Some of Russia's closest allies abstained at the UN rather than support its claim to have annexed parts of Ukraine

Sinéad Baker
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a cabinet meeting via videoconference in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022. Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP


UN members voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to condemn Russia's annexation of Ukrainian regions.

Only 4 countries explicitly supported Russia. Allies in its CSTO military bloc mostly abstained.
Russia's invasion has left it increasingly isolated, even among traditionally friendly nations.

Some of Russia's allies abstained from a UN vote to condemn Russia over its annexation of Ukraine, leaving just four countries voting to support Russia as it becomes increasingly isolated over its invasion.

Only four countries —North Korea, Belarus, Syria, and Nicaragua — joined Russia to vote against the resolution at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, which condemned Russia's annexation and demanded it give the territories back.

143 nations voted in support, agreeing to condemn Russia's annexation, while 35 abstained.

Among the abstentions were members of Collective Security Treaty Organization, a post-Soviet security bloc dominated by Russia and full of traditionally friendly countries.

Four of its six members abstained: Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Belarus and Russia itself are the final two members.

Experts say Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed them further from Russia.

Paul Stronski, an expert on Russia's relations with Central Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Moscow Times last month: "There is growing friction between the Kremlin, its proxies and local Central Asian elites."

Russia tried to make Wednesday's vote a secret ballot, which would have obscured which nations voted with Russia. But UN members rejected the suggestion and insisted the vote be public.


The General Assembly's resolutions are symbolic and will not result in any specific action in Ukraine.

Russia formally annexed the regions this month despite widespread global opposition.

It did so after conducting referendums in the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia — which Ukraine and Western nations dismissed as a sham.

Russia's claim is also complicated by events on the battlefield: it does not control the entirety of any of the four regions and has been losing further territory to Ukrainian advances.

DIRTY DOZEN

From jail cell to frontline: Russia turns to convicts to help flailing war effort

New bill would allow those convicted of crimes to serve in the military in exchange for early release or a reduction in their sentence.

Those convicted of certain types of crimes would technically be 

permitted by the measure to serve in the military

| Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images

BY ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH
OCTOBER 13, 2022 

Russian criminals could be freed from prison and have their convictions quashed in exchange for serving in Moscow’s flailing war effort in Ukraine, under a new bill drafted by senators.

The bill would formally allow those convicted of certain categories of crimes to perform military duty in exchange for early release, the scratching of their convictions or reduced penalties, Olga Kovitidi, a senator representing illegally annexed Crimea, said in a post on Telegram on Thursday. Kovitidi, along with her colleagues on the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building, was responsible for drafting the bill.

Kovitidi said the law would apply to those who had committed crimes of “small and medium gravity.” Those who have been convicted of calling for or participating in anti-government rallies, discrediting the Russian armed forces or calling for sanctions against Moscow would not be eligible, the senator said.

Russia has struggled to turn the tide of the war, with Kyiv launching a successful counteroffensive last month and taking back thousands of kilometers of Ukrainian territory held by Moscow’s troops. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced what he called a “partial mobilization” of reservists, which led to a significant public outcry (by Russian standards).

Videos and reports have circulated of the Wagner Group, a network of mercenaries and Putin’s de facto private army, attempting to convince prisoners to fight in the war, but the new legislation paves the way for more open recruitment.

According to Russian news daily Vedomosti, there are reports of “thousands of prisoners with unserved terms for various, including serious” crimes being sent to the front lines.

 

Ukraine bats away Lukashenko’s border threats

Despite saber-rattling from Minsk, Kyiv’s forces are playing down the risks of another invasion from Belarus.

Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko has so far avoided sending his own forces into the conflict in Ukraine | Alexander Nemenov / AFP via Getty Images

BY SERGEI KUZNETSOV
OCTOBER 12, 2022 


KYIV — Ukraine is giving short shrift to increased posturing from Belarus’ authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who this week pledged to conduct joint deployments with Russian forces and triggered fears that Minsk could be seeking to engineer a false flag operation on the border.

Belarus’ chief strategic significance in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is that its territory — and importantly its airfields — are a springboard for attacks against northern Ukraine, most significantly Kyiv. Indeed, Putin used Belarus in exactly this way in the opening phases of the war.

Crucially, however, Lukashenko has avoided sending his own forces into the conflict, sensing it would be a political disaster.

Just two years ago, Lukashenko survived massive street protests against his rule by using brutal force, and the heavy casualties that the Belarusian army would probably sustain in the war against Ukraine could reignite popular anger against his rule. His direct involvement in the war would also mean more Western sanctions against a nation that has already been seriously hit by restrictions over the rigged 2020 presidential election.

Law enforcement officers respond to a protest against President Lukashenko’s rule in 2020 |

 AFP via Getty Images

Attention swung back to Lukashenko’s motives this week when he said on Monday that he had agreed with Putin to deploy a joint regional military group. He added that this order had been given two days before, apparently after the explosion of the Russia-Crimea bridge, which Moscow blamed on Ukraine. Lukashenko said that the Belarusian army would form the base of this group.

Lukashenko also made fake claims about a potential Ukrainian attack against Belarus. He issued a warning to the Ukrainian leadership in the light of supposed information on “strikes on Belarus from the territory of Ukraine.” Think tankers and independent Belarusian journalists considered this to be Minsk laying the ground for a possible false-flag operation.

“This information was immediately brought to my attention. My answer was simple: Tell the president of Ukraine and other insane people … that the Crimea bridge will be just the thin end of the wedge to them, if only they touch a single meter of our territory with their dirty hands.”

He made his statement as Russia was hitting Ukraine with barrages of missiles on Monday, and Lukashenko’s reference to the Crimea bridge was most likely a hint at Moscow’s retaliation.

Despite this escalation in rhetoric, Ukraine’s military is remaining cool-headed about potential risks from Belarus.

“The units of the Defence Forces are monitoring the situation, there are no signs of the formation of offensive groups on the territory of Belarus,” the general staff said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian political leadership also played down Lukashenko’s provocative talk of the past days.

“Lukashenko continues to sell [Belarus’] sovereignty to Russia. The request to deploy Russian contingent in Belarus under false pretenses is the formalization of occupation,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, tweeted on Monday.

Ukraine assesses risks and is ready for any threat from the Belarusian territory, he added. “The situation is under control, currently there is no sign of repeated invasion from Belarus.”

Ukrainian forces have also added context about how much help they think Belarus is really offering Putin.

Belarus is “involved in the repair” of Russian military equipment damaged during the war in the Ukrainian territory, the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said on Wednesday.

Perhaps more significantly, the general staff added the first batch of 20 T-72 tanks was removed from storage in Belarus and sent to Russia’s Belgorod region, apparently with the aim of beefing up the army’s depleted reserves in eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Belarusian opposition Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who ran against Lukashenko in 2020’s fraudulent presidential election and now lives in exile in Lithuania, urged Kyiv on Tuesday to build a joint “alliance against Russian aggression.”

So far, the relationship between the Ukrainian authorities and Tikhanovskaya’s team has been limited. Unlike many Western leaders, Zelenskyy, as well as other senior Ukrainian officials, has never officially met Tikhanovskaya, much less recognized her as the legitimate leader of Belarus.

Kyiv has always tried to distance itself from expressing direct sympathy for Tikhanovskaya, one of Lukashenko’s main political rivals, seeking not to provoke the authoritarian leader, who might then refrain from holding back and join Russia’s ground war in Ukraine.

