It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, January 24, 2022
Opinion: Alberta's COVID response: From 'we're all in this together' to 'just live with it'
The Omicron wave has reached Alberta. Case numbers are higher than they have ever been and we are only catching a small fraction of the actual impact. Despite the exploding case numbers, the once encouraging slogan of “we’re all in this together” is gone. Instead of hearing about togetherness, we’re being told that we need to “just live with it.” Tests are in short supply, supports for workers have been drawn down, and businesses remain open despite the risk of spread.
True, widespread vaccination has changed the game some. Vaccination rates are high in Canada and vaccinated people are well-protected from severe disease and death. However, immunocompromised people are still very vulnerable and young children are still not able to get vaccinated.
As a working parent of a three-year-old, those concerns sit in the back of my head every day. Like many, I feel as though I’ve been left on my own to figure out what to do about this current wave. As a sociologist studying how vulnerable groups like people with disabilities have been managing during the pandemic, it’s clear that many people have been left behind in this pandemic. How have we gotten here?
Understanding this journey requires considering how inequality is structured and how this relates to policy — central areas of my research at the University of Alberta.
Considering structures of society shows us that we have never actually been “all in this together.” If we were really all in this together, why have billionaires increased their wealth while others struggle to pay their mortgages and inequality has grown? Why did Canadian CEOs continue to receive astounding bonuses in 2020 when workers struggled? Why do some countries have vaccination rates above 80 per cent while others hover around 10 per cent? Why are COVID-19 mortality rates twice as high in racial minority neighbourhoods in Canada? Why has it become so acceptable to simply write off people with disabilities?
One thing has been very clear since the beginning of the pandemic — some groups are better able to shield themselves from the virus than others. We live in a stratified society where certain groups continually receive better access to important resources, opportunities, and rewards at the expense of other less advantaged groups. The pandemic, especially with the spread of Omicron, amplified these disparities, posing a higher threat to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 — and governments have not given this fact enough consideration within policy.
COVID-19-related policy has never explicitly aimed to decrease inequality or address stratification across groups. Some policies like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) helped to limit the growth of inequality, and others have helped to protect those with the least. Most, however, have focused on getting people back to work and making sure businesses don’t lose profits.
In the case of COVID-19, “just live with it” brings us back to a message that fits with other ongoing policy in Canada and many other nations. Since the 1980s, power has shifted toward businesses and owners above workers, resulting in fewer supports for people outside the labour market. Recent pandemic policy is no different.
So, what do people do when governments don’t support them?
They turn toward community. They turn toward each other. This is where I see hope. This is where people have taken the slogan of “we’re all in this together” to heart. In Edmonton, we see it in the ongoing work of organizations like Boyle Street and YESS and the Co-ordinated Youth Response jointly undertaken by organizations during the pandemic. We see it among the public sector workers — doctors, nurses, teachers, essential workers — supporting each other and standing up against attempts to undermine the sector.
Crises like a global pandemic are shocks to our systems, our way of doing things. They show us the flaws and the faults in our ways. In doing so, they can show us a new path forward. In order to move forward, we must commit to change at all levels. We don’t have to “just live with it.”
Dr. Michelle Maroto is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Alberta. A specialist in social stratification and policy, she’s a speaker at this year’s International Week.
Lockdowns, staff shortages and 'warning shots': inmate describes desperate situation at Edmonton Max during COVID's fifth wave
Jonny Wakefield
21/01/2022
Edmonton’s maximum security prison is dangerously short-staffed and descending into violence, an inmate said in a desperate appeal to a provincial court judge Friday.
Aaron Moore, an inmate at Edmonton Institution, appeared in Drumheller provincial court Friday to be sentenced for stabbing an inmate during a brawl last year at the city’s federal prison.
When given a chance to address the court, Moore detailed for Judge Bruce Fraser how conditions inside Edmonton Institution have worsened since he was transferred there in August.
Appearing by video from a conference room in the lockup, Moore said that addictions programming, educational opportunities and out-of-cell time have all fallen by the wayside as the prison grapples with staffing troubles.
Moore also said he witnessed a Jan. 8 fight in which three inmates were injured, one of whom remains in hospital. Moore claimed a correctional officer fired an “assault-style” rifle during the altercation.
“I witnessed officers dragging an inmate’s non-responsive body,” he said. “I fear for my life here, as do the staff.” ‘Burnt right out’
James Bloomfield, prairies regional president with the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, said persistent, region-wide staffing shortages have been exacerbated by COVID’s fifth wave.
“There are lockdowns, and we are managing movement within the institution based on staffing levels,” he said.
“Today we have 12 people off due to COVID-related reasons,” he added. “Everybody is burnt right out. Overtime is being ordered, people are being forced to stay (at work).”
The flareup is the latest in the troubled history of Edmonton Max, which many consider to be among the worst prisons in Canada. Multiple reports have been written on its “toxic” workplace , and as of 2020 Edmonton had the worst rates of inmate-on-inmate assault, use of force by corrections staff, and self-harm by inmates.
CCTV image showing inmates at Edmonton Institution throwing food at “protected status” inmates, in a photo published by Canada’s correctional investigator in 2020.
Jill Shiskin, Moore’s lawyer, said she has repeatedly run into problems reaching clients at Edmonton Institution due to the frequent lockdowns. Moore’s own hearing was delayed a week after court staff were unable to reach the prison.
After Fraser said there was little he could do about the conditions of Moore’s confinement, Shiskin said Moore’s statement was intended to put “on the record the conditions people are currently facing in Edmonton Max.”
Bloomfield said Edmonton Institution is well below its full staff complement of 266 correctional officers. Before COVID-related absences, the prison was operating with a staff of about 210. Around 50 positions are unfilled, while another 50 staff are on leave for WCB-related issues.
