Inquest to probe role of air pollution in death of British girl

Issued on: 30/11/2020 -

WHO-recommended limits for air pollution are broken in 99 per cent of London 

Niklas HALLE'N AFP/File

London (AFP)

A coroner's inquest starts in London on Monday to determine whether air pollution played a role in the death of a nine-year-old girl who lived near a busy road.

The hearing, which is due to last 10 days, could set a new legal precedent if it is found poor air quality contributed to the death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah.

Ella died in February 2013 from a severe asthma attack. She had previously suffered from nearly three years of repeated attacks related to the chronic illness and had been in hospital 30 times.

A first coroner's inquest in 2014 determined she died of acute respiratory failure brought on by severe asthma.

But the ruling was set aside in 2019 and a new investigation ordered after evidence about the risks of air pollution was highlighted in a 2018 report.

The second inquest will examine the levels of pollution the young girl was exposed to.

If it is found it contributed to her death, she would be the first person in the UK to have air pollution recognised as a cause of death.

Ella's mother, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who will testify at the hearing, said it had been a "long hard fight" to get the second inquest.

"What I want is justice for Ella and for her to have on her death certificate the true cause of why she died," she said.

"The house became so much quieter after her death and I don't think we ever recovered from that. She was the life and soul of our home -– always playing music, always dancing."

The family lived less than 30 metres (98 feet) from the South Circular, a busy and regularly congested arterial road, in Lewisham, southeast London.

In 2018 air pollution expert Professor Stephen Holgate said there was a "striking link" between Ella's time in hospital and recorded peaks in levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter -- the most harmful air pollutants to human health.

- Global health issue -

The lawyer representing the family, Jocelyn Cockburn, said reaching the second inquest was a "significant achievement".

"Rosamund's account of Ella's struggle is very powerful and illustrates the human suffering behind the statistics," she said.

Coroner's inquests are held in England and Wales in the event of a sudden or unexplained death. They establish the causes and circumstances of deaths on the balance of probability.

They do not determine criminal or civil liability, guilt or blame but set out facts in the public interest.

According to figures from the Mayor of London, World Health Organization (WHO) recommended limits for air pollution are broken in 99 per cent of the British capital.

The WHO says air pollution kills some seven million people across the globe every year and nine out of 10 people breathe air that exceeds guideline limits on pollutants.

Low- and middle-income countries are worst affected and the problem contributes to premature deaths.

Last month, the executive director of the Clean Air Fund, Jane Burston, said children in London were "4.2 percent more likely to be hospitalised for asthma on days with high NO2 pollution".

Also in October, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan released figures showing improvements in air quality due to changes made since his election in 2016.

These measures have included the introduction of an "ultra low emission zone" which requires drivers of the most polluting vehicles to pay a daily tax when entering central London.

© 2020 AFP

Spirit of revolt lives on in Syria's exiles

Issued on: 30/11/2020 

Four Syrian activists, who ended up as refugees after surviving violence and loss, tell AFP they do not regret their revolution 

Jonathan NACKSTRAND AFP

Paris (AFP)

They may be scarred, but nothing, not even torture, bombing or exile, could break them.

As the Arab Spring revolts swept through the Middle East and North Africa region like a wildfire, thousands of young Syrians joined protests in March 2011 demanding change in a nation ruled by the family of President Bashar al-Assad since 1970.

The regime's revenge was swift and brutal, and many of the non-violent activists at the heart of the uprising paid with their freedom and their lives.

AFP interviewed four Syrian activists who ended up as refugees after surviving extreme violence and immeasurable loss.

But even now, with no end in sight to their exile, they do not regret their revolution.

Here are their stories.

- Stockholm: The public speaker -

The first thing Omar Alshogre sees when he wakes up in his Stockholm flat are the photographs of two prison guards who tortured him in Branch 215, one of Syria's most notorious detention centres.

It may seem surprising but Alshogre wanted the pictures, which he had to buy off the guards' families and keeps on his bedside table, as a reminder to himself that: "They could not break me, and I'm still alive."

Alshogre, now 25, says he was just 15 when regime forces first arrested him "along with all the men" in his village near Baniyas city -- a protest hub in a largely pro-government province -- on the Mediterranean coast.

He was released two days later -- but only after his interrogators had pulled out his fingernails and broken his leg.

"I understood what freedom meant for the first time, and that's when I started protesting," Alshogre tells AFP via a videoconference app.

Over the next 18 months, he was detained six more times in different places, including at his cousin's home, in the classroom and at checkpoints.

In May 2012, regime troops attacked his village, killing his father, a retired army officer, and his two brothers.

Following his final arrest in November 2012, he was transferred to a total of 10 different prisons and detention centres.

"I saw more of Syria's prisons than I ever saw of Syria itself," he says.

Released in 2015, he was a shadow of his former self, weighing just 34 kilos (just under 75 pounds).

To save her sons' lives, his mother smuggled Omar and his younger brother Ali, then 20 and 11 years old, into Turkey.

At the height of Europe's migrant crisis, they boarded a smuggler's boat to Greece and crossed Europe to Sweden, where they were granted asylum.

Alshogre has since learned Swedish and English and speaks both fluently.

Now, he works for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based advocacy organisation, and has testified before Washington's Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on torture in Syria's prisons.

He has given TED talks on his experience, inspiring his audience with a universal message on overcoming pain by finding meaning even in one's darkest hour.

And recently he won a place at Georgetown University in Washington DC to study business and entrepreneurship.

"It is not easy to lose your home, your father, your brothers, your school, your town, your mountains and your memories," he says.

"But if I had the possibility to go back in time, I wouldn't do it. Because the revolution is the first thing we did right in Syria."

- Berlin: The humanitarian -

"When I was pregnant and I had pain in my belly, I would cry. Not for me, but for the Syrians living in displacement camps who can't see a doctor, and for the detainees who suffer constantly," says Nivin Al-Mousa, who has lived in Berlin since 2015.

