Questions raised over hydroxychloroquine study which caused WHO to halt trials for Covid-19

Exclusive: Australian researchers query origin of data used for Lancet study, but stress there is no evidence drug is a safe or effective treatment

BEING FROM DOWN UNDER MAY EXPLAIN HAVING THEIR HEADS UP THEIR ASSES

Melissa Davey THE GUARDIAN Thu 28 May 2020
 

Earlier this week, the World Health Organization said it would temporarily drop hydroxychloroquine from its global study into experimental coronavirus treatments after safety concerns. Photograph: George Frey/Reuters


Questions have been raised by Australian infectious disease researchers about a study published in the Lancet which prompted the World Health Organization to halt global trials of the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19.

The study published on Friday found Covid-19 patients who received the malaria drug were dying at higher rates and experiencing more heart-related complications than other virus patients. The large observational study analysed data from nearly 15,000 patients with Covid-19 who received the drug alone or in combination with antibiotics, comparing this data with 81,000 controls who did not receive the drug.

The findings prompted researchers from around the world to reassess their own clinical trials of the drug for preventing and treating Covid-19. The World Health Organization halted all its trials involving hydroxychloroquine due to the concerns raised in the study about its efficacy and safety. It was once viewed as among the most promising medicines to treat the virus, though no study to date has found this to be the case, and the drug can have toxic side-effects. The Australian Department of Health had been stockpiling millions of doses of the drug in case clinical trials found it proved useful.

Australian hydroxychloroquine trial to treat Covid-19 under review after WHO safety concern
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/26/australian-hydroxychloroquine-trial-under-review-world-health-organization-concern-over-safety

The study, led by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Advanced Heart Disease in Boston, examined patients in hospitals around the world, including in Australia. It said researchers gained access to data from five hospitals recording 600 Australian Covid-19 patients and 73 Australian deaths as of 21 April.

But data from Johns Hopkins University shows only 67 deaths from Covid-19 had been recorded in Australia by 21 April. The number did not rise to 73 until 23 April. The data relied upon by researchers to draw their conclusions in the Lancet is not readily available in Australian clinical databases, leading many to ask where it came from.

The federal health department confirmed to Guardian Australia that the data collected on notifications of Covid-19 in the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System was not the source for informing the trial.

Guardian Australia also contacted the health departments of Australia’s two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, which have had by far the largest number of Covid-19 infections between them. Of the Australian deaths reported by 21 April, 14 were in Victoria and 26 in NSW.


Victoria’s department confirmed the study’s results relating to the Australian data did not reconcile with the state’s coronavirus data, including hospital admissions and deaths. The NSW Department of Health also confirmed it did not provide the researchers with the data for its databases.

The Lancet told Guardian Australia: “We have asked the authors for clarifications, we know that they are investigating urgently, and we await their reply.” The lead author of the study, Dr Mandeep Mehra, said he had contacted Surgisphere, the company that provided the data, to reconcile the discrepancies with “the utmost urgency”. Surgisphere is described as a healthcare data analytics and medical education company.

In a statement, Surgisphere founder Dr Sapan Desai, also an author on the Lancet paper, said a hospital from Asia had accidentally been included in the Australian data.

“We have reviewed our Surgisphere database and discovered that a new hospital that joined the registry on April 1, and self-designated as belonging to the Australasia continental designation,” the spokesman said. “In reviewing the data from each of the hospitals in the registry, we noted that this hospital had a nearly 100% composition of Asian race and a relatively high use of chloroquine compared to non-use in Australia. This hospital should have more appropriately been assigned to the Asian continental designation.”

He said the error did not change the overall study findings. It did mean that the Australian data in the paper would be revised to four hospitals and 63 deaths,.

Dr Allen Cheng, an epidemiologist and infectious disease doctor with Alfred Health in Melbourne, said the Australian hospitals involved in the study should be named. He said he had never heard of Surgisphere, and no one from his hospital, The Alfred, had provided Surgisphere with data.

“Usually to submit to a database like Surgisphere you need ethics approval, and someone from the hospital will be involved in that process to get it to a database,” he said. He said the dataset should be made public, or at least open to an independent statistical reviewer.

“If they got this wrong, what else could be wrong?” Cheng said. It was also a “red flag” to him that the paper listed only four authors.

“Usually with studies that report on findings from thousands of patients, you would see a large list of authors on the paper,” he said. “Multiple sources are needed to collect and analyse the data for large studies and you usually see that acknowledged in the list of authors.”

He stressed that even if the paper proved to be problematic, it did not mean hydroxychloroquine was safe or effective in treating Covid-19. No strong studies to date have shown the drug is effective. Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have potentially severe and even deadly side effects if used inappropriately, including heart failure and toxicity. Other studies have found the drug is associated with higher mortality when given to severely unwell Covid-19 patients.

Australian doctors warned off after prescribing potentially deadly Covid-19 trial drug to themselves TOLD YA, HEADS UP THEIR ASSES

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/australian-doctors-warned-off-after-prescribing-potentially-deadly-covid-19-trial-drug-to-themselves

In a statement Surgisphere said it stood by the integrity of its data, saying all information from hospitals “is transferred in a deidentified manner” but could not be made public.

“This requirement allows us to only maintain collaborations with top-tier institutions that are supported by the level of data-integrity and sophistication required for such work,” the statement said. “Naturally, this leads to the inclusion of institutions that have a tertiary care level of practice and provide quality healthcare that is relatively homogenous around the world. As with most corporations, the access to individual hospital data is strictly governed. Our data use agreements do not allow us to make this data public.”

Scientists have reiterated the need to wait for the results from rigorous randomised control trials, considered the gold standard of science, and the Australian Department of Health has warned the drug should not be given to patients other than in clinical trials.

Cheng said it would be a mistake to stop strong, well-designed clinical trials examining the drug because of questionable data. The Lancet study findings have prompted the leaders of an Australian hydroxychloroquine trial, known as the Ascot trial, to review the future of their study. The outcome of that review has not yet been announced.

