Angola's Joice Zau: 

The prize-winning poet who

refuses to stay quiet

By Israel Campos
BBC News, Luanda    

IMAGE SOURCE,JOICE ZAU

Despite describing herself as a shy person, Joice Zau is one of the most high-profile figures in a new spoken-word movement spreading across Angola, and her talent has even led her to represent Brazil in international competitions.

Her sweet yet assertive voice first captured the attention of many after a slam poetry performance was uploaded on Facebook in 2020.

Zau was performing at Slam Tundavala, a spoken-word competition aired by a private TV channel that aimed to promote and celebrate the creativity and freedom of expression of young Angolan artists.

She decided to perform what she called a "demonstration of her artistic sensitivity" given the social and political pressures that Angola was going through at the time - during the pandemic many freedoms were curtailed by the local authorities.

"They deceive us with slogans," she declared in her poem talking about politicians and their failure to address Angola's glaring inequalities.

It is unfair

That the chapters of a Machiavellian past are perpetuated to this day like 'fine dust' that flows into the indigestion of our stomachs

It is unfair

That the flag we once raised continues to shed the blood of our current pains and evaporate our dreams

Extract from 2022 Vais Gostar (You will like it)

Despite some changes after President José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down in 2017 after almost four decades in power, speaking out in Angola can still be a dangerous thing to do.

This is why some saw Zau's performance as an act of courage, but it was the 25-year-old's passion and sincerity that made the moment.

She had spent the previous three years in near anonymity writing and performing, wishing she could inspire political change.

The poem's title, 2022 Vais Gostar, literally means "You will like it" and is seen as an ironic threat to the governing MPLA party which is facing an election this year.

It was written in her now signature style of simple and direct language.

In it, she criticised what she called the "harmful governance" of the MPLA, which has been in power since independence in 1975.

Exploring current social issues in the oil-rich nation, such as poverty and the lack of basic services, she criticises the Dos Santos regime, but says the problems live on under his successor João Lourenço.

BBC

There were people calling my family members to frighten me and say that I would suffer reprisals for the truths I told"

Joice Zau
Performance poet

But what was only meant to be a cry for freedom on a TV spoken-word contest became a feminist symbol of artistic resistance and caused deep fear and insecurity for Zau.

"There were people calling my family members to frighten me and say that I would suffer reprisals for the truths I told," Zau says.

"I felt scared and was advised not to leave my home for more than a week."

Despite some progress in terms of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in the country, many artists still feel the need to think twice before openly criticising the authorities.

"We are still living in a dictatorship. The law says we can express ourselves, but the reality is completely different.

"We thought that with a new president in 2017 things would be different, but it was all political theatre," Zau tells the BBC.

The dream and the reality

Born in a village surrounded by the Mayombe Forest in the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, she says she grew up swimming in the rivers that run through the rich forest, exploring its innermost secrets.

She describes her childhood as "happy and peaceful", living in the middle of the forest, believing it has somehow shaped her and her views of the world.

But it was in the country's capital, that this second daughter of six siblings discovered her passion for poetry and delight for spoken-word.

"Cabinda is a province geographically separate from Angola. So the dream that people from Cabinda have about going to Luanda is like the dream Brazilians have of going to the US," she says.

Zau arrived in Luanda in 2014 to study electrical engineering, as Cabinda did not have universities offering her chosen degree at the time.

But she did not find what she had hoped for in the capital city.

IMAGE SOURCE,AFP

Image caption,

President Joao Lourenço (R) has made changes since taking over from Jose Eduardo dos Santos (L) but not enough for Joice Zau

"The real Luanda wasn't as perfect as the one in the Utopia I had built in my head for years."

Social inequality was one of the main reasons that led her to start writing poems that questioned the authorities and their political decisions.

After her video went viral, several international invitations began to arrive.

She won the 2021 Lusophone Female Spoken Poetry Championship and was a finalist in the Guilhermina Slam Contest, which both took place in Brazil.