IAEA
The Safety and Security of Small Modular Reactors

13 October 2022

Advanced reactors such as small modular reactors and other innovative designs are expected to provide considerable benefits to society and play a large role in decarbonizing our economies. These nuclear technologies can be very different from the current operating fleet. How can we ensure the effective deployment of safe and secure advanced reactors? The IAEA has completed a major project in cooperation with countries around the world to check how well existing safety standards apply to the innovative features that are being introduced. The IAEA is working on addressing the findings of this review by developing revised safety standards, technical publications and training materials.

Battling History

Medieval history powers a crisis of identity in Lithuania and Belarus

BY DAIVA REPEČKAITĖ
ARTWORK BY KATE SAPOTSKA/KARGI STUDIO

26 JULY, 2022

For Lithuanians, their country’s medieval history has been a source of pride, pageantry and identity. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, multilingual state that sprawled across swathes of the Baltics and eastern Europe, including modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, and parts of Poland, Latvia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Russia.

The Big Idea: Battling history

Governments rewrite history to further their political goals. School boards insist on rewritten history textbooks to elevate elite groups or privilege favored narratives. But unsavory motives are only one aspect of the rewriting history project. Other impulses are noble, idealistic, and sincere.

Its heyday, historians agree, was in the late 14th century and through much of the 15th century before the Union of Lublin in 1569 formalized a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Small as Lithuania is, compared to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it considers itself, and has broadly been considered to be the keeper of the Grand Duchy’s historical legacy. Lithuania’s coat of arms and its euro coins feature its iconic knight mounted, sword aloft, on a charging warhorse.

The Lithuanian journalist Vaidas Saldžiūnas remembers going into a souvenir shop on a trip to neighboring Belarus and seeing what looked like a Lithuanian mounted knight emblazoned across stationery, mugs and wallets. He was surprised that he felt a little indignant, as if a part of his country’s history had been appropriated.

“It’s like someone is studying the layout of your home,” says Saldžiūnas about his own response in the souvenir shop, “and nonchalantly saying, ‘here, that’s my bed, that’s my restroom, and this is where I cook.’” In other words, it was as if the Belarusians were squatting in a house long owned by Lithuanians.

He was not alone.

In 2013, Lithuania’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the efforts to appropriate medieval monarchs as Belarusians were an example of information warfare. “The conflict with the Belarusians is pre-programmed,” said Valdas Rakutis, a Lithuanian historian who is now a ruling party politician. He was speaking to the public broadcaster and appeared to be suggesting a deeper conspiracy to foment conflict.

The Lithuanian government had initially taken a less strident tone in its response to Belarus’s growing interest in reclaiming their shared medieval history. After all, it was mainly the pro-western Belarusian opposition that used the symbols to refer to a pre-Soviet history and culture and they had Lithuania’s support.

But this tolerant attitude changed when “Lithuanian” symbols began to be used by the government of Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko. In 2012, Belarus sponsored the staging of a ballet honoring Grand Duke Vytautas, who ruled the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for close to 40 years from the late-14th century.

Vytautas became a much romanticized figure during a 19th-century Lithuanian revivalist movement that paved the way for independence from the Russian Empire. And news of the ballet caused consternation in Lithuania.

Many Lithuanians were now resentful that Belarusians, over the last decade or so in particular, had begun to claim for themselves what Lithuanians had unquestioningly grown up to believe was their history.

“Eventually a generation will grow up — or maybe it already has — which will think that Lithuania is a misunderstanding and that Vilnius should be annexed to Belarus,” Rakutis told Lithuanian media.

 

Rūstis Kamuntavičius is an academic, an expert on the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His style is teasing and informal, often sarcastic. Kamuntavičius has little patience for the growing rancor in the competing claims and interpretations of the Grand Duchy’s history and what it means to the identity of present-day Lithuania and Belarus.

He thinks, for instance, that the Lithuanian fear of Belarusians appropriating Lithuania’s knight is both “hysterical and ignorant.”

“I’ve had fights with Lithuanians about it,” says Alex Smantser, a Belarusian expat in Canada, on the use of medieval symbols. “This [rift] emerges at various history gatherings — when they see the mounted knight symbol, they say, ‘he’s ours’ and I say ‘he’s ours’. And so it begins.”

Smantser felt so drawn to the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that he started identifying as a pagan and a Litvin rather than as Belarusian — the latter, he says, doesn’t roll comfortably off his tongue. According to academics, “Litvinism” is the ideological position that Belarus is the true heir of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

“I can read [medieval documents] with my Belarusian language. Can they [Lithuanians]?” asks Smantser. The ruling elite of the Grand Duchy had Lithuanian names but wrote in a Slavic language historians call “Chancery Slavonic.” The large Slavic population of the Grand Duchy spoke Ruthenian, a predecessor of modern-day Belarusian and Ukrainian.

“There used to be robbers, bandits,” Kamuntavičius says, only half-joking. “They convened into groups and went to kill and pillage neighbors. What difference does it make what language they spoke?” He adds that “there are few [primary] sources from the 13th century, so we’re mostly speaking about interpretations and re-interpretations. Historians construct the past, and these constructs then compete.”

In the Soviet period, Belarusian schoolchildren were taught that in the Middle Ages Lithuanian and Polish nobles oppressed Belarusian and Ukrainian serfs. As a result, few Belarusians and Ukrainians felt they could identify with the Grand Duchy’s elite and take pride in its military and cultural glories.

Even the Encyclopedia Britannica describes the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as “essentially an international or nonnational formation led by a foreign dynasty (of eastern Lithuanian pagan origins) ruling over predominantly Belarusian and Ukrainian populations.”

Meanwhile, in Lithuania, the grand dukes have always been important cultural icons. Even under Soviet rule, when national identity was suppressed, over 1,500 babies born in 1958 were named after Vytautas. Off the top of my head, I can think of a political leader, an actor, and a former classmate of mine named Vytautas.

Today, in a country of fewer than three million inhabitants, over 28,000 men owe their names to a 15th-century grand duke. Vytautas is the second most-popular name in Lithuania, after Jonas (the Lithuanian version of John).

Maryia Rohava, who researches contemporary Belarusian identity politics at the University of Oslo, says that, unlike Lithuania, Belarus has not incorporated any memorial days related to the Grand Duchy into its official calendar, and that the state tolerates rather than actively promotes identification with that period. “When I conducted my focus groups and was asking people about different periods, some did mention [the Grand Duchy] as a way of saying that we did have some proud moments, but they still didn't know how to connect it into one coherent story,” she says.

Before 2020 — when thousands of Belarusians filled the streets to protest rigged elections — the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was not seen as problematic, Rohava says. Indeed, Lukashenko was warming to medieval imagery as a means to distinguish Belarus from Russia.

Kamuntavičius traces Minsk’s efforts to claim the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s history as its own to 2005, when the Lukashenko regime started to rebuild palaces and redraw historical maps. At the time, Belarus feared being reabsorbed into Russia and also wanted to take advantage of opportunities offered by the European Union’s “neighborhood policy,” intended to foster closer economic ties in the south and the east and catalyze development.

Born and raised in Belarus, Smantser moved to Canada to escape the country Belarus had become under Lukashenko. He argues that Lukashenko should not be allowed to hijack a discussion about history. He says Lithuania’s exclusivism and its protectiveness about its medieval history is disappointing. This history, after all, is shared across several countries in the region.

