Archive for
March 31st, 2009
Stories
Cambodia: Evidence at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
VOA Khmer interviewed former Khmer Rouge rebels who doubt there will be sufficient evidence to convict the five leaders waiting to stand trial at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Sok Pheap, a general in the army who had defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1996, challenges,
I didn’t know [who the killers were]; I was the soldier in the forest, and when I came back home also my relatives had gone missing, killed, and most of villagers had died.
Another former Khmer Rouge member, Meas Mouth, states that:
For instance, the skull bones that have been displayed: the court must know which skull belonged to a person killed by the Vietnamese, which belonged to a person killed by B-52 bombers, or any of the Khmers who did not die by the Khmer Rouge.
A lawyer from the Cambodian Defenders Project agreed that because the events occurred 30 years ago, evidence and witnesses could be hard to come by.
However, Youk Chhang of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, stated there are hundreds of thousands of documents to link the accused to the war crimes.
In addition to documentary evidence, testimonies of survivors are being gathered, including in Long Beach, California, where many Cambodians resettled after the genocide.
Victims and their relatives have the right to file complaints through the Victims Unit of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Instructions on how to file a complaint are found here.
Photo capturing faces of the Tuol Sleng prison by Yarra64 and licensed through Creative Commons.
Indian Elections 2009: The Impact of Socially Conscious Corporate Campaigns
In my previous posts for the Global Voices special coverage on the 2009 Indian general elections, I have analyzed how Indian politicians and political parties are using internet and mobile tools for election campaigning and civil society groups in India are using digital tools to run voter registration and transparency campaigns.
As interesting as these initiatives are, the three most effective election campaigns in the 2009 Indian general elections are run by corporate brands: Jaago Re by Tata Tea, My Idea from Idea Cellular and Lead India/ Bleed India by The Times of India (Live Mint/ Thaindian/ Exchange4Media/ Hindustan Times).
In my earlier avatar as the custodian of a large brand in India, I was convinced that online campaigns in India could stand on their own, without support from ad spends in mainstream media. The tactics employed by these three successful campaigns have made me realize that online brand campaigns in India will continue to be driven by heavy spending in mainstream media.
The Jaago Re campaign was launched by Tata Tea and Janaagraha in September 2008 (press release) to start a voter registration drive in colleges and corporates in 35 cities across the country and register four million voters. The voter registration itself is driven through an interactive application on its website and kiosks, which helps users identify their constituency, prepares a ready to print voter registration form in five minutes, guides them to the nearest voter registration center and updates them via SMS when their names are added to the voting list.
The campaign, which is run by a small team of youngsters in their twenties (The Week), has an advisory board that includes former Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy, Infosys founder Narayan Murthy and Rang De Basanti director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (Hindustan Times/ Indian Express/ TOI). The campaign has convinced several large colleges and companies to become 100 percent registered (TOI/ TOI/ Mid Day/ TOI/ Deccan Herald) and even convinced the election commission to allow bulk submission of registration forms.
Tata Tea has used a number of interesting ads to engage the Indian youth into the Jaago Re campaign.
Jaago Re Use Your Finger! Use it to Vote!
Tata Tea has also tied up with various TV channels to create micro campaigns like Bindass TV's iChange campaign to support the Jagoo Re campaign.
Jaago Re Bindass TV Ungali Utha Vote Kar ad:
Jaago Re Disney ‘If I Were a Prime Minister' ad:
Jaago Re Channel V VJ Juhi ‘Vote ya Vaat' ad:
Jaago Re also has an active social media presence with more than 15,000 members on Facebook and almost 13,000 members on Orkut.
The campaign is now conducting free Shut Up & Vote rock concerts by Bangalore-based band Thermal And A Quarter (TAAQ) across 10 cities to to engage Indian youth in the electoral process (DNA/ Indian Express/ IBN Live/ Indian Express/ DNA):
Jaago Re has turned out to be an extremely successful campaign. Not only has it been a topic of a huge number of news stories and blog posts, and resulted in much goodwill for Tata Tea (Business Standard), it has also managed to register 531,395 voters so far, in spite of its run ins with a slow moving bureaucracy (TOI).