He said that has led to the scaling-back of classroom and group programming intended to help prisoners reintegrate.
“It creates a lot of tension within the walls, when you have to adjust routines to match your staffing,” he said.
The situation came to a head on the evening of Jan. 8, when a fight broke out between two inmates. According to Correctional Service of Canada spokesman Jeff Campbell, both inmates were taken to hospital after the fight. One was returned to the prison that night, while the other remains in hospital.
During the fight, correctional officers attempted to “de-escalate” the situation by firing “impact munitions” and “warning shots,” Campbell said. He was unable to immediately clarify whether the warning shots were live ammunition. A third inmate who was uninvolved in the fight suffered scrapes that did not require further medical attention.
Edmonton police continue to investigate the fight, a spokesperson said Friday.
Moore said he hopes to one day return to Drumheller, where there is a GED program, as well as Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
He said he has seen numerous violations of Bill C-83, which was intended to eliminate the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons. Since the beginning of January, inmates on Moore’s unit have received the mandated four hours out of cells a day on just four occasions, he said. On the remaining days, they have been confined to cells for all but 15 minutes.
Fraser agreed to sentence Moore to an additional three months for his role in the stabbing, which he called “extremely lenient.” Shiskin said provocation and self-defence would have been issues had the case gone to trial.
Her Toronto bookstore unionized in the middle of a pandemic. Now, she hopes others will join her
Vanessa Balintec
In the years leading up to the pandemic, Greta Whipple often wondered what would be the last straw that forced her to leave her part-time customer service job at Yorkdale shopping centre's Indigo book store.
There were many things that frustrated her, including stagnant wages and the fear management could lay her off at any time. But she thought if she went somewhere else, things wouldn't be any better.
"I can't tell you the number of times … I contemplated a shift, but I really had the feeling that that would just be lateral," said Whipple, 25. "You're dealing with the same stuff under a different brand."
Then came COVID-19.Whipple realized she no longer felt safe at work wearing insufficient PPE and running the risk of dealing with customers who refused to wear masks.
But instead of leaving, she helped spearhead the unionization effort at her store last summer, following in the footsteps of at least five other Indigo stores in Canada where employees unionized.
Whipple is now among 35,000 members represented by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1006A, which deals with workplaces such as grocery stores, retail shops, restaurants and more.
"COVID-19 was the straw that broke the camel's back," said Whipple. "We locked down in 2020 [and 2021] and people had the time away from work. I think coming back, it sort of woke them up."
The percentage of workers who belong to unions throughout the country has held steady — before and during the pandemic —hovering at over 30 per cent for about a decade, according to Statistics Canada.
But while public sector workers are highly unionized at 77.2 per cent as of 2021, only 15.3 per cent of their private sector counterparts belong to unions, down from 21.3 per cent in 1997.
Jim Stanford, the director of the Centre for Future Work, a research institute in Canada and Australia, says industries like retail, hospitality and manufacturing are reckoning with the reality that their employees, who traditionally aren't unionized, may be looking to unionize to improve their working conditions.
"If you do a poll and ask workers, 'Do you want the protection of wages and benefits and pensions that come with a union contract,' the majority will say yes," said Stanford, a former economist and director of policy with Unifor, the largest private sector union in Canada.
"It's more the legal and operational hurdles that have to be overcome in order to form a union in the face of very aggressive management opposition."
Stanford says some of those hurdles include rules governing unionization campaigns and certification votes. Another barrier is employer intimidation, something he says governments don't do enough to stop, even though it's illegal.
For Lyndsay Craine, one of 110 new members from The Salvation Army York Housing and Support Services who unionized with UFCW Locals 175 & 633 in December, unionization seemed within reachafter COVID-19 showed the importance of her work.
"I don't feel that it's an us-against-them situation," the program services case worker said of the relationship between the Salvation Army and its employees.
"But I believe that we're coming at it from two very different perspectives … so it was necessary to create a situation where the people who [have] their feet on the ground and [provide] direct service have a greater say."
Over the pandemic, support services have been dealing with a worsening opioid, homelessness and mental health crisis leading to long service wait times and barriers to in-person treatment.
"Advocating for ourselves became essential to our ability to advocate for our clients," said Craine.
According to Lesley Prince, director of organizing at UFCW Local 1006A, the local has seen "strong interest" from many retail workers.
"Since late 2020, workers at four book stores and eight retail cannabis stores in Ontario have voted to join UFCW 1006A," wrote Prince in an email to CBC News. "We see this trend continuing in 2022 as workers seek a meaningful voice on the job."
The Ontario Chamber of Commerce and the Toronto Board of Trade declined to comment on the effect of unionizations on businesses
Whipple says while a collective agreement is still in the works, the immediate difference in morale is immeasurable.
"I think the reason why so many of us have stayed at Indigo for so long is because we do like the work — we just don't like how disrespected we are," said Whipple, who says union dues are capped at about $11 a week.
"Knowing that we finally have somebody in our court to vouch for us, it makes it way more tempting to stay."
In response, Indigo says the unionization of its Canadian stores does not mean workers are benefiting from "higher wages, vacation, paid sick-time, health benefits or guaranteed hours."
"With the automatic deduction of union dues, unionized employees' take-home pay is actually less. Even with a minimal tax deduction the loss of income can be substantial," wrote Madeleine Lowenborg-Frick, Indigo's director of corporate communications, in an email.
"We respect our employees' right to seek third-party representation, but we prefer to have a direct relationship with them."
The Salvation Army wrote in an email to CBC News that it will "respect the voting process, result and look forward to better understanding the concerns raised" and working toward a resolution.
