Tunisian journalists launch strike against Saied's attempts to control media

The strike broadens dissent at president Saied's increasingly autocratic manoeuvres from across the political spectrum of Tunisian society.

The New Arab Staff
02 April, 2022

Syndicate president Mohammed Yassine Jelassi speaks at a rally for Tunisian journalists ahead of the strike

Tunisian journalists begin a general strike on Saturday, reacting to "attempts to control public media" and "policies of indifference and neglect practised by the authorities", which have left Tunisian media "under-funded, marginalised and unprotected", a statement by the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (NSTJ) has said.

The strike was forced by "a lack of serious interaction or negotiation from anyone inside the government", the statement added.

The nationwide strike includes a swathe of official media channels belonging to Tunisian broadcasting and television institutions, the Tunisia-Africa News Agency, and others.

The outlets involved will suspend almost all coverage, focussing their attention solely on the strike itself - and "extremely urgent matters of necessary public interest".

The syndicate has been threatening a strike since 11 March, demanding that authorities reverse censorship attempts and deteriorating working conditions at state-run Wataniya TV.

The strike began at 11:00 AM local time after the syndicate said that the journalists' demands were not met.

Yassine el-Bahri, a Wataniya cameraman who is also a SNJT vice president said: "Our television is supposed to be public, not governmental."

Declining freedoms

Human Rights Watch regional deputy director Eric Goldstein wrote last week that President Kais Saied had "set about dismantling institutional checks on his authority since his July power grab, and state television is an obvious target".

"Tunisian television is experiencing its worst period since the 2011 revolution," said NSTJ president Mohamed Yassine Jelassi to the New Arab's sister site al-Araby al-Jadeed.

"It has become monopolised by supporters of president Saied and his decisions, and has been cleansed of any opponents," said Jelassi.

Freedom of speech and press was a key gain for Tunisians after the 2011 revolution that ended the rule of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and triggered the Arab Spring protests.

However, the democratic system adopted after the uprising is in deep crisis after President Kais Saied last year suspended the parliament, seized executive power and brushed aside the constitution to rule by decree.

DIY UNION

After Amazon workers’ union victory the Fed must stop tipping the scales for bosses

A post-Covid jobs recovery has strengthened workers’ hand – companies posting record profits don’t need government to slow the economy

Union organizer Christian Smalls celebrates with Amazon workers following Friday’s vote to unionize the Amazon Staten Island warehouse. 

Photograph: Andrea Renault/AFP/Getty Images

Robert Reich
Sun 3 Apr 2022 

On Friday, Amazon – America’s wealthiest, most powerful and fiercest anti-union corporation, with the second-largest workforce in the nation (union-busting Walmart being the largest), lost out to a group of warehouse workers in New York who voted to form a union.

If anyone had any doubts about Amazon’s determination to prevent this from ever happening, its scorched-earth anti-union campaign last fall in its Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse should have put those doubts to rest.

Putinism is breeding in the heart of the Republican party
Robert Reich

In New York, Amazon used every tool it had used in Alabama. Many of them are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act but Amazon couldn’t care less. It’s rich enough to pay any fine or bear any public relations hit.
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The company has repeatedly fired workers who speak out about unsafe working conditions or who even suggest that workers need a voice.

As its corporate coffers bulge with profits – and its founder and executive chairman practices conspicuous consumption on the scale not seen since the robber barons of the late 19th century – Amazon has become the poster child for 21st-century corporate capitalism run amok.

Much of the credit for Friday’s victory over Amazon goes to Christian Smalls, whom Amazon fired in the spring of 2020 for speaking out about the firm’s failure to protect its warehouse workers from Covid. Smalls refused to back down. He went back and organized a union, with extraordinary skill and tenacity.

Smalls had something else working in his favor, which brings me to Friday’s superb jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report showed that the economy continues to roar back to life from the Covid recession.

