Small farmers jailed for Sumatra fires as companies duck blame

By Harry Jacques

BENGKALIS, Indonesia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Firefighter Ibnu Hajar stopped near the top of a wrought-iron observation tower in Bengkalis on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, and looked inland over miles of oil palm trees planted up to the edge of the northeastern coastline.

“In 2015, all this was lost,” he said.

Five years ago, a strong El Nino climate pattern prolonged Sumatra’s main dry season beyond October, delaying rains needed to douse wildfires burning across expanses of peatland.

The result was an environmental and public health disaster, with 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) scorched, and half a million people sickened across the archipelago.

Indonesia’s planet-warming emissions exceeded those of the entire U.S. economy for 38 out of 56 days during the 2015 crisis.

Small-scale farmers in Bengkalis regency, part of Riau province, have set fires for decades to prepare land to plant cassava, pineapple and rambutan, said Teguh Surya, head of the Sustainable Madani Foundation, a Jakarta-based environmental group.

Research shows fire has traditionally been used in land cultivation owing to its speed, low cost and desirable side effects in reducing soil acidity and incinerating pests.

But such fires increasingly spread out of control after acacia and oil palm plantation firms began draining peatlands on an industrial scale in the 1990s, said Bengkalis-born Teguh.

Oil palm and acacia trees fare poorly in waterlogged soil, so companies excavated vast networks of canals to drain it, rendering the carbon-rich landscape highly flammable.

LOCKED UP

Across the road from the fire tower, the ground becomes increasingly damp and brackish as plantation land recedes into the sea about 80 km (62 miles) south of the Malaysian city of Malacca.

Oil palm grower Muakit, with flecks of grey hair and sun blemishes from years spent working more than a dozen hectares of land here alone, recalled the blacked-out sky during the worst of the 2015 disaster.

But only a few months after the haze brought by the fires finally ended, the 63-year-old became the object of a manhunt for contravening rules against burning.

Muakit, who goes by one name, said he went to work as normal in the fields not long after dawn in early 2016 and set a small fire to burn rubbish.

He then drove home, only to find out later in the day the fire had spread over about half a hectare. He went into hiding out of fear, but police caught up with him a month later.

The farmer found himself locked up with rapists and other violent offenders in a small cell of about 30 inmates and was later sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment.

“I am traumatised,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I don’t ever want to use fire again.”

LOW-HANGING FRUIT

Environmental groups say a legal crackdown against the people and companies behind the fires has disproportionately fallen on individual farmers like Muakit.

Kadiman, 59, a mildly spoken man who began farming here in 1981 and goes by one name, went to prison for two years in 2004 after setting fire to a patch of nearby land to begin planting.

He had to sell four hectares to support his family while in jail.

“I would not burn again,” said Kadiman. “I wouldn’t dare.”

Police detained 136 individuals in the year to mid-September, but launched criminal investigations into only two companies accused of fires on their concessions.

Legal advocates in Riau say only a handful of farmers arrested over fires have access to adequate legal representation.

Farmers like Muakit held in more remote areas are often unaware of their rights to legal assistance, said Andi Wijaya, director of the regional Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation.

The coronavirus pandemic has further complicated legal support this year owing to restricted prison access.


“COVID has been highly disruptive,” said Andi.
LAW ENFORCEMENT

Legal analysts say prosecutions of corporations over fires frequently run into obstacles in Indonesia’s maze-like legal system, with resourceful companies dragging out cases or winning appeals in local courts.

“We have identified 349 palm, pulp and paper companies involved in forest and peat fires (since 2015), but law enforcement has stalled,” said Zenzi Suhadi, head of advocacy at the Jakarta-based Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).

Greenpeace Southeast Asia analysis shows only a fraction of about $220 million handed down in fines to companies during the last decade has been paid.

In 2016, police in Riau province dropped criminal investigations against more than a dozen plantation firms accused of burning land.

“Companies sometimes do not want to share the information,” including concession permits, maps, environmental impact assessments and field data, said Professor Bambang Hero Saharjo at Bogor Agricultural University, who frequently testifies as an expert witness for the government in fire cases.

Given the complexity of criminal proceedings, the government has increasingly levied administrative sanctions against such companies, ranging from warning letters to suspending permits.

But holding errant plantation firms to account may be about to get harder, green groups fear.

