoms of ill-health such as fatigue, headaches, sleep disturbances and memory loss among people who live within 100 metres of mobile phone towers.

At present, dozens of cell phone towers are scattered across the urban landscape of the Salvadoran capital, which is home to 1.5 million people.

Some of the antennas were built after telecommunications were privatised in 1999, but in recent years their number has multiplied in line with the telecoms companies’ need to expand their networks and provide wireless internet services.

About 7.5 million cell phones are in use in this Central American nation of 6.2 million people.

One of the transnational corporations involved in the mobile telephony sector in El Salvador is América Móvil, owned by Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Under its trademark Claro, the company operates the largest mobile phone network in the Americas. América Móvil is the privatised successor to El Salvador’s state-run National Telecommunications Administration (ANTEL), which was sold to France Telecom in 1999 and acquired by Slim in 2003.

Also present in the Salvadoran market are the Spanish firm Telefónica and the Jamaican company Digicel.

When the metal towers were first installed in San Salvador, they were purportedly to be used for closed circuit video surveillance cameras in parks and recreation areas, as part of a public safety initiative by the mayor of the capital city, Norman Quijano of the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).

However, in several communities and neighbourhoods IPS was able to verify that the towers are in fact being used for wireless telephone services, including one in a park in Centroamérica, a neighbourhood in northwest San Salvador.

In a document dated Nov. 24, 2011, signed by Rafael Henríquez, the city councillor for San Salvador’s District 2, the municipality gave permission to Collocation Technologies of El Salvador “to carry out the installation of towers or telecommunications structures in Centroamérica Park.”

Local residents say this company is subcontracted by one or other of the telecoms companies to install cell phone towers. “They put one in Centroamérica Park and now they want to put one in our neighbourhood, but we won’t let them,” said Suncín.

The San Salvador mayor’s office responded that no one was available to be interviewed by IPS.

Residents of the areas where telecoms towers have been located are calling for their removal. “Fortunately there is a social movement of citizens who are against them and are not just waiting until cancer victims appear,” Gregorio Ramírez, an activist with the Salvadoran Ecological Unit (UNES), told IPS.

Human rights ombudsman Oscar Luna added his voice to the criticism, complaining that the structures were built without informing or consulting the local population.

The conflict between protesters and the city government of San Salvador occurred during the election campaign for mayors and city councillors which led to Quijano’s re-election as mayor Mar. 11. Quijano said the protests were politically motivated and designed to prevent his re-election.

Article 11 of the municipal regulations for mobile phone tower installation empowers the mayor to authorise their placement, on condition that they do not obstruct any right of way and are not placed on median strips or traffic islands, or on land adjacent to houses.

This last requirement was in danger of being violated in the case of the tower planned for construction in Santa Fe, because the chosen site is only a few metres away from several houses, as IPS was able to confirm.

So far, the national government has remained silent.

“State institutions ought to issue a statement, including an investigation into what regulations the mayor’s office followed when it granted permission for the towers, backed up by the WHO reports that say the radiation is harmful,” Nayda Medrano, the executive director of the Consumer Defence Centre (CDC), told IPS.

Many consumers have complained about the telephone service since it was privatised, citing overcharging and other problems.

The CDC reported that fixed charges for a residential landline in El Salvador amount to nearly 10 dollars a month, compared to just 2.10 dollars in neighbouring Honduras, 3.58 dollars in Nicaragua, and 5.36 dollars in Guatemala.

Although El Salvador has a telecommunications law and a regulatory agency, analysts say foreign companies have raked in profits during the wave of privatisations that swept the country, and the rest of Latin America, in the 1990s.

But although the country’s first leftwing government took office in June 2009 with the victory of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (the FMLN guerrilla movement-turned political party), very few changes have occurred, the local residents complained to IPS.

The Coordinating Committee for Communities Affected by the Installation of Cell Phone Towers has asked parliament to ban the installation of mobile phone towers close to population centres.

Activists want the legal ban to include the precautionary principle formulated by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, which has been taken into account by countries like Argentina and Chile.

The precautionary principle states that, even if a cause-and-effect relationship has not been fully established scientifically, if the product or activity poses a threat to health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken.

Although the families in Santa Fe are optimistic, they know they are up against powerful economic and political groups. “It’s a case of David against Goliath,” Suncín said.

Excerpt:

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

By K. S. Harikrishnan
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, Mar 21 2012 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -
BANGKOK, Mar 16 2012 (IPS)

In a move expected to deepen political reform, the quasi-civilian government in Myanmar (also known as Burma) is permitting the distribution of leaflets that will help thousands of people in the country’s ethnic enclaves learn to resist forced labour.

The leaflets offer residents in the ethnic minority areas a chance to raise the alarm with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) about the horrors they endure at the hands of government troops deployed in their areas.

The Shan ethnic minority is the first to benefit from this new measure, one among a growing list of reform policies – including freeing political prisoners, easing the iron grip on the media and permitting public campaigns by political dissidents – that President Thein Sein has ushered in during his first year in office.

The one-page, A-4-size sheets of paper that have been flowing from Yangon (also known as Rangoon), the former capital, to the Shan state since January has been hailed by the ILO for using the local Shan language – stepping away from the policy of previous military regimes to suppress ethnic languages.

Following the distribution of nearly 30,000 leaflets in the Shan state over the past two months, the ILO has set its sights on raising awareness about its “complaints mechanism for forced labour” in six other ethnic areas, where Burmese troops have been fighting separatist rebels.

“The government agreed this year for the production of the ILO’s awareness raising materials on the complaints mechanism for forced labour in other languages, including Karen, Kachin, Chin, Rakhine and Mon,” says Steve Marshall, the Geneva-based body’s representative in Myanmar.

“It is hoped that these will be available for distribution very shortly,” Marshal said.

