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'The risk you run': 

Colombia's women protesters

 on sexual violence

 Sophie Foggin - Medellín, Colombia

Tue, June 22, 2021, 5:10 PM·6 min read

Women have been at the forefront of the wave of anti-government protests

A woman who had become separated from the group she was protesting with felt a tug on the homemade flag she was wearing as a cape during an anti-government demonstration in the capital, Bogotá, in the early hours of 3 June.

"A group of roughly eight police officers surrounded me," the woman - who has asked for her name to be withheld for security reasons - recounts. "One of them said: 'This one is a good one to rape'."

"He had a pellet gun and was pointing it closely at me. I told him to do it," she said, defiantly. "He just wanted to scare me," she explained, adding that other protesters came to her rescue soon after the officer had uttered the threat.

Verbal abuse, threats of sexual violence and discrimination have not been isolated incidents during the wave of anti-government protests that has been spreading through Colombia since 28 April.

• Why Colombia's protests are unlikely to fizzle out

• 'Colombians are not scared anymore'

There have been at least 113 cases of gender-based violence, according to a report by the Office of the Ombudsman, an official government agency tasked with overseeing the protection of citizens' human and civil rights.

"They started calling us bitches, whores, sluts," Karla Cardoso says of the abuse police officers hurled at her and other women during an anti-government protest in Medellín on 20 May. "They asked us what we were doing out at night, threatening to kill us," the 25-year-old student says.

This 19-year-old protester said she was determined to continue marching

And according to Temblores, an NGO which monitors police violence, it does not always stop at threats. The NGO says it has received reports from 28 protesters who allege they were sexually abused by members of the security forces. They include allegations of having been forced to strip naked, being groped and being raped.

Seven allegations of sexual violence by security forces are currently being investigated by the attorney-general's office. Among them is the case of a 17-year-old girl who was allegedly sexually abused by police in the city of Popayán. The girl killed herself the day after the alleged abuse.

Linda Cabrera, the director of feminist organisation Sisma Mujer, says that the aim of gender-based violence is to spread fear among women to deter them from protesting. But many women have not been deterred. They say that, if anything, the violence has made them more determined to play a vital role in the demonstrations.

Some are organising vigils and sit-ins while others make a point of marching right out front at demonstrations. Many say they feel vulnerable at protests, though, especially when they are alone.

Women have been right at the front at many demonstrations

Allegations of sexual attacks on protesters are not new to this latest wave of protests. Temblores says it has received 132 reports of sexually violent acts committed by police between 2017 and 2021. The NGO says the evidence it has gathered suggests they were pre-meditated and routinely orchestrated by groups of officers inside enclosed spaces.

Katherine Acosta, a 23-year-old student from Medellín, says she was the victim of such an attack in June 2020. She told the BBC that she was arrested after calling out an officer for spraying a woman in the face with an aerosol can of paint during an anti-government protest.

"When we got inside the station, [the police officer] touched me everywhere, my breasts, my intimate parts, he pressed his penis against me."

Protesters use vinegar to counteract the effects of tear gas

The BBC put the allegations of sexual violence by police officers to Colombia's Office of the Inspector General, which oversees the conduct of public sector workers.

It replied that "any act of sexual violence is reproachable and violates human rights, no matter who the victim or the perpetrator is".

Asked if sexually violent behaviour was a systemic problem within the police force, the Inspector General's Office - which is currently in charge of investigating the allegations - said there were no studies or quantitative results to suggest such a pattern.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) earlier this month sent a team to Colombia to investigate the allegations of excessive use of force by police during the protests.

Ahead of its arrival, President Iván Duque proposed a series of police reforms, including the creation of a human rights directorate led by an international expert, a better system to follow up on citizens' complaints and the expansion of disciplinary standards for officers.

Rights groups have called for the riot police to be dismantled

But these reforms have yet to be approved by Colombia's Congress, and their passage is far from certain.

Rights groups have also pointed out that even if the reforms pass, the police will still fall under the jurisdiction of the defence ministry, meaning cases of abuse will continue to be judged by military tribunals, which they consider problematic.

Rights groups also think that more has to be done to tackle Colombia's impunity levels.

Ms Acosta filed a report with the police but many victims are reluctant to report cases of sexual violence because so few perpetrators ever get punished. According to Sisma Mujer, 90% of reports of sexual violence filed in 2020 - including that of Ms Acosta - have not progressed past the initial inquiry stage.

