MISOGYNY & TOXIC MASCULINITY
Texas school shooter Salvador Ramos was ‘violent towards women,’ classmates say

By Eileen AJ Connelly
May 28, 2022 

Keanna Baxter spurned a come-on from the “eerie” Salvador Ramos after she witnessed a friend who dated him grow frightened of their volatile fellow Uvalde High School student.

“He dated my ex-friend. And then they broke up,” Baxter, 17, told the San Antonio Express News. “And then he tried to date me after that, but I told him no. Because he always had this kind of eerie sense about him.”

Ramos, 18, on Tuesday slaughtered 19 elementary school students and two teachers when he burst into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in America’s deadliest school shooting since 2012.

Ramos was unpredictable and violent when he was dating her friend, Baxter said.

“She told me that he was scary,” Baxter said. “Like he would get super violent. And when he would lose his temper, she would literally be scared for her life, basically.

“He would send her these really nasty messages, where he’d go from super sweet to screaming at her back to super sweet.”

“He was overall just aggressive, like violent,” Baxter added. “He would try and fight women. He would try and fight anyone who told him no — if he didn’t get his way, he’d go crazy. He was especially violent towards women.”

Mourners gather at a memorial at City of Uvalde Town Square following the mass shooting.

James Keivom for NY Post

One of those women was Crystal Foutz, 17, also a Uvalde High School student.

Ramos threatened to harm her in comments on Instagram, after he got into a fight on social media with her ex-boyfriend.

Children run to safety during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary.

Pete Luna/Uvalde Leader-News via REUTERS

“It was just harassing. And I never like provoked him or anything like that,” Foutz said Friday. “He was aggressive for no reason. … I just blocked him.”

Salvador Ramos was killed by police following the rampage.salv8dor_/Instagram

Foutz also heard about Ramos harassing his former girlfriend after they broke up.

“Another friend of mine, when she worked with (Ramos), there was an incident between a girlfriend and a boyfriend — (Ramos) tried to fight the girlfriend,” Foutz told the Express News. “And it really was over nothing. Just because he was aggressive like that.”

It’s not the first time his contemporaries described volatile behavior from Ramos.

Santos Valdez Jr., 18, said they were close until the future gunman went off the rails. Ramos showed up one day at a park where they played basketball with cuts all over his face. At first told Valdez he was scratched by his cat, then revealed the truth – he had cut himself “just for fun.”

There’s a video circulating of Ramos holding up a dead cat in the passenger seat of a car, said Baxter. Foutz said she saw TikTok videos Ramos posted of himself punching walls while wearing boxing gloves and declaring he could fight anyone.

Ramos posted about his guns on social media.salv8dor_/Instagram

“He was just very like pushy,” Foutz recalled. “If you would ask for something or if he was trying to pick on you or he was trying to tell you something and you didn’t give him a reaction, it would make him angry … (He was) very pushy, very aggressive.”

Rumors circulating among the high school students say Ramos was angry that he wouldn’t be able to graduate. Reports have said he dropped out of high school, but Baxter saw him in the school last month. Foutz remembered seeing him on campus last fall.

“To be honest, I didn’t think twice about this kid,” Baxter said. “I barely knew this kid for like a year. He kind of popped out of nowhere.”

Both girls called Ramos a “loner” with “no friends.”

“The people that did try and give him a chance to be friends with, he scared them away,” said Foutz. “He was a bully, really. If you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was a bully to you.”

“He didn’t have any friends,” Baxter said. “To be honest, no one ever spoke to him. Just because people were genuinely afraid of him.”

A law enforcement officer displays a graphic showing the route Ramos took into Robb Elementary School.EPA

In fact, some students thought that if there was a target for this type of tragedy, it would be the high school.

“We all thought maybe they’re going to do it to the high school — because we’ve gotten threats before,” she said. “But not to the kids. It should have been us. There was no reason to go and hurt those kids.

Salvador Ramos’s home being searched by the FBI.

Kevin C. Downs for NY Post

“None of us are like that. None of us have that kind of hate in our heart to do something like that or know how this ever could have happened.”

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for EMOTIONAL PLAGUE

Blaming mass shootings on the nation's mental health crisis is 'harmful', advocates say

1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experience mental illness each year, estimates show.

By Arielle Mitropoulos
May 28, 2022, 

A memorial is seen surrounding the Robb Elementary School sign following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, May 26, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

‘The heartbreak is palpable’: Nation mourns Texas elementary school shooting
ABC News’ Linsey Davis reports on the devastation in Uvalde felt around the country as the nation reckons with the latest school mass shooting.

Tuesday marked yet another tragic day in America, after a gunman opened fire at an elementary school in rural Texas, leaving 19 children and two teachers dead, and dozens of family members and friends in mourning.

As the nation reels from the tragedy, politicians and pundits have been pointing fingers as to who and what is to blame for these relatively rare but increasingly common public mass casualty events.

At the forefront of the debate is the role of mental health in these incidents, with some legislators asserting that such atrocities are the result of the nation’s mental health crisis.

"We have a problem with mental health illness in this community," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on Wednesday.

However, physicians, psychiatrists and other leading experts told ABC News that it is inaccurate to assert that "mental health issues" are solely or primarily responsible for the United States’ ongoing rash of gun violence.