“This dramatic change is clearly linked to the new government’s response to the issues ILO is raising, reflecting the change of leadership, philosophy and priorities of the government,” Marshall said in an interview in Bangkok.

But reaching this milestone has been tough. The ILO office in Rangoon began pushing the case following a March 2008 decision by the ILO governing body to raise the need for “the production of awareness raising materials on forced labour, explaining the agreed ILO complaints mechanism in the country.”

Then military strongman Senior Gen. Than Shwe permitted the brochures to be printed only in Burmese, the language of the country’s largest ethnic group and it It took two years of negotiations between the military regime and the ILO to “get agreement to the wording”.

Since its June 2010 distribution in the central region, which is home to majority ethnic Burmese in the country of 55 million people, the ILO noticed a steady increase in cases being lodged.

While a mere drop when compared with the scale of such human rights violations, the over 1,160 forced labour complaints that the ILO has received in the past four years offer a glimpse into who the victims are and the abuse they have been subjected to.

The majority of cases from the dominant Burmese side have been children forced to swell the ranks of the military, according to the ILO.

The few complaints of forced labour lodged by ethnic communities have ranged from villagers compelled by troops to help build public works, carry goods and ammunition for the Burmese army and clear land.

But, human rights groups have long accused the Burmese military of more violations in areas where battles with ethnic separatist groups have raged since 1949. They have included slave-like duties to clean military camps, build military structures and walking ahead of troops in terrain infested with landmines.

“Whether it is carrying supplies for the army, building their camps, standing sentry duty along roads or serving as vassals for under-supplied and poorly disciplined garrison battalions, the Burmese army as it currently stands is a burden to local communities,” says David Scott Mathieson, Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch (HRW), the New York-based global rights lobby.

Consequently, the plight of forced labour victims in the ethnic areas was not forgotten during the early round of peace talks that the country’s largest rebel groups – the Karen and the Shan – have had with the Thein Sein administration since late last year.

The Karen National Union (KNU) demanded an immediate end to “forced labour, arbitrary taxation and extortion of villagers” as the sixth item in an 11-point plan for peace talks with Burma’s railway minister, Aung Min, head of the government negotiating team.

“Fighting in the Karen area has resulted in a lot of forced labour, so we wanted it included in the early round of talks,” David Tharckbaw, KNU vice-president and head of the movement’s peace committee, said during a telephone interview from the Thai-Burma border. “They (the Burmese government) accepted these concerns in principle.”

But complaints have continued, given the presence of nearly 200 military camps in the Karen state, near the Thai border. “As of February 2012, forced labour was ongoing in five villages in the Tantabin township,” revealed the Karen Human Rights Group in a Mar. 12 field report.

A similar picture prevails in the Shan state. “Forced labour was discussed during the talks but never put on the agenda,” says Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of a Shan news agency and a member of the Shan negotiating team in talks with the government.

“It is time the Burmese army mends its ways to build up trust among local ethnic populations,” he explained during a telephone interview from northern Thailand. “They should end forced labour.”

The government’s nod to the ILO taps into such a prospect. “This initiative will be valuable support to ongoing ceasefire and peace talks,” says ILO’s Marshall.

Excerpt:

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore and - -
BEIJING, Mar 15 2012 (IPS)

Millions of Chinese micro-blog users will be forced to hand over their details this week in a real-name registration drive. The new state regulations – piloted in five Chinese cities – have created uproar amidst fears the move will bring heightened censorship and a crackdown on users.

China has witnessed an explosion in social media over recent years, with the number of micro-blog users quadrupling in 2011. Around 300 million are registered on micro-blogs across the country, and many use the Twitter-like posts to verbalise anger over subjects ranging from corruption to pollution. Until now they have been allowed to post their views anonymously.

Sina Weibo, which was launched in 2009, has become the favourite mirco-blogging site in China with over 250 million registered users. Despite censors blocking sensitive words on the site – such as Tibet or Tiananmen – it has become a haven for whistleblowers.

But in December the Beijing city government announced that all micro-blog operators based in the capital, including Sina Weibo, must force users to provide a verifiable real name and mobile telephone number within a three-month deadline, which expires Mar. 16. Those who fail to comply will no longer be able to post comments on the site.

The pilot scheme will be extended to other areas if successful, Wang Chen, minister of the State Council Information Office, stated in January.

The regulations are an attempt to prevent “the spread of rumours”, Wang said. Micro-blogging, he added, “can spread information rapidly and have a big influence. It covers a wide population and can mobilise people.”

“This is a violation of privacy and security,” Wang Junxiu, CEO of Blogchina, tells IPS. “It will have negative effects, for sure. The government said it will maintain social stability – they must have meant maintain their stability.”

Wang adds that the rules are bound to turn away users. “Web portals are not very keen on this policy, because strict applications will decrease their users.”

With media strictly controlled by the state, the public have few outlets to express opinions. Past hot topics on Weibo have ranged from the abuse of local power to land grabs.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) warns that the rules will curb public empowerment and prevent individuals from highlighting contentious issues for fear of retaliation.

“In terms of real name registration, there are two angles. For those individuals who are known to the authorities for perceived dissent or challenges to the status quo – the most famous being people such as Ai Wei Wei – this real name registration doesn’t make a difference because they are already on the grid,” says Phelim Kine, a senior Asia researcher at the New York-based HRW.

“The real concern is that real name registration will have a chilling effect by discouraging individuals from making disclosures based on a not unfounded fear that there might be official reprisals from such actions.”

Liu Wenbing, a 32-year-old IT worker, is just one of the many who opposes real name registration. Liu will no longer use Sina Weibo and will instead turn to Twitter. The site is blocked on the mainland, but many Twitter-users get around the Great Firewall via use of a proxy.

“Weibo is a platform to publish and spread information – real identity is not necessary. The government just wants to control citizens and interfere with personal freedom. It is an expression of un-confidence,” Liu tells IPS.