Despite the risks, women have not been deterred from protesting

Many victims also say they fear there could be reprisals for speaking out or that they could become victims again, explains human rights lawyer Carolina Martínez.

A human rights advocate from Medellín, who asked for her name to be withheld, told the BBC that she was sexually assaulted by a medic while undergoing an examination at Colombia's Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.

She had gone to the institute, which is attached to Colombia's Office of the Attorney General, to document the injuries she says she sustained when police used excessive force during a protest she attended.

And the security forces are not the only ones accused of sexual violence during the protests. In the city of Cali, a group of protesters is being investigated for the sexual assault of a female police officer.

The protester from Bogotá who says she was threatened with rape by a police officer also recounts being sexually assaulted by a male fellow protester days after her encounter with the police.

"Being a woman means being exposed to this - the risk of being raped by a police officer, or anyone really, when you go out to protest."

Operatives who killed Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi received training in the US, New York Times reports

Lauren Frias,Azmi Haroun

Tue, June 22, 2021, 

In this article:

People hold posters picturing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and lightened candles during a gathering outside the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, on October 25, 2018. Yasin Akgul/Getty Images

• Four Saudis involved in the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi received training in the US prior to his killing, NYT reported.

• The contract for the paramilitary training was approved by the State Department, according to the NYT.

• The training initially began in 2014 and continued during at least the first year of Trump's presidency, according to The Times.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Four Saudis who were involved in the death of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 received paramilitary training in the US the year prior, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The contract for the paramilitary training was approved by the State Department and carried out by a contracted group called Tier 1, according to documents and sources familiar with the matter, The Times reported.

"The State Department initially granted a license for the paramilitary training of the Saudi Royal Guard to Tier 1 Group starting in 2014, during the Obama administration," according to The Times. "The training continued during at least the first year of former President Donald J. Trump's term."

Arkansas-based security company Tier 1 Group provided the paramilitary training. The company said the training was defensive in nature and intended to teach how to better protect Saudi leaders, including "safe marksmanship" and "countering an attack," The Times reported.

Louis Bremer, a senior executive of Cerberus, the parent company of Tier 1 Group, confirmed the company's role in the paramilitary training in response to questions from lawmakers as part of his nomination for a high-ranking position at the Pentagon during the Trump administration.

The document containing Bremer's answers, which he provided to The Times, confirmed that four members of the team behind Khashoggi's death received training in 2017 from Tier 1 Group, and two members previously participated in another iteration of the training between October 2014 and January 2015.

In his responses, Bremer said that a review of the Tier 1 Group training in March 2019 "uncovered no wrongdoing by the company and confirmed that the established curriculum training was unrelated to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi."

"The training provided was unrelated to their subsequent heinous acts," Bremer said in his responses, citing The Times report.

The Trump administration ended up withdrawing Bremer's nomination for the top Pentagon position and did not send the document to Congress, so lawmakers never received responses to their questions, according to The Times.

Insider reached out to the State Department for comment.

Khashoggi, a prominent commentator and columnist for The Post, was once within the Royal family's circle, but their opinion of him soured once his work became more critical of the Saudi royal family's dealings.

Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018; he was dismembered by Saudi agents. Khashoggi went to the consulate to pick up marital documents needed to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

His remains have yet to be found.

In February, the Biden administration declassified a CIA intelligence report, which directly implicated the Saudi Crown Prince in Khashoggi's murder.

"We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi," said the report, provided by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

A UN report issued after Khashoggi's killing seconded the claim, saying that, "Assessments of the recordings by intelligence officers in Turkey and other countries suggest that Mr. Khashoggi could have been injected with a sedative and then suffocated using a plastic bag."

Turkish officials, along with UN and US officials, corroborated that Khashoggi's body was dismembered with a bone saw.

A Turkish court is currently trying 26 Saudi nationals connected to the murder, in absentia, with the next trial date set for July 8. The Saudi government, after a series of excuses, admitted that Khashoggi was killed in a "rogue operation," and placed 11 individuals on trial.

Five people were sentenced to death in December 2019 by the Riyadh Criminal Court for "committing and directly participating in the murder of the victim," and three others were handed prison sentences. Three others were found to be innocent in a trial the UN heavily criticized, and Ahmad Asiri and Saud al-Qahtani, two high ranking officials close to MBS scraped by with no charges.

After the ruling, Cengiz said, "The ruling handed down today in Saudi Arabia again makes a complete mockery of justice."