She also won the Brazilian national contest, Slam Brasil, last year which meant she qualified to represent Brazil in the Copa América de Slam - one of the main events on the spoken poetry calendar in Latin America.

"Art has a tendency to take us down paths unimaginable for our minds," she says.

This year, Zau will represent Brazil in two international spoken-word competitions - one in France and another in Belgium.

"It's a strange feeling to represent a country that isn't mine," she says, laughing.

"But when I'm declaiming, I feel like I'm representing Angola. And even when I'm representing Brazil in a competition, they always make it clear that I am Angolan, so people always know where I come from."

'Women move this country'

In Angola, the spoken-word movement is fairly recent and like most other public activities, it started out as a heavily male-dominated space.

But Zau wants the contribution of women recognised.

"Women are what move this country. And we can see proof of that in the informal markets, where most of the people doing business are women and that says a lot given the economic contribution this sector has in our lives," she says.

And she is not going to keep a low profile.

Her poem Between Peace and Love, I prefer Love encapsulates her determination not to keep quiet for the sake of social order.

I absolutely hate peace

Screw it, morals and good customs, the laws of physics that govern nature in time and space, I hate peace and I'm not of peace

Peace doesn't mean anything to me, peace doesn't represent me

Peace, a rag to a stained social fabric, peace is feigned

Peace, pretends that freedom springs, while it makes us products on a conveyor belt and controls us through antennas

Peace, wreaks havoc in winter, comes with a smile that opens like a flower in spring and corrupts our cries for justice

Extract from Between Peace and Love, I prefer Love

On the elections scheduled for August this year, Zau is hesitant to speculate about what could happen.

"People are still too afraid to express themselves politically. People are afraid to think, to say what they think and to act.

"We still have a lot of work to do. We need to make people aware in order to awaken their lost civic and patriotic sense," she says.

Russia Is From Mars, Ukraine From Venus – OpEd

By John Feffer
May 2, 2022 Eurasia Review 

Vladimir Putin is a man’s man, or that’s how he likes to portray himself. The Internet is full of pictures of him without a shirt. He shoots animals, rides horses, camps on the taiga, and spars with the Olympic judo team. He surrounds himself almost exclusively with male advisors. He loves to rub up against the military, like a bear that needs to scratch an itch. He refuses to acknowledge any illegitimate children.
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Putin is also a champion of traditional values, or least his interpretation of them. He believes that marriage is only between a man and a woman, a principle he enshrined in the constitutional amendments he pushed through in 2020. He has gone after the LGBTQ community. Once an official of the officially godless Soviet Union, he now embraces the Orthodox Church as an instrument of Russian soft power and relishes Patriarch Kirill of Moscow’s assessment that his leadership of the Russian Federation is a “miracle of God.”

A proud illiberal, Putin will hook up with anyone, wherever they are on the political spectrum, to advance his own agenda. He has cozied up to Nicaragua’s putatively leftist Daniel Ortega, Italy’s far-right leader Matteo Salvini, and Brazil’s macho man Jair Bolsonaro. He loved Trump (and still does). He gets on famously with China’s Xi Jinping.

But he seems to like the bad boys best. Putin has formed relationships of extraordinary violence with some of the worst human-rights abusing people on Earth. He partnered with the ruthless Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya to keep order in that restive republic. He served as the principal geopolitical lifeline for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, coming to the besieged autocrat’s aid when a civil uprising threatened his rule. He has sent his Wagner Group mercenaries to support strongmen in Libya, Sudan, and Mozambique.

Like a mob boss—a true alpha male in a man-eat-man world—Putin has also methodically killed his opponents. Journalists (Anna Politkovskaya), politicians (Boris Nemtsov), and former allies (Alexander Litvinenko) have all been assassinated, though Putin has been careful to wipe his own fingerprints from the scene of the crime.

