Paralysed planes: Should airline bailouts come with climate conditions?

Issued on: 20/04/2020

DOWN TO EARTH © FRANCE 24
By:Mairead DUNDASFollow|Marina BERTSCH|Valérie DEKIMPE

As Covid-19 takes hold across the globe, and global demand for air travel falls 80 percent, the aviation industry is in freefall. The International Air Transport Association predicts half of all airlines will be bankrupt by June if governments don't step in with loans and bailouts. Climate campaigners, however, believe the pause in flying is an opportunity to build a cleaner air transport system.

Magdalena Heuwieser is a climate activist and co-founder of the Stay Grounded Network. The group's current campaign #SavePeopleNotPlanes asks that any financial aid come with conditions.

Heuwieser told FRANCE 24: "Airlines must agree to finally pay their fair share of taxes. Right now, airlines don't pay fuel tax and there is no VAT on plane tickets. We also demand to stop air miles programmes which incentivise frequent flying."

There is some hope the Covid-19 outbreak could lead to long-term changes in flying behaviour. With business trips cancelled, people are learning to communicate using video conference technology, raising the question of whether staff need to fly as frequently in the future.

Single-use plastic on the rise again

Meanwhile, one industry that's been less affected by Covid-19 is the business of plastic. Single-use plastics are on the rise again, as supermarket chains and local governments take steps to avoid contamination via the sharing and re-use of objects.

Plastic industry lobbies are meanwhile taking advantage of contagion fears and pressuring governments to ease bans. That's despite limited evidence single-use plastics are safer than other materials.

Coronavirus pandemic driving tech solutions in sub-Saharan Africa

The coronavirus pandemic is posing a major challenge in Africa. With not much help expected from donors, the continent's tech geniuses are inventing quick and cheap solutions to curb the spread of the virus.


Innovation and figuring things out is nothing new to Africa, a continent where people are used to making do with limited resources. From homemade farm implements and vehicles found in dusty South African barns, to a boy building a windmill out of scraps of junk in rural Malawi, to the popular mobile money payment system M-Pesa, people across Africa know how to get creative.

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic continues to compound the continent's limited resources — and not much help is expected from Western donors, whose economies have been derailed by the outbreak. Now many startup hubs across the continent are ramping up innovative solutions, even for the most basic and temporary of needs.

Read more: World Bank: 'No African country can face this crisis alone'

Ventilators

COVID-19 attacks the human respiratory system. People with severe symptoms struggle to breathe, and need artificial ventilation. But across Africa, there are very few intensive care units outfitted with these machines.

Read more: How do ventilators work?

It's not just an African problem: industrialized nations like the United States and Germany have ordered car manufacturers to produce ventilators en masse. With demand outstripping production, countries like South Africa, Ghana and Uganda have started looking into producing their own ventilators.


This ventilator prototype is currently being tested at Makerere University in Uganda

Vincent Ssembatya, a professor at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, teamed up with another success story, car manufacturer Kiira Motors, with the only goal of making affordable ventilators to supply the country's cash-strapped health care system. "Everyone is demanding the same product, so Africa has a very small chance," Ssembatya told DW.

A team at the Academic City University College in Accra, Ghana has developed a prototype, but is currently facing financial constraints to purchase more components for the device to be ready for testing and certification.

In Nigeria, nonprofit venture capitalist Africa Business Angel Network is working on another prototype, while a local auto manufacturer, Innoson Motors, has sidelined its production to manufacture ventilators. According to the blood delivery service LifeBank, Nigeria has about 100 ventilators owned by private health facilities.

Read more: COVID-19: Africa's clerics send mixed messages to followers

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the government-controlled National Ventilator Project plans make 10,000 machines by the end of June, using locally manufactured materials or those already available.

Mobile apps and web solutions

Following its virtual hackathons last week, the World Health Organization offered up to $20,000 (€18,400) in seed funds to finalists with digital solutions to curb the pandemic.

The winning team from Ghana developed a tool that maps test cases similar to the Johns Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center. The difference, however, is their screening tool can classify the cases according to risk and submit the data to national authorities.


Mobile apps, like Zimbabwe's Fresh In A Box, have played a key role in Africa's response

In Nigeria, the on-demand health information platform Wellvis has created an easy-to-use app called COVID-19 Triage Tool. The free app allows users to self-asses their coronavirus risk category based on their symptoms and exposure history. Depending on the answers, a user is offered remote medical advice or referred to a nearby health care facility.