“The government said it is for maintaining social stability. It sounds hypocritical and typical with ‘Chinese characteristics’. It is really designed to undermine the platform. Citizens should be able to say whatever they want to say. People like freedom. Registration is a way of depriving it.”

Online reaction has been just as vehement. “Weibo is a tool to spread information,” said a user named Leo- Majia on Sina Weibo. “It brings surprises to our lives, such as anti-corruption, the Guo Meimei scandal (in which a 20-year-old girl who claimed to work for the Red Cross of China flaunted her designer lifestyle in pictures on Weibo, sparking a national crisis of confidence in Chinese charities), crackdowns on abducting and selling children etc. If it goes real name, I am afraid Weibo will lose its charm and value too.”

Despite such concerns, Sina Weibo has announced that it expects 60 percent of its account holders to meet the deadline. Forty percent have failed to complete the registration, according to Sina’s chief executive Charles Chao.

A spokesperson at the Sina headquarters tells IPS: “It is a government move. Sina isn’t in the right place to say much.”

Excerpt:

Since it first hit the airwaves more than 50 years ago, the University of the Philippines (UP)’s campus radio has evolved into a community broadcaster, serving as the voice of the people.

DZUP radio’s tower reaches communities outside the Philippines university campus. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

DZUP 1602 Khz, the UP’s radio station, does not just air the voice of students and the academic community but also allows grassroots groups and the marginalised to use it as a platform for social change.

Josefina Santos, DZUP’s station manager, says the radio station started in 1957 as an “an experiment” of the UP’s college of engineering and the college of arts and sciences.

The station played a crucial role during the leftist unrest in the country and allowed students to voice their concerns during the years before the 1972 declaration of martial law by then president Ferdinand Marcos, cracking down on protests and agitations.

“Sometime in the late 60s until the 70s, before martial law, it really became the voice of the university and a dissenting voice of the people who really were for social change,” says Santos.

“When martial law was declared, one of the first stations that the military went after was DZUP. They destroyed all the equipment and UP went off the air,” says Santos.

In the 1980s, under the management of the UP’s college of mass communication DZUP was revived using an old transmitter borrowed from the Philippine Broadcasting Bureau.

Radio programmes focused on health, people’s rights and various other issues, provided an alternative perspective to mainstream media. There, however, were technical problems operating on a “very low-powered” transmitter.

“We didn’t have the financial support of the government at that time. It was so difficult. Sometimes just a clap of thunder would cut us off air,” recalls Santos.

“Every now and then, we had to borrow some parts from other stations just to operate DZUP… but still it became the voice of students and teachers at that time and we were able to generate support,” she adds.

When the UP was recognised as a public service university, DZUP was able to get the much needed financial support, and in 2010 it finally got a new transmitter capable of handling regular programming.

Now, broadcast communication students produce, write, and host the shows, while faculty members serve as executive producers and programme hosts.

Other departments also co-produce and air their own shows over the radio station. ‘Psych O’Clock Habit’ is a show anchored by professors from the department of psychology, while ‘That’s Entrep-tainment’ is run by the UP institute for small scale industries.

Similarly, ‘Itanaong kay Engineer’ (Ask the Engineer) is co-produced by the college of engineering; and ‘Abogado ng Bayan’ (Lawyer of the People) by the law college. Other programmes deal with health matters, economics, student concerns, sports and music.

The more powerful signals and wider reach beyond the campus opened up avenues for grassroots communities to come in.

DZUP is the only radio station with public service programmes that give a voice to ordinary people such as drivers, vendors and village leaders about concerns affecting the community.

The station works with a partner, Kodao Productions, a multimedia outfit that produces radio programmes and video documentaries on social issues in the country. Kodao Productions also provides training to community broadcasters.

“We conduct training for regional and sectoral organisations interested in putting up their own community radio stations or producing radio programmes to be aired in radio stations nationwide,” says Kodao’s director Raymund Villanueva.

Kodao is a member of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, an alliance of about 5,000 community radio stations worldwide.

Kodao’s main public service radio programme, ‘Sali na, Bayan’ (Join us, Nation), broadcast over DZUP, Monday to Friday, from 2 to 3 pm is reserved for the marginalised sectors of society.

Villanueva says the universal challenge for community radio is financial difficulties due to its non-profit nature. Finding funds to pay for equipment, conduct training and maintain operations is a major hurdle.

Unlike other Asian countries like Indonesia and Nepal where “community radio stations define the news,” Villanueva says that the lack of legislation supporting community radio in the Philippines has been a hindrance.

“The government makes it very difficult for marginalised sectors to apply for permits to set up their own community radio stations.

“No one from the big stations generally cares for or consistently asks the marginalised sectors about what they think is happening in the country,” says Villanueva.

DZUP’s Santos agrees. “In ordinary radio stations, the masa (masses) will go there to ask for help. Here, the masa goes there to give their opinions, to give updates on what is happening in their community.”

While challenges remain for community radio, both Santos and Villanueva are optimistic that DZUP can provide a good platform for airing grassroots issues to a wider listenership.

The renovated facilities, new tower and transmitter now enable DZUP to broadcast on five kilowatts of power, expanding its reach throughout Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

The advent of the Internet has also allowed the station to expand its reach to include Filipino workers in various parts of the globe. Programmes, streamed online, are available through the Diliman Interactive Learning Centre under the UP.

“A portion of our current listeners in the United States is overseas Filipinos. We have overseas Filipino worker groups reporting from Hong Kong, Rome, Libya… They are able to listen to DZUP through live streaming,” says Villanueva.

DZUP is also turning to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and archiving episode for online reception.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

By Marwaan Macan-Markar and - -
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Mar 10 2012 (IPS)

When he returned home after over two decades as a political exile, Aung Zaw, a prominent figure among Burma’s exiled media community, was served a slice of truth by the country’s notorious censorship board.