On Nov. 2, President Joko Widodo enacted an unprecedented deregulation package, easing labour laws and red tape to attract new investment into Southeast Asia’s largest market.

Raynaldo Sembiring, executive director of the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, said new rules may weaken companies’ obligation to prevent fires on their concessions.

But details of the regulation still need to be clarified by the environment ministry, he added.

‘PERMANENT’ SOLUTION


About 4.4 million hectares of land burned in Indonesia between 2015 and 2019 - an area larger than Switzerland, according to Greenpeace.

The estimated $16 billion in economic damages from the 2015 haze crisis was double the worth of Indonesia’s value-added palm oil exports from the previous year, according to the World Bank.

In 2015, President Joko Widodo extended a moratorium on forest conversion, before banning new cultivation on peat in 2016.

Earlier this year, he instructed ministers to find “a permanent solution” to the annual wildfires.

Environment ministry data show there were far fewer fires this year compared with 2019, amid a shorter dry season.

But some structural factors could prove difficult to shift on the ground.

The Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research has estimated the use of fire to clear land to produce palm oil in Riau generates more than $3,000 per hectare.

But only a small share of that goes to the farmer, with local elites and plantation firms pocketing about 85%.

And as restrictions have been tightened on establishing larger plantations, one way around it may involve bundling up land owned by small-scale farmers, experts say.

That could also put such growers in the firing line.

“If a farmer burns something in the kitchen they go to prison,” said Muakit. “But if a company burns however many hundred hectares, there is no prison.”


Reporting by Harry Jacques; editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit news.trust.org/climate

Tullow Oil's new strategy focuses on squeezing West African oilfields

By Shadia Nasralla
Wed, 25 November 2020

LONDON (Reuters) - Tullow Oil will commit 90% of its investments in coming years on its existing oilfields offshore West Africa and move exploration activities to the back burner as it seeks to reduce its debt burden.

Tullow, which was founded in the 1980s to tap in to African oil and gas, has historically focused on exploring for new oil discoveries, but the oil price collapse this year has forced the entire oil and gas sector to slash its exploration budgets.

As part of a Capital Markets Day under new Chief Executive Rahul Dhir, Tullow, with a market capitalisation of $560 million as of Tuesday and $2.4 billion in net debt, said it expected to generate $7 billion of operating cash flow over the next 10 years.

"The plan focuses our capital on a deep portfolio of short-cycle, high-return opportunities within our current producing asset base and will ensure that Tullow can meet its financial obligations," Dhir said.

In a statement before a presentation due at 0900 GMT, Tullow said it had produced only 14% of the 2.9 billion barrels in place in its Ghanaian fields and that drilling there would start in the second quarter.

It expects to invest around $2.7 billion over the next 10 years and make $4 billion in cash flow to pay down debt and distribute shareholder returns at oil prices of $45 a barrel in 2021 and $55 from 2022.

In September, Tullow, which pays no dividend, raised the prospect of a potential cash crunch at a debt covenant test in January 2021. Then, it said it was looking at options like refinancing convertible bonds due next year or the senior notes due in 2022, amending its reserve-based lending (RBL) facility or raising cash from banks or other investors by January.

Since 2019, Tullow suffered a series of missed production targets, leading its previous chief executive to step down late last year.

It then set itself a $1 billion divestment target, but on Wednesday it said it saw less need for further divestments after the sale of its stake in yet-to-be developed Ugandan onshore oilfields to Total for $575 million and cost cuts.

As for its oilfields offshore Guyana, adjacent to the Stabroek field where Exxon Mobil Corp has discovered some 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent but where it had some disappointing well results, Tullow said it would focus on better understanding the basin.

Graphic: Tullow Oil free cash flow - 

https://graphics.reuters.com/TULLOW-OIL/oakvexyowpr/chart.png

Graphic: Tullow Oil net debt -

 https://graphics.reuters.com/TULLOW-OUTLOOK/ygdvzbamavw/chart.png

(This story corrects net debt figure to $2.4 billion to reflect recent Uganda deal, paragraph 3)

(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla in London, Editing by Matthew Lewis)

UK
Coronavirus: ‘Inadequate’ stockpiles forced Health Department to pay extra £10bn for PPE, report finds

Andrew Woodcock
Tue, 24 November 2020

A nurse helps a doctor to put up his protective gear (AFP via Getty Images)

“Inadequate” stockpiles of personal protective equipment forced the government to pay £10bn over the odds for items such as face-masks, gowns and gloves in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, a spending watchdog has found.