With consumer demand soaring, employers are desperate to hire. This has given American workers more bargaining clout than they’ve had in decades. Wages have climbed 5.6% over the past year.

The acute demand for workers has bolstered the courage of workers to demand better pay and working conditions from even the most virulently anti-union corporations in America, such as Amazon and Starbucks.

Is this something to worry about? Not at all. American workers haven’t had much of a raise in over four decades. Most of the economy’s gains have gone to the top.

Besides, inflation is running so high that even a 5.6% wage gain over the past year is minimal in terms of real purchasing power.

But corporate America believes these wage gains are contributing to inflation. As the New York Times solemnly reported, the wage gains “could heat up price increases”.

This is pure rubbish. Unfortunately, the chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome Powell, believes it. He worries that “the labor market is extremely tight” and to “an unhealthy level”.

As a result, the Fed is on the way to raising interest rates repeatedly in order to slow the economy and reduce the bargaining leverage of American workers.

Pause here to consider this: the commerce department reported on Wednesday that corporate profits are at a 70-year high. You read that right. Not since 1952 have corporations done as well as they are now doing.

Amazon’s profits are in the stratosphere, but it’s not just Amazon. Across the board, American corporations are flush with cash.

Although they are paying higher costs (including higher wages), they’ve still managed to increase their profits. How? They have enough pricing power to pass on those higher costs to consumers, and even add some more for themselves.

When American corporations are overflowing with money like this, why would wage gains heat up price increases, as the Times reports? In a healthy economy, corporations would not be passing on higher costs – including higher wages – to their consumers. They’d be paying the higher wages out of their profits.

But that’s not happening. Corporations are using their record profits to buy back enormous amounts of their own stock to keep their share prices high, instead.

The labor market isn’t “unhealthily” tight, as Jerome Powell asserts; corporations are unhealthily fat. Workers don’t have too much power; corporations do.

The extraordinary win of the workers of Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse is cause for celebration. Let’s hope it marks the beginning of a renewal of worker power in America.

Yet the reality is that corporate America doesn’t want to give up any of its record profits to its workers. If it can’t fight off unions directly, it will do so indirectly by blaming inflation on wage increases, and then cheer on the Fed as it slows the economy just enough to eliminate American workers’ new bargaining clout.

Amazon's new union demands company start bargaining in May

Sat, April 2, 2022,


FILE PHOTO: Workers stand in line to cast ballots for a union election at Amazon's JFK8 distribution center, in Staten Island, New York City

(Reuters) - The union that Amazon.com Inc workers recently voted to represent them has demanded the company start bargaining in early May and cease any changes to employment terms at their warehouse in the interim, according to a letter the group issued Saturday on Twitter.

The Amazon Labor Union also demanded the retailer respect workers' rights to union representation during disciplinary meetings, the letter said. Amazon did not immediately comment.

On Friday, after some 55% of workers voted to make their warehouse in Staten Island, New York Amazon's first unionized worksite in the United States, the company said it may file objections before the election result is certified.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, California; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

The letter
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar

Published April 1, 2022 - 

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

FOR days ‘the letter’ has triggered unending speculation and intrigue. Our teetering-on-the-brink prime minister has become the subject of yet more memes amongst his opponents, while his supporters’ siege mentality has only hardened. Lost in the mix is the very real question of foreign intervention and Pakistan’s ruling classes.

One does not have to subscribe to the standard state-nationalist narrative of the ‘foreign hand’ to acknowledge that this is a country with a garrison inheritance in which Western powers — the US especially — as well as players closer to home like Saudi Arabia and China are entrenched within the body politic and economy.

So how does one place in its rightful context the role of imperialism in our nominally sovereign affairs? How does one state the facts and at the same time force PTI supporters who posit reactionary ‘Western culture is ruining us’ arguments to acknowledge that the rot starts at home?