The Ascot study has been recruiting patients in more than 70 hospitals in every Australian state and territory, and 11 hospitals in New Zealand. The randomised control trial is exploring whether hydroxychloroquine in combination or on its own can treat Covid-19 patients and prevent deterioration in their condition. The leader of the trial, Prof Josh Davis, has written to the Lancet study authors asking for an explanation of the data.

In the meantime, patient recruitment for the study had been put on hold, an Ascot spokeswoman said. “Following an observational study published in the Lancet Ascot has paused patient recruitment pending deliberations by the governance and ethics committees overseeing the trial,” she said. “We expect these deliberations to occur rapidly and will provide further information as they arise.”

Questions about the paper’s statistical modelling have also come from other universities, including Columbia University in the US, prompting Surgisphere to issue a public statement.

Last month Australia’s chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, urged the public to be cautious about findings and interpretations from studies in the race to find cures and treatments for Covid-19.

Serious concerns have being raised by bioethicists, clinicians and scientists that scientific rigour and peer review is falling by the wayside in the race to understand how the virus spreads and why it has such a devastating impact on some people.

Fauci: Hydroxychloroquine ineffective as COVID-19 treatment
Don Jacobson & Danielle Haynes

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks to reporters at the White House on April 16. File Photo by Chris Kleponis/UPI | License Photo

May 27 (UPI) -- Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that hydroxychloroquine, a drug President Donald Trump said he has taken to ward off the coronavirus, is not an effective treatment based on the latest scientific data.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made his most definitive statement yet against the drug once touted by Trump as a possible treatment.

"The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy," Fauci, the White House's top infectious disease expert, said.

His statement comes on the heels of France banning the drug altogether Wednesday and the internationally respected science journal The Lancet publishing a 96,000-patient study that concluded hydroxychloroquine had no effect on COVID-19.

RELATED WHO suspends trials of hydroxychloroquine, citing safety

France's decision was published in the country's official legal journal, ending the drug's use as a weapon in the pandemic just weeks after French epidemiologist Dr. Didier Raoult recommended it as a key tool against the coronavirus disease.

Tuesday, the French High Council of Public Health and National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products said hydroxychloroquine has shown higher rates of death and cardiac arrhythmia in COVID-19 patients.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran ordered the assessments last weekend after the study in The Lancet. The study also reported increased death rates and irregular heartbeat among COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine.

RELATED Chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine linked to higher death risk in COVID-19

The World Health Organization said Monday it paused medical trials involving the drug.

On Wednesday, Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO's emergencies program, said there's no evidence hydroxychloroquine and related drug chloroquine work to treat COVID-19.

"There is no empirical evidence at this point that these drugs work in this case either for treatment or for prophylaxis," he said. "We do not advise the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 outside randomized control trials or under appropriate close clinical supervision subject to whatever national regulatory authorities have decided."

RELATED Studies show no benefit of malaria drug against COVID-19

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been used as anti-malarial drugs for decades and are sometimes used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Trump and others have said hydroxychloroquine could be a potential treatment for COVID-19 or to prevent infection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and American Heart Association, however, have warned that using it without medical supervision can lead to a greater risk of cardiac arrest.

On This Day: First surviving set of quintuplets born in Canada
On May 28, 1934, the Dionne sisters, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile, Marie and Annette, first documented set of quintuplets to survive, were born near Callander, Ontario, and soon became world-famous. Emilie died in 1954, Marie in 1970 and Yvonne in 2001.
By
UPI Staff


The Dionne quintuplets and their sisters arrive at Lansdowne Park in June 1947 to take part in a program of religious music during the Marian Congress. The quintuplets were born May 28, 1934. File Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2020/05/28/On-This-Day-First-surviving-set-of-quintuplets-born-in-Canada/4381589988620/?sl=2

In 1892, the Sierra Club was founded by naturalist John Muir.

In 1961, Amnesty International was founded in London by lawyer Peter Berenson. The organization won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work supporting people imprisoned because of their race, religion or political views.

File Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI

In 2008, Nepal's newly elected Constituent Assembly voted to dissolve the 239-year-old monarchy and form a republic, officially ending the reign of King Gyanendra.

In 2014, author-poet-activist Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) died in Winston-Salem, N.C. U.S. President Barack Obama called Angelou, who was 86, "one of the brightest lights of our time."

VIDEO IS AMERICA THE NEXT BIG CORONAVIRUS THREAT TO THE WORLD

VIDEO HONG KONG POLICE FIRE TEAR GAS PEPPER ROUNDS

Will Hong Kong’s rule of law survive the challenge of Beijing’s national security legislation?

From its process of enactment – apparently bypassing the local legislature and ignoring public opinion – to its future implementation and enforcement, the law is incompatible with the city’s common law tradition

Hong Kong’s courts will be severely tested in trying to uphold the rule of law


Michael C. Davis
Published: 9:00am, 28 May, 2020



Illustration: Craig Stephens

With the expected passage of the National People’s Congress resolution on national security this week, mainland and Hong Kong officials assure us that the proposed law will be narrowly drafted and pose no threat to basic freedoms and the rule of law in Hong Kong. This assurance should be doubted.

The claim that public officials are reliable people who will only go after the bad guys underlies the People’s Republic of China’s tradition of rule by law. It presumes that a society of laws is one where officials issue the right directives and everyone else is bound to follow them. Such use of law as only an instrument of control is not the rule of law as known in Hong Kong.

Rather, the rule of law primarily aims to maintain public order by ensuring that officials comply with properly enacted laws in carrying out their duties. For common law Hong Kong, under the Basic Law, such laws should be the product of a proper legislative process with enforcement and oversight in the ordinary courts.
This is not what is envisioned with regard to the proposed national security law. The NPC resolution runs afoul of a number of Basic Law requirements. First, the process of enactment raises grave concern. The NPC has directed this mainland-drafted national security law be added to Annex III of the Basic Law and then directly promulgated for application in Hong Kong.