The worldwide scramble for PPE sent prices soaring by more than 1,000 per cent in some cases, and saw Matt Hancock’s Department for Health and Social Care spend £12.5bn on 32bn items which would have cost £2.5bn the year before, some of which turned out to be unfit for use, said the National Audit Office (NAO) in a report.

Meanwhile, the DHSC was accused of having “no plan” in place to secure vital medical equipment in an emergency, after a separate report found it lost a crucial month because it was “underprepared and reacted slowly” to the shortage of mechanical ventilators.

An inquiry by the House of Commons Public Account Committee (PAC) found the NHS in England did not even know how many ventilators it owned at the start of the outbreak, and that 26,000 were eventually bought for a total £569m, the majority of which have never been used.

The NAO found that many front-line health and care workers in England went without essential PPE between March and July, as the care sector received just 10 per cent and the NHS 80 per cent of their needs from government. Care homes were initially expected to source most of their PPE from private wholesalers and received just 331m items from DHSC in this period - 14 per cent of the total distributed - compared to 1.9bn going to NHS trusts.

Some 8,152 Covid-19 cases and 126 deaths were linked to occupational exposure among health and care workers, significant numbers of whom felt they were not adequately protected.

As demand for PPE rose in March, the government was initially reliant on PPE stockpiles designed for a flu outbreak which proved “inadequate” for a coronavirus pandemic, the NAO found.

In a “rapidly deteriorating” situation, the DHSC set up a parallel supply chain to speed distribution, but could “barely satisfy” requirements, with just 2.6bn items delivered to the frontline by July. It was not until the end of May that the system reported holding as much as one day’s worth of stock for all PPE items.

By July, some 32bn items of PPE had been ordered, but the global surge in demand led to “huge” increases in prices, from a 166 percent hike for respirator masks to 1,310 per cent for body bags.

“Had government been able to buy PPE at 2019 prices, expenditure on PPE to July 2020 would have been £2.5 billion - £10 billion less than it actually paid,” said the NAO. The extra cash spent equates to almost one-twelfth of the entire annual budget of NHS England.

Some PPE failed to meet required standards, with two orders totalling £214m for 75m respirator face masks which could not be used. Tens of millions of respirator masks ordered from other suppliers and some other types of PPE are also likely to be unusable for the original purpose.

PAC chair Meg Hillier said: “The pandemic caught the NHS on the wrong foot. The national stockpile was nowhere near big enough for a coronavirus outbreak – a consequence of the pandemic plans’ fixation on influenza.

“The government was far too slow to recognise how precarious the position was. When the penny finally dropped, DHSC had to scramble to buy what was left as prices went through the roof.

“The social care sector was largely left to fend for itself in the early months, while health workers couldn’t always get the PPE they needed. Shortages and confusing guidance added to the strain on front line workers.”

The head of the NAO Gareth Davies acknowledged that the authorities worked hard to source PPE “once they realised the gravity of the situation”, but said most arrived too late for the first wave of the disease. Government must learn “important lessons” about considering the needs of the care sector as well as the NHS, he said.

Meanwhile, the PAC report into ventilator procurement found that the government went into the pandemic with no plan in place to source additional critical care equipment in the event of an emergency.

NHS bosses did not put out a call to trusts to find out how many mechanical ventilators they had until late February - a month after the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a “public health emergency of international concern”.

The tally of 7,400 was far fewer than the 59,000 the NHS thought might be needed, sparking a race to buy more in March.

Estimates of the total number required increased rapidly to 90,000 by the end of March, before being sharply reduced to 6,200 in April. A DHSC target to acquire 30,000 ventilators by 30 June to prepare for a second wave was missed, with the figure eventually being hit on 3 August.

“It is fortunate that the majority of the ventilators were not needed and that additional capacity is now available should it be required,” said the PAC report. “However, the committee is concerned that the government’s targets were not effectively calibrated to need - and were not met.