The Indian blogosphere is in love with the Jaago Re campaign. Rashmi Bansal believes that, with the campaign, Tata Tea has taken corporate social responsibility further than most brands do. Rajesh Kumar wonders why only beverage companies do election themed social advertising. Indian Homemaker and Chavvi Sachdev share their experiences with voter registration. Sanjukta has an interesting interview with Jaago Re campaign coordinator Jasmine Shah.
Idea Cellular's My Idea campaign is a continuation of its participatory democracy ad campaign where a lady politician, aided by her tech-savvy assistant Abhishek Bachchan, gathers the views of the citizens in her constituency using mobile phones:
The campaign, run by Pinstorm, asks people to submit an idea that can change India and vote on the ideas submitted by others. So far, within one month, more than 2,000 ideas have been submitted and more than 140,000 votes have been cast (Indian Television).
It's the Janus-faced Lead India/ Bleed India by The Times of India, however, which is likely to incite the most interesting discussions in the Indian blogosphere.
The Lead India campaign carries forward the theme of its 2007 campaign, in which it ran a nationwide ‘talent-hunt' to search for the next generation of Indian leaders. In its new avatar, it wants to enable the Indian electorate to make the right voting decision in the upcoming elections, by providing a platform for meaningful political debate and supporting the No Criminals in Politics campaign.
At the same time, TOI's Bleed India campaign parodies Lead India and asks:
Lead India? Where to? Up the garden Path? Round the Bend? And by who? Our Leaders? Lol!
So while the Times Of India tries to find new leaders for a new age (good luck gentlemen!), we focus instead on those who Bleed India; Masters of the Scam, Tigers of the Tightrope: Surely they deserve some acknowledgement of their genius - in staying above the law, beyond the law, in making it and in breaking it..wah! wah! Ladies and gentlemen…you have led us and yes you have bled us.
It then creates an elaborate parody of the typical Indian politician, Pappu Raj, with his own Facebook profile and Facebook page (Exchange4Media).
Anondan tears apart the Lead India print ad while Rajiv Dingra wonders what is cooking with the Lead India/ Bleed India dichotomy. On Twitter, several users like Deepak and Kanika, find the Bleed India campaign “funny and creative”, while Sumant and Aadisht believe that Bleed India is “buzz gone wrong” and “badly done sarcasm”.
Opinion is divided on whether Jaago Re, My Idea and Lead India/ Bleed India are really socially conscious campaigns, or blatant attempts to generate buzz, but if engagement is the benchmark for success, these campaigns are the most effective ones running in the election season in India.
Guyana: The Legacy of Janet Jagan
On the afternoon of Friday 27 March, news spread in Guyana that 88-year-old former president Janet Jagan had been admitted to hospital. Shortly after midnight on Saturday 28, Jagan passed away, as reported by the Live in Guyana blog.
Still a controversial figure more than eleven years after she left office, Jagan was both the first foreign-born and the first female head of state of Guyana. Born in Chicago, USA, in 1920, to a middle-class Jewish family, Janet Rosenberg met her future husband Cheddi Jagan in 1942, while working as a nurse. They married the following year. Jagan, then a dentistry student, was significantly influenced by his wife's socialist politics. A Stabroek News obituary summarises the Jagans' entry into active politics:
She came to British Guiana with him in December 1943 and worked for 10 years as a dental nurse in Dr Jagan’s clinic. She became immediately involved in the labour struggle and as a member of the first ever union in the colony, the British Guiana Labour Union. She was also the co-founder of the Political Affairs Committee. Mrs Jagan was elected General Secretary of the PPP in 1950 and served in that post until 1970. She was a founder of the Women’s Progressive Organisation and became the first elected woman to the Georgetown city council. She was later one of three women to enter the House of Assembly as a representative of the Essequibo Constituency.
Following the suspension of the constitution and the ousting of the government, Mrs Jagan was jailed for six months in 1955 and restricted to Georgetown after her release. When the PPP was returned to power in the 1957 elections she was appointed Minister of Labour, Health and Housing – one of her famous posts.
(While she was a government minister, Jagan made a strong impression on the visiting writer V.S. Naipaul, who described her dress sense and reading habits in his 1962 travel book The Middle Passage.)