The central government claims that the local
disorder on the streets associated with the protests represents a threat to national security. Its decision to take matters into its own hands runs afoul of the requirement in
Basic Law Article 14 that, “The government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be responsible for the maintenance of public order in the Region”.
Basic Law Article 18 further provides, “National laws shall not be applied in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region except for those listed in Annex III”, with further provision that the law being listed must “be applied locally by way of promulgation or legislation by the Region”.


here have been reports that Beijing may promulgate the law directly on its own, in violation of this provision requiring the SAR to do so. More important is the requirement in the same article that laws enacted under this provision “shall be confined to those relating to defence and foreign affairs as well as other matters outside the limits of the autonomy of the [SAR] as specified by this law”.

Basic Law Article 23 clearly places the enactment of such laws on national security, secrecy and the like within the scope of local autonomy, providing explicitly that such laws should be enacted by the Hong Kong SAR “on its own”.

Beijing officials are fond of saying that, since Hong Kong did not enact a law under Article 23, then Beijing has to step in and do so. On close examination, this is a fallacious argument. In 2003, the Hong Kong government proposed a draconian version of such a law that was widely and rightly condemned by the masses of Hong Kong people.

On July 9, 2003, about 50,000 people gathered outside the then Legislative Council building to voice their disapproval of the Tung Chee-hwa government’s handling of the proposed Article 23 legislation, about a week after half a million people marched on the streets to oppose the law. Photo: SCMP


There was no reason a law covering the areas addressed in Article 23 could not have been proposed through a proper law reform process. In the Hong Kong tradition, such an approach would likely include submissions to the Law Reform Commission with proper public consultation.


Such reform should have aimed to improve on existing laws in this area, with high regard for basic rights. Instead, the central government is now seeking to force through a law that aims to control or intimidate its critics.

Why the West is so focused on Hong Kong
27 May 2020

On a substantive level, an even greater concern is the problem of fitting this mainland-drafted national security law into Hong Kong’s rule-of-law-based system. Claims by mainland officials that the law will be narrowly drawn are hardly reassuring, given the extreme application of national security laws to
silence opposition on the mainland.


That the law purports to broadly reach acts against state power suggests it might even be applied to innocuous actions such as blockading local government offices, as is common to protests in Hong Kong’s dense urban environment.

A number of other limitations have become apparent. Basic Law
Article 22 provides that “no department of the central people’s government … may interfere in the affairs” which Hong Kong administers on its own. As already noted, this would encompass both public order and Article 23 legislation.

The fourth item of the NPC resolution, to the contrary, provides for
setting up in the Hong Kong SAR the relevant national security agencies of the central government. The compatibility of such mainland institutions with an open society in Hong Kong raises grave concern.

The sixth item of the NPC decision ominously provides that the Standing Committee is authorised to establish a comprehensive legal system and execution mechanism to “precisely prevent, stop and punish any behaviours” that pose a serious risk to national security, as it relates to secession, sedition, terrorism and interference by foreign countries or outside influences. The scope of intrusion on Hong Kong’s autonomy, rule of law and human rights is breathtaking.

This also poses a severe challenge to the Hong Kong judiciary and its maintenance of the rule of law. How will such prevention, stoppage and punishment be delivered? Will the Hong Kong courts be able to exercise judicial review over both the text and the application of this law, as they do over all other laws in Hong Kong?

Even if they are given such review power in the normal practice, one can easily imagine the severe pressure on judges reviewing this law and the acts of mainland officials under it. Some discussion has worryingly even suggested the creation of a special tribunal in this area.

We must add to these concerns the chilling effect such a legal regime will have on freedom of speech and the press in Hong Kong. Will journalists and public citizens dare to speak out against Beijing’s intrusions and decisions in these areas?

Will our civil society dare to interact with the global discourse, international bodies, NGOs or other critical voices in such areas as human rights, public health or the environment if they see local activists who do hauled off to jail?


Michael C. Davis 

a former professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, is a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre in Washington, DC and a senior research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute at Columbia University

Michael C. Davis is professor of law and international affairs at the O.P. Jindal Global University in India and a resident fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre in Washington, DC. A professor in the Law Faculty at the University of Hong Kong until late 2016, he continues as a non-resident senior fellow in the university’s Centre for Comparative and Public Law.

Why Beijing’s national security law for Hong Kong leaves too many unanswered questions to feel safe

Vague language creates uncertainty over who, beyond protesters in the streets, could be accused of subversion, secession or terrorism

Perceived threats to Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy risk provoking a tough response from Trump, the State Department and Congress

Opinion Michael Chugani 28 May, 2020

A woman stands in front of police during a protest against Beijing's move to enact a new national security law for Hong Kong, in Causeway Bay on May 24. Photo: DPA

Last Friday, after Beijing dropped a bombshell of imposing a national security law on Hong Kong, a foreign journalist asked if I was scared. As a journalist myself, I have to admit I fear the law could harm my work.

When China’s parliament enacts the law, would I still be able to write that I detest the country’s authoritarian government? Would I break the law if I urged the United States to protect Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy that the Basic Law promised?
Beijing has only laid out national security areas without details, leaving us guessing. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor couldn’t answer when a reporter asked if the law would be retroactive. That would have a chilling effect.

Stationing mainland security agents here would, too. The new law allows that, but why the legal permission now when Hong Kong booksellers were abducted in 2015 anyway?

The bombshell was a response to last year’s protests, but the areas puzzle me – subversion, secession, terrorism and foreign interference. Subversion is trying to destroy or overthrow a government. The masses who marched peacefully were opposing an extradition bill, not destroying the government.



When peaceful marches morphed into violent protests after Lam initially refused to kill the bill, the protesters were venting fury over what they saw as eroding freedoms, not trying to overthrow the government.

Secession is separation. A tiny ragtag group of young dreamers advocate independence, but waving independence banners doesn’t mean an actual ability to achieve their aim.

There is no universal definition of terrorism, but the consensus is premeditated violence against not just intended targets but the general public in the name of religious or political ideology.

Last year’s violence involved running battles between protesters and the police, not premeditated action to terrorise the public. There have been several police discoveries of bomb-making material. The government spin is the protest movement is spawning home-grown terrorists.

We won’t know for sure unless suspects are found and tried. Aside from Molotov cocktails, no bombs were thrown or remotely detonated during eight months of protests.

