THE THREE ABRAHAMIC SECTS
Passover, Easter, Ramadan 2022 fall simultaneously

In a rare conjunction, three major holidays of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are occurring at the same time this year.



The three largest monotheistic religions will be celebrating in Jerusalem this weekend

This Friday, Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus, and on Sunday celebrate Easter, marking their belief in his resurrection. On Friday, Jewish people celebrate the eve of Pesach, commonly called Passover, which commemorates the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and the end of their slavery.

And this weekend as well, Muslims around the world mark another Friday, their weekly holiday, within the month of Ramadan, which began on April 2 and ends on May 2. This coincidence of dates is unusual, especially as far as the proximity of the Islamic Ramadan to the Christian Lent or to the dates of Pesach and Easter is concerned.

This rare conjunction of holidays is possible because unlike the Christian calendar, which is determined by the course of the sun and is widely used in the Western world, the Islamic calendar is aligned with the moon and the lunar year. Twelve months in the solar year last 365 days, in the lunar year, on the other hand, only 354 days. Thus the Islamic cycle of holidays moves across the Western calendar over the course of a good three decades.

PASSOVER IN PICTURES: JEWS OBSERVE HOLIDAY OF DELIVERANCE
Passover: A freedom celebration
Passover, also called Pesach, is one of the major Jewish holidays. The week-long holiday begins at sundown on the first day. It follows the lunar calendar, meaning it takes place every year on different dates, but it usually falls in mid-March or April. It celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt under the leadership of the Old Testament prophet Moses.
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'Siblings in humanity'

The shorter course of the year offers Muslims "the chance to experience Ramadan as well as other festivals in different seasons and different climatic conditions," the spokesperson for Germany's Coordination Council of Muslims, Abdassamad El Yazidi, told DW. At the same time, it ensures that the Muslim holy days coincide over time with various holy days of Christians and Jews. "That should remind us that we are all siblings in humanity and must work together for good."

The Jewish holiday of Pesach and the Easter date of the Western churches, on the other hand, always occur quite close together in early spring. But they don't often fall on precisely the same date. In 2022, Passover begins on April 16, and the Christian Holy Week — which began on April 10 on Palm Sunday — climaxes from Maundy Thursday evening on April 14 to Easter Sunday morning. The holiday covers Jesus' "Passion," from the last supper with his disciples to the celebration of the resurrection.

The difference is due to the fact that the Christian calendar dates Easter to Sunday since the year 325 CE, more specifically to the first Sunday after the spring full moon. In the Jewish calendar, on the other hand, Passover can begin on any day of the week.

TRADITIONS AND RITUALS OF RAMADAN
Ramadan: Islam's holiest month
Every year, millions of practicing Muslims across the world fast, pray and give alms in observance of Islam's holiest month, the exact dates of which change each year. From firing off cannons to lunar sightings, DW explores how Muslims mark the occasion and what it means to the faithful.
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Jerusalem celebrates

Nowhere in the world do the celebrations of multiple monotheistic religions come together as closely as in Jerusalem. One can feel how all three religions are "looking forward to these days," German Benedictine monk Nikodemus Schnabel told DW. In what he described as an "intense time" there, "the city literally vibrates with the various pilgrims, as if there was a need to catch up after the coronavirus, to celebrate outside again and to come together for the festivals," said the monk, who has lived on the outskirts of Jerusalem's Old City for many years.

Ultimately, according to Schnabel, the common experience of a pilgrimage festival connects the religions. Christian churchgoers parade in prayer through the Old City for several days in a row. On Friday morning, Muslims go to the mosque on the Temple Mount for prayer. And during these days, many Jews are drawn to pray at the Wailing Wall — the ruins of the Western Wall of the Second Jewish Temple in antiquity. The location is considered by many Jews to be one of the holiest sites to pray at, due to its proximity to the nearby Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the ancient temple. In view of the political tensions in the area, such days are always a challenge for all security forces in the city.

GERMANY'S BEST-LOVED EASTER TRADITIONS

The decorated Easter egg

Germans love painting Easter eggs. The Sorbs, a cultural minority in Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg, are famous for their art of beautifully decorating eggs with wax. You can learn more about the Slavic minority and their customs at the Spreewald Museum in Lübbenau.

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Easter in Orthodoxy

After this weekend, however, the Easter celebrations are not over. In the Orthodox churches and some of the Eastern churches associated with the Catholic Church, the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus is not held until the following weekend.

The reason for the differing dates is that in 1582, the Eastern Christians, under Pope Gregory XIII, opted for a calendar reform that shifted liturgical timing towards the Gregorian calendar. Those traditions now mark the beginning of spring differently.