“Even in the extreme circumstances of the emergency, there must be clear protocols in place to ensure that public money is protected, and that any exceptions or changes to procurement are justified. Despite having to operate at speed, DHSC still had a duty to carry out full due diligence for all parts of the supply chain, and it is not clear that the government’s checks were sufficient to provide that assurance.”

Ms Hillier said it was “much more by luck than design” that a ventilator was available for every patient needing one.

“DHSC incredibly had no plan for sourcing critical care equipment in an international emergency,” said the PAC chair. “It relied at first on an overseas market that was under great pressure and seeing prices increase exponentially because of the international nature of the pandemic.

“DHSC didn’t know what equipment hospitals already had, and its estimates of need fluctuated considerably as the pandemic progressed. Those targets that were set were universally missed.”

Eventual successes in the procurement operation cannot cover the fact that “much of it would have been unnecessary had DHSC and the NHS had a better plan for what to do to fill gaps in critical equipment in an emergency”, she said.

Health minister Jo Churchill said:“As the NAO report recognises, during this unprecedented pandemic all the NHS providers audited ‘were always able to get what they needed in time’ thanks to the herculean effort of government, NHS, armed forces, civil servants and industry who delivered around 5bn items of PPE to the frontline at record speed.

“We set up robust and resilient supply chains from scratch and expanded our distribution network from 226 NHS trusts to over 58,000 health and care settings.

“With almost 32bn items of PPE ordered, we are confident we can provide a continuous supply to our amazing frontline workers over the coming months and respond to future eventualities.”

Read More

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Millions wasted on useless PPE could have paid for free school meals

Why An Interracial Marriage In The White House Matters To Black Women Like Me


Tineka Smith
·Writer, racial equality advocate and entrepreneur
Mon, 23 November 2020

For a long while, I felt the struggle for equality and social progress was being squashed under the weight of Trumpism. So I let out a sigh of relief once Joe Biden had reached 270 electoral votes and officially won November’s election.

But for Black American women like me, the real victory is Kamala Harris. What she has accomplished is no mean feat: the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Harris is the first woman of colour to be elected vice president of the United States of America.

Not only that, but with her husband Doug Emhoff set to become the first ‘Second Gentleman’ in US history, Harris is also the first candidate in an interracial relationship to ever be elected to the White House.

This is an important milestone. Here’s why.

Over the last four years, my country has shown me racism isn’t being stamped out – instead it is only becoming more insidious. The rise of white supremacy and open racism under Trump has caused people in mixed-race relationships to re-evaluate the difficult racial dynamics of their relationships. And I say that from personal experience as an African American woman married to a white British man.

When America elected Obama, many heralded it the dawn of a new post-racist world – as if a Black man becoming president of a country with a brutal past of slavery proved humanity had moved beyond racism.

As the Black Lives Matter movement gained significant momentum this year and deeper conversations on race were sparked across the country and in my own relationship, I found myself becoming more of an advocate for racial equality. But while Biden and Kamala’s election win gives cause for optimism, I am cautious to embrace that times are changing for the better.

You see, when America first elected Barack Obama in 2008, many heralded it the dawn of a new post-racist world – as if a Black man becoming president of a country with a brutal past of slavery proved humanity had moved beyond racism. I admit I was one of those hopeful people who thought a new era of racial equality had begun.

Fast forward 12 years and the celebrations that followed Biden’s election victory over President Trump seemed more akin to the end of an authoritarian regime. For what the last four years of Trump’s presidency has shown me is that the idea that our nation is ‘post-racism’ is nothing but a myth.

Strange as it might seem, race wasn’t really something my husband and I discussed early on in our relationship. But the more race became a matter of vehement discussion in public arenas, the more it manifested in our personal lives – from strangers in the street contesting our interracial relationship to racially inappropriate comments made by our friends where my husband would not even perceive these as problematic.

Yes, love brought us together. But the gaping disparities in our lived experiences in our lived experiences were, at one point, driving us apart. Where I needed empathy and support, he inferred that I might have played a part in provoking my aggressors or perhaps that I was on the receiving end of someone who was simply having ‘a bad day’. I never expected my husband to doubt that I was a reliable witness to my own Black experience.

When a man spat in my face after he saw me kiss my husband in the street, only then was he really able to see the multi-faceted experience of the discrimination I faced – not just from some white people but those in the Black community who perceived me as some kind of race traitor. Confronting his ignorance has been a long and difficult process but was all the more necessary as we navigated the world as an interracial couple together; not least in a world that was appearing to regress under populism.