Does foreign interference include former chief secretary Anson Chan Fan On-sang going to Washington to advocate for Hong Kong democracy? Or activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung urging the US to weaponise Hong Kong’s special trade status under the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act and its 2019 amendment, known as the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act?

We won’t know until Beijing provides details. Both Beijing and the local government have blasted the Policy Act and its 2019 amendment as interference in China’s internal affairs. The act simply asks Beijing to live up to its promised high degree of autonomy under “one country, two systems” for Hong Kong to qualify for a privileged trading status separate from the mainland.

Hong Kong has benefited from this law since reunification. How can the United States enforcing its own laws be interference? If it is considered to be interference, the simple solution is for Hong Kong and Beijing to tell the United States it doesn’t want special trade status.

The Policy Act requires an annual State Department report. Last year’s report said that, despite diminished autonomy, Hong Kong still qualified for special trade status. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has now described the national security law as a death knell for Hong Kong’s autonomy. US President Donald Trump has warned he is planning action against China’s security law for Hong Kong.

White House says Beijing’s proposed national security law for Hong Kong could lead to US sanctions

Given these tough words, what will this year’s delayed Policy Act report say? I can only guess, but I can’t see how Pompeo can still give Hong Kong a free pass on special trading status. I still remember Senator Mitch McConnell exclusively revealing the Policy Act to me when I worked in Washington. He was very committed to
upholding the act, which Congress fully supported.

There is likely to be congressional uproar if Trump, in deference to President Xi Jinping, takes only mild action. My guess is doing that would anger many in Congress. They would probably feel the Policy Act and its 2019 amendment, which had unanimous support, have become a toothless tiger.

Michael Chugani is a Hong Kong journalist and TV show host

trump sacrifices 100,000 americans to his ego MEMES

U.S. coronavirus deaths top 100,000 as country reopens
The novel coronavirus has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States, according to a Reuters tally on Wednesday, even as the slowdown in deaths encouraged businesses to reopen and Americans to emerge from more than two months of lockdowns.

Diary from a Genocide in the Making
By Margaret M. Seiler
Field Notes

Out of the Darkness, Port of Entry at Gateway International Bridge, 3/14/20. Photo: Tom Cartwright.


I spent a week on the US/Mexico border in February with a grassroots group called Witness at the Border. It was my second trip this year, since we launched a daily vigil in Xeriscape Park in Brownsville, Texas, in mid-January. “Witnesses” from over 30 states and abroad have come to bear witness to the horror wrought by the current administration’s cruel immigration policies. A steady drumbeat of incomprehensibly racist policies keeps escalating. First, the travel (or Muslim) ban, then family separation, then children in cages, then “Remain in Mexico” (absurdly called the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP), and now an alphabet soup of stealth policies—PACR, HARP, ACA—that fast track the deportation of asylum seekers. As each new policy unfurls, quicker than the ACLU and other human rights groups can challenge them in court, another one pops up. Cruelty is the point.


“Witnessing is the subversive act of seeing what our government doesn’t want us to see: the cruel consequences of our policies, hidden behind fences and walls,” says immigration activist and Brooklynite Joshua Rubin, founder of Witness at the Border. “We cannot stop what we cannot see.”


So I went to see with my own eyes the atrocity of asylum seekers fleeing violence—men, women, and children—forced by the MPP policy to live in a squalid encampment for the homeless in Matamoros, Mexico. Many others are scraping by all over the city, a city ruled by drug cartels and gangs, as dangerous as most in Syria, a city the US State Department advises Americans not to visit. I came to bear witness to the sham that is the “tent court” system. I came to see people whose only crime is running from danger, asking for refuge only to be loaded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers onto airplanes, in shackles, deported to danger.


January 11: Justice at the Border

Deporting asylum seekers back to danger, Brownsville International Airport. Photo: Allan Mestel


On my first day in Brownsville, I visited with other witnesses at Xeriscape Park, a small green space across the street from the Gateway International Bridge to Matamoros. What is witnessing? It’s holding up signs reading “Let Them Cross,” “Seeking Asylum is Legal,” “Love Has No Borders,” “Amor, No Odio. (Love, Not Hate.)” It’s waving to passersby who honk their car horns and wave back. (Brownsville is about 90% Latino.) It’s nodding hello and greeting the many folks walking by on their way into Brownsville after crossing over the bridge from Matamoros: “Buenos dias.” Witnessing is observing, noticing, recording, Tweeting, posting on Facebook, visiting the tent courts or the airport—again, to observe, witness, record, and testify.


On my visit to a Brownsville “courtroom,” held in large white tents, I sat in the back with a few other observers on folding chairs. ICE officers led 15 migrants in, about two thirds men, one third women, and one 11-year-old girl. They filled the first two rows of the courtroom and waited patiently for the judge to show up on a large video screen in order to begin the proceedings. Each migrant has at least one, usually three calendar hearings, spaced weeks apart. They are asked if they’ve filled out their application for asylum completely and in English, if they’ve found an attorney, then they’re given another date to return. The judge was in a courtroom nearby in Harlingen with a prosecuting attorney from the Justice Department and a Spanish language translator. Visitors are only allowed into the calendar hearings—and they only opened to us after complaints in the press. The final stage is a merits hearing; in it, arguments of the case for and against removal are presented in order to determine whether asylum is granted or not—no visitors are allowed. Of the 15 migrants in court that day only two had lawyers; one had a lawyer that was present and the other one had a lawyer calling in from Miami.


When you face your judge on a screen while they are in some faraway courtroom, the distance created between you and them is palpable. Can they see a tear or hear the tremor in a voice? Can they see a father rubbing his young daugher’s back as she quietly kicks her feet? Is this something deliberate to keep the proceedings impersonal and easier on the judge?


Back in the park, a lawyer waiting to go to court visited with us. “It’s Kafka on the border,” she said. “Asylum court is like traffic court, only it’s life or death.”


February 12: Migrant Persecution Protocols


We sat in front of a huge banner made by Miami-based artist Alessandra Mondolfi, that in bold red and black letters reads: MPP KILLS. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young Latino man crossing the street from the bridge towards us, grinning ear to ear.