The Greek, Russian, and other Eastern Christian Orthodox churches are celebrating Easter this year a week after the Western Christians. And in Germany, Ukrainian-speaking communities are preparing for a large crowd. Churches are expecting many Christians who have fled the Russian invasion in recent weeks.

This article was originally written in German.

SEE 

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/04/passover-song.html

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Pagan Origins of Easter 

 

Decolonizing Politics and Theories from the Abya Yala

Fernando David Márquez Duarte and Víctor Alejandro Espinoza Valle

Free PDF

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This book addresses, from a decolonial approach, various aspects of the original history of Abya Yala. Together, the chapters provide a critical view of the colonization of Indigenous Peoples that not only explains social or economic subjugation of Latin American people, but also makes it clear that colonization is ontological and epistemological. It is a way of conceiving history and memory as subjugation imposed by those who set themselves up as lords and masters of the land and of the social and cultural heritage of Latin America. Thus, colonization must be conceived as a totality. Therefore, deconstructing the hegemonic vision of history is necessary in order to recognize the ancestral rights of Indigenous communities. The decolonial vision is radical in the sense that it goes beyond the European descendants or mestizo visions from which the explanation of Latin American development was constructed. This book aims to investigate the roots of hegemonic thought and provide theoretical and empirical tools to imagine other readings of Abya Yala.

Find out more about E-IR’s range of open access books

Table of contents

Introduction – Aura Cumes

PART ONE: THEORETICAL DISCUSSIONS

Decoloniality And Contemporary Regionalism in Alianza Bolivariana Para Los Pueblos De Nuestra América (Alba) – Alina Ribeiro & Marina Scotelaro

Decolonizing South-South Cooperation: An Analytical Framework Founded on Post-Development and the Common – Marina Bolfarine Caixeta & Maria Do Carmo Reboucas Dos Santos

Armed Actors in the Colombian Conflict: State Vs Armed Groups – Deisy Milena Sorzano Rodriguez & Etienne Mulume Oderhwa

Decolonizing Environmental Politics: Sumak Kawsay as a Possible Moral Foundation for Green Policies – Valeria Victoria Rodríguez Morales

Latin American Critical Economic Thinking and the Labor Market – Rocio Arredondo & Javier Castellon

Latin American Antiphilosophies – Christina Soto Van Der Plas

PART TWO: PRAXIS ANALYSIS

The Crime of Defending a River: Domination, Racism, and Structural Violence in Guatemala – Miguel Alejandro Saquimux Contreras

Decolonising Social Movements in Latin America: An Approach Over the Internationalization of the Landless Workers Movement – Ellen Monielle Do Vale Silva & Guilherme De Lima Souza

Messages From the Meek: Dynamic Resistances at The Edge of Amazonian Colonization and Capitalism – Christian Ferreira Crevels

Development Or Bem Viver? The Xukuru Do Ororubá People’s Vision of Sacred Agriculture as a Counter-Hegemonic Proposal for the Relationship Between Human Beings and Nature – Iran Neves Ordonio, Carla Ladeira Pimentel Águas & Marcos Moraes Valença

‘El pueblo manda y elg obierno obedece’: Decolonising Politics and Constructing Worlds in The Everyday Through Zapatista Autonomy – Sebastián Granda Henao

Cultural And Artistic Expressions of Haitians on Mexicali, Baja California: The Road Toward Interculturalism – Kenia María Ramírez Meda & Adriana Teresa Moreno-Gutiérrez

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About the editors

Fernando David Márquez Duarte is a Mexican decolonial activist and thinker from the Abya Yala. He has a BA in International Relations with Honorific Mention from UABC, as well as a MSc in Regional Development from El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) with a CONACYT scholarship. He is currently enrolled in the PhD Political Science program at the University of California Riverside (UCR) with a Fulbright García Robles scholarship and the Dean’s Fellowship. He has more than 5 years of teaching experience in different universities in México and the USA, and is currently teaching at UCR. He has academic articles published in indexed journals of México, Brazil, Ecuador, Russia, Germany and the UK, as well as book chapters in México and Spain. He has worked advising and supporting Indigenous groups such as the Triquis and Cucapáh Indigenous communities in Baja California, México, regarding Indigenous rights and political participation. He has also worked with the Resistance in defense of water in Baja California with a participatory action-research project. He is proficient in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Náhuatl languages.