When a man spat in my face after he saw me kiss my husband in the street, only then was he really able to see the multi-faceted experience of the discrimination I faced.

Kamala and Doug’s new precedent should pave the way to a world more welcoming of diversity – not just in professional spheres, but in our personal lives too. To an interracial couple such as my husband and me, Harris and Emhoff personify unity. They symbolise that, in today’s world, two people can come to love each other not just despite but also because of their cultural and racial differences.

With the globalisation of the Black Lives Matter movement and now Harris’ election, maybe interracial and diverse relationships and families are going to see better representation than ever before. Christmas adverts this year, and in recent years, are a testimony to this: Argos made an all-Black family with queer parents the centre of their festive narrative; Debenhams did a modern take on the classic Cinderella fairytale with a Black ‘prince’ and white ‘princess’; John Lewis told the story of Moz the Monster and his special relationship with a mixed-race boy.

I’m hopeful that the tides will continue to change. And I’m hopeful that Kamala Harris will, among many things, use her incredible profile and platform to effect a collective shift in mindset – not just in those who inwardly oppose biracial unions but for those in interracial relationships to engage in honest and, yes, uncomfortable discussions about what it means to walk hand in hand through life together in a post-Trump world.

Tineka Smith is a writer of Mixed Up with Alex Court, available exclusively on Audible now

Growing ‘heat blob’ from Atlantic driving sea ice loss in Arctic, study says


Daisy Dunne
Tue, 24 November 2020

Amount of ocean heat delivered to the Arctic has increased markedly since 2001(Getty Images)

An underwater heat blob from the Atlantic is delivering more and more warmth to the Arctic, causing sea ice to rapidly melt, a study has found.

The research shows that the amount of heat delivered to the Arctic Ocean and the Nordic Seas by ocean currents has increased markedly since 2001.

This influx in ocean heat is likely playing a major role in the warming of the Arctic Ocean and the rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice, according to the study.

“The most significant achievement of this work is that we have quantified the ocean heat transport robustly for the first time, not only long-term mean, but also its temporal variability,” study lead author Dr Takamasa Tsubouchi, a researcher of ocean circulation at the University of Bergen, Norway, told The Independent.

The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, uses ocean temperature data taken across the Arctic from 1993 to 2016.

It is the first to fully quantify changes to how much heat has been delivered to the Arctic Ocean over this time period.

Ocean heat arrives at the high northern latitudes through a vast ocean current, which is known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

The AMOC moves warm, salty water from the tropics to regions further north, such as western Europe.

A diagram of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

Praetorius (2018)

It plays a major role in determining the world’s weather. As the AMOC carries warm water northward, it releases heat into the atmosphere. Without this, winters in the UK could be close to 5C colder.

When warm, salty Atlantic water reaches the Arctic, it sinks below the ocean surface to form a “heat blob”. The reason it sinks down is because it is more salty, and thus more dense, than cool and fresh Arctic water.

The sinking of the warm Atlantic water below the cool Arctic water usually allows sea ice to form on top of the Arctic Ocean.

However, the increased delivery of ocean heat from the Atlantic identified in this study could disrupt this balance.

In some parts of the Arctic, such as the Barents Sea, warm salty Atlantic water has begun escaping to the ocean surface, where it is causing Arctic sea ice to melt. This phenomenon is known as “Atlantification”.

Prof Igor Polyakov, a researcher from the University of Alaska Fairbanks who led a research paper in Science documenting Atlantification of the Arctic in 2017, told The Independent: “[The paper] sheds light on our recent finding of Atlantification in the eastern Arctic Ocean which is driven by anomalous influx of Atlantic water into the polar basis and represents a fundamental change of how the polar basin operates.

“Particularly, it provides solid grounds for our arguments for the increasing role of the Arctic Ocean on diminishing sea ice. Thus, I think this an important element of the mosaic painting a complex picture of high-latitude climate change.”

Arctic sea ice reached its second-lowest level on record this September and took much longer than usual to begin refreezing for the winter.

In addition, the last 14 years have seen the 14 lowest levels of Arctic sea ice in the modern satellite record.

