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March 23rd, 2008
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Blogger of the Week: Abdulrahman Warsame
Today's Blogger of the Week series features yet another global voice - Abdulrahman Warsame, who amplifies the reactions of Somali bloggers on Global Voices Online. A Somali born in Saudi Arabia, educated in Egypt and Australia, and currently working for Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, as a Senior Analyst in New Media, Warsame shares his thoughts on blogging in his country and the rest of the Arab world.
At his personal blog, Warsame, who graduated from Monash University in Australia in Information Systems, focuses on politics.
“My blog is mostly a commentary on politics, journalism and culture but certainly politics takes a bigger space. Being an Arab and African, I focus on them most. I'm excited when I see young Arabs and Africans using the web - among other means - to bring about positive change: Egyptian bloggers exposing police torture or Kenyan bloggers rallying together to fight tribalism and create projects like Ushahidi.com to help those who need help. I get annoyed by the lack of time, I would like to write a lot more but I don't seem to be able to get the time. My co-blogger Hanna Ali makes the blog tick, with her intelligent comments on politics and Africa,” he says.
For Warsame, although the role between a blogger and a journalist are distinct, there are many meeting points.
“Blogging is simply a tool, so a journalist could be a blogger and so can a doctor. Blogging is closer to activism than journalism, but bloggers sometimes do some journalism (i.e. bloggers from Myanmar, Egypt and Iraq committed acts of journalism). But there are also journalists who blog, like Andrew Heavens,” he explains.
A relatively newcomer to GVO, Warsame hopes to be able to amplify what Somali bloggers are writing about and possibly encourage more of them to blog.
“I hope to introduce Somali bloggers to the readers of GVO and hopefully encourage more Somalis to read and write blogs. The Somali blogsphere is still relatively young and very diverse. Most Somali blogs, until now, are in English and are written by young Somalis in the North America, UK, Middle East and Africa. Forums and chat rooms are still big but as blogging catches on there would be more Somali blogs written in Somali language.”
Besides blogging, Warsame devotes “a large chunk” of his spare time to reading.
“I also like photography so I do it whenever I get my hands on a decent camera (planning to buy a pro camera in the near future). Socializing and drinking tea (at least 5+ cups a day) is another hobby.”
The father of a five-month-old son, Ibrahim, is also dismayed at the lack of interest in reading among some of his Arab compatriots - and blames the 'system' for it.
“Having been through Arab schools and speaking to students and teachers here, I think the education system is largely to blame for the lack of interest in reading books (people read newspapers). There are less books published in the Arab world (than Iran for example), there are few public libraries or national programs to encourage reading from you age. There was no decent public library in Cairo when I lived there, and it's the same here in Qatar (though they're building one now). It's a crisis and unfortunately no one is doing anything about it,” he notes.
And are Arabs making the most of online technologies?
“Some are and some aren't. I don't think anyone understands the dynamics yet though. Iraqi bloggers like Riverbend and Healing Iraq have done very well and online news sites like Morocco's Hespress are very successful. Forums and chat rooms are still bigger though. Governments, public institutions and companies are very much behind: most of their websites are out of date and have little information about anything. They assume people wouldn't be looking at them,” says the blogger, who is fluent in Somali, Arabic and English and has a bit of Chinese (Mandarin) and Farsi under his belt.
Czech Republic, Slovakia: Whipping Girls and Other Easter Traditions
Easter is a very important celebration both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, called Velikonoce - from Veliké noci or Great Nights. Although the religious connotations of Easter were suppressed under the communist regime, nowadays Czechs and Slovaks are again aware of the strong Christian background of Easter, although they regard it as mostly fun times. Many traditions are still observed, especially in villages. Several bloggers have been describing some of them.
Easter by Nic Hyland, used under a Creative Commons Lincense.
Green Thursday
The Thursday before Easter is the day of the last supper, when Jesus Christ feasted with the apostles on lamb with bread and wine. Because of that, it is usual to bake lamb for Easter, but now real lamb often gets replaced with gingerbread lamb replica. The Journeys of Captain Oddsocks explains that Green Thursday is so called “because of the long green robes worn in church and the spinach and cabbage traditionally eaten on the day.” He also describes the customs of the day:
… customs include the boys’ game Chasing Judas, and the baking of twisted spiral buns representing serpents, the symbols of betrayal. In some villages there are processions led by a captive Judas in a straw suit which is ceremonially burnt at the end of the day. When sprinkled into a clean jug of water, the ashes of Judas were believed to have special powers including the abilities to guard against fire and protect the health of livestock for the coming year.