Vladimir Putin, in short, is a man from Mars, a menacing, turbo-charged version of the can-do male described in the 1992 bestseller, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. That is the image he has cultivated, and that is the source of a good deal of his support among men, the far right, and those elements of the left that have never quite gotten over their dictator-worship complex.
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But there is nothing that such Martians like so much as a good, old-fashioned war. Taking up arms is what separates the men from the boys, and for the most part in Russia the men from the women as well. It certainly seems to send Putin’s testosterone levels soaring. For an aging man worried about his declining potency and popularity, military intervention is a golden opportunity to get his mojo back.

A Gendered War

Putin is a great believer in family values. So, let’s reframe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in family terms.

In this particular tragedy, the Kremlin plays the role of the husband who takes his frustrations out on his wife in an emphatically violent way. Worse, he believes in his own mind that he is beating his wife for her own good. Wives, in Putin’s traditional worldview, should be submissive. But little Mrs. Ukraine was making eyes at other men (Mr. Brussels, Mr. NATO). She was acting too uppity even to the point of allegedly adopting a political philosophy antithetical to her husband’s.

Thus, Putin the great liberator has decided to free Ukrainians led astray by a “Nazi” leadership. He has asserted his right to make this judgment and act on his assessment because Russians and Ukrainians are all part of the same “happy” family. To all the outsiders that have responded to Ukraine’s 911 call, Putin is effectively saying, “Sorry, officers, that you had to come over here tonight, but this is just a private squabble—you know how it is between husbands and wives. I’ve got everything under control.”

It’s no surprise, then, that this “Kremlin husband” has reserved so much of his violence for women and children in Ukraine. There have been more than 5,000 civilian casualties of Russian attacks, nearly half of whom are women and children. In Mariupol, Russian bombs fell on a theater clearly marked on both sides with the word “children” in Russian. A missile that struck a train station in Kramatorsk full of fleeing civilians, mostly women and children, read in Russian “for the children,” suggesting that the strike was in retaliation for alleged Ukrainian attacks on Russian-speaking children in the Donbas. The cluster bombs that fell on the crowded train platforms killed 57 and injured 109.

The batterer is legendary for his misinformation. The victims were clumsy. The woman “walked into a door.” The child “tripped and fell.” Their stories of being beaten? They’re just making things up, self-dramatizing, or dealing with their own anger issues.

Likewise, the Russian government has denied responsibility for civilian casualties. The Kremlin has even argued that the signs of violence are self-inflicted. Ukrainian forces, we are told, have been bombing themselves in Mariupol (uh, really?!). The Russian Ministry of Defense has insisted that Ukrainians “staged” the war crimes in Bucha by placing bodies of the tortured and the dead on the streets of the city after the Russian army withdrew (satellite imagery contradicts this nonsense).

Ukrainian sources have gathered many stories of rape committed by Russian soldiers, yet Russia refuses to acknowledge any of these abuses. The Russian military faced earlier charges of rape in other conflicts, and its refusal to engage the issue is consistent with the trivialization of rape that permeates statements by Russian leaders and even phone calls made by Russian soldiers.

But, of course, Russia will deny all charges of rape. Husbands from time immemorial have denied that such a thing can occur within a marriage.

In a domestic violence situation, service agencies encourage victims to leave, to seek help, to take refuge with family or a women’s shelter. Ukraine indeed tried to leave Russia’s embrace and seek refuge in the European Union. Like the typical jealous husband, Russia has stormed the shelter to retake Ukraine by force. The Kremlin believes that Ukraine belongs “back home” as a properly submissive member of the Russky mir (Russian world).

We’ve seen many stories about women who have switched planets, as it were, and channeled their martial spirit to beat back the aggressor. In the 1984 film The Burning Bed, Farrah Fawcett killed her abusive husband by setting fire to his bed; in 2018, Chrystul Kizer killed the man who raped her and pimped her out to others. These acts of violence were in part an expression of the failure of the system to protect the victims. If the police and the courts can’t help, women have to resort to self-defense.