When she joined the protests in her town of Taybet al-Imam in the central province of Hama, she never imagined she would end up seeking refuge abroad.

In 2013, her younger brother Hamza, also a non-violent activist, was detained at a checkpoint.

"We later learned that he had been tortured to death," says Al-Mousa, who identified his body in one of the pictures of torture victims' corpses released by a former Syrian military police photographer, codenamed "Caesar", who fled the country taking thousands of photographs documenting abuse and torture.

"The moment you see that picture, a wound opens inside you, and the pain never heals," she tells AFP.

Al-Mousa, her mother and siblings fled to Turkey in an escape "worthy of a James Bond movie. There were warplanes above us, bombing all around us, and the driver was speeding at 200 kilometres (125 miles) an hour," she says.

In Turkey, she met her husband Mohammad, who originates from the central Syrian city of Homs and had narrowly survived being randomly shot in the head by a sniper while coming home from university.

In 2015, he was granted a visa to seek medical treatment in Berlin. There, the family received refugee status.

Al-Mousa, now 36, has frequent nightmares. "We are all traumatised," she says.

But for her two daughters' sake, she works hard to adapt to her new life.

She now speaks fluent German as well as English and Arabic, as do her girls, who are six and four.

She works for international aid group Humanity & Inclusion, formerly known as Handicap International, helping refugees with disabilities in Germany.

She also participates in protests in Berlin, home to a large Syrian refugee community, to help shine a light on the suffering of Syria's detainees.

"All we want is a government that respects our basic rights," Al-Mousa says. "One day, the regime will get the fate it deserves."

- Colmar: The feminist -

Tohama Darwish survived an August 2013 chemical attack on the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta blamed on the regime, in which rights groups say 1,400 people were killed.

Then in 2018, the area faced an onslaught when the army, backed by Russian warplanes, crushed the armed opposition.

"The bombing was so intense, I wished my daughter had still been in my belly so I could run faster," says Darwish, whose daughter Sumu was two at the time.

Darwish, then a volunteer nurse, and her family joined the tens of thousands who fled Eastern Ghouta to the rebel-held northern province of Idlib.

There, Islamist fighters accused her of spreading "obscenities" through her work raising community awareness about violence against women.

"We didn't want to leave Syria," the 30-year-old tells AFP. "Unfortunately, there was no difference between the regime and the Islamists ruling Idlib."

The family went to Turkey, from where Darwish and her husband applied for asylum in France.

They now live in state housing in the northeastern French town of Colmar, where they are learning the language as they wait for their residence permits to come through.

"From a gender perspective, life is better here. It's hard to be a feminist in Syria," she says.

"I feel guilty for leaving my relatives behind. But I am happy that Sumu is at school here," she says.

"She will always be Syrian, but her life is here now. When she's older, I will tell her everything that happened."

- London: The doctor -

When Bashar Farahat was released from detention in early 2013, he was barred from resuming his postgraduate paediatrics training at a government hospital in Latakia in western Syria.

He had been jailed for joining the protests, and beaten by his interrogators "even harder" because he was a doctor with a degree from a public university.

In April 2013, he was detained again for another six months.

"In prison, the torture during interrogations was bad. But the worst was the constant torture of living in a tiny cell of 30 square metres (320 square feet) with 90 to 100 other detainees," says Farahat, who is now 36 and a registered doctor working in London.

"We would take turns to sleep while the others stood," he says.

As a doctor, his cellmates would ask him to treat their wounds. "But I had nothing to treat them with," he tells AFP of his time in a military intelligence detention centre in Damascus.

"Occasionally, the guards would give us two vitamins or two anti-inflammatory pills to share among 100 people. People would lose limbs because of simple injuries becoming severely infected," he adds.

Following his release in November 2013, he fled to neighbouring Lebanon, where he applied for resettlement through the United Nations.

He arrived in Britain in March 2015, and has since passed the conversion exams allowing him to practise medicine there.

Now married to an interior designer, he works at a National Health Service (NHS) hospital in north London.

"When the Covid-19 pandemic began, of course I worried for my loved ones, but I think my experiences in Syria prepared me to work well in a crisis," says Farahat, who feels proud to be able to give back to Britain in its time of need.

He has also set up a telemedicine website offering vulnerable Syrians online consultations free of charge.

"We have to be strong, work hard and build good lives, so that when the regime falls we can contribute to Syria's future," he says.

Looking back, knowing now what he didn't know in 2011, what would Farahat tell his younger self?

"I would say: go out. Protest. Even more than I did. Do I regret the revolution? Never, not for a second. The revolution made me who I am today."

© 2020 AF

How the Arab uprisings were weakened by online fakes

Issued on: 30/11/2020 - 

The Arab uprisings saw online calls to join the protests but the internet was soon flooded with misinformation 

Khaled DESOUKI, PEDRO UGARTE AFP/File

Tunis (AFP)

The Arab uprisings a decade ago were supercharged by online calls to join the protests -- but the internet was soon flooded with misinformation, weakening the region's cyber-activists.

When Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country in January 2011, rumours and uncertainty created "panic and hysteria", said ex-activist and entrepreneur Houeida Anouar.

"January 14 was a horrible night, so traumatic," she said. "We heard gunfire, and a neighbour shouted 'hide yourselves, they're raping women'."

As pro-regime media pumped out misinformation, the flood of bogus news also spread to the internet, a space activists had long seen as a refuge from censorship and propaganda.

Journalist and researcher Hakim Beltifa said the ground was ripe for "the spreading of fake news".

"Fake news fed off people's mistrust" of traditional, state-owned media outlets which "obscured the reality and kept the people in ignorance," he wrote for online magazine The Conversation.

When Egyptian state TV accused American fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken of giving free meals to pro-democracy protesters at Cairo's emblematic Tahrir Square, the rumours were repeated online, amid a string of reports of foreign powers allegedly infiltrating the protest movement.