Aung Zaw, editor, 'The Irrawaddy' Credit: 'The Irrawaddy'

It was just one of the many encouraging experiences of Aung Zaw during his five-day visit in February. Another was freedom to travel and meet contacts and dissidents, including pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, without being tailed by government spies.

The openness and sense of hope he felt in the Burma under its quasi-civilian government was in stark contrast to the climate of oppression that had gripped the country in 1988, the year he fled, hiding in remote villages, till he reached the Thai border.

In 1993, this trenchant critics of the military junta launched ‘The Irrawaddy’ on a shoestring budget to cover political events in Burma. The publication’s two-decade presence, first as a monthly and then as a website with daily updates, set the tone for the growth of the exiled media – a new phenomenon in Burmese journalism. It now has close to 20 media outlets in Norway, India, Bangladesh and Thailand.

“I don’t see ourselves as exiled media now, after the government lifted the restrictions to access our website inside Burma,” he said during an interview in his editorial office in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: You returned to Burma after 24 years in exile, during which time you set up ‘The Irrawaddy’ to expose the oppression by military regimes back home. Are the days of military dictatorships since the 1962 coup drawing to an end? A: Burma is changing, it is going through a transition period; it is at a crossroad, definitely. But if this change is not managed well, not done intelligently, in a more creative way, I am afraid we are going to lose this period of transition. That would be a shame. This is a golden opportunity for Burma.

Q: Among the places you visited was Naypidaw, the new administrative capital, to meet officials of President Thein Sein’s government. What did that visit feel like, since your publication was scathing in its coverage of the former junta’s plans to build this new seat of power? A: I got a call on my first morning in Rangoon from the government asking me to come to Naypidaw as soon as possible. I was expecting to make this journey at the end. So, I went immediately.

It was a funny journey (laughs) as I talked with the others in the vehicle about the number of stories we had written about this secret, jungle hideout, how much money was spent and the kinds of clandestine operations and deals struck by the military regime in the past. And then finally to see it – looked like a place in China; I felt it in the style of the buildings.

But I had a very warm, incredible reception with the officials from the president’s office. We had extensive talks, didn’t beat around the bush.

Q: Like what? A: Media laws in Burma, press freedom and the censorship board – when are they going to abolish it. How much freedom the media inside the country has and the changing media landscape since last year and will there be more openness.

Q: Does it mean you are planning to relocate The Irrawaddy to Burma? A: I did talk about our intentions to go back, at some point, and launch our publication at home. But is that possible? How much freedom will we have? These are questions of concern about the media space for us, because inside the country the cronies, the tycoons and family members of the military dominate and control the media, the many layers of publishing, even contents and editorial policies.

But I think there is potential for journalism to grow, for more professional journalism to take root. There are groups of people who are committed and very dedicated, very determined; they are relatively small. They need support and I see them as partners to reeducate journalists about what is good journalism, independent journalism, press freedom, and the role journalists have to achieve this.

Q: And will the government permit this possible flowering of a vibrant, independent media inside Burma? A: Actually, since last year, the government has relaxed media controls a lot. There is more space to publish and report. I also think the government wants to see a more professional media. They are very disappointed with the state of the media. They even asked at one point what we can do to help them with training.

Q: That would be something, given how you have been seen as an enemy by the military regimes all these years. Would the ministry of information and information minister Kyaw Hsan, your nemesis, be able to stomach it? A: (Laughs)… I only had a brief handshake with Kyaw Hsan, but I did meet the deputy minister (Soe Win) and he was very expressive as if he was meeting a long lost friend. He admitted being a big reader of the Irrawaddy. I was surprised (laughs).

Q: One of the problems exiles around the world face when they return to their country at peace after years of conflict or, in your case, decades of military oppression, are feelings of resentment by those who stayed back and felt the full force of domestic turmoil. You will face this, won’t you? A: Definitely, definitely. I think my first visit was a honeymoon. Even movie stars who had followed my work, seen me on our TV programmes, came and said hello to me in restaurants, as did other people I met in the markets, on the streets of Rangoon and even in the shops in Naypidaw. But the more exiles start making inroads in the professional fields, they will encounter resentment. It is natural.

Q: So is it time for exiles in professions such as journalism, health, education, finance to go back and deal with this reality check? A: I think it is time for a visit; get a feel for the change. But time will come for them to do more, to go back and help. And I think the government – there is a problem – also has to do something to welcome exiles back. They have to create incentives for people who left the country since 1960s to return and not be seen as people coming back to disrupt the society.

Excerpt:

The last broadcast antenna installed in Kingston in the 1990s by Power 106 FM, a subsidiary of the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Mar 3 2012 (IPS)

In the last 25 years, there has been an explosion of commercial radio stations in what Jamaican broadcast professionals describe as “a revolution” that has extended the “mobility of radio”.

Radio remains the island’s most effective and fastest growing communications medium. From four stations in the late 1990s, Jamaicans today are able to access more than 70 stations – 30 of them are owned and operated on the island.

Radio Jamaica‘s (RJR) Yvonne Wilks told IPS that the rapid growth in the number of radio stations is due primarily to two events: the deregulation of the local tele-communications sector in 1999 and the simultaneous but lengthy divestment of the state-owned Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) and its three satellite stations.

The former opened the telecoms sector to competition and the rapid expansion of the mobile telecommunications and Internet sectors; and the latter gave birth in the 1980s and 1990s to new programming formats.

The more flexible licensing regime allowed programme producers to start their own radio stations and diversify their offerings. In the modern radio landscape, the stations offer a diet of music, religious broadcast, talk shows, news and information.

JBC’s original satellite stations have now evolved into KLAS FM Sports; Hot 102 FM – primarily a talk show format – and IRIE FM, a 24-hour reggae music station.

Divestment continued to stimulate the growth of radio stations in the 1990s as the original investors supplemented operational costs by “‘renting space” on their broadcast towers. This among other things, created a dynamic competitive market place by removing the costly investment needed for start-up.