Stanford says despite the cost of paying higher wages and betterbenefits,employers should realize unionization can help them attract and retain employees in the long run.
"A union gives workers a safe, predictable channel to express their opinions and to challenge management decisions that they see as arbitrary or unfair" Stanford said.
"Sometimes that makes all the difference in your work experience."
Major disaster averted in icy Kara Sea after two oil barges ran aground The two barges went on rocks near the northern tip of the Vaygach Island.
Russia’s Marine Rescue Service describes the unprecedented salvage operation as "extremely difficult" as ice was rapidly building up on the structures of the barges in the freezing cold polar night. The environmental group Bellona now calls on a ban on transporting fuel oil during icy Arctic winter months.
“There was a real threat of an ecological catastrophe comparable to the emergency near Norilsk,” is the wordings used by Rosmorrechflot, the Federal Agency of Marine and Rivertransport, when informing about the until now unreported incident with two oil barges that ran aground at the northwestern tip of the Vaygach island on November 24 last year.
One of the two huge barges contained 7,000 tons of diesel fuel, while the other was loaded with 170 tons of kerosene (paraffin).
Both barges were towed by the same sea tug, the “Pak“ operated by Lena River United Shipping Company based in Yakutia.
Sudden freeze-up
Destination for the two barges is not disclosed, but supplies of fuel oil to Russia’s remote Arctic regions are normally taking place during autumn with departure ports like Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. Last fall, however, saw a sudden freeze-up and quickly accumulating sea-ice on the Northern Sea Route, including the Kara Sea.
Vaygach, where the two oil barges ran aground, is the island separating the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya from the mainland, most known for the Kara Gate, the western entrance to the Northern Sea Route between Europe and Asia.
When the distress call was made, the tug with the barges was sailing in stormy winds, waves, drifting ice and polar darkness, Rosmorrechflot informs. The salvage tug “Beisug” was at the moment in the Kara Gate and came to the site of emergency after only 35 minutes.
Then, the two oil barges MN-4001 and MN-4002 were already on the rocks. Two other rescue ships were sent to the site with additional equipment. Later, also a support vessel departed from Murmansk to join the rescue operation.
Rescuers had a hard time cracking the ice that had built up on the deck of the barges. The ice cover was about 30-50 cm thick, according to information published by Russia’s Marine Rescue Service last week.
Two months in shadow
It is unclear why it took nearly two months from the accident happened till information was made public. One reason could be that the rescued barges first last week were delivered to port in Severodvinsk in the White Sea and the danger of any spill now is over.
It is local newspaper Severny Rabotchy that informed about the arrival of the barges to Severodvinsk.
The rescue operation was very difficult and the crew of the salvage vessels were working around the clock to avoid a major oil spill in the fragile Arctic marine environment.
Pulling the barges off the rocks was considered unsafe. This would certainly have led to additional and massive damage to the barge hulls with a guaranteed spill of oil products, the rescue service said.
Work was further complicated by limited depths, windy weather, waves, shifting ice, temperatures down to minus 20 degrees Celsius and constantly icing on the barges. The rescue workers had to manually break the ice to gain access to hatches and other structures and to reduce the weight of the barges.
Diving inspections revealed that the ballast tanks on both barges were pierced. Two tankers came to the site and about 5,000 tons of the diesel fuel were reloaded.
The first barge was removed from the rocks during December, soon followed by the other.
Vaygach Island in summer. Photo: Thomas Nilsen
After additional diving inspections, a plan was made on how to tow the barges to a safe port. The towing operation is described as taking place in “extremely difficult ice conditions”, it got “repeatedly stuck” in dense ice, with ice fields at some places with a thickness up to one meter. The crew had to fight rapidly icing on deck during the towing operation through the eastern part of the Barents Sea and the White Sea to Severodvinsk near Arkhangelsk.
Thanks to competent, well-coordinated actions by the marine rescuers they managed to prevent an environmental disaster in Russia’s Arctic zone, the emergency services concluded.
Deeply worried
Sigurd Enge, an expert on Arctic shipping and marine environment with the Bellona Foundation in Oslo, is deeply worried about what happened.
“It is only luck that this didn’t ended in a disastrous oil spill,” he said in a phone interview with the Barents Observer.
“It clearly shows that the Northern Sea Route is not ready for year-round sailings. Towing barges with fuel oil are seriously jeopardizing the Arctic environment. We can’t base emergency preparedness on luck,” Sigurd Enge said.
Sigurd Enge is advisor on Arctic and shipping with the Bellona Foundation. Photo: Thomas Nilsen
Enge has first-hand experiences from younger days in Arctic waters with shrimp fishery north in the Barents Sea, around the archipelago of Svalbard.
“Icing on vessels happens very quickly,” he explains. “In worst conditions, sea spray icing occurs when freezing cold wave-generated spray comes in contact with any structure on the boat.”
“Seawater can freeze to ice on the deck within seconds,” he noted.
In December 2020, icing was believed to cause the sinking of the Russian fishing vessel “Onega” near Novaya Zemlya in the eastern Barents Sea. Only two of the 19 crew members were rescued.
Sigurd Enge said that danger of icing makes towing and emergency navigation especially hard.
“You can’t sail against the wind. That will create even more spray that freezes on the vessel.”
“We in Bellona strongly recommend imposing a ban on towing barges with fuel oil in icy waters, especially during polar night,” Sigurd Enge said.
“It is simply too risky.”
In Russia, Indigenous land defenders face intimidation and exile
Pressure on communities comes as regional elites and big companies look to develop resource-rich Indigenous lands.
Yana Tannagasheva, an Indigenous Shor activist who protested against coal mining on her people's ancestral lands in western Siberia, holds a banner that says: 'We don't want to live in moonscapes' [Courtesy: Nelly Slupachik]
The police officers could have planted drugs in his backpack, Andrey Danilov says.
