African American spelling bee champ breezes to win

AFTER A LONG PERIOD OF INDO AMERICAN DOMINANCE

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Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from Harvey, Louisiana is covered with confetti as she celebrates winning the finals of the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee at Disney World Thursday, July 8, 2021, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Whether dribbling a basketball or identifying obscure Latin or Greek roots, Zaila Avant-garde doesn’t show much stress. Now she has become the first African American winner in the 96-year history of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The 14-year-old basketball prodigy from Harvey, Louisiana, breezed to the championship on Thursday night. The only previous Black winner was also the only champ from outside the United States: Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica in 1998.

Zaila said she was fully aware that people were watching her and dreaming of following in her footsteps.

“I’m hoping that within the next few years, I can see a little bit of an influx of African Americans, and not many Hispanic people, either, so I’m hoping to see them there, too,” she said.

The bee has long been a showcase for spellers of color. Nine of the 11 finalists were of South Asian descent, and Zaila’s win breaks a streak of at least one South Asian winner every year since 2008

Zaila has described spelling as a side hobby, although she routinely practiced for seven hours a day. She is a basketball standout who hopes to play some day in the WNBA and holds three Guinness world records for dribbling multiple balls simultaneously.

Zaila twirled and leaped with excitement after spelling the winning word “murraya,” a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees.

Only one word gave her any real trouble, “nepeta,” a genus of Old World mints, and she jumped even higher when she got that one right than she did when she took the trophy.

“I’ve always struggled with that word. I’ve heard it a lot of times. I don’t know, there’s just some words, for a speller, I just get them and I can’t get them right,” she said. “I even knew it was a genus of plants. I know what you are and I can’t get you.”

Zaila only started spelling in time to qualify for the 2019 bee. But there isn’t much typical about a basketball prospect whose first choice for college is Harvard and wants to work for NASA if she doesn’t go pro in hoops. Her father, Jawara Spacetime, gave her the last name Avant-garde in tribute to jazz great John Coltrane.

This bee was different from any that came before because of the coronavirus pandemic, which led to the cancellation of last year’s bee. It was moved from its usual location just outside Washington to an ESPN campus in Florida, and only the top 11 spellers competed in person. Previous rounds were held virtually.

Only spellers’ immediate families were allowed to attend, in contrast to the hundreds of fans and former spellers who normally pack the bee ballroom. There was, however, one high-profile fan in attendance: first lady Jill Biden.

The first lady, an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College near the nation’s capital, also attended the 2009 bee. The seasoned public speaker told the spellers she was once crippled by stage fright.

“In sixth grade I was my school’s spelling bee champion. I had a chance to go to the next level, but on the day of the regional competition, I told my mother that I was sick,” Biden said. “The truth was that I was too nervous to go, so I have incredible admiration for each and every one of you.”

The competition itself was hardly recognizable compared to the most recent version. In 2019, Scripps’ word list was no match for the deep and talented field, and the bee ended in an eight-way tie.

This year, five of the 11 finalists were gone after the first round, and Zaila emerged as the champion in just under two hours. Had the bee reached the two-hour mark, a new lightning-round tiebreaker would have determined the winner. The field was perhaps thinner than usual because of the 2020 cancellation, which denied a strong crop of eighth-graders of their best chance at winning and prevented younger spellers from gaining valuable experience.

Zaila will take home more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. She used the $10,000 prize from an online bee she won last year to pay for lessons with her coach, 2015 Scripps runner-up Cole Shafer-Ray, who charges $130 an hour — part of a burgeoning industry of private tutors who work with most of the top spellers.

Chaitra Thummala, a 12-year-old from Frisco, Texas — another student of Shafer-Ray — was runner-up. She has two years of eligibility remaining and instantly becomes one of next year’s favorites.

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Follow Ben Nuckols on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APBenNuckols

Governor Abbott’s Zero Tolerance on Immigration

Activists and some border counties are resisting this GOP power grab.


BY JAMES GOODMAN
THE PROGRESSIVE
JULY 8, 2021
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Creative Commons


Immigrants protesting in Houston, Texas.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott had all the right optics for rallying the Republican faithful to his anti-immigrant campaign: On June 30, Sean Hannity brought his Fox TV show to Hidalgo County, on Texas’s southern border, for a town hall with Donald Trump.



Activist Roger Ramirez addresses Border Community Town Hall in Hidalgo County, Texas on June 30.

Onstage with Trump, Abbott said “we’re going to start arresting people, putting people behind bars, putting them in jail, not giving them the red-carpet treatment the Biden Administration has been giving them.”

Abbott, who has called for continuing work on former President Donald Trump’s border wall, is misusing a Texas law, intended for natural catastrophes, to invoke extraordinary powers and portray immigrants seeking safe haven as a “disaster.”



Activist Laura Peña addresses Border Community Town Hall in Hidalgo County, Texas on June 30.

Resistance to Abbott’s plan was readily apparent at a community town hall meeting in Hidalgo the morning of the Trump visit.

“The crisis that does exist at our border is that we are constantly used as a scapegoat, deprived of necessary resources to aid our historically and systematically disenfranchised community and denied justice,” said Roger Ramirez of the Laredo Immigrant Alliance.

