Lawsuit: CBP held dozens of minors for several days in the last 2 months

Nov. 24 (UPI) -- A new lawsuit filed by a non-profit law firm accuses U.S. Customs and Border Protection of detaining dozens of migrant children, including infants, over the last two months at southern border facilities for longer than 72 hours, and some for as long as 18 days.

The lawsuit dated Monday and filed in a California U.S. district court by the National Center for Youth Law accuses CBP of detaining 35 children for more than 72 hours last month alone, 15 of whom spent at least five days in unlicensed facilities, including two infants under the age of 10 months.



In September, 36 children were detained for longer than the legal three days, including a one-month-old infant who was held for 16 and a half days.

One of the minors, a 15-year-old who was detained at the Weslaco Border Patrol Station earlier this month, detailed being kept in a cramped room with 30 other minors, forcing them "to sleep in a sitting position because there were so many people in the room," the lawsuit quotes him as saying.

The court document also accuses the CBP of failing to supply information that shows it is complying with COVID-19 requirements but details from testimony that the minors are not being properly protected from the pandemic.

"I have been given one disposable face mask and I have to use the same face mask every day," the 15-year-old boy said. "I have not been provided hand sanitizer since my arrival. I have not been provided gloves. I do not have access to soap for hand washing."

An 8-year-old boy at the same station who was separated from his ill mother said he does not know why he has been left alone.

"My mom is somewhere else," he said, according to the lawsuit. "I think she is in the hospital because her back hurts. I have not been able to talk to her because she is sick. They told me that I cannot leave until she gets here."

He also reported having no soap to wash his hands and that he was only given only face mask and that there is no social distancing being practiced.

"When we are in line, we sit or stand close together," he is quoted as saying. "I think many people here will get sick from COVID. That makes me scared."

The lawsuit says the defendants, who have been named as U.S. Attorney General William Barr and the United States, have "steadfastly refused" to disclose the reason the children were being detained.

A letter obtained by CNN signed by Rep. Joaquin Castro addressed to Department of Homeland Security head Chad Wolf said holding children in CBP custody "for extended periods" is against the Flores Settlement Agreement of 1997 that applies child welfare protections to immigrant minors. Other laws require them to transfer unaccompanied minors to Office of Refugee Resettlement juvenile coordinators within 72 hours and that all detainees should generally not be held for longer than this time frame while officials should be expending every effort to discharge them as soon as possible.

"We demand an immediate explanation for these prolonged detentions and that DHS comply with the law and swiftly place unaccompanied children in the Office of Refugee Resettlement or parole accompanied children and families into the interior," the letter reads.

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In Thailand, protesters take aim at King Vajiralongkorn's royal funding machine:
The Crown Property Bureau

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

POSTMODERN FUEDALISM
Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida greet their royalists as they leave a religious ceremony to commemorate the death of King
Chulalongkorn, known as King Rama V, at The Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand, Oct 23, 2020.
Reuters

Thailand’s oldest bank, Siam Commercial Bank, faced a political and financial reckoning of sorts in September when youth-led pro-democracy protesters launched a campaign to have people withdraw money from the bank and boycott it.

The move was part of protesters’ demands to reform the monarchy by attacking the king’s own privy purse. King Maha Vajiralongkorn , or Rama X, is currently the biggest shareholder of the bank – which was founded by his great grandfather, King Rama V, in 1907.

In monetary terms, Siam Commercial Bank, which is one of Thailand’s largest commercial financial institutions, has yet to feel the pinch of the activists’ initiatives, but the campaign trained a spotlight on how the king accumulates and spends his fortune, adding pressure on the traditionally revered monarchy like never before.

Pro-democracy protesters initially planned to march on Wednesday to the office of the Crown Property Bureau, a quasi-governmental institution that manages the king’s wealth, to stage a peaceful and symbolic demonstration. Protesters later changed the location to the Siam Commercial Bank’s headquarters.

Pro-reform movement leader Anon Nampa said the group’s demands include the repeal of the 2018 royal amendment on the crown property act, so as to prevent the monarch spending his wealth at his discretion and to initiate public oversight of the king’s purse.

By doing so, “regardless of how many future kings there will be, the assets of the nation will not be lost”, he said on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

Read AlsoThai protesters openly criticise monarchy of King Maha Vajiralongkorn


Thai police on Tuesday summoned seven leaders of the protests, including Anon, to face charges of lèse-majesté, or insulting the monarchy, over comments made at demonstrations in September. The charges carry prison terms of up to 15 years, but the protesters have until November 30 to answer the summonses.

