Why are people protesting in Nigeria and why does Rihanna care?

Endemic police brutality sparked the latest bout of public anger but grievances against authorities go further

A protester waves a Nigerian flag during a protest against police brutality on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway at Magboro, Ogun State, on October 21, 2020. AFP


On October 4, a video of Nigerian police brutality circulated on social media showing two men being dragged from a hotel, one of whom was shot dead.

The police force blamed was Nigeria's notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad, or Sars.

The footage reopened an old wound in Nigerian society, that of endemic police brutality.

These allegations are not new. In 2016, Amnesty International accused police of routinely “torturing detainees to extract bribes”.

By 2017 a hashtag had appeared on twitter, #EndSARS, but the recent outrage has turned online anger into a major movement.

The Sars unit has provoked particular anger and there were growing calls to disband it.

The squad was abolished on October 11, but it was too late to stop growing unrest.

Protests began on October 7 with crowds gathering at the Lekki Toll Gate junction in an upscale neighbourhood of Lagos known for shopping malls and the homes of government officials.

On October 20, security forces opened fire on demonstrators at the toll gate without warning, killing at least 12. Some accounts put the toll far higher.

The shooting led to a major escalation, with arson and the looting of government buildings, including warehouses storing food in the city of Jos.



Nigerian protesters are seen in the streets of Alausa Ikeja after the authorities declared an open-ended lockdown in Lagos in the face of spiralling protests. AFP






What has the international response been?

The spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for authorities to “swiftly explore avenues to de-escalate the situation” after the violence.

The US will be sending a fact-finding mission to review policy in one of their most important allies in the fight against ISIS and their Nigerian affiliate, Boko Haram.

The recent violence received a mention in the US election campaign. Joe Biden called on Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to “cease the violent crackdown”

#EndSARS has also drawn the attention of celebrities including Beyonce, who said she intended to help those affected in a post on her Instagram account, which was “liked” almost 1.5 million times.

Not to be outdone, Rihanna chimed in the next day, tweeting an image of a bloodied Nigerian flag and expressing her outrage at the “torture and brutalisation” on the streets of Lagos.

Rihanna

@rihanna

#ENDSARS

5:20 PM · Oct 20, 2020

384.1K

224.2K people are Tweeting about this

What will the government do next?

Mr Buhari was initially silent on the allegations of police brutality and instead said demonstrations were being infiltrated by “subversive elements” to cause trouble for the government.

Mr Buhari, who was elected in 2015, also ruled Nigeria before the country’s transition to democracy.

He has been accused of bringing back tough crackdowns on political dissent, associated with the country’s former military rule.

The government appears to have launched a two-pronged approach, firstly disbanding Sars and pledging to investigate its crimes, but also warning that further demonstrations will not be tolerated.

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari addresses the nation on a live televised broadcast on October 22, 2020 but made no mention of the shooting of peaceful protesters at Lekki toll plaza. Nigeria State House via AP

Could the crisis escalate?

There is a risk that the #EndSARS movement could spill over into wider discontent.

Nigeria has been racked by economic turmoil in recent years as successive governments failed to contain corruption or build an economy that is not dependent upon oil revenue.

Fitch Ratings says the government needs an oil price of $133 a barrel just to pay recurring expenses.

READ MORE

Nigeria shooting fans long-simmering anger at the state

For Mr Buhari, the danger is that protesters will turn on the political elite because public anger goes far beyond police brutality.

By the government's admission, 40 per cent of Nigerians live in poverty.

Financial consultancy PwC says Nigeria needs to create three million jobs a year just to keep unemployment from increasing.

Sars may have been disbanded and the investigations that the government has promised might go ahead.

But even if this appeases protesters, the country’s economic problems and almost annual protests, are going nowhere.



Updated: October 26, 2020 01:32 AM

How young, queer Nigerians use Twitter to shape identity and fight homophobia
By Paul Onanuga

Twitter has grown to become a very popular microblogging platform in Nigeria, accounting for about 1.75 million users

NIGERIA continues to be largely homophobic, mainly as a result of cultural and religious conventions. Negative perceptions of homosexuality led to the criminalisation of same-sex relations in 2014.

The Nigerian environment is therefore toxic for LGBT people. They become easy prey to oppressive and exploitative state security apparatus. They are also vulnerable to public “moral police” who seek to make homosexual performance invisible and closeted.

One may assume that the marginalised Nigerian same-sex community and its allies have conceded to the widespread societal ostracisation. But that would be to ignore the vigorous advocacies that have been going on in the country’s cultural production and on social media.


Films and literary texts have been the more studied genres where same-sex agency has been iterated and reinforced. In Nollywood – the country’s film industry – early depictions were constructed by non-LGBT people who seemed to latch onto public inquisitiveness for financial gains.


More recently, however, members of the Nigerian queer community have taken over the task of shaping their public image and identity, to reasonable success, in these creative ventures. They have done so through movies as well as a growing body of literary writings.

READ MORE: Westminster has dragged its feet on outlawing LGBT ‘conversion therapy’

Social media, however, can be considered more potent as a medium which, to the authors of The Alternative Media Handbook, gives voice to “the socially, culturally and politically excluded”.

By unpacking “live” data from members of the queer community, one can identify the challenges as well as advocacies in Nigerian digital queer discourse. That’s what I did in a study of queer Nigerian Twitter. To explore the diversity of queer agency, I analysed selected tweets by Nigerian queer men. As a linguist, my focus was on identifying and discussing how the performative use of language can achieve the functions of coming out as well as confronting homophobic cyberbullying.

Twitter has grown to become a very popular microblogging platform in Nigeria, accounting for about 1.75 million users, with an annual growth rate of 4.4%. Communities with shared interests are built online. The queer community in Nigeria is no doubt on the margins, but it has found digital platforms safe havens for collective queer voices.

The digital space, I found, has become a location for the representation and assertion of queer agency. What I found interesting in these narratives was that these commenters were not only ready to come out on a “public” digital space, they were also expressive in revealing their offline identities. This despite the possibilities of homophobic violence.

For example: “This year I accepted the entirety of my sexuality and it’s one thing I’m very grateful about.