Editorial: PM Imran has built himself up as a lone fighter for Pakistan’s cause

One would start with the 1958 coup d’état, which, the historical record confirms, was very much in the knowledge, and took place with the approval of, the US ambassador in Islamabad. It was thus that Gen Ayub Khan later called his American patrons “friends, not masters”.

We need a genuinely anti-imperialist politics.

Then there was Gen Ziaul Haq, who overthrew the country’s first elected prime minister and was welcomed into office by Washington. The latter poured dollars into his lap and helped him foment militant jihad in Pakistan and the Muslim world at large.

Most recently, Gen Musharraf signed onto to the US-led war on terror, boasting in his autobiography that he earned ‘bounties’ by handing over ‘terrorists’ (mostly the same ji­­h­adis that were patronised during the Zia era) to the Americans. This was the same Mush­ar­raf that Imran Khan supported in the 2002 presidential referendum and whose support base eventually metamorphosed into the PTI.

Of course, Imran Khan also benefited from ‘foreign intervention’ — the Americans and British certainly did not dislike him, and there is a line of argument which suggests Pakistan under the PML-N between 2013 and 2018 had tilted too far towards the Chinese orbit. And then there was the role that Tahirul Qadri played in dharna politics from 2014 on, parachuting in from Canada whenever required.

No matter which Pakistani government one analyses, however, foreign support doesn’t last forever. Gen Zia’s tryst with the ‘free world’ soured after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Ultimately, a measly mango crate put paid to the navigation system of the plane in which he perished.

Gen Musharraf’s end was less gory. But Washington’s role was no less prominent. The Americans facilitated a negotiated return to power for Benazir Bhutto, a process that eventually culminated in her widower, Asif Zar­dari, replacing Musharraf in the presidency.

And what about Imran Khan? Not surprisingly for a desperate man in desperate circumstances, he is now comparing his predicament to that of Z.A. Bhutto, who of course wrote a book on death row in which he clearly named the US empire as having conspired with Gen Zia to engineer his downfall.

Yet Bhutto came to power in an era when left-wing movements were at their peak. Workers, peasants and students not only understood the destructive role played by Western imperialism in our country but also called out the home-grown Mir Jaffers and Mir Sadiqs that facilitated empire. Popular mobilisations of the people compelled Bhutto to cut ‘fat and flabby’ generals down to size, promulgate land reforms, nationalise big industries and discipline the Anglicised ‘mandarins’ who ran our colonial civil servi­­ce. Mr Bhutto’s fall began when he started victi­mising trade and student unions, farmers’ associations and political workers whilst also ord­ering military action in Balochistan.

Both before he came to power and during almost four years in the saddle, Imran Khan has done anything but articulate a left-of-centre politics rooted in the grassroots. He certainly has a captive support base, but the latter has only imbibed superficial sloganeering about corruption and national security without actually naming and challenging neoliberal economics, colonial statecraft and the sacred cows who have served as the primary clients of imperialism in our history.

Rather than fanciful slogans and hateful rhetoric, we need a genuinely anti-imperialist politics that starts at home. This is the only way there can be a progressive alternative to the right-wing populism of Imran Khan, and, even more concerningly, militant formations like the Taliban and TLP. We need land to be redistributed from rural and urban landlords to the people. We need to dismantle the virtual apartheid that exists between the military and ‘bloody civilians’. We need to make peace with India and Afghanistan. We need much more. And when such a popular politics gains ground, rest assured that foreign powers will do everything in their power to nip it in the bud.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2022

Samar Minallah Khan's award-winning documentary captures the courage of Pashtun girls in the face of displacement

PUBLISHED ABOUT 17 HOURS AGO
SOOMAL HALEEM
SUB EDITOR


The film has won 20 plus awards in various international film festivals.

Pakistani filmmaker Samar Minallah Khan's documentary OutSwing won the Best Documentary award at the Annual Borrego Springs Film Festival in California recently, adding to the 20 plus awards the film about an all-girls cricket team has accumulated already.