The Grand Duchy’s history was rich in “memorable events and personalities,” write Belarusian researcher Marharyta Fabrykant and U.S. researcher Renee Buhr in the academic journal “Nations and Nationalism.” So locating and identifying with these icons helps small nations feel “destined for greatness, yet victimized by enemies on all sides.”

Some Lithuanian historians argue that if Slavic culture and the Duchy’s cosmopolitan heritage was given short shrift in the past it was because Lithuania was seeking to forge a national identity. They say Belarusians are dealing with a similar process of national reckoning, albeit a century later.

Fabrykant and Buhr have compared Belarus to countries like North Macedonia, with its ubiquitous statues of Alexander the Great — a historical figure claimed by the Greeks. Grand Duke Vytautas (Vitovt in Ruthenian) is also called the Great, and his baptismal name was Alexander. To celebrate him, Belarus has named its bus brand “Vitovt Electro.”

For many years, Lithuanian academics such as Kamuntavičius explored and debated these competing interpretations of histories with fellow specialists. Indeed, Kamuntavičius was better known in Belarus, where these debates had currency, than in Lithuania. But in 2013, he came to the attention of his compatriots.

That May, Kamuntavičius gave a talk to Belarusian academics in his signature playful style. Instead of glorious victories, he spoke of fear and chaos. He tried to complicate the romanticization of Vytautas, the great hero of Lithuanians. A few months later, Lithuanians became aware of the contents of Kamuntavičius’s talk. “I was called a traitor on [prime-time news],” he says.

“This person is being used as part of information warfare, a cog. Doesn’t he understand this,” asked the news show’s host, Nemira Pumprickaitė. A well-known far-right blogger wrote about Kamuntavičius that it is “difficult to believe that this is not some Kremlin propagandist speaking.”

He added that by employing Kamuntavičius, Vytautas Magnus University (yes, named after the grand duke) was revealing itself to be an “asylum of spiritual paupers.” The right-wing youth movement Pro Patria designated Kamuntavičius as an “anti-state actor,” who hides behind slogans of academic freedom and democracy. “Is [the university] a hotbed of anti-state activity,” the website’s editors asked.

“It was stressful, I received a ton of emails,” Kamuntavičius remembers, “and everyone was saying, ‘you’ve sold yourself to the Russians.’ It was the first time I felt attacked for doubting.”

In 2020 Belarusians from all walks of life took to the streets to protest the allegedly rigged elections. Police violence and arrests followed, only encouraging more people to attend mass rallies. Lithuania offered support to protesters and sheltered fleeing opposition activists, including Lukashenko’s main challenger Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Protests kept flaring up well into 2021, and repression followed.

The protests were marked by the use of the country’s “white-red-white” flag (a century-old flag adopted by the democratic opposition to Lukashenko) and a medieval knight symbol, after repressions against Belarusian Grand Duchy heritage activists became known to the protesters.

“These symbols were familiar to people from school,” says Vilija Navickaitė, who works at the Swedish International Liberal Center, “but they were lifeless and mostly theoretical.” She adds that for “some young people both the flag and the medieval symbols were a completely new discovery. Now they signify their struggle for freedom and change.”

“We have different languages, but a single history, and it shouldn’t be divided,” says Smantser, the Belarusian who now lives in Canada and strongly identifies with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He tells me that he empathizes with the Lithuanians’ attachment to their history more than he once did. “But the stance ‘it’s us, only us and no one else’ is a sign of weakness.” Living in Canada makes him believe that a multilingual state that is proud of its shared heritage is not a pipe dream.

Kamuntavičius says he has found there is now an appetite for his work in Lithuania. No one calls him a traitor or a cog in the Russian propaganda machine any longer. But it’s hard to tell what will become of this new-found willingness to explore their shared history if Belarus continues to grow closer to Putin’s Russia.

Media outlets in both Lithuania and Belarus reported earlier this month that statues of Vytautas and his cousin Jagiello, who became King of Poland in 1386, were removed from a national museum in Minsk. This suggests, as one opposition figure put it, that “Russification is underway in Belarus.”

With Lukashenko moving ever closer to Putin – a closeness that grew in part as a result of Lukashenko’s post-protests paranoia and that has culminated in his steadfast support of Russian aggression in Ukraine – perhaps the time has again come for him to play down or altogether ignore Belarus’s medieval ties to both Lithuania and Poland, not to mention Ukraine.

Will the Grand Duchy of Lithuania be a symbol of solidarity once more for only the Belarusian opposition? And will that make it easier for Lithunanians to share the symbols of a medieval history of which they believed they were the sole custodians?

Belarusians are making intriguing contemporary art, Kamuntavičius asserts, because they have learned to “live with contradictions.”

Lithuanians too must conclude, he says, that answers that were once comforting no longer apply, that history is messy and subject to interpretation.


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Daiva Repečkaitė is a freelance journalist from Lithuania. She reports on minorities, historical memory and environmental issues.@daiva_hadiva

Supported by The Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund.

AUTHORITARIAN TECH

Stakes are momentous for the next battles for control of the global internet

Voting prevented control of the United Nations’ internet standard-setting body falling into Russian hands last month. But it’s far from the last battle to be fought for the future of the internet

TEONA TSINTSADZE/NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM

BY CHRIS STOKEL-WALKER
13 OCTOBER, 2022
FEATURE

It’s been an excruciatingly long three weeks for those gathered in Bucharest, Romania for the International Telecommunications Union’s quadrennial come together. At the I.T.U. Plenipotentiary Conference, policymakers, researchers, lobbyists and government representatives come together to thrash out the future direction of travel of the internet and key policy interventions and decisions that they feel ought to be made for the good of the world’s internet-connected population.

The I.T.U. was first convened in 1865 in Paris as the International Telegraph Union, tasked with harmonizing communication standards, and has evolved to regulating almost everything that is connected. These regulations have become momentous for the future of the internet around the world.

Conference attendees aren’t encouraged to rush through the discussion points. Meetings began on September 26, and are scheduled to run until October 14 — including through some weekend days. Extended negotiations mean attendees have little time for sideline conversations or availability to speak to the press.

Still, the three weeks could have seemed an awful lot longer for most had it not been for a crucial decision taken in the first few days of the conference. An election for who would be next secretary-general — and as such be responsible for the general direction the organization takes — was won by the American candidate, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, who handily defeated the Russian candidate, Rashid Ismailov.

Ismailov was a former deputy head of Russia’s telecommunications ministry, and was in part defeated quite so significantly because of external geopolitical circumstances — turns out waging an unjust war against Ukraine is bad for your international reputation. But more than that, Ismailov, representing Russia, threatened to take the future of the internet down a different path to the open, liberalized one that we’ve gotten used to.

“Two things were at stake,” says Maria Farrell, an Irish tech policy expert. “One is the broad direction that the I.T.U. is going to take over the next decade — and there were two very different visions of what that would be. And the second was a sense check of global geopolitics, and what the numbers are between the two power groups.”

On one side is the U.S. and Europe, and a drive for an open internet. And on the other, China and Russia’s pursuit of a closed-off internet that allows easy centralized control and censorship.

By choosing to elect Bogdan-Martin, the I.T.U. membership dodged a bullet, and made a decision that many observers believe will help keep the internet fair and free for the next four years. “It marked a big opportunity,” says Mehwish Ansari, head of lobby group Article 19’s global digital team, who is attending the plenipotentiary.