International law did not protect Ukraine either. The restraining orders of the Minsk agreements proved to be nothing but paper. Russia has been hitting Ukraine over and over again for years. It illegally seized custody of little Crimea. And now, with all the force of the world’s second most powerful military, the Kremlin attempted a knock-out blow. Is it really any surprise that Ukrainians have picked up weapons to defend themselves from a serial abuser?

Is Ukraine Really from Venus?

Women played a critical role in the Euromaidan protests of 2013-14, though their contributions were often overlooked. “Women coordinated the provision of medical supplies, compiled lists of missing persons, offered legal assistance for detained protesters, organized public lectures and documentary screenings inside the encampment, patrolled the barricades, distributed food, and provided first aid as bullets whistled past,” write Olena Nikolayenko and Maria DeCasper.

But it wasn’t just a support role. The Night of Women’s Solidarity in January 2014 marked a turning point, as women protesters defined the struggle against the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych as a fight against patriarchy as well. Newly formed Women’s Squads asserted their right to participate as prominent street activists and even armed partisans. Self-defense classes began to take on an additional element, not merely anti-rape but also the defense of the nation. Even as Russian aggression continued in 2014, the Ukrainian Women’s Fund in Kyiv supported 150 women’s organizations throughout the country. All over the globe, the Ukrainian group Femen put their own bodies on the line to protest Russian actions in Ukraine.

Ukraine is far from a feminist utopia. Although it has showcased women leaders—former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, former Luhansk Governor Iryna Veryhyna—it remains a male-dominated society. There is the usual pay gap, the usual presumption that women’s primary role is to take care of the family, the usual high rate of domestic violence.

But Ukraine has made great strides in recent years. It has done an impressive job of closing the wage gap, according to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Report. The number of women in parliament has also risen considerably from a mere 2.5 percent in the first parliament of independent Ukraine in 1990 to 20 percent after the most recent national election. In local elections in 2020, nearly 38 percent of the elected deputies were women.

Ukraine is not really from Venus. In fact, the whole Mars-Venus dichotomy is a gross simplification of gender relations. But war, too, is a gross simplification in its separation of aggressors and victims and its reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Ordinarily these two oversimplifications don’t intersect because wars usually feature two aggressors, two Martians who covet each other’s territory, who launch mirror-image incursions, who commit comparable war crimes.

But that’s not the situation in Ukraine. As in a case of domestic violence, the power differential is asymmetrical. To take just one example, Ukrainian men are not raping Russian women because Ukraine has not invaded Russia.

The analogy is not precise (no analogy is). The military in Ukraine is from Mars; the anti-war protestors in Russia are from Venus. There are women taking up arms and men refusing to fight. But the analogy to domestic violence is useful because it illustrates the profound power imbalance, the failure of institutional mechanisms of protection, and the legitimacy of self-defense.

Most of all, the analogy reveals the moral clarity of this situation. You really do have to pick sides. If you make excuses for Russian behavior, it’s comparable to making excuses for a wife beater. The international community needs to act accordingly.

*John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus. His latest book is Right Across the World: The Global Networking of the Far-Right and the Left Response.

Shanghai lockdown: The hard life of a homeless deliveryman

Image caption,

Delivery riders have been essential in ensuring Shanghai residents receive food and other supplies

Weeks into a strict lockdown, most of Shanghai's 25 million population continue to rely on delivery riders to bring them food and supplies. But this largely invisible workforce of 20,000 faces a lack of shelter and safety. Two delivery riders tell the BBC their stories.

I've been so busy. So many people need supplies. I make deliveries all day long, then when it's approaching midnight, I look for a place to sleep.

I left my apartment on 8 April and haven't been back since. The Shanghai government allows delivery riders to leave and enter their residential compounds. But the compounds insist on enforcing their own policies, and most don't allow riders to return to their own homes. There are hotels that are open, but not many are open to us.

There was a tent in front of my compound. You know, those blue ones set up for Covid testing. When I left home, the compound managers asked me to help them buy supplies and in exchange they offered me the blue tent to sleep at night. I left all my stuff in there.