In a tweet posted on March 30, the filmmaker shared about the documentary's win at the festival held in March. "Our film OutSwing won Best Documentary award at the Annual Borrego Springs Film Festival, California. It's a story of an all girls cricket team and their supportive coach," she wrote.

OutSwing documents "the stories of pain and joy", and how a group of girls overcome their fears and find strength through something as simple as a game of cricket. It focuses on a group of Pashtun girls from Mashal Model School, located on the outskirts of Islamabad near the shrine of Bari Imam where internally displaced Pashtuns relocated from remote villages when they were impacted by natural disasters and violent conflict.

When Akhtar Zeb, a former professional cricketer hailing from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, invites the girls to form a cricket team, they taste the freedom and confidence one gets from participating in sports for the very first time. In the documentary, conflict arises when the girls have to "weigh the joy of playing against the expectations and deeply held cultural values of their families".

In the face of community condemnation and pressure from their homes, the girls struggle to keep on playing the game they love. All are tested when their cricket team is offered the chance to play a match against Khaldunia, one of the best private schools in Islamabad.

In cricket terminology, out-swing means something that moves away from the line of bowling. This form of bowling, despite the risk of being called a wide ball, can be a game changer for the team. According to Zeb, "Cricket is for those who have courage. It’s more than just a game. It’s a match that changes many lives."

Filmmaker Minallah told Images about her aspirations for the film as well as the lives the documentary has come to touch.

"Before I started making this film, I knew the cricket field was special to these girls, but it was only after I completed the film that I realised the cricket field was life altering," Khan said, talking about how her understanding as it evolved with the film's completion.

One of the driving forces for the filmmaker was the image of Pashtun girls being portrayed as how she perceives it — "heroes who have been defiant and courageous, even in the face of displacement and relentless discrimination" instead of passive victims that the Western media lens portrays them as. "They have been forced to abandon their homes, but they refuse to abandon their dreams," said Khan.

The filmmaker said that even the men she interviewed embodied the defiant spirit of "standing against social expectations and becoming supporters of the girls’ dreams  — in simply finding these dreams WORTH protecting".

Speaking about the impact of the documentary, Khan said OutSwing has received several awards in the film festival circuit and the cash awards were donated to the school featured in the documentary. The filmmaker also expressed the desire to ease the school's financial constraints through fundraising.

She shared about when the girls' cricket team coach watched the film at the DIVVY Film Festival in Islamabad for the first time. "The coach received a standing ovation by the audience. His reaction and how overwhelmed he was at the positive response made my day," she said. "This is the kind of response that inspires such heroes to do more. The aim of my films is to shed light on such silent allies, to bring their example to a larger audience, to showcase them as everyday role models. I want the audience to relate to a different kind of hero."

"One of the girls [from the documentary] recently shared the news of winning a ‘Sportsperson of the match’ award at a recent game in Islamabad. This is Wajiha, who used to sell sweets outside Bari Imam Shrine to support her family," Khan said, asserting that it’s the little things that add up over time.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Britain still can’t stand a brown woman speaking truth to power

Perspectives
Alia Waheed
28 Mar, 2022

Not even six years of being imprisoned and tortured in Iran has saved Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from racist and misogynistic attacks upon her return. She should have been applauded for calling out the UK government’s failures, writes Alia Waheed.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe rightly called out the UK government's failures during her imprisonment. [GETTY]

Just as how black women have to contend with the angry black woman trope, brown women from the Middle East and Asian sub-continent face the meek, submissive victim stereotype.

When Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe criticised the UK government upon her return from six years of imprisonment in Iran, she strayed from the script.

At a time when Nazanin should have been home, finally tucking her daughter into bed, she had to face the media, hungry for a soundbite.

Boy, did they get one.

When her husband thanked the current foreign secretary, Liz Truss, Nazanin did not. "I have seen five foreign secretaries change over the course of six years. How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home?" she rightly asked. All the while, admirably remaining composed and dignified- something you wouldn’t expect from anyone who has experienced the intolerable conditions she has lived through.