But activists and journalists on the ground found little evidence of fried chicken. Most demonstrators were getting by on pita bread and kushari, a popular, ultra-cheap street dish of rice, pasta and lentils.

- Ghost bloggers -

Soon, a slew of fake stories originating online was undermining trust in internet sources. One example was the infamous case of the "Gay Girl of Damascus".

Amina Abdallah Arraf was a young Syrian-American lesbian, anti-regime activist and author of a blog widely followed by observers of the Syrian uprising.

Except she never existed.

When Amina was reported "kidnapped" in Damascus, her worried followers mobilised to rescue her from the hands of the Assad regime.

But they discovered that the blogger, who had been an icon of Syria's pro-democracy movement, was in fact Tom MacMaster -- a bearded American in his 40s living in Scotland and hoping to achieve some literary fame.

"That seems fairly bland today as we've learned to be more suspicious of this type of fabrication, but at the time, suspicion was far less prevalent," researcher Yves Gonzalez Quijano said.

Another invented personality was Liliane Khalil, supposedly a US journalist covering the "Arab Spring" for a number of media outlets, and who had indirectly expressed support for the Bahraini government.

Despite a mass of public information about Khalil, who was accused by many activists and researchers of being a fake, her true identity has never been revealed.

- Online mistrust -

The two cases, with their carefully-crafted back stories and manipulated images, were early examples of what soon became a trend of misinformation online.

Researcher Romain Lecomte said that regimes were soon able to "infiltrate discussions" online, spread doubt about reported abuses and "sow confusion and misinformation".

"Mass political use of the internet" was a game-changer, said Lecomte.

Many online activists began to question the democratic power of the internet.

That has sparked the phenomenon of fact-checking services, along with dilemmas about whether to allow "fake news" to flourish or to censor it and risk compromising democratic freedoms.

In the early years of the Arab uprisings, chat rooms and sites such as Lina Ben Mhenni's blog "A Tunisian Girl" had fuelled growing protest movements and side-stepped censorship.

But the flood of misinformation took away much of the credibility of cyber-activism, said Gonzalez Quijano.

It "has never recovered from being used, or rather manipulated, by political powers that are better organised than activists on the ground," he said.

© 2020 AFP

'The Arab Spring did not die': A second wave of Mideast protests

Protests in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq last year showed the spirit of the Arab Spring uprisings is still alive 

OZAN KOSE AFP/File

Beirut (AFP) 
Issued on: 30/11/2020 

The Arab Spring uprisings are nearly a decade old and moribund but protests in four new countries last year revealed that the spirit of the revolts that lit up 2011 is still alive.

"The emergence of the 2019 wave of the uprisings in Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq showed that the Arab Spring did not die," said Asef Bayat, an expert on revolutions in the Arab world.

"It continued in other countries in the region with somewhat similar repertoires of collective action."

The countries swept up by the latest revolts had initially stood on the sidelines as a contagion of uprisings gripped Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya and Yemen in 2011.

But in 2019 they led calls for an end to the same regional economic precariousness, corruption, and unresponsive governance that fuelled the Arab protests years earlier.

"The main drivers of the Arab Spring... continue to bubble under the surface of Arab politics," said Arshin Adib-Moghaddam of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

"2011 yielded 2019 and 2019 will merge into a new wave of protests," said the author of the book "On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today".

- Algeria -

Memories of Algeria's 1992-2002 civil war had left many wary when protests swept the region in 2011, despite a wave of demonstrations that broke out in January over rising food prices.

The trauma of the civil war "prevented the Algerians from going out in the streets" in major protests, said Zaki Hannache, a 33-year-old activist.

"We followed with enthusiasm the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, but we were scared."

On February 22 last year, fear gave way to anger as President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's plans to run for a fifth term after 20 years in power prompted demonstrations in key cities.

The uprising, which would later become known as the Hirak protest movement, echoed a resistance to the kind of long-standing dictatorships that spurred the protests in Egypt and Tunisia nearly a decade ago.

"We learnt from the Arab Spring," Hannache said.

The Algerian army, like its counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, withdrew its support for the regime, causing Bouteflika to resign on April 2, 2019.

The euphoric moment echoed the early victories of 2011, but activists this time around were more cautious.

Even after securing Bouteflika's resignation, the weekly protests persisted, targeting a total overhaul of a political system that has been in place since Algeria's independence in 1962.

It was only in March this year that the Hirak suspended demonstrations, due to social distancing required by the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the most important Arab Spring lessons, Hannache said, came from Syria, where an initially peaceful uprising spiralled into one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century.

"We learnt that the only option was to keep the movement peaceful," Hannache said.

"Our revolution lasted long because we remained peaceful."

- Iraq –

The 2003 US invasion had long rid Iraq of dictator Saddam Hussein by the time the Arab protests started toppling seeming invincible regimes like dominoes.

"We saw the Arab Spring uprisings as an opportunity to rescue democracy in Iraq," said Ali Abdulkhaleq, a 34-year-old activist and journalist.

"We had come out of a bad regime by force," he said of the US-led occupation.

In February 2011, Abdulkhaleq helped create the "Youth of February" protest group that organised weekly rallies in Baghdad's Tahrir Square to denounce the then government of Nuri al-Maliki, which was corroded by corruption.

"The people demand the reform of the regime," the crowds chanted, stopping short of calling for the entire leadership to be taken down.

The movement, after a few months, rolled back. But February 2011, Abdulkhaleq said, marked a turning point.

"An Iraqi rage was unleashed and the people started to know that there is space for protest," he said.

Protests broke out again almost every other year, but anger finally boiled over in October 2019.

An unprecedented nationwide uprising demanding a complete political overhaul forced the government of then-prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign.

The coronavirus pandemic and the violent repression that killed nearly 600 demonstrators have all but snuffed out the movement.

Yet Abdulkhaleq argues that "the triggers that could spark a new revolution or uprising still remain."

"The threat to the political leadership... still stands."

- Sudan -

The advent of the Arab Spring lit a revolutionary spark in Sudan in 2011, said Mohammad al-Omar, a 37-year-old activist.