Khashoggi's murder ignited a global pressure campaign against the Saudi regime, prompting officials in the US and abroad to briefly question their diplomatic relationships with Saudi Arabia.

After President Biden's first meeting with MBS in early March, he reportedly refused to sanction the Saudi regime over Khashoggi's killing.

This story is breaking. Check back for more details.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Egypt sentences TikTok star to 10 years in prison for 'human trafficking'

Campbell MacDiarmid

Tue, June 22, 2021, 

A photograph from the Instagram account of Hanen Hosaam, a 20-year-old Cairo university student

Egyptian police on Tuesday arrested a Tiktok star who has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for her posts on social media.

Haneen Hossam, a 20-year-old Cairo University student who became an influencer on video sharing app Tiktok, was sentenced in absentia on Sunday alongside four others.

While all five were fined 2,000 Egyptian pounds (£9,160) for encouraging women to share videos in exchange for money, which Egyptian authorities equated to human trafficking, Ms Hossam received a harsher prison sentence, which her lawyer attributed to her not appearing in court.

"It was her legal right not to show up," said her lawyer Hani Sameh, announcing she would appeal her sentence. "We hope that she can get a reduced jail sentence or an acquittal.”

On Monday Ms Hossam released a video begging for clemency, saying she had never harmed anyone.

Her arrest was the latest episode in nearly a year of legal proceedings against the five for “inciting debauchery” by publishing online videos, which prosecutors claim violated social norms in the conservative Muslim-majority nation.

Ms Hossam was first arrested last year after posting a video explaining how women could earn money by posting videos online, which authorities interpreted as encouraging online prostitution. "You will be able to form friendships with people in a respectable way," she said in the video.

She was first convicted in July alongside another female social media influencer Mawaddah Al-Adham, who was found guilty of sharing "indecent" photos and videos with her 1 million Instagram followers, and three men who were accused of helping the two women.

Ms Hossam, whose social media posts have been attacked for violating 'traditional values', begged for clemency on Monday

The charges were overturned on appeal in January and the five were released in February after spending eight months in jail.

But after prosecutors introduced new charges of human trafficking, all five were found guilty on Sunday, with the other four ordered to serve six years.

The content produced by the women was banal by the standards of Western social media use and included dance videos and photos of the two women posing in fashionable attire.

Ms Al-Adham had shared videos of herself dancing in a shark onesie, posing in a convertible, and performing short sketches.

Ms Hossam, who wears a headscarf, had posted a video in which she promoted the video-sharing platform Likee, saying women could make good money for posting lives and talking with people.

But amid an ongoing crackdown of personal freedoms under the oppressive rule of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who came to power in a 2013 coup, female social media stars, singers and dancers have been targeted by reactionary authorities.

The government has introduced strict internet controls including blocking websites and monitoring personal social media accounts. Content deemed racy or suggestive has been prosecuted under vague offences like "misusing social media", or "inciting immorality".

Rights groups condemned Egyptian authorities for prosecuting the online conduct.

“These sentences against women and men represent egregious violations against free speech online, right to privacy and nondiscrimination and reveal the government’s continued persecution of women for their peaceful conduct online,” said Rothna Begum, senior women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The use of human trafficking charges in particular betray at best a failure to understand the real crime of human trafficking and at worst, using a serious charge to criminalise peaceful online conduct by women,” she added.

Reda Eldanbouki, executive director of the Egyptian organisation Women's Centre for Guidance and Legal Awareness said: "Such a verdict restricts the right to freedom of opinion and expression and aims to control women's bodies and impose guardianship over their actions."

Ms Hossam, who has deleted her past social media activity, posted several tearful videos pleading for clemency ahead of her latest arrest.

"Ten years! I didn't do anything immoral to deserve all this. I was jailed for 10 months and didn't say a word after I was released... Why do you want to jail me again?," she asked.

The Kenyan women crushing stone and stereotypes at the same time


Tom Matoke
Tue, June 22, 2021, 

THE INDEPENDENT

The group of women from Tindiret Sub-county in Kenya’s Nandi County who crush stones (predominantly men’s work) to raise school fees for their children (Tom Matoke | Nation Media Group)

It is 8am in the rural Kenyan village of Sarwat, and 15 women are each sitting on a heap of gravel brandishing a heavy hammer. They are smashing stones, making such a loud noise that it can be heard from a distance. With each swing of the hammer, they disturb the peace of the surrounding cattle, which are ready to get their fill of food for the day.

Untroubled, the women, aged between 23 and 65, hit the rocks harder and harder, crushing them into smaller pieces to make gravel that will later be used for construction.