One of the seven, Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak, said his family had received a summons on the charges and he was not worried.

“This will expose the brutality of the Thai feudal system to the world,” he said. “We will keep fighting.”

Since ascending the throne in 2016 after the death of his father, King Bhumibol , King Vajiralongkorn has overturned the traditional role of the Crown Property Bureau as an investment arm of the royal family, putting all of the assets that had been under its control under his own name in 2018.

Read AlsoTesting royal taboos: Inside Thailand's new youth protests


Even though the assets have since been subject to taxes and are still managed by the bureau, this has not prevented the protesters from demanding an investigation and overhaul of the king’s financial conduct.

The king has appointed trusted confidantes to lead the bureau, including ultraroyalist former army chief Apirat Kongsompong as deputy director, making a public audit impossible – even by the military-backed government of Prayuth Chan-ocha .

The 2018 legal amendment allowed the king to appoint and remove all board members, where the bureau’s board of directors previously answered to the finance minister.

Other questions related to the public accounting of the king’s spending have also arisen.

Read AlsoBiggest Thai protest in years cheers calls to reform monarchy


During the Thai parliament’s fiscal budget debate in September, Bencha Saengchantra, an opposition MP from the Move Forward Party, questioned how the government budget in support of the king’s personal cavalry and helicopter units could overlap with the budget for the armed force branches for the same services.

“We have raised questions about the budget related to the monarchy, but we never really get the clarification we need, even when the country is mired in economic hardship,” she said.

For many Thais, resentment towards the monarchy has been deepened by the country’s economic performance – GDP is expected to contract by more than 7 per cent this year – while millions are forced out of jobs in tourism and manufacturing.

Yet the king’s months-long stay at a luxury resort in Bavaria, Germany, during the pandemic has been in the headlines everywhere outside Thailand.

Read AlsoThai PM 'concerned' after student protest new demands on monarchy

“What makes this particularly egregious is that the king lives lavishly abroad on funds derived from taxes and income generated by Thais,” said Tamara Loos, a professor in Thai and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University.

“In addition to the funds generated by the Crown Property Bureau, Thais pay for over US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) in costs generated by the monarchy to support the salaries of the staff working in the Royal Household Bureau, plus funds to provide for royal security and royal rural development projects.

“That alone is a major conflict of interest: using public funding to support a repressive monarch who does not appear to have the best interests of his population in mind,” she said.

Loos estimates that the king’s shares in Siam Commercial Bank, Siam Cement Group and other property holdings are worth about US$40 billion, although she added that “the total amount varies between US$30 billion and US$70 billion – the point being that no one really knows because it is not subject to public oversight”.

Read AlsoThailand tells universities to stop students' calls for monarchy reform


Siam Commercial Bank and Siam Cement Group were hit hard during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, according to a paper by the late Thai academic Porphant Ouyyanont, but bounced back upon the appointment of the Crown Property Bureau’s director at the time as the chairman of both companies – a move “designed to restore confidence … by linking them directly with the power and prestige of the Bureau”.

“Thanks to the royal ideology that [King Bhumibol] was a frugal man, no one really paid attention to how he accumulated wealth for himself and his family,” said Puangchon Unchanam, a political science lecturer at Naresuan University.

But Forbes magazine’s publication of its richest royals list in the early 2000s, which included the Thai royal family, “changed everything” for Thais, he said.

“Suddenly, some people started to wonder how the Thai king topped the world’s ranking of richest royals,” he said.

Read AlsoPro-monarchy groups spruce up police headquarters in Thailand


“The status of the CPB has become more awkward,” Puangchon said. “On the one hand, it still maintains all the political privileges it has received from the government. On the other hand, it looks more like a private company that is solely owned by the king.”

In effect, Paungchon said, the changes in the management of the Crown Property Bureau effected by the king were a rollback of normal ethics practised by most big businesses.

“It has become more difficult for the public to access the Crown Property Bureau’s annual performance, income, asset, and profit,” he said, since the king put the assets of the bureau under his name. “It looks more like a merchant’s company in the era before the introduction of the stock market than a modern corporation in the age of global capitalism.”

Loos, the Cornell University professor, said protesters’ demands for the reform of the king’s wealth management had a precedent in the era following the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, when the Thai state divided royal property into those properties which belonged to the king and “those deemed state property such as the palaces, and those business units used to finance the institution of the monarchy, which were placed under the Crown Property Bureau” in 1936.