Instead, while experts say some aspects of mental illness are associated with mass violence, they insist that it is truly a multi-layer and complex crisis, driven by a confluence of other factors as well, such as widespread access to firearms, stalled gun reform and exposure to increased stressors and crises.

“There is no ‘the mentally ill.’ It’s all of us. It’s our kids, our families, our uncles, our cousins,” Joel Dvoskin, a clinical and forensic psychologist who served on the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Reducing Gun Violence told ABC News.

“These events slap us in the face… This is a public health crisis, and we should think of it as a public health crisis," Dvoskin said in reference to the gun violence and Tuesday's tragedy in Uvalde.

In fact, a 2018 report of the FBI on the characteristics of active shooters found that only 25% of shooters from 2000-2013 had confirmed mental illness.

"There are important and complex considerations regarding mental health, both because it is the most prevalent stressor and because of the common but erroneous inclination to assume that anyone who commits an active shooting must de facto be mentally ill," the report said.

"Absent specific evidence, careful consideration should be given to social and contextual factors that might interact with any mental health issue before concluding that an active shooting was 'caused' by mental illness. In short, declarations that all active shooters must simply be mentally ill are misleading and unhelpful."

Millions experiencing mental illness in the US

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experience mental illness, defined as a condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling or mood, each year, approximately 52.9 million Americans. In 2020, 1 in 10 young adults, between the ages of 18 and 25, were found to experience serious mental illness.

With millions of Americans grappling with mental health challenges, doctors and public health experts, interviewed by ABC News, questioned whether it would be feasible to rely on the nation's current mental health infrastructure to stop would-be shooters.

“The notion of blaming this on the mentally ill is an intentionally disingenuous scapegoating of people who have enough problems already -- that they don't need to be insulted by politicians who were looking for a way to avoid a more complicated discussion,” Dvoskin said.

Those who live with mental illness are 10 times more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators, he added.

“Very few of these mass shooters have had a diagnosed mental disorder of any kind. That doesn't mean that they were doing fine. I think the better rhetoric to use [instead of] mentally ill is people who are in crisis. Anybody who's in a crisis of despair or rage… that doesn't mean they're going to shoot anybody but they ought to get help,” Dvoskin said.

On Wednesday, the National Alliance on Mental Illness also pushed back on the notion that mental illness is at fault in this shooting or with other similar crises.

“Mental illness is not the problem. It is incorrect and harmful to link mental illness and gun violence, which is often the case following a mass shooting,” the organization wrote. “Pointing to mental illness doesn’t get us closer as a nation to solving the problem and doing so leads to discrimination and stigma against those with mental illness — who are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. People across the globe live with mental illness, but only in the U.S. do we have an epidemic of senseless and tragic mass shootings,” they said.

Globally, estimates suggest around 1-in-7 people have one or more mental or substance use disorders.

However, even with the pandemic impacting people across the globe, the United States is unique in its epidemic of gun violence, with the nation reporting more violent deaths — largely driven by firearms — compared to other high-income countries.

One study found that the U.S. gun homicide rates were 25 times higher than in other high-income countries.

"If mental illness were the simple cause, you'd see mass shootings happen all over the developed world," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said this week.

Politicians fight over the role of mental illness in mass casualty incidents

Many politicians on the right, who are ardent defenders of gun rights, point to mental health as the principal issue at hand.

Although officials reported that the gunman had “no known mental health history,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott stressed on Wednesday that mental health issues must be addressed in order to evade such tragedies in the future.

“We as a state, we as a society, need to do a better job with mental health. Anybody who shoots somebody else as a mental health challenge, period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it,” Abbott argued during a press conference.

Following other mass shootings in years prior, former President Donald J. Trump, shared a similar sentiment in placing the blame on mental illness.

"Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger. Not the gun," Trump said in the days after two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in 2019.

Community members embrace and mourn together at a vigil for the victims in the mass shooting at Rob Elementary School, May 25, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

However, on the other side of the aisle, many Democrats have rejected such an argument as an excuse to not address gun reform legislation.

“Spare me the bull---- about mental illness,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, who, when he arrived in Washington, D.C., first represented the district home to Sandy Hook Elementary. “We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we’re not an outlier on mental illness.”

Mass shooting incidents increased during the pandemic, data shows

In the last two years, conversations around mental health and the potential impact on mass casualty incidents have been augmented by the onset of the pandemic.

Since the early days of the pandemic, officials have been warning that COVID-19 could cause spur an uptick in violence across the country.

An internal Department of Homeland Security memo in early 2020, obtained by ABC News last summer, warned that the emotional, mental and financial strain, exacerbated by the new pandemic, combined with social isolation may "increase the vulnerability of some citizens to mobilize to violence."

Thus, the question of what role COVID-19 may have had in exacerbating these already existing issues surrounding mental health, isolation, and radicalization, is one that groups of public health experts have been investigating as the frequency of these mass shooting events has increased.

Dr. Anupam B. Jena, Associate Professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, who has been studying the rash of mass shootings across the country, told ABC News that since the onset of the pandemic, there has been a clear increase in the number of mass shootings, defined as shootings in which 4 or more people were killed or injured, not counting the perpetrator, when compared to previous years. Totals for 2021 were even higher than those seen in 2020, according to Jena's research.