The South African government is using WhatsApp to run an interactive chatbot which can answer common queries about COVID-19 myths, symptoms and treatment. It has reached several million users in five different languages.

Also in South Africa, in an effort to curb fake news and quell panic, two former University of Cape Town students have created Coronapp, a tool that centralizes information flow about the pandemic.

Ghana's e-health startup Redbird launched a COVID-19 tracker in late March. The browser-based app enables users to self-report symptoms without needing to visit a health care facility. CcHub, Africa's largest tech incubator, has also launched a huge fund and open call for more tech projects.

Mobile money transfer

The use of mobile phone-based money transfer services is not uncommon in the African continent. Kenya's mobile money platform M-Pesa is used by more than 20 million people. Telecoms giant Safaricom, which owns M-Pesa has waived fees on transfers of under 1,000 shillings ($10/€9), while Airtel has also waived charges on all payments through its platform Airtel Money.

Read more: Six ways digitalization is helping Africa's environment

Ghana's central bank has asked providers to waive fees on transactions of 100 cedi ($18) and eased registrations requirements, allowing citizens to open more than one account.

Food delivery services

National lockdowns in sub-Saharan Africa mean people are struggling to put food on the table.

Lockdowns are meant to stop COVID-19 from spreading. But they also stop practically everything else, including food deliveries to traditional markets. In many southern African cities, markets are key to supplying locals with daily supplies — unlike in many European countries, where people can stock up on food.

A Zimbabwean startup, Fresh In A Box, is delivering fresh produce door to door, directly from farmers. The company runs off an app, and the venerable three-wheeled motorcycles deliver the food boxes. This helps reduce the risk of infection and prevents people from starving.

In Uganda, the Market Garden app lets vendors sell and deliver fruits and vegetables to customers as restrictions to promote social distancing have been enforced. Developed by the Institute for Social Transformation, a Ugandan charity, it reduces bustling crowds in market areas by allowing women to sell their goods from their homes through the app. Motorcycle taxis deliver the goods to customers.

The African e-commerce giant Jumia has offered governments use of its last-mile delivery network for distribution of supplies to health care facilities and workers.

Frank Yiga in Uganda and Privilege Musvanhiri in Zimbabwe contributed to this report.


SOUTH AFRICA: IMPRESSIONS FROM A COUNTRY IN LOCKDOWN.
Johannesburg is staying home
At an apartment building in Hillbrow, an inner city suburb of Johannesburg, residents looked on as police on the streets tried to enforce the nationwide lockdown

Did coronavirus really originate in a Chinese laboratory?

Did the novel coronavirus escape from a Chinese lab that researches bats? Though the early origins of the virus remain unclear, some Chinese scientists' work is helping develop a vaccine. DW examines the facts.



Researchers and journalists have been speculating for months about how the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, emerged in the city of Wuhan, China. Initial indications pointed to a so-called wet market where fish was sold along with wild animals.

Now, however, Western media outlets are reporting that the virus possibly originated in the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Read more: From bats to pangolins, how do viruses reach us?

Similar theories began making the rounds on social media sites as early as January, mostly in connection to conspiracy theories referencing secret Chinese military labs developing bioweapons. At the time, The Washington Post newspaper brushed off theories that the virus was manmade, citing experts who assessed that its characteristics pointed to a naturally occurring virus and not a manmade mutation.

That assessment was confirmed by a team of researchers led by Kristian G. Andersen, who published a finding stating as much in the March 17 edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

Another factor that would seem to corroborate that assessment is the fact that the lab's work is not secret, and that much of its research on various bat viruses has been published in professional journals. Western partners have also been involved in a number of research projects conducted in Wuhan. One of those partners was the University of Texas' Galveston National Laboratory. Britain's Daily Mail newspaper has reported that the US government also provided financial support for research at the lab in Wuhan.

Where did the first infection come from?

But despite all these indications to the contrary, it can't be said for certain that the pandemic didn't accidentally enter the world via the Wuhan lab.

As early as the end of January, the magazine Science published an article questioning the official theory that the virus had been transmitted from an animal to a human at the wet market. And another study published in the medical journal The Lancet concluded that 13 of the first 41 people diagnosed with COVID-19 had no contact whatsoever to the Wuhan market.