Easter Sunday
The Journeys of Captain Oddsocks describes Easter Sunday as “the big day”:
The day that Christ rose from the grave, the day of new life cleansed of suffering and victorious over death. The morning is for attending church services, (the bells having returned from Rome) and the early afternoon is set aside for a great feast. After the meal it’s time to visit relatives, and in some places to ride in a horseback procession through the countryside with blessed twigs to ensure fertile fields for the year ahead. While the men and boys are out gallivanting around on horses, girls are at home decorating eggs in preparation for the following day.
Egg Time by Semmi, used with permission.
Easter eggs are called kraslice, from the old Czech word krásný, meaning red, which was the most common colour used for dying. The designs are usually very intricate and, as The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia points out, “some eggs are even decorated by using a drill and hollowing out portions of the shell”. In fact, the techniques used to hand-paint and decorate them are truly an art form, and there are even competitions for the best kraslice and a museum dedicated to the craft.
During the weeks preceding Easter, Czech and Slovak cities have street markets selling kraslice, gingerbread lambs and other Easter items, such as the one in Prague's Old Town Square, photographed by My Czech Republic Blog.
Red Monday
Easter Monday practices, involving boys pouring water over girls and lightly whipping them with braided branches, are the most controversial of Easter traditions. As The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia explains, “if you are not Slovak and didn’t grow up around these traditions, you might find them at best—odd, at worst—barbaric.”
What? by Laura Appleyard, used under a Creative Commons license.
So what happens exactly on Easter Monday? The Czech Daily World explains the pomlázka whipping tradition:
Throughout the day men (usually in groups) visit their female relatives and friends and spank them with special whips. […] These whips are hand-made from willow rods, the length ranges from 50 centimeters to two meters. There are ribbons at the end. There used to be a tradition that women would add their own ribbons so the whip would say how many women the particular man has already visited but this seems to fizzle out. And women are chased around (if they decide to make it interesting or to play along), or they just stand motionless and the male visitors would spank her butt. However, it should not hurt. Or at least not throughout the whole procedure.
The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia explains why willow branches are used to make the pomlázka (which is called korbáč in Slovak): “It is the first tree that ‘wakes’ in spring and, according to folk tradition, the fertility and vitality from the branches were thought to flow into the woman during this act.”
Czech Mate Diary explains the exchange taking place during the whipping:
If you were one of the first houses the mob visited, you were lucky: the guys are still kind of sober, kind of polite and kind of mellow. You let them into the living room - or better - just a hallway, give them some refreshments, offer them more vodka and let them “spank” you. If they still have their egg baskets, you would also stuff couple of eggs in them and if you are lucky they leave afterwards.
Pomlázka whipping in the village of Hříchovice, near Pilsen.
Tischler's in Prague posted an article from the Prague Daily Monitor on an American woman's reaction to the tradition:
…men and boys […] go door to door singing Easter carols, demanding “treats” (eggs, chocolate, liquor, or a peck on the cheek) and the right to beat the women with their pomlázka whips for good luck. While my female students said they generally enjoyed decorating Easter eggs and preparing Easter sweets, none seemed too fond of the pomlazka or gendered traditions.
[…] Being both female and a foreigner, I presented a problematic situation. Should our hostess offer me chocolate eggs and liquor as she did her male friends? Should she offer me nothing? In the end, I was given a warm welcome and a glass of red wine.
In addition to whipping, Easter Monday also involves dousing. According to The Journeys of Captain Oddsocks, in some regions the girls get their revenge on Tuesday when it’s their turn with the whips, while in other regions they return the rejuvenation with a bucket of ice-cold water. In Slovakia, however, it seems that it's the girls who get watered on Easter Monday. The Foreigner's Guide to Living in Slovakia explains the ritual:
…it’s customary for the girls and women to stay at home while the boys and men, usually dressed in nicer clothing and sometimes even in kroj – traditional costume, go from the residence of one relative to another, bringing greetings and intending to oblievat’ – to “water” the female relatives present. Water is the symbol of life and the pouring of water is a gesture meant to bestow year long health and beauty. Some use a spray of perfume instead of water, or both.