Ocean heat is not the only contributor to Arctic sea ice melt. Air temperatures are rising twice as fast in the Arctic than the global average. In some parts of the Arctic, temperature rise is four times higher than the global average.

Previous research has found that human-caused climate change will cause the AMOC to weaken over the 21st century.

To fully understand the influence of human-caused warming on increasing ocean heat in the Arctic, more measurements will need to be taken, Dr Tsubouchi said, adding: “If we do not measure it, we cannot know what is going on in the ocean.

Funding for this kind of research has declined in recent years.

“In Davis Strait, which is one of major gateways of Arctic Ocean, there has been no new data collection at all over the last two to three years at least, and we do not know when observations will resume again," he said.

The strength of this study comes from its use of field data, said Dr Michel Tsamados, a sea ice researcher from University College London, who was not involved in the research.

“More observations would result in improved accuracy in the estimates provided here and a better understanding of the ocean and climate system as a whole,” he told The Independent.

Breonna Taylor protest leader is shot dead in Louisville


Matt Mathers
Tue, 24 November 2020, 

(Getty Images)

A man shot dead in a suspected carjacking in Louisville, Kentucky has been identified as a protester who was at the forefront of racial justice demonstrations for Breonna Taylor in the city.

Family members of Hamza "Travis" Nagdy, 21, confirmed him as the victim to the Louisville Courier-Journal in the shooting which took place at 12.30am on Monday.

Louisville police did not provide more details and no suspects have been identified.

In a social media post on Monday, Mr Nagdy’s mother, Christine Muineach, said her “beautiful and intelligent son” had been killed in a carjacking.

Mr Nagdy was among hundreds of protesters who took to the streets of Louisville over the summer to demand justice for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot dead by police during a bungled drugs raid on her home in March. No drugs were found at the property.

Her death, and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis two months later, led to nationwide protests over police brutality against minority communities.

Mr Nagdy was a key organiser in those Black Lives Matter protests in Louisville and was often seen leading chants and marches. On Monday a few dozen people gathered at the spot where Mr Nagdy was killed.

Some in attendance wore T-shirts bearing Mr Nagdy’s face and chanted "there ain't no justice in this town".

At least 200 people gathered at Jefferson Square, scene of many earlier protests, later in the evening to sing Mr Nagdy's name and recite his favourite chants, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

"I hope he will be a symbol of this violence and that we'll finally say, 'This stops with Travis,'" Antonio T-Made Taylor, an independent reporter who mentored Mr Nagdy, told LCJ.

"He's irreplaceable. Travis really believed he could help change systemic racism. He believed he could be a big part of that change," he added.

Louisville Metro Police spokesman Matt Sanders said the victim was rushed to the University of Louisville Hospital where he died of his injuries.

LMPD's homicide unit is investigating the killing.

Harvard elects Black man as student body president for first time in three centuries


Namita Singh Tue, 24 November 2020, 

Noah Harris becomes the first black man to be elected as the president of the Harvard University’s student body (Screengrab/NewsNation Now)

Harvard University has for the first time in the school’s three-century history elected a black man as the president of its student body.

Noah Harris, 20, is a junior in Dunster House and is majoring in government studies.

Mr Harris told CBS Boston that he does not shy away from his identity of being a Black man from Mississippi.

“It was a historic election and for it to come in a year of so many racial injustices with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and people who were taken from our communities, it makes it that much more of a statement on the part of Harvard and the student body,” Mr Harris, who is also a co-chair of the Undergraduate Council’s Black Caucus at the school, said.

He added that “it’s a message to the university that we really have to be conscious about the decisions that we’re making, and how we’re standing with all of our students of colour and making sure that their college experience and just their livelihoods are as good as possible, when a university like Harvard has so many resources.”

Mr Harris, along with his vice president Jenny Gan, in their campaign pushed for proactive steps to tackle issues like sexual assault and mental health, while emphasising diversity and inclusion. “We will hold Harvard accountable for its commitment to anti-racism", read their electoral plan.

Though two other black persons have in the past headed Harvard’s Undergraduate Council, Mr Harris is the only Black man to have been elected by the entire student body to the role.

Another Black man, Carl Gabay, was selected for the role in 1993 by members of the council. Gabay died in 2015 after being caught in the crossfire of a shooting in New York City.