Moreover, it is likely that "patient zero" — the first person to have the disease — was infected as early as November 2019. Thus, the earliest cases had no connection to the market, as Daniel Lucey, a professor for infectious diseases at Georgetown University Medical Center in the US, told Science Speaks in an interview in late January.


Chinese researcher Shi Zhengli found traces of the coronavirus in the excrement of a horseshoe bat

Are researchers to blame?

But how did the virus make its way to the Wuhan market? Shi Zhengli, a professor of virology at the Wuhan Institute who published findings on bat viruses in a February issue of Nature, may have the answer. In a story on the professor that ran in the South China Morning Post newspaper on February 6, she told of how she had traveled to caves across 28 different Chinese provinces to collect bat feces.

As was also reported in magazines like Scientific American, she used those samples to create a comprehensive archive of bat viruses. In early 2019, she and her colleagues published an extensive study on bat coronaviruses. The report noted that the horseshoe bat was a vector for coronavirus strains similar to the one that would later appear in Wuhan.

It was her team's work that made it possible to sequence and publish the virus' genome so quickly, presenting a historically unprecedented opportunity for speedily coming up with a vaccine.

Still, over the past several weeks Shi Zhengli has been relentlessly attacked on social media sites in Asia and around the world. That has prompted a public defense from her New York-based research partner Peter Daszak, the head of the EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO focused on scientific research and pandemic prevention.
Speaking with the US public radio program Democracy Now!, Daszak said the theory that the virus found its way out of the Wuhan lab was "pure baloney." He said he had personally worked with the lab for 15 years and that it does not store SARS-CoV-2 viruses on its premises.

"It's really a politicization of the origins of a pandemic, and it's really unfortunate," he said of stories implying any connection between the lab and the outbreak.

It is notable, however, that the Chinese government recently began censoring stories dealing with those origins. When confronted with the accusations printed in the Daily Mail, the Chinese Embassy in London reacted angrily, calling them "groundless." The embassy also released a statement saying that research aimed at finding the origins of COVID-19 was still underway.

BATS: SECRETS OF THE FLYING MAMMAL
Not just rare cave-dwellers
From Australia's bush to Mexico's Pacific coast — hanging in trees, perched high up on mountains, hidden in caves, rock crevices, and rooftops—bats are the most widely distributed mammal on Earth, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica. Making up about 20% of all mammals, these nocturnal creatures are the second most common mammal after rodents, and the only one capable of sustained flight.

Virus cuts through Mexican factories snubbing shutdown

20/04/2020

Commuters walk past a sign warning about the COVID-19 at San Ysidro port of entry, in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico Guillermo Arias AFP/File

Mexico City (AFP)

When Ana Lilia Gonzalez fell ill with flu-like symptoms, she went to the infirmary at her factory in a Mexican city on the US border, where the doctor told her she could carry on working. Two weeks later, she was dead.

Her name has been added to the growing list of COVID-19 deaths among factory workers in Ciudad Juarez, located in the poor, densely populated northern region of Chihuahua.

"A fortnight ago, she was fine. At the infirmary, they didn't want to send her home until her condition got worse," one of her colleagues, who has since quarantined herself because of the illness, told AFP by phone.

The 24-year-old, who declined to reveal her name because she feared being stigmatized, has developed a cough and has lost her sense of taste -- two of the symptoms of the coronavirus. She said that she had recently attended a wedding with Gonzalez, who was 45.

Syncreon, where both women worked repairing ATM machines for US banks, was deemed a non-essential company and ordered by the government to suspend work at the end of March.

- Cheap labor pool -

However, thousands of Mexicans continued last week to work there and in similar "maquiladoras" -- factories set up mainly by US companies to avail of cheap labor -- all along the 3,100-kilometer (2,000-mile) border with the United States.

Other countries have forced non-essential industries to shut down to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

In Juarez alone, among the 160 largest maquiladoras -- which together employ 300,000 workers -- nearly 30 factories deemed non-essential by the government were still operating last Friday, according to Chihuahua Labor Secretary Ana Luisa Herrera.

So far, at least 13 workers in the city's factories have died from COVID-19, local health officials reported.

Herrera said that she complained to the federal government about factories ignoring the shutdown order. But inspectors to enforce the shutdown are scarce on the ground. Only 18 have been assigned to the task of monitoring industrial activity across the state.