"At the time, youth pressure groups started forming and organising small and scattered protests," he told AFP.

However Omar al-Bashir, who had led the country since 1989, maintained a tight grip and the formal opposition was fragmented, he said.

Omar said the clearest indication of the "influence of the Arab Spring uprisings" on his country came in 2013.

Khartoum lifted petrol subsidies, leading prices to skyrocket and people to take to the streets, revealing the revolutionary fervour brewing beneath Sudan's surface.

"The circle of opposition to the regime started to widen," he said.

Protests broke out again five years later over soaring food prices and continued into 2019.

On April 11, 2019, the army announced it had put Bashir under house arrest.

Military and protest leaders signed a "constitutional declaration" in August and a sovereign council was formed for power-sharing before transition to civilian rule.

"Sudan's movement was much more organised" than the Arab Spring uprisings, Omar said.

The activist, who was imprisoned over his role in protests that toppled Bashir, lauded the role of Sudan's professional trade unions in leading the street movement towards change.

He cited "their insistence on maintaining the peaceful nature of the movement despite attempts by security services to drag them into violence."

- Lebanon -

Imad Bazzi, a Lebanese activist and advocacy expert, has been pushing for political change since 1998.

The Arab Spring uprisings, he said, fuelled his momentum.

"They gave us hope," the 37-year-old told AFP.

A system of governance that divides influence along confessional lines has kept in power a hereditary political class, comprising mostly of warlords from Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

"When I saw that in Tunisia and Egypt change was happening, I thought: why wouldn't this happen in Lebanon too?", Bazzi said.

In February 2011, a jobless Bazzi started organising the first series of protests inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt but which paled in comparison.

The movement petered out within a month without effecting much change, but Bazzi said it set the stage for a grassroots renaissance in the decade that followed, leading to a wave of protests in 2015 over a garbage management crisis.

It culminated in October 2019, when a government decision to tax WhatsApp calls sparked an unprecedented nationwide movement demanding the wholesale removal of the ruling elite.

The movement took aim at the entire political class, forcing the government of then-prime minister Saad Hariri to bow to street pressure.

A year on, the political leaders targeted by the 2019 uprising remain in power and Hariri looks set to return as premier.

But, for Bazzi, the episode marked the third chapter of a revolutionary process that started in 2011 and continues to this day.

"It's a continuous thing," he said.

"The waves come one after the other and they are all connected."

© 2020 AFP

The soundtrack of the Arab uprisings in 10 songs

Issued on: 30/11/2020 - 

Few of the pro-democracy protesters in the Arab Spring had a flag to raise or a leader to follow -- but all of them had a song to sing

 ANIS MILI AFP





Beirut (AFP)

Few of the pro-democracy protesters who took the Middle East by storm a decade ago had a flag to raise or a leader to follow. But all of them had a song to sing.

From the US civil rights movement's "Freedom Songs" to the Italian partisans' "Bella Ciao", revolutionaries throughout history have always rallied around an anthem.

The demonstrators who took to the streets in Tunisia in late 2010 and in other countries since took up that tradition, producing rousing hymns of protests packed with the anger, humour and creativity that their regimes had silenced for too long.

Here is a playlist of 10 of the most striking anthems of the so-called Arab Spring:

TUNISIA

"Rais Lebled"

Tunisia was the original revolution and in some respects, "Rais Lebled (President of the country, or Mr. President)" was the original revolution song.

The dark and gritty rap song by "El General" paints a damning picture of the state of the country under Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, with this punchline: "Mr President, your people are dying."

"Rais Lebled" lists all the economic and social ills that led street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi to self-immolate on December 17, 2010 and ignited the first revolution of the so-called Arab Spring.

The song was not just an anthem inspired by what was the revolution, it was part of what started it.

Hamada Ben Amor, the 21-year-old rapper behind the stage name "El General", had released his song on November 7, the anniversary of Ben Ali's rise to power in 1987.

He released another days after the start of the protests and was briefly jailed before the revolt succeeded into toppling Ben Ali.

Ben Amor was among Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the year in 2011 and while his career never took off, "Rais Lebled" was a major inspiration to other protesters and will forever go down as one of the sparks of the Arab uprisings.

EGYPT

"Irhal"

Jubilant crowds singing along to Ramy Essam and his guitar on Cairo's Tahrir square captured the euphoria that marked the early days of the Arab Spring.

He was only 24 when he climbed on stage in late January 2011 to sing his tunes to the crowd of revolutionaries camping out on the Egyptian capital's main square.

"I never looked at myself as a musician or an artist before 2011, it was always the other way round: I was a protester with a guitar who could use it as a tool for the movement," he says.

Unknown to the greater public until then, his song "Irhal (Leave)" that directly took on President Hosni Mubarak soon became the anthem of the revolution.

He was beaten when thugs on camelback stormed the square. Then he was arrested and tortured.

"I was so lucky to take part in this revolution. It taught me life, it taught me freedom," he told AFP from Sweden, where he fled after Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took over and imposed his autocratic rule on Egypt.

Essam continued to produce music abroad, but some of those he worked with were swept up in the crackdown against dissent in his home country.

In May this year, filmmaker Shady Habash died in prison after more than two years in jail over directing a music video for Essam's song lambasting "Balaha", a name given to Sisi by his detractors. Two others remain in jail.

Essam admits the revolution has not fulfilled the promise of its heady days, but the singer's revolutionary spirit seems intact.

"I'll never lose hope. It would be a betrayal. The bond (with the revolution) is written in blood... I will continue until my last breath," he says.

LIBYA

"Zenga, Zenga"

Libya's revolution produced one of the most unlikely of the "Arab Spring" protest hits, a viral video starring Moamer Kadhafi himself in an outlandish remix made by an Israeli.

After Tunisia erupted into pro-democracy protests, the wildfire of revolts that spread against the region's dictators did not spare the longest-standing among them.