''Many bigots commented that if she had been in Iran, she wouldn’t have been able to say what she did. Except she isn’t in Iran anymore, she’s back home in a country that proclaims to be a defender of freedom of speech and civil liberties.''

Within hours the hashtags #sendherback and #ungratefulcow were trending on Twitter with right-wing keyboard warriors accusing her of effectively biting the hand that freed her. Nazanin was on trial again, but this time it was a trial by social media because she dared to criticise the government’s long delay in securing her freedom.

Let’s not beat around the bush, the real reason she faced such vitriol is because she is a brown woman of Middle Eastern decent. She is considered part of the population normally left to drown on boats in the channel, not a strong and outspoken voice against human rights abuses and the UK government’s failures.

Nazanin was caught in the crosshairs of racism and misogyny. Women’s rights, it seems are selective, especially when it comes to women of colour. What a message to send during women’s history month in particular.

Brown girls are not supposed to be the angry ones, we are conditioned to believe that we are victims who silently endure the oppression dealt to us by our so-called backward communities. We are supposed to be seen and not heard, apart from in gratitude to our white saviours for saving us from our own brown, misogynist menfolk.

RELATED

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s homecoming should inspire action

Perspectives

Sonya Sceats

Many bigots commented that if she had been in Iran, she wouldn’t have been able to say what she did. Except she isn’t in Iran anymore, she’s back home in a country that proclaims to be a defender of freedom of speech and civil liberties. She had every right to say what she did. She should be celebrated for refusing to be a hypocrite and daring to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Anybody who is familiar with the details of her case will know her comments were completely justified. Nazanin, a dual British-Iranian citizen who worked for the Thomas Reuters Foundation charity was wrongly arrested on spying charges, something which she has always denied.

She missed out on the first six years of her daughter's life because of a catalogue of blunders by a string of foreign secretaries including Boris Johnson who blurted out that she was “simply teaching people journalism.” Except she wasn’t.

His ill-thought out remarks were an “inverted pyramid of piffle,” but were nevertheless weaponised in the Iranian state media and cited by the Iranian judiciary as evidence that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime.” as usual, he got away with his faux pas while Nazanin didn’t.

His off the cuff remarks also handily obscured the real reason why she was languishing in prison for years - a dispute over the repayment of an acknowledged historic debt over a cancelled arms deal. Nazanin was paying the price for a 40-year-old dispute which started when she was three.

Nazanin was an inconvenient truth for the government, who was supposed to be brushed under the carpet. It was left to another brown Muslim woman, her local MP Tulip Siddiqui who tirelessly campaigned by her husband’s side for Nazanin’s release.

Her agonising years in captivity came to an end because the Tories decided they may need Iranian oil.

Yes she was wronged by the Iranian government, but she was wronged by the British government too. Accountability does not need to be rationed after all, and her case is one of so many failures by political leaders who should have acted better.

It is not her job to make Boris Johnson and Liz Truss feel good about themselves, and she is right not to let them off the hook. Nazanin addressing those facts is important to the preservation and defence of all our rights and freedoms.

Alia Waheed is a freelance journalist specialising in issues affecting Asian women in the UK and the Indian subcontinent.

Follow her on Twitter: @AliaWaheed

'The state is anti-people and anti-art': Seraiki poet Ashu Lal on why he refused Pakistan's highest literary award

IRFAN ASLAM

         

“The deep state is oppressing the natives, our resources and our culture. Our children go missing under the fascist regime."

Renowned Seraiki poet and writer Dr Ashu Lal refused to accept the Kamal-i-Fun Award having the prize money of Rs1 million announced by the Pakistan Academy of Letters on Thursday.

He was selected for the award by a committee of PAL and the announcement in this regard was made at a press conference by Dr Yousuf Khushk, chairman of the academy. Urdu novelist and travelogue writer Mustansar Hussain Tarar is the other author who got the highest award of the country besides Ashu.