“I remember those days when I use to beat myself, cut myself, cry, pray and do all shits for being gay. Those days that I had to go to various priests for deliverance and guidance.”

This Twitter user reveals their sexual orientation within a narrative which expresses the difficulties of their lived reality.

What is striking is the conviction of self-acceptance and the roles played by the online queer community in the affirmation of this.

Even more exciting is how these Twitter users engage in anti-homophobic advocacy. They turn the narrative around by exploiting online platforms towards positive self-presentation. They also respond to and challenge their cyber-aggressors and other homophobic commentators. They further acknowledge the necessity of support.

READ MORE: The greatest risk to LGBTQ youth is pretending they don’t exist

The tweets I analysed draw attention to the role of family relationships, homosexual allies and larger non-queer communities in helping Nigerian LGBT people express and accept themselves.

The tweets have sociological implications as ways of creating meaning. They humanise the commenters as legitimate members of Nigerian society and attest to the naturalness of queer identities. The online discussions provide visibility for a marginalised community.

Since the tweets contest the normative portrayals of same-sex relations, they also constitute activist representations. These queer Nigerian males use digital platforms for the purpose of identity formation. In this self-assertion, they contest the monochromic representations perpetuated in popular culture.

The tweets I studied speak out against the bigotry and hate messages which are directed at them. They accentuate the human rights concern that a person’s sexuality is their personal decision. And they correct the perspective that problematises homosexuality as being the same as other social ills.

More crucially, I conclude, in view of the stifling and homophobic lived realities in Nigeria, these narratives engender conversations around the issue of queer visibility and acceptance within Nigerian society.

Paul Onanuga is a lecturer at Federal University, Oye Ekiti

This article is from theconversation.com

How Nigerian End Sars protests and BLM reveal global fights

By Layla-Roxanne Hill

Nigerians are protesting on the streets of Lagos against police brutality

FOREBODING headlines earlier in the year indicated African countries would see vast numbers of Covid-19 infections and deaths.

According to the latest World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics however, from January to October 2020 there have been 61,667 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with 1125 deaths in Nigeria. It may be argued that some countries don’t have the sufficient means of testing or recording Covid-19, but we could look back at how effectively Nigeria – and many African countries – dealt with Ebola in 2014 and conclude that the experience of handling viral disease has braced these societies for the global pandemic.

Across the planet, the inequality produced by unfettered capitalism – and latterly austerity – has become more pronounced. So too the failures to address the social and economic consequences of this are now very much in our present, as they cross-fertilise with the virus itself. And for much of the world, the historic legacy of imperialism adds a further dimension. In Nigeria, people aren’t only dying from Covid-19, but from years of colonial divide and rule, corruption and the refusal by wealthy elites to invest in public infrastructure.

As a friend in Lagos tells me: “Covid-19 is ok here. It’s the lockdowns which came as a shock to people, a lot of Nigerian people died from starvation... lots lost their jobs... everyone is hungry out here, even the police.”

For context, employees of the Nigerian police force have a starting salary of approximately N9019 per month. That’s around £18.01. For a constable, the monthly salary is N46,000, or £91.86. To give an idea of how much this is in real terms, a book bought on my last visit to Lagos in 2016 was N4500 (£8.98) and prices have vastly inflated since the pandemic took hold. This is compounded by the fact that the American Dollar and British Pound are considered to be of more value and often the only accepted currencies.

Before Covid-19 – and the accompanying restrictions – the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) embarked on strike action to force the government to fulfil agreements made at a truce more than 10 years ago. Then, as now, the ASUU called on the government to reduce its economic profligacy, which has accelerated the wilful neglect and decline of public universities in Nigeria.

A senior lecturer more than over six years’ experience receives approximately N220,000 (£439) per month, a salary which many lecturers use to pay for materials required to teach students. President Buhari’s (pictured below) 2021 budget allocated only 6.7% to education, a gross shortfall to the Unesco-prescribed minimum of 26%. As the ASUU states: “Hungry teachers can neither teach well nor carry out research. And poorly taught students can neither excel nor propel their nation to great heights.” Despite recent orders from the Nigerian government to resume teaching, public universities remain closed.

These are but a few examples, many others can be found including in transport and housing. In Lagos there is currently no city-wide rail service despite decades-old plans to undertake public transport investment. Lagos’s islands shimmer with unoccupied luxury developments, priced out of the reach of all but the city’s richest, while the masses continue to make do with slums. It is estimated Lagos has an existing shortage of more than five million homes and needs to deliver 200,000 houses annually to keep up with the growing population.


Like the West, the gulf between the rich and poor is widening and futures free of continued and increasing economic, climate and social crisis seem illusive. Those who see this most clearly are the youth. And now, instead of seeking brighter futures, which often end in the tragic loss of life owing to border restrictions and anti-Black modern slavery, the Nigerian youth are staying – and fighting back in the form of the #endsars movement.

Where there is crisis there is opportunity

THE global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement has reverberated throughout 2020 and the world. This is especially true when being Black is a category applied to the diaspora and the descendants of imperial ventures. I wondered how much the Black Lives Matter movement had inspired #endsars. I asked my friend in Lagos if Black Lives Matter has had much of an impact in Nigeria. She tells me: “This motivated the #endsars movement... after watching the West stand up for George Floyd, that sort of fuelled the moment.”

For weeks, the people of Nigeria have been courageously protesting from Abuja to Lagos, demanding an end to the killing, unlawful arrests, torture, sexual violence and other harm caused Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a controversial unit of the Nigerian

Police.

On Tuesday, October 20, Nigerian forces opened fire on protesters, killing multiple people and adding to the dozens who have already been shot and killed over the course of the demonstrations.


The reason people in Nigeria are demanding an end to SARS is the same reason Black people in the United States – and elsewhere – are demanding the defunding of police. Because in a time of crisis, the institution exists as a violent resource the state can call upon to impose order in an unequal and unjust society.