In 1964, however, the Jagans' political rival Forbes Burnham won a general election, and led the country from independence in 1966 until his death in 1985. Cheddi Jagan was leader of the opposition during this period, and Janet Jagan worked as editor of the party newspaper. After free elections in 1992, the PPP was returned to power and Cheddi Jagan became president.
After her husband's death in 1997, Janet Jagan ran for the office of president and was elected, despite her age (77) and the fact that she was white and foreign-born. (She was only the second female South American head of state.) She resigned in 1999, after a mild heart attack, and her short term of office was marked by political unrest. Until her death, she remained active within the PPP, resuming the editorship of the party newspaper, and she was a noted patron of the arts.
Guyanese bloggers' reactions to her death were varied. “Mrs Jagan's entire life has been a class act,” wrote Live in Guyana admiringly. “Her Presidency was defined by a sense of vision and wider purpose.” The blog also posted a gallery of portraits. On the other hand, Guyana 911 remarked:
We wait now for PPP to keep pounding it in our face how great she was. Look how many years have gone and they still haven't reached the end of Cheddie's eulogy.
Guyana 360 pointed out that as of early Saturday afternoon, the government of Guyana had still not issued an official statement on Jagan's death; when a statement did appear later that afternoon, 360 provided a link. The following day, 360 raised questions about the quality of medical care available at the hospital where she died:
Could anyone say why was Mrs. Jagan admitted to the Georgetown Public Hospital, a facility that has been discarded by senior officials of her party? Is this the care and attention she deserves as a fomer President?
Meanwhile, on Twitter, mediaimran declared himself “appalled that [furniture store] Courts ran a TV ad which stated that the company was ‘pleased to join the nation in mourning the passing of Mrs. Jagan'.”
Guyana Providence Stadium linked to details of the “simple” funeral plans for Jagan: a ceremony at the parliament building in Georgetown followed by a cremation ceremony.
Morocco: Different Names, Same Story
Ali Anouzla and Jamal Boudouma have each been fined MAD200,000, the equivalent of approximately USD$23,800
Despite outward progress, Morocco has faced a number of setbacks for press freedom over the past few years. Most recently, it was reported that Ali Anouzla and Jamal Boudouma, managing editor and publishing director of Moroccan newspaper Al-Jarida Al-Oula (الجريدة الأولى) have each received two-month suspended sentences and fines of MAD 200,000 (approximately USD$23,800) for “defamation” and “insulting the judiciary.” Anouzla stated that his lawyer will appeal the ruling as soon as a copy of the decision has been received.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):
The lawsuit, the second in less than three months in regard to the same article, was filed by Khalil Hachemi Idrissi, publishing director of the daily French-language newspaper Aujourd'hui Le Maroc in January. Idrissi filed a previous lawsuit against Anouzla in September 2008, after the newspaper reported on an incident in which Hassan al-Yaqoubi, the spouse of King Muhammad VI's aunt had shot and injured a traffic policeman who had stopped him.
“We urge the court of appeals to overturn this unjust ruling,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayam, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “This fine and another that was issued in January smack of political score-settling and are likely to bring down the newspaper if upheld by the court of appeals.”
Idrissi wrote a piece in Aujourd'hui Le Maroc calling the newspapers that covered the incident unpatriotic and said they lacked journalistic ethics. Al-Jarida al-Oula was the only newspaper that wrote about the incident at the time, Anouzla told CPJ.
Moroccan author Laila Lalami blogged about the story today, clearly stating her disagreement with the court's decision:
So let me see if I get this straight: One prominent journalist sues another for defamation and wins. (And it just so happens that the latter was critical of the regime’s handling of the al-Yacoubi case.) The censorship machine is so well-oiled nowadays that the Moroccan government doesn’t need to do anything.
Will of the blog One Hump or Two? hopes that the testimony somehow reaches publication:
I hope Al-Jarida Al-Oula, if it decides the risk of continuing to publish the testimony isn't worth it, is able to give or sell the documents to a foreign paper (I think Spain would be best). That's not an ideal solution, though, because it makes the information more difficult for Moroccans to reach.