According to official figures, Mexico had more than 8,200 COVID-19 cases late Sunday, and more than 680 people had died.

"The northern Mexican states are going to be the most affected by the pandemic," warned senior government health official Hugo Lopez-Gatell, adding that "some companies are continuing to operate" despite the restrictions.

Lear Corporation, a company that produces auto seats in Ciudad Juarez, said in a statement last week: "We learned of the hospitalization of some of our employees at our operation in Ciudad Juarez and the regrettable death of several of them."

But Susana Prieto, a labor rights lawyer in Ciudad Juarez, said that in general, factory owners cared little for their workers. She accused them of lying to their employees by claiming they were on a list of companies authorized to continue working during the shutdown.

"The owners of capital do not care about the lives of their employees. They know they have a ready supply of cheap labor at their disposal," said Prieto.

- 'General psychosis' -

During the past week, workers increasingly worried about the spread of COVID-19 held protests at several factories to demand greater protection in the workplace.

One such protest forced a halt at Syncreon, which has ordered workers to turn up at the factory again on Monday.

Employers have defended the need to keep industry running.

"All the factories -- even the essential ones -- are going to have to close soon because of the general psychosis and the nervousness of the staff. The employees simply don't want to work anymore," local National Maquiladora Industry Council official Pedro Chavira told AFP.

"We blame the industry when the enemy here is the virus," he said.

Chavira declined to comment on what happened at Syncreon but insisted that most of the companies that continue to operate have taken measures to mitigate the spread of the virus: offering clean-up facilities, distributing protective masks and sanitizing gels, checking temperatures and slowing production in order to reduce the number of on-site employees needed.

But at Syncreon, the reality is different, according to factory technician Alexis Flores, 22, who was participated in last week's protests.

"Until this week, they gave us masks that we had to sew on the elastic ourselves, temperature checks were never done, and I don't think they really disinfected. Everything is very dirty," said Flores.

Syncreon declined to comment.

Unemployed and now in confinement, his main fear is that he could infect his father, who suffers from hypertension.

Flores said at least five of his colleagues died, all of whom displayed COVID-19 symptoms.

Most of them were under 50 years old, like Ana Lilia Gonzalez, who earned $7.50 a day.

In Europe, Covid-19 puts idea of universal income back into welfare debate
Issued on: 19/04/2020

Alessandro, a homeless man, asks for alms as a woman wearing a protective face mask gives him money at the entrance to a supermarket in Barcelona, Spain on March 24, 2020. © Nacho Doce, Reuters

Text by:Melissa Barra

Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, Spain is the first European country to lay the foundation for universal income. The health crisis has also reopened the debate about a living wage or unconditional living allowance in France and elsewhere.


Before the pandemic, the question of universal income was at the heart of the agreement between Spain’s ruling socialist party and the radical left-wing Podemos party to form a coalition. Faced with the health and social crisis of the country’s Covid-19 outbreak, the government announced the gradual implementation of a minimum subsistence income: a safety net of a yet-to-be-determined amount for all families with an income of less than €450.The measure will take effect in May. “Many families don’t have the means to refill their refrigerators right now,” said Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s minister of social rights and Podemos’s leader, to the Spanish press on April 16.
Unemployment figures have reached record levels in Spain since the beginning of the outbreak: according to the ministry of social security, 900,000 people have lost work between mid-March and April 1, which surpasses the number from the 2008 financial crisis. “The minimum living wage will be permanent, as provided for in the coalition agreement,” said José Luis Escrivá, the ministry’s head, on the Spanish channel Cadena SER.

“From the start, universal income has been one of Podemos’s campaign themes. Today, we are somewhat in a minimum income model, which is intended to cover the essential needs of life. They are not the same thing,” explained Joan Cortinas-Munoz, a researcher at the Centre of Sociology at Sciences Po Paris and a specialist in Spanish social politics, to FRANCE 24.

Cortinas-Munoz also points out that Spanish regions, which enjoy administrative autonomy, have established their own minimum allowance programs, with the requirement that recipients are looking for work, since the late 1980s. The Spanish government has announced that its universal income program will complement these regional systems.

The universal income debate

Will the measure suffice? “In some regions of Spain, the amounts of money in these programs are ridiculous. They provide around €500 for a single person, while the poverty line for an individual is about €750,” Cortinas-Munoz said.