“MPP!” he shouted out, smiling and pointing at the banner. “Si! No bueno, MPP… Muchas gracias!!” He said again, smiling from ear to ear with two thumbs up. Then we noticed his telltale gallon plastic bag filled with paperwork. Next thing I knew, Cat had leapt up and wrapped the young man in a bear hug. Other friends were lining up to greet him.


“Soy libre! Gane asilo” (I’m free! I won asylum), he said. Bienvenidos!(Welcome!) we said.


We pieced together a bit of his story with our limited Spanish. All his family in Honduras had been murdered. His brother was waiting for him in the US while he’d been stuck in the Matamoros encampment for six months. Cat handed him a snack she had in her cooler, and we asked him what he needed. He asked for a phone to call his brother in Florida. We soon found out there were no flights left out of Brownsville that day. A kind volunteer with Team Brownsville, a local nonprofit that assists asylum seekers, escorted him to a shelter where he could shower, get a hot meal, and spend the night. We were overjoyed, but he was one of the lucky few; 0.1%. That’s what his chances of being awarded asylum were—0.1%. This young man had beaten the odds.


Over a year has passed since MPP was instituted in another Texas border city, El Paso, where all new policies are launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Now seven sites along the border, Nogales, Arizona; San Diego, California; and, all in Texas, Calexico, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville, and Eagle Pass, enforce this draconian policy. When asylum seekers arrive at ports of entry, they present themselves to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to claim a “credible fear” of remaining in their home country. Instead of allowing them in and quickly moving them from detention facilities to sponsors or family members in the US while they wait for their court hearings, our officers say, “Go back. Wait in Mexico. Here’s a number and a date. See you in a couple months!”


As a result, encampments of homeless migrants have sprung up along the border. While there are shelters in Mexico, they are usually located deep inside these dangerous cities. Matamoros has been issued its harshest no-travel warning; a level 4 warning, like the ones in war torn Syria. Migrants in the shelters live far from the bridges connected to the US, where armed guards provide some semblance of safety. What's more, how can it be expected of them to even be able to get to the bridge early on their court date when they must line up at four a.m., four hours in advance in order to make it to their 8 a.m. appointment, due to long wait lines? How would they even access American lawyers?, which they need. The lawyers know what could happen to them in Mexico, and even the most intrepid ones will not dare to travel deep into cities like Jaurez and Matamoros. Because of this, asylum seekers prefer to remain close to the bridge, nestled together, offering each other some sense of community and safety. That is until nightfall, when they are prey for gang members who know the migrants have contacts in the US. Kidnapping them has become a cottage industry. Sexual violence and rape are common occurences even among young children.


The Matamoros encampment, the largest of the makeshift refugee camps along the border, grew from a few dozen people last summer to over 2,500 recently. Walking through, I saw families washing their clothes in the river, rows upon rows of donated two-person tents in which whole families sleep, set on the dirt, some with donated mattresses and others in sleeping bags. I saw men and boys hauling cut wood to use with ingeniously devised stoves made from sticks and mud; some made with tubes of discarded washing machines. Tree limbs and chain link fences were dotted with drying laundry—squares of pink and blue and red hanging beside and above the mounds of tents.


What struck me most were the kids. They were everywhere. Girls with beautifully braided hair, toddlers caked in mud, boys kicking soccer balls on the dusty paths. There’s a charging station for phones where you can find a dozen people talking, and rows of porta-potties. Running water has finally been set up by volunteer groups; a small health clinic is run by Global Resource Management. A huge tent went up in late January for meals served by World Central Kitchen, assisted by the heroic Team Brownsville. There is no sense of danger. People are friendly. I’ve heard the camp is very orderly. Tasks are assigned, groups often arranged by nationality set themselves chores, such as filling up donated trash bags. Most are Hondurans, then Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, and even some Venezuelans. Outside the camp, those with money, often the Cubans and Venezuelans, rent apartments and rooms. Or so I hear.

March to Shine a Light on the Border. February 15, 2020, Brownsville. Photo: Allan Mestel.


In March, the 9th Circuit in California ruled that MPP was illegal. For about 10 hours people rejoiced. Migrants flooded (not rushed!) the bridges, wondering what this all meant. The government requested a stay, which they got. Within a week, the Supreme Court had swooped in: MPP is here to stay, for now.


February 14: #DeportedToDanger


On Valentine’s Day, I awoke at 5 a.m. I dragged myself out of bed, leaving the scratchy, motel sheets behind. I hurried to meet my friends at the Brownsville International Airport by 6 a.m. About 30 “witnesses” were there to show some love to the Central American asylum seekers, only to see them shackled like career criminals, in 5-point restraints, being moved onto Swift Air planes by beefy Border Patrol officers in shiny yellow vests. The seekers were moms, dads, teenage girls with swinging black hair, even toddlers. What was most disturbing was the banality of it all. This was just another morning at the border: our government deporting the unwanted and ignored back to danger.


We gathered at the airport just before dawn. There was a chill in the air. It was dark. As we walked to the lot where four busloads full of human cargo sat, the sun came up. I saw palm trees silhouetted against a rosy sky dotted with gray clouds. Up beside the busses, the glass windows were tinted dark but, standing close, we held up red cardboard hearts that we’d made for Valentine’s Day. We saw people sitting inside and they could see us. We sang out, “No estan solos! (You are not alone!)” “Te queremos! (We love you!)”


“They were lifting up their shackles and showing us, so we knew what situation they were in,” said Camilo Perez-Bustillo, a human rights attorney and researcher. “This is clearly a flagrant human rights violation. It’s a violation of international law because we’re having people sent back who are facing danger in their home countries, who are entitled to international protection, refuge and asylum, and the US is denying it.”


ICE officers huddled together, waiting to see if we’d leave. After about 30 minutes, they told us to move off private property. No one wanted to get arrested so we moved to stand next to a large chain link fence where we watched the busses pull up next to white airplanes that seat about 150 people. ICE parked some trucks so our view was blocked but we still managed to see men, women, and children climb out of the busses. They lined up one by one, adults in shackles. An officer patted each one down, checked their hair and the inside of their mouths. Then the restrained asylum seekers awkwardly made their way up the stairs into the plane, heads bowed, the girls’ long hair flapping in the wind, flying back to danger.