It is here, in a site they have rented themselves, in the rocky hills of the Tinderet constituency of the Western Nandi County that these women earn their daily bread. Tirelessly, they crush one stone after another to meet the ever-increasing demand for gravel in the surrounding villages and beyond.


They do it, they say, so they can earn an income and tend to the needs of their children. Some have to bring their children along, because they have no one else to look out for them while they work.

These women are part of the Chepkemel community’s women’s self-help group, and have been working as stone crushers to empower each other economically for the past 12 years.

Women’s self-help groups, which carry out grassroots self-improvement initiatives such as this one, have been booming in Kenya in recent decades, particularly in rural areas. In the 1970s, there were approximately 3,000 active groups in the country. By 1990, the number had seen a tenfold increase — and it has kept on growing until today, studies show. And while some remain part of the informal sector, many are now legally registered and able to get funding or loans.

Such initiatives are all the more relevant in this African country, which ranks 95 out of the 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, and where significant inequalities between men and women remain, namely regarding access to education, healthcare services, representation and economic participation in the job market.

(Spark News)

In the past decade, legislative efforts have been made to ensure gender equality across all sectors, particularly thanks to a new, more progressive constitution introduced in 2010. But women are still disproportionately vulnerable to poverty, mainly due to gender roles’ stereotypes.

They also have fewer controls over land and resources than men, which limits their full participation in the country’s economy. According to UN Women, while over 80% of Kenyan women work in small farms, for instance, only 1 per cent own land of their own. They access less than 10 per cent of available credit, and less than 1 per cent of agriculture credit.

Ruth Soi, a 65-year-old mother of seven, is the oldest woman in the group. She knows just how much hard work the group has put in to fend for their families in a tough environment.

“Through the work of our hands, we have taken our children through college and sometimes even universities while taking care of the younger ones at home,” she says. “Some of the women have young children who are still breastfeeding; this all-women space allows them to bring their babies along so we can all watch over them as we work.”

Alongside stones, these women are crushing the stereotype that such laborious jobs only belong to men. And with each pay, they settle one more bill.

“We crush the stones until darkness falls when we return home, exhausted but happy that we have fulfilled every parent’s God-given duty - to provide for their children,” says Ms Soi.

Everlyne Chirchir, another member of the group, says it takes them at least three days to turn stones into a tonne of gravel, the unit of measure used in the construction sector.

We crush the stones until darkness falls when we return home, exhausted but happy that we have fulfilled every parent’s God-given duty - to provide for their children
Ruth Soi

The group’s clients include neighbouring schools and other construction projects that have previously ordered the gravel, often from distant counties like Kisumu, Kakamega and Uasin Gishu.

If the group’s activities have helped the women get by for many years, now most of their clients are looking into buying machine-processed gravel instead —which is more refined in texture. Some even use this option as leverage to lower their prices, says Ms. Chirchir.

“Before we could earn up to 1,200 [Kenyan] shillings ($11) per tonne of gravel. Now we make as little as 700 shillings per tonne,” she adds.“There are times when we go an entire month without recording a single sale. But we keep hoping for better days ahead.”.

These women live on tiny and rocky parcels of land, unsuitable for commercial crop farming activities, hence, they have very few alternatives other than crushing stones to make a living. They practise subsistence farming intercropping of vegetables, maize and beans to feed themselves and their families.

This painstaking process of breaking and stacking stones has left them with scars all over their bodies. But despite both that and the dwindling market for their gravel, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, the women are not about to give up.

Fortunately, Ms. Soi says they have recently received confirmation that some local schools will buy some of their gravel, boosting their much-needed income.

This article is published within the framework of "Towards Equality", a collaborative journalism operation gathering 15 news media from all over the world highlighting the challenges and solutions to achieve gender equality.

(Towards Equality)

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US Medicaid enrollment swells during the pandemic, reaching an all time high


UNITED STATES - April 15: Chiquita Brooks-LaSure testifies before the Senate Finance Committee during her nomination hearing to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in Washington on Thursday, April 15, 2021. (Photo by Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)More

Amy Goldstein
Mon, June 21, 2021, 3:31 PM·6 min read

The number of Americans relying on Medicaid swelled to an apparent all-time high during the coronavirus pandemic with nearly 74 million Americans covered through the safety-net health insurance, new federal figures show.