So he refused to show its contents to the officers who did not identify themselves or say why they approached him in late August 2021 in the Arctic town of Monchegorsk in northwestern Russia.
Drugs planted by police have become a routine part of a crackdown on liberal opposition, independent journalists and human rights activists.
But Danilov is none of the above.
He is a community leader of some 1,600 Saami living in Russia’s Murmansk region near Norway. They are a fraction of the Saami Indigenous nation that primarily lives in Arctic Scandinavia in the region which the Saami call Sapmi, a place also known as Lapland and advertised to tourists as Santa’s home.
Danilov says the search and subsequent detention were part of perennial official pressure on him, payback for leading a campaign against platinum and palladium mining on Saami lands, and for his victory in July in the Constitutional Court which ruled that unlicensed hunting is the birthright of any Indigenous person as part of their traditional way of life.
Russian law suggests that only Indigenous people living in the wilderness and not in urban centres can hunt without a licence, but Danilov, who lives in the town of Severstal, proved that hunting is part of his culture and beliefs.
Danilov was released hours after the news of his detention reached other activists and independent media. But he knows the pressure is far from over.
“Their main goal is to either push me to flee abroad or to force me to shut up,” Danilov, 51, who is head of the grassroots group the Saami Heritage and Development Foundation, tells Al Jazeera.
In early November, 116 human and Indigenous rights groups and dozens of individuals signed an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin detailing the persecution of Danilov and other Indigenous activists across Russia. So far, the Kremlin has not replied.
A truck loaded with coal in the town of Kazas, western Siberia, where the Indigenous Shor people fought against the development of new coal mines [Courtesy of Nelly Slupachik]
A gold rush
Most of Russia’s Indigenous nations, as Indigenous groups are referred to in Russia, still rely on hunting and gathering, fishing and reindeer husbandry. But their lands – like those of other Indigenous communities from Papua New Guinea to Alaska – are treasure troves of fossil fuels, gold and other minerals as well as timber, game and fish.
And they are falling victim to a nationwide gold rush for these resources.
A warming Arctic, modern technologies and growing demand are opening up deposits previously deemed unavailable or too expensive to develop. As resources open up, the Kremlin, regional elites and big businesses including those owned by Putin’s former colleagues and neighbours or Kremlin-friendly oligarchs are eager to develop them.
“The development should be conducted in accordance with high ecological standards and with respect to the specifics of the local populations’ traditional lifestyle,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in May addressing the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum of eight countries including Russia.
But the development disrupts migration routes of wild animals or deer herds, spawning routes of fish, and destroys nesting grounds, sacred sites and burial grounds, Indigenous activists and observers say.
“For the Indigenous nations, their land is something sacred, they can’t live without the land, the fish, the forest, the tundra,” Danilov says.
Meanwhile, the developers increasingly ignore the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that prescribe their informed collective consent before any use of their land.
There is a scramble to develop the land for its resources, Danilov says. “And the Indigenous nations have simply become pawns in the big politics.”
As commercial interest grows, Indigenous activists fight the encroachment with the very limited means they have – protest rallies, lawsuits mostly lost in Kremlin-controlled courts, social media posts and appeals to independent media, rights groups and the UN.
In return, the activists face harassment, intimidation, arrests and surveillance by police and intelligence services, smear campaigns, destruction of property, accusations of “separatism” and exile, according to rights groups, the UN, independent media and court papers.
“Those who see the injustice towards their people, their nations, who simply discuss it, automatically get listed as people’s enemies,” Pavel Sulyandziga, an exiled community leader of the Udege, an Indigenous nation of some 1,500 that lives near the Chinese border, tells Al Jazeera.
Members of the Udege Indigenous nation stand next to a large plush toy of a Siberian tiger, a protected animal [Courtesy of Pavel Sulyandziga]
Tigers and jade
Sulyandziga, 59, is a bearded, bespectacled former maths teacher who rose to become one of Russia’s top Indigenous rights officials in several government bodies and Indigenous groups in the 1990s.
His community’s land in Russia’s Far East is home to the Siberian tiger, the world’s largest cat. In the early 2000s, the black market price for one poached animal – whose body parts and even faeces are prized in Chinese medicine – exceeded $50,000, and they numbered several hundred.
But Putin took a shine to them and made headlines in 2008 after shooting a tigress with a tranquiliser to place a tracking device around her neck and creating a national reserve for the felines in the cedar forests where the Udege live, hunt and fish.
The reserve became a boon to the community that enjoys an uninterrupted electricity supply for the first time in their history and no longer has to worry about illegal logging and clandestine cannabis plantations because the preserve is protected by federal officials.
“They’ve never been better off,” Sulyandziga says.
But not him.
Pressure on Sulyandziga began after he organised public hearings on pressure on an Evenki Indigenous community that developed a jade mine on their ancestral lands in the taiga forest of the southeastern Buryatia region near Mongolia. Jade has been prized in China for millennia, and by 2010, the price of the semitranslucent stone exceeded that of gold.
In 2012, the mine was taken over by the Rostec state-run corporation focusing on defence and hi-tech.
That year, criminal charges were brought against community leaders, leading to confiscation of jade and land, activists say.
“Within months, the community was disbanded, some of its members were jailed, some were forced to leave Russia,” Dmitry Berezhkov, an Indigenous rights activist from the Itelmen nation that lives on the Pacific Peninsula of Kamchatka, tells Al Jazeera.
Since then, the community has faced expulsion from their land, community leaders said in a video appeal to Putin in 2019.