“What’s more, this health crisis will be an economic crisis. The worst since World War Two. With soaring unemployment, many people will face a social welfare system that’s been hardened by 30 years of reforms. Many will be excluded from accessing it,” he said.

Numerous voices are calling for a universal income mechanism. Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey announced a donation of $1 billion to help manage the pandemic and the post-lockdown period by establishing a “universal basic income”. In Germany, the designer Tonia Merz started a petition that gained more than 460,000 signatures and was sent to the Bundestag. In the UK, 170 members of parliament called for unconditional aid for all for the duration of the Covid-19 crisis, but Finance Minister Rishi Sunak dismissed the idea.

In an open letter circulated on Easter Sunday, Pope Francis wrote in favor of a universal basic wage to “honor the essential and noble work” of low-income workers. “Street vendors, scrap merchants, stall keepers, small farmers, construction workers, garment workers, various caregivers” are “totally invisible in the system”, said the head of the Catholic Church.

In France, rethinking the post-crisis period

In France, the idea of universal basic income is not new. But it is newly resonant as the health crisis has demonstrated the vulnerability of workers in precarious jobs. “Those without access to partial unemployment or retirement benefits, like deliverers for digital platforms such as Deliveroo, have no financial guarantees if they stop working to protect their health,” said Nicole Teke, the spokeswoman for the Mouvement Français pour un Revenu de Base (French Movement for Basic Income, or MFRB), an organisation created in 2013.

“There are holes in social security, we want a real security base for everyone,” the activist, who welcomes Spain’s initiative to install a living wage, told FRANCE 24.

Universal income could be at the core of a philosophical debate about a post-Covid-19 model for society “for reasserting the value of essential jobs, such as home healthcare aide, which are the most poorly paid, and also to put an end to constant suspicion towards the unemployed within the administrations that pay social benefits in France,” she said.

Economic recovery could hamper social justice

In June 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron launched a dialogue around a universal activity income to merge welfare, housing allowances and the state’s activity bonus. According to its contours, which are still unclear, beneficiaries will commit to not refusing more than two job offers. “Universal income, as we understand it, will not be implemented by the current government,” said Trek.

“In the crisis scenario before us, I don’t see how a government could embark on a logic of universal income, with the pressure of financial markets, banks and international financial institutions on countries’ budgets,” Cortinas-Munoz said.

In its forecast of April 15, the International Monetary Fund’s expected Spain’s public debt to increase to 113 percent from 95 percent in 2019. In France, where more than nine million employees are on partial unemployment, the debt is expected to jump 17 points to 115 percent of gross domestic product in 2020.

"There are two opposing visions of society,” Trek said. “That which wants to take this opportunity brought by the crisis for rethinking our system on the basis of social justice, and that which wants to save businesses and the economy, tightening the belt.”

Why Germany can't quit its racist Native American problem

More than 40,000 Germans participate in "Indian hobbyism" — reductive reenactments of Native life in the past. This form of appropriation is excused as well-meaning affection as Native voices are systematically silenced.

Across the country, Germans spent the past week celebrating Carnival, known for its parades, drinking, and colorful costumes ahead of the Lenten fast. There is a pervasive attitude that for these five days, Germans can shed their rigid cultural norms and adopt an "anything goes" policy.

Every year, pictures of some of the more racist trappings of Carnival, such as the use of blackface or "Chinese" costumes complete with conical hat, tend to face backlash both from mainstream culture and the country’s growing Asian and Afro-German communities.

However, the same cannot be said of the abundance of "Native American" costumes, a wildly popular choice in a country that has had a robust infatuation with Native stereotypes since the 1800s, made more popular by the works of beloved writer Karl May and his Winnetou character, the archetypal 'noble savage, 'and the 20th-century films depicting the character.

With no significant Indigenous population to resist these stereotypes, even well-educated and open-minded Germans will defend both the Carnival costumes and Native hobbyism as "honoring" a group of people with whom they have usually never come in contact.

LeAndra Nephin, an Omaha activist living in the UK, explained: "As we only represent less than 2% of the total population in the United States, here in Britain and throughout Europe we experience even greater invisibility."

When asked if such Native hobbyism is indeed a racist fetishization, Nephin noted that "what would be met with uproar in the United States is met with indifference here in Europe. Fetishizing goes unchecked, because there is a lack of representation, education, and awareness."