In February 2011, faced with an unprecedented uprising, a haggard-looking Kadhafi gave a rambling televised speech calling for a national march against the revolutionaries.

The song title comes from the dialect word he used for "alleyway" when he vowed to "purify Libya" by hunting down the enemy in every home, in every street.

His rant triggered howls of laughter on the internet, and a few days later a dance remix entitled "Zenga, Zenga", in which Kadhafi's words were set to the tune of a song by US rapper Pitbull, started making the rounds on YouTube.

The realisation that the parody video was produced by an Israeli musician, Noy Alooshe, somewhat dampened Libyan enthusiasm but not enough to prevent it from reaching more than five million views.

YEMEN

"Hurriya"

In the early days of Yemen's often forgotten revolution, Khaled al-Zaher's song "Hurriya" (Freedom) became an upbeat anthem for the revolution.

The samba beat combined with a distinctive Yemeni lilt made it an instant hit with tens of thousands who took to the streets of Yemen in early 2011.

The chorus goes like this: "Freedom, freedom, and we are a free people". The song did not travel beyond Yemen's borders, but it stood out among a flurry of revolutionary anthems that flooded the internet at the time.

Zaher, who started singing as a schoolboy, was already known for his patriotic and revolutionary songs.

The song's destiny and the singer's fame however appear to have gone the way of the Yemeni revolution, now but a distant memory of a fleeting moment of hope.

SYRIA

"Erhal, ya Bashar"

The rise of Syria's protest movement was sung to a variety of tunes, often repurposed traditional songs. But one of them came to symbolise the revolution's tragic fate.

It's hard to overstate the sense of transgression conveyed by the grainy nighttime footage of a crowd gathered in the city of Hama for a protest against President Bashar al-Assad.

Every person chanting "Yalla Erhal, ya Bashar (Come on Bashar, time to leave)" in that video is literally risking their life.

The man who was credited with writing the song, Ibrahim Qashoush, became a faceless hero of the battle against the Assad regime.

The words -- a rageful drumroll of attacks calling the Syrian president a "liar" and an "ass" -- were once spray-painted on walls, blared on minibus radios and exchanged as mobile phone ringtones.

The nagging mantra achieved sacred status when word got out that Qashoush, "the nightingale of the revolution", had been brutally murdered and had his vocal cords ripped out.

His fate became a cautionary tale of the dangers of joining the revolt until a 2016 investigation revealed Qashoush had nothing to do with the song.

Its real author Abdul Rahman Farhood had chosen to keep a low profile after hearing of the purported songwriter's grim demise.

MOROCCO

"Iradat al Hayat"

Morocco's short-lived protest movement also had its song, a Tunisian poem adapted in local dialect and turned into song by a rap artist from Casablanca.

The people's view of the king was different from the rage the Arab Spring ignited against tyrants in other countries, but the wave of protests briefly caught on nonetheless.

And they yielded an iconic song, with rapper Lhaqed's version of poet Abou el Hacem Chebbi's "Iradat al Hayat (The Will to Live)".

Mouad Belghawat, whose stage name means "the grudgeful", paid dearly for posting his protest song and was jailed several times. He was granted political asylum in Belgium.

IRAQ

"Dhayl Awaj"

The protest movement that drew hundreds of thousands in the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in October 2019 became a window for the country's vibrant youth culture and one song captured it better than others.

"Dhayl Awaj" literally means "crooked tail" and in Iraqi dialect is a reference to Tehran's political allies as "tentacles" of the Iranian regime.

It was aired on Deutsche Welle on the Al Basheer Show, a hugely popular and influential satirical programme whose host Ahmad al-Basheer has lived in exile for years.

The sleek camera work showcases all the symbols of the October revolution -- from the "Turkish restaurant" landmark that became the revolution's de facto "command centre" to the tuk-tuks that ferried away the wounded. It became a popular meme and has scored nearly 15 million views on YouTube.

LEBANON

"Hela Ho"

It was perhaps not the most poetic of protest songs, but it became the undisputed mega-hit amid the demos that erupted in Lebanon on October 17, 2019.

Its chorus crudely takes aim at then foreign minister Gebran Bassil and the president's son-in-law -- the face of everything the protesters wanted to get rid of: corruption, political dynasties and incompetence.

For weeks, groups of youngsters would blurt out the explicit refrain during and after the protests, with joyous rage.

On one Beirut street, cars were only allowed through the "Hela Ho" checkpoint once the driver had produced an acceptable rendition of the song.

ALGERIA

"La Liberté"

When Soolking released "La liberté" in March 2019, the streets of Algiers were boiling over with anger and the song became an instant success with protesters demanding freedom and democracy.

He released the song with Ouled El Bahdja, a group of supporters of the USM Alger football club known for its fan songs and which lent its organisational firepower to the Hirak protest movement.

The song is in French and its heartfelt plea for freedom struck a chord. The anthem went viral in Algeria and across the region and has since clocked up close to a quarter of a billion views on YouTube.

Soolking grew up in a suburb of the capital. A stampede at a concert which left several dead in August 2019 as well as a tribute he posted on social media following the death of army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah later tarnished his credentials as a revolutionary icon.

SUDAN

"Blood"

One of the most powerful musical moments of the Arab uprisings took place in central Khartoum in 2019, when Sudanese rapper Ayman Mao climbed on stage.

On April 25, having flown straight to Khartoum from the US, he grabbed a microphone at the main sit-in site, and intoned one of his most famous songs: "Blood".

With every line, the crowd answered "Thawra (revolution)". But a few weeks later, the title of what had become the revolution's anthem took on new significance.

The same site was where the most tragic episode of the Sudanese revolution unfolded on June 3, when security forces cracked down on the sit-in and killed at least 128 people.

burs-jmm/ah/jkb/kjm

Arab Spring: the first smartphone revolution


Issued on: 30/11/2020 -

Egyptians use their mobile phones to record celebrations on February 12, 2011 in Cairo's Tahrir Square Mohammed ABED AFP/File

Nicosia (AFP)

Social media and smartphones briefly gave youthful Arab Spring protesters a technological edge that helped topple ageing dictatorships a decade ago as their revolutionary spirit went viral.