Alongside the divestment, deregulation had fuelled a rapid increase in the use of cell phones in Jamaica. From 90,000 users in 1999 at the end of Cable and Wireless’s monopoly on telephone service, the number of cell phone subscribers had grown to an estimated 3.1 million active users in 2010.

After its April 2001 launch, the Irish mobile phone company Digicel grew its customer base by 100,000 in its first 100 days. Wooed by Digicel’s offerings of low-cost mobile telephones and instant connection, Jamaicans took to the new technology.

Today, the company reportedly has a customer base of more than two million active subscribers. The introduction of feature and smart phones have also revolutionised the way radio and TV are delivered.

The state-of-the-art outside broadcast (OB) units, once owned by only the richest station owners, have been replaced by a variety of tools including cell phones, laptops, wireless broadband modems, and wireless transmitters.

Obsolete too are the dedicated phone lines that were absolutely necessary if broadcasts were to be carried from locations outside the studio, and the costs associated with them, radio engineer Melvin Cummings told IPS.

“Set-up has been reduced to hours and in some cases minutes, instead of days,” the 16-year veteran of radio broadcasts noted, adding that beginning with the introduction of transistor radios, innovation has been rapid and non-stop.

Cummings agreed that the speedy pace of development in a climate created by the combination of communication technologies and equipment related to mobile phones, radio and computing often sees broadcast professionals playing catch-up.

It was RJR that first introduced mobile phones to live broadcasting. The technology helped the station to retain its number one status – usually the first to file breaking news – until the late 1990s when it was toppled by some of the very stations it enabled.

According to former broadcaster Michael Bryce, the introduction of mobile phones to live reports revolutionised broadcast radio. It enabled journalists to file reports faster and from places previously inaccessible to traditional transmission means.

Bryce, a member of the reporting team covering Nelson Mandela’s visit to Jamaica in 1991, explained that the team was able to transmit live along the entire route from the Norman Manley International Airport to the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies via a mobile phone that had been “rigged into the mobile unit”.

The now head of Consumer and Public Affairs in the Office of Utilities Regulations further explained, “We had to say on air that we were speaking from places we wouldn’t have been able to transmit from before we got the phone.”

When RJR shut down Jamaica’s last functioning AM transmitter on Mar. 30, 2009, it completed almost two decades of transition which saw a move from the AM band to FM and digital broadcast.

RJR’s leadership in the development of local radio goes back to 1939 and the half-hour weekly wartime broadcasts made by John Grinan, via his ham radio from his home in Kingston. Radio VP5PZ – Grinan’s call sign- was renamed ZQI in 1940 and later Radio Jamaica.

Fast forward to 2001 when veteran radio talk show host Barbara Gloudon visited and beamed her show from New York, a month after the 9/11 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Centre.

Radio Jamaica’s Yvonne Wilks noted that the entire talk show was broadcast from Ground Zero via cell phone. It was, she said, an indication of how far the technologies had come and a demonstration of the continued interdependence between radio and telecommunication technologies.

“There has been a convergence of technologies that has helped to keep radio alive at a time when TV has become a dominant medium,” she noted.

Since its early beginnings, developments in tele-communications and radio broadcast have been inextricably linked. These days, it is not unusual to see live broadcasts being transmitted via a wireless broadband modem affixed to a laptop.

“Radio is no longer a box on the table,” Wilks added, pointing to the newest trends of listening to radio via cell phone, television, or Internet. Radio currently operates four (three on cable) and TV three radio stations under the banner RJR Communications Group.

But inspite of its reach and flexibility, local researchers note, that there has been a fragmentation of the markets, accompanied by a falloff in ownership of radio units and listenership.

Media specialist Marcia Forbes noted in an April 2010 article that radio has been losing its audience for years, falling from 1,763,000 in 1996 to 1,204,000 in 2000 – “almost a 30 per cent falloff over approximately 10 years”, she said.

Whilst the fragmentation of radio markets has been in attributed in part to the growth of alternative stations, Bryce notes that the alternative listening devices like mp3 players has resulted in a more selective audience.

Some believe that in certain respects, technology has pushed Jamaica backward, to a time when “nighttime radio was a playlist on a reel- to-reel”. As stations cut costs to stay competitive, the all-night disc jockey has virtually disappeared, to be replaced by a computerised play list; stations now depend on centralised news production teams and salaries are very low.

But in the words of one veteran, mobile technology has enabled broadcasters to be more responsive to their audiences and made coverage more immediate.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

The Arab world is talking about a revolution; not just out on the streets but in films, in newspapers, in songs – using any means necessary to document events, expose the horrors of war and explore the struggles and possibilities that lie ahead as the Arab Spring feels the wintry chill of post-revolutionary democratic challenges.

During Arab Spring World Cinema day at Berlin’s 62nd international film festival, Arab filmmakers expressed hope, fear, defiance, resolve and resilience.

Caught between repression and the struggle for change, filmmakers have been documenting the tidal wave of transformation sweeping across Arab countries and creating a new, collective culture of resistance.

Many feel the artistic process has been a personal and political quest for reconciling the tensions between Islam, faith, freedom and democracy, but by far the strongest consensus among media makers has been – as Julius Caesar famously remarked while leading his armies across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy – “the die has been cast.”

Image production in war-torn Syria

This was no accident – most authoritarian regimes thrive on placing severe restrictions on the collective imagination of their populations, limiting their ability to conjure up alternatives to the daily routine of repression.

While working on a documentary about the ‘caricature scandal’, a story about freedom of expression circumventing censorship, Syrian producer and film activist Hala Al Alabdallah unearthed a law forbidding the use of “images devoid of commentary”. The discovery highlighted just how insidious repression can be.

But while state forces attempt to control everything from free association to artistic production, resistance and creativity have come together in the squares or “agoras” of the Middle East and North Africa, opening up new public spaces for social solidarity, overcoming collective fears and expressing hope and a new sense of belonging.