Stuck in the past
In Germany, storybooks about Native people (always set in the past and usually about Plains nations) are much beloved, and so widespread is the interest that people often consider themselves experts. Hobbyists may spend decades researching a particular nation during a particular time period, dressing in highly accurate handmade costumes and spending entire weeks in the countryside living out their fantasies in like-minded groups. There are also people who refer to themselves as "plastic shamans" who may have spent months or even years learning different Indigenous religion practices and then claim to be healers and spiritual guides.

These practices "relegate us to a historical myth and is a disavowal of the differences," among the hundreds of Indigenous nations in North America, Nephin said.

Shea Vassar, a Cherokee writer, agreed, saying "it places us forever in a historical and mythical context."

"The biggest issue is the overall simplification of our cultures and the erasure inherent in 'playing Indian,' as if we were something mystical like a wizard. It's not like dressing up like an ancient Roman. We still exist."

Nephin agreed, calling cultural misappropration "nostalgia" that functions like a "pick and mix — they highlight the positives but not the oppression. It's very reductive, our modern realities are being erased."

Indeed, Native people are one of the fastest-growing demographics in the United States, with a population of about 5 million people. But in Germany, Indigenous North Americans remain relegated to the past, riding horses and shooting bows and arrows. The limited coverage of modern Native realities in Germany only portrays more up-to-date stereotypes, describing issues related to alcoholism or the hardships of life on some reservations.

Vassar sees this as a larger problem of representation in popular culture, saying that it by and large propagates the idea that Native people exist only in the past. Often, even in the very rare instance that Native characters are played by Indigenous actors, the story takes places in the past. This is of course the case with the Winnetou films (in which the Native characters are played almost exclusively by European and some Middle Eastern actors), the most recent of which came out in 2016.


Winnetou was traditionally played by French actor Pierre Brice, and in the 2016 made-for-TV revival by Albanian Nik Xhelilaj. The chief's daughter character pictured here, Ribanna, was played by German actress Karin Dor. Vassar says the over-sexualization of Native female characters is another painful stereotype that needs to be addressed.

Why Germany? Color-blind racism and trauma

So why is Native cultural misappropriation so much more common in Germany than other nations that do not have a direct connection to the genocide commited against Indigenous North Americans?

D.S. Red Haircrow is an Apache and Cherokee writer, educator, and psychologist who has lived in Germany for 17 years. He recently released the documentary Forget Winnetou: Loving in the Wrong Way, an exploration of the particular psycho-societal issues behind Germany's racist infatuation.

Haircrow puts it down, in part, to Germans fulfilling a desire to return to something they lost when Christianity swept through Europe destroying many ancient pagan traditions, a wish to be close to nature, to be perceived as brave and able to take on the wilderness. It is also indicative, he says, of "a desire to step outside of the problematic issues of their German identity and history."

If that is how the passion began, then why has it continued so long after the end of World War II, when Germany declared that "never again" would it return to racist ideologies?

Many expats across the country note that talking about race in Germany is generally considered taboo. Sociologists say that as a result, a sort of color-blind racism has sprung up and become a widespread phenomenon. In mainstream culture, many people like to declare that they don't see race or religious differences. While this may be well-intentioned or an instinctive reaction to right the wrongs of the past, it has led not only to a silencing of minority voices but to allowing those who consider themselves progressive to take their eye off the ball.



Researchers estimate that between 40,000 and 100,000 people across Germany participate in Native hobbyism in some capacity. Millions more read Native stories, often written by Germans, as children and develop a lifelong interest.
According to Haircrow, there is a deep "lack of understanding of racial categories," because of this.

"An intense effort to prove that they are over racism and anti-Semitism has led to a lot of erasure that is still going on within German society, which creates an even bigger divide between people of color and people of European ancestry. It's made a whole generation believe there is no such thing as race anymore," Haircrow said.

Compounding this issue is a resistance to being told that behavior such as the wearing of "Native headdresses" and the historicizing of a living group of people is harmful and wrong.

"There is an almost hysterical reaction to criticism, because they have been criticized for so long, and subjected to stereotyping themselves as Nazis," Haircrow added, "they think because they have been traumatized, they are allowed to say what they want now."

German history, Haircrow says, has made people compassionate and empathetic, and their interest in Native cultures "is sometimes an honest love and sympathy to our plight...but too often for their own advantage."