Since November, over 800 Honduran and Salvadoran asylum seekers have been deported to Guatemala under the Trump administration’s Guatemalan Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA), according to journalist Jeff Abbott on Twitter. “The majority are women and children.” he wrote in early March, “only 14 have applied for asylum.” Trump signed a so-called “safe third country agreement” with Guatemala last July. The deal states that asylum seekers traveling through a third country to the US must first apply for asylum in the countries they pass through. If they arrive at the US-Mexico border without doing so, they are quickly deported to Guatemala—not their home country—by DHS. They are then given 72 hours to apply for asylum there, or leave the country.


Yael Schacher of Refugees International visited Casa del Migrante, a shelter in Guatemala City, in early February. She interviewed about 20 deportees from the US.


Many of the people were misled, they were led to believe that they would be transferred here and they could actually apply for asylum in the US here, which is not the case. Most of them don’t want to seek asylum here in Guatemala, which isn’t safe for them. It doesn’t have the capacity to process their applications. There’s no place for them to stay, no family here, but they also don’t want to go back to their home country because most of them have fled violence and have protection needs and can’t go back there. Some of them will, out of desperation. Others are trying to find any way possible to seek safe haven elsewhere.



The Honduran “safe third country agreement” is expected to start being implemented soon, if it hasn’t been already. First we sent them to Guatemala, and now Honduras and El Salvador, under programs called PACR (Prompt Asylum Claim Review) and HARP (Humanitarian Asylum Review Process), which is for Mexicans. Witness at the Border has been going to the airport frequently, documenting with photographs and video these deportations.



[PACR and HARP] are the deployment of the most direct strategy yet for preventing people from getting relief in our country….We have reports that these unwilling passengers have not been advised of any rights they might have, and some arrived confused about where they are, hungry, and severely stressed….For our government, this has the advantage of being even further out of sight than the hellish border cities of Mexico…. Our government celebrates the lower numbers of the desperate here in the US, which they attribute to the reduced likelihood of people finding hope for themselves and their families in the country that has disowned the lamp lifted in New York Harbor.



wrote Josh Rubin on February 26, 2020.


January 12/February 13: Just Kids

Matamoros encampment of asylum seekers. Photo: Allan Mestel.


It’s Sunday morning in Matamoros: Escuelita de la Banqueta (School on the Sidewalk). I arrived at the Brownsville bus station at 8:15 to greet a slew of volunteers taking supplies out of Dr. Melba Lucio-Salazar’s car and loading them in plastic carts—donated books, crayons, drawing paper, pens, markers, pencils. We hauled them across the International Bridge—four quarters needed to cross, no passport on the way over, only back—and to the back of the encampment where we set up blue tarps on the dirt under large white, open air tents. I piled the supplies I’d brought: a picture book in Spanish, colored pencils, and paper. A local group teaches yoga to the kids—teens in one area, 8–12 year olds in the middle, and the littlest kids together. (We’ve heard there are 700 kids in the camp.) I squeeze onto a yoga mat somewhere in the middle and stretch out in a downward dog. Little boys tumble and roll over each other, laughing and wrestling.


When yoga ends, about an hour of instruction begins, interspersed with the ever-popular snack time. I have about 20 minutes with each group—8–10 year olds, 5–7 year olds, under 5s—moving from tarp to tarp. My first group swarms over me: “Sientese, por favor) It’s chaotic, but fun. As a former teacher, I know when to instantly adapt a lesson to the group in front of me—no one speaks English so I drop my plan to introduce new English words. I read the picture book and ask questions in my mediocre Spanish: “Que es su color favorito?” (What is your favorite color?) “Que es su animal favorito?” (What is your favorite animal?)


“Dibujalo“ (Draw it!)


A boy about four years old, in a hoodie and flip flops, excitedly bops up and down next to me, grabbing the book I’m trying to read. I pat my lap and he climbs into it, my arm drawing him close. Better. Much later, as we’re all leaving the tent, he sees me holding my phone, and gestures to me for a selfie. I snap a few and he grins as I show them to him. In February, I volunteer at the Sidewalk School for Children Asylum Seekers, started by a Texas native, Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, which is now run every weekday from 4:30–6:30. This month a new school is slated to begin, a school in a bus run by the Yes We Can World Foundation. Meanwhile, bright kids of all ages—from toddlers to teens—are not getting the kind of quality education they could get if they lived in a stable community. If they could just go to their family and sponsors in the US while their parents proceed through the court system, which is their legal right.


February 15: The Wall


On Saturday, we marched and protested through the streets of Brownsville, waving our signs and banners against this injustice. Those who have worked on the frontlines with immigrants for years—Catholic nuns, RAICES, the Texas Civil Rights Project, ACLU-TX—have welcomed Witness at the Border. Our mission is political. While the vital humanitarian work of feeding, clothing, and providing medicine to needy asylum seekers is carried out daily by stalwart locals like Sergio Cordova, Michael Benavides, and Andrea Rudnick of Team Brownsville, our job is to MAKE SOME NOISE. We need outrage! Family separation is not over! Kids are still being tortured! Human rights abuses in our name, with our tax dollars!


So we stood next to the Wall, an enormous steel barrier up against the Rio Grande, and listened to Texans on the frontline of immigrant justice talk about their work. A leader of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas talked about colonialism and indigenous people’s fight to preserve their land and their culture in the Rio Grande Valley, about the environmental degradation of the Wall, and the inhumanity of it all. We talked about the need for more witnesses, more national outrage.


Through the bars of the wall, across the blue-green river under a brilliant blue sky, not far away, we saw a family resting on the banks. We waved at each other across the invisible border. So close by.