“It's very clear that something has changed during the pandemic that has led to an increase in mass shootings and the timing of the increase is timed, really at the start of the pandemic,” Jena said. “I feel pretty confident saying the increase in mass shootings that we've observed in the last year and a half two years is a result of changes that have occurred during the pandemic."

CDC data, released earlier this month, found the overall gun homicides increased 35% across the country during the first year of the pandemic to the highest level in 25 years.

According to an analysis, conducted by Jena, there were 343 more mass shootings "above expected," during that period, leading to an additional 217 deaths, and 1,498 people injured, between April 2020 and July 2021.

An FBI report released on Tuesday also revealed a 52.5% increase in active shooter incidents between 2020 and 2021. Such incidents have increased by nearly 100% since 2017.

Active Shooter Incidents 2017-2021
ABC News / FBI

“The COVID-19 pandemic imposed sudden and additional psychological and financial strains across society through fear of death, social isolation, economic hardship, and general uncertainty,” and thus, the tremendous tensions and stresses caused by the pandemic could have led to an uptick in mass shootings,” Jena and his co-author wrote in a September study.

Economic and social factors played a significant role in the likelihood of a person committing a mass shooting, Jena argued.

“There's not a person who hasn't been disrupted by the pandemic really, and so the question is does it have a particularly pronounced effect on people who would be prone to committing acts of mass violence, and it seems to be that way,” Jena said.

As with COVID-19, there is a “contagious” nature with mass shootings, according to David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, with incidents at times having a domino effect, one occurring after the other.

The pandemic has had ‘enormous’ effects on mental health

The pandemic itself has had “enormous” effects on the mental health of people across the country, Hemingway said.

Public health experts say social disruption caused by the lockdown, and by all the changes in the way society operates, has affected everyone, regardless of race, gender or age.

“It's been a time of terrible disruption,” Dr. Rebecca W. Brendel, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, told ABC News. “All the institutions and the support and the connectedness that holds us together, was taken away overnight, and it's simply just not back the same way again. How could it not disrupt our lives in ways we're only beginning to understand?”

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott is accompanied by Senator Ted Cruz as he speaks to the media at Robb Elementary school, the day after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at the school in Uvalde, Texas, May 25, 2022.
Marco Bello/Reuters

The vast majority of attackers in mass attack incidents — 87% — had at least one “significant stressor,” defined as significant medical issues, turbulent home lives, work and school issues, strained relationships, and personal issues, within five years leading up to the attack, according to a United States Secret Service report on Mass Attacks in Public Spaces.

However, the USSS reported noted that "the vast majority of individuals in the United States who display the symptoms of mental illness discussed.... do not commit acts of crime or violence."

People rely on regularity to protect the predictability, the connectedness of our institutions and our relationships, for a normal healthy development, Brendel said.

MORE: As Gov. Abbott places shooting blame on mental health, what has Texas done to address it?

“Part of normal development is learning how to interact with other people and learning about one's place in the world, from being around other people and navigating relationships in person,” she said, and a number of things have gotten in the way of that normal development.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 people reported that the pandemic had a significant impact on their mental health, including 45% of people with mental illness.

Young people have been particularly affected, data shows. During the pandemic, more than one-third of high school students in the U.S. reported experiencing poor mental health during the pandemic, while nearly half of students, 44%, reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless in the past year, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, comforts families outside of the Civic Center in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022.
Dario Lopez-mills/AP

One significant culprit that continues to aggravate these feelings of loneliness is social media, said Brendel. Although it serves as a way to keep in touch, it can also lead to problematic situations.

“We're seeing kids who get their information, or see their friends only through social media posts, and we know that people can portray themselves only as they wish to be seen,” Brendel said, adding that this leads to situations where people may feel that their lives were empty or not as good as the perfect lives they saw on social media, leading to increased feelings of isolation, and making it even more difficult to reach out to others.

“We know that when we're in our deepest despair, with being isolated, [social media] makes it worse and it is a big risk factor. We're in for added trouble,” Brendel said.

What to do

As officials look for answers, experts say there are no simple solutions to such complicated issues.

Top of mind for many mass shooting health experts is addressing the overarching issues with gun control reform in the U.S.

According to polling from Pew Research, nearly half of adults — 49% — say there would be fewer mass shootings if it was harder for people to obtain guns legally.

“The United States is such a blaming society. Once we blame somebody then we can say, ‘oh, our work is done.’ And the answer is no, you haven't done, and prevented anything,” Hemingway said. “You want a system so it's hard for people to get these lethal weapons. It's hard for people to use these lethal weapons, and it's unlikely for people to be so enraged that they want to use these lethal weapons.”

People react outside the Staff Sgt Willie de Leon Civic Center, where students had been transported from Robb Elementary School after a shooting, in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022.
Marco Bello/Reuters

Stigmatization of mental illness is only deterring people from seeking help, experts said.

Thus, ensuring those in need are able to access the care — for mental health, crisis, or stress related issues — without fear of being ostracized or judged, will also be critical.

In getting people the help they need, Dvoskin added that “you would prevent some mass shootings — you would just never know it because you don't know which particular person in crisis is going to do something that's horrific.”