Regimes across North Africa and the Middle East were caught flat-footed as the fervour of the popular uprisings spread at the speed of the internet via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Unfortunately for the pro-democracy movements, autocratic states have since caught up in the digital arms race, adding cyber surveillance, online censorship and troll armies to their arsenals.

While the so-called Arab Spring offered a brief glimmer of hope for many, it ended with even more repressive regimes in most countries and devastating, ongoing wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen.

Nonetheless, say veterans of the period, the revolts mark a watershed moment when digital natives launched the era of "hashtag protests" from Occupy Wall Street to Hong Kong's Umbrella protests and Black Lives Matter.

Hyper-networked and largely leaderless, such protests flare up like flashmobs, making them harder for authorities to suppress, with grievances and demands decided not by committees but crowd-sourced online.

"Blogs and social networks were not the trigger, but they supported the social movements," said former Tunisian activist Sami Ben Gharbia, who ran a blog from exile and returned home amid the 2010 uprising.

"They were a formidable weapon of communication."

Today, say Arab cyber-activists, states have lost much of their control over what citizens can see, know and say, as evidenced by a later wave of protests that rocked Algeria, Sudan, Iraq and Lebanon in 2019 and 2020.

While the heavy lid of state censorship has come down once more in many places, that free spirit has also brought change for the better, especially in the small Mediterranean country where it all started, Tunisia.

- 'Mass mobile-isation' -

The spark that set off the Arab Spring was the tragic suicide of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, who, having long been cheated and humiliated by state officials, set himself on fire.

If his desperate act on December 17, 2010 expressed a real-world fury shared by millions, it was the virtual universe of online communications that spread the anger and hope for change like wildfire.

Long simmering discontent among the less privileged was harnessed and multiplied by tech-savvy and often middle-class activists into a mass movement that would spread from Morocco to Iran.

Bouazizi's self-immolation was not caught on video -- but the subsequent street protests were, along with the police violence that aimed to suppress them through fear but instead sparked more anger.

Smartphones with their cameras became citizens' weapons in the information war that allowed almost everyone to bear witness, and to organise, in a trend that has been dubbed "mass mobile-isation".

Clips were shared especially on Facebook, a medium outside the control of police states that had for decades tightly controlled print and broadcast media.

"The role of Facebook was decisive," recalled a blogger using the name Hamadi Kaloutcha, who had studied in Belgium and back in 2008 launched a Facebook forum called "I have a dream ... A democratic Tunisia".

"Information could be published right under the regime's nose," he said. "Censorship was frozen. Either they censored everything that circulated, or they censored nothing."

If previously dissent could only be whispered, some of the citizens' fear and apathy lifted as online users saw their networks of family and friends speak out in the virtual space.

Online platforms also formed a bridge with traditional global media, further accelerating the regional revolt.

"International media like Al-Jazeera covered the uprising directly from Facebook," Kaloutcha said.

"We had no other platform to broadcast videos."

With head-spinning speed, Tunisia's ruler of more than two decades, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was gone in less than a month.

"Thank you Facebook," read one graffiti sprayed on Tunisian walls, long before the social media giant drew increasing fire for spreading not just calls for freedom but also fake news and hate speech.

- 'The camera is my weapon' -

The Tunisia victory would soon kick off a political earthquake in North Africa's powerhouse Egypt.

A key catalyst there to mobilise and organise protests was the Facebook campaign "We are all Khaled Said", or "WAAKS", which highlighted rampant police brutality and widespread corruption.

Said, 28, died in police custody in June 2010. Photos of his battered corpse went viral online while authorities unconvincingly claimed he had choked on a bag of drugs.

The WAAKS campaign brought hundreds to his funeral, followed by a series of silent protests.

By early 2011, the Egyptian revolt had gathered steam, and the movement snowballed into anti-government protests on January 25, the National Police Day.

WAAKS at the time encouraged citizen journalism with the video tutorial "The camera is my weapon".

Powerful online images surfaced including one of a man facing off with an armoured water cannon, echoing the iconic image of an unknown Chinese protester who in 1989 defied a column of tanks on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

Volunteers translated Arabic tweets for the international media, even as state broadcasters railed against the "criminals" and "foreign enemies" it blamed for instigating the protests.

Anonymous movement hackers showed solidarity by distributing advice on how to breach state firewalls and set up mirror websites.

On January 28, 2011, the "Friday of Rage", the government ordered an internet blackout and blocked cell phone services, but it was too late.

A critical mass was already reached, and more youngsters left their screens to join the offline action on the streets.

At the height of the protests, up to one million Egyptians were demanding Hosni Mubarak's ouster. He finally agreed to step down on February 11, ending a rule of nearly three decades.

- Virtual battlegrounds -

If the phrase "Arab Spring" echoed the romantic hopes for freedom of the 1968 Prague Spring, it ended as tragically as that brief uprising crushed by Soviet tanks.

Arab states have quickly caught up with their own cyber tools, weaponising social media and cracking down hard on online activists.

"The authorities reacted quickly to control this strategic space," said former Moroccan activist Nizar Bennamate, then with the February 20th protest movement.

Activists, he said, became "victims of defamation, insults and threats on social networks and some online media".

A decade later, Amnesty International charged, Morocco has used smartphone hacking software to spy on journalist and rights activist Omar Radi, before detaining him on rape and espionage charges.

In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government has crushed almost all dissent, blocked hundreds of websites and jailed social media users, including even teenage influencers on the short video app TikTok.

Takeovers of publishing and TV companies by regime insiders has "led to the death of pluralism in the media landscape," said Sabrina Bennoui of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"We called this movement the 'Sisification' of the media."

Gulf countries, meanwhile, have used the Covid-19 pandemic "as a pretext to continue pre-existing patterns of suppressing the right to freedom of expression," Amnesty has charged.

