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Bolivia: Honoring Dogs on the Feast of St. Roch

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Each year on August 16, Bolivian households celebrate the Feast of St. Roch (or San Roque in Spanish), who was the patron saint of dogs. The story of this French saint may not be well known across the country, but nevertheless, Bolivians take this opportunity to provide extra special attention on their pets.

Even though the life of a dog may not always be easy, as one blogger reminds his readers. Alberto Medrano of El Alto Noticias [es] writes that “we should not forget that in El Alto and La Paz there are a lot of street dogs, who are sick that pass away at any time.”

There are many dogs throughout the country that are beloved by their owners, and this day is a chance for bloggers to express that through citizen media. However, to begin, the blog of the Archbishop of La Paz provides a bit of background information about the Saint [es].

Seguro que tus padres o tus abuelos te habrán ya contado la preciosa narración del perro de San Roque. Si te fijas en la estampa, nuestro santo va acompañado de un simpático chucho. ¿Quien fue este perro?. Pues … fue su salvador. Cuando hoy en día, sobre todo en verano, se abandonan por las calles tantos perros que nos han mostrado su cariño a lo largo del año, bueno será explicarles a aquellos que hacen este tipo de salvajadas la historia de este animal que le salvó la vida a un santo tan importante como fue Roque.

Se explica, que cuando nuestro santo se trasladó al bosque para no infectar de esta manera a los vecinos de Piacenza, recibía cada día la visita de un perro que le llevaba un panecillo. El animalito lo tomaba cada día de la mesa de su amo, un hombre bien acomodado llamado Gottardo Pallastrelli, el cuál, después de ver la escena repetidamente, decidió un día seguir a su mascota. De esta forma, penetró en el bosque donde encontró al pobre moribundo. (…) Cabe decir que otras versiones populares afirman que fue el mismo perro quien le curó, después de lamerle la herida de su pierna varias veces cuando el santo estaba en el bosque.

Surely your parents or grandparents have told you the precious story about the St. Roch's dog. If you look at the stamp, our saint is accompanied by a nice dog. What is the story behind this dog? Well, it was his savior. In today's times, especially in summer, many dogs that have showed their kindness throughout the year are abandoned in the street. It would be nice to explain to the people who do this type of savage actions, about the story of the animal that saved the life of an important saint like Roch.

As the story goes, our saint went to the forest in order to not infect the residents of Piacenza, and each day he was visited by a dog that took him a piece of bread. The animal took the bread from the table of his owner, a well-to-do man named Gottardo Pallastrelli, who after seeing the same scene day after day, decided to follow his pet. In this manner, they went into the forest where they found the poor, dying man. (…) It is worth mentioning that in other popular versions, it was the same dog that cured the man, after licking his leg wounds in the forest.

Photo of Tomoyo by Edwin Velásquez and used under a Creative Commons license.

Some Bolivian bloggers took this opportunity to write about their own pets, and share stories about how they impacted their lives. Edwin Velásquez writes about his dog and whose company is always enjoyed [es]:

Tomoyo, tenia otro nombre, otros dueños y otra vida. Tenía que ser sacrificada por sus anteriores dueños, porque estos tenían muchos perros y ya no podían cuidarlos a todos, al saber esto, mi padre la compro, y después me la regalo. Yo le puse un nuevo nombre, la bañe, le corte el pelo y le dí de comer. Tomoyo, estaba aterrorizada y por dos días no quiso comer, esto me preocupo mucho, pero con paciencia y cariño, Tomoyo, se adapto a su nueva vida.

Tomoyo had another name, another owner, and another life. She had to be given up by her previous owners because they already had too many dogs and they couldn't take care of them all. Knowing this, my father bought her and later gave her to me. I gave her another name, bathed her, cut her hair and gave her food. Tomoyo was terrified and for two days did not want to eat, and this worried me. However, with a bit of patience and care, Tomoyo adapted to her new life.