The “You’re Both Fired!” banner behind the podium, along with chants of “Sí se puede,” left little doubt as to the prevailing sentiment.“Abbott is trying to step into the shoes of Trump,” said Laura Peña of the Texas Civil Rights Project. “And we say ‘no.’ ”

The Biden Administration, while rescinding many of Trump’s repressive anti-immigrant policies, continues to expel most asylum seekers at the border. That’s a big mistake and an injustice.

Although it’s unclear what the impact of Abbott’s antics will be, he is clearly attempting to throw a wrench into any efforts to move the Southern border in a humane direction.

“What Abbott is doing is trying to cause a crisis where one hadn’t existed,” Robert Heyman, a policy consultant with the El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, tells The Progressive.

Border Community Town Hall in Hidalgo County, Texas on June 30.

Abbott, who is up for re-election next year as well as being considered a likely presidential contender in 2024, launched Operation Lone Star in early March. He teamed up with the Texas Department of Public Safety to “surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”

The broad sweep of Abbott’s plans became apparent in his May 31 disaster declaration directing state troopers to apply federal and state laws in assisting Texas counties. This includes arresting undocumented immigrants on state trespassing charges.

Abbott’s declaration also commits to providing jail space for those arrested, and he has emptied a state prison, the Dolph Briscoe Unit in Dilley, so it can be used to incarcerate immigrants.

What’s more, his declaration instructs fifty-six state-licensed shelters to stop housing more than 4,000 unaccompanied children by the end of August—or lose their licenses.

Abbott’s attempt to commandeer border policy—a federal responsibility—also includes diverting $250 million from state spending for border wall construction as well as collecting private donations to do the same.

Photo provided
Kate Huddleston

He has turned to the Texas Disaster Act of 1975 to hype his anti-immigrant campaign and grant him additional powers. This law, for example, provides stiffer penalties for such offenses as trespassing in disaster counties. Even without the enhanced penalties, a trespassing conviction can land an undocumented immigrant 180 days in prison and a fine of $2,000.

“He’s taking a law intended for natural disaster and he is twisting it to set his own immigration policy,” Texas ACLU lawyer Kate Huddleston tells The Progressive.

Huddleston coauthored a June 24 letter to officials of the thirty-four Texas counties that Abbott wanted to participate in his disaster ploy. It warned that taking part in Abbott’s “unilateral efforts to set federal immigration policy and enforce federal immigration law” could put them in violation the Constitution and federal law.

Texas law enforcement has continued to hand over many undocumented immigrants to Border Patrol, but Abbott’s declaration allows the use of state law to jail them on minor charges. Any consideration that they might want asylum is not in the cards.


Where would the children of undocumented immigrants go if their parents are in an adult prison for trespassing?

Meanwhile, GOP stalwarts are rallying to Abbott’s side. Six Republican governors are sending law enforcement officers to the border as a way to bolster Abbott’s anti-immigrant campaign. In a step toward mercenaries for hire, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem enlisted the Tennessee foundation of a Republican mega-donor to cover the costs of dispatching a contingent of her state’s National Guard to Texas.

Local and state police, in Texas and elsewhere, have long collaborated with Border Patrol in enforcement. But Abbott wants enforcement with a Trumpian mindset.

On June 28, two days before Trump’s visit to the Southern border, Abbott’s office updated its list of counties that have declared a disaster and agreed to partner with the state to arrest and detain “people for crimes related to the border crisis.”

The list of participating counties is now down to twenty-eight—six fewer than a month before. Among those dropped are Hidalgo and neighboring hot spot counties in the lower Rio Grande Valley.

Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, the county’s top administrator, spelled out his concerns in a June 1 release that says: “In speaking to local law enforcement, they have not reported levels of criminal activity that would require a disaster declaration.” He also urges comprehensive immigration reform and reopening ports of entry at the Southern border.

Resistance to Abbott has been spearheaded by La Unión del Pueblo Entero. Founded by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, LUPE organizes immigrant communities. It is pushing for such basic infrastructure spending as paved roads and street lighting.

“We want the world to see us as ambassadors of the border because we want to change the narrative of people seeing us as criminals,” LUPE organizer Raquel Chavez tells The Progressive.

The plight of immigrants, she adds, must be seen through a “humane lens,” which dispels the image of the United States as a nation “filled with hate.”

José, a forty-eight-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico living near the border, echoes these concerns.

“The governor should stop playing with people’s lives,” says José, who has lived in the United States for three decades. “At the end of the day, we are the ones affected by his decisions and what he is doing does not benefit us.”

In early June, grassroots opposition to Abbott’s agenda crystallized with A Proclamation by the People of the Río Grande Valley. Denouncing Abbott’s “disastrous leadership,” the document describes him as a governor who “shames and blames Black, brown and working-class communities who have struggled to work, feed their families, and secure healthcare during the pandemic.”

Abbott—pure and simple—wants to treat asylum seekers as criminals. His approach is in stark contrast to the efforts of many localities and states to break ties with the draconian practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

Photo provided
Ilse Mendez Fraga

Abbott’s brand of “zero tolerance”—arresting immigrants whenever possible—would likely result in a new round of family separations. Where would the children of undocumented immigrants go if their parents are in an adult prison for trespassing?

“I am assuming Governor Abbott wants to be the next Arpaio,” says South Texas Human Rights Center Director Eduardo Canales, referring to the reign of former Sheriff Joe Apaio in the Phoenix area known for his anti-immigrant policies.