Only a few weeks before Nigerian forces opened fire and killed protesters in Lagos, Daniel Bertrand, the Belgian ambassador, visited Eko Atlantic City, also in Lagos. These events are not disconnected. Eko Atlantic City is a new coastal city, described as a public-private partnership between the Lagos State Government and the Chagoury Group, which owns South Energyx. Funded entirely by private investments, the role of government is limited to providing the concession for the project and receiving taxes on the

land sales.

The development, “standing on 10 million square metres of land reclaimed from the ocean and protected by an 8.5 kilometre long sea wall, will be the size of Manhattan’s skyscraper district. Self-sufficient and sustainable, it includes state-of-the-art urban design, its own power

generation, clean water, advanced telecommunications, spacious roads and tree-lined streets”.

In September 2009, Eko Atlantic City was awarded a “Commitment Certificate” by the Clinton Foundation Global Initiative. The certificate recognises “commitments” by members of the Initiative, who create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.


READ MORE: Nigerian demonstrators 'shot dead' as curfew broken

According to the Foundation citation, “South Energyx commits to combating the devastating effects of climate change by reclaiming nine square kilometres of land for a new city, Eko Atlantic. Eko Atlantic will be an environmentally conscious city, built with nature, to restore an original coastline and protect Victoria Island, Nigeria from the severe risk of ocean surge and flooding.” Modern imperialism, shrouded in progressive veneer.

Gilbert Chagoury, founder and chairman of the Chagoury Group, has donated between $1-$5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Protecting Eko Atlantic City will be the Great Wall of Lagos. Over eight kilometres long, it is designed as a barrier to dispel the force of the waves from the Atlantic Ocean. Like the gated communities in Lagos, investors are capitalising on what is a gateway to the emerging markets of the continent. But ordinary Nigerians are not to reap any benefits. Instead, they are subjugated by the state.

The Nigerian youth have other plans. Their movement is courageously challenging power, and in the process it is building its own. Just as capitalism, the fight for racial equality and the pandemic are global, so too is the struggle for another world. And that kind of internationalism from below is needed now more than ever. Nigeria has a rich history of revolutionary action and thought, often actualised through its women. This is much harder to erase and will take more than walls to keep at bay.

Three-quarters of Chilean voters want new constitution: partial count



By Aislinn Laing, Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chileans have voted overwhelmingly for the country’s Pinochet-era constitution to be redrafted, with more than a third of votes counted from around the nation and abroad, the electoral service said on Sunday evening.

A total of 77.71% had approved the option of a fresh charter to replace one drafted in 1980 during the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship, compared to 22.29% who voted against with 36% of votes counted, the Servel election authority said.

With 19.5% of the second voting card counted, asking voters if they wanted the new charter drafted by a specially-elected body of citizens to draft the new charter over a mixed convention of lawmakers and citizens, 75.5% picked the former.

As votes were counted on live television around the country, excitement built as citizens streamed towards the capital Santiago’s main squares.

In Plaza Italia, the central hub for protests, a small number of rock-throwing demonstrators clashed with police using tear gas and water canons but they were later replaced by massive crowds in carnival mood letting off fireworks.

Police estimated their numbers at 9 pm local (2400 GMT) at 15,000 people, who wielded green lasers as “rebirth” was beamed in lights on a nearby tower.

Record turnout seen as Chileans vote in constitutional referendum

By Aislinn Laing, Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chileans turned out in record numbers on Sunday to vote on whether to tear up the country’s Pinochet-era constitution in favor of a fresh charter drafted by citizens - a key demand of fierce anti-government protests that erupted last year.


Electoral and government officials and analysts pointed to a particularly high turnout and significant representation of young people among voters, despite Chile continuing to be blighted by the coronavirus pandemic and recent violence linked to the demonstrations.

As dusk fell, police fired tear gas and water cannon to try to disperse hundreds of people who gathered in Plaza Italia, the central Santiago square that has been the focus of protests. The officers later appeared to stand down as the crowd grew with more people arriving to celebrate the likely result.

Patricio Santamaria of the Servel elections body said turnout would probably exceed 49% - the highest level recorded since voting was made voluntary in 2012. “Today, people have heard the call of history,” he said.

Claudio Fuentes, a political scientist at Chile’s Diego Portales University, said the months of protests had served to reverse a downward trend in voting engagement.

“I think we could see turnout of around 55 to 58%,” he said. “The more people who vote, the more legitimate and overwhelming the result.


Few Chileans are indifferent to the outcome of the referendum, and opinions were strongly-held among voters polled by Reuters on Sunday.

Natalia Ramos, 43, a kindergarten teacher who voted in favor of a new constitution in Santiago’s affluent Las Condes suburb, praised the protests that began a year ago over patchy public services and societal inequity, saying they had brought about radical change.

“The protests were unfortunately violent but history tells us that without violence, there is very little we can achieve to bring about important revolution - they raised awareness of the inequality of the past 30 years,” she said.

Jose Tomas Olivares, 18, voting for the first time at the same polling station, said only the current, free-market friendly constitution could safeguard the economic growth required to uplift more citizens.

“There is a lot of populism among young people but many people are voting to approve a new constitution just to be part of a trend,” he said.


More than 14.8 million people are eligible to vote up and down the long thin country, although COVID-19 sufferers have been told to stay away from polling centers on threat of arrest.

Chileans can decide whether to approve or reject a new constitution and whether it should be drafted by a specially elected citizens’ body or a mix of citizens and lawmakers.

The winning camp needs a simple majority. Opinion polls suggest a new charter will be approved by a significant margin. First results are due between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. local time, according to Servel.

Unofficial results from votes cast by 5,208 Chileans living in Europe and Asia, tallied by Diego Portales University, showed more than 87% voted in favor of a new constitution.

The country’s current constitution was drafted by dictator Augusto Pinochet’s close adviser Jaime Guzman in 1980, and has only been tweaked by successive governments to reduce military and executive power.

Reporting by Aislinn Laing and Fabian Cambero; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Daniel Wallis

PORTLAND RECKONS WITH POLICE ATTACKS ON PROTESTERS AFTER MONTHS OF UNREST

Witness testimony and a video reconstruction detail deliberate violence by police against peaceful protesters.