From February 2020 through January, Medicaid enrollment climbed nationwide by 9.7 million, according to a report based on the most recent available data and expected to be released Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Some people signed up last year as the pandemic's economic fallout took away their jobs, income and health benefits. But according to federal health officials and other Medicaid experts, much of the increase is because of a rule change that was part of the first coronavirus relief law adopted by Congress last year.

That law created a trade-off: It gave states extra federal money to help cover what were anticipated to be ballooning Medicaid costs. In exchange, states needed to promise they would not remove anyone from their Medicaid rolls until the federal government ended the coronavirus public health emergency.

The 15% spike means the size of the public insurance program for low-income Americans now significantly eclipses the nearly 63 million older Americans covered last year through Medicare. Both health insurance programs date to the mid-1960s and were pillars of Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society" anti-poverty strategies.

"We've really seen how important Medicaid is to ensuring the overall health of our country and have seen this through the pandemic," said Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, who became CMS administrator late last month.

"We are seeing what a lifeline the Medicaid program is to so, so many Americans," she said in an interview Monday.

The Biden administration's championing of Medicaid is a contrast to the policies of the Trump era. Brooks-LaSure's predecessor at CMS under President Donald Trump, Seema Verma, encouraged states to require some people on Medicaid to work or prepare for a job in exchange for the insurance. Federal courts struck down the policy, ruling that it was incompatible with the Medicaid law's main purpose of providing low-income people with coverage.

President Joe Biden and his top health officials are working to extend insurance, focused on a dozen states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, while advocating other means to reduce the cadre of roughly 30 million Americans who are uninsured.

Unlike the Medicare program, Medicaid is a shared responsibility of the federal government and states, with the federal government paying part of the cost, depending on a state's wealth, and setting some basic coverage rules. States decide the rest.

The report does not parse what share of the increased enrollment reflects people newly joining the Medicaid program as opposed to people not leaving the rolls as would ordinarily happen.

Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said his group's members in several states have been telling him much of the enrollment spike "is the gathering up of all the people who otherwise would be cycling or rotating off the program."

Before the pandemic, Medicaid experienced considerable churn, with people cycling on and off as their incomes fluctuated. Under the rules adopted during the pandemic, states suspended periodic checks of whether participants remained eligible.

The Biden administration has said previously that the coronavirus public health emergency will continue at least through the end of this year - meaning the halt in eligibility checks will continue, too. Brooks-LaSure echoed that Monday.

Salo said the resumption of normal rules is likely to place burdens on states and Medicaid's beneficiaries alike.

"If you have a large number of people going from coverage to no coverage . . . that's a really bad situation for a lot of low-income folks. You definitely don't want to flick a switch and have some huge number - 10 million? 15 million? - people go off the program," Salo said. "It's jarring . . . you want to minimize the mass disruption."

Brooks-LaSure said CMS is working to ensure that state Medicaid officials handle eligibility reviews properly. Under the Trump administration, some states made it more difficult for people to verify whether they qualified to remain on the program.

"We are very focused on making sure we don't lose our gains in coverage through unnecessary hoops," she said.

Brooks-LaSure also said some people whose incomes have risen too high to stay on Medicaid would become eligible for private health plans sold through ACA insurance marketplaces. In the past, she said, "a lot of people are lost between that transition" from the public insurance to ACA health plans. "We should be getting whatever coverage they're eligible for."

The administration created an unprecedented special enrollment period that runs through August. For the last few years, the regular ACA enrollment time has run for six weeks, ending in mid-December.

Federal health officials said they did not have figures on how much the extra enrollment has cost the federal government or states. However, one individual familiar with the program, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the cost runs into the billions.

The new report shows that Medicaid's sharp increase contrasts with relatively flat enrollment during the pandemic in the Children's Health Insurance Program, another type of public insurance created in the late 1990s to help working-class families. Unlike with Medicaid, states have not been required to keep everyone on the children's insurance program through the country's public health emergency.

The two programs have a combined enrollment of 80.5 million.

January's Medicaid enrollment of 73.8 million is the highest since CMS began keeping enrollment data in its current form in 2013. As a result, the report does not compare the current swollen rolls with the last time the United States went through severe economic strain - the Great Recession, officially from late 2007 to mid-2009, and the few years afterward.

Salo said, however, that the latest enrollment is doubtless higher than then because the earlier recession was before the Affordable Care Act allowed states to expand their Medicaid programs starting in 2014 to people with slightly higher incomes. The expansion allows people, including single adults, to join if they have incomes up to 138% of the poverty line - today, nearly $18,000 for a single person or almost $37,000 for a family of four.