But one day the tent was gone. I couldn't find my stuff. The managers said it wasn't their business. Security guards there said they didn't know where my stuff went.

So I had to look for a new place to sleep. Sleeping under a bridge just comes naturally to us delivery riders - it can block out the wind and rain. I usually fall asleep immediately after lying down - I feel so tired by then!

One day I forgot to pay attention to the weather forecast. It was raining heavily and all the space under the bridge had been taken. I found an ATM room to sleep. It was quite a good place, no-one else was around. My only hope was that the police wouldn't show up and kick me out.

But after two nights there, around 2am, policemen on patrol saw me and chased me away. They said I should go to a homeless shelter. But I've tried and it's not open. Nobody was there, not even security guards.

IMAGE SOURCE,SUPPLIED TO THE BBC

Image caption,

One deliveryman the BBC spoke to sought refuge in this ATM room

In the beginning I survived on dry instant noodles. Later a group of delivery riders found a restaurant that opened secretly and now we go there to buy takeaways. The police usually just ignore it. We do need a place to eat, right? Some shops also have an outdoor space where there are electrical sockets. We sneak over to charge our phones.

There was a story going round that a delivery rider died on the streets after getting into a crash. Of course I worry that will happen to me too. But I've been very careful. I always go very slow. If I get into an accident in a remote area, it would be extremely dangerous. The biggest problem is if your scooter breaks down and there is no place to fix it. You can't work any more.

Many people saw news reports saying delivery riders can earn up to 10,000 yuan per day ($1,500; £1,200). Since then many have asked me how to become one. My advice is usually: "Don't become a rider."

In Shanghai, the pay we earn as riders is quite all right. But most riders only earn a few hundred yuan a day. And I don't think everyone can put up with such hardship, such living and working conditions.

But you know, if we weren't doing this, we wouldn't have any income either while under lockdown. That's stressful.

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

The streets of Shanghai have been mostly empty during the lockdown, apart from delivery riders

I was born in 1999 in Anhui province. When I graduated from high school, I couldn't get into a good university. The tuition fees were too expensive for my family. I was so young and had no idea what I could do. My mum suggested I join my cousin in Shanghai. At least I wouldn't be left with no place to sleep and no food to eat.

So I came to Shanghai and worked with my cousin to sell computers. That lasted about two years. Business went down during Covid so I started to look for a new job. I had no place to live back then. I found a shared rental with another rider. It seemed like he was earning a lot. I said: "Brother, could you help me become a rider, too?" So about half a year ago I became one.

People told me Shanghai is a developed city, better than my hometown. Now even my family is asking me to go home. They've all heard about the situation here. It's unimaginable that people can starve in Shanghai nowadays.

But it's not like I'm starving or anything. I'm from the countryside, I slept in a cowshed when I was a child. I'll be fine.

I used to earn on average 4.5 yuan per order. But I don't take these orders anymore, nobody does, it's too low. These days I take orders privately from my clients, through chat groups. I can earn around 1,000 yuan a day.

I see larger residential compounds doing group buys of food, but smaller compounds with just a dozen residents have nothing. It's so hard to get people to deliver things to them, it's also hard to order supplies in the first place. Many elderly people also don't know how to do group buys.

Orders with small quantities of food won't get delivered now. Fruit shops won't sell individual pieces of fruit any more - you have to buy in bulk now. If someone wants 20 yuan worth of vegetables, I'll end up spending half a day looking for that and get nothing, as only bulk vegetable packages are available and each costs over 100 yuan.

IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

Many Shanghai residents have been doing group purchases of food in bulk, which they then split among themselves

Now we have no food and no water, and sleep on the streets. I know at least 40 riders in the same situation as me. There are delivery riders who work for companies which provide hotel rooms for them. But there are those who take online orders from customers, like us, and the local government has done nothing to help us find a place to stay.

My residential compound won't let me back in, they say it's likely I'll bring the virus back. I can't go home even if I test negative for Covid. I've been going to hospitals to get tested every day. I'm afraid of getting Covid - all the riders are afraid of it.