February 16: The Kids, Part II

On Sunday, we held a memorial for the seven children who have died in Border Patrol custody (or one soon after) during the past year and a half:

Felipe Gomez Alonzo, 8, Guatemala
Darlyn Cristabel Cordova-Valle, 10, El Salvador
Juan de Leon Gutierrez, 16, Guatemala
Mariee Juarez, 19 months, Guatemala
Jakelin Caal Maquin, 7, Guatemala
Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, 16, Guatemala
Wilmer Josue Ramirez Vasquez, 2, Guatemala

Marina Vasquez, a nurse who lives in Austin, arranged an altar with pictures of the children, candles, a beautiful cloth and a quilt with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She spoke prayerfully about the children. Camilo, the human rights attorney, spoke about the historical context of how we got here: conflicts in Central America, US greed, intervention and duplicity. Then he read the poem, “Floaters”, by Martín Espada (excerpted here).


And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body, to see
if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks….



And the dead still have names, names that sing in praise of the saints,
names that flower in blossoms of white, a cortege of names dressed
all in black, trailing the coffins to the cemetery….Enter their names in the
book of names.

Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez; say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos….”



Afterwards, we traipsed over to a stage to listen to speakers and hear music. Dr. Amy Cohen is a child and family psychiatrist who currently advises attorneys working with children in detention centers and families who have been separated by immigration policies. She has interviewed children held in government custody and, for much of her 30-year career, has treated traumatized children.



This is a holocaust of danger being visited upon the young. Children whose only crime has been to seek safety from the deadly conditions of their home countries. I don’t want to have to see—as I did a week ago—the child in my office who weeps and trembles even TWO YEARS LATER as she recalls the cruelty of the officers who separated her from her mother and then threatened to send her back to her country all by herself if she cried. Officers who locked her into a crowded, freezing cage bathed in perpetual light and then came into that cage, went up to her on the concrete floor, and kicked her because, exhausted from her quiet weeping, she’d fallen asleep.



I don’t want the call about the 1–1/2 year old child desperate for treatment for pneumonia, which she contracted as a complication of not one but two barely treated infections she contracted in the squalid conditions of American detention….Some medical professional signed the order to have this sick child discharged from the hospital without medication so she could be put on a plane to a third country where she, her mother and her sister knew no one and had no resources whatsoever. If a child dies in Guatemala because of American policies, will we ever know?

I don’t want to have to come down to the border to help parents to face the excruciating decision of whether or not to separate from their children to keep them alive. Whether to send them across the bridge by themselves, these small children they have held in their arms to protect through the dangerous journey to what they thought was safety. Watching them disappear as they cross that bridge on their own, praying that they will be safe. Because our government is now exposing them to the VERY SAME DANGERS of violence that they faced in the countries they fled. No parent should have to make that decision.

You thought family separation ended? Make no mistake. This administration is nimble. And MPP is yet another child separation program.



February 18: What Fathers Do


Amy asked me to accompany her when she visited with families at the Resource Center of Matamoros, where Project Corazon, a project of Lawyers for Good Government, tries to stem the tide with only two full time lawyers. A young doctor from Philadelphia joined Amy and me to translate. X, a young father from Honduras, arrived with his ten-year-old daughter, V. Amy, who speaks like a kind preschool teacher or an angel, gently spoke to the girl, giving her crayons and drawing paper. Then turned her attention to X:


“So let’s talk about your decision to get your daughter across the border by herself.”


X explained how he had to carry two IDs in Honduras—he showed them to us. Gang members would stop him in the street: one gang was shown one ID, the other gang the other. Finally, he was attacked too many times, his life and his family’s lives threatened too intensely. Still, the court questioned why he’d waited six months to leave home with his daughter—are you really in danger? Seriously? Why would you wait so long?


“What would you do? You have to figure it out! Where do I go? How do I leave my whole life behind? It takes a while,” he says in Spanish. He finally convinced his wife to take their three-year-old son and hide at her parents while he and V made the trek north.


“We’ve been here five months, in the camp. I had my third hearing and they denied me asylum, because I waited so long to come. They didn’t believe me when I said if I go home, I’ll be killed. I guess I’ll have to go home eventually but I want V to get across and go to my cousin. She’s in Houston,” he says. “And someday, I’ll get there too.”


V is drawing a beautiful drawing of a house with flowers in the windows. I smile at her and offer her more colored pencils. She is hearing every word.


A discussion goes back and forth about the cousin. Does X have any family in New York or California (the best states to seek asylum)? No, one in Maryland, but a single man, not the best sponsor for a ten-year-old daughter. They discuss how best to get V across the bridge so she can spend the minimum amount of time in detention and/or foster care, and then on to the Houston cousin. X shows us a picture of himself six months ago, when he was 30 pounds heavier. He pulls up his shirt to show us his psoriasis. “El estres.” (The stress.)


We spent over an hour with X and V. That evening I spoke to my friend, Gale, who also helped with translation. She had spent the afternoon with Amy, who interviewed six other families. “That father and daughter were heartbreaking, no?” I asked Gale. “How was the afternoon?” “Horrifying. A mother is fleeing domestic violence. Her husband has connections in the Guatemalan government so he was able to locate her. She got a call that he’s coming to the camp to kill her. Their eight-year-old son is in foster care in Pennsylvania. Amy is desperately trying to get both mom and the boy to safe houses.”


These are the bad hombres.


Since this article was written, asylum has been virtually banned and court hearings postponed.The Witness at the Border vigil in Brownsville has been suspended for now due to COVID-19. Follow our website to learn more. Support Amy Cohen’s work at Every.Last.One. Support health care in Matamoros: Global Response Management. Support Amy Cohen’s work at Every.Last.One. Support health care in Matamoros: Global Response Management.

ContributorMargaret M. Seiler

Margaret M. Seiler is an educator and activist living in Brooklyn, New York. Besides her work with Witness at the Border, she volunteers with two NYC-based groups promoting humane immigration policies and supporting asylum seekers: Don’t Separate Families and Team TLC NYC.

ArtSeen
Against, Again: Art Under Attack in Brazil
By Sumeja Tulic

Jaime Lauriano, America, 2020. Drawing made with black pemba (chalk used in rituals of Umbanda), dermatographic pencil, charcoal and golden self-adhesive high tack tape on cotton. 150 x 160 cm. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Alex Korolkovas/Courtesy of AnnexB.