Isn’t that nice? The women folk get watered and whipped while the men get fed and given drinks, and the little boys are given money or chocolate in exchange for their work of the day. Just so you know, being watered can range from having a teaspoon of warm tap water dribbled over you (my personal experience), to a bucket of frigid well water thrown at you.
Liquid assets: Bloggers on World Water Day
(This article would not have seen the light of day without the collaboration of Paula Góes, Amira Al Hussaini and Lova Rakotomalala. Many thanks!)
It's known as the universal solvent, Adam's Ale, government juice, council pop, H2O, dihydrogen monoxide, hydrogen hydroxide, has a ton of different names in Arabic and yesterday (March 22) the world was called upon to pay it special attention.
World Water Day 2008 marked the start of the fourth year of the UN International Decade for Action on Water that began in 2005, and to mark the occasion portals like ih20.org aggregated stories and videos while bloggers weighed in with insights and commentary from various corners of the world.
Madagascar blogger Malag@sy Miray posted a striking print advertisement (pictured above) from the Global WASH Campaign and noted that
A Madagascar, moins de 15% de la population disposent de l’eau courante dans leur logement et les ménages qui en ont se trouvent en majorité en zones urbaines [..] Or avec le taux de croissance démographique en vigueur actuellement à Madagascar, il serait faux de croire que ces buts seraient atteints par le seul équipement en réseau d’eau courante, sans une rapide prise en compte de la nécessité des mesures adéquats d’assainissements.
In Brazil, dozens of bloggers rallied around the appeal by the Faça a Sua Parte [Do Your Part, pt] blog, which sought to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide, and remember that in Brazil, the world's richest country in terms of freshwater availability, forty million families have no access to drinkable water. Brazilian bloggers expressed the view that the country has an important role in preserving drinking water and are doing their bit to raise awareness about the importance of managing their precious water resources. Bloggers like Denise Rangel [pt] reminded readers that individual attitudes make a big difference to the planet:
Você já imaginou o quanto de água é desperdiçada no simples ato de ensaboar as mãos com a torneira aberta? De acordo com a Agência Nacional de Águas (ANA), são gastos cerca de sete litros! Não é mais admissível que ainda haja pessoas que se recusam a mudar pequenos hábitos que, além de trazer economia para seus próprios bolsos, proporcionam um grande bem ao meio ambiente e à vida de outras pessoas. O combate ao desperdício deve ser um hábito estimulado pela família inteira. Basta fechar a torneira ao ensaboar as mãos, ao escovar os dentes ou tomar um banho mais rápido.
Sérgio Coutinho [pt], on the other hand, expressed the view that it is necessary to stay ahead from the myth that if everyone makes a little effort the planet will be saved:
Seria interessante que o desperdício industrial de água, com centenas de litros jogados no lixo para a produção de uma só mercadoria (20 litros por frango, por exemplo) também sofresse com a regra “da parte de cada um”.
In the Middle East, Tel Aviv-based Yael K was woken up (by her cats) in the middle of the night, only to find that her thoughts turned almost immediately to water:
What? Doesn’t everyone else think about this issue in the wee hours of the morning?
For those of you who don’t know, our region is in the midst of a quite severe drought that has been going on for the past 4 years. We’ve had way less rainfall and snowfall than we generally get and far far less than we need in this arid desert region. For those who don’t know, right now the mid-west in the U.S. is getting far more rainfall and snowfall than they usually get and far far more than they need –in fact, they are being seriously flooded with lots of loss of life and damage to property and so forth occurring. The U.K. also got hit with severe flooding this year.
So my 4 a.m. thoughts ran something like this: Such a shame that those poor people are being flooded and us poor people are water-deprived. They’ve gotten more water in the last 2 weeks than we’ve gotten in a full year. All that lovely water is running amok in people’s houses and then will eventually drain out to the sea and become salty and even of less use than when it is destroying property and washing out roads. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some way to move all that water from places it isn’t needed to places that it is? If our global warming trends and climate changes continue, at some point water will be worth more than oil and will go for a pretty penny. Then I fell back asleep.