Alice Speri October 25 2020

DAYS INTO THE nationwide protest movement sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, the Black-led, police accountability group Don’t Shoot Portland sued the city of Portland, Oregon, over use of tear gas against protesters. The lawsuit led to a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Portland Police Bureau from using tear gas, except in narrow circumstances. But officers quickly switched gears, and in response to growing protests, they ramped up the deployment of OC spray, rubber bullets, pepper balls, flash bangs, and other impact munitions known as “nonlethal” or “less-lethal” weapons. Don’t Shoot Portland again sought and obtained a court order to limit police’s use of those weapons.

Then on June 30, just four days after a federal judge had sided with protesters and issued a restraining order on the use by police of less-lethal weapons, Portland officers meeting protesters outside the local police union building again fired smoke grenades, rubber bullets, and other impact munitions into the crowd, injuring several people. They then declared the protest a riot and deployed tear gas despite the court order restricting its use.

“They blatantly ignored the order,” Tai Carpenter, Don’t Shoot Portland’s board president, told The Intercept. “What happened on June 30 was just an all-out attack on civilians. That night just really stands out for the vast amount of violence that was being inflicted on the street.”

In August, as protests in Portland continued uninterrupted for a third month, Don’t Shoot Portland filed a new motion, asking the federal judge in the case to hold the city in contempt of court over police use of “less-lethal” munitions that night. In a court hearing this week, protesters testified in graphic detail about what they described as an unprovoked, violent response to a protest that had been largely peaceful.

A spokesperson for the city of Portland declined to comment on pending litigation. Attorneys for the city said in court that police response “was based on good faith and reasonable interpretations of the less-lethal order.” They argued that police were responding to protesters throwing bottles, rocks, and cans and shining green lasers at them, and that officers feared that protesters would set the police union’s building on fire. In court filings, they wrote that plaintiffs had offered “vague descriptions of uses of force such that it is not possible to begin to evaluate whether the uses violate the Less Lethal Order.”

The implication that a confrontation between protesters and police was too chaotic to discern, and that police were justified in their outsize response by some individuals’ actions toward them, is one that’s been regularly invoked following violent repression of protests. Often the official narrative established by police is hard to challenge in a court setting, because evidence is usually messy or incomplete, or the chain of events gets obscured in the fog of war surrounding many protests.

Read Our Complete CoverageProtests for Black Lives


But the June 30 incidents were not only among the most violent in Portland’s summer of protest, they were also some of the best documented, captured in several long videos shot from different angles by protesters and bystanders. “It was one of the most heavily visualized nights of the protests,” said Carpenter. “There were a lot of livestreamers there, there were people on their balconies, because it was in a residential neighborhood.”

In fact, the number and quality of videos has allowed attorneys for Don’t Shoot Portland, working with the applied-research group SITU, to produce an unusually detailed reconstruction of that night’s events, a granular analysis of a number of incidents of police violence over a 90-minute period of time that clearly shows the circumstances, and lack of justification, that preceded each deployment of force. The reconstruction, which was shown in court, offered a forensic analysis of a protest with a level of detail that is usually reserved for criminal investigations. It provided a rare piece of evidence of abuse by officers that is much harder to dismiss than many witness accounts of police violence, opening the door for an equally rare moment of accountability.

“What these protests have exposed is the utter contempt that the police bureau has for criticism or even the idea that anybody should question what they do at any time,” Jesse Merrithew, one of the attorneys representing Don’t Shoot Portland, told The Intercept.

“You can watch it on video what actually happened,” he added.“What we’re hopeful of is that this helps the court impose the accountability that the city has been unwilling or unable to impose on the police bureau.”



Video: Courtesy of SITU Research
The Night of June 30

On the evening of June 30, protesters who had previously stayed mostly downtown for the first time moved to the more suburban area where the Portland Police Association has its headquarters. By then, a growing number of people in Portland had begun to protest not only to demand justice for Floyd, but also large cuts to the police bureau’s budget and accountability for violence carried out by local police. In court documents, Don’t Shoot Portland called the police union “the chief obstacle to police accountability in this city.”

Protesters met a line of officers before reaching the union’s building and stopped at a distance, chanting or listening to speakers. Witnesses described seeing a couple plastic bottles hurled toward the officers, but no further criminal conduct and “nothing shocking or riotous.” But within minutes of protesters’ arrival, officers in full riot gear filled the street. Using a loudspeaker on an LRAD truck, a type of sonic weapon sometimes deployed at protests, they announced that the assembly had been declared unlawful and threatened to deploy force to arrest protesters. Then, as the crowd complied with orders to move back, police, unprovoked, begun pushing and beating people back with batons. Almost immediately, and responding to no visible provocation, they fired the first impact munitions and pepper-sprayed people at close range.

The reconstruction of the following hour and a half that was presented in court zeroed in on four moments that evening during which police deployed multiple types of less-lethal weapons, as well as a moment when they “bull-rushed” into the crowd. It ends showing police as they declared a riot and deployed tear gas.

In the first incident, police can be seen shoving and beating people with batons and pepper-spraying them in the face, before shooting munitions at them at close range, even as protesters are moving back as directed. Police are also shown grabbing a protester holding a banner, ripping it, and preventing people from dispersing despite ordering them to do so. In the second incident, a protester can be seen throwing a bottle on the ground in front of police — in response to which police fire impact munitions at the protester multiple times before rolling a smoke grenade into the receding crowd. Officers are then seen firing at a different protester who kicked away a smoke canister. In the third incident, police are seen shooting impact munitions at a crowd that was posing no threat, from 120 feet away, and then doing so again at a closer distance during a fourth incident.



Video: Courtesy of SITU Research

In court, James Comstock, a lead investigator in the case, walked a judge through SITU’s reconstruction, which he explained was built using a laser scan of the area to reproduce a three-dimensional model of the street where the protest took place. Visual evidence of each incident was then mapped onto the model and replayed in real time. Each incident was presented from multiple viewpoints, including side views and aerial views captured by a bystander filming from his balcony. And each deployment of force was shown in the context of the 30 seconds that preceded it, in order to paint as accurate a picture as possible of any action that might have justified it.