Rules were changed in 1995 to make it an election involving the entire student body, after which the first Black woman, Fentrice Driskell, was named president in 1999.

Mr Harris, who intends to go to Harvard Law Schoool and become an attorney, also received congratulatory messages from Representative Jeramey Anderson and Congressman Steven Palazzo.

Labour calls for suspension of UK training and funding of Nigerian police


Emmanuel Akinwotu West Africa correspondent
Tue, 24 November 2020

Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images

Labour has called for the UK government to consider suspending the funding and training of security forces in Nigeria, where protests against a notorious police unit were brutally suppressed last month.

Kate Osamor, the MP for Edmonton, said she had serious concerns about a lack of oversight of the UK’s role, especially in relation to the special anti-robbery squad (Sars), which was disbanded in October after allegations of killings and abuse.

The same month, protests against police abuses were brutally suppressed by the Nigerian police and military, which have been authorised to purchase at least £127m-worth of UK registered arms since 2008.

Dozens of protesters were killed, including at least 12 people gunned down by soldiers in Lagos, according to Amnesty International. Despite widespread outrage, the army and Nigerian authorities have denied responsibility, dismissing reports of fatalities and claiming footage showing soldiers at the scene was manipulated. Authorities have also set about clamping down on prominent protesters, critics and media which broadcasted abuses.

Labour is also calling for “independent investigations into the allegations against Sars units, as well as military, security and policing forces responsible for attacks on protesters, that could lead to targeted Magnitsky-style sanctions against responsible individuals”, Osamor tweeted on Tuesday.

At a debate in parliament on Monday night, MPs pressed the government to adopt “individualised sanctions such as travel bans and asset freezes” against individuals accused of abuses.

After initially stating that Sars officers had not received UK support, the UK minister for Africa, James Duddridge, said the unit had received “strategic assistance” and training alongside personnel from the wider Nigerian police force as part of a programme that ran from 2016 to March this year.

Osamor, who heads the Commons all-party parliamentary group on Nigeria, said: “The government now needs to come clean and explain how and why that funding took place in the first place. They owe it to the many who have been killed by Sars units to explain who made the decision to fund those units and why.”

There were “serious concerns about the level of oversight attached to government funding in this area”, she added. “Amnesty International and several other international human rights organisations have been very clear that Sars have been directly involved in extrajudicial killings, torture and corruption. The UK government either knew that and decided it would fund Sars anyway or didn’t know where UK funding was going.”

A UK Foreign Office spokesperson said: “It is important that the police in Nigeria respect human rights. We have been working with Nigeria to support reforms to ensure this happens”.

The spokesperson did not confirm whether the government had knowingly provided training to Sars officers and whether assistance or funding to the army or police had ever been reviewed on account of human rights abuses.

A judicial panel has been set up to in Lagos to investigate action by security forces during the October protests, but it has been met with cynicism in Nigeria, where there is a history of government inquiries leading to no prosecutions. Statements by Nigerian ministers defending security personnel accused of abuses and discrediting media reports of recent killings have appeared to undermine ongoing inquiries.

Chi Onwurah, who heads the APPG for Africa, said the UK should press authorities to fully investigate recent abuses. “We need clear, honest, verifiable messages from the Nigerian authorities and a credible investigation to build public trust.

“The enduring influence and consequences of the colonial period on Nigerian institutions, including the police, does give the UK a responsibility to do all we can to support the Nigerian people in reforming those institutions,” she said.

A freedom of information request by the Campaign Against Arms Trade has revealed that the College of Policing, a professional body for police in England and Wales, trained Nigerian security forces last year.

Related: Black lives matter everywhere. That's why the world should support the #EndSARS movement | Chibundu Onuzo

Since 2015, £43m of weapons have been licensed to Nigeria. UK arms export licensing criteria requires the government to review a licence “if there is a clear risk that the items might be used for internal repression”.

“The government claims that it has a rigorous and robust arms export policy, but, in reality, it routinely arms human rights abusing regimes and police forces across the world,” Andrew Smith from CAAT said. “The UK has a long history of looking the other way whole abuses are being inflicted.”

Thousands of mostly young people took the streets of Nigeria last month in the largest protest movement in years, sparked by footage of killings by Sars officers. The government dissolved the unit on 11 October but the protests continued.