Sulyandziga claimed he was accused by state officials of “separatism”, “espionage” and embezzlement. His sons and brother, also an Indigenous rights activist, faced pressure too.
In 2016, Sulyandziga left for New York to deliver a speech at a UN session about Russia’s Indigenous rights situation. He says he never returned because a high-ranking security official told him that intelligence services planned to kill him and present his death as “suicide”.
Today he is an associate researcher at Bowdoin College in Maine and heads the Batani Foundation, an Indigenous rights group.
He says that since he left, pressure on Indigenous communities “rose dramatically”.
“If in the past intelligence services tried to at least pretend to make their actions look legitimate, now they simply don’t need to do that,” he says. “If in the past they tried to pressure leaders, now they pressure everyone who simply tries to tell the truth.”
Activist Dmitry Berezhkov, second from right, of the Itelmen nation at the 2002 Alaska Federation of Natives conference now lives in Norway where he was granted asylum [Courtesy of Dmitry Berezhkov]
Living on the edge
Russia’s 46 Indigenous groups are known officially as the “small nations of the North, Siberia and the Far East”.
They amount to less than 300,000 people, or 0.2 percent of Russia’s population of 144 million, but live in autonomies that are often larger than some European nations.
Some of these autonomies live on land covered by permafrost and tundra; some are nestled in the world’s largest forest, the Siberian taiga.
Their remoteness from urban centres and agricultural areas saved them from assimilation – even though since the Soviet era, the children of taiga nomads and hunters were often educated in Russian-language boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their mother tongues.
Putin has lauded the “small nations” for making Russia a diverse, multiethnic country and has on many occasions said the Kremlin promotes their legacy by funding the festivals of their culture and music, documentaries and cartoons based on their folklore.
“The unique diversity of [Russia’s] traditions and tongues is our common, priceless property that we value and take pride in, and the original culture of the people of North, Siberia and the Far East occupies a special place on this palette,” he said in April, addressing a forum of Indigenous people.
Even so, development on Indigenous lands and the subsequent environmental damage threatens the way of life, identity and spiritual beliefs of Indigenous groups.
The inevitable development-versus-preservation conundrum seen worldwide is exacerbated by the innate oddity of Russia’s economy, in which extraction and export of oil and natural gas resources play an outsized role, accounting for 36 percent of Russia’s budget revenues.
“Extraction of natural resources is Russia’s key business, and Indigenous people are its competitors, unwanted witnesses, they stall it,” says activist Berezhkov, who was granted asylum in Norway in 2013 after years of threats, surveillance, interrogations and alleged fraud charges.
A sacred place for the Khanty people in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region in western Siberia has been polluted by drilling for crude oil [File: Alexander Demianchuk/Reuters]
Way of life under threat
In northwestern Russia, the inkblot-shaped Imlor Lake is for Khanty reindeer herders the burial place of the divine bear, a deity in their beliefs. But the Surgutneftegaz oil company drills crude oil from the lake, and the pollution forces Khanty to drive their herds elsewhere.
In 2017, a court in Surgut, the largest city of the Khanty autonomy, convicted Khanty shaman Sergey Kechimov of “murder threats” to the company’s security guards and sentenced him to community service. Kechimov, an activist who resisted the drilling for more than 10 years, said the guard dogs attacked his reindeer and he shot one of the dogs.
Some communities have lost their property and homes.
Yana Tannagasheva, a public school teacher and activist of the Shor Indigenous nation in southwestern Siberia protested against the expansion of coal and magnesium mining in her region of Kemerovo.
She wrote complaints to regional authorities and the Kremlin, and told a UN session on Indigenous rights in 2016 about an “ethnocide” of Shors.
Some residents of Kazas, a Shor village that once consisted of three dozen wooden houses by a pristine stream and nestled in the bright-green taiga forest full of berries and game, refused to sell their property to the mining company Sibuglemet.
In 2013, Tannagasheva says five houses were burned down and one was bulldozed, an ancestral burial ground was destroyed, and the nearby Karagay-Lyash mountain was blown up, where, according to Shor beliefs, a powerful spirit lived.
It also cordoned off what remained of the village that now stands empty in a “moonscape” of treeless land choked with coaldust that pollutes the rivulet, she says.
“They don’t see us as humans at all,” says Tannagasheva, 36.
She fled Russia in 2018 with her husband and two sons after years of surveillance by Center E, the anti-extremism police department, and interrogations by FSB, Russia’s main intelligence service.
“Authorities call us freaks and enemies although we simply wanted them to follow the law. We didn’t commit any crimes, and simply asked for access to our hometown, to save the graveyard where our forefathers are buried,” she says with indignation.
Sibuglemet’s press service did not reply to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
In the Kemerovo region, Siberia, Russia, the Shor Indigenous people protested against the expansion of coal mining [File: Ilya Naymushin/Reuters]
Controlling activists
Officials and businesses easily dismiss the concerns and needs of the Indigenous nations citing efforts of Western NGOs advocating for communities to harm Russia’s “national interests” and strategic security.
“Foreign NGOs boost inter-ethnic tensions and extremism by promoting pro-Western liberal values, separatist sentiments, and fake information about the alleged abuse of rights of small Indigenous nations,” Nikolay Patrushev, head of Russia’s Security Council, said in May.
Boris Nevzorov, a former top official in Kamchatka, proposed in 2014 to restrict the fishing rights of the peninsula’s six Indigenous nations and claimed that they use “American funds” to stoke separatism.
“But the real reason is simple – Boris Nevzorov has a large fishing business, he accumulates fishing quotas and areas, wants to take them away from the Indigenous communities,” says activist Berezhkov.
Nevzorov, who currently serves as Kamchatka senator in Moscow, could not be reached for comment.
