Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

On April 17-19, 2013, activists from collectives and organizations across thirteen Latin American countries and Spain will gather in La Paz, Bolivia to share experiences, strategies, and ideas with one another. To follow the proceedings, the hashtag #REactivxs will be used throughout the event. A map of participating organizations will be collected on the Datea.pe platform.

This month, Rob Martineau, Tom Stancliffe, and Guy Hacking are running 1,000 miles from Odessa to Dubrovnik, via Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Croatia, as part of the Run For Love 1000 campaign, whose aim is to raise funds for Love146, a UK charity that “gives care and hope to trafficked children, and to raise awareness of the scale of human trafficking across Europe.” Follow their run on the RFL1000 website, on Facebook, and on Twitter; support the runners by donating here (215 donations have been made so far, with nearly £12,500 raised).

Raul Jorge, a Santomean citizen, launched a petition [fr] against deforestation in São Tomé and Príncipe, addressed to the current Prime Minister Gabriel Costa. The petition has already gathered more than 700 signatures. In October 2012, Global Voices reported about the situation; in response netizens published videos and a Facebook page in protest.

@northaura: #xa_advertising is about a twitter movement protest by email in #Greece to push advertisers off ever again supporting pro-neonazi TV shows.

Blogger @ypopto_mousi started a campaign to inform the sponsors [el] of a highly controversial SKAI TV panel featuring four neonazi Golden Dawn MPs, that they are sponsoring hate speech. The blogger is urging netizens to email advertising companies, providing sample emails [el] and addresses of advertising companies, while blogging [el] and posting regular updates on Twitter on the campaign's results under the hashtag #xa_advertising.

A leading alternative news site in Greece, Athens Indymedia announced it was being suppressed by Greek judicial authorities, along with two radio stations, and provided a Tor link [el] for alternate access. Potmos asserted on the significance of the site for independent news in Greece:

@potmos: Fast and accurate info posted on Athens #Indymedia led to life sentence for cop who murdered 15yo Alex. Grigoropoulos in 2008.

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As war rhetoric intensifies every day in Korean peninsula and even nuclear threats were made by North Korea, an online petition by ICAN was posted on Change.org, urging North Korea and heads of the Six-Nation Talks to return to the negotiating table.

The Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM) explains [en] why Macedonian journalists are demanding an open debate “on the scope and the contents” of the draft Law on the Media (via @Macedonia_en):

[...] It was prepared, in its entirety, by the Government and is offered today to the public to give its comments and suggestions as a final and closed concept. [...] we do need changes in the legislation to incorporate the EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive and we need improved and strengthened implementation of the existing legislation. Any expansion of the scope of the regulation needs to be preceded by a serious debate on the very need to introduce new regulation. [...]

Tactical Tech's 2013 Info Activism Camp in northern Italy (23-30 June) will explore how digital technologies, data and visuals can be used to influence society. Only 80 spots available, apply before April 15.

The first non-profit community radio station to be licensed for broadcast in Japan made its debut a decade ago out of a small corner cafe in Kyoto city. Kyoto Sanjo Radio Cafe [ja], FM 79.7 on the dial, celebrated its 10-year anniversary on March 31, 2013. They aired a program to talk about how things have been in the community since the first broadcast.

FM79.7 Kyoto Sanjo Radio Cafe celebrates 10 year anniversary on March 31, 2013

Chilean website El Quinto Poder has published an e-book on digital activism in Chile [es, PDF], as part of the project “Social Media and Citizen Advocacy: Towards a new political legitimacy?” [es]. The book analyzes different activism initiatives and it considers ”the symbolic dimensions of the forms of discourse which are present in interactions between activists and their audiences.”

Jamaica's version of Blog Action Day (the topic is Jamaican police abuses and brutality) will take place on May 23, to coincide with the anniversary of the country's state of emergency in 2010.

Cuban blogger, teacher and GV author Elaine Díaz Rodríguez was denied a visa to enter the US [pt] Wednesday, April 3, 2013, preventing her from participating in the International Congress of Latin-American Studies. Brazilian journalist Alex Haubrich reported Elaine's frustration with and criticism of the US government's criteria.

As RuNet Echo previously reported [GV], Alexey Navalny has appealed to his readers to make up their own minds about his innocence or guilt in an upcoming embezzling trial by releasing for download the financial documents of the firms involved. Now, his opponents appear to have taken a page out of his book, creating a website which is a direct copy [ru] of Navalny's original [ru]. Unlike Navalny's “Why is Navalny Not Guilty?”, this one is titled “Why is Navalny Guilty?” and makes available for download allegedly relevant excerpts from Navalny's previously hacked email correspondence [GV]. Since the emails have been publicly available for quite some time, the page is likely created in the spirit of “trolling” rather than any real attempt at an exposé.

Hacktivist collective Anonymous claims to have hacked North Korean government websites and stolen more than 15,000 user records. North Korea Tech blog wrote about their message posted online. 