As of the end of last year, states' expansion of Medicaid had resulted in an additional 14.8 million people in the program who previously would not have been eligible, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-policy organization.

The Biden administration is eager to persuade the dozen states that have refrained from expanding their programs to change their minds. They are conservative states, primarily in the South, in which politicians have antipathy for the ACA.

The American Rescue Plan, the most recent coronavirus aid package that became law in March, includes a new, generous incentive for holdout states to broaden their safety net. The incentive would add extra federal aid for each person in the traditional part of a state's Medicaid program, a larger group than the number of people likely to come in through an expansion.

There has been little public sign the offer is motivating those states to rethink their position.

Brooks-LaSure said Monday that she is in conversation with "a couple of states about how they want to move forward." She did not identify them.

She said it takes time at the state level for Medicaid advocates to try to persuade governors and state legislators. "I wouldn't be surprised if more states come in," she said.

Rights group: Facebook amplified Myanmar military propaganda




Facebook-MyanmarFILE- In this March 29, 2018, file photo, the logo for Facebook appears on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York's Times Square. Facebook's recommendation algorithm amplifies military propaganda and other material that breaches the company's own policies in Myanmar even though the social media giant says it’s treating the situation there as an emergency following February's military coup, a new report by the rights group Global Witness has found. A month after the military seized power in Myanmar and imprisoned elected leaders, Facebook's algorithms were still prompting users to view and “like” pro-military pages with posts that incited and threatened violence, pushed misinformation that could lead to physical harm, praised the military and glorified its abuses, Global Witness said in the report, published late Tuesday, June 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)More

BARBARA ORTUTAY
Tue, June 22, 2021

Facebook's recommendation algorithm amplifies military propaganda and other material that breaches the company's own policies in Myanmar following a military takeover in February, a new report by the rights group Global Witness says.

A month after the military seized power in Myanmar and imprisoned elected leaders, Facebook's algorithms were still prompting users to view and “like” pro-military pages with posts that incited and threatened violence, pushed misinformation that could lead to physical harm, praised the military and glorified its abuses, Global Witness said in the report, published late Tuesday.

That's even though the social media giant vowed to remove such content following the coup, announcing it would remove Myanmar military and military-controlled pages from its site and from Instagram, which it also owns. It has since enacted other measures intended to reduce offline harm in the country.

Facebook said Tuesday its teams “continue to closely monitor the situation in Myanmar in real-time and take action on any posts, Pages or Groups that break our rules.”

Days after the Feb. 1 coup, the military temporarily blocked access to Facebook because it was being used to share anti-coup comments and organize protests. Access was later restored. In the following weeks, Facebook continued to tighten its policies against the military, banning all military entities from its platforms and saying it would remove praise or support for violence against citizens and their arrest.

“Once again, Facebook shows that it’s good at making broad sweeping announcements and bad at actually enforcing them. They’ve had years to improve their work in Myanmar but once again they are still failing,” said Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist and whistleblower who found evidence of political manipulation in countries such as Honduras and Azerbaijan while she worked there.

The struggle between the military regime that deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government and those opposing it has sharpened in recent months.

Soldiers and police have killed hundreds of protesters. Last week, the United Nations’ office in Myanmar expressed concern about escalating human rights abuses after reports that a group opposed to the junta may have executed 25 civilians it captured and allegations that troops had burned down a village.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, had over 22.3 million Facebook users in January 2020, more than 40% of its population, according to social media management platform NapoleonCat.

“What happens on Facebook matters everywhere, but in Myanmar that is doubly true," the report says. As in many countries outside the Western Hemisphere, mobile phones in Myanmar often come pre-loaded with Facebook and many businesses do not have a website, only a Facebook page. For many people in the country, Facebook effectively is the internet.

On March 23, just before the peak of military violence against civilians, Global Witness said it set up a new, clean Facebook account with no history of liking or following specific topics and searched for “Tatmadaw”, the Burmese name for the armed forces. It filtered the search results to show pages, and selected the top result — a military fan page whose name translates as “a gathering of military lovers.”

Older posts on this page showed sympathy for Myanmar's soldiers and at least two advertised for young people to join the military — but none of the newer posts since the coup violated Facebook's policies. However, when Global Witness's account “liked" the page, Facebook began recommending related pages with material inciting violence, false claims of interference in last year's election and support of violence against civilians.

A March 1 post, for instance, includes a death threat against protesters who vandalize surveillance cameras.