Carl, in Jerusalem, recalled a post he wrote nearly a year ago considering the implications for Israel's water supply of any land-sharing arrangement with Palestine or Syria, and expressed concerns about the near future:
With warm temperatures hitting this weekend (temperatures are expected to hit 29 degrees Celsius today and 31 tomorrow), the winter rains are likely finished for the season. Unfortunately, we did not have enough rain this winter, and if the water levels run too low, the aquifers that supply our water may be irreversibly polluted. The existing desalination facilities are insufficient. We have a major problem that could potentially hit full force as soon as this summer.
The WITNESS Hub, meanwhile, presented the the other side of the argument, posting the first “chapter” of “Drying Up Palestine“, a 28-minute documentary by Rima Essa and Peter Snowdon which describes itself as “a film about what it's like to try and live with less than one raindrop out of every ten”.
Dismissal of Brazilian Blogger: Censorship or Just Business?
The abrupt dimissal of the journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim — or PHA as he is referred too — from his anchor-like position at the IG portal has fueled this week's blogs debate. The humorous and opinionated style used by PHA in his ‘Conversa Afiada‘ blog to attack what he called the ‘PIG' — an acronym for Portuguese words meaning, ‘the party of the coup-plotting mass media' — was an outlet for ‘left bloggers', and many posts were quick to denounce IG's surprising move as censorship.
O site de Luiz Carlos Azenha informa que Paulo Henrique Amorim foi demitido do IG nesta terça-feira. Por fax. O que chama a atenção, de cara, é a intempestividade da medida do portal de internet. Se não fosse o Azenha, estaríamos acessando o site do PH sem conseguir, e sem saber por que… Fica praticamente impossível deixar de especular sobre as possíveis injunções políticas do fato. Aguarda-se uma explicação do IG. Enquanto não vem, permite especulações e preocupação de que pode estar começando uma caça às bruxas jornalística, promovida sob as ordens de grandes empresas de mídia e de políticos que todos sabem quem são e que têm ascendência sobre tais empresas.
Demissão de PHA - Cidadania.com
PHA's Dismissal - Cidadania.com
It is important to mention that IG differentiates itself from the rest of the big Internet outlets by its sympathetic approach to the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. This perspective adds intrigue to the plot, as it is not so easy to identify the forces driving behind PHA's release.
Não há UM ÚNICO BLOG “DE DIREITA” DENTRE OS DESTAQUES DO IG. Repito: NÃO HÁ UM ÚNICO, UM MÍSERO, UM COITADINHO QUE SEJA. Mas bastou PHA zarpar do portal que já falaram naquelas bobagens de “PIG” e outros bordões ridículos e adorados pelos semoventes. Se houve alguma interferência política, foi a maior idiotice do planeta ou um movimento digno das jogadas de Kasparov. Ou então, tcharã!, não foi nada disso e o contrato foi rescindido pelos motivos mais prosaicos, mesmo.
MITOS SOBRE A RESCISÃO CONTRATUAL DE PAULO HENRIQUE AMORIM - Imprensa Marrom
Myths about PHA's contractual termination - Imprensa Marrom
IG has an Ombudsman, who has a blog. He's been posting the opinions of the portal users and readers on PHA's dismissal, mostly they are negative. He has also managed to pull out an official statement from the portal's press office:
Em atendimento a pedido de leitores que cobram uma manifestação do iG no caso Conversa Afiada, reproduz-se abaixo a posição divulgada pela assessoria de imprensa do portal: “O contrato com o site Conversa Afiada foi rescindido de forma unilateral a partir do dia 18 de março, respeitando todas as cláusulas contratuais. Haverá multa e o jornalista está sendo indenizado. A decisão de rescindir foi feita por conta de um processo de reestruturação de contratos de colaboradores do iG, que já começou há algum tempo. O site Conversa Afiada era altamente desvantajoso para o modelo de negócios do iG, principalmente em função da baixa rentabilidade provocada por poucos anúncios”.
As explicações do IG - Blog do Ombusdman
IG's explanations - Blog do Ombusdman
The late official explanation was fine, but not enough. So bloggers kept speculating.