“It’s a new Cold War: U.S.-Europe versus Russia-China, and their competing visions for how networks should function in terms of state control,” said Farrell. “This is one major, headline-grabbing skirmish in a long and very persistent underlying struggle for control of the internet,” she added.

But it’s far from the last skirmish over what will become of our digital lives — and there are arguments that the secretary-general vote was far from the most important moment in the battle for the future of the internet.

For one thing, countries gave the U.S. candidate their support — but only for now. Farrell pointed out there’s a group of floating countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa, that can be convinced at times to vote with the western axis of international order, but need persuading. “Very often they will vote with Russia or China, depending on the issue they’re interested in,” she said.

A growing list of countries and their leaders have dabbled in authoritarian crackdowns on free speech, including online. India scores 49 out of a possible 100 on Freedom House’s internet freedom index, Brazil scores 64, and South Africa 73. While none are anywhere near as censorious as Russia (30) or China (10), prior precedent suggests they aren’t exactly beacons of digital freedom.

That’s a concern because there are more significant votes still to come about the rollout of infrastructure underpinning the internet. The tendency of many countries to carry out speech crackdowns could portend future votes that align with the Russian and Chinese closed internet agenda.

“The I.T.U. is a very important UN agency that impacts our day-to-day lives,” said Sebastian Bellagamba, vice president of external engagement at the Internet Society, who represented the non-profit at the Bucharest conference. Take Network 2030, a set of new internet protocol rules that has been debated by the I.T.U. over the last four years. “It’s a very linked set of ideas being pushed by Huawei, which is effectively an arm of the Chinese state,” said Farrell. China and its representatives want to introduce oversight of every data packet sent through the internet that would allow every IP address to be sourced back to a legally identifiable individual or company.

It would be a boon for a controlling, centralized state like China to get that granular level of information on its users – and would move the internet away from an ad hoc network of peers to a very centralized, top-down model, said Farrell.

In her acceptance speech, Bogdan-Martin indicated that she wanted the I.T.U. to continue its comparatively hands-off approach to top-down control. That runs counter to Chinese plans. “There are always very well-funded and organized initiatives by China to use the I.T.U. to articulate and export its own incredibly state-centered view of the internet,” said Farrell.

“There’s a lot of work being done at the ITU that is absolutely fundamental for how information and communications technology is designed, developed and deployed, and how telecommunication networks are designed, developed and deployed all around the world,” said Ansari at Article 19.

Concerns over Network 2030, the proposal to change internet protocol rules, which was repackaged in January 2020 by Huawei into a New IP proposal that would replace the existing internet protocol structure by 2030, are widely shared among open internet advocates. It’s a key battle that Bellagamba and the Internet Society believe is likely to dominate conversation at future I.T.U. plenipotentiary meetings.

Like with the general secretary election, at stake is how much the internet will remain open and free. Under proposals presented by Huawei, the New IP plans would have included “intrinsic security” baked in—a phrase that leaves some outside China and its radius of control chilled. For China, knowing everything about users is “intrinsic security”. For others, it’s a mass invasion of privacy. A now-deleted page on the Huawei website gave justifications for the change to New IP including the need to meet the future of 6G networking, and technical improvements on shipping data around the globe at speed. “New IP does neither define governance models for the use of those technologies, nor lead to “more centralized, top-down control of the internet,” the company wrote, perhaps conscious of what critics were thinking.

Among those critics is Bellagamba. “New IP, which instead of being a distributed, peer-to-peer protocol, would be a more top-down approach that is more centralized rather than distributed, and more able to be controlled centrally,” he says. In other words, the new standard would take away a data exchange that is spread out across the internet and put in its place a master control controlled by governments. “That’s an important battle to make sure it doesn’t come up again.”

It’s not just the plans for Network 2030 that are a potential flashpoint for future division, and a rallying flag for those looking to uphold freedoms on the internet. “We’re seeing the standardization of technologies in the I.T.U. without scrutiny of the human rights implications and without scrutiny of the user-centric implications of standardizing that technology,” says Ansari.

Ansari’s warning applies not only to Chinese or Russian-backed plans: the firmament of big tech companies, overwhelmingly based in the U.S., have long been involved in gathering vast amounts of user data, triangulating it and packaging it up to sell on to companies for profit without much oversight. “The internet is not open at all, and that’s the reason for our presence here,” says Bellagamba. “In order for the internet to work, many actors need to be okay with the future of the internet — including the I.T.U., but it’s not the only one.”

The backdrop to each of these clashes is a broader battle over the future direction of life online. China has spent billions over decades developing its Great Firewall, which has largely stood firm despite the hope that the internet would foster democracy and political pluralism within the country. Russia is rapidly rolling out its own RuNet, a centralized, Balkanized version of the global internet over which the state can exert control, a closure that Russia has been accelerating dramatically since its re-invasion of Ukraine in February.

Chinese and Russian versions of their internet are anathema to the open, decentralized internet that western countries profess to hold dear. The survival of entire political systems is tied to how the internet is allowed to be governed. And the tooth-and-nail fight for which approach will prevail will be won and lost at the I.T.U.

In the breach is the future of the internet for the next billion internet users. “Why does this stuff matter?” asked Farrell. “It’s the fundamental question.” For people like herself who live in countries like the U.K., “Our lives are not going to be changed very much by this, or anything the I.T.U. does. But the people it does count for is the whole of the rest of the world — not Europe, not North America.”

Control over internet access during elections has become a flashpoint for nervous African governments fearful of voter opposition to their rule. How the internet can be regulated inside countries — open and accessible, or closed and constrained — depends on the decisions made at the I.T.U., a global standards setting body and part of the UN.

Photo: YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images

Farrell asked me to imagine for a moment I’m the communications minister in a small-to-medium-sized African country. “Let’s say you’re Uganda,” she says. “You’ve just come to power; the president has told you the internet is a key driver of growth and middle-class jobs.”

“And above all, we need to make sure we’re not just being a serf country for big U.S. firms that are extractive data firms,” she says. “It’s a neo-colonialist model. You’re looking at your telecoms companies within the country — likely one large incumbent, which was probably founded by a European telco in the first place, and a couple of smaller national incumbents. They come to you saying that a network upgrade is an expensive thing, and you need to bankroll its development.”

“At the same time, you’re looking at what’s going on in Syria or Tunisia, at the Arab Spring and you know you can be out of power very quickly. The internet is out of control,” she says. “It’s expensive and dangerous — and yet you have to have it.”

But there’s a solution.

A Chinese business executive or politician comes calling, offering you a complete package that will solve all your problems. “They’ll give you everything from cheap loans to buy the equipment you need,” said Farrell. “They’ll train your engineers for you. They’ll ship their builders in for you. They’ll literally write the laws for you to keep a lid [on the internet.] They’ll take your civil servants and bring them back to China and train them in censorship. They’ll solve all your problems for you.”

Continued Farrell: “We have built an internet in such a way that it’s extractive and it’s expensive. It creates at least as many problems as it fixes. And right now, we’re not particularly open to thinking of that as a problem and how we can solve it for most of the people in the world.”

“This is just one iteration of a larger struggle,” she said.