So I just find a place to sleep outside. My feet stink so bad you can smell them from a distance! I'll shower eventually, maybe after the lockdown lifts.

IMAGE SOURCE,SUPPLIED TO THE BBC

Image caption,

A deliveryman sent the BBC this image of the place he was sleeping that night

What's the point of resting at home anyway? The first week of the lockdown, I only got two cabbages. The second week I only received a box of medicine. Who can survive on that? What do I eat? It's better to be outside - at least I can still find some food.

Delivering food is better than working in a factory. I've worked in a few in Shenzhen, earning only 200 yuan per day, working 12 hours a day. Delivery riders have better income and more freedom. How much you earn depends on how much effort you put in.

My family has been asking me to come back. But how can I get out now? People even got chased back into the city after driving out to the highway.

I'm just waiting for the lockdown to be lifted. I'll leave then. I don't know how much longer I can hold on for.

I'm so done with Shanghai. Once I leave, I'll never come back.

Interviews edited by Tessa Wong.

Former Spymaster Pulls the Strings of Turkey's Far-Rght MHP, an Ally of the Erdoğan Government

by Abdullah Bozkurt
Nordic Monitor
May 9, 2022

Former Turkish intelligence spymaster Şenkal Atasagun is the mastermind behind Turkey's anti-Western Nationalist Movement Party.

The mastermind behind Turkey's far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which drives an anti-Western agenda in close cooperation with the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has turned out to be Şenkal Atasagun, a former spymaster who ran Turkish intelligence agency MIT for years.

Atasagun, who retired from MIT in June 2005, has been working as the chief advisor to MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli for over a decade now, helping shape the policies of the racist party and framing the narrative and talking points put forward by party leadership. Working in the shadows and barely seen in public for years, Atasagun has played a key role in the radical shift in the Erdoğan government's policies at home and abroad.

His partners in the government are Mehmet Ağar, a former interior minister who is effectively in charge of the police department, and Süleyman Soylu, the current interior minister. The three have been enriching themselves through cuts and kickbacks they get from various criminal enterprises, ranging from drug cartels to organized crime syndicates.

The former intelligence chief has enlisted the help of notorious mafia figures whom he had used as operatives when he was with MIT in the 1980s and '90s. The most notorious figure Atasagun brought to the team was Alaattin Çakıcı, a far-right-linked gangster and hit man who was used by MIT to conduct clandestine operations in Turkey and abroad. Atasagun secured his release from prison through the MHP's influence with the Erdoğan government despite the fact that he was convicted on multiple charges and had been serving a lengthy prison sentence.

Çakıcı, held accountable for the deaths of 41 people, was put in charge of all mafia groups to maintain a climate of fear against opposition and government-critical groups so that Atasagun and his partners in crime in the government could act with impunity and free of public scrutiny. The mobster has been issuing threatening messages to government critics in support of the government.

On November 17, 2020 Çakıcı threatened Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in a handwritten statement released on Twitter. Insulting the politician as an "ignorant informant who serves traitors like a dog," the mafia leader vowed to punish Kılıçdaroğlu with impalement. He defended MHP Chairman Bahçeli as his respected elder and took offense at Kılıçdaroğlu's criticism of the MHP leader.

The enlisting of Çakıcı as an intelligence asset was first done by Atasagun when he was deputy director of MIT's Istanbul branch. When Atasagun became the chief of the intelligence agency on February 16, 1998, he tasked Çakıcı with carrying out an assassination in Europe and gave him a diplomatic passport, issued by the Foreign Ministry for undercover MIT officials. The operation was foiled when he was captured and his links to MIT were exposed by the French police.

Atasagun's background is murky. He suppressed an investigation into nationalist networks after famous assassin Mehmet Ali Ağca shot Pope John Paul II in 1981 and killed famous Turkish journalist Abdi İpekçi in 1979. When he was asked by Korkut Eken, a former officer in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) Special Operations Department, if MIT was interested in investigating Ağca's connections, Atasagun, who was then deputy director of MIT's Istanbul office, said the agency had no interest in it.