“Those who threaten female police officers from the traffic control office and violently destroy the glass and destroy CCTV, those who cut the cables, those who vandalize with color sprays, (we) have been given an order to shoot to kill them on the spot,” reads part of the post in translation, according to the report. “Saying this before Tatmadaw starts doing this. If you don’t believe and continue to do this, go ahead. If you are not afraid to die, keep going.”

Facebook said its ban of the Tatmadaw and other measures have “made it harder for people to misuse our services to spread harm. This is a highly adversarial issue and we continue to take action on content that violates our policies to help keep people safe.”

Global Witness said its findings show that Facebook fails to uphold the “very basics" of its own guidelines.

“The platform operates too much like a walled garden, its algorithms are designed, trained, and tweaked without adequate oversight or regulation," said Naomi Hirst, head of the digital threats campaign at Global Witness. “This secrecy has to end, Facebook must be made accountable.”

Nordic fund KLP divests from Adani Ports over links to Myanmar military


FILE PHOTO: Anti-coup night protest in Yangon

Gwladys Fouche
Tue, June 22, 2021, 

OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian pension fund KLP is divesting from Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited on the grounds the company's links with the Myanmar military breach the fund's responsible investment policy, KLP said on Tuesday.

Adani Ports, India's largest port operator, has been under scrutiny from international investors over its project to build a container terminal in the city of Yangon on land leased from a Myanmar military-owned conglomerate.

A military coup in Myanmar on Feb. 1 and an ensuing crackdown on mass protests in which hundreds have been killed has drawn international condemnation and sanctions on military figures and military-controlled entities.

"Adani's operations in Myanmar and its business partnership with that country's armed forces constitutes an unacceptable risk of contributing to the violation of KLP's guidelines for responsible investment," KLP said in a statement to Reuters.

A spokesperson for the Myanmar military did not answer calls from Reuters seeking comment.

KLP, Norway's largest pension fund, had an investment worth nine million crowns ($1.05 million) in Adani Ports at the time of its decision, it told Reuters.

It was divesting because the container terminal is being built on land owned by the Myanmar military and that there is an "imminent danger" the armed forces could use the port to import weapons and equipment, or as a naval base.

"In this way, the port could be used by the army to continue its violations of human rights," KLP said.

Adani said it condemned the violence in Myanmar and the violations of the fundamental rights of its people and that, at the time the deal was concluded in 2019, its counterparties were entities of the democratically-elected government.

It reiterated it could abandon the project and write down the investment if it is found to be in violation of sanctions imposed by the United States.

"The write down will not materially affect the balance sheet as it is equivalent to about 1.3% of...total assets," it said in a statement to Reuters.

KLP said it had been in a dialogue with Adani Ports since March this year and held a meeting with the company's management in April.

Adani told KLP "it takes human rights seriously, and that it has a human rights policy", KLP said.

At the same time, "Adani said it had made no due diligence assessments relating to human rights before the agreement it concluded with the Myanmar military", KLP said.

Adani did not reply to a question about KLP's statement.

An activist group welcomed KLP's decision to divest from Adani Ports.

"We call on other pension funds to follow suit and divest from Adani Ports and other business partners of the Myanmar military," Yadanar Maung, a spokesperson for Justice for Myanmar, said.

($1 = 8.6 Norwegian crowns)

(Additional reporting by John Geddie and Sudarshan Varadhan, Editing by Robert Birsel and Angus MacSwan)

Armed rebels have declared war on the Myanmar junta, and the country is gearing up for all-out urban warfare

Cheryl Teh

Tue, June 22, 2021, 

A man holds a torch as he stands behind a barricade during a protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar March 28, 2021. Stringer/Reuters

• A Myanmar militia declared war on the military junta, pushing the country closer to war.

• Firefights between junta soldiers and the People's Defense Force broke out on the streets of Mandalay.

• This is the first time gunfights between rebels and troops broke out in Myanmar's cities since the February 1 coup.

• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

A formal declaration of war has been made on Myanmar's military junta by an armed militia group.

On the same day that gunfights between rebels and the country's security forces broke out on the streets of Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city, a group of resistance fighters called the People's Defense Force made a public statement.

"We've declared war. The day we've been waiting for is finally here," said Bo Tun Tauk Naing, a spokesman for the People's Defense Force in Mandalay on Tuesday, per a report from local news organization Myanmar Now.

According to Myanmar Now, this is the first time that guerilla groups have exchanged fire with the country's armed forces in a city environment.