“When you blame mass homicides on mentally ill, all you're doing is dramatically increasing stigma. People don't want to join the group of people who are responsible for harm,” Dvoskin said. “Those statements not only are wrong but they are directly harmful to citizens who might be struggling with a mental illness, but they haven't asked for help, and why would they when we stigmatize it so drastically.”

After living as a woman for 20 years, she was jailed with men

When Ms Williams spoke to a counsellor, she said, she was told ‘boys will be boys’ and to just wait out her time

Rachel Weiner

Lawsuits have led to changes in Washington, D.C., jail and in Massachusetts; some states have proactively mandated inmates be housed according to their gender identity
(Getty Images)

When Kesha Williams went to jail in Fairfax County, Virginia, in November 2018, she had been living as a woman for two decades. At first, she was put with female inmates and given women’s underwear.

But when she asked about getting the hormone treatments she had been taking for 15 years, jail officials learned she was transgender and had not had genital surgery.

From then on, she said in a federal lawsuit, she was housed with men, harassed by deputies during searches, and ogled and groped by inmates when she was showering or walking through the jail.

Her bras were taken away, she said, and she was told she couldn’t buy one at the commissary. Her hormone treatments were not provided for weeks at a time.

When she spoke to a counsellor, she said, she was told “boys will be boys” and to wait out her time.

Instead, before even leaving the jail, she contacted a lawyer. “I have to fight for the next girl, every other girl who has to go through this,” Williams, 41, said in an interview. “You’re being physically, mentally abused.”

Williams, who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, is suing under a relatively new interpretation of disability law that has been embraced in some federal courts and met with scepticism in others. The US Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit is now weighing the case after a panel heard arguments for it in March.

It’s part of a national legal push for trans rights to be considered under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and for trans women in prison to be housed with other women.

Amy Whelan, a senior staff attorney with the National Centre for Lesbian Rights, said genitalia still determines housing in most prisons despite federal regulations and research showing the high risk of sexual abuse trans women face in men’s prisons.

“Jails are still very behind in terms of understanding how important it is to move people, and understanding the medical issues involved,” she said. “It’s putting the safety and security of these institutions at risk.”

Lawsuits have led to changes in Washington DC and Massachusetts; some states have proactively mandated inmates be housed according to their gender identity. But there has also been pushback against those policies, including a lawsuit in California arguing that they violate cisgender women’s rights.

The US Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit has ruled that an Idaho prisoner was entitled to gender confirmation surgery under the constitution, but the fourth circuit is the first appellate panel to specifically consider the disability question.

When the ADA became law in 1990, “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments” were explicitly excluded from protection from discrimination. Courts – including the first federal judge to review Williams’s case – have pointed to that language in dismissing cases alleging discrimination against trans people.

Through attorneys, Fairfax officials said the same. “To say that circumstances alleged by Ms Williams are far from ideal would minimise the struggles she and other trans people face,” they wrote, but “her allegations are insufficient to show that she is a qualified individual with a disability”.

A spokesman for the Fairfax sheriff’s office, which runs the jail, said it would be inappropriate to comment while the case is pending.

Williams and others argue the law’s authors misunderstood trans identity so thoroughly that the law’s exception does not describe it. Added at the urging of conservatives, the exclusions to the law also included paedophilia, voyeurism and exhibitionism under “sexual behaviour disorders”.

The desire to live as the opposite sex is no longer labelled by psychiatrists as a disorder to be treated; instead, the mental problem is the stress of being born in a body that does not align with one’s gender identity. “The disorder that my client now has did not exist, at least diagnostically” in 1990, her attorney Joshua Erlich said. “We must apply a modern understanding.”

Determined to file a lawsuit, Williams connected with Erlich before leaving Fairfax custody. She had done brief stints in jails before. But she had never had an experience as she did in Fairfax, which she said arose from agreeing to help a drug-dealing boyfriend who turned out to be working a sting operation.

“I did what I did, I’ll go to jail – but I’m being penalised for who I am, as well,” she said. “They need to change their system; they have to understand we’re in a different time.”

The Washington Post

HOMOPHOBIC MURDER OKED BY US COURT

Ex-college linebacker acquitted after killing male Tinder date who posed as woman

by Ryan King, Breaking News Reporter
| May 28, 2022 

Former Virginia Tech football player Isimemen Etute was acquitted Friday after beating a man whom he mistook as a woman to death in a Tinder date gone awry.

A jury found Etute, 19, not guilty of second-degree murder charges for the death of Jerry Smith, 40, in 2021, determining that Etute acted in self-defense when Smith seemingly lurched for an object near his bed, where a knife was later discovered by police.

"I think he's earned the right to go back to school and further his academic and sports career," Etute's lawyer, James Turk, said after the ruling, per ESPN. "I think the school that ends up taking him is going to get probably a lot wiser and a much smarter and an exceptional athlete."

Etute went ballistic on Smith upon discovering he was a man, having expected his Tinder date to be female, prosecutors alleged. His physical stature over Smith, with Etute weighing over 50 pounds more than him, cast doubt on the notion Smith was grasping for a weapon because Smith did not pose a physical threat to him, they argued, according to the New York Post.

"That's a big disparity," Montgomery County Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Patrick Jensen said in reference to his weight and height advantage, according to the Associated Press.