As Abbott’s plans take shape, the bigger police presence at the border has already taken a toll.

“We’re working with different organizations trying to bring resources down here in Laredo,” says Ilse Mendez Fraga, an organizer with Laredo Immigrant Alliance.“We don’t have a lot of lawyers to help out with immigration.”

Even though the thirty-four-year-old Mendez is now protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and her four children are U.S. citizens, she avoids highways and a nearby park, where Border Patrol agents are frequently found.

“Since Trump, since Abbott, I don’t feel safe,” says Mendez.

The draconian law used by Israel to steal Palestinian land

Analysts say all outposts are a backdoor to keep claiming Palestinian land after Israel committed to freezing settlements in the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Israeli soldiers stand guard as Palestinian demonstrators gather during a protest against Israeli settlements in Beita town near Nablus [Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]

By Anchal Vohra

8 Jul 2021

In early May, more than 50 Jewish families packed their bags and moved to a hilltop in the West Bank in the occupied Palestinian territory.

They quickly erected modular homes, a synagogue, a nursery, and even dug a playground to claim a piece of land they neither purchased nor inherited.

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These settlers called it the Evyatar outpost, after Evyatar Borosky – a Jewish man killed in 2013 allegedly by a Palestinian.

All settlements or outposts – a backdoor to keep claiming Palestinian land after Israel committed to freezing settlements in the Oslo Accords in 1993 – are deemed illegal under international law.

The Evyatar outpost stood out because it was illegal under Israeli law, too.

Moreover, it came into existence at a time when US President Joe Biden had replaced Donald Trump and Israel witnessed a change of government to a multi-party coalition of left, right, and centrist parties

The land is also strategically located. It lies south of Nablus in an area called Jabal Sabih in the villages of Beita and Yatma that is expected to be a part of the future state of Palestine. A settlement here would break Palestinian territorial contiguity.

Last week, the settlers were finally evicted and the Palestinians celebrated it as a victory of their resistance. Analysts, however, warned that celebrations were premature and unwarranted.

Al Jazeera spoke to several experts who said the eviction did not reflect a change of Israeli policy and only displayed how the Israeli state deploys its instruments to facilitate systematic theft of Palestinian property.

 VIDEO The draconian law used by Israel to steal Palestinian land | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Instead of being reprimanded by the state for illegally confiscating land that did not belong to them, the settlers were made a promise.

The Israeli media reported Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new prime minister and a staunch supporter of illegal settlements, offered the settlers a deal – the state would ascertain whether the land can be classified as “state land” and if yes – the conclusion the state is expected to arrive at – it would be handed over to the settlers even though it lies in Palestinian villages.

Hagit Ofran, executive director of the Settlement Watch programme at the Israeli NGO Peace Now, surmised it for Al Jazeera. “It was published: The settlers leave; the houses remain; the army puts up a military post; the government starts the process of declaring state lands,” Ofran said.

Israel legalises such outposts or settlements by deploying a draconian interpretation of the Ottoman law that if the land was not cultivated for several years in a row it would become the property of the state.

Peace Now, however, asserted the Evyatar outpost was in fact built on “private Palestinian land”, and that an aerial photo from 1980 showed parts of the land were even “cultivated” – implying it cannot hence be deemed state land.

Yet the state might just confiscate it for the settlers, as it has done hundreds of times. Israel has settled 441,000 settlers in 280 settlements on more than two million dunams – one dunam equals 1,000 square metres – of Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

It has passed a series of discriminatory laws to be able to confiscate Palestinian property.

Absentee property law

Israel uses the Absentee Property Law to claim the lands it forced the Palestinians to abandon in the 1948 and 1967 wars. It also deploys a range of tactics to declare all unregistered lands – left out by the Ottoman and British occupiers and believed to be two-thirds of the West Bank – as possible “state” land.

Palestinian lands are also confiscated in the name of archaeological and tourism purposes, and if they are bought from Palestinians it is almost always through coercive measures, Peace Now noted.

According to B’Tselem, Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Israel grants tax benefits to settlers to build homes and to Israeli industries to set up shop in these territories. The Israeli state also encourages Jews to establish agricultural farms and enables the extensive takeover of Palestinian farmland and pastureland.

“Forty such farms have been established in the past decade, effectively taking over tens of thousands of dunams,” B’Tselem confirmed in a March report.

 VIDEO The draconian law used by Israel to steal Palestinian land | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Anwar Mhajne, an assistant professor at Stonehill College and a political scientist specialising in international relations, said in 1968 Israel put the land registration process on hold, allowing it to label any unregistered land as state land.

She added Israeli law allows the Israeli state to confiscate private land for Palestinian public necessities, which is then passed on for settler infrastructure.

“Israel uses this law, however, to seize private land for building segregated roads to connect the settlements,” said Mhajne. “Relying on a similar law in East Jerusalem, Israel established 12 settlements in East Jerusalem.”

Mhajne added if the patch of land south of Nablus is granted the status of state land, which Palestinian experts feared is likely, it would set a dangerous precedent. It would encourage, “the settlers to construct even more illegal settlements to pressure the government to recognise them even if they are unlawful”.

Ines Abdel Razak, a member of the Palestinian think-tank Al-Shabaka and the advocacy director for the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), said many illegal outposts are in process of being legalised.