“I don’t know that anybody has used a reconstruction like this in a protest case,” Merrithew told The Intercept. “We use them all the time in criminal cases and we’ve used similar reconstructions for police shooting cases.”

“It gives a really good overview for people to understand what’s going on, the movement of the police and the protesters, and the violence, and it’s in real-time so you can actually see what’s happening,” echoed Carpenter. “It will show a lot of people what we’ve been saying, that it was all unprovoked.”

In court, the judge also heard firsthand accounts from protest participants, including Pedro Anglada Cordero, the protester who was shot with a rubber bullet after kicking a smoke canister away, and Eric Greatwood, a livestreamer and a regular presence at Portland protests who recorded most of the evening with a video action camera placed on top of a 20-foot pole, and who was shot in the groin with a FN303 round, a type of impact munition that has caused fatal injuries in the past.

Anglada Cordero, who was at the protest with his wife, was retreating from police along with most others in the crowd when a smoke canister was tossed toward him. Anglada Cordero, who noted that his wife had already been coughing because of the chemical agents in the air, said that he instinctively moved to kick the can away. When the can barely moved, he took a few more steps and kicked it further away, the video shows. Police immediately shot him with rubber bullets, hitting him once behind the knee and once in the thigh, and leaving tennis ball-sized bruises later documented in court filings.

“My first, spontaneous reaction was to get it away from us,” he told The Intercept, referring to the canister. “It was in my interest to keep our immediate group safe from being exposed to more agents.”

But police took the gesture as an attack on them, and right after he kicked the canister, things escalated quickly, Anglada Cordero said. Moments later someone who tried to grab and toss a can was tackled to the ground. In court, city attorneys sought to describe the incidents as evidence of protesters’ violent conduct. Anglada Cordero said he was just trying to protect his wife, himself, and those in his immediate vicinity.

“The moment they toss a smoke canister our way and the moment someone kicks it back, that constitutes a reason for them to escalate and retaliate,” he told The Intercept. “So suddenly they are in the right to use ammunition against the crowd, but the crowd has no right to defend themselves.”



Video: Courtesy of SITU Research

Eric Greatwood, an independent livestreamer who has filmed dozens of protests, captured much of the evening on video, providing footage that was used for the reconstruction presented in court. At one point, officers recognized him and called him by name, ordering him to move back. “That just sent the hairs of my arm up, just to call me by my name like that,” Greatwood told The Intercept. He complied but kept filming from the sidelines as police arrested protesters. Then moments later, as Greatwood crouched down to look at an unexploded smoke grenade, police fired an impact munition at him, hitting him in the groin.

“I know for a fact that they did it intentionally because there have been other people who have been fired on in that area,” said Greatwood, who can be heard moaning in the video as his camera kept rolling. “They have sights on those things, they know exactly how to fire them, they are supposed to bounce them off the ground. They fired directly at me.”

A U.S. Air Force veteran, Greatwood said that anyone in the military caught doing what police did to him would be in prison. “I don’t know how a man can actually hit another man in the groin, that just completely baffles me, he totally aimed for it.” The officer who shot him, Brent Taylor, said in court that had had not intended to target Greatwood’s groin. “I’m shooting at a moving target,” he testified. “I’m aiming at his lower legs but how quickly he changes his position, I cannot control.”

Greatwood, who has filed notice of his intent to sue the city for using excessive force, said that he was in pain for weeks after being shot and had difficulty using the bathroom. But he was back the next day to livestream another protest, and many more since then. “I just couldn’t not film what was happening.”
Competing Narratives

In court, attorneys for the city pushed back against the reconstruction presented on behalf of Don’t Shoot Portland. “It wasn’t an effort to provide an objective presentation from both police perspective and demonstrator perspective, right?” an attorney for the city asked Comstock in cross-examination, noting that the reconstruction focused for instance on the actions of Portland police, and not of Oregon State Police who were also on the scene. “The purpose of this video is giving context around the video that we’ve collected,” Comstock replied.

In fact, the legal team representing protesters said that they chose to reconstruct the June 30 incidents over other episodes during which police may also have violated court orders in part because of the volume of evidence available about them. “It’s important for the case to be able to give the court the best possible, quality evidence so the court can determine whether or not they violated the order,” said Merrithew.

But as Portlanders reckon with the historic wave of protests that has gripped the city for months, leading to two deaths and hundreds of arrests, and as the upcoming mayoral race is likely to be determined in large part by officials’ response to the protests, the broader public also has a right to see evidence of what happened, Merrithew argued.

“Probably a very small percentage of the public is looking at these things every night and actually paying attention to what’s going on; they’re hearing it from a 10,000-foot view, which allows them to sort of be naive in whatever camp they’re predisposed to be in,” he said. “We’re trying to bring the same quality of evidence to the public as we are to the court, because the public needs to understand that the justifications that are being made by the bureau are false. The public needs to understand what these public employees are doing in their name.”

The impulse to discern and record what was happening is also what drove Greatwood to start livestreaming the protests in Portland. “I’ve seen a lot of footage that was basically just the backs of people’s heads, and there was a lot of chaos, but you couldn’t exactly see anything,” he said, adding that his video camera, placed on top of a pole or sometimes on a drone, offers a bird’s eye view of the protests. “I wanted to figure out if protesters were causing the police’s actions or if the police were just being a little bit heavy-handed.”

Greatwood said that he has always been respectful toward officers at protests, getting out of their way when asked and limiting himself to documenting what was happening, including on June 30. But he felt he had been targeted that night because he was there with a camera. “They are probably upset because they know that they have been acting out of line, and they don’t like it being broadcast,” he said. “If you are doing things that are proper, you shouldn’t be afraid of a camera and the truth.”

That night, he said, he had seen “barely anything happening” before police unleashed on protesters. “I saw more things that seemed blown out of proportion when it came to the police providing footage or photos to the press,” he added. “I felt like there was a lot of gaslighting from the police, and that there was not a whole lot that the protesters were doing to get them egged on.”