For the first time, it seems, the feeling of being a citizen of one’s own country is proliferating among the Syrian masses, buoyed by a cultural resurgence that includes street dancing and turning old folksongs into revolutionary anthems.

“People came to the streets asking for freedom; even in a (muzzled) country like Syria we hear slogans chanting that Syrian people are one. I see the incarnation of freedom in poetry,” said Al Alabdallah pointing out the powerful nexus at work between insurgency, culture and engagement.

Mohamed Ali Atassi, a cultural producer in exile, turned to filmmaking out of psychological necessity, “when I realized I could no longer express the complexity I was feeling without picking up a camera,” Atassi, whose “creative solutions” include obtaining footage from inside the country using the internet and Skype interviews, told IPS.

As revolution and the struggle for change spreads across the Arab World “witness-filmmaking” is emerging, as a formidable art enabled by YouTube – a new form of dissent-inspired ‘auteur’ film. Increasingly, a generation of mobile-savvy youth are becoming gatekeepers of the visual world, archiving that which cannot be denied to people rising up against state power.

Despite her fear, Younis felt compelled to order her newly trained team of young video journalists to “get out there and keep the cameras rolling.” In their toughest assignment yet, the 20-year-olds had to get on the streets and ‘learn by doing’ the dangerous process of reporting a revolution.

One of the video journalists reporters, Ahmed Abdel Fatah, was shot in the eye while filming people being killed on the Qsr el-Nil bridge during the Internet blackout of the 18-day-long Cairo revolution last January.

The resulting dramatic footage was edited into a documentary entitled “Reporting… a Revolution” – a powerful example of witness-filmmaking by six young reporters including Abdel Fatah.

“I am a videographer, my eye is my most precious asset,” he said. “But we will never stop. This is our job, it’s what we know how to do best and we’ll keep doing it.”

Well aware of the contradictions implicit in “guerrilla journalism”, Younis faces a daily struggle with the ethics of journalistic objectivity, as the lines between documenting revolution and revolutionary documentary filmmaking blurred into non-existence.

Arab women face the camera

Many acts of defiance amongst women are increasingly poignant expressions of a new readiness to speak up without fearing the consequences of being heard.

Examples like Aliaa Magda Elmahdy’s subversive act of posting a nude photo of herself was seen as a groundbreaking statement on the dignity of the naked female body trapped in a gender power struggle.

“The nude picture is indicative of a new state of fearlessness and this gives me hope because an incident of this kind would not have occurred before the revolution,” pointed out Viola Safik, a German- Egyptian documentary filmmaker talking in Berlin about changing perspectives in the Arab world.

Safik also warned that the opening up of cultural frontiers could lead to an era where art will become more aggressive, potentially engendering violent backlashes, like the power of the regime to label cultural producers as “traitors” or “unbelievers”.

Undeterred, women are slowly and tentatively facing the camera. Long-repressed controversial issues like marriage freedom, the meaning and implications of financial independence, tradition, what to accept and what to refuse, were all central questions in Hanan Abdalla’s debut documentary “In the Shadow of a Man”.

Born in the backstreets of Cairo, 69-year-old Wafaa, the documentary’s protagonist, looks back at the “honour” check she was forced to submit to on her wedding night and has no qualms or regrets about her divorce, though she sadly never recovers a sense of respect for men.

As violence rages throughout the Arab world, with the spotlight largely on Syria and Bahrain, Berlinale Festival jury-member Boualem Sansal, the Algerian novelist and poet, pointed out that Algeria has somehow escaped scrutiny, despite the fact that president Abdelaziz Bouteflika “strangles his people morally and culturally, an act that is tantamount to cultural genocide,” Sansal said on the last day of the Berlin film festival.

His words are a sombre reminder that the die may be cast but crucial dominoes in the Arab world have yet to fall; and when they do, the cameras will be rolling.

Excerpt:

By Inés Acosta and - -
MONTEVIDEO, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

Uruguay took a giant step towards more democratic media when it passed a law on community radio broadcasting in 2007. But although regulations for the law were approved in late 2010, many broadcasters are now off the air and waiting to be assigned a frequency.

Community radio operator at La Cotorra. Credit: Courtesy of La Cotorra FM

“It establishes a community radio broadcasting sector which is assigned one-third of the radio spectrum in every frequency band,” he said. A draft decree on digital television being prepared by the government also “reserves one-third for community broadcasters.”

Martín Prats, head of the Honorary Advisory Council for Community Radio Broadcasting (CHARC) as the representative of the Ministry of Industry, told IPS the law “establishes a transparent process for assigning frequencies in different parts of the country, which is the stage we are at. It is a process that has just begun; the results will be more visible next year.”

Based on the law, a census was carried out in 2008 to assign frequencies to community radio stations that were already on the air. A total of 413 projects applied, but only 92 of them met the legal requirements.

This process ended in 2010, and it was only in 2011 that calls were opened for applications in different parts of the country to assign frequencies to radio stations that had not necessarily been on the air before.

Stations that apply – on the understanding they must not broadcast until they have been approved by the competent authorities – are scrutinised by CHARC, after which public consultations are held. If selected, they must wait to be assigned a frequency.

So far, calls for applications have been issued in five of the country’s 19 provinces, and the most headway has been made in Durazno, in the centre, Flores in the southwest and Lavalleja, in the southeast. In these provinces public hearings have already been held, and the stations are awaiting the assignment of frequencies.

“The plan is to finish the application process throughout the country this year. It’s a very gradual process,” said Prats. Only one frequency is made available in each geographic location, which “to a certain extent limits the aspirations of applicants,” but the political goal is “to regulate use of the spectrum.”

In 2013, “when the spectrum has been regulated, further calls for applications will be issued,” he said.