“Israel’s settler-colonial project that started a century ago has a clear goal: maximum land with minimum Palestinian people,” Abdel Razak said. “This is very clear in Jerusalem and in the West Bank today whether in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, or Beita.

“From the Absentee Property Law to the settlement enterprise in the West Bank, the policy and practice have been to build Jewish settlements and dispossess Palestinians from their homeland.”

I

srael has settled some 441,000 settlers in 280 settlements [File: Abbas Momani/AFP]

According to a report by Human Rights Watch released in May last year, Israel boxes in Palestinian communities – refusing to accommodate their natural population growth – not just in the West Bank but also in Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel.

It said the Israeli state controlled 93 percent of all land, including in East Jerusalem, and has delegated the task of managing these lands to a state agency – the Israel Land Authority. But this body is dominated by the Jewish National Fund whose “explicit mandate is to develop land for Jews and not any other segment of the population”.

The report also quoted a finding from 2017 that while Palestinians make up 21 percent of Israel’s population, less than 3 percent of land falls under the jurisdiction of Palestinian municipalities.

What will Biden do?

The fate of Palestinians, caught in an unequal fight with state-backed settlers, now hinges on how Biden deals with the matter as he meets Prime Minister Naftali Bennett later this month or early next.

Will Biden pull him up and demand a settlement freeze, or will he just give him a slap on the wrist and agree to disagree?

Ofran of Peace Now said if left unchallenged by the United States, Bennet would of course want to continue with “the legalisation” of all outposts.

“The question would be to what extent the pressure from within the government and from the world will lead him to refrain from it,” Ofran said.

Warren asks SEC to take closer look at cryptocurrency exchanges
BY SYLVAN LANE - 07/08/21 

© Greg Nash


Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to assess the effect of cryptocurrency exchanges on U.S. financial markets and the risks they could pose to consumers.

In a letter released Thursday, Warren asked SEC Chairman Gary Gensler to explain if cryptocurrency exchanges operate in a safe and efficient way, and what regulatory action might be necessary to protect investors.

"While demand for cryptocurrencies and the use of cryptocurrency exchanges have skyrocketed, the lack of common-sense regulations has left ordinary investors at the mercy of manipulators and fraudsters," she said.


"These regulatory gaps endanger consumers and investors and undermine the safety of our financial markets. The SEC must use its full authority to address these risks, and Congress must also step up to close these regulatory gaps and ensure that every investor has access to a safe cryptocurrency marketplace," she added.

Warren is the latest Democratic lawmaker to push regulators toward a tougher stance on cryptocurrency trading after a flood of investor demand for digital tokens. While prices for popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have since plunged from peaks set earlier this year, the rush of activity has raised questions and concerns among many skeptics.

Gensler has expressed an openness to the ways cryptocurrencies could improve or innovate within the financial system, making him more receptive to the industry than many other Democrats. Even so, he’s also raised concerns about a lack of federal visibility and standards for many popular cryptocurrency exchanges.

Many such exchanges are regulated by state money transmission agencies, and a wide range of investment products tied to them fall under the SEC’s purview.

But cryptocurrency exchanges do not necessarily fall under the SEC’s jurisdiction because the tokens themselves often straddle the lines between securities, currencies and commodities.

Both Gensler and Jay Clayton, his Republican predecessor as SEC chair, have asked Congress for greater authority to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. Doing so will also require coordination among the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Treasury Department and occasionally bank regulators.

“These regulatory gaps also extend to the way that cryptocurrency exchanges hold an individual’s crypto-assets, which would not be allowed on a traditional securities exchange,” Warren wrote.

“The harms to consumers as a result of this under-regulated market are real and continue to proliferate in the absence of effective SEC

PALESTINE
JESUS WAS A PALESTINIAN
Fr Romanelli speaks about living under the bombs, close to the sick of Gaza

by Silvina Premat
07/05/2021, 17.30

A cancer patient himself, the Argentine priest from the Institute of the Incarnate Word decided to stay in the Strip to support the few remaining Christians. He talks about the difficulties in getting medical treatment, the injustices that Gazans face, and the activities of his parish.

Buenos Aires (AsiaNews) – Two days before Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce, Father Gabriel Romanelli, who was still recovery from his latest chemotherapy session, learnt that a building some 40 metres from his church, the only Catholic place of worship in the Gaza Strip, was going to be bombed.

With a strength that he attributes only to the Grace of God, he got the children who had found refuge in his parish, to draw. Thus, staying close to the little ones, he survived the closest attack that he experienced in his 25 years in the Middle East.

A missionary with the Institute of the Incarnate Word (Instituto del Verbo Encarnado), a congregation established in Argentina, his native country, Fr Romanelli is the only Argentine in the Gaza Strip.

When he was a teenager in Buenos Aires, he knew that he wanted to consecrate his life to God and announce the Good News in places where “there were people who suffered for the faith.”

He has been doing this since 1995, first in Egypt, then Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, the last two years in the Gaza Strip.

In September 2020, he was told he had a malignant tumour in the colon. After it was removed, he was prescribed six months of chemotherapy.

“The health system in the Gaza Strip is very deficient and inadequate. In the heat of war, thank God, Egypt helped with the most seriously wounded, but for cancer treatment, certain things can be done [in Gaza], others cannot,” Fr Romanelli told AsiaNews.