Others who testified last week also said that regardless of the outcome in court, it was important for Portland residents to document and address the harm and trauma inflicted on countless protesters over the last months. “There are so many people that have gone through something so similar to what I went through that night,” said Anglada Cordero, who after being shot helped other protesters who were maced at close range and couldn’t breathe. “When you go through such an experience, and you see others hurt, then you feel compelled to come out and be in solidarity with others. And that’s what happens every night, when people are getting hurt, more people come out and help each other.”

The judge in the case is expected to rule on whether to hold the city in contempt of court in the coming days.

“It’s hard to have faith in the court system when it’s been proven all your life that your civil liberties don’t matter,” said Carpenter of Don’t Shoot Portland. “But the trauma and the violence have been clearly documented on the record; they’re facts that can’t be ignored. Even with the way that our justice system works, there has to be accountability.”

POLICE FAILING TO PROTECT PROTESTERS FROM VIOLENCE, AS VOLATILE ELECTIONS NEAR

October 23, 2020

Law enforcement agencies across the United States are failing to facilitate people’s fundamental right to freedom of peaceful assembly, and to protect protests and counter-protests from violent disruption by armed groups among others, Amnesty International said today in a new report, Losing the Peace: US Police Failures to Protect Protesters from Violence.

Since the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, there have been thousands of peaceful anti-racism and political protests and counter-protests across the United States. Yet in nearly 200 incidents where violence occurred between participants in conflicting protests, Amnesty International found that US police forces frequently failed to take preventive measures to avoid the disruption of peaceful assemblies and failed to protect protesters from violent attacks when they did occur.

“Amidst unprecedented rises in political volatility and violence, US government and law enforcement authorities at all levels must meticulously protect people’s human rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International. “In the context of hotly contested elections and a nationwide civil rights movement, no one should fear for their lives when they try to cast a vote or have their voices heard at peaceful assemblies.”

From May to September 2020, Amnesty International has documented and verified violent confrontations between protests and counter-protests in approximately 75% of all US states, and in about half of all US states it confirmed cases of police forces failing to keep assemblies peaceful and to protect participants from violent confrontations with counter-protesters. In particular, law enforcement agencies often neglected to:
Deploy appropriately trained police in adequate numbers to address potential violence between protesters and counter-protesters;
Separate protests and counter-protests, and de-escalate tensions, when necessary to avoid violent confrontations;
Prohibit and prevent threats of violence by armed groups and individuals at peaceful assemblies.
Halt acts of violence by intervening in disputes between protesters and counter-protesters; and
Differentiate between violent and nonviolent actors in law enforcement responses to violent incidents, including by avoiding the dispersal of assemblies when they remained otherwise generally peaceful.

“As President Trump calls on his supporters to ‘go to’ and ‘watch’ the polling stations, and white supremacist armed groups to ‘stand by’ during the elections, law enforcement officials should be on high alert to prevent political violence in this explosive moment,” said Brian Griffey, regional researcher and advisor for North America at Amnesty International. “Government authorities and the police forces they direct must adopt new policies, strategies, and tactics to facilitate and protect peaceful protests, and prevent their disruption by armed groups or other violent actors.”

Among the incidents documented by Amnesty International, over a dozen protests and counter-protests erupted in violence with police either mostly or entirely absent from the scene. A frequent catalyst for violent confrontations between protesters and counter-protesters was the presence of vigilante armed groups. The Trump administration’s rhetoric, policies, and practices have appeared to encourage the prevalence of armed groups unlawfully assaulting protesters and counter-protesters around the country.

In one example, an anti-racism protest organizer, Tony Crawford, told Amnesty International that “people could have gotten killed” during a violent confrontation his community had with armed counter-protesters at demonstration calling for the removal of a Confederate civil war statue in Weatherford, Texas in July.

In a series of text messages to the Weatherford police chief, reviewed by Amnesty International, Crawford wrote: “The patriots [armed group members] are surrounding us to force confrontation. We are surrounded by guns and people talking about shooting us loudly… Where are the police, Chief? This is ridiculous. We are being abused. Where are y’all… Y’all abandoned us Chief. You abandoned us. You let us get dragged and attacked while you did nothing.”

US government and law enforcement authorities at all levels must reform their police forces’ policies and practices to better facilitate freedom of peaceful assembly and protect protesters from widespread threats of preventable violence. In the marked absence of federal protection, local-level governments should safeguard protests from violence by issuing temporary executive orders to restrict the presence of weapons in public properties, parks, polling stations, and peaceful assemblies; and by instructing their law enforcement agencies to prevent armed individuals and armed groups from disrupting peaceful protests and civic activities during the elections period.

Police forces at city, county, state and federal levels should all immediately reform their conduct and implement specialized trainings on the human rights-compliant facilitation and protection of freedom of peaceful assembly, in line with their obligations under the US Constitution and good practices in policing of assemblies.

Background and context

On August 4, Amnesty International published the report The World is Watching: Mass Violations by US police of Black Lives Matter protesters’ rights.

On October 6, the organization called upon United States governors to issue executive orders prohibiting non-state actors from possessing firearms at or near polling places during the 2020 general elections. Six states already prohibit guns at polling places: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

On October 20, Amnesty International also issued a joint letter with Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, calling on US municipal governments to adopt temporary special measures to prevent armed individuals or groups from intimidating or threatening protesters or voters during and following the elections.

Media contact: media@aiusa.org

DOWNLOADS
Losing the Peace

 

White poppy campaign launches with call to remember Yemen

By agency reporter

OCTOBER 22, 2020

Remembrance Day risks being a 'festival of forgetting' if we ignore Yemen and other wars going on today. That is the message from the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) as it launches this year's white poppy campaign.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Yemen, which has already killed over 20,000 people and left 10 million on the brink of starvation.

The PPU is this year using the slogan 'Remember Yemen', along with the usual call to 'Remember Them All' – victims of all nationalities in all wars, including current wars and lesser-mentioned colonial wars of the past.