The story you just read is a small piece of a complex and an ever-changing storyline that Coda covers relentlessly and with singular focus. But we can’t do it without your help.Coda Story is a 501(c)3 U.S. non-profit. Your contribution to Coda Story is tax deductible USA Only  Support Coda


Chris Stokel-Walker is a UK-based journalist. His work has appeared in New Scientist, the BBC, Wired, and The Economist. He is the author of TikTok Boom: China's Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media.@stokel


KROPOTKIN FAVORED THE ITU AS A MODEL OF ANARCHIST FEDERALISM

http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/peter-kropotkin%E2%80%99s-anarchist-vision-organization

Peter Kropotkin's anarchist vision of organization - ephemera journal 

Against the monolithic unity that was typical for centrally ruled state systems, Kropotkin portrayed the anarchist structure as a 'union' or an 'association' ( ...

Family of Dead Palestinian-American Rebuffs Settlement Offer

Thursday, 13 October, 2022 

FILE - Mourners take a last look at the body of Omar Asaad, 78, during his funeral at a mosque in the West Bank village of Jiljiliya, north of Ramallah, Jan. 13, 2022. 

I(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser, File)

Asharq Al-Awsat

The family of a Palestinian-American man who died earlier this year after he was detained by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank said Wednesday they would reject Israel’s settlement offer.

Israel’s Defense Ministry said earlier this week that it had agreed to pay out the family of 78-year-old Omar Assad, who died handcuffed and blindfolded while detained by Israeli soldiers.

Assad was born in the Palestinian town of Jiljilya but spent about 40 years in the United States. He became a US citizen before he returned to his hometown in 2009 to retire with his wife, according to The Associated Press.

Under the deal, Assad’s family would receive 500,000 shekels, or about $141,000 to drop its court case against the state, the ministry said.

Nawaf Assad, Omar’s brother who splits his time between Virginia and Illinois, said he had instructed their family lawyer to rebuff Israel’s proposal.

“We are not interested in dropping the case for any reason,” Assad told The AP. “No money can replace my brother for his children, for his grandchildren who still call out for him ... for his wife who thinks he’s home every time her doorbell rings.”

Questions remain about what happened to Assad after he was detained by Israeli forces at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli army said troops later unbound his hands and left him face-down in an abandoned building.

Assad was pronounced dead at a hospital after other Palestinians who had been detained found him unconscious. A Palestinian autopsy showed that he died from a heart attack brought on by injuries sustained while he was detained.

The Israeli military reprimanded a senior officer and removed two others from leadership roles after its own investigation concluded that Assad’s death resulted “from a moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.” It was a rare acknowledgement of error from a military that has long come under criticism for rarely holding soldiers accountable.

Assad’s family said they would reject Israel’s settlement so they could continue to push the US to conduct its own independent investigation. Several members of Congress have also called for an American probe.

“If we close the deal, the US government will close the (case),” Assad, his brother, said. “We want justice.”

Iran establishment figure breaks with regime’s response to unrest

IntelliNews - Yesterday
By bne IntelIiNews


REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE

Islamic Republic establishment figure Ali Larijani has broken with the uncompromising line shown by the regime towards the month-long protests that have swept Iran by warning that a “rigid response” to the unrest “is not the cure”.

Larijani, 65, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and who served as speaker of parliament for 12 years until 2020, gave a lengthy interview to Iranian daily Ettela'at, addressing the protests, amid which at least 201 people are now thought to have died.

The conservative and former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander—who was barred from running for the presidency in 2021, helping to clear the way for Khamenei’s hardline favourite Ebrahim Raisi to win the restricted election—addressed the issue of enforcing the wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, by women in Iran. It was the death in custody of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini—who was confronted on a Tehran street by morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab loosely—that triggered the initial protests.

Larijani questioned excessive state enforcement of the hijab under the Islamic dress code, warning that extremist enforcement of social customs leads to extremist reactions. “The hijab has a cultural solution, it does not need decrees and referendums. I appreciate the services of the police force and Basij [paramilitary volunteer militia under the IRGC], but this burden of encouraging the hijab should not be assigned to them,” he said.

“Do not doubt that when a cultural phenomenon becomes widespread, a rigid response to it is not the cure. The people and young people who come to the street are our own children. In a family, if a child commits a crime, then they try to guide him to the right path, the society needs more tolerance”.

Larijani also referred to how during the period of the last Shah’s monarchic rule prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the hijab was not encouraged, but many women wore it voluntarily.

“Islamic government means that people manage their own affairs. It is the same in terms of social justice. If the affairs are managed by the people, their talents will flourish,” continued Larijani.

Related video: Iran: Ex-Parliament speaker Ali Larijani speaks out against Hijab rule

View on Watch

“The problem is that if in a society, young people do not implement one of the sharia rulings correctly from an intellectual and social point of view, this is not 100% wrong.”

The protests in Iran are seen as remarkable in that they are typically led by women.

Demonstrations on October 12 included a protest led by the Tehran bar association that was broken up by security forces.

Social media posts, meanwhile, told of the Union Council of Iranian Students quoting witnesses who said that security forces forced their way into the Hafez dormitories of Tehran University.

There were unverified claims from one witness that 'the security forces initially broke the windows of the first floor and the entrance of the Hafez dormitories and entered some rooms and checked the student cards of the students… which was followed by some resistance from the students.'

Earlier in the day, outside the Tehran University Art Building, there were claims of students fighting with Basij militia who were attempting to enter the complex.

RFE/RL reported officials as confirming that several high school students arrested during the protests have been sent to re-education camps.

Scores of indictments have been served across the country against people for involvement in “riots”.

Further posts on social networks indicated that the day saw anti-regime protests in cities including Sari, Golshahr, Shahin Shahr and many others.

Khamenei publicly mentioned the protests for a second time, appearing to describe them as incidents of a minor nature.

They were a 'passive and clumsy design of the enemy against the progress and innovative movements' of the Iranian nation, he said.

Iranian officials have accused foes including the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia of fomenting much of the unrest.

Protests Reach 19 Cities in Iran Despite Internet Disruption

Thursday, 13 October, 2022 -

This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)
Asharq Al-Awsat


Protests swept across at least 19 cities in Iran on Wednesday sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained last month by the country’s morality police, even as security forces targeted demonstrators in the streets, activists said.


The protests over the death of Mahsa Amini have become one of the greatest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the country’s 2009 Green Movement. Demonstrators have included oil workers, high school students and women marching without their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.


Calls for protests beginning at noon Wednesday saw a massive deployment of riot police and plainclothes officers throughout Tehran and other cities, witnesses said and videos showed. Witnesses also described disruptions affecting their mobile internet services.


NetBlocks, an advocacy group, said that Iran’s internet traffic had dropped to some 25% compared to the peak, even during a working day in which students were in class across the country.


“The incident is likely to further limit the free flow of information amid protests,” NetBlocks said, The Associated Press reported.


Despite the disruption, witnesses saw at least one demonstration in Tehran by some 30 women who had removed their headscarves while chanting: “Death to the dictator!” Those cries, referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can result in a closed-door trial in the country’s Revolutionary Court with the threat of a death sentence.


Passing cars honked in support of the women despite the threats of security forces. Other women simply continued with their day not wearing the hijab in a silent protest, witnesses said. Demonstrations also occurred on university campuses in Tehran as well, online videos purported to show.