Read Also'Illegal thoughts': How some exiled critics of Thai king are fuelling a revolt


Puangchon said the king’s motive in transferring the Crown Property Bureau’s assets into his own name had parallels to when King Rama VII, in the years before the 1932 revolution, transferred his assets to overseas banks to safeguard them against political instability. “Regardless of how the political situation unfolds under his reign”, he said, the current king “has to own the crown property personally and absolutely”.

This month, King Vajiralongkorn donated royal title deeds worth around 10 billion baht (S$443 million) to four Bangkok educational institutions in a move seen to reduce the pressure on the monarchy.

Ideally, if the king were to relinquish some of his powers and assets, or agree to the protesters’ demands for reform, it would “decrease his wealth and political power, but potentially increase the cultural capital of the monarchy as an institution, which has precipitously declined in terms of popularity and respect”, Loos said.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.

Thai pro-democracy leaders summoned over royal defamation

Tue, 24 November 2020

Thai pro-democracy leaders summoned over royal defamation

Student-led pro-democracy protests are testing Thailand's royal defamation law, one of the harshest in the world

Twelve Thai pro-democracy protest leaders have been summoned by police to answer charges of royal defamation, the first use of the draconian law in almost three years, as Bangkok gears up for another major rally.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha last week gave the green light for authorities to lay lese majeste charges, which bar any criticism of the royal family, against demonstrators who could now face up to 15 years in prison.

Thailand has for months been rocked by youth-led protests demanding a new constitution, reform of the untouchable monarchy, and for Prayut to resign.

Tensions in the Thai capital are rising -- officers deployed water cannon and tear gas at a rally outside parliament last week, with 55 people injured and six shot in scuffles with royalists. The source of the gunfire is under investigation.

Anti-royal graffiti was also daubed around police headquarters in central Bangkok, and demonstrators threw paint at the compound.

Thailand has one of the harshest royal defamation laws in the world. It is routinely interpreted to include any criticism of the monarchy -- including content posted or shared on social media.

Under section 112 of Thailand's penal code -- which authorities have not invoked since early 2018 -- anyone convicted of defaming, insulting or threatening the king, queen or heir faces between three and 15 years in prison on each count.

- Major rally -

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights says 12 protest leaders have received a summons -- among them human rights lawyer Anon Numpha, Panupong "Mike" Jaadnok and prominent student leaders Panusaya "Rung" Sithijirawattanakul and Parit "Penguin" Chiwarak.

"I'm not scared just one bit and I believe that by being sent the 112 summons, it will bring out more people to (Wednesday's) rally," Parit told AFP.

"Does this mean the monarchy has declared an all-out war with the people, is that right?"

Protesters last week announced they would rally outside the headquarters of the Crown Property Bureau on Wednesday.

But overnight they flagged they would switch the protest to the main office of the Siam Commercial Bank -- in which the king is a major shareholder -- to avoid potential clashes with a rival ultra royalist rally.

Soon after coming to power following his father's death in 2016, the new king took control of the Crown Property Bureau which has assets in banks, companies and prime real estate.

The bureau's board was previously headed by the finance minister in an arrangement that gave a sheen of public oversight to a trust some experts estimate is worth $30-$60 billion.

The full assets are privately held and remain a closely guarded secret.

bur-lpm/jfx/hg

Violence against women rages in South Africa

"Government is not enough," she said. "And we are not looking at government anymore because we need to do these things on our own."


South African men and women protest gender-based violence outside parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 30. File Photo by Nic Bothma/EPA-EFE

Nov. 25 (UPI) -- South Africa's constitution is revered for its commitments to human rights -- but it also has one of the highest rates of femicide, the slaying of women on account of gender, in the world.

Data released by the World Health Organization shows that 12.1 in every 100,000 women are victims of femicide, five times worse than the global average of 2.6. One in four women over 18 have experienced violence of some form from a partner in their lifetime, according to a 2016 Demographic Health Survey.

This is a problem that has only accelerated in the country since the lifting of COVID-19 lockdowns. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a June speech, "The scourge of gender-based violence continues to stalk our country, as the men of our country declared war on the women."

The United Nations recognizes Nov. 25 as the Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, highlighting the statistics showing gender-based violence as among the most pervasive yet underreported crimes across the globe.

In South Africa, what factors into the disparity between what is on the books and what is actually happening?