Paulo Henrique Amorim tinha um salário alto no iG – bem lá para cima das dezenas de milhares de reais. Devia ser o blogueiro mais bem pago do país. Mas, para tentar imaginar os motivos de sua demissão, ninguém deve pensar apenas no valor de seu salário. Há mais aí no meio além de sua conhecida baixa audiência.
Paulo Henrique Amorim demitido do iG - Pedro Doria Weblog
Paulo Henrique Amorim dismissed from iG - Pedro Doria Weblog
PHA has himself expanded the story line with new elements reported at his newly created website:
O CITI ME DEMITIU? Em lugar de responder a uma pergunta, o Citibank prefere cercear a liberdade de expressão. Reproduzo abaixo M&M que publiquei no Conversa Afiada, quando ainda estava no iG: “BrOi”: DANTAS CHANTAGEIA CITI. Para a “BrOi” sair, o Citi precisa fazer um acordo com Dantas. O que significa retirar da Justiça de Nova York a ação de US$ 350 milhões que move contra Dantas. Para obrigar o Citi a fazer o acordo, Dantas entrou na Justiça – neste processo que o Citi move contra ele – com um documento que Dantas obteve de forma criminosa… . Porque o Citi, depois de ir à Justiça contra Dantas, não pode ser cúmplice de uma patranha: apresentar em juízo um documento roubado.
O Citi me demitiu? - Conversa Afiada
Has Citibank dismissed me? - Conversa Afiada
When the news that PHA's blog had been dropped started to spread through the blogosphere, many readers turned to other IG bloggers in order to check on what was going on. There was Mino Carta's, a senior journalist known from his major editorial posts in national magazines, who decided to end his blog at IG because of what he felt like ‘echoes of unacceptable situations that he and PHA have known very well'. But there was also Luis Nassif, maybe the most reputable on-the-scene blogger at this time, who came to the rescue of IG's reputation in front of the blogosphere.
1. Há dois meses estou enfrentando o esquema mais barra-pesada que já atuou na imprensa brasileira. Nesse período todo, não houve nenhuma pressão da parte do iG. Em nenhum momento sofri qualquer espécie de veto ou restrição. 2. Houve um rompimento unilateral do contrato do iG com o Paulo Henrique. As duas partes têm sua dose de razão nas reclamações recíprocas, embora a forma como se deu o rompimento tenha sido desastrosa e deselegante. 3. Desejo todo sucesso do mundo ao Paulo Henrique – que, alias, me ligou hoje de manhã agradecendo a nota que coloquei sobre sua saída, assim como a menção ao novo endereço do seu site. Da parte do iG recebi ligação também informando que nada muda na liberdade com que o Blog tem atuado. 4. De modo algum o episódio pode ser interpretado como vitória do jornalismo de esgoto ou perda de espaço da blogosfera independente. O iG continua um espaço democrático. E Paulo Henrique sai bastante fortalecido com o episódio e as demonstrações de solidariedade e apoio que recebeu. 5. Aos leitores fiéis peço paciência e esforço para baixar a fervura.
De Volta - Luis Nassif Online
Back - Luis Nassif Online
A more credible version has cropped up:
Ao que este blog conseguiu apurar - e não foi muita coisa ainda - a motivação do rompimento do contrato foi a postura firme de Paulo Henrique contra a fusão da Brasil Telecom com a Oi (a tal “Broi” de que ele tanto fala). Como a Brasil Telecom é controladora do iG, a versão faz sentido. E, a ser verdadeira esta versão, a recisão é, do ponto de vista do iG, compreensível.
Os motivos do rompimento - Entrelinhas
The causes of the Os motivos do rompimento - Entrelinhas
An almost obvious comment from a typical blogger comes as a good advice.
A situação, embora não seja uma regra sem exceções, que sirva de exemplo e peso nas discussões sobre parcerias entre blogs e a mídia tradicional, seja ela um jornal pequeno de pouca circulação ou um mega portal como o próprio iG: independência pessoal, tão valorizada em blogs, nem sempre combina com interesses empresariais.
Paulo Henrique Amorim e blogs em portais - Prensa 3.0
Paulo Henrique Amorim and blogs in portals - Prensa 3.0
PHA's ousting from IG will continue to raise partisan controversy in the blogosphere, but the censorship thesis has lost ground to a collectively formed view that is able to identify such events as adjustments in the development of a new media ecology. Indeed, changes are happening everywhere, and spreading fast.