In March, public hearings will be held in the eastern provinces of Treinta y Tres and Cerro Largo.

José Imaz, of the Coalition for Democratic Communication and a member of the La Cotorra FM radio station in the Cerro neighbourhood of Montevideo, told IPS that “the law has set some very important precedents in terms of the democratisation of speech, which have been taken up in various decrees.”

But implementation of the application procedure “is excessively slow, and a major hurdle for future calls.”

Prats acknowledged there were administrative difficulties. “CHARC is an honorary body,” and therefore suffers from a “lack of resources,” he said.

Mega FM, a radio station in Vergara, a town of 4,000 people in the province of Treinta y Tres, had been broadcasting since 2008, one of the station’s members, Cristián Rodríguez, told IPS.

Two other community radio stations were also operating in Vergara. They all applied for frequency assignment and are awaiting a public hearing in March. “All three stations have shut down, they are all off the air,” Rodríguez said.

But “local people miss them, because Vergara is a small town and is accustomed to relying on the community radio stations,” he complained.

While it is unable to broadcast, Mega FM is posting on its web site videos of music concerts, sports events and other local activities on YouTube.

It is noteworthy that the Uruguayan law does not stipulate power limits for the frequencies, Kaplún said. “The limits will be set according to need and advisability.”

However, putting this guideline into practice raises difficulties. “The frequencies assigned in the first round are short range. Use of a 30-metre antenna and a power of 30 watts were established as general principles.”

In rural areas, where more wave bands are available and higher power is needed, “this general rule for frequency concession does not seem reasonable,” Kaplún said.

In contrast, in the capital city it is not easy to assign new frequencies on a spectrum that is overcrowded with private and public radio stations. “The spectrum should be redistributed, but this option was not chosen; instead, gaps in the spectrum are being used so as not to displace commercial and public broadcasters. This is untenable,” said Kaplún.

In Imaz’s view, the state should promote community radio stations and provide “economic aid for their installation, as well as distributing official advertising more widely to include community stations as well as commercial broadcasters.”

Prats said that in order to achieve “better implementation of the law, more economic and administrative resources should be allocated to CHARC.”

In future, he said, community radio stations “face a challenge: to be committed to playing a role in and for the community, without broadcasting political or religious propaganda.”

* This article was produced with the support of UNESCO.

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By Dalia Acosta and - -
HAVANA, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

More than 15 years after the “deactivation” in Cuba of the Association of Women Communicators (MAGIN), its members remain united in an informal network that transcends any specific political situation and has become a reference for the new generations.

“We were not personally involved, but its history has come down to us. MAGIN is a reference, legacy and motivation to continue working despite the obstacles,” said Helen Hernández, one of three journalists who have been organising a discussion circle on gender and culture called “With a Sceptical View” since 2011.

“MAGIN no longer exists, but it lives on in the memories and actions of the women who were its members,” Hernández, author of the 2011 book “Mujeres en crisis. Aproximaciones a lo femenino en las narradoras cubanas de los noventa” (Women in Crisis: Women’s Issues in the Work of Cuban Women Writers of the 1990s), told IPS after attending the first public revival of an experience that changed the lives and work of those involved.

After the MAGIN experience, writer Daysi Rubiera published a book on sexual violence in Cuba; researcher Gisela Arandia promoted the project “Color cubano”, focusing on race issues; psychologist Norma Guillard began working with sexual diversity groups; and film-maker Belkys Vega made important documentary and fictionalised films about AIDS in Cuba.

Historian Julio César González Pagés, one of the few men involved in the initiative, devoted himself to rescuing the history of women and feminism in Cuba. He also founded the Ibero-American Masculinity Network, an academic space that is considered one of the most important in today’s debate on gender issues in Cuba.

“It was like a little bug that is born, generates a discussion and then begins to spread all over,” anthropologist and former MAGIN member Leticia Artiles commented to IPS about the group’s impact, which spanned radio and television, literature, research in diverse areas and especially women’s studies.

In what more than a few people saw as “an act of justice,” this revival of MAGIN took place during the international colloquium “Women, Channels of Collaboration and Associations in Latin American and Caribbean culture and history”, which ended on Friday the 24th at the cultural institution Casa de las Américas.

Covered with a veil of silence since its “deactivation,” as it was referred to in 1996, to avoid more definitive words like “shutdown,” the Association of Women Communicators was created in March 1993 after the First Ibero-American Women and Communication Conference was held in Havana.

During one of the most difficult moments of the economic crisis that Cuba endured after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its main aid and partners in the European socialist bloc, a group of women communication workers who attended the conference identified the need to work for gender awareness in the media.

Responding to the initial invitation of journalist Mirta Rodríguez Calderón, who subsequently continued her work from her new home in the Dominican Republic, more than 100 women joined, including journalists, artists, scientists and local and national government officials. As a name for the group, they chose the name “magin,” which means intelligence.

However, by 1996, the association had not yet received approval of its application for registration, and its members were informed that it could no longer operate.

“The more or less formal statement that was made the day they summoned us, after talking about the intentions of the United States to infiltrate the Revolution using its intellectuals, was that we were not going to be given legal status because it was not opportune,” Rodríguez Calderón told IPS via email.

The main argument brandished by those who made that decision was related to the so-called Track II of the 1992 U.S. Torricelli Act, which promoted people-to-people contact and academic, cultural and civil society exchange as a way of encouraging changes to Cuba’s political system.

But the real reason, according to various former MAGIN members, may have been “jealousy” on the part of entities accustomed to having a “national monopoly” over certain issues, or the transgression implied by a project such as this in a society organised in a top-down, heterosexist way, with a deeply-rooted patriarchal culture.

“How could a group of prominent women journalists get involved like that in a transgressive, innovative process? Crises tend to generate development, and MAGIN was the fruit of that innovative development. But the social structure was not ‘ready’ for that leap,” Artiles said.