Indigenous nations face depleting fish resources and growing competition with the fishing company, Ustkamchatskryba, that Nevzorov still owns, and poachers protected by corrupt officials, Berezhkov says.
“Kamchatka’s Indigenous people are in a sad situation when it comes to fishing,” he says.
In 2020, the FSB started an online registry of each Indigenous person to monitor their rights to hunt and fish based on whether they live in the tundra or in urban centres.
The registry is also designed to identify and prevent “extremism”, which is punishable by up to 20 years in jail. Community leaders claim this step is aimed at intimidating and threatening activism.
“It is created to fully control the activists,” Danilov says.
Leaders have lambasted the registry because Indigenous people must prove their ethnic background and often cannot use the registry’s online services because they lack internet access or do not know how to use computers.
“With this registry, you will divide our people – [urban] intellectuals from the tundra people, children from parents, retirees from their grandchildren, wives from husbands,” Gennady Shchukin of the Arctic community of Turkic-speaking Dolgans told the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in 2020.
In 2020, the Nenets autonomous region, home to some 40,000 Nenets reindeer herders whose lands face the Arctic Ocean, was the only district in Russia to vote against a constitutional reform that would allow Putin to stay in power until 2036 [File: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency]
Small victories
At times, collective Indigenous dissent has been able to stand up to the Kremlin’s well-oiled propaganda machine.
The 40,000-strong Nenets reindeer herders form the largest of the “small nations” whose lands face the Arctic Ocean and contain nine-tenths of Russia’s natural gas.
After the Kremlin announced plans to merge their autonomy with the neighbouring Arkhangelsk region, it became Russia’s only federal district that voted against the 2020 nullification of Putin’s presidential terms that lets him stay in power until 2036.
The Kremlin scrapped the plans.
In November, dozens of community leaders and activists wrote an open letter to Elon Musk, who has said his Tesla company needs more nickel for electric car batteries.
“We are respectfully requesting that you do not buy any nickel, copper or other products of Norilsk Nickel” until it accesses the damage caused by its mining operations and a giant diesel fuel spill in the northern peninsula of Taymyr, the letter said.
Saami activist Danilov, who co-signed the letter, says it forced Norilsk Nickel to declare that it would go “green” by modernising their equipment to reduce environmental impact and emissions.
But Danilov believes the declaration is nothing but greenwashing.
The taiga, the largest forest in the world, is home to Indigenous communities who have faced pressure from various development interests [File: Ilya Naymushin/Reuters]
Continued resistance
In its pursuit of resources and profits, the Kremlin and its business allies follow the logic of czarist-era colonisers whose conquest of Siberia, Alaska and a chunk of California (both sold to the United States in the 1800s) were driven by their quest for the fur of sables, foxes, ermines, otters and other animals, says Johannes Rohr, an expert on Indigenous affairs in Russia and project coordinator for the Institute for Ecology and Action Anthropology, a German NGO.
Known as “soft gold”, fur played a role in Russia’s exports and economy similar to today’s fossil fuels, he says. Cossacks, fur traders and czarist troops conquered Indigenous lands in ways that resemble the European colonisation of the Americas.
They crushed the resistance with firearms – while the Indigenous people had nothing but bows and arrows and spears. They imposed taxes on fur and introduced Orthodox Christianity – along with infectious diseases and alcoholism.
These days, the Kremlin sees any resistance to the development of resources on Indigenous lands as an existential threat, Rohr says.
“Back then, fur was collected from Indigenous peoples as tribute, and today, most oil is extracted in ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples. So, I guess, there is the idea that this [resistance] threatens Russia’s economic backbone,” says Rohr, who was barred in 2018 from visiting Russia for 50 years after a series of critical reports.
Communist Moscow gave Indigenous people university quotas and created collective cooperatives that specialised in fishing, hunting and animal husbandry that often destroyed traditional ways of life, annihilated property rights and restructured their communities.
They also purged or executed Indigenous elites such as shamans or wealthy reindeer owners, and the new elites were educated in “state-oriented” universities, Rohr says.
“Most of the Indigenous elites existing today, including the opposition-minded ones, are entirely state-oriented, their primary identity is that of Russian citizens, and there is no stable collective identity of Indigenous peoples” seen in countries like Peru or the US, Rohr says.
Despite this mindset, Indigenous activists confront the Kremlin in a David-versus-Goliath way – and some believe to improve the situation, Russia will have to live up to international standards of observing Indigenous rights.
“We will need to strive to build a system that will make possible the observation of Indigenous rights,” says Sulyandziga.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
Armed with apps, Gen Z dives into the dizzy world of investing
There's a new generation of investors in town: they're young, they get their tips on YouTube, and they're armed with apps that make the stock markets more accessible than ever before. From Nigeria to India, Gen Z are flocking to homegrown investment apps.
Dahunsi Oyedele, Nigerian investor, shares his experience.
"You can get started, run your account and start trading in less than 10 minutes. It's the same thing with several other apps like that. So, they make it easier for you. And again, especially for crypto-currencies, you can easily transact, you can easily make transactions overseas. So instead of having to go to the bank, and then queueing, they say maybe you want a domiciliary account, instead of all that, just get a crypto-currency exchange, open it, start using USDT and you can send money anywhere."
- About eNaira -
The country's economic hub Lagos has long been known for its hustle and celebration of success, but the weakness of the naira currency has put extra pressure on youths to make cash as the cost of living has rocketed.
Nigerians have flocked to local apps such as Trove and Risevest which allow them to invest in US stocks, widely seen as a means of protecting wealth as the naira nightmare continues.