For Haircrow, hobbyism and plastic shamanism are "teaching white supremacist behavior in an indirect way," and for Nephin, "a form of modern day colonization, taking our arts, our beliefs, our traditions, and now saying it's a part of your identity too."

So deeply does it become part of the identity of some hobbyists, Haircrow said he has received immense resistance and even death threats from enthusiasts who consider themselves experts on Native traditions and feel he is taking away something they think they deserve to have, and sets them apart from other people.. Furthermore, many people, hobbyists and enthusiasts alike, do not want to travel to North America or engage with real Indigenous groups, lest it shatter their illusions.

A possible end for cultural appropriation

Nephin, Vassar and Haircrow all agree that education, particularly for young people, should be the foundation of a path away from cultural misappropriation and toward more respectful cultural exchange. Nephin and Vassar also stressed the importance of ally-ship from non-Natives, and the need to empower Native voices.

"First, though," Haircrow said, "Germany has to face the truth about itself, which it is so far refusing to do."

Nephin said she is hopeful, as the reaction she gets when she gives talks has been largely positive. "People are becoming more aware that we're not historical relics people want to learn more, want to live in a mutually respectful space."

Vassar believes that programs "putting young Native people behind the camera and the keyboard," might help both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, regardless of location, realize "we have so much going on in our communities right now that people don't even know about."

"There are so many wonderful people in the world," Haircrow said, "but they've been taught so many wrong things and they don't know how to be better. Those are the people that need to be reached, so they can learn it is possible and necessary to improve."

Sacred stone returns to Venezuela after decades in Berlin

The Kueka stone was taken from Venezuela more than two decades ago to be part of a public exhibition in the German capital. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has described the stone as "spiritual treasure."

   

A sacred stone for the indigenous Pemon community arrived in Venezuela on Thursday, more than two decades after it was taken for a public art exhibition in the German capital, Berlin.

Bavarian artist Wolfgang Kraker von Schwarzenfeld removed the so-called Kueka stone from Venezuela in 1998. He claimed that the Venezuelan government had given him permission to use it for an exhibition, saying it would symbolize love.

Von Schwarzenfeld's Global Stones Project brought together five large stones from across the globe, with the others symbolizing awakening, hope, forgiveness and peace.

"I spoke with ministers, indigenous people, managers and the man on the street, and learned about Venezuelans' ambitions and problems," von Schwarzenfeld said. "I filed an application and started the project. South of the Orinoco River, I found a red granite boulder to be the first stone for my project."

Read more: Brazil's Amazon rainforest has become the Wild West for illegal gold miners

'Spiritual treasure'

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday said the sacred stone was a "spiritual and cultural treasure" for the country.

"The Kueka stone begins its journey back to the place it had always been for thousands of years," Maduro said in a televised speech.

The 30-ton (27-metric ton) stone will now be transferred from a Caribbean port to Venezuela's Gran Sabana grasslands region, home to the world's tallest waterfall.

The Pemon community believes the Kueka stone represents the story of two lovers from different tribes who defied the gods to marry, only to be turned to separate stones as punishment. The Kueka stone is described as the Pemons' grandmother.

Germany had returned the stone as a sign of "goodwill and willingness to respect the peoples' cultural rights," according to Venezuelan officials.

Novelist Arundhati Roy claims pandemic exposes India's 'crisis of hatred against Muslims'

The Man Booker Prize winner has said the Indian government is exploiting COVID-19 to ramp up suppression of Muslims, comparing the tactic to one used by the Nazis. The BJP rejected the claim as "false" and "misleading

Arundhati Roy on coronavirus: 'Situation in India is approaching genocidal'
VIDEO AT THE ENDPolitical activist Arundhati Roy accused the Indian government on Friday of exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

She told DW that this alleged strategy on the part of the Hindu nationalist government would "dovetail with this illness to create something which the world should really keep its eyes on," adding that "the situation is approaching genocidal."
"I think what has happened is COVID-19 has exposed things about India that all of us knew," said Roy. "We are suffering, not just from COVID, but from a crisis of hatred, from a crisis of hunger."

India's 1.3 billion people are currently in the midst of a six-week nationwide lockdown. The world's second-most populous nation has so far confirmed 13,835 infections of the novel coronavirus, resulting in 452 deaths, according to figures from the Johns Hopkins Institute. It's often cited as a country where the gap between official numbers and real case numbers could be particularly high.