Another blogger, Maria Cristina Moreno in Santa Cruz also takes the opportunity to wish her dog, Danilo, well. She writes about the best way to celebrate the day:

Asi que hoy más que nunca hagan felices a sus mascotas con caminatas, buena comida, agua fresca y muchos mimos… porque los perros son los mejores amigos del hombre…

Today, more than ever, make your pets happy with walks, good food, fresh water and a lot of attention… because dogs are the man's best friend…

She also took the following video:

Finally, José Luis from the city of Yacuiba stayed up late one night researching stories about St. Rocco and writes [es] that “(honoring dogs) shouldn't be a questioning of celebrating on only day, but a question of celebrating every day.”

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Cambodia’s AIDS colony

Mong Palatino · 00:41, August 18th, 2009 · East Asia

lingua → pt · fr · bn · sr · zhs · zht · es · it

Various human rights groups have accused the Cambodian government of setting up a de facto AIDS colony when it resettled 40 families with HIV and AIDS to a village 25 kilometers outside Phnom Penh City.

The families were from Borei Keila in Phnom Penh. They were evicted from their homes to make way for an urban development plan of the government. The families are now living in Tuol Sambo village.

The families are complaining of their situation in the “AIDS village”:

With inadequate sanitation and no running water, the area is not a health sanctuary for HIV-infected patients, who require personal attention and care.

HIV-infected people living in the village say they have not received any official recognition of ownership rights nor government compensation for their old homes.

Details are Sketchy wants to find out the responsible authority for this drastic move:

Who is responsible for this decision? The media should find out. And prosecutors should start preparing a case. Because it’s all but certain that at least one of those 40 HIV-positive people will die as a result of the move. That’s negligent homicide, at least, if not outright premeditated murder.

The Global Network of People living with HIV is urging the Cambodian government to address the humanitarian concerns of the evicted families:

* Cease moving HIV-affected families to the Tuol Sambo site;
* Improve conditions at Tuol Sambo to meet minimum standards for adequate shelter, sanitation, and clean water;
* Ensure full access to quality medical services, including antiretroviral treatment, treatment of opportunistic infections, primary health care and home-based care;
* Work with relevant agencies and consult with the families already at Tuol Sambo to address immediate and long-term concerns regarding housing, health, safety, and employment, and reintegration into society in a manner that protects their rights and livelihoods; and
* Employ a transparent and fair screening process to determine eligibility for on-site housing at Borei Keila, and allow eligible families to move in immediately. For those found ineligible, authorities should provide other adequate housing.

Writing for Global Health, Alanna Shaikh reacts:

To me, this looks like a classic example of treating people living with AIDS as though they are disposable. They're going to die anyway, goes the logic, so there is no reason to treat them well. But people with AIDS are still human beings, with rights and skills and the ability to live full lives. Treating as less than human benefits no one.

More than 100 international and local groups wrote Prime Minister Hun Sen and Health Minister Mam Bunheng urging the latter to provide a better treatment to the evicted families:

The housing conditions at Tuol Sambo are grossly inadequate in terms of size, fire safety, and sanitation. Residents are crowded into poorly ventilated metal sheds that are baking hot in the daytime. There are no kitchens and no running water in the sheds, which are flanked by open sewers, and only one public well to service the evicted families.

While other homeless people from Phnom Penh are slated for relocation to brick houses at an adjacent site at Tuol Sambo, the HIV-affected families from Borei Keila have been placed in a separate settlement with inferior housing, distinguished by green corrugated metal roofing and walls. Even before the evictees were resettled there, local people referred to the green sheds as “the AIDS village.”

The living conditions at Tuol Sambo pose serious health risks, particularly to people with compromised immune systems. The risk to those people living with HIV can be life threatening. Residents report that the heat in the poorly ventilated metal sheds is so intense that they are usually unable to remain in their rooms during the afternoon and they are afraid that their ARV medication will deteriorate in the heat.

The situation of the evicted families in their former homes in Borei Keila was not also good as shown by this video by licadho, which was uploaded on The Hub:

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Azerbaijan: Eurovision voting scandal

Onnik Krikorian · 00:19, August 18th, 2009 · Central Asia & Caucasus

lingua → es · bn · zht · zhs

Although held in May, some media outlets in Azerbaijan last week reported that 43 people who voted for the Armenian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest have been identified by police and one has even been called in for questioning. Still effectively in a state of war over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, the news is just the latest of many scandals surrounding both countries in the international music competition.