Psychiatrist Ada Alfonso has a similar opinion. “The fact that in the early 1990s a group of women were conducting self-esteem workshops to talk about our orgasms, among other things, was very transgressive. Even today, in 2012, we don’t speak completely freely about our bodies,” she said.

In just three years, MAGIN organised 50 workshops on different issues and worked on projects that included a publishing collection, a quarterly magazine, a press bureau to produce informational materials with a gender-based approach, and training workshops, along with other ideas recalled by editor Pilar Sa Leal, the group’s recognised executor.

After the association formally shut down, Rodríguez Calderón moved to the Dominican Republic, where she organised exchange activities and founded the publication A primera plana (APP), with contributions from Cuba.

Meanwhile, back in Cuba a group of former MAGIN members prepared and circulated by email La Hoja de APP bulletin.

According to one of the founders, Irene Esther Ruíz, beyond the energy that was deployed, there was “a magic” that helped “illuminate the obscure areas of knowledge,” and to understand “that other women were not your rivals, but your counterparts.” In fact, “that magic was responsible for a sense of belonging that still remains,” she said.

As Cuban writer Sonnia Moro said, “MAGIN was deactivated, but the ‘women of MAGIN’ live on.”

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By Milagros Salazar and - -
LIMA, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

The Onda Rural communication for development initiative in Peru has come up with a range of strategies to get information out to remote villages, to help them with decision-making on questions like climate change adaptation or disaster preparedness.

Radio Pachamama is a community station in the highlands region of Puno. Credit: Radio Pachamama

But, he added, “they can help these communities have more information, to improve their practices and handle difficult situations better.”

Since 2004, AMARC, the Latin American Association for Radio Education (ALER) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have been carrying out activities in several countries of Latin America that include communication for rural development and policy-making – in particular the Onda Rural communication for development project.

In Peru, the work has been carried out mainly through radio programmes in three southern highlands regions, Puno, Cuzco and Arequipa, usually as part of FAO projects involving agricultural activities in emergency situations, like floods, freezing weather, or drought.

“Our contribution is aimed at connecting issues that are important for these communities with different radio networks in the country,” Rivadeneyra said.

The programmes are broadcast in Spanish, as well as Quechua and Aymara, the two indigenous languages spoken in Peru’s highlands communities, located 3,400 metres above sea level and higher.

The activities are focused on the production of short radio programmes in which local peasant farmers talk about weather events and experts explain why they occur and what can be done to prepare for and deal with each specific emergency situation.

Workshops for journalists and radio producers are also held, to promote the inclusion of these issues in radio programming.

“Normally information and news arrive after emergencies occur,” Rubén Mori, coordinator of the FAO Emergency Rehabilitation and Coordination Unit in Peru, told IPS. “The workshops are a good way to get reporters interested in these issues, so they can inform the communities about preparedness and risk management.”

AMARC and ALER have also organised workshops on climate change and environmental protection in the same regions, where they have formed a network of allies.

Claudio Orós, producer of the Sisichakunaq Pukllaynin radio programme – the name means “game of the ants” in Quechua – that is broadcast by 12 stations in Cuzco, told IPS that one of the most important aspects of the workshops is the sharing of experiences with colleagues from other towns and regions, which helps to make it possible to respond better to the needs of rural communities.

The programme addresses the question of protecting the environment by keeping traditional knowledge and customs alive. And the target audience is primary school children.

Produced by Orós’s Pukllasunchis Association, the 15-minute programmes are used as a teaching tool for teachers in rural schools in the district of Lares, in Cuzco region.

Like a story-teller, the narrator describes different situations faced by local communities, speaking in both Quechua and Spanish.

“The people of Quishuarani believe the ancient Inca still live on in the oldest ‘quiwuña’ (Polylepis) trees in the community. These trees are taller and thicker and are respected by everyone,” the radio announcer says, describing the beliefs of the community and their respect for nature.

Quishuarani is a village in Lares that basically depends on agriculture and is located along an Inca trail in an area with a large variety of wild trees. Local native traditions are very much alive in the community.

The local radio station coverage of these issues promoted by Onda Rural has used different approaches and styles.

In the city of Puno, Juan Sotomayor, the administrator of the Pachamama (mother earth) 850 AM radio station, said the training workshops have enabled the station’s team of journalists to become familiar with new technological tools and formats, and especially to adapt local questions to social and political contexts of a national scope.

Sotomayor said the radio station, which also broadcasts online, reaches the entire region, and 80 percent of its programming has an educational focus and is tailored for rural audiences.

Although the impact of these communication strategies has not been assessed, the organisations behind Onda Rural and the journalists involved say the local population is increasingly interested in the programmes, and is keen on participating.

But the effort has also run into obstacles.

Rivadeneyra said several activities have come to an end because the projects “are limited and have a modest budget.

“The state should support this kind of initiative, but it regrettably has weak participation in communication for development, and even more so in the areas of agriculture and the environment,” he said.

For that very reason, the project for an early warning system for weather events developed in highlands towns in Arequipa, Cuzco and Puno came to an end in spite of its impact and innovativeness.

Communication played a key role in that initiative: local residents trained to read the data from the weather stations set up in their villages relayed the information to the government’s national meteorology and hydrology service.

The national meteorology and hydrology service in turn processed the data and placed it on a special web page available to radio stations, which used it to produce early warning messages.

Unfortunately, the project ended in April 2009, Rivadeneyra said.

Mori explained that FAO funds have an end date, because they are principally related to emergencies. But he also said that since 2010, the United Nations agency has been working to link these initiatives with development projects that the local authorities can take control of.

While these challenges are tackled, the organisations have new projects up their sleeves.

FAO is working on a national agricultural risk management and climate change adaptation plan that will have to be disseminated among the communities, while AMARC is involved in the production of radio programmes to help indigenous people in the Amazon region of Ucayali deal better with floods.

* This article was published with support from UNESCO.

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