As conflicts are fought increasingly in the virtual space, the standoff between a Saudi-led group of Gulf countries and Qatar has seen the use of bot armies to attack each other.

In Libya's war, fought with drones and mercenaries, UN mediators recently urged both sides not just to lay down their weapons but also to refrain from the use of online "hate speech and incitement to violence".

Social media has also been used to great effect by non-state actors such as the Islamic State jihadist group, which employed it as a powerful weapon for propaganda and recruitment.

"The tools that catalysed the Arab Spring, we've learned, are only as good or as bad as those who use them," said a commentary in Wired magazine.

"And as it turns out, bad people are also very good at social media."

- 'Dream come true' -

Today, as most Arab countries linger near the murky bottom of RSF's Global Press Freedom Index, the one place that offers a glimmer of hope is Tunisia, the tiny country where it all started.

Though battered by poverty and now the pandemic, it boasts a long secular tradition, a fragile democracy and relative freedom of speech in a region dominated by totalitarian regimes.

Nawaat, once one of the major dissident blogs subject to state censorship, is now a fully fledged media outlet that runs both opinion and investigative pieces, with a website and a printed magazine.

It has produced several documentaries on environmental and social justice issues and interviewed former prime minister Elyes Fakhfakh earlier this year.

Gharbia, once a refugee who had fled the Ben Ali regime and ran the Nawaat blog from the Netherlands from 2004 to 2011, is now proud to be a force in the country's media landscape.

"There was a big debate after the fall of Ben Ali," he said. "Had we reached our goal, should we continue and in what form?

"After a transition, in 2013, we decided to professionalise the editorial staff, to produce independent quality information, which is still lacking today in Tunisia".

One recent day he was running a lively editorial meeting during which journalists discussed which political parties to investigate next.

"Having offices and a team of journalists working freely in the field was a dream 10 years ago," he said.

"That dream has come true."

burs-fz/jkb/kjm

French F1 driver Romain Grosjean survives fireball after huge crash



Issued on: 30/11/2020

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Race officials and drivers praised the modern safety systems developed for Formula One on Sunday after Romain Grosjean said he was "okay" after surviving a high-speed crash and fireball blaze on the opening lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

The Frenchman's car rammed into the barriers as he braked hard from around 250 km/h (155 mph) during the opening lap, the front part hammering into the steel guardrails which buckled.

Grosjean, 34, trapped in his cockpit, flew under the barrier as it gave way and as his car burst into flames, splitting in two on impact, but managed to escape with only "light burns" to his hands and ankles.

"Hello everyone, just wanted to say I'm okay, well, sort of okay," said Grosjean from his hospital bed in a video posted on social media.

"Thank you very much for all the messages."

Safety and official medical car driver Alan van der Merwe was on the scene within seconds as he followed the field after the start of the race and along with chief medical officer Dr Ian Roberts they battled the blaze to save Grosjean's life.

"It's a miracle that he's alive," said 1996 world champion Damon Hill, who was Ayrton Senna's team-mate at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix when the Brazilian was killed.

Van der Merwe said: "It was a big surprise for us as well, we've never seen that much fire in 12 years.

"Romain started to get out of the car himself which was pretty amazing after an accident like that. It was a relief to see he was okay. It just goes to show all the systems we've developed worked hand in hand -- the halos, the barriers, the seatbelts, everything all worked as it should.

"Without just one of those things, it could have been a very different outcome."

Grosjean lost control of his Haas car after clipping the front left wheel of Daniil Kvyat's Alpha Tauri, having skewed right in the intense battle for position at Turn Three on the opening lap.

His Haas team boss Guenther Steiner said: "When you see something like this the only thing you think is 'I hope we get lucky' –- you don't think how it happened or whatever.

"I would like to thank all the marshals. They did a fantastic job to get him away as quick as possible from the fire. It was amazing what they did."

Grosjean said the once controversial 'halo' safety device had saved his life.

"I wasn't for the halo some years ago but I think it's the greatest thing we brought to Formula 1 and without it I wouldn't be able to speak to you today," he added.

Grosjean 'conscious at all times'

Steiner added that Grosjean, who is set to leave F1 at the end of the season, had suffered "light burns on his hands and ankles".

Grosjean was taken to hospital, with reports suggesting he had also suffered a suspected broken rib.

"The driver self-extricated, and was conscious at all times," the FIA said in a statement. "He was taken to the medical centre before being transferred to Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) Hospital by helicopter where he is undergoing further evaluation."

The race restarted after a lengthy delay, with newly-crowned world champion Lewis Hamilton going on to take victory.

"I'm so grateful Romain is safe," Hamilton wrote on Twitter.

"Wow... the risk we take is no joke, for those of you out there that forget that we put our life on the line for this sport and for what we love to do.

"Thankful to the FIA for the massive strides we've taken for Romain to walk away from that safely."

The safety car was quickly back in action following the restart as Lance Stroll's car flipped over.

The Canadian's Racing Point made contact with Kvyat's Alpha Tauri at Turn 8, his car coming to a halt upside down.

Stroll was uninjured and stayed cool inside his car.

"I'm okay, just hanging upside down," he told his team before climbing out.

PHENOM
From majors to manga: Japan tennis ace Osaka to star in comic book

Issued on: 30/11/2020 -

Naomi Osaka won her third Grand Slam title at the US Open in September 

MATTHEW STOCKMAN GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP

Tokyo (AFP)

Japan's major-winning tennis player Naomi Osaka has welcomed a new manga comic-book series where she will star as a cartoon character in a magazine aimed at teenage girls.

"Unrivaled Naomi Tenka-ichi", which will run in "Nakayosi" magazine from late December, was produced with the help of Osaka's older sister, Mari. "Tenka-ichi" means "world number one" in Japanese.

"Growing up reading manga/watching anime was something that bonded me and my sister immensely so this is really exciting for both of us," the three-time Grand Slam champion tweeted Sunday.