Etute and Smith first connected via Tinder in April 2021, according to court testimony. Smith posed as a lady named "Angie Renee," and the two met on April 10. He initially left the meeting amid concerns over Smith concealing his face and keeping the room dark but later returned and received oral sex from Smith and a $50 gift, according to reports.

On May 31, a teammate of Etute's went to Smith's apartment but left after feeling uncomfortable about the situation. Etute and two of his teammates opted to return to Smith's apartment later that day to try to ascertain Smith's gender, reports added. Etute entered the apartment alone while his teammates waited outside, and after Etute "felt around" to determine Smith's gender, Smith groped him, prompting a smack from Etute, the former linebacker testified. Etute believed that Smith was trying to reach for some sort of weapon such as a gun and struck him a few more times in response, he testified. He confessed to stomping on Smith's face as he left.

Etute acknowledged that he did not see the knife at the time, but police officers later discovered it under the mattress, reports said. The former Virginia Tech student broke almost all the bones in Smith's face and he suffered bleeding of the brain, a medical examiner determined.

The jury deliberated on the case for three hours before reaching a decision.

Etute was suspended from Virginia Tech and the football team after prosecutors unveiled charges against him last year. His lawyer argued the incident should be a lesson for users of apps such as Tinder.

"It should be an eye-opener not just for college athletes, but any young people using these social media platforms," he said. "They can be extremely useful, but they can be extremely dangerous."

Pic of the Week: Germany’s first trans military official put on trial over a dating site profile

The military said the Tinder profile was a violation of the duty of servicewomen and men to behave "properly" outside of duty.

By Bil Browning 

Saturday, May 28, 2022

25 May 2022, Saxony, Leipzig:

 Anastasia Biefang, commander of the German Armed Forces, stands in a room of the Federal Administrative Court. The instance is hearing a disciplinary measure against Biefang because of her profile in a dating portal. The disciplinary measure had been imposed because the female soldier had not fulfilled her duty of proper off-duty conduct. The commander is defending herself against this.

Photo: dpa/picture alliance via Getty I

Anastasia Biefang, the German military’s first transgender officer, has been forced to defend her Tinder profile in court – and lost.

The high-ranking commander was disciplined for a violation of the duty of servicewomen and men to behave “properly” outside of duty. 

The military service senate of the Federal Administrative Court decided that her private dating profile was too spicy despite a decided lack of prosecutions of straight men who regularly post much more explicit content.

The dastardly expression of sexuality on a dating site read: “Spontaneous, lustful, trans*, open relationship looking for sex. All genders welcome.”

“We think that a commander must also choose his words on the Internet,” the presiding judge said in the verdict. “Formulations that raise doubts about the character’s integrity must be avoided.”

After the verdict, Biefang told reporters that they still didn’t see what was untrue or misleading about her profile, saying, “In the future, I’ll probably have my managers check my profiles to see if that’s legal.”

A REVOLUTION OF YOUTH AND WOMEN

‘Our friends didn’t die in vain’: Sudan’s activists aim to topple military regime

In the struggle for democracy in Sudan, protesters in Khartoum demonstrate against military rule in March this year. Photograph: Marwan Ali/AP

Three years after protests toppled Omar al-Bashir, activists hope to bring down another government with little more than phones, placards and motorbikes

Jason Burke & Zeinab Mohammed Salih

in Khartoum

Sat 28 May 2022 

A small house on a street in central Khartoum, lost among the dusty blocks of offices and cheap hotels but not difficult to find. On the wall outside, a slightly faded portrait of the smiling young man who once lived here: Abdulsalam Kisha.

Inside, half a dozen men and a woman are meeting, planning, eating, joking. These self-styled “revolutionaries” do not belong to a political party, or even a defined organisation. Instead, they are part of a coalition of hundreds of grassroots associations across Sudan’s towns and cities coordinated by activists who hope to bring down a powerful military regime with little more than placards, smartphones and motorbikes. The efforts of these “resistance committees” in Sudan are being watched – with hope by many, anxiety by autocratic leaders – across a swathe of the Middle East and Africa.

Their efforts are not without risk, however. Nearly 1,600 pro-democracy campaigners in Sudan have been arrested in the past eight months, and 96 killed in a series of protests. Almost every weekend, the police deploy shotguns and teargas to clear streets of barricades and demonstrators. More than 100 were injured in three days last week alone.

Among those meeting in Kisha’s house are a 58-year-old housewife and her 63-year-old retired agricultural engineer husband whose involvement in such dangerous and committed activism would seem astonishing unless you knew of their history. Kisha, a charismatic and popular 25-year-old law student, was killed by a bullet during the uprising that ended the 30-year rule of Sudan’s autocratic Islamist leader, Omar al-Bashir, in 2019, and appeared to usher in a new era of democracy. The house is where Kisha grew up, clambering across the cluttered courtyard, playing in the dusty street outside, leaving to attend school then university and finally to walk 100m to the protest where he died. The middle-aged couple are his parents.

This week, on the third anniversary of their son’s death, they will take to the streets yet again, shouting themselves hoarse, evading police checkposts, chanting the protest songs with the others, most 30 or even 40 years younger.

“What else can we do?” they said. “We are the parents of a martyr. We have to be there to inspire the others.”

Others in the room, a generation younger, explain their participation similarly. “We have to go on and risk our lives, so that our friends did not die in vain,” said one.