Macedonia: Student Protest Ends in Violence
Don't rape Skopje by Harald Schenker
1. We demand an official position of the Faculty of Architecture [at the University of] Skopje on developments concerning the city’s public spaces in the interest of society.
2. We demand a professional debate before every key venture for building projects.
3. We demand transparent competitions, announcements, and urbanistic surveys, as well as commissions with representatives and consultants from Macedonia and abroad, NON-PARTY bodies that will decide about such buildings. The final decision must be sanctioned through a referendum, as practiced in European cities in such cases. Until then, a moratorium for construction must be in place!
4. We demand of politicians to - instead of investing in kitsch architecture, instead of building artificial villages for developing rural tourism, instead of drawing up new urbanistic plans, instead of building on extremely inappropriate parcels - to focus public funding on the maintenance of the authenticity and originality of the old buildings that already exist but decay due to neglect.
5. We ask that the citizens wake up, for once think with their own heads, and become actors in the building in their and their city’s future instead of remaining merely passive observers.
Soon after the news for the protest circled the internet, many posts were created to call the citizens to a counter-protest, to support the building of the church. One day before the protest the blog “Jadi Burek” published [mkd] a call for a counter-protest:
Tomorrow at 12 pm, on the square of Skopje, probably a group of gays and atheists will gather and try to spread rubbish under the hidden motive of caring for the architecture of the city, and against the church. Because of that, tomorrow me and my family are going on a counter-protest one hour earlier, at 11 am, and will give our support to the construction of the church!
Similar texts were published on many other blogs.
The protest was scheduled for 12 pm on March 28, 2009, but, before it started, the counter-protesters gathered to support the building of the church. When the two groups met on the square of Skopje, the event turned from peaceful to violent, involving fights between the two groups:
Many bloggers that were at the protest wrote about the incident.
The blogger Harald Schenker from Vision! Come on… posted a full report:
[…] The protest was countered by a mass of up to 1500 church goers, mobilized from all over the country, who gathered to stop the protest from happening. The “spontaneous” and thus not registered counter-protest featured church flags, printed banners, a priest and a lot of people, who have no connection whatsoever to urban Skopje, but who were bussed in from rural areas to fight the Anti-Christ. A large number of expensively produced flyers flooded the city centre – clear indications of a logistically well organized movement. They were in majority, so the actual manifestation remained marginal and actually was about to retreat, when a group of violent hooligans appeared out of nowhere. […] The heated up hooligans attacked individual participants in the protest, using the only intellectual arguments accessible to them – fists and legs. It is almost a miracle that there were only few injuries. […]
All this was happening under the eyes of a stunningly passive police force, which was obviously not able to cope with the events. So they did the obvious – they turned against the protesters. These are now under investigation for not having provided adequate security to their manifestation. No, this is not some sick joke. It is true. […]
The blog Kanalizacija wrote this [mkd]:
Today, a herd of 1000 [Hunzas] didn’t allow us to protest peacefully against the building of the church on the square. They had flags with crosses, icons and posters on which was written “We want temple” and some prayers. Among them there were members of [VMRO-DPMNE], who I know personally.
The people from the Architectonical Faculty, who I joined, were coming from the riverside from the park side. When we arrived at the square the mass started walking towards us, and were whistling and yelling “Uaaa” and “Go to Bakoyanni” [referring to Greek foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis].
If we didn’t escape there was going to be blood! […]
According to the mainstream media, the protests had political background, with the students led by the daughter of the chief of campaign headquarters of SDSM presidential candidate, and on the other side the counter-protesters, who were activists of VMRO-DPMNE.
The Macedonian blogosphere is constantly buzzing about the incident, and almost on every blog post there is a heated debate.
Hong Kong and the Philippines: Satire or racism?
A Senate leader in the Philippines just filed a resolution condemning a Hong Kong writer Chip Tsao for his article “The War at Home” in HK Magazine (originally published on 27 of March).
Now the article has been taken down in the website but the Senate Resolution also asked the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) to look into the working condition of the overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong. As the Hong Kong government decided to exclude foreign domestic worker from minimum wage legislation, the article will certainly add oil to the flame.
Who is Chip Tsao?