White poppies, which have been worn since 1933, have three meanings:

• Remembrance for all victims of war, both civilian and military, of all nationalities
• A commitment to peace
• A rejection of militarism and any attempt to celebrate war

The PPU has repeatedly condemned British complicity in the bombing of Yemen, pointing out that Saudi forces have been trained by UK forces, both in the UK and in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the UK government has recently allowed the resumption of arms sales to the Saudi regime. In August, British soldier Ahmed Al-Babati was arrested by Military Police for peacefully protesting against the war in Yemen.

While white poppy sales and remembrance events this year are likely to be affected by the ongoing pandemic: the PPU has reported that there has already been an increase in orders of white poppy material for schools. This includes a new Remembrance Education Pack, featuring suggested activities and lesson ideas for both primary and secondary schools.

Geoff Tibbs, the Peace Pledge Union's Remembrance Project Manager, said: “White poppies stand for remembrance of all victims of war – including those it suits the UK government to forget. Many white poppy wearers this year will remember Yemen, where British-trained pilots are dropping bombs from British-made planes. White poppies challenge militarism, as well as the hypocrisy of those who talk of remembering the past while ignoring the present.”

Adhiyan Jeevathol of London Students for Yemen, who is backing the white poppy campaign, said: “We should remember Yemen because we are in part responsible for the misery in Yemen if we do not take a stand against the policies of the UK government and arms companies. Through remembrance we can endeavour not to be responsible for another Yemen.”

White poppies were first introduced by the Women's Co-operative Guild in 1933, and are now distributed by the Peace Pledge Union, a pacifist campaign group, though not all white poppy wearers are pacifists. Money raised through sales goes towards promoting nonviolent approaches to conflict and producing educational materials. Many white poppy wearers also donate to charities supporting veterans or other victims of war.

The Peace Pledge Union will hold an Alternative Remembrance Sunday Ceremony on 8 November. Owing to the Covid pandemic, it will this year be largely online. More details will be announced shortly.

* White poppies and resources available to order here

* Peace Pledge Union https://www.ppu.org.uk/

[Ekk/6]

Domestic workers in Qatar suffer extreme overwork and abuse
By agency reporter
OCTOBER 21, 2020


Migrant domestic workers in Qatar have been pushed to breaking point by extreme overwork, lack of rest, and abusive and degrading treatment, says Amnesty International in a major new report.

Amnesty spoke to 105 women who had been employed as live-in domestic workers – 90 of the women said they regularly worked more than 14 hours per day, while half worked more than 18 hours per day, almost double their contracted hours.

Eighty nine of the women who were in contact with Amnesty regularly worked seven days a week, and many of the women had never had a single day off at all.

Though Qatar has introduced a Domestic Workers Law for its 173,000 migrant domestic workers - with limits on working hours, mandatory daily breaks, a weekly day off and paid holidays – many women told Amnesty they were scared to refuse their employers’ endless requests, even when they desperately needed to rest. Eighty seven of the workers had also had their passport confiscated by their employers.

Some also reported not being paid properly, while 40 women described being insulted, slapped or spat at. One woman said she was treated “like a dog”, with others describing sexual abuse (see cases below).

At least 23 women interviewed by Amnesty said they were not given enough food, while some described sleeping in cramped rooms, on the floor or without air-conditioning.

Amnesty’s 76-page report, ‘Why do you want to rest?’: Ongoing abuse of domestic workers in Qatar, highlights how the Qatari authorities’ are failing to conduct workplace inspections, and how recent reforms were failing to significantly address systemic abuse. Qatar recently introduced a minimum wage and abolished a requirement that workers obtain their employer’s permission to change jobs or leave the country. Though these changes may make it easier for workers to escape exploitative employers, they are unlikely to significantly reduce abuse itself or improve domestic workers’ conditions.

As a party to various international treaties prohibiting human rights abuses, Qatar is obliged to protect all workers, including domestic workers living and working in its territory, and should provide remedies when those rights are being violated.

Steve Cockburn, Head of Economic and Social Justice at Amnesty International, said: “Domestic workers told us they were working an average of 16 hours a day, every day of the week, far more than the law allows. Almost all had their passport confiscated by their employers, and others described not getting their salaries and being subjected to vicious insults and assaults.

“The overall picture is of a system which continues to allow employers to treat domestic workers not as human beings but as possessions. Despite efforts to reform labour laws, Qatar is still failing the most vulnerable women in the country.”

Amnesty is calling on the Qatari authorities to take concrete steps to ensure full implementation of the law, establish strict inspection mechanisms and take serious action against abusive employers.

Amnesty spoke to 40 women who said they had suffered verbal and physical abuse, often involved degrading treatment, shouting and insults.

Emily (not her real name) said: “Madam will say ‘[you are] a monster, I will cut your tongue’. I am scared. She will tell me ‘I will kill you’, always bad words. I am only a [maid], and I can’t do anything.”

Fifteen women said they faced physical abuse at the hands of their employers or family members, including spitting, beating, kicking, punching and hair-pulling.

Five women said they had been sexually abused by their employers or visiting relatives. The sexual abuse ranged from harassment to fondling and rape. Most women felt they could not complain to the police for fear of retaliation by their employers. One woman, Julia (not her real name), did report sexual abuse to the police. The son of Julia’s employer visited the house one day and attempted to rape another woman working in the house. The man offered the women money to keep quiet, but they went to the police. A police investigator accused Julia and her friend of “making up stories” and dropped the case. Finally, their employer bought them tickets home in exchange for the women signing a statement written in Arabic which they did not understand.

Some of the women Amnesty interviewed were still in their jobs, while others had left but remained in Qatar; others had returned to their home countries. Like the women themselves, the employers they described were from many different countries. All names have been changed to protect identities.

Qatar has utterly failed to hold abusive employers to account, meaning there is little to deter future abuses. Passport confiscation and unpaid wages are not being automatically investigated. Employers rarely face consequences when they refuse to hand back passports or pay unpaid wages.

Women who leave their jobs can face retaliation measures from their employers and be charged with 'absconding' or other offences. At least ten women Amnesty spoke to were accused of theft, and 13 others had an 'absconding' case filed by their employers. All women denied the charges and said they were filed after they fled abuses.