Fortunately, the medication he required was available and he was able to follow the treatment himself without interrupting his parish work.

However, according to several human rights organisations, many cancer patients in Gaza cannot be treated in the strip and must go to Israel or other areas of Palestine, but they cannot always do so because they are not authorised to cross the borders.

“Now it seems that some restrictions are being lifted, but there are still people who need to be treated. In fact, a lady from our parish has cancer and for a long time she has not been allowed to go to Israel, Jerusalem, other parts of Palestine, or Jordan where they have better means,” said the priest.

“The health system [in Gaza] is very deficient and was further weakened by the pandemic and then by the war. While there are now signs that it is improving, it is still in a critical state,” he added.

The problems in Gaza, which has been subjected to a blockade by Israel for the past 12 years, has also led to a decline in the numbers of Christians.

According to the data provided by Fr Romanelli, there are 133 Catholics, 13 of whom are religious. Together with Greek Orthodox, with whom they work together, Christians number 1,077 amid two million people.

Fifteen years ago, there were 3,500 Christians and 206 Catholics. “Many have left. This is why we work and ask God not to lose faith,” Father Gabriel explained.

Gaza Christians “are descendants of the first disciples of Christ. Christmas for them means Bethlehem, where they have relatives and Easter means Jerusalem.

In the past, “They could visit those holy places at least once or twice a year, but those who are between 16 and 35 years old cannot because they are not allowed. Young people are denied that right.”

Of the charism of his congregation, the Word incarnate, Romanelli values ​​how its members present themselves “without duplicities or ambiguities, with charity, prudence and patience, without hiding their Catholic identity. In Palestine there is no persecution, but being a minority, it is difficult to bear witness to Christ.”

Yet, in peacetime his parish is always full of people. Most of the students in the two parish schools are Muslim, but the two establishments also offer religious training and prayer for adults and young people, an oratory for children and numerous works of charity.

Through the latter, said the priest, “we show who we love and in whom we believe: Jesus Christ.”

MALAYSIA

Pandemic controls uncover foreign workers in virtual slavery

by Steve Suwannarat

07/02/2021, 

Some 229 illegal immigrants are found and arrested at a metal disposal company. For the authorities, the situation is "under control", but the US State Department, in its human trafficking report, downgraded Malaysia to the bottom tier.


Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews) – Forced labour, especially among irregular migrants, is setting off alarm bells in Malaysia.

Recently, Malaysian police arrested 229 foreign workers employed by a metal disposal company in the capital.

Overall, forced labour is not “out of control”, the authorities claim, but for many, we have seen only the tip of the iceberg.

The US State Department's annual report on human trafficking in the world, released yesterday, downgraded Malaysia from second to third tier (the worst), noting that the practice is a major issue in the country.

According to Acting Director of the State Department's trafficking office Kari Johnstone, forced labour in Malaysia can be found in many sectors, including palm oil and other agriculture plantations, as well as the construction industry, and manufacturing.

The problem has received greater coverage in recent months because of increasing outbreaks of the coronavirus among foreign workers who are the least protected.

The situation has favoured the growth of the pandemic. Last month, Malaysia reported in fact the highest number of cases in Asia in relation to the population. However, the exploitation of foreign workers in the country is nothing new.

Malaysia has attracted foreign workers for a long time, especially from Muslim majority countries in Southeast Asia and South Asia (especially Indonesia and Bangladesh). Foreign migrants are generally employed in lower-paying jobs that are less attractive to Malaysians.

Some 212,000 people are said to work under forced labour conditions. The Malaysian government is opposed to the practice but so far it has little to show in terms of results.

According to Reuters, some1,600 investigations took place between 2014 and 2018 with only 140 convictions.

Foreign workers are needed to support the country’s economy because of a shortage of qualified personnel. However, many migrant women are used as domestic help or as prostitutes.

Often the exploitation takes place amid the indifference if not the complicity of the authorities, which apply rigidly, even arbitrarily the laws that regulate immigration and the employment of asylum seekers.

In this situation, migrants are at risk of becoming prey to human traffickers. Rohingya Muslims who fled persecution in Myanmar or an unbearable life in refugee camps in Bangladesh, are one example.

INDIA

MODI KILLED THE SWAMY

Fr Stan Swamy killed by nine months in prison

by Nirmala Carvalho
07/05/2021,

The 84-year-old Jesuit, who was arrested on charges of “terrorism” for defending the rights of tribal communities in the state of Jharkhand, died today in a Mumbai hospital after contracting COVID-19 in prison. Saddened and anguished, Indian Jesuits will “take forward” his legacy.



Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Fr Stan Swamy died today after he was taken into custody nine months ago on terrorism charges for his work with tribal peoples. He was 84 years old.

In late May a court allowed the Jesuit priest to be moved from Taloja prison to the Holy Family hospital in Mumbai when he was already in poor health.

As his conditions worsened yesterday, he was transferred to the intensive care unit. Meanwhile, his application for release was still being before the court. Death came first.

Fr Stanislaus D'Souza, the Jesuit provincial of India, issued a statement announcing the clergyman’s death.

“With a deep sense of pain, anguish and hope we have surrendered Fr. Stan Swamy, aged 84, to his eternal abode on July 5, 2021,” reads the press release.