Efforts had been made to reform the Nigerian police force, which was founded by UK governing authorities during colonial rule. Yet according to Isa Sanusi, a spokesperson for Amnesty International Nigeria, its violent origins are still evident in its “emphasis on protecting those in authority and use of force in all aspects of law enforcement”.

UK
Universities Told To Teach White Privilege And 'Allyship' In Anti-Racist Training

Léonie Chao-Fong
·News reporter, HuffPost UK
Tue, 24 November 2020

University staff and students should be given anti-racist training to improve their awareness of “white privilege, fragility and allyship”, universities have been told.

Training should be given in understanding racial “microaggressions” to tackle racial harassment on university campuses, in guidance published by Universities UK (UUK).

The group, which represents vice-chancellors, has called on senior leaders and governing bodies to acknowledge that racism exists in universities and higher education.

Professor David Richardson, chair of the advisory group, said: “It is my firm belief that UK universities perpetuate institutional racism.

“This is uncomfortable to acknowledge but all university leaders should do so as a first step towards meaningful change.

“Too often Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students and staff have been failed. While they may have heard positive words, they have seen little action. That needs to change now.”

Training in white privilege, white fragility, white allyship and microaggression should be provided to both staff and students at universities, according to the guidance.

Universities should also introduce reporting systems for incidents of racial harassment, sanctions for breaches in online behaviour and share data on reported incidents with senior staff and governing bodies, it adds.

The report said the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement had “shone a stark light” on racial inequalities within higher education.

It added: “The sector cannot reach its full potential unless it benefits from the talents of the whole population, and individuals from all ethnic backgrounds can benefit equally from the opportunities it provides.

“These developments reinforce the need to act now.”

Professor Nishan Canagarajah, vice-chancellor of the University of Leicester and member of the advisory group, said: “It is not acceptable that students at the same institution can have a completely different experience at university just because of their background.

“This report is timely and relevant – students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds are clearly being let down, and it is a wake-up call to higher education to show we cannot ignore this issue any longer.”

The recommendations by UUK follow a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) last year that found an “alarmingly high rate” of racial harassment on university campuses.

The report found that nearly a quarter of ethnic minority students had experienced racial harassment at university.

Rebecca Hilsenrath, chief executive at the EHRC, said: “It is vital that universities make absolutely clear that any form of racial harassment is wholly unacceptable.”

“We welcome this guidance from Universities UK and are pleased to see that they have taken forward a number of our recommendations.

“This leadership could go a long way to help universities become inclusive environments where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential through education.”

YouTube bans far right-wing OAN channel for a week

Tue, 24 November 2020

According to YouTube policy, OAN has two more strikes before it is kicked off the social media network

YouTube stopped One America News Network, one of US President Donald Trump's favored channels, from posting new videos for a week for falsely claiming Covid-19 has a cure, the social media network said Tuesday.

The popular Google-owned site also temporarily stopped OAN from making money from content already online, spokesperson Ivy Choi said.

"After careful review, we removed a video from OANN and issued a strike on the channel for violating our COVID-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content claiming there's a guaranteed cure," Choi said in a statement.

This is the first time that YouTube has clamped down on OAN, a small, far-right and fiercely partisan outlet that has refused to recognize Joe Biden's victory in the November 3 presidential election and has spread lies about electoral fraud.

According to YouTube policy, OAN has two more strikes before being kicked off the social media platform.

OAN will also have to prove that it has solved the problems to YouTube's satisfaction if it wants to be able to monetize its videos again.

"Since early in this pandemic, we've worked to prevent the spread of harmful misinformation associated with COVID-19 on YouTube," Choi said.

Since February YouTube has pulled 200,000 dangerous or misleading videos on the subject, the company said.

YouTube, which has seen an increase in viewership as people remain at home due to the pandemic, has been promoting authoritative information channels -- of which OAN is not one.

Angry with alleged "censorship" of conservatives on popular social media sites and even upset with Fox News, tens of thousands of Trump supporters are switching to smaller far-right outlets such as OAN and Newsmax.

Trump has encouraged viewership. "Try watching @OANN . Really GREAT!" he tweeted on November 16.

Several Democratic senators led by Bob Menendez wrote to YouTube on Tuesday asking them to remove videos that spread election disinformation

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