His recruitment by MIT in 1967 was accomplished with help from his father and former general Şahap Atasagun. He had worked in various departments, run covert operations and intelligence-gathering activities and specialized in counterintelligence. He served on assignment in Brussels and London.

The track record of Atasagun as an intelligence official is covered with trail of blood. He was reportedly an important player in the Turkish Resistance Organization (Türk Mukavemet Teşkilatı, TMT), a paramilitary group set up in Cyprus with support from the Turkish government. The group was involved in extrajudicial killings including false flag murders of Turks to blame Greek Cypriots.

He sanctioned operations that led to the killing of innocent people including Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist who was shot dead by an ultranationalist teenager in broad daylight on January 19, 2007. Atasagun was the man behind an intimidation campaign targeting the journalist that eventually resulted in his death.

Dink published a news story about Sabiha Gökçen — the adopted daughter of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and Turkey's first female pilot — in his newspaper that suggested Gökçen could be one of the thousands of Armenians who were orphaned in 1915 when Armenians faced a forced displacement that led to many deaths. Furious about the article, Atasagun sent his men to scare the journalist.

In a private meeting held on February 24, 2006 in the İstanbul Governor's Office building, under orders from Atasagun, Özel Yılmaz, deputy regional director of MİT in İstanbul, and Handan Selçuk, another MİT agent, threatened Dink. They warned the journalist about "possible danger if [he] continues to make controversial statements." Less than a year later, Dink was assassinated.

After his retirement in 2005, Atasagun worked as an advisor to the Black Hawk Security firm, a US-based company that was established by Turks to provide what company officials claimed was security in Turkey and Iraq, especially in border areas. The company's partners included former Turkish general Köksal Karabay, former governor Cemil Serhatlı, former consul general Mehmet Nuri Ezen, attorney Günay Hakkı Övünç and several Turkish businessman.

Using political cover provided by the government, Atasagun today continues to resort to violence and commit crimes with zero accountability. Attacks on several journalists who criticized the MHP leader were believed to have been orchestrated by Atasagun, who used mafia figures to suppress critical coverage of Bahçeli. The fact that the assailants were let go after each attack with a slap on the wrist confirms that they were protected by the government.

The former spymaster is afraid that he would fall from grace and be held to account if Bahçeli fails and needs to ensure the MHP leader's survival in politics. The partnership with the Erdoğan government is key in this scheme, and he has insured that the MHP stands by the Erdoğan government despite apparent conflicts in some cases between what the MHP preaches and what the Erdoğan government does.

Rumors in Ankara circles suggesting that Bahçeli has in fact been an MIT employee for decades have gained more credence in the face of close collaboration between him and Atasagun. Alpaslan Türkeş, founder of the MHP, knew Bahçeli, an academic and member of the party, was linked to MIT and even wrote a letter from his hospital bed telling his colleagues to keep Bahçeli away from the party because he was working in intelligence.

Yaşar Okuyan, a former government minister and Türkeş's right-hand man, said several times that he has the original letter and claims Bahçeli was assigned by MIT as a "trustee" to control the MHP. He dared Bahçeli to to sue him for defamation so that the letter could be verified by the court. Despite the serious allegations, Bahçeli never sued Okuyan for his claims of connections to MIT.

Alpaslan Türkeş's letter stating that Devlet Bahçeli worked for the intelligence agency:

Putin Referenda In All Russian Speaking Parts Of Ukraine To Create Peoples Republics Loyal To Moscow – OpEd

By Paul Goble

Many are asking what and how Vladimir Putin hopes to achieve in Ukraine, Mikhail Rostovsky says; but the answers are clear from his actions in 2014, his own comments as long ago as 2018, and the statements of some of his political loyalists in recent days, Mikhail Rostovsky says.
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The Kremlin leader wants to create peoples republics as he did in 2014, he sees this as a way of destroying a united Ukrainian state that the West could use against Russia, and he wants to organize referenda as soon as the guns fall silent in particular regions to achieve that end, the Moskovsky komsomolets commentator says (mk.ru/politics/2022/04/21/s-planov-putina-spolzla-zavesa-tayny-ukrainu-pokroshat-referendumami.html).