Oyedele, Nigerian investor (male, 23 years old, English):
"There isn't much use for that in Nigeria (eNaira, Nigeria's new digital currency) because a CBDC (central bank-backed digital currencies, ed.) has to work on internet infrastructure and in a country where just a little over half of the population has access to stable internet, then your CBDC isn’t going to be useful... " Dahunsi further added.
Worldwide, the new arrivals are largely young. India's Upstox, an online stock trading says more than 80 percent of its users are 35 or under, a figure matched by Nigeria's Bamboo (83 percent)."
Trading apps have lowered the barriers to entry for youngsters in part by offering fractional trade.
A share in Amazon, for instance, is currently worth more than $3,000 -- unaffordable for the average Gen Z or slightly older millennial. But a small fraction of that share might be within reach, particularly on an app that charges zero commission.
Tupac Shakur exhibition opens in Los Angeles A touring exhibition dedicated to American rapper and actor Tupac Shakur opened this Friday in Los Angeles. The exhibition "Wake Me When I'm Free" explores the life and legacy of the artist considered to be amongst the most prolific in hip-hop of his generation.
Tupac Shakur died in 1996 at the age of 25 years old.
"We really wanted to be able to give context to who Tupac was, preconceived notions. Twenty five years of media, 30 years of media shows one side, as we know, as I speak to the media. But there's such a deeper meaning in who he was. Not only his lyrics and his poetry, but who he was as a man and the things that he was speaking about both in writing poetry as a child, the poetry that become songs as a young man, and obviously his legacy since his passing 25 years ago. We built this space really as a way to honor him and what he means as a true revolutionary spirit", said Arron Saxe, president of Kinfolk Management who is working with the Shakur estate.
The exhibition also features a space dedicated to Tupac's mother, Afeni Shakur, a former Black Panther who inspired the work of her son. She died in 2016.
"Yes, we're hoping that people can walk his life in his shoes. You walk through his mother's life, which again, when giving context to who he is, you have to explain who his mother was. So you walk through her gallery and you get to his childhood and you get to see the beginnings of where he starts to write his poetry. And you get to the chaos of two and a half years of the craziness of his career with not only the music, but the movies that he was in. Get a glimpse into his work in the studio and the music there. Get to see that creative process", added Arron Saxe.
The exhibition contains handwritten lyrics, poetry, music and clothing as well as items related to hs campaigning as an activist.
SYRIA
The Axis of Torture was taught by a Nazi and is likely to grow
Torture is an evil as old as conflict, and there is much more to it than the sort of thing usually seen in the movies. It is, sadly, a skill that appears to be passed down from generation to generation, and is widespread.
Individuals with such skills are not only found in criminal gangs and non-state militias, but are also employed by governments that the international community regards as legitimate representatives of the people. And just as some states specialise in the production of certain products or dominate particular industries, others specialise in torture.
Syria is one such state. Torture has been instrumental in President Bashar Al-Assad's quashing of the revolution which broke out in 2011. Statistics showed last year that over 14,000 Syrians have been tortured to death by the regime over the past decade. According to a report by the Syrian Network of Human Rights (SNHR) in 2019, it is estimated that at least 1.2 million Syrians have been detained and tortured by the regime during the same period.
The horrific extent to which the regime will go in this respect was documented in the 55,000 photographs of Syrians tortured to death which were smuggled out of the country by a former military photographer in 2014, codenamed "Caesar".
This systematic campaign of arrest, detention and torture is arguably one of the reasons for the protests which led to the ongoing conflict. People should not have to put up with being carted off to an overcrowded prison and tortured for months on end; nor should their fears of it ever happening be very real and justified.
Much has been written about the crimes, atrocities and violations of human rights committed by the Assad regime, but light is rarely shed on how it acquired such a reputation. The fact is that state torturers in Syria learnt their odious trade from a former Nazi from Austria.
Alois Brunner was a member of the infamous SS, and a leading figure of the Nazi movement in Vienna before World War Two. He was responsible for the capture and transportation of an estimated 128,000 Jews all across Europe, sending them to concentration camps, one of which he commanded in France. According to Adolf Eichmann, one of the most prominent SS officers behind the Nazi Holocaust, Brunner was his "best man".
Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Americans helped post-war Germany to form a new intelligence agency. Headed by former Nazi spy chief Reinhard Gehlen, it apparently recruited thousands of SS and Nazi veterans, of which Brunner was one. He escaped detection by the international community by working as a driver for the US military.
Brunner left Germany in 1954, going first to Rome, then Cairo, before ending up in Damascus where he became an advisor to the government. There, it is said that he taught torture and interrogation techniques to the Syrian intelligence services throughout the rule of President Bashar Al-Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez Al-Assad.
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus, Syria on 11 February 2016 [JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images]
Having survived two assassination attempts by Israeli agents, as a result of which he lost an eye and the fingers of his left hand, Brunner was guarded by Syrian agents. The regime in Damascus repeatedly refused to extradite him to stand trial as a Nazi war criminal.
The date of Brunner's death is uncertain. Some reports claim that he died in 2001 after spending his last years neglected and locked up in a Damascus basement living on army rations; others say that he died in 2010. Nevertheless, he was a mass murderer who continued to kill people long after he fled from Europe by passing on his skillset to torturers employed by the Assad regime.
In the SNHR report mentioned above, at least 72 methods of torture used by the regime against detainees are documented. Ranging from physical and psychological to sexual violence, it is a catalogue of the degradation of human dignity.
One former prisoner of the Syrian regime, Omar Alshoghre, spent three years being tortured. He confirmed to Middle East Monitor that, "Most of the torture is systematic and well-organised to break the prisoners physically and mentally. I believe it's taught to break prisoners in a way that makes them never to try to attack the guards, and if they survive, they survive filled with fear."