For most of those involved with the resistance committees, the campaign is their third battle for democracy in Sudan, a strategically located country of 44 million people which has suffered a series of autocratic regimes and wars since declaring independence from Britain in 1955.

The first such effort was waged over almost a decade to overthrow Bashir. Then, for a few short weeks from April 2019, came a second: to force democracy on the soldiers and paramilitaries who took power after the dictator’s fall. This ended bloodily. At least 200 were killed and more injured when an unprecedented sit-in was brutally broken up.

“It was a very beautiful moment when Bashir fell. We dreamed of a Sudan where everyone was free to be and say what they wanted … But looking back now, we were very naive,” said “Carbino”, a leader of a resistance committee in south Khartoum.

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president who was ousted in 2019. 

Photograph: Ashraf Shazly/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the brutality, the protests of 2019 did win a partial victory, with Sudan’s powerful army and allied paramilitaries forced to concede the creation of a mixed civilian-military administration that was supposed to prepare the way for elections. Once again, however, hopes of a better future were dashed. A military coup in October ended any dream of democracy, and so the resistance committees formed to fight for a third time for radical change.

“This time we have our eyes wide open, and will not accept anything other than all our demands: peace, justice and freedom,” Carbino said.

This new effort is a scrappy affair, unlike the big demonstrations that brought down Bashir or the protracted mass sit-in that followed. It is a campaign of pop-up protests, running battles with the police, graffiti on walls at night, clandestine leaflet deliveries, demonstrations organised only hours before and instructions circulated on social media.

On a Saturday night, it is the turn of the resistance committee in Burri, a middle-class neighbourhood near Khartoum’s international airport. As the barricades of bricks and rocks go up, the shutters on the shops come down. A grocer stays open a few minutes longer to allow housewives to run last-minute errands for sugar, cooking oil or bread. Then the young men fill the streets and wait for the police.

“We have to do this, for freedom,” said Omar, 27 years old and jobless, as he watched the first attempts of the police to disperse the protesters. Heavy armoured trucks manoeuvre, pushing forward with squads of policemen alongside.

That a sharp wind blows the clouds of teargas back towards the advancing vehicles does not please Omar.

“That’s bad … It means they will use live ammunition instead,” he warned, and soon after there is a volley of shots. The teenage protesters fall back, then gather their resolve and return to the street. Flames from burning tyres flicker in the dusk. And so it goes on, through the evening.

In moments of relative calm, women gather errant children and complain about the disruption. Many worry too. “We want this to stop … Our young people are dying,” said one, as she sheltered in a neighbour’s yard.

The rhythm of the protests is irregular, but preparations are well-rehearsed. A baking powder solution helps deal with teargas and so, the demonstrators say, do anti-Covid masks. Then there are goggles and builder’s hard hats that are supposed to protect against shotgun pellets. Those with motorbikes stand ready to pick up the injured, taking them to local clinics where they are treated by sympathetic doctors.

Ijlal Syed Bashera, wearing goggles to counter the teargas, at a protest in Omdurman. Photograph: Jason Burke/The Observer

A day after the protests in Burri, it is the turn of Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city just across the river Nile. Kisha’s parents are planning to join protests there, though may be stopped either by police checkpoints or arthritis.

By 3pm, despite temperatures above 40C, crowds have gathered on Shaheed Abdulazeem street. The makeshift rock barricades are already up amid drumming and chanting. There are teenagers from the neighbourhood, lots of students, and a core of very determined older protesters.

Momin Ahmed, 27, was shot in January at a demonstration and lost most of the use of his arm. “We are thousands…[so] I am not afraid,” he said. Ijlal Syed Bashera, 43, has brought her two children, aged nine and 12, to “learn the true meaning of patriotism”. Unemployed despite degrees in politics and computing, she has been protesting since 2013 in each of the three efforts for democracy and has been arrested three times too.

“It is simple. We want a better life. There is total economic collapse. There is no freedom. So obviously we protest,” she said.

Some doubt the depth and breadth of the protesters support, painting them as relatively well-off urbanites out of touch with Sudan’s often deeply conservative population. There is little doubt that the current unrest is restricted to bigger towns and cities, and that, even in Khartoum, it is not mobilising masses or causing significant disruption. On Africa Street, a broad thoroughfare not far from the Omdurman protests, patrons enjoy fried fish, stewed beans and kebabs in packed restaurants despite the acrid smell of teargas on the evening breeze.

Pro-democracy activists claim such apparent apathy is deceptive, and that they have genuine grassroots support. Osman Basri, a lawyer who represents detained campaigners, said a combination of holidays, the deliberately decentralised strategy and repression had depressed numbers.

“What you see is the tip of the iceberg. There are the visible protesters, but a huge mass of people who support us but don’t show it,” he said,

There are good reasons to remain unnoticed by security forces. Emergency laws currently in place allow arbitrary arrest and detention. Abuses are systematic.

“I was held for six weeks and was never charged, saw no lawyer, could not call my family. When I went on hunger strike to complain I was put in a small cell called the fridge, where an air conditioner was kept on maximum and lights on all day and night,” said “Rasta”, a member of a central Khartoum resistance committee.