The new character, which depicts a doe-eyed Osaka with pink and purple hair and wearing a yellow visor, follows a storm of controversy over a sponsor's cartoon image of her last year.

Noodle-maker Nissin apologised and withdrew the image, which showed Osaka with pale skin and light brown hair, after being accused of "white-washing" the Japanese-Haitian player.

Osaka, who has dislodged Serena Williams to be rated as the world's highest earning female athlete, is a household name in Japan where she is the face of several leading brands.

© 2020 AFP

Bolsonaro suffers losses, centre-right makes gains in Brazil local polls

Issued on: 30/11/2020 - 

Bruno Covas, mayor of Sao Paulo, celebrates his re-election during the municipal elections in Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 29, 2020.

 © REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli

Text by:NEWS WIRES


Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's candidates suffered further defeats Sunday and the traditional centre-right emerged stronger in municipal runoff elections seen as a gauge of where things stand in Brazilian politics ahead of presidential polls in 2022.

Brazil's biggest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, both elected experienced centre-right mayors -- incumbent Bruno Covas and returning veteran Eduardo Paes, respectively -- as the candidates endorsed by Bolsonaro were roundly defeated, according to full official results.

The Brazilian left meanwhile continued to struggle to bounce back from the damaging impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the jailing of her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on corruption charges -- the events that paved the way for Bolsonaro's "conservative wave."

The runoff elections "confirmed what we'd already seen in the first-round vote (on November 15): a defeat for Bolsonaro's camp," said political scientist Leonardo Avritzer of the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

"The left meanwhile continues to have enormous difficulties."

For the first time in its history, Lula's and Rousseff's Workers' Party (PT) failed to win a single mayoral race in Brazil's 26 state capitals.

Traditional parties to the center and right meanwhile consolidated the comeback they made in the first round, including Sao Paulo Mayor Covas's Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and Rio mayor-elect Paes's Democrats (DEM).

Bolsonaro, the politician known as the "Tropical Trump," will for his part have to work to bolster his position before his expected reelection bid, analysts said.

"Bolsonaro showed little political capacity as a leader," said political scientist Flavia Biroli of the University of Brasilia.

"The center-right and right came out as winners, but that is not the same as the Bolsonaro right," she told AFP.

Against 'politics of hate'

Covas and Paes both took aim at Bolsonaro in their victory speeches.

Covas, a 40-year-old cancer survivor tasked with handling one of the world's biggest coronavirus outbreaks, called his win a victory for "science and moderation."

That was seen as a veiled jab at Bolsonaro's polarizing style and controversial handling of Covid-19, which the president has downplayed as a "little flu" even as it has killed more than 172,000 people in Brazil, the second-highest death toll worldwide, after the United States.

Covas had to fend off what looked at times to be a tough challenge from leftist activist turned politician Guilherme Boulos, hailed by progressives as the new face of the Brazilian left.

However, the result was not close in the end: Covas won 59 percent of the vote in Latin America's biggest city, to 41 percent for Boulos.

The incumbent received warm congratulations from his predecessor and mentor, Sao Paulo state Governor Joao Doria, a top contender to challenge Bolsonaro for the presidency.

In Rio, Paes condemned the "politics of hate" associated with both Bolsonaro and the candidate the president backed, Evangelical pastor and incumbent Mayor Marcelo Crivella.

"The results of extremism, hate and division have been good for no one," said Paes, who was previously Rio mayor from 2009 to 2016.

Paes won with 64 percent of the vote to 36 percent for Crivella.

The other runoff candidate backed by Bolsonaro, police reserve captain Wagner Sousa Gomes, also lost in the northeastern city of Fortaleza.

Bolsonaro candidates routed

The municipal polls, which are essentially Brazil's midterm elections, bore the indelible mark of the pandemic.

The soaring death toll and the economic crisis that has ensued were central issues.

Brazil's 148 million voters were electing mayors and city councils in 5,569 municipalities, with runoffs held in 57 cities.

In other closely watched races, another rising left-wing star, Manuela D'Avila of the Communist Party of Brazil, lost to centrist candidate Sebastiao Melo in the southern city of Porto Alegre.

In the northeastern city of Recife, scene of a left-wing family feud pitting two cousins against each other, Joao Campos of the center-left Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) defeated Marilia Arraes of the PT.

Bolsonaro, who currently has no political party -- but must choose one to stand in 2022 -- meanwhile got bleak results for his candidates.

Just two of the 13 mayoral candidates he endorsed won, and nine of 45 city council candidates.

Cuban president says artist collective's protest was US plot

Issued on: 30/11/2020 -

Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel arrives at a concert rally to condemn the campaign in support of the San Isidro movement in Havana, on November 29, 2020 

YAMIL LAGE AFP

Havana (AFP)

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Sunday that a recent protest in Havana by an artists' collective over freedom of expression was "the last attempt" by US President Donald Trump's administration "to overthrow the revolution."

"You know they tried to trick us. They set up a media circus," Diaz-Canel told hundreds of young people who took part in a "defense of the revolution" event in a park in the capital.

The protest was "the last attempt that the Trumpists and the anti-Cuban mafia (in Miami) could lead."

He called it part of an "unconventional war strategy to try to overthrow the revolution."

A group of 14 people, members or associates of the San Isidro Movement of artists, recently barricaded themselves for 10 days in a house in Havana.

They were demanding the release of another member, rapper Denis Solis, sentenced to eight months in prison for contempt.

They were expelled Thursday evening by the police, who said the raid was necessary due to Covid-19 protocols since one person there had just arrived from Mexico via the United States without properly quarantining.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry on Saturday summoned the US charge d'affaires in Cuba, Timothy Zuniga-Brown, denouncing "flagrant and provocative interference" with the San Isidro Movement.

On Friday, about 200 artists gathered for hours in front of the Ministry of Culture to press for more freedom of expression, a rare demonstration of its kind in Cuba.

A delegation representing the protesters eventually met Vice Minister Fernando Rojas.

© 2020 AFP