The blog world is seeing more change right now than I’ve seen in years. Mike Arrington is close to those changes, and reports on some of them (money, linking, and cliques). Mark Cuban caused a bunch of noise a few days back by writing that newspapers shouldn’t call their blogs “blogs” because it destroys their brand. Hey, I agree with that. FastCompanyLive is really my videoblog, but I don’t call it that. Cuban followed it up with another post that’s very astute. Says what matters is why you do what you do.
The changeosphere - Scobleizer
Maldives: Living with contaminated groundwater
As the world observed World Water Day on March 22, issues concerning sanitation and access to safe water were discussed and debated in the media. This year’s theme for WWD is sanitation as 2008 is the International Year of Sanitation.
Maldivian bloggers have brought water and sanitation issues to the forefront of discussion in the country. It has emerged that the groundwater in several islands of the Maldives is contaminated with sewage.
It began with the death of 5 young people in a water well on March 3. They were part of a construction team working to bore a hole in the well when toxic gases caused the death. When there was no news of two persons, another person climbed in for rescue, and this cycle repeated till five people were in the well. The well was used to supply water for the Fish Market in the capital Male’.
When the accident took place, the eyewitnesses alerted Maldives Police Service. However, in such emergencies it is the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) which has to be alerted. The hospital ambulance which arrived did not have paramedics as in the Maldives ambulances are no more than simple vans which carry patients in stretchers. The MNDF rescuers who arrived to the scene did not give CPR to the victims.
The Maldives Medical Watch blog examines the failures of emergency services to respond to this accident and gives recommendations on improving the medical rescue services.
We asked some of our friends about who they would contact in a similar event. The answers we got were not surprising. Most of them said that they would contact MPS or IGMH. The MNDF Fire and Rescue services were mentioned by only one of the 25 people we contacted. This maybe a biased assessment but this highlights one issue. The general public have not been made aware of what emergency service they need to contact in which kind of incident.
This brings us to our argument for the need for a common Emergency Services. Why can't we organize an emergency response service that has teams from various fields (Fire, Rescue, Police, Medical Services) that could be contacted by calling an umbrella Emergency Service?
International practice is to have a single body responsible for Emergency services. They will be comprised of the different teams that will be mobilized to respond to an event. It would them be easier for the common people to know which number to call in an emergency. Much like the 911 service we see on Reality TV.
We also note that the information conveyed at the time of calling the rescue service is vital. If details were not provided by the caller, the person receiving the call should have the sense to keep him or her online and to gather more information till the rescue services could reach the site.
Another issue that has been raised is how unprepared workers are when they are at high risk work. With inadequate safety regulations and laws to make it mandatory for employers to provide safe working environments, many workers in the Maldives are facing work-related risks while accidents at work are common.
The blogger Hamdun examines the issues concerning work safety in the Maldives.
The state in any country bears the burden of legislating and implementing laws to serve and protect its citizens. Legislating Rules and Regulations on workplace safety standards also falls on the government’s shoulder in making work sites safe for the people who work in them and also the general public from those work sites. It is also the government’s responsibility to monitor the workplaces to ensure the state of the workplaces are with the workplace safety standards, and penalise those who fail to adhere to it.
Poor workplace safety Standards and poor monitoring of the standards is equal to inviting tragedy with open arms. The Bopal tragedy in India serves the best example of this. The state of Madhya Pradesh was aware of the poor workplace safety observed in Bopal plant but decided to ignore the issue on the ground that it provided much needed employment and income for the locals. Then, on the night of 3 December 1984 tragedy struck, when a reaction in one of the storage tanks resulted in leaking more than 40 tones of Methyl Isocynate (MIC) gas into the air killing 3800 people instantly and more than 30000 people to date. Should the Maldives wait on for proper workplace safety standards till we experience a similar tragedy? Obviously no, if a Workplace Safety Standard means saving a single life it is definitely worth it. Thus, it is time for the government to introduce tighter Workplace Safety Standards and develop a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the standards are well observed within worksites and no more lives are lost to poor safety conditions.