"This crisis of hatred against Muslims," she continued, "comes on the back of a massacre in Delhi, which was the result of people protesting against the anti-Muslim citizenship law. Under the cover of COVID-19 the government is moving to arrest young students, to fight cases against lawyers, against senior editors, against activists and intellectuals. Some of them have recently been put in jail."

Contentious typhus comparison

Roy claimed the government was exploiting the virus in a tactic reminiscent of one used by the Nazis during the Holocaust. "The whole of the organization, the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist group — Editor's note] to which Modi belongs, which is the mother ship of the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party], has long said that India should be a Hindu nation. Its ideologues have likened the Muslims of India to the Jews of Germany. And if you look at the way in which they are using COVID, it was very much like typhus was used against the Jews to ghettoize them, to stigmatize them."

Read more: Crowd of migrant workers chased out of Mumbai station

Roy's theory that the pandemic has been used as an opportunity to maginalize Muslims in India has subsequently been met with opposition from supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Nalin Kohli, a BJP spokesman, told DW that he rejects Roy's viewpoint "in its totality" and that the claims are " misleading, false and completely racist."

"Not one decision or policy of Narendra Modi’s government distinguishes between Indians on the basis of religion, caste or creed but under due process of law," he stated.

Meanwhile Rakesh Sinha, a member of parliament for the BJP, tweeted that Modi's government is "free from any bias," and that the prime minister "has been tirelessly working to save Indians from coronacrisis" but that "useless idiots, like Arundhati Roy are trying to pour communal poison in public discourse."

Another BJP member tweeted that Roy "should be put on trial", adding that her accusations "amounts to sedition."

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Arundhati Roy on coronavirus: 'Situation in India is approaching genocidal'

Germany: Coronavirus aid resumes after scammers clone state website
Fraudsters cloned official government sites, hoping victims would apply there by mistake, allowing them to then claim the money in the victims' names. The scheme forced one state to shut down its website for a week.


Self-employed individuals and small businesses in Germany will again be eligible to apply online for coronavirus-related state emergency aid in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW), the state's economic ministry said on Friday.

Applications had been halted shortly before the Easter holiday, when it was found that thieves had made a copy of the website which they were using for fraudulent activities.

NRW Economy Minister Andreas Pinkwart said the process to receive the aid would continue to be digital and that the money would be paid out next week.

As the coronavirus lockdown began, the German government swiftly approved a total of €50 billion ($54.382 billion) for rapid support to the self-employed and the smallest businesses with 10 or fewer employees.

Website cloned

Pinkwart had promised that the emergency aid would be "as simple, lean and unbureaucratic as possible," insisting that the office would "not accept printed applications."

Fraudsters moved quickly and intercepted prospective applicants by cloning the state's official website. When users entered their data into the fake site unwittingly, it was the fraudsters and not the government that was receiving it.

Scammers then took the data — including things like name, address, employer information, tax details and bank details — and then used it to apply for the money themselves on the real website, albeit with different bank details.

A state prosecutor's office told German news agency DPA last week that it was suspected the scams were being run by "a professional criminal organization" that appeared to cross national borders.

To protect from fraud, Pinkwart announced that tax officials would now check the applicants' data and compare it with the state's official information.

NRW is not the only state to have been affected. On Friday, Hamburg, Berlin, Saxony and Bremen all reported similar cases of fraud with their state aid websites.

Europe-wide scams

Last month, the European law enforcement agency Europol warned that criminals were taking advantage of the coronavirus emergency, doing everything from selling counterfeit products, impersonating health workers and hacking computers as many citizens do their jobs online at home.

"Criminals have quickly seized the opportunities to exploit the crisis by adapting their modes of operation or developing new criminal activities," Europol Executive Director, Catherine de Bolle said in a statement.

Europol's report found that the top illicit activities were cybercrime, fraud, counterfeit and substandard goods, and organized property crime.

jcg/msh (AFP, dpa)

AMERICAN RIGHT WING PROTESTERS R DUM

Christian Christensen

@ChrChristensen

Right-wingers in the US holding up signs saying "Be Like Sweden!" re #COVID19 might want to consider that Sweden also has universal healthcare, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, paid parental leave, paid vacations and subsidized daycare and after-school care. #COVID19