According to the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, an academic research organization based in Johannesburg, studies have found that police are less likely to intervene in cases of gender-based violence, as they are viewed as inter-relationship squabbles. This often results in the secondary victimization of the person reporting the crime.

Jackie Chauke, 49, was subjugated to secondary victimization by police on multiple occasions while she was attempting to escape her abusive husband in the Alexandra township in Johannesburg in 2011.

Chauke's husband tracked her movements and the two were getting into arguments so intense that each of them vowed to kill the other. One day Chauke made the decision to leave. She exited her house with trash in hand to make it seem like she was just taking out the garbage. It was a guise to escape to a police station. She reported emotional abuse and requested to stay at a shelter. The officer initially did not understand what emotional abuse was and said he could not help her.

"He got stuck," Chauke said. "He did not know what to do with me."

In that vulnerable moment, Chauke said she felt unsupported.

The officer eventually called over a captain who was familiar with a program where she was able to seek shelter and receive counseling. Chauke was thrilled when she saw her room for the first time.

Women can seek refuge in shelters, like Chauke did, but are typically only permitted to stay up to three months. During the three months, the women have access to legal advice and counseling. But that ends when their time there is up.

"I've had survivors come back. We also have survivors who hop from one shelter to the other," said Jeanette Sera, who oversees operations at a shelter in a Johannesburg suburb run by People Opposing Women Abuse.
During her three-month stay at the shelter, Chauke had to return home to retrieve some of her clothes and personal items. She was escorted by police, who were intended to be there to protect her, however, they quickly accepted bribery from her husband.

One of the officers turned to her and said, "You have a beautiful home, you have a car, a business and your husband is very sweet and humble, why do you leave your relationship?" Chauke responded, "If you want to come and stay here, then take over."

She wasn't supposed to be left alone with her husband as she packed her things, but she was.

She didn't know what secondary victimization was at the time, but remembers feeling as though the officer wasn't on her side.

The constitution of South Africa includes one of the most progressive and ambitious Bill of Rights, including rights to housing, equality of the sexes and human dignity.

Although this political goodwill is written into law, there is still a huge gulf between these aspirations and the reality on the ground.

"Implementation sucks," said Francesca Fondse of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.

Fondse, who works as the South African Champion for Women against GBV, Domestic Violence and Intimate Femicide, said that although South Africa has great laws on the books, because of a lack of implementation the situation hasn't improved. Over 60% of the South African Police Service personnel are men, according to the service's 2019 annual report. Fondse said that the average police officer is someone who left school to join the force.

"He's probably seen his own father abuse his mother," Fondse said. "We have to re-educate."

The domestic violence training police officers receive from the Department of Justice, Fondse said, is a top-down operation. The department trains upper, middle and lower management and in turn they are supposed to train the officers in their precincts. This used to be an annual training, though Fondse now believes it to be quarterly.

The culture of machismo in the police force can disrupt the willingness of the officers to take the training seriously.

"It is difficult in some cases, where you have police officers that in their own personal lives abuse women," said Irvin Kinnes, an adviser to the South African Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police.

Chauke said she eventually made the decision to move back into the house with her husband, living in a separate wing, and uses the skills she learned through counselling to keep her independence. She now works at ADAPT, a non-profit aimed at providing victims training and counseling, and works in a police station in Alexandra to give counseling to victims.

Chauke has seen the increase in women coming into the police station to report abuse since the lifting of the COVID-19 lockdown. There was a 1.8% increase in attempted murder and a 3.2% increase in sexual offenses from July to September of this year, compared to the same time in 2019, according to data released by the South African Police Service.

She said she feels extreme fatigue from handling an increasing number of cases in this current uptick.

"I'm so tired," Chauke said. "The statistics are crazy."

Ramaphosa announced in September that three bills were being introduced to Parliament to help combat gender-based violence. The bills focus on tightening bail restrictions for perpetrators of sexual offenses, making the names on the National Register for Sex Offenders public and permitting protection orders to be completed online. Ramaphosa acknowledged in his statement that the barriers in the system make it incredibly difficult for victims to navigate.

"The sad reality is that many survivors of gender-based violence have lost faith in the criminal justice system," Ramaphosa wrote. "Difficulties in obtaining protection orders, lax bail conditions for suspects, police not taking domestic violence complaints seriously and inappropriate sentences have contributed to an environment of cynicism and mistrust."

Chauke acknowledged Ramaphosa's pushes to create change, but said she is tired of the inaction on the ground.