Others report chronic overcrowding, brutal beatings, sleep deprivation, repeated humiliation and denial of medical treatment. Age or infirmity makes little difference. If detained, the parents of Kisha would receive the same treatment as anyone else, Basri said.

Abdulsalam Kisha’s father, a retired engineer. 

Photograph: Jason Burke/The Observer

By late afternoon in Omdurman, the police have been reinforced and canisters of tear gas fired in broadsides from trucks clatter off the potholed road. Young men run, choking, crying but waving V for victory signs. They ignore stacks of pebbles at a construction site. The resistance committees insist their protests are non-violent, and so far discipline has held.

Everyone knows the stakes are high, and not just for Sudan. More than a decade after the pro-democracy uprisings of the Arab spring, millions across the Middle East are watching what happens in Khartoum, Omdurman and across the country. So, too, are others across Africa, where democracy has been retreating in the face of renewed repression from Zimbabwe to Mali. The future of Sudan is especially important for the chain of unstable states running from Senegal to Somalia.

“This is a contest of totally different and incompatible visions of politics,” said Kholood Khair, founding director of Confluence Advisory, a thinktank in Khartoum.

On one side are the political elites, the rebel groups, the military and paramilitaries with their patronage-based politics, back-room deals and distribution of the country’s resources between those strong enough to claim a share. On the other is the street, and a vision of transformational change based on entirely new ideas about civilian government.

“The military have a lot of patrimonial power and military might. The street has the numbers, new ideas and time … At the moment, we are at an impasse,” said Khair. “For pro-democracy movements, Sudan is a kind of proof of concept that change can come. If they can do it in Sudan, they can do it elsewhere. And there are lots of people excited by that, but lots very worried by it, too.”

Many analysts in Khartoum say that a decisive moment is fast approaching. The country is already plunged in economic crisis, partly a consequence of last October’s coup which led the US, World Bank and other major donors to cut off the flow of billions of dollars of aid.

Millions are already hungry, violence is rising in restive regions such as Darfur and inflation is running at 250%. If people start to go hungry or can no longer afford fuel or find work, the relatively modest protests could rapidly swell into the massive demonstrations that brought down Bashir’s government in 2019.

The most powerful military rulers of Sudan – Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti” – now find themselves in a quandary. To stave off economic collapse and widespread protests, they need international aid. But to get it they need to make concessions and at least bring some of Sudan’s mainstream civilian politicians back into government. The resistance committees would see this as another betrayal, however, and would protest, inevitably prompting the sort of repression that would undermine any compromise. Meanwhile, the economy would deteriorate further.

The Abdulsalam family are not bothered by any of this. They say they will remain true to the ideas and ambitions that attracted their son to the protest movement against Bashir and led to his death three years ago.

“The French Revolution took many years to be successful,” said Kisha’s father, as the rest of the resistance committee ate a rapid lunch before heading out to another protest. “We have only just started ours.”

Abdulsalam Kisha’s mother, also an activist, at home with a picture of her son who was killed in a protest three years ago. 

Photograph: Jason Burke/The Observer

NATO NATION BUILDING FAIL

UN report: Libya faces serious security threat from foreign fighters, Russia's Wagner Group

By Euronews with AP • Updated: 28/05/2022 - 14:50

Forces loyal to Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, one of Libya’s two rival prime ministers, secure the streets of Tripoli on 17 May 2022 - 

 Copyright AP Photo/Yousef Murad

Libya faces a serious security threat from foreign fighters and private military companies, especially Russia's Wagner Group which has violated international law, a UN expert report said.

The experts also accused seven Libyan armed groups of systematically using unlawful detention to punish perceived opponents, ignoring international and domestic civil rights laws, including those prohibiting torture.

In particular, "migrants have been extremely vulnerable to human rights abuses and regularly subjected to acts of slavery, rape and torture," the panel said in the report to the UN Security Council obtained late Friday.

The oil-rich North African nation plunged into turmoil after a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was later killed.

It then became divided between rival governments: one in the east, backed by military commander Khalifa Hifter, and an UN-supported administration in the capital of Tripoli. Each side is propped up by different militias and foreign powers.

In April 2019, Hifter and his forces, backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, launched an offensive to try and capture Tripoli.

His campaign collapsed after Turkey stepped up its military support for the UN-supported government with hundreds of troops and thousands of Syrian mercenaries.

An October 2020 cease-fire deal led to an agreement on a transitional government in early February 2021 and elections were scheduled for the last 24 December aimed at unifying the country.

But they were cancelled and the country now has rival governments with two Libyans claiming to be prime ministers.

A decade since Gaddafi, Libya's election raises fears of new violence

Hope for progress in Libya as factions agree interim presidential council

The cease-fire agreement called for the speedy withdrawal of all foreign fighters and mercenaries but the panel said "there has been little verifiable evidence of any large-scale withdrawals taking place to date."

The report said Chadian opposition groups operate from Libya and Sudanese fighters have been recruited by Hifter.

Wagner mercenaries accused of crimes against civilians

Turkish-backed Syrian combatants have been seen by the panel in government military camps in Tripoli, while Hifter-affiliated Syrian fighters operate alongside the Wagner Group's mercenaries in the strategic northern city of Sirte and nearby Jufra.

At least 300 of these Syrians have returned home and not been replaced by Hifter, the report said.