So who is Chip Tsao and what exactly did he write? For local Hong Kong people, we know him as To Kit （陶傑）, he is one of the most famous columnist and broadcaster in Hong Kong and he “earns” his reputation with his vulgar sarcasm, metaphor and Cantonese F words. Wikipedia has more of his background.
The article “The War at Home”, reading from the surface, is a commentary on international relation, in particular over the Spratly Islands, however, the embedded text is a criticism of Hong Kong Chinese's nationalism which is directed towards weaker country, rather than strong states, such as Russia and Japan. It is under such context that he wrote:
As a nation of servants, you don't flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.
Of course, such metaphor is very offensive to local domestic workers, especially the imagined conversation between him and “Louisa” (his domestic worker). However, if you have read how he criticized the Chinese government with his comment on June 4, you would be surprised (Apple Daily 205-05-07 via inmediahk.net):
況且比起土改和文革，中國的「六四」，在北京長安街天安門一帶，只殺了一兩千，數目出奇地少，所以「六四」不應該列為中國需要怎樣特別懺悔的「罪行」，這次殺得那麼少，太進步了，我覺得反而應該讚揚。
Mockery of Chinese or domestic workers?
Regarding this article, netizens from hkgolden forum pointed out that the article is in fact a mockery of Chinese government (the charge of treason) by quoting this part of the text:
I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.
Most of them agreed that Chip Tsao's mean and politically incorrect style would eventually result in big scandal, and the time has come. They re-pasted the apple daily news comic to spoof at Tsao:
Satire or Racism?
Meanwhile, the Asia City Publishing House (publisher of HK Magazine) has issued an apology to the Philippine Consulate General and took down the article in the HK Magazine website, but local filipino group demanded a more sincere public apology from Chip Tsao. In this afternoon press release (via e-mail), United Filipinos in Hong Kong stated:
We are all united in our position that the article was racist, discriminatory and demeaning to Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong. It was insulting to us as Filipinos and as domestic workers who are already confronting serious discriminatory and anti-migrant policies and practices in Hong Kong;
It was not a satire nor did we simply misunderstood the intent of the article. For if it was a satire, it should have been directed to the Philippine government who is also our exploiter and not to the Filipino domestic workers who have no hand on the position of the Philippine government on the Spratly Islands issue.
The NGO also calls for a protest rally April 5 against racial and class discrimination in Hong Kong.
Policy towards foreign domestic workers
The real issue at stake is probably not Chip Tsao's article, but local policy towards domestic workers. Apart from the exploitation employees' retraining Levy, a more recent controversy is concerning the “exclusion to wage legislation and long working hours”.
Asian Migrants' Coordinating Body, an NGO, has issued a statement this afternoon saying that the HK government's decision to exclude foreign domestic workers from legal protection is a “double violation of rights of foreign domestic workers”.
When the Labour Advisory Board excluded FDWs in the statutory minimum wage because we are working 16 hours a day, what they are really saying is that it is acceptable to pay a measly amount to workers labouring under long working hours. They are saying that this type of modern-day slavery is right.
What is wrong with receiving such an amount if you labor for 16 hours in a day? If a worker works overtime – as what is obviously the practice with domestic workers – she has the right to be compensated accordingly. Don’t we deserve to get paid HK$30 per hour because we are foreign workers?
Links for Tue, 2009-03
Kyiv Scoop and What's Up, Ukraine? comment on the constitutional changes proposed by president Victor Yushchenko.
Streetwise Professor and Robert Amsterdam's Blog comment on a WSJ piece based on an interview with Russia's deputy prime minister Igor Sechin.
A Fistful of Euros writes about a document known as the Durnovo Memorandum: “What’s striking about the memo is how, six months before World War One started, [Pyotr Durnovo] absolutely nails it. Nature, conduct, likely outcomes — he’s eerily, astonishingly correct about all of them.
Cubans Generation Y and Octavo Cerco blog about “an unforgettable night” in front of open microphones.
Haiti's jmc strategies is very interested in U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden's statements on immigration reform: “Biden did not specifically say that the Administration was backing away from a legalization program. It remains therefore to be seen what steps they will take in the future.”
The Acorn analyzes an opinion poll on international opinions on India and asks “why do Europeans take a dim view of India’s international role?”
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