"Government is not enough," she said. "And we are not looking at government anymore because we need to do these things on our own."


upi.com/7056998

Scotland becomes first country to make menstrual products free nationwide

Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Scotland approved legislation on Tuesday making it the first nation to provide free access to menstrual products nationwide.

The bill introduced by member of the Scottish Parliament Monica Lennon creates a series of requirements to combat "period poverty," a term describing situations in which people who need period products are unable to afford them

Under the legislation,the Scottish government will be required to set up a nationwide program to allow anyone who needs period products to get them free of charge. This includes requiring schools, colleges and universities to make a range of products available for free in bathrooms and granting the government the power to make other public bodies provide the products for free.

Scotland made menstrual hygiene products free for students at schools and universities two years ago.

The Scottish government estimated the new program will cost about $32 million annually.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon praised the passage of the legislation on Twitter Tuesday.

"Proud to vote for this groundbreaking legislation, making Scotland the first country in the world to provide free period products for all who need them An important policy for women and girls," she wrote.

The Philippines wants to outlaw child marriage. But in Muslim-majority Bangsamoro, change will be hard

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

ByRAISSA ROBLES

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Some 15 per cent of Filipino girls are married before their 18th birthday, and 2 per cent are married before the age of 15.
Reuters

Ayesha Merdeka wants child marriages to be a thing of the past. They aren’t an abstract concept to her – they are the reality she has lived with for more than three decades after her grand wedding at the age of 15 made a splash in newspapers and magazines across the Philippines .

She is a member of a politically influential clan in what is now the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) – where most of the 3.8 million residents are Muslim, in contrast with the rest of the predominantly Catholic country – and hers was the first Muslim Maranao-style wedding to be held in the capital, Manila.

Ayesha’s father, Abul Khayr Alonto, was the founding Vice-Chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front. He recruited Nur Misuari, who became the group’s leader, into the rebel movement. Her father, who was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as chairman of the Mindanao Development Authority in 2016, died last year.

At the time of Ayesha’s wedding, then-president Corazon Aquino was seeking peace talks with the rebels. Several foreign diplomats from the US and Russian embassies attended the ceremony. But little did the guests know, the bride had no choice but to marry.

It was like having “an invisible gun on your head”, Ayesha, now 49, told This Week in Asia . She clarifies that she wasn’t forced into marriage – it was “more like [being] indoctrinated into the idea that marriage was a decision made by the elders. It’s like your mind was conditioned from the beginning that that area of your entire life is going to be decided by them.”

Ayesha, who still lives in the BARMM, said suitors, including those from abroad, began circling when she was 13 years old and still “boyish looking”. But her father put his foot down and said she had to marry within the clan.

A handout photo. Ayesha Merdeka on her wedding day.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

He warned her that if she committed “a moral mistake, then I will make an example [of you] to the Bangsamoro women”, Ayesha recalled.

“The one thing that really held me after he said that,” she said, was that “his voice became imploring as he said, ‘Please don’t make me do that to you’. The voice is still at the back of my head but I trusted that my dad would choose the best man among the Moros [for me].”

‘An act of child abuse’

According to Girls Not Brides, a partnership of civil society organisations committed to ending marriages involving children, 15 per cent of Filipino girls were married before their 18th birthday, and 2 per cent were married before the age of 15.

Boys in the Philippines are less likely to enter into child marriages – in 2017, there were 32,000 brides between the ages of 15 and 19, four times the number of grooms, according to official figures.

Part of the problem, Girls Not Brides points out, is the trafficking of women and girls from rural regions to urban cities, as well as forced marriages.


Read Also Social media couple in Indonesia slammed for touting child marriage


Another issue the group identifies is religion . Most registered child marriages in the Philippines take place in the BARMM – which is in Mindanao, the country’s second-largest island – where women can marry at a very young age under the 1977 Code of Muslim Personal Laws.

That legislation, enacted through a decree from then president Ferdinand Marcos, set the marrying age for Muslims at 15, but provided an exception – girls can be married as young as 13, provided they are menstruating, and a wali , or guardian, petitions for the marriage.

Last month, Senate Bill 1373, which criminalises marriages between an adult and a minor – defined as a person under the age of 18 – was unanimously approved by the Senate. A similar measure, House Bill 1486, has bipartisan support and is awaiting a nod from the House of Representatives that is expected to come by next year.