Lawyers also peacefully demonstrated in front of the Iran Central Bar Association in Tehran, chanting: “Woman, life, freedom” — a slogan of the demonstrations so far. The video corresponded to known features of the association’s building. A later video showed them fleeing after security forces fired tear gas at them, the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran said.


At least three lawyers were among the some two dozen arrested there, the center said.


“Lawyers willing to defend detainees arrested for peaceful protest are the last lifeline for a citizenry under attack by the Iranian government,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the center’s executive director. “Protests must be allowed without the threat of lethal state violence or arbitrary arrest.”


The center said it tracked protests in at least 19 cities across Iran.

Gathering information about the demonstrations remains difficult amid the internet restrictions and the arrests of at least 40 journalists in the country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Iran Reform Advocate Tajzadeh Jailed for Five Years

Thursday, 13 October, 2022

Leading reformist Mostafa Tajzadeh, who has been jailed for five years by an Iran court, is seen here registering his candidacy for last year's presidential election, before he was disqualified by a conservative-dominated vetting body - AFP
Asharq Al-Awsat


Leading Iran reformist Mostafa Tajzadeh, who has made repeated public calls for "structural changes" to Iran, has been jailed for five years, his lawyer said late Tuesday.


The 65-year-old, who was arrested on July 8, before the wave of protests triggered by the death in morality police custody last month of Mahsa Amini, has begun serving his sentence after choosing not to appeal, lawyer Houshang Pourbabai said on Twitter.


"My client Mostafa Tajzadeh was sentenced to five years for plotting against state security, two years for publishing lies and one year for propaganda against the system," Pourbabai said, AFP reported.


He said the jail sentences would run concurrently, so his client would serve five years in prison.


Tajzadeh refused to put up any defense at his trial, which opened on August 13, after the court denied him permission to consult privately with his lawyer.


Tajzadeh's wife Fakhrossadat Mohtashamipour, who is also a leading reform activist, expressed concern that her husband was being held in solitary confinement despite his ill health.


A former government minister under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who oversaw a rapprochement with the West between 1997 and 2005, Tajzadeh already spent seven years in prison.


He was jailed with other reformist leaders after the re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked mass protests in 2009.


Tajzadeh registered to stand on a reform platform in last year's presidential election but, like most other reformist hopefuls, his candidacy was rejected by the Guardian Council, which vets all candidates for public office.


In his campaign material, Tajzadeh billed himself as a "citizen, a reformist," and a "political prisoner for seven years".


He hit out out against "blocks on the internet", "interference by the military in politics, the economy and elections" and a "costly and pro-Russian foreign policy driven by anti-Americanism".

Iran’s Khamenei Says 'Enemies' Involved in Protests

Thursday, 13 October, 2022 - 


Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei speaks on January 8, 2021 (AFP)
Asharq Al-Awsat


Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Wednesday said "enemies" were involved in street violence that erupted last month over the death of Mahsa Amini.


Khamenei has already accused the United States, Israel and their "agents" of fomenting the unrest sparked by Amini's death after her arrest for allegedly failing to adhere to the Iranian republic's strict dress code for women, AFP said.


"Today, everyone confirms the involvement of the enemies in these street riots," Khamenei said Wednesday in a televised meeting with the Expediency Council, an advisory body.


"The actions of the enemy, such as propaganda, trying to influence minds, creating excitement, encouraging and even teaching the manufacture of incendiary materials, are now completely clear," he said, without identifying the enemy.


Earlier Wednesday, the judiciary said it had charged more than 100 people over the protests in Tehran and Hormozgan provinces.


"Some of these people are either enemy agents or... aligned with the enemy, and some are excited people," Khamenei said.


"The judicial and security authorities must do their duty" in dealing with the "enemy agents", he said.


Since September 16, dozens of people -- mainly protesters but also members of the security forces -- have been killed while hundreds of others have been arrested in several cities across the country.


On Wednesday, gunshots were fired as Iranian security forces confronted protests over Mahsa Amini's death in a crackdown that rights groups say has already cost at least 108 lives with many children among the dead.


The crack of gunfire interrupted demonstrators' chants in the cities of Isfahan and Karaj and in Amini's hometown Saqez, in videos shared by two Norway-based human rights organizations.


"Death to the dictator," shouted female students who had defiantly taken off their mandatory hijab headscarves as they marched down a Tehran street, in a video verified by AFP.


Shots were heard in Isfahan amid the "nationwide protests and strikes", Iran Human Rights (IHR) said of a video it tweeted, and in Saqez, according to the Kurdish rights group Hengaw, which reported that later "the security forces fled".


Amini, 22, died on September 16 after falling into a coma following her arrest in Tehran by the notorious morality police for an alleged breach of the Iranian republic's strict dress code for women.


Young women, university students and even schoolgirls have since taken off their hijabs and faced off with security forces in the biggest wave of social unrest to grip Iran in almost three years.


At least 28 children have been killed and hundreds more detained and held mostly in adult prisons, rights groups said.


Deadly unrest has rocked especially Sanandaj in Amini's western home province of Kurdistan -- but also Zahedan in Iran's far southeast, where demonstrations erupted on September 30 over the reported rape of a teenage girl by a police commander.


'Bloody crackdown' feared -

Activists in Tehran called for protesters to turn out "in solidarity with the people of Sanandaj and the heroic people of Zahedan".


"We don't want spectators. Come and join us," a group of mainly young women outside Tehran's Azad University sang in IHR footage verified by AFP.


The protest slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom" was spray painted on the wall of the former US embassy -- abandoned in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis -- but later painted over, an image obtained by AFP showed.


A man who asked not to be identified told the BBC: "The atmosphere is quite tense and yet it is exciting. People are hopeful this time and we hope that a real change is just around the corner. I don't think people are willing to give up this time.


"You can hear some sort of protest everywhere, almost every night. That feels good, that feels really good."


IHR said the security forces had so far killed at least 108 people, and at least another 93 people in Zahedan, while warning of an "impending bloody crackdown" in Kurdistan.


It also said workers had joined protest strikes this week at the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the southwest, Abadan in the west and Bushehr in the south.


In its widening crackdown, Iran has blocked access to social media, including Instagram and WhatsApp, and launched a campaign of mass arrests.


- Missing children -

EU countries on Wednesday agreed punitive measures on Tehran.


European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said it was "time to sanction those responsible" in Iran "for the repression of women", while French President Emmanuel Macron expressed solidarity with the protesters.


The Tehran-based Children's Rights Protection Society, which reported the deaths of 28 minors, condemned security forces for violence against children.


It criticized "families being kept in the dark on their children's whereabouts, cases proceeding without lawyers and a lack of children's judges and police".


Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi told Iranian media on October 5 that the "average age of the detainees from many of the recent protests was 15".


On Twitter, Canada's foreign minister slammed Iran for killing child protesters.


"Canada condemns the Iranian regime’s continued use of violence against protestors, resulting in the death of civilians, including children," Melanie Joly wrote. "The ongoing arbitrary detention and mistreatment of protestors must stop."


Human rights lawyer Hassan Raisi said around 300 people between the ages of 12 and 19 were in police custody, some of them in detention centers for adult drug offenders.


Iran's judiciary said more than 100 people had been charged in Tehran and Hormozgan provinces alone.


An official Iranian forensic investigation found Amini had died of a longstanding illness rather than reported beatings.


Her parents have denied this and filed a complaint against the officers involved. A cousin living in Iraq has told AFP she died of "a violent blow to the head".