He is now with “the author of life [. . .] who gave him a mission to work among the Adivasis, Dalits and other marginalized communities so that the poor may have life [. . .] to the full, with dignity and honour.”

“The Society of Jesus, at this moment, recommits itself to take forward the legacy of Fr. Stan in its mission of justice and reconciliation. The funeral details will be communicated [. . .] soon.”

Despite his age and advanced Parkinson's disease, Fr Swamy was arrested on 8 October 2020 by India’s National Investigation Agency in Jharkhand, where he had dedicated his life to defend the rights of local tribal communities from certain economic interests.

As part of an investigation into the clashes that took place in 2018 at the commemoration of the battle of Bhima Koregaon, the Jesuit, together with 15 other activists, was accused of contacts with Maoist guerrillas.

Fr Swamy steadfastly denied the charges, claiming that some documents were planted in his computers in order to file false accusations against him. Several times the court in Mumbai refused his bail application.

Only after he contracted COVID-19 in prison, was he moved to the Holy Family hospital.

In a highly charged hearing on 22 May, he refused to go to a public hospital, asking to be released so as to die among his people.

“During these eight months there has been a slow but steady regression of every function of my body,” he said. “Taloja prison has brought me to a condition where I am unable to write or walk alone.”

“I am asking you to consider why and how this deterioration of my health has occurred. [. . .] I don't think it would make any difference. Whatever happens I want to be able to be with my people.”

Fr Swamy, a modern day martyr, is laid to rest

by Nirmala Carvalho
07/07/2021

Fellow Jesuits pay tribute to their confrere who died at the age of 84 after a long period of incarceration prison. A friend, Fr Mascarenhas remembers how he was “inspired after Fr Stan’s stint as director, when he went to work with” the marginalised in Ranchi.

 For writer Arundhati Roy, his slow murder “is a microcosm of the not-so slow-murder” of Indian democracy.


Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Fr Stan Swamy, who died on Monday at the age of 84, was laid to rest today.

His fellow Jesuits described the service as “The funeral of a saint of our time”, held in St Peter’s Church in Bandra (Mumbai).

Only 20 people were able to take part in the ceremony due to COVID-19 restrictions, but the Mass was streamed live.

Fr Stan spent long months in prison on charges of “terrorism” for his commitment to the rights of tribal and Dalit communities.

For his final journey, his body was dressed in a red chasuble, while his hands clasped a chalice and his fingers were entwined with the Rosary.

“Fr Stan was hounded because of his staunch support for the struggle of the Adivasi and the Dalits for their basic human rights,” said in his homily Fr Stanislaus D’Souza, president of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia, citing the Gospel passage about the flagellation of Jesus.

In the eulogy, his friend Fr Frazer Mascarenhas mentioned the word “comrades”. To think that Fr Stan used it in a Maoist sense “is an absolutely ridiculous accusation. Stan was gentle; someone who loved peace,” who rejected all forms of violence. “He considered all those working for humanity [. . .] as his comrades.”

In all this he valued his priesthood above all else. “Every time I went to visit him [in the hospital]. He was interested in receiving Jesus in Holy Communion,” Fr Mascarenhas noted.

“One particular evening, when I forgot to bring the Holy Communion, after we had chatted for a while, he said, ‘now give me the Communion’. I went back to my parish and brought Fr Stan the Holy Communion, and he was truly grateful for that. This was the real Fr Stan.”

“As a young Jesuit, I went to an institute where Fr Stan was director. He taught social analysis,” Fr Mascarenhas said.

“He explained and helped us understand the undercurrents of Indian society. Later I was inspired after Fr Stan’s stint as director, when he went to work with” the marginalised in Ranchi.

Fr Stan “worked for 30 years with the most vulnerable in Indian society” using “his social analyses”. “At the time of his arrest, 3,000 young Adivasi were detained” for the same reasons he was, and he “was fighting for them”.

Immediately after the funeral, Fr Swamy’s remains were cremated; his ashes will be taken to Ranchi, where he wanted to die. Moving his body would have entailed logistical difficulties, a Jesuit source said. A monument is already planned in his memory.

Meanwhile, the elderly Jesuit priest’s death is a major topic of discussion across the country. Writer Arundhati Roy slammed Indian authorities for the way he died.

“The slow murder of Father Stan Swamy is a microcosm of the not-so slow-murder of everything that allows us to call ourself a democracy,” writes Roy. “We are ruled by fiends. They have put a curse upon this land.”

For war-scarred Iraq, climate crisis the next great threat

By AFP
July 8, 2021


A boy walks through a dried up agricultural field in the Saadiya area, north of Diyala in eastern Iraq. — © AFP AHMAD AL-RUBAYE

Dawood Al-Yaseen with Salam Faraj in Khanaqin

As Iraq bakes in the blistering summer heat, its hardscrabble farmers and livestock herders are battling severe water shortages that are killing their animals, fields and way of life.

The oil-rich country, scarred by wars and insurgencies over the past four decades, is also one of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change and struggles with a host of other environmental challenges.


Upstream dams in Turkey and Iran have diminished the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which are also heavily polluted with sewage, waste and agricultural runoff as they flow southeast through Iraq.

Drought has hit the Mesopotamian marshes, said to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden, where water buffalos and their owners once found respite from summer heat above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).