The Senate bill, which calls child marriage “an act of child abuse as it debases, degrades and demeans the intrinsic worth and dignity of children”, aims to punish relatives, guardians and those who facilitate such marriages with a fine of not less than 50,000 pesos (S$1,400) and between six and 12 years in jail, as well as the “loss of parental authority” over the victim.

Its main sponsor, Senator Risa Hontiveros from the opposition Akbayan party, told local media after the vote that the issue of early and forced child marriages was “a tragic reality for scores of young girls who are forced by economic circumstances and cultural expectations to shelve their own dreams, begin families they are not ready for, and raise children even if their own childhoods have not yet ended”.

However, even if the law is passed, realities on the ground will make its implementation difficult, according to Muslim rights activists in the Philippines who are seeking to end the practice.


Read Also Indonesia inches closer to outlawing child marriage



A senior member of the National Ulama Conference of the Philippines, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he did not think the proposed child-marriage law was “automatic for Muslims” given the concurrent existence of the Code of Muslim Personal Laws.

He revealed that there was an ongoing discussion between the ulamas on the conflict between the Code and the impending congressional legislation banning child marriages.

“We are trying to reconcile the two views – the Code says 15 [is the marrying age], while the [proposed Congress legislation] says 18,” he said, explaining that some Islamic scholars put the age of marriage for women “from the time she starts menstruating, but the Koran itself has no provision regarding that”.
‘It stops with me’

Experts say decades of war in the BARMM – including in the province of Magindanao, and the 2017 battle to retake the city of Marawi from Islamic State -affiliated militants – have made the region the poorest in the country, and caused a spike in the number of child brides.

“It alarmed us,” said Sittie Jehanne Mutin, former chair of the Regional Commission on Bangsamoro Women, of the rise in child brides among tens of thousands of internally displaced persons or refugees due to the protracted war between government troops and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The rebellion officially ended last year after a peace deal that saw MILF rebel commanders become administrators of the newly formed BARMM.

Read Also UN moves to prevent child marriage


Mutin said the war had taken a toll on families taking care of young girls, and marrying them off meant fewer mouths to feed, while it was also a way of preventing possible sexual abuse since strangers were crammed together in refugee camps. The really poor families did not mind even if the groom was decades older, she said, so long as “they can afford the dowry”.

She pointed out that the situation could not be addressed simply by an outright ban since there were multiple laws that existed and were applicable, including international Islamic law; Philippine sharia law, as outlined under the Code of Muslim Personal Laws; as well as the various traditional and customary laws observed by the 13 Muslim-majority ethnic groups in Mindanao.

Ordinarily, Mutin added, arranged marriages were a custom with built-in protective mechanisms. For instance, “parents will never force a child to marry without really looking at the advantages for their own daughter. That’s usually very high on their list.”

This community aspect is also evident to columnist and peace advocate Samira Gutoc, who took part in drafting the Bangsamoro Basic Law for the BARMM. She said there were many instances when young couples were made to abstain from sexual relations until the girl reached “the age of maturity” or started menstruating

.

A handout photo. Ayesha Merdeka today.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

“The purpose of marriage is not just to strengthen power relations; it also provides social protection [and] protection against family vendettas,” Gutoc said, pointing out that some marriages were arranged between clans after slights were exchanged so as to prevent the clans from warring.

She was almost made to marry young herself, and recalls “running away” to show her refusal to do so – following in the footsteps of her mother, who had flatly rejected the notion after seeing her older sister marry around the age of 13 and drop out of school to bear children.

As for Ayesha, when asked about her own marriage, she explained that there were some arranged marriages that worked because “Islam emphasises duty over individual rights”.

Read Also Yemen child brides the victims of poverty, tradition


“It gets more complex when you really look at the culture,” she said. “I chose to be happy every day. There are a lot of things to be grateful for.”

Her husband visited and wooed her daily for three months before their wedding, keeping to a condition imposed by a stern aunt. “My aunt was crying throughout her wedding day because [she had only seen her husband] on that day.”

Ayesha, whose early marriage did not stop her from finishing a history degree and teaching for nearly four years in Libya, said Filipino Muslim women were “far more empowered” than those in the Middle East. In Libya, she would be summoned by the school head to “stop your revolution” about Muslim women’s rights.

It’s a revolution she continued at home. None of her three daughters – who are still single in their 20s and 30s – were forced into arranged marriages, she said, and her eldest son married for love.

“It stops with me,” said Ayesha, whose second given name, “Merdeka”, means freedom.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.

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.”

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