IRGC Prepares for Ground Operations in Iraqi Kurdistan

Wednesday, 12 October, 2022 

Well-informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is preparing to carry out ground operations in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to target the bases of Iranian Kurdish opposition parties, with the escalation of the protests that erupted last month following the death of Mahsa Amini.


Human rights groups expressed concern about a security crackdown in Sanandaj, while Reuters reported that videos on social media showed tanks being transported to Kurdish areas, which were focal points in the crackdown on protests. In turn, AFP quoted the Norway-based Hengaw rights group as saying that an Iranian warplane had arrived at the city’s airport overnight and buses carrying special forces were on their way to the city from elsewhere in Iran.


Sources in Tehran told Asharq Al-Awsat that the IRGC announced the readiness of its ground units to carry out limited operations to target the sites of Kurdish opposition parties. The sources said that IRGC units had received orders to head to the tense area.


In this context, IRGC channels reported on Telegram that the armed forces were preparing for a “ground attack on the headquarters of separatist terrorists.”


Protests demanding the overthrow of the Iranian regime have swept the country since the death of Amini - a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian young woman – who passed away on Sept. 16, while she was being detained by the “morality police” on the grounds of “bad hijab”. Iranian authorities have blamed “enemies” for the violence, including armed Iranian Kurdish rebels. The Revolutionary Guards attacked their bases in neighboring Iraq several times during the recent unrest.


The IRGC said on Sept. 28 that it had fired 73 ballistic missiles and dozens of drones at targets of the Iranian Kurdish opposition parties. Authorities in Iraq said 14 people were killed, including an infant and dozens were injured. The US Central Command announced at the time that it had shot down an Iranian Muhajir-6 drone, because it “posed a danger” to the US forces in Erbil.


During a visit to Sanandaj, Minister of Interior Ahmad Vahidi claimed that the protests were “supported, planned and executed by separatist terrorist groups,” without providing any supporting evidence.


Hengaw said at least seven people had been confirmed killed by the security forces in Sanandaj and other Kurdish-populated cities since Saturday.


Amnesty International said it was “alarmed by the crackdown on protests in Sanandaj amid reports of security forces using firearms and firing teargas indiscriminately, including into people’s homes.”


Hengaw warned that citizens were having difficulty sending video evidence of the events due to restrictions on the Internet, but confirmed the death of a seven-year-old child on Sunday night. It added that at least 7 people have been killed by security forces in Sanandaj and other Kurdish-populated cities since Saturday.


The New-York based Center for Human Rights in Iran said there was a risk of a similar situation in Sistan-Baluchistan province in the southeast, where activists say more than 90 people have been killed since Sept. 30.


“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan province, on the heels of the massacre in Sistan-Baluchistan province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” said its director, Hadi Ghaemi.


Meanwhile, Reuters quoted the Taseer1500 Twitter account that strikes were organized at energy facilities in southwestern Iran for the second day. Workers protested at the Abadan oil refinery and the Bushehr petrochemical plant, shouting slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and blocking access roads.


The workers were angered by a dispute over wages and were not protesting against the death of Amini, a regional official said on Tuesday.


The protests continued until late Monday after spreading to the country’s vital energy sector, according to videos on social media.


A video posted on Twitter showed protesters setting fire to the office of the Friday Imam and the representative of the Iranian guide in the central city of Fuladshahr, Isfahan. In the video, the attackers said: “We burn the Friday Imam’s office with Molotov cocktails for the sake of Iran’s girls on International Girls’ Day.”


Iranian President Vows Vengeance Against 'Architects of Conspiracy'

Wednesday, 12 October, 2022

Protests in Tehran (AP)
London, Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said his government would take revenge from "the architects of the conspiracy."


The official IRNA news agency quoted Raisi as saying in a telephone conversation with the family of a deceased Basij officer that the responsible authorities are keen to take revenge from those responsible for this crime.


For his part, the spokesman for National Security and Foreign Policy Parliamentary Commission, Abolfazl Amouei, said that a group of conservative MPs discussed security developments with officials from the Ministry of Intelligence.


According to Tasnim News Agency, Amouei indicated that recent developments have social foundations, but at the same time, the revolution's enemies seek to destabilize the country.


He added that the lawmakers demanded a strict confrontation with the counter-revolutionary groups.


Judiciary spokesman, Masoud Satayshi, said that former reformist MP Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, faces charges of propaganda against the regime, calling for gatherings, and disrupting public order.


He announced that Hashemi was "temporarily detained."


Hashemi was arrested on the 11th night of the protests, and hours after her arrest, Tasnim Agency quoted an informed source saying that one of the security services had arrested her for "inciting protestors to create chaos."


A member of the Expediency Discernment Council, Mohammad Sadr, warned that the authority "cannot rule by force," noting that the developments following Mahsa Amini's death resulted from accumulated resentment and repeated demands of people, especially the young and women.


Sadr, who ran several times for the Foreign Minister position, told the Jamaran website that "the security vision itself threatens security," calling for a change in the security position of the ruling institution.


Several newspapers criticized the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice and its Secretary General Mohammad Salih Hashemi Gulbaigani after he incited state agencies to impose strict veil laws.


The conservative Farheekhtegan newspaper headlined: "The Hate Production Factory," warning that the Commission's head and officials exacerbated social rifts.


Late Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador to protest the UK's imposition of sanctions on Iran's morality police over the death of Amini.


The Ministry told the British ambassador that the sanctions imposed by the UK "are distorted and have no value for the Islamic Republic of Iran."


The ambassador was also informed that Iran "reserves its right to take countermeasures," state media added.


This is the third time Iran has summoned the British ambassador since the outbreak of protests last month.


Britain announced sanctions against Iran's morality police in its entirety as well as its chief, Mohammed Gachi, and the head of its Tehran division, Haj Ahmad Mirzaei in response to the violent suppression of protests since the death of Amini in police custody.


Recently, Western countries, including the United States and Canada, imposed sanctions on Iranian officials, accusing them of "suppressing" the protests.


The European Union is also considering imposing "restrictive measures" on Tehran.


White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, "The world is watching what is happening in Iran."


"These protestors are Iranian citizens, led by women and girls, demanding dignity and basic rights," Sullivan wrote on Twitter.


"We stand with them, and we will hold responsible those using violence in a vain effort to silence their voices."


Meanwhile, reformist Etemad newspaper quoted Iranian-US sociologist Asef Bayat saying people wish to take back the everyday life that has been taken away from them.


Bayat believes this movement seeks life, and the protesters feel that achieving basic demands is being violated by the ruling establishment, unaware of the people's hopes and suffering.


He indicated that former protests focused on economic and living issues. However, the current movement is "comprehensive and unified," able to bring together different classes and nationalities from all over the country.


The Emtedad website quoted Bayat as saying that "women have taken the lead in Iran in the struggle against the authoritarian regime."


He described the uprising in Iran as an all-encompassing movement that has gathered together all Iranians regardless of their social class and ethnicity.

Regina Leader-Post
Letter to Editor

Why isn't Scott Moe stopping 'intrusions' of federal money to Saskatchewan?


REGINA, SASK : May 18, 2022 -- Premier Scott Moe speaks with reporters at the Legislative Building on Wednesday, 

In a recent announcement Premier Scott Moe declared that he would outline how Saskatchewan might “protect itself against federal intrusion into areas of provincial jurisdiction.”