A buffalo grazing by a pen in the Chibayesh marshland in Iraq’s southern Ahwar area. — © AFP

In southern Iraq, where the two big streams merge into the Shatt al-Arab, the reduced flow has caused saltwater intrusion from the Gulf, degrading the waterway that is shaded by lush palm groves on its banks.

“Everything we plant dies: the palm trees and the alfalfa which normally tolerates salt water,” said Rafiq Taufiq, a farmer in the southern riverside city of Basra.


The saline water encroaching ever further upstream has already destroyed thousands of hectares of farmland.

This year, the trend has worsened again, said Alaa al-Badran, an agricultural engineer in Basra province.

“For the first time the salt entered as early as April, the start of the farming season,” he said.

– ‘Risk of displacement’ –

The problems are exacerbated as decades of military conflict, neglect and corruption have destroyed irrigation systems and water treatment plants.

According to the United Nations, only 3.5 percent of Iraq’s farmlands are watered with irrigation systems.



A dead fish on cracked, sun-baked earth in the Chibayesh marshland in Iraq’s southern Ahwar area. — © AFP

Rivers are meanwhile often polluted with viruses and bacteria, oil spills and industrial chemicals.

In Basra, where freshwater canals are clogged with garbage, more than 100,000 people were hospitalised in 2018 after drinking water polluted with sewage and toxic waste.


The heat and the water shortages have been a blow to Iraq’s agricultural sector, which accounts for five percent of the economy and 20 percent of jobs, but provides only half of the food needs of Iraq, which relies heavily on cheap imports.

In a nation of 40 million people, “seven million Iraqis have already been affected by the drought and the risks of displacement that it entails,” President Barham Saleh wrote recently.

In Chibayish, in Iraq’s marshlands, buffalo herder Ali Jasseb said he now has to travel great distances to keep the animals producing milk, his family’s only income.

“Every two or three months, we have to travel to find water,” he told AFP. “Because if the buffaloes drink salty water, they get poisoned, they stop producing milk and sometimes they die.”

Raad Hmeid, another buffalo herder, pointed to the sun-cracked ground below his feet.

“Until 10 days ago this was mud, there was water and even greenery,” he told AFP.

– Years of drought –

In Iraq’s east, cereal farmer Abderrazzaq Qader, 45, said he had seen no rain “for four years” on his 38 hectare (94 acre) farm in Khanaqin near the Iranian border.



An Iraqi farmer in a parched field in the Khanaqin area, north of Diyala, in eastern Iraq. 

© AFP

The years of drought, he said, had led many local farmers to abandon the land to take jobs as labourers.

In total, “69 percent of agricultural land is threatened with desertification, meaning it is being rendered unfit for cultivation,” Sarmad Kamel, a state forestry official working on the issue, told AFP.


Iraq’s agricultural lands are shrinking further as farmers are selling their unprofitable plots to developers, said economist Ahmed Saddam.

“On the one hand, there is more and more demand for housing, while on the other hand cultivating land no longer creates sufficient income,” he said.

Rather than continue their back-breaking work for little pay, many farmers near Basra have sold their plots, often for “between 25,000 and 70,000 euros … huge figures for farmers,” he says.

At this rate, “every year, 10 percent of agricultural land disappears to become residential areas”, he added.

This accelerates a rural exodus into towns and big cities, piling huge pressure on the economic, social and environmental fabric of life in Iraq.

There is little respite in sight, warned Saleh in a recent statement that said “climate projections for Iraq foresee a rise of about two degrees celsius, and a drop in rainfall of nine percent by 2050”.

Another worrying projection says that, by mid-century, Iraq’s population will have doubled to 80 million.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/life/for-war-scarred-iraq-climate-crisis-the-next-great-threat/article#ixzz704CQk32v

Bulgaria rocked by corruption claims ahead of vote


By AFP
July 8, 2021


Weekly demonstrations against 'the mafia and oligarchy' are fuelled by mounting revelations of graft in the government - Copyright AFP Munir UZ ZAMAN
Diana SIMEONOVA

From kidney transplants for rich foreigners at state hospitals to big companies tapping government loans meant for smaller firms, graft in Bulgaria is outraging citizens afresh, a year on from huge anti-corruption protests.

The scores of examples, revealed in daily press conferences by interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev’s administration, have confirmed most of the allegations from those who took to the streets, with ramifications for Sunday’s snap parliamentary election.

Yanev was appointed after an inconclusive April 4 general election that saw three-time premier Boyko Borisov come out first but unable to find partners to govern.

Though primarily tasked with organising the new vote, the interim government has also set out to make thorough checks of Borisov’s almost 10 years in office.

Yanev says these efforts are a bid to answer protesters’ demands for transparency and suspicions about massive graft.

Borisov says they’re part of a political witch hunt by his bitter foe, President Rumen Radev, who appointed Yanev’s administration.

Either way, the accusations are having an impact as public opinion appears to be shifting away from Borisov’s GERB party.

– Parallel authority’ –

“We always knew something was wrong, now we see the full size” of the problem, Yanev said in an interview last week with public BNR radio.

He also complained that state agencies allied to the previous administration have been “trying to sabotage” the corruption probes.

Like the state-owned development bank that refused to give information about its loans, or the chiefs of the national security and surveillance agencies who took lengthy leave to dodge answering requests.