It was the work safety angle that the mainstream media picked up immediately after the deaths of the five people. However, Bluepeace blog examined the reasons as to why toxic gases were built up in the well and came up with a shocking conclusion: the groundwater in Male’ is contaminated with sewage. Male’ Water and Sewerage Company (MWSC) providing sewerage services has built a sewerage system which discharges effluent without any treatment.
Unlike other inhabited islands in the Maldives hardly any household in Malé sink effluent (sewage and waste water) into the ground using septic tanks. Household effluent is collected in catch pits and transferred to MWSC’s Central Sewage System. If this is the case, why is the groundwater in Malé contaminated with sewage? For more than a decade, sewage manholes have been causing sewage infiltration into groundwater because of defective manhole housing. In addition, the poor design and construction of catch pits used in households have lead to further infiltration of sewage into groundwater. In order to reduce the pressure from sewer gases in manholes and thus reduce infiltration, MWSC erected sewage vents in Malé, some of them located in public parks.
The use of septic tanks and the primitive sewage systems in the rest of the country causes equally alarming problems. Sinking of effluent into the ground has caused contamination of groundwater in several islands of the Maldives. Unlike Malé, in the other islands the people use groundwater for washing clothes, dishes and for bathing, as piped desalinated water is not available. When rainwater is depleted, during dry spells, the people drink groundwater in several islands. In fact, 25% of the people of the Maldives depend on groundwater for drinking according to State of the Environment Report 2002.
After the issue was raised by Bluepeace blog, mainstream media picked on the issue and newspapers started running articles on it. Another interesting revelation that came in the wake of this debate is that Maldives Food and Drug Authority (MFDA) was aware that contaminated water was used to clean fish at the Fish Market but did not intervene to stop it, as Bluepeace blog reports.
According to Miadhu, the Maldives Food and Drug Authority (MFDA), which has been established in 2006 to centralise the setting of standards relating to food and drugs in Maldives, has carried out a groundwater testing in the Fish Market area in January 2008. The tests carried out by the MFDA indicated presence of “considerable amounts of hydrogen sulphide and ammonium in that area”.
What is amazing to learn is that even the MFDA, while being scientifically aware of the high concentration of deadly gases in the groundwater of Male’, much prior to the deaths on Youth Day, had failed to take measures to stop the use of contaminated water to wash fish and the Fish Market’s floors.
After the tragic death of five young men on Youth Day in the Maldives, the various government agencies are involved in a game of pointing fingers and blaming one another. Meanwhile the public has been made more aware of water and sanitation issues through blogs and other media outlets. An increasing number of people have stopped buying fish from the Fish Market although contaminated water is no longer used to clean the fish. However, Maldives Water and Sanitation Authority (MWSA), the regulatory body on water and sanitation, has so far not responded to the circumstances surrounding the recent deaths, and have not issued any statement. With irresponsible authorities in charge, a large number of Maldivians live in islands with contaminated groundwater, leaking toxic gases, and sewerage systems discharging untreated effluent.
As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in his message on World Water Day, the biggest culprit in failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015 is the lack of political will.
Russia: Two Dagestani Journalists Killed
Ilyas Shurpaev, a 32-year-old TV journalist and blogger (LJ user shurpaev), was found strangled in the apartment he was renting in Moscow Friday. (More detailed English-language media accounts of the murder are here.)
A native of Dagestan, Shurpaev had been based in Makhachkala until very recently, covering the Caucasus region for the state-owned Channel One. (A Sept. 2007 Global Voices translation featuring his observations on the situation in Ingushetia is here.) He transferred to Channel One's Moscow office a month ago.