He clearly missed the opportunity to do just that when the federal government in July of 2022 announced “an additional $2.85 billion in funding for health care, public transit and safer air in schools.” Saskatchewan received $77.4 million dollars based on its population . Is that not an intrusion into areas where the province has jurisdiction? The year before the premier also had the opportunity to object when the federal government provided CERB payments which saved hundreds of Saskatchewan businesses and individuals from sure bankruptcy. Why was the premier not up in arms at such an obvious “intrusion”?

Then think of the missed opportunity to stop Minister Chrystia Freeland from coming to Colonsay and Saskatoon to laud the work of the Jansen Potash mine and announce that the federal government “would set aside $3.8 billion to implement the country’s first critical mines strategy” in its spring budget. There might yet be time for Premier Moe to stop this “intrusion” before some of the money is invested in Saskatchewan.
  
And on the local level, a golden opportunity to stop another “intrusion”: money toward the building of a 29 unit permanent housing project (Silver Sage Housing) in Regina . The federal government is putting up the bulk of the money for this project: $7.8 million with the provincial government kicking in only 10 per cent of that amount. Scott Moe lauded this project on his Twitter account but failed to mention who the major contributor is or if the province has contributed any of its share of the money as of yet.

Then there is the new YWCA that will be in the area of the Lucy Eley Park in Regina’s Cathedral neighbourhood . The federal government is by far and away the largest contributor to this project, “intruding” with its contribution of nearly $34 million while the province will contribute $1 million.

If the premier is serious about “intrusion” into areas of provincial jurisdiction, then he might object to all this money coming into our province. And if he is happy to have this kind of “intrusion” then he might be honest enough to publicly thank the federal government rather than constantly and consistently find ways to ignore it or criticize it. This after all is the season to be thankful.

Henry A. Friesen, Regina

REST IN POWER

Dr. Michael Marshall's death an 'irreplaceable' loss for transgender health services in Alberta

Madeline Smith - 

Four years ago, Dr. Michael Marshall entered a room like he always did — with a burst of energy.


Dr. Michael Marshall, an Edmonton psychiatrist specializing in transgender health, died last month at 45.

It was where he made a vivid first impression on Glynnis Lieb, who described Marshall as a “ball of colourful life,” talking to her a mile a minute.

At the time in 2018, she laughs, he was trying to talk her out of money. While they’d eventually become partners, their first meeting was at a work function. She’s the head of the University of Alberta’s Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, and he had recently moved to Edmonton from Red Deer to establish the gender health program at the U of A Hospital. Like everything else in his life, Marshall was full of ambition and ideas about the future.

Marshall, a psychiatrist specializing in transgender mental health, died unexpectedly on Sept. 23, cutting short his work caring and advocating for gender-diverse people. He was 45 years old.

Lieb said she’s still waiting for answers about the cause of his death. He’d recently suffered a head injury, but it’s unclear if that contributed in any way, or if there was another medical issue at play.

Marshall connected with and treated hundreds of gender-diverse people in Alberta since he arrived in 2015. He was renowned for his expertise and advocacy focused on dismantling barriers to gender-affirming care, the spectrum of procedures and services that trans people may pursue to align their body and physical appearance with their gender identity. Marshall stressed that this care can be not only be life-changing but life-saving.

Related
'Barely surviving': Wait times, limited information keeping trans Albertans from health care

Edmonton voice program key to trans, gender-diverse health, but more awareness needed

“Not being oneself leads to a degree of disquiet, unhappiness that is understandable by most people,” he said at a workshop for health workers learning about trans patient care in 2019.

“It is important that people live their true selves, because it’s a fundamental human need.”

That session was part of his national and international work to educate medical professionals about giving safe, competent service to trans people and the broader 2SLGBTQ+ community.

“He became a global voice for recognizing that people deserve access to affirming care, and people know themselves and their wishes should be respected,” Lieb said.

“Higher rates of mental health problems aren’t linked to being gender diverse, they’re linked to being ostracized and stigmatized and bullied.”



Dr. Michael Marshall, pictured here with his youngest son, was an Edmonton psychiatrist specializing in transgender health. (Supplied by Glynnis Lieb)© Glynnis Lieb

As Lieb sees it, Marshall had already packed seven average lifetimes into his four-and-a-half decades, with a life and career that took him from his home in Saint Lucia to a stint in the British armed forces, becoming a practising physician by the time he was 24 and working in Scotland, then Canada.

He and Lieb were parents to six sons. Lieb’s biological son and five boys adopted from Saint Lucia — all members of the same family that they wanted to ensure weren’t separated.

“He moved with dizzying speed,” Lieb said.

“And he couldn’t understand why the rest of the world couldn’t keep up.”

‘The potential of people like us doesn’t have an end point’

Adebayo Katiiti also met Marshall for the first time in 2018, walking into his clinic as a patient after waiting a year and a half for care. Long wait times for referrals for gender specialists and affirming procedures are a well-documented issue in Alberta and beyond, and part of Marshall’s work was aimed at reducing the delays.

As a Black transgender person, Katiiti says there’s a legitimate fear of judgment or mistreatment by doctors. But during the appointment, Marshall disclosed that he was trans, too.

“For me, seeing a Black trans person in that position — it was like, the potential of people like us doesn’t have an endpoint,” Katiiti said.

“Society has deemed us unworthy of life. Seeing Michael do his work and carrying that candle for us showed us that you can reach wherever you want to reach, despite your identity.”

Marshall was one of only a handful of psychiatrists across Alberta who specialize in serving transgender people. His loss is yet another blow to efforts to fix the care deficit that leaves many suffering while they wait for the affirming care they need.

In Katiiti’s view, Marshall’s leadership and lived experience are irreplaceable.

“The space that has been left by Michael’s passing is huge,” he said.

“He wasn’t perfect, but he has given life and joy to many trans communities. I’m one living testimony of his work … The community and the entire world need to name him as a hero.”


Dr. Michael Marshall, pictured on Jan. 23, 2018, in Edmonton.© Greg Southam

Marshall left the U of A Hospital gender program the year after he arrived, speaking publicly about how it was a difficult decision, but he felt he wasn’t getting enough resources and funding to adequately meet the community’s needs.

He went on to found the LGBTQ+ Wellness Centre , which brought numerous services for trans people under one roof. But the community need still outstripped resources, and Marshall was continually looking for more support and funding.

Dr. Bill Gibson, a geriatrician who knew Marshall for almost 20 years, said they had been discussing the need for trans people to keep getting appropriate, affirming care as they age. The two doctors wanted to try to integrate that into the Wellness Centre too.

“He was absolutely passionate about what he knew to be right,” Gibson said.

“He was clear with me that if I let him know that I’d seen injustice and not challenged it instantly, he’d be absolutely on me, saying, ‘Look, come on. You’ve got to stand up. You’ve got to use your privilege here.’

“Now I’ll be in a situation and I’ll think, ‘If Michael found out what I was doing about this, how would that go down?'”

Speaking to the Edmonton Journal three years ago, while Marshall detailed the barriers and challenges trans people face in their everyday lives, he underlined how that isn’t the whole story.

“In the face of discrimination, in the face of victimization, in the face of stigmatization, minority stress, trans people thrive, too,” he said.

“And I feel it is important we shine a light on that.”

masmith@postmedia.com

@meksmith