The Snowolf says that it is not sure whether the news is alarming or entertaining. By the end of the post, however, the blogger seems to have decided on the former.

[…] Bloody hell. He voted for a fucking song. It's not just us that use the security dogwhistle as an excuse to give someone a hard time for the hell of it, then.

[…]

One final little question; How did the authorities know this man had voted for the Armenians? I'm willing to bet that it was down to the retention of all telephone calls and text messages on some sort of central database.

Brett Neely comments on the Soviet-era tactics employed by the authorities.

The super-cheesy annual Eurovision song contest (held in May) has had its share of political undertones in the past few years (Georgia, Russia, etc), but the latest case of politics creeping into the event has a downright Stalinist cast to it (minus the Siberian gulag).

[…]

Though the Azerbaijan entry wound up getting a very respectable third place, the thought that Azeris might support Azerbaijan’s arch-enemy, Armenia, was a bit too much. Never mind that the Azeri entry included an Iranian-Swedish singer joined by an Azeri pop star – which prompted Nasirli’s protest vote for Armenia. Even scarier is how the Azeri spooks discovered Nasirli’s “traitorous” voting:

[…]

A couple of points worth noting here. First, the Azeri state must feel insanely insecure if someone within the security services felt the need to look up SMS records to find out who’s not for Team Azerbaijan in one of the world’s silliest televised events. Human Rights Watch has documented the country’s heavy-handed attempts to silence dissent.

Others are not surprised, especially as Eurovision was already off to a bad start with Georgia's aborted entry in February. Eurovision central has more.

[…] his action is broadly representative of Azerbaijan’s government. International Politics rearing its head in the Eurovision? Who’d have thunk it?!

Here’s the Armenian entry that got the voters in trouble – I wonder if they still think it was worth it?

A Fistful of Euros says that the news is indicative of the state of democracy — or lack of it — in both republics.

That’s actually a fairly good index of the relative freedoms of the two countries. Armenia is a managed democracy, where the opposition is kept pretty toothless. Last year, when the government got tired of peaceful protests over a stolen election, they gunned down a bunch of protesters in the street. (And then blamed the opposition, of course.)

That said, Armenia has a formal opposition. The Armenian press is free-ish. (Well, newspapers are. TV and radio, not so much.) Open criticism of the government is tolerated. […] And there’s a much wider field for… I’m not sure how to say it… not dissent exactly. Opinions that differ from the nationalist consensus? There are boundaries that can’t be crossed in Armenia, but they’re much wider. Nobody really cares if you vote for the Azeris.

Azerbaijan, on the other hand, is a fairly repressive dictatorship. There’s not much more to say. Politically, it resembles the former Soviet republics of Central Asia much more than it does either of the other two countries of the south Caucasus. And Azeri society allows much less room for public dissent.

[…]

Anyway. Azerbaijan is a wannabe police state, the Nagorno conflict is intractable. Not really news. But once again, we see the power of Eurovision! And that’s always worth reporting.

Notes from the Bartender says the incident is Orwellian, but adds that the song didn't deserve being voted for in the first place.

Although amusing, these sorts of stories always make me wonder about the mindset of people who get into positions of power. Is their grip on power so tenuous that they need to monitor who their citizenry vote for in a song contest? Are the government really using resources to read everyone’s phone texts? How distorted has their sense of patriotism become?

[…]

[…] Long-time EU members now seem to treat the contest as something of a joke, seeing who can enter the most ridiculous contestant. New inductees into the wider European community, however, tend to take things a little too seriously, perceiving victory as a mode of national advancement.

I could understand if this was a visit from the Taste Police. […]

Life after Helsinki 2007 calls the heavy-handed tactics absurd, while The Armenian Observer simply concludes that if only 43 Azeri citizens voted for Armenia in this year's competition, and reportedly without the telephone number to do so being displayed, it is unlikely that any will do so in 2010.

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