Anonymous Brazil released a dossier [pt] about Marco Feliciano, recently elected as chairman of the Committee for Human Rights and Minorities in the Deputy Chamber amid the outrage of human rights defenders due to his vocal hardline views on homosexuality and racist remarks. The dossier contains information on legal cases involving the evangelical preacher and congressman as well as “ghost workers” from his office.

A photo-blogger based in the city of Voronezh, located in central Russia not far from the Ukranian border, has taken a series of striking photographs [ru] (including an animated panorama) of a small, forgotten “slum” hiding in the center of an otherwise modern and populous urban area. The “slum”, which turns out to be mainly abandoned buildings, looks like a set for a WWII movie — ironic in a city that was rebuilt after heavy destruction during the war.

Alexey Navalny, unofficial protest leader, took to his blog [ru] on March 27 to defend himself from what he says are unfair allegations of corruption. Navalny is currently a suspect in two different embezzlement investigations. One of these, the so-called KirovLes case, involves the supposed use of a shell company to steal several million rubles worth of materials from a Kirov Region lumber mill.
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Photo by Cícero Bezerra shared by Homofobia Não on Facebook.

On March 27, a protest against the recent election of congressman and controversial evangelical preacher Marco Feliciano as chairman of the Committee for Human Rights and Minorities in the Brazilian Deputy Chamber ended with repression against LGBT rights advocates. On Youtube, Rodrigo Grassi shared the moment when one of the protestors was arrested.

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My Chinese dream: Judicial fairness. Give back the life of my son.

While China’s new leader Xi Jinping likes to talk about his “Chinese dream”, a group of Chinese petitioners are using the microblogging site Sina Weibo to talk about their Chinese dreams. Rachel Lu from Tea Leaf Nation has collected posts and photos of their dreams.

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The journeyman.tv published on March 25 a detailed investigation using undercover filming to expose the booming child sex trade in Madagascar:
One mother in the film testifies:

My daughter was at school, I had no money and no job so she decided to become a prostitute. I finally decided not to stop her

Watcher.com.ua reports [uk] that Kyiv-based netizens have set up an online volunteer coordination map [uk, ru] and a website [uk, ru] to offer help to those affected by the unprecedented snowfall in Ukraine's capital [see this GV text]. The map indicates the location of volunteers who can offer hot drinks and a place to warm up, or help dig the car out of the snow. The map also indicates locations where help is needed.

Aminul Islam Sajib reports that Google featured Bangladeshi National Flag as a Doodle on the occasion of the Independence Day of Bangladesh (26th March, 1971) which was a long time demand from Bangladeshi netizens.

The Japanese prime minister’s office revealed apps that give smartphone users easy access to official announcements and photos from official events. Masaru Ikeda at StartupDating writes:

 for the younger generation who don’t subscribe to physical newspapers or watch TV news shows, it could be a good touch point for them to stay up to speed on Japanese politics.

Bolivian activists are on alert [es] and writing a collaborative proposal [es] on the new Book and Reading Act [es] in the Plurinational Legislative Asemply (Parliament). The bill seeks to encourage the production and reading of texts of various kinds in the country; however, the bill passed by the Lower Chamber excludes Copyleft and instructs the absolute use of Copyright.

“Black Monday”: Dec. 24, 2012

In order to shed light on the events of Dec. 24, 2012, when journalists and opposition MPs were thrown out of the Macedonian Parliament [en, es, mk], Foundation Open Society Institute Macedonia (@fosim) published a study entitled “Black Monday” [.pdf: en, mk, sq], with testimonies of witnesses and participants and analyses by relevant experts. Video from its promotion, with an extensive discussion, is also available online [mk].

The GoPetition site published Do not select Tokyo to host the 2020 Summer Olympics petition which has been introduced to many local sites. It accuses the current Japanese administration of denying the truth that more than 200,000 women and girls were indeed forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during the World War 2. 

@andriotakis: Στο τρέιλερ του #followme οι @jeffjarvis @evgenymorozov @drandakis @vatraxokoritso @Urfurslaag @constantnos @asteris http://youtu.be/5OD_9oZXlH8 

Videographer and author Manolis Andriotakis namechecks Greek tweeps and acclaimed critics he interviewed for his documentary on Twitter, prior to its’ screening at the 15th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

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Vídeo intitulado “Porquê que os Santomenses não se indignam?”

Danilo Salvaterra published [pt] a video on Facebook that shows a young boy from São Tomé and Príncipe complaining about the general lack of basic infrastructures not only in Diogo Vaz (where the teenager lives and the video was recorded), but also in the rest of the country. He mentions access to education, sanitation, electricity, among other things.

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The Iran Media Program at the Annenberg School for Communication, present a new study: “Fights, Adapts, Accepts: Archetypes of Iranian Internet Use” by Arash Abadpour and Collin Anderson.