The panel said it continues to investigate the deployment of Wagner fighters and the transfers of arms and related materiel to support its operations.

The Wagner Group passes itself off as a private military contractor and the Kremlin denies any connection to it.

But the US identifies Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Wagner's main financier and the group has been hired in a number of conflicts to serve the interests of the Russian government.

Who are the Russian mercenaries waging war in Libya?

EU sanctions Russia's Wagner Group over human rights abuse claims

The panel said it considers a Samsung electronic tablet left on a Libyan battlefield by a Wagner mercenary and obtained by the BBC in early 2021 to be authentic.

It contained maps of the locations of 35 unmarked anti-personnel mines in the Ain Zara area of south Tripoli which was then a frontline area under Hifter's control, supported by Wagner.

Several mines had never been reported as being in Libya before and their transfer, therefore, violated the UN arms embargo, the panel said. It added that a booby-trapped mine exploded during a clearance operation killing two civilian experts.

The report claims that the authors also received information about the recovery of anti-tank mines from positions primarily occupied by Wagner in south Tripoli.

The panel said the failure to visibly mark the anti-personnel and anti-tank mines and issue warnings of their locations to civilians in the areas was a violation of the international humanitarian law by Wagner.

Russia supports withdrawal of foreign fighters from Libya

Russia, China blocking report into Libya conflict arms embargo violations

The Wagner tablet also contained a list of requested items including drones and tanks that would violate the arms embargo if delivered, the panel said, but it did not know if any of it had.

The panel said it identified 18 arms transfers and four examples of military training between March 2021 and late April 2022 that violated the UN arms embargo.

Among the examples it cited was the Luccello, a ship flying the Comoros flag that delivered 100 armoured vehicles to Hifter in Benghazi.
'Turning a blind eye to rape'

The experts said four migrants suffered human rights abuses in secret detention facilities controlled by human traffickers in the areas of Tazirbu in the Libyan desert and Bani Walid near the northwest coast.

They said victims were enslaved, severely beaten, deliberately starved and denied medical care.

"Two former female detainees, who were 14- and 15-year-old girls at the time, further testified to the panel that multiple perpetrators repeatedly raped them, subjected them to sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence during the period of over 18 months in a secret detention facility in Bani Walid," the report said.

'They sprayed the room with bullets': migrants in Libyan detention centres living in fear

Libya's detention centre closures: lancing lawlessness or consolidating poltical control?

The panel said it also found that guards responsible for protecting the most vulnerable migrants in the government-run Shara al-Zawiya detention centre "took a direct part in or turned a blind eye to consistent acts of rape, sexual exploitation and threats of rape against women and girls" detained there between January and June 2021.

UNDER REPORTED

School Shooting: Thousands of Students Walkout in Protest Across US

May 27, 2022

Hundreds of students attend protest march in Chile

 Last updated: 11 hours ago

Hundreds of students protested in Santiago, Chile on Friday, demanding that food subsidies and funds for structural improvements to public schools be allocated in the country's budget. At one particularly violent intersection police were forced to use their water cannon trucks to put out a bus set on fire by a group of protesters. No arrests had been made and no one was reported as injured. Recently inaugurated President Gabriel Boric's approval ratings have dropped with some pollsters registering his popularity now at 24% after his apparent willingness to appeal to the military for assistance in domestic security issues. As a student leader, Boric often led protests against inequality that rocked the country that was once seen as a bedrock of political stability in the region. As a candidate, he vowed to bring a seismic shift in the political landscape. Now some of his voters are disappointed that change appears slow and the students are returning to the streets to register their displeasure.

Coal India to import coal for first time in years as power shortages loom: Report

Coal India: India is expected to face a wider coal shortage during the third quarter of 2022 due to expectations of higher electricity demand.


Reported By:| 

Edited By: DNA Web Team |

Source: Reuters |Updated: May 28, 2022


Coal India, the world`s largest coal miner, will import the fuel for use by utilities, a power ministry letter seen by Reuters showed on Saturday, as shortages raise concerns about renewed power outages.

It would be the first time since 2015 that the state-run company has imported the fuel, highlighting efforts by state and federal officials to stock up to avoid a repeat of April, when India faced its worst power cuts in more than six years.

"Coal India would import coal for blending on government-to-government (G2G) basis and supply ... to thermal power plants of state generators and independent power producers (IPPs)," the federal Power Ministry said in the letter dated May 28.

The letter was sent to all utilities and top federal and state energy officials including the federal coal secretary and the chairman of Coal India.

India is expected to face a wider coal shortage during the third quarter of 2022 due to expectations of higher electricity demand, stoking fears of widespread power outages.

The power ministry said in the letter the decision was taken after nearly all states suggested that multiple coal import tenders by states would lead to confusion and sought centralised procurement through Coal India.

India stepped up pressure on utilities to increase imports to blend with local coal in recent days, warning of cuts to the supply of domestically mined coal if power plants did not build up coal inventories through imports.

But the power ministry on Saturday asked states to suspend tenders that are "under process". "The tenders under process by state generators and IPPs for importing coal for blending may be kept in abeyance to await the price discovery by Coal India through G2G route, so as to procure coal at least possible rates," the ministry said.

Coal inventories at power plants have declined by about 13% since April to the lowest pre-summer levels in years.