ON VIEW

Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery
New York

What happens when nostalgia and the future collide? A very complicated present, befitting a group show. Against, Again: Art Under Attack in Brazil presents the work of more than 30 artists whose practices respond to the seemingly cyclical waves of authoritarianism brought back into full swing in Brazil with the election of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro. Since his inauguration in January of 2019, Bolsonaro, a retired military officer and admirer and ally of President Trump, has begun a steady attack against the Brazilian democracy and its institution, threatening and censuring political opposition, activists, intellectuals, and artists. In addition to being a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, environmental regulations, abortion, affirmative action, immigration, drug liberalization, land reform, and secularism, Bolsonaro is a staunch defender of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–1985) and its torture practices.


The show begins with America: democracia racial, melting pot and pureza de razas (2019) by São Paulo based Jaime Lauriano, whose work often deals with institutional violence and historical traumas. Here, he resurrects the aesthetics of colonial cartography and “the discovery of the new world” on a white textile, drawing the Americas with the black chalk used in the rituals of a syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion. America distinguishes itself from colonial cartography by concretizing, in language, with honesty and irony, the ideals and deceptions of the settler-colonial expansion and its genocidal practices. In Lauriano’s map, instead of the Atlantic Ocean the viewer reads in Portuguese "Racial Democracy" while "Race Purity" takes the place of the Pacific Ocean. “The Melting Pot” is spelled out in quaint typography over the lands of North America.


While Lauriano’s work examines the production and representations of history, the decades-long practice of Maria Thereza Alves has been concerned with the detrimental effects of the Portuguese imperialism on the indigenous peoples of Brazil as well as the impact of the Spanish conquest on the Americas. The show features two iterations of Alves’s meeting with her mentor, indigenous leader Tupã-Y Guaraní (Marçal de Souza). The first, from 1980, is a black-and-white photograph of Guaraní standing at the edge of his tribe’s land in the interior state of Mato Grosso do Sul, pointing at the mountain that once marked its border. The other documentation Alves presents is an audio recording of a conversation she had with Guaraní, also in 1980, which is played as the soundtrack of a single-frame video made of the photograph, which has been colorized, of Guaraní pointing at the mountain. During their discussion, Guaraní explains that a union of indigenous peoples has been formed and encourages Alves to join the fight for indigenous rights. Three years after their meeting, in 1983, Guaraní was brutally murdered by a Euro-Brazilian landowner wanting his tribal lands.

Maria Thereza Alves, Marçal Tupã Y (Tupã-Y Guaraní, Marçal de Souza), 1980. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Alex Korolkovas/Courtesy of AnnexB.


Despite a recent drop in murders in Brazil, violent crimes continue to plague the country—a problem compounded by the use of lethal force by Brazilian police. An Apology to Elephants (2019), a video by Brooklyn-based Anna Parisi (b. 1984), is dedicated to five children, ranging from 8 to 12 years old, who were killed in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas during police raids. The video begins with footage of a baby elephant, “…so cute, young and plump… docile eyes…so dark,” the narrator says, walking down a road, before the video shifts its tone. An older elephant then is punished by a trainer, a white, middle-aged woman. The training sequence dissolves into footage of police breaking into a favela, gathering boys and men, hitting and degrading their black and brown bodies, which the police body cameras render gray and blue.

Berna Reale, Camuflagem #01 (Camouflage #01), 2018. Inkjet print with mineral pigment on paper, 100 x 150 cm. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo and New York. Photo: Alex Korolkovas/Courtesy of AnnexB.


Also on view is Camuflagem #01 (2018), a photograph by the performance artist Berna Reale (b.1965), who is known for using her body in constructing reflections on social conflicts and disparities. For Camuflagem #01, Reale wears a military uniform while pushing a wagon carrying bundles that are shaped like human corpses and made from sheets used to cover victims of violence that Reale, who is also a forensic investigator, sourced from her colleagues working in police departments. In Camuflagem #01, Reale's back is to the camera—the bodily position of a perfect target.


The show also includes Inserções em circuitos ideológicos: Projeto cédula ("Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Banknote Project"), the work of the acclaimed conceptual artist and sculptor Cildo Meireles (b.1948). For this installation, made in 1970, Meireles stamped official banknotes with subversive messages and then returned them to regular circulation, including one asking "Quem Matou Herzog?" or "Who Killed Herzog?" The question refers to the death by torture of the journalist Vlado Herzog, a vocal opponent of the military dictatorship, by the police. Herzog’s murder was officially reported as suicide. The Banknote Project exemplifies Meireles’s practice of producing unexpected opportunities for viewer engagement as he did again in response to the 2018 murder of Marielle Franco, a Rio de Janeiro councilwoman, feminist, human rights activist, and outspoken critic of police brutality and extrajudicial killings. In 2019, two former police officers were arrested and charged with her murder. Before their arrest, both suspects had pictures taken with Bolsonaro. Recently, several Brazilian media outlets reported that the police were investigating possible ties of Bolsonaro’s second son, Carlos, to the murder.


Originally the title of a book by the Viennese-born writer Stefan Zweig, “Brazil is the land of the future,” is a repeated refrain amongst Brazilians envisioning what is to come as a society marked by plurality, diversity, and economic prosperity. In the past few years, the latter part of the phrase, "and always will be," has been replaced by "but that future never arrives." Between the idealism and resolve of the first and irony of the second accompanying phrase is a positive-bias. This positive-bias, common to all people and not just Brazilians, refuses to acknowledge the future as an adverse condition immune to the promises of historical and technological progress. Some of that future is the present, quarantined life sustaining the world.

#CóleraAlegria, Selection of protest flags and slideshow with images of protests, 2016–ongoing. Dimensions variable. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Alex Korolkovas/Courtesy of AnnexB.


On the way out of the gallery are works by the collaborative action project #CóleraAlegria, which creates banners, posters, and flags for political demonstrations and online campaigns. On the day the gallery reopened after closing for one day because of the COVID-19 outbreak, between two gallery shifts, the front desk was empty. Befittingly to the moment and scene, #CóleraAlegria's poster hung above the desk and the empty chair: "Democracy, what time will she return?"

ContributorSumeja Tulic

is a contributor to the Rail.