And in the case of the Sofia hospital where wealthy visitors from Israel, Japan and Oman were given kidney transplants from live donors, the head even challenged his sacking in court, Yanev said.

According to political analyst Evgeniy Daynov this is part of a “parallel authority” established and entrenched by Borisov that was now trying to subvert the efforts of Yanev’s administration.

– ‘Boiling point’ –

On top of the scandals within the country, the US Treasury earlier this month blacklisted several prominent Bulgarians, including notorious lawmaker and power broker Delyan Peevski.

He was one of six individuals, along with fugitive gambling tycoon Vasil Bojkov, who were added to the US’s sanctions list due to “their extensive roles in corruption”.

The move was described by the Treasury as “the single largest action targeting corruption to date” under the Magnitsky Act, a law under which Washington punishes foreign government officials implicated in corruption or human rights abuses.

“This is a sign that corruption in Bulgaria has reached a boiling point… that state capture has reached an extent that can no longer be tolerated,” Vessela Cherneva from the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank told the TV+ television station.

Fourteen years after joining the European Union, Bulgaria remains the bloc’s most graft-prone member, according to Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perception Index.

The group’s Global Corruption Barometer published last month showed that 48 percent of Bulgarians polled late last year thought that corruption had increased in the previous 12 months.

Fifty-six percent said they believed that their prime minister was involved in corruption, 67 percent thought the same for MPs and 40 percent thought that most or all magistrates and judges were corrupt.

– Election impact –

As many as 65 percent of the 3,000 people polled even said they feared reprisals if they reported graft.

It is uncertain whether the latest revelations will bring any results from the slow and inefficient judiciary, which has often investigated those reporting corruption with more vigour than those accused of it.


While Borisov denies any wrongdoing, the revelations are “weighing heavily on public opinion on the eve of the elections,” says Vasil Tonchev, a sociologist at the Sova Harris polling institute.

Recent polls have shown Borisov’s GERB losing the lead it enjoyed at the last election and now polling almost neck-and-neck with the new anti-establishment populist party There is Such a People (ITN) of showman-turned-politician Slavi Trifonov.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/bulgaria-rocked-by-corruption-claims-ahead-of-vote/article#ixzz704AIaLHg

Belarus raids independent news sites in media crackdown


By AFP
July 8, 2021


REMINDS ME OF A FRANCIS BACON OR RALPH STEADMAN
Roman Protasevich's arrest sparked a new round of anti-regime protests - Copyright AFP Angela Weiss

Belarus on Thursday barred access to the country’s oldest news organisation and raided the offices of several regional newspapers as President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime clamps down on media not under state control.

Authorities in the ex-Soviet country, which is in the throes of a months-long crackdown on dissent, blocked the online publication Nasha Niva over accusations it had published illegal content.

Belarus’ KGB security services also raided its offices as well as those of several regional publications across the country.

The media crackdown comes a day after one of Lukashenko’s main challengers, Viktor Babaryko, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Nasha Niva — founded in 1906 under the Russian Empire — said on social media that raids took places at the homes of four of its editors and that two including its editor-in-chief Yegor Martinovich were detained.

It said that it had lost contact with one editor, Andrei Dynko, while Martinovich’s wife said on Facebook he was in such bad shape after the raid at their home that he needed treatment in detention.

Nasha Niva said on social media that the raids were carried out as part of a probe into actions that grossly violate public order.

The opposition-leaning site covered anti-Lukashenko protests that erupted last year and many of its staff have been interrogated or spent time in jail.

“Nasha Niva is not just a website, it’s the oldest Belarusian newspaper,” exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said in a video posted on Twitter.

“I call on the international community to provide practical support for our independent media and journalists,” she added.

Separately, the Belarusian Association of Journalists reported that the editor-in-chief of another independent news site, orsha.eu had been detained and that an outlet which covers the IT sector had also been blocked.

– Regional outlets targeted –

Security officers then came to two regional newspapers.

According to Viasna, the KGB raided the editorial offices of the internet publication Intex-press in Baranovichi, a city south-west of Minsk.

Brestskaya Gazeta, an independent newspaper based in the city of Brest on the Polish border, said KGB officers had also come to its offices.

The move to bar access to Nasha Niva is part of a broad crackdown in the wake of historic opposition protests last year.

Journalists who covered the mass demonstrations have come under mounting pressure in recent months, with several receiving long jail terms.

Popular news website Tut.by was blocked in May and several of its employees arrested on tax evasion charges.

Lukashenko, the long-serving authoritarian leader who sparked the rallies by claiming a sixth presidential term, has drawn condemnation from the West whose leaders say the vote was not free or fair.

A leading opposition figure and former banker, Babaryko, who was considered one of Lukashenko’s strongest opponents in the elections, was jailed for 14 years this week on contested fraud charges.

Western nations have slapped a slew of sanctions on Lukashenko and his regime but they appear to have had limited effect as he maintains backing from key ally and creditor Russia.

Most recently, leaders in the West targeted key sectors of the struggling Belarusian economy to punish Lukashenko’s government for intercepting a Ryanair plane in May and arresting an opposition activist and his girlfriend on board.

tk-jbr-oc-emg/yad

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/belarus-raids-independent-news-sites-in-media-crackdown/article#ixzz7049g0VIO