CNN reported that clashes erupted around an apartment building between a group of rebels and soldiers patrolling the city, which the junta alleges was a guerilla base camp.

The country has seen an unending onslaught of violence since the military junta swept to power in an early morning coup that happened on February 1 this year, rounding up top Myanmar politicians, including civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and then-President Win Myint.

Aung San is currently on trial for several charges, and the country's junta-backed election commission resolved to dissolve her National League for Democracy Party, branding them traitors.

Peaceful protests and mass civilian demonstrations in the city quickly turned deadly in the weeks following the coup. The violence was thought to have reached a crescendo in March during a particularly bloody day of protests that coincided with the country's Armed Forces Day.

But the fresh clashes on Tuesday, and the declaration of war that followed, signal a new shift in the kind of violence that Myanmar's major cities should brace for.

According to a report by ANI News, guerilla groups before Tuesday focused most of their attacks on remote areas in Myanmar's frontier regions. But more young activists are being trained by insurgents in the remote mountainous regions of Myanmar, wrote the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and they may soon return to their towns and cities armed and ready for urban conflict. These fighters may also resort to insurgency tactics to take on the overwhelming force of Myanmar's army, which claims it has half a million soldiers, per The New York Times.

The violence could also see a swift escalation in the weeks to come; Nikkei reported on the use of Russian-made rocket launchers by army troops against People's Defense Force fighters on Tuesday afternoon.

Read the original article on Insider

UK staff shortages drive pub and restaurant wages up 14%


LaToya Harding
·Contributor
Mon, June 21, 2021,

Weekend workers are seeing the biggest benefits, with those shifts typically paying 9% more than pre-pandemic levels. Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

A shortage in the hospitality sector has driven up the average wage of pub and restaurant workers by as much as 14%, new research has revealed.

According to data from Indeed Flex, an online marketplace for flexible workers, the hiring crisis is causing businesses in the industry to turn to temporary staff to keep up with demand.

Weekend workers are seeing the biggest benefits, with those shifts typically paying 9% more than pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile weekday pay rates have risen by an average of 5% across the UK, far exceeding the 1.8% rise in the minimum wage between 2019 and 2021.

Pay increases vary around the country, with Greater Manchester and Cheshire experiencing the biggest pay hikes, Indeed Flex said. Hourly rates for temporary workers in those areas have risen by 11.15% for weekday hospitality staff, and by 13.87% for weekend workers compared to May 2019.

Pay growth has been weakest in Merseyside, where hourly rates increased by just 0.84% on average, and in London, where they notched up by only 3.73%.

Average pay increase by region: Chart: Indeed Flex

According to official employment data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the food services and accommodation sector recorded the biggest spike in vacancies, up 265.5%, of any industry in March as lockdown restrictions first began to ease.

Some companies have resorted to incentives to help tackle the shortage. Examples include bonuses or gift vouchers for staff who recommend friends for jobs.

“The combination of booming demand from customers and the table service-only rule means thousands of pubs and restaurants need more staff - and fast,” Jack Beaman, CEO and co-founder of Indeed Flex, said. “But with bottlenecks holding up the supply of workers, forward-thinking businesses are increasingly turning to temporary staff to fill shifts, and raising wages to woo the best people.”

He added: “We’ve also seen an influx of people opting for temporary work as a post-lockdown lifestyle choice - as it gives them a variety and a work-life balance that a permanent job cannot.

“Temporary workers offer hospitality businesses vital flexibility in the current uncertain trading environment in which customer demand is strong but margins are squeezed.”

Read more: UK restaurants struggle to recruit after Brexit and COVID double whammy

UK pubs and restaurants have blamed both the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit for staff shortages across the industry. The industry has urged the government to relax immigration rules to allow low-skilled workers from abroad to work in bars and restaurants across the country.

Before Britain left the EU, more than 30% of hospitality workers across the UK were European. In London, the proportion was more than half. Brexit and the pandemic have meant many of those workers have returned to their home countries.

It comes after a decision to postpone the full reopening of the UK economy on 21 June which put extra pressure on the hospitality industry.

Boris Johnson announced last week that ‘Freedom Day’ in England would be pushed back to at least 19 July as the Delta variant, which was first detected in India, continues to spread across the country.

Venues across the country are still having to social distance and provide table service only, requiring extra staff, as well as limiting the number of customers they can serve.

The hospitality industry is also likely to come under further pressure when the business rates holiday ends on 30 June.