As a result of this policy, Rostovsky says, “the number of ‘peoples republics’ can be significantly increased,” although there is a limit, he suggests. “No one in Moscow will want to make a second attempt to ‘re-educate’” Ukrainian speakers in the western oblasts of Ukraine who have shown themselves recalcitrant to all such attempts.

Rostovsky says that at present, of course, this is only one possible scenario for Putin’s actions; but a survey of what the Russian military authorities and the other agencies of Russian power following behind them are doing in areas where the Ukrainian army has been forced out at least for the present provides strong support for his contention.

The Chief Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry reports that “the Russian military are preparing a number of pseudo-referenda” to attempt to legitimize their occupation

 (facebook.com/DefenceIntelligenceofUkraine/posts/295027096142051 and graniru.org/Politics/World/Europe/Ukraine/m.285015.html).

According to the ministry, propaganda materials and ballots for such a pseudo-referendum are already being prepared in Kherson. Residents there are convinced that no real voting will occur. The Russian occupiers will limit themselves, they believe, to staged voting in order to make points in Russia and in the international community.

AFRICA
Family of 'Hotel Rwanda' hero sues Rwandan government for kidnapping and torture


DUSTIN JONES

NPR

Paul Rusesabagina, pictured in 2012, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges last September in Rwanda. His family is suing Rwanda for $400 million for kidnapping, torture and unlawful imprisonment.

Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images

Paul Rusesabagina, the man portrayed in the film Hotel Rwanda who saved more than 1,200 people during the nation's 1994 genocide, has been detained in Rwanda for 20 months on terrorism charges that human rights groups call a sham. Now his family is suing the government of Rwanda for $400 million, saying he has been abducted, tortured and illegally imprisoned.

The Rwandan government abducted Rusesabagina, 67, in August 2020 in Dubai. This past September, a Rwandan court sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Rusesabagina is a U.S. permanent resident and holds Belgian citizenship.

"The Rwandan government has openly admitted that it planned an elaborate operation inside the United States to track Paul Rusesabagina and use its agents to trick him into traveling — with false promises of contractual work in Burundi— from his home in the United States to Rwanda," lawyers for the family say in court documents. "He was drugged and taken to Rwanda where President Paul Kagame's security agents forcibly abducted him, tortured him, and forced him into illegal imprisonment."

Rusesabagina has been a harsh critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, accusing the president of war crimes and human rights violations. The family says the government targeted him in response.

Rusesabagina is best known for his heroism in 1994 as the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, chronicled in the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda. He gave safe haven to over 1,200 people during extermination efforts that claimed some 800,000 lives.

He received multiple humanitarian awards, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2005.

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In the late 2000s, Rusesabagina and his wife, Taciana, moved to the United States, settling down as legal residents in San Antonio, Texas. But the Rwandan government spent years trailing, spying on and harassing Rusesabagina and his family, the family's lawyers say.

On Aug. 27, 2020, Rusesabagina was traveling from the U.S. to Burundi for contractual work. But his family said he went missing during a layover in the United Arab Emirates. The Rwanda Investigation Bureau announced four days later that they had captured Rusesabagina, who they accused of being involved in terrorism.

Rusesabagina co-founded the opposition Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change, which has an armed wing called the National Liberation Forces. The NLF has claimed responsibility for multiple deadly attacks in Rwanda's Southern Province in recent years, according to Human Rights Watch.

Rusesabagina was convincted on charges related to those attacks and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in September 2021.

Human Rights Watch called the trial "flawed" and "emblematic of the government's overreach and manipulation of the justice system." The U.S. State Department said it was "concerned" about Rusesabagina's "lack of confidential, unimpeded access to his lawyers and relevant case documents and his initial lack of access to counsel."