The isolation of many domestic workers and the restrictions imposed on their freedom of movement make it very difficult for them access support and flee abuse. While some businesses are beginning to set up workplace committees for other migrant workers, no equivalent initiative exists for domestic workers. Domestic workers, like other migrant workers in Qatar, are unable to form and join trade unions.

* Read ‘Why do you want to rest?’: Ongoing abuse of domestic workers in Qatar here

* Amnesty International https://www.amnesty.org.uk/

[Ekk/6]

 

We need to stop our children being monetised

By Bernadette Meaden

OCTOBER 7, 2020

Student accommodation is a lucrative business. One investment website says gross yields can be around 10-15 per cent, and adds, “Following the 2008 global downturn, it consistently remained one of the world’s best performing asset classes. Today, despite wider economic concerns, it remains one of the most popular investments in the UK and US respectively.”

These investments can change hands for huge sums. Earlier this year it was reported that New York-based private equity firm Blackstone had done the largest-ever private property deal in the UK, by agreeing to buy student accommodation company iQ  from Goldman Sachs – for £4.7 billion. 

The plight of students now locked down and studying online in this expensive accommodation is rightly receiving considerable attention, and the monetisation of university education and the student experience is being discussed – perhaps in part because people in the media can easily identify with the students, or may have family members affected.

But – providers of student accommodation do at least supply rooms or flats in a suitable location, ie near the university. Some of our most disadvantaged and traumatised children and young people do not even get that consideration, and few people in the media identify with their plight.

Children who are taken into care are often moved long distances away from their home areas, far from everything and everybody they know. Andrew Fellowes of the NSPCC has pointed out that these children are more likely to go missing, and says, “There needs to be coordinated action from national and local governments to provide high quality accommodation options close to where children live." 

One would think this was the least we could expect from a state which had any thought for the welfare of some of its least fortunate children – that some careful planning would go into where children’s homes are needed, and to establish them there.

But the reality is that, like so much these days, the care of vulnerable children is increasingly subject to market forces. The care of some of our youngest and most severely deprived and disadvantaged children have, like University students, become a source of big profits, and if there’s one thing we all know about profits, it’s that they are usually maximised where possible.

So perhaps it is no surprise to learn that a quarter of all England’s children’s homes are located in the North West, and that London children who go into care are quite likely to be sent far away from home. It seems likely that a big factor in this is property prices. If you were setting up a children’s home for profit, would you buy an expensive property in the South East, or a cheap one in the North West? So, children in care are shunted around the country.

Perhaps if we were confident that children would receive good care when they got there, location wouldn’t be so important. But sadly, we can’t be. In the latest government figures, for example, it was revealed that two large private providers had 28 per cent of their homes listed as “Requires improvement to be good”. 

What does it mean, for the children who have to live in homes that are not as good as we would hope? What is it like? Sometimes, not at all like a home in any real sense of the word. Ofsted inspection reports can tell a grim story.

For instance, on 11 August 2020, following a complaint, Ofsted carried out a monitoring visit to a children's home in Warrington. The previous inspection in 2019 had rated the home as Good. On this visit inspectors found, “Staff and managers are not meeting children’s basic day-to-day needs and physical necessities. This may re-enforce previous experiences for children and this does not meet the therapeutic approach described in the home’s statement of purpose." And then, sadly: ”The physical environment of the home needs improvement. For example, carpets in the home were stained and had burn marks on them. Basic items such as bathroom fittings and bedroom furniture were missing. This does not provide a homely environment for the children to live in.” The company that operates this children’s home was purchased in 2017 by a private equity company based in Savile Row, Mayfair, London. 

Last year the Local Government Select Committee investigated the funding of children’s care, and said, ‘Concerns were raised about local authorities’ reliance on private providers and the cost and quality of some of this care. Professor Jones [Emeritus Professor of Social Work, Kingston University and St George’s, University of London] told the Committee: “at the moment, 40 local authorities do not provide any residential childcare themselves; they buy it all in the market”. He considered that the overdependence on the private sector meant “the market is now escalating the price [of residential care] because they can afford to, because they have local authorities over a barrel”. He also considered that “the same is true of independent foster care agencies”.’ 

Then in January 2020, research commissioned by the Local Government Association found, “Professional investors and markets have brought financial engineering techniques to the children’s services sector, and these include significantly increasing debt levels and their associated risk.”

Financial engineering techniques. It’s disturbing to remind ourselves that we are talking about the care of traumatised, unhappy and suffering children, being treated as income streams for big businesses and hedge funds to gamble with. This, to me, indicates how unjust and money-driven our society has become, and how the lives of those most in need are too often disregarded and ignored – at great cost to them, and to us. Many of the costs, in personal and social harm, are unquantifiable. But the financial costs alone can be quite staggering.

In September 2020 the Children’s Commissioner reported: “local authorities can pay extortionate amounts for residential care – usually more than £4,000 a week, with local authorities reporting that the costs of such placements are rising sharply.” When children are 16 or older they may go into ‘unregulated accommodation’, where they receive support rather than care – again often provided by private companies at a profit, sometimes of poor quality (caravans and even tents have been reported) and often at great cost. The Children’s Commissioner said “we have heard evidence of one local authority being charged £9,000 per week for a place in unregulated accommodation” 

Even foster care, where an individual or family opens their homes and their hearts to children, the epitome of kindness and generosity, has been affected by this monetisation, as private equity firms have moved into this sector too. The three dominant independent groups in the foster care ‘industry’ are all backed by private equity.

It is of course essential to say that the actual foster carers and staff who are working on the front line in children’s care will be doing everything they can to keep children safe and improve their quality of life and prospects. This is emphatically not intended as a criticism of those dedicated people who are working so hard, but of a system that allows profit to be a priority, and sees growing amounts of public money channelled into the bank accounts of hedge funds.

And if, thanks to the support of good people and their own determination and talent, children survive and go to university, they may remain a source of profit, for investors in student accommodation.

* I became aware of these issues through the work of Martin Barrow, a local authority foster carer and journalist who tirelessly campaigns for scrutiny, transparency, and accountability in children’s social care. Follow him on Twitter @MartinBarrow

-

-----------   

© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. You can follow her on Twitter: @BernaMeaden