Timur Aliev - LJ user timur_aliev, a journalist and Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov's aide - wrote this (RUS) about Shurpaev:
[…] He was an excellent guy - witty, communicative. Lots of fun stuff on his blog - yesterday, by the way, he wrote a lot there. We knew each other mainly through LJ. Though we did run into each other once in real life - at a seminar in [Nalchik]. And for the New Year's, he sent us some gifts, through friends from Makhachkala. It's been hardly a month since he moved to Moscow, and we were congratulating him in LJ on the new job location. He had been covering all kinds of things in his native Dagestan (explosions, terrorist acts, warfare) and nothing had happened to him. And in Moscow, he got killed…
Oleg Panfilov - LJ user oleg_panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations - wrote this (RUS):
Ilyas had a book in him. And, perhaps, even more than one. He was very talented, his blog was, I think, one of the best ones in my [feed]. I recommended it to many people, although sometimes I had a problem with his loose style and “salty” words…
Most likely, they attempted to rob him, but they didn't take his laptop. I don't think it was a work-related murder, because Ilyas was a rare journalist who did the most serious stories solidly and neutrally. Sometimes, when we got together in Makhachkala, we talked about propaganda, and Ilyas, who understood perfectly well what kind of place he was working at [state TV], was making it clear that he was trying hard to avoid propaganda cliches. And he was successful in doing that…
The following exchange on Shurpaev's professionalism (RUS) took place in the comments section to Panfilov's post:
z_ari_n:
[…] he… was… a good journalist. […]
dinrid
Then what was he doing at Channel One if he was a good journalist? In Russia, it is now practically impossible to be an honest journalist if you don't have your work published in the oppositional mass media.
oleg_panfilov:
This opinion, of course, is legitimate, too, but, first, the oppositional media also frequently have problems with objectivity, and second, the number of honest journalists and “honest” media is not the same.
z_ari_n:
I'm sorry, but this doesn't mean anything. To be a good journalist, it's enough not to be a frenzied journalist. Basically, a good journalist can work practically anywhere, as long as [he/she] is considerate and diligent.
Here is a comment (RUS) Shurpaev made on March 3 about his work and the Russian presidential election, which took place the previous day:
Watched our programming yesterday. I'm so happy I'm here in Abkhazia now, on a work trip, and am not taking part in this bacchanalia. Thanks for your attention.
Shurpaev's last blog entry (RUS) has received much attention both in the Russian blogosphere and in the media. In it, he wrote that he'd been “blacklisted” by a Dagestani newspaper critical of the republic's president:
Here we go! I'm a [dissident] now! Not sure if I should laugh or cry. I already wrote here that there's a battle going on at one Dagestani paper between its journalists and founders. The latter, according to the journalists, wanted to use them as informational killers. The potential killers [the journalists] rebelled. But all this business is way too serious and I don't understand it. But here's what blew me away. The founders came up with a list of people who it's forbidden to publish in this paper, mention them or […] even interact with them in the newspaper's building. And there I am, in the front row! Heading the list! The funniest thing is that I've never written anything subversive for this paper - only notes on my travels, in which I did not touch upon the political situation in Zimbabwe, but just describe where I'd been, what I'd eaten and who I'd seen. I haven't taken part in the political life of the republic [Dagestan] or even of my region, because I'm lazy and, in general, I had to go to the gym and take my daughter to the movies and to the playground. And then boom! Such a turn of events… Perpaps the [newspaper's] founders know something about me that I do not know myself? Maybe I should do the “suitcase-train station-Israel” thing, so as not to become a second [Khodorkovsky]? Anyways. Matilda [a frequent anonymous addressee of Shurpaev's blog postings]! Knit me some woolen socks. Just in case. The size is 43 1/2. […]
Among other individuals on the newspaper's “black list” was Gadzhi Abashilov, head of Dagestan's state TV. Around 8 PM on Friday, Abashilov was shot dead in the republic's capital, Makhachkala.
Timur Aliev posted some thoughts (RUS) on this murder as well:
The second murder of a Dagestani journalist in two days - now, following Ilyas Shurpaev (in Moscow), Gadzhi Abashilov has been killed in Makhachkala.
I don't know whether these two murders are connected. But here's one version (I do not possess any insider information whatsoever). Abashilov was a pro-government journalist, a media bureaucrat - head of the “Dagestan” [State TV and Radio Company]. Ilyas [Shurpaev] could have also been perceived to have ties with the government - because he worked for [state-owned Channel One] - the main federal channel. Both were on some list of journalists who had been banned from being published and mentioned in an independent (and, lately, more of an oppositional) Dagestani newspaper. Thus, they were both identified more like pro-government people.
This leads to two conclusions (of course, only in case these two murders originate from the same source) - either the opposition is retaliating, or someone wants to compromise the opposition - namely, [Suleiman Kerimov] (who has been mentioned as the newspaper's sponsor). […]
According to media reports on the ongoing investigation, the killings of Shurpaev and Abashilov are not connected.
Links for Sun, 2008-03
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