Systematic torture is not limited to Syria; it is found in other states across the region. In September last year, Amnesty International released a report detailing torture methods used by the Iranian authorities against protestors. They look eerily similar to those used by Iran's ally Syria.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also been accused of using systematic torture both at home and abroad in places such as Yemen, where its forces run secret prisons in which physical and sexual torture is carried out. Another example is Egypt, in which torture has long been on a scale similar to that in Syria.
Saudi Arabia is also reported to have tortured activists, critics and African migrants. The Kingdom's use of torture does not appear to be as systematic as the other states mentioned.
Even opposition groups in north-west Syria which are supposed to be "Islamists" have used torture against critics in ways that are reminiscent of the regime that they oppose. This was seen in the repeated arrest and torture by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group of the recently-released British aid worker Tauqir "Tox" Shariff, who was subject to techniques such as the infamous tyre and cable beating.
In Israel, Palestinian prisoners are tortured routinely, even children. Indeed, torture is legally sanctioned in the "only democracy in the Middle East".
What we have now in the Middle East is an Axis of Torture, taught by a Nazi and likely to grow. Although torture is used by numerous states and even more intelligence agencies around the world, Western nations often use Middle Eastern states to do the dirty work for them. They are not known for having systematic torture sites within their own jurisdiction on the sort of scale that we see elsewhere, but so-called extraordinary rendition has been used to "circumvent laws on interrogation, detention and torture".
It was revealed last year that the UAE had been training Syrian intelligence agents in a joint programme between the two states, which likely included interrogation techniques, a euphemism for torture. It would not be surprising if it is soon revealed that more of such "cooperation" between these governments has taken place or will in the near future.
None of the governments in the Middle East appear to have hands clean of the taint of torture. All are allies of prominent states within the international community.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
One surrendered Hong Kong hamster tests Covid positive as city lockdown grows
While a handful of hamsters had already tested positive for the virus, this latest case is the first involving a hamster in the care of a pet-owner that had tested positive.
A man with personal protective equipment sits inside a vehicle in front of a temporarily closed pet shop after govt announced to euthanize around 2,000 hamsters in the city after finding evidence for the first time of possible animal-to-human transmission of Covid-19 in Hong Kong, China. (Photo: Reuters)
Hong Kong authorities said on Sunday one hamster surrendered to authorities by pet-owners had tested positive for the Covid-19 virus and that over 2,200 hamsters had been culled as the city grappled to contain an outbreak.
On Tuesday, officials ordered the killing of hamsters from dozens of pet shops after tracing a coronavirus outbreak to a worker at a shop and asked people to surrender any bought on or after Dec. 22.
While a handful of hamsters had already tested positive for the virus, this latest case is the first involving a hamster in the care of a pet-owner that had tested positive. Despite a public outcry against the hamster crackdown, authorities urged pet-owners to continue to hand over their tiny furry pets given burgeoning health risks.
"(The government) strongly advises members of the public again to surrender ... as soon as possible their hamsters purchased in local pet shops on or after December 22, 2021 for humane dispatch," the government said in a statement. Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam earlier told reporters that she understood "pet owners are unhappy" with the killings, but said the biggest priority was to control the outbreak.
The government described the outcry as "irrational". Thousands of people have offered to adopt unwanted hamsters. Some scientists and veterinary authorities have said there is no evidence that animals play a major role in human contagion with the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, officials have warned that Covid-19 infections could be growing exponentially in the congested residential area of Kwai Chung on the Kowloon peninsula, as a second building in the district with two thousands residents was locked down on Saturday for five days.
More than 35,000 residents in over a dozen buildings in the area were also ordered to take Covid-19 tests, with Lam herself visiting the area on Sunday.
Lam urged people to avoid gatherings ahead of next week's Lunar New Year holidays to try to contain the highly infectious Omicron variant.
The situation is testing Hong Kong's "zero Covid-19" strategy focused on eliminating the disease, with schools and gyms already shut, restaurants closing at 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) and air travel with many major hubs severed or severely disrupted.
Some companies have begun to enact contingency measures.
UBS Group AG (UBSG.S) said in a note to its Hong Kong staff reviewed by Reuters that it had "decided to move to work-from-home operations for all except a minimum number of staff who have essential tasks to be completed in the office" given the Omicorn outbreak.
A UBS spokesman declined to comment on the memo.
On Friday, officials shut down the first Kwai Chung building after more than 20 cases were linked to it, with food delivered from outside three times a day and mass testing underway.
© Provided by Edmonton Journal Edmonton Institution is dealing with mounting tensions as a result of staffing shortages.
A truck loaded with coal in the town of Kazas, western Siberia, where the Indigenous Shor people fought against the development of new coal mines [Courtesy of Nelly Slupachik]
Members of the Udege Indigenous nation stand next to a large plush toy of a Siberian tiger, a protected animal [Courtesy of Pavel Sulyandziga]
Activist Dmitry Berezhkov, second from right, of the Itelmen nation at the 2002 Alaska Federation of Natives conference now lives in Norway where he was granted asylum [Courtesy of Dmitry Berezhkov]
A sacred place for the Khanty people in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region in western Siberia has been polluted by drilling for crude oil [File: Alexander Demianchuk/Reuters]
In the Kemerovo region, Siberia, Russia, the Shor Indigenous people protested against the expansion of coal mining [File: Ilya Naymushin/Reuters]
In 2020, the Nenets autonomous region, home to some 40,000 Nenets reindeer herders whose lands face the Arctic Ocean, was the only district in Russia to vote against a constitutional reform that would allow Putin to stay in power until 2036 [File: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency]
The taiga, the largest forest in the world, is home to Indigenous communities who have faced pressure from various development interests [File: Ilya Naymushin/Reuters]