After the award was announced, Dr Ashu Lal took to social media and announced his refusal to accept the award in a post made in Seraiki. He said: “I express my gratitude to friends. I refuse to accept the award. I have not sent any of my books to the Academy of Letters. In my opinion, my refusal (to accept the award) is more precious. My literary activism for the last 40 years is my reward (as a writer). Don’t want to live in brackets. Thank you.”

When asked by Dawn the motive behind his move, Ashu Lal said: “The deep state is oppressing the natives, our resources and our culture. Our children go missing under the fascist regime. The natives are ignored badly. How can we accept the award from an anti-people and anti-art state?”

He says the awards are mostly politically motivated and they have become controversial, limited only to photo sessions. He asserts that he doesn’t have anything to do with the deep state in government, literature or culture. He considers it degrading for himself to accept an award from a president in the current regime who does not even know him.

Born on April 13, 1959, he was named Muhammad Ashraf but adopted the sobriquet Ashu Lal, which was given by his mother, when he started writing in the Seraiki language. He is a medical doctor by profession. After completing his MBBS from the Quaid-i-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur, he served as a doctor across the region, at times working in places where no doctor would like to go. He retired from his job two years back. Since then he runs a clinic at Karor Lal Esan tehsil of Layyah district where treatment is free for the poor.

“I am 62 years old. Since my youth, I have believed in literary activism only. By accepting an award from the current exploitative regime, how can I waste my struggle of 45 years of writings in Seraiki and Urdu?” he emphasises.

When asked about sending any books to PAL for the award, Ashu says that his friend had sent a book on his own way back in 1997 and except that he never sent any book to the academy.

Expressing his gratitude to those who considered him worthy of the award, he says he refuses to accept the award because the state is not taking care of the rights of the natives and it is exploiting their resources. We (Seraiki region) are being kept backward financially and culturally.

“I am not against any mother tongue or regional language. I urge the Punjabi-speaking people to adopt Punjabi medium in schools,” he clarifies, adding that the state’s policy of not giving education to the people in their native tongue is a tactic to keep them backward. He says he is following the resistance of Bulleh Shah and Kabir.

Explaining what he means by ‘living in brackets,’ Ashu quotes Jean Paul Sartre, saying he had refused to accept the Nobel Peace Prize because he did not want to become a bracketed writer (institutionalised was the word used by Sartre).

Ashu Lal is currently engaged with the PPP South as the president of its cultural wing. He argues that his objective is to achieve cultural harmony and satisfy his inner self and that he has a commitment to himself.

“I am working with the native people. We arrange poetry sitting and cultural events and get connected to our land and share our thoughts about it. That’s our way to resistance. The fishermen in river Sindh are struggling to survive. Water crisis is a big issue in the whole world but here it is ignored.”

Ashu Lal suggests that cultural and literary bodies of the country should do something practical. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had started doing it. PAL was founded by him. He had organised a big symposium at Moenjo Daro and then he was hanged.

Speaking about the power of culture, he says the Fasting Buddha on its own can save Pakistan, given the number of Buddhists in the whole world but our state has done the greatest damage by using the religion card.

Dr Ashu Lal says that the country has turned into a fascist state, which commits “brain robbery” against children through syllabi and textbooks. He adds that brain robbery takes away the power to think in the younger generations and then the state easily usurps resources.

His Seraiki poetry books include Chairroo Hath Nah Wanjli (The Shepherd without a Flute), Gautam Naal Jhairra (Arguments with Gautam), Kaan Wassu Da Pakhi Aey (Crow is Bird of Human Abode), two editions of Sindh Sagar Naal Hameshaan (Always with River Sindh), Jaal Maloti (A Meeting Place) and two collections of short stories, Abnormal and Bairri (Boat). Another collection of his short stories is being published.

Originally published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2022