Victor Alejandro Espinoza is a tenured professor at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. He has also taught at UABC and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM). He is a member of the SNI (National Researchers System). He holds a Master’s and PhD in Political Science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and in Political Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid. In 2019–2020 he was a visiting professor at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California at San Diego, and in 2008 he was visiting fellow at the Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He has served as the director of journals Frontera Norte and the Revista Mexicana de Estudios Electorales and is the author of ten books and the editor of ten books. He has published 5 working papers, 65 book chapters and 40 articles in academic journals. He has made TV appearances on Novedades, Diario 29, La Crónica, El Mexicano & Zeta. He is a contributor for El Nacional, El Financiero and Excélsior – and 

Florida husband says wife killed in hit-and-run was rescuing turtle from busy road

By Johanna Chisholm

The Independent

 1 day ago

A Florida woman was attempting to save a turtle crossing the road when she was struck and killed in an alleged hit-and-run earlier this month, her husband told Fox 35 Orlando .

According to Florida Highway Patrol, Virginia Celli-Olivi had stepped out of her SUV at approximately 12.45pm on 5 April to rescue a turtle that was attempting to cross Curry Ford Road in Orange County , Florida.

A box truck driving down the same road allegedly crashed into the 57-year-old and her car as she was outside of her vehicle.

"She was doing something that she had done numerous times before, rescuing a turtle," said her husband, Rick Parrish, in an interview with Fox 35. He added that he believed that she was able to save the turtle, and was about to hop back into her car when the deadly crash occurred.

“[She] was coming back around behind the car to go on out and get into the driver’s side when she was struck,” Mr Parrish said.

The man driving the truck, Miguel Valero Gonzalez, 30, fled the scene of the crash, but was followed by a witness who’d seen the fatal crash, Florida Highway Patrol said in a statement.

The witness, they said, followed the box truck until a nearby gas station, where the 30-year-old suspect was apprehended by local authorities.

Mr Parrish, who when told about the witness’ efforts to not let the 30-year-old driver get away, told Fox 35 he was “very appreciative” of the “gentleman who did that”.

Recalling his wife’s life to the outlet, Mr Parrish explained how the former Venezuelan sociology professor had big plans on the horizon, including opening her own translation business.

“Coming to the realisation that I’ll never get to talk to her, never hold her hand - none of that - that’s the hardest part,” he said in an interview in their central Florida home.

The accused hit-and-run suspect was arraigned on 6 April where a judge set the man’s bond at $18,000 and revealed to the court that he was driving without a licence on the day of the 5 April crash.

Several organisations throughout the Orange County region began sharing their condolences for the former sociology professor, including the Venezuela USA Foundation, the Venezuelan American Caucus and the New Miami Hispanic Caucus.

“We mourn the loss of Virginia Celli Olivo, who to the Venezuelan American Caucus was a leader, a colleague and above all, a friend,” wrote the American Caucus in a Facebook post.

https://tinyurl.com/4u6v6ta5

COMMONWEALTH FOR ALL

Portrait of Thomas Paine by Laurent Dabos. 

Credit: National Portrait Gallery, Wikipedia Commons

The Thomas Paine Tax Plan – OpEd

 April 16, 2022

By Sam Pizzigati*

The great pamphleteer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, had much more on his mind than independence from the British.

Paine spent his life, Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Vanessa Williamson write in a new paper, advocating for a democratic “commonwealth” that shared the wealth. He wanted to free people “from domination both political and economic.”

In particular, Paine believed that a wealth tax on grand private fortunes could prevent the emergence of an anti-democratic elite. This tax season, over two centuries later, we may finally have a president who’s taking Paine to heart.

In its new budget proposal, the Biden administration is calling for a new “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax.” The White House isn’t calling this proposal a “wealth tax,” but we should.

Under Biden’s plan, Americans worth over $100 million would be expected to pay an annual tax of at least 20 percent on their total income — including any increases in the value of their stocks, bonds, and other liquid assets.

These liquid assets make up the bulk of every billionaire fortune, but increases in their value go totally untaxed until their wealthy owners decide to sell them off. That gives “ultra-high-net-worth households,” the White House points out, the ability to have their gains “go untaxed for decades or generations.”

Let’s take the example of a CEO who pockets $20 million a year in salary. He might pay a 20 percent tax on that $20 million.

But if this executive also holds stocks worth $10 billion and those stocks gain 10 percent in value — an extra $1 billion — then the vast majority of our CEO’s real income would go completely untaxed.

Under Biden’s plan, that CEO would have to pay taxes on his CEO pay and all his stock gains. That would hike his federal tax tab from $4 million to $204 million.

America’s 700 or so billionaires, the Biden administration notes, saw “their wealth increase by $1 trillion” last year. Yet current law has billionaires paying “just 8 percent of their total realized and unrealized income in taxes.”

That’s right: Billionaires pay at a lower overall rate than average Americans.

“Under current law, when an American worker earns a dollar of wages, that dollar is taxed as they earn it,” the White House explains. “But when a billionaire earns income because their investments increase in value, that gain is too often never taxed at all.”

Firefighters and teachers, adds the White House, “can pay double” the rate billionaires pay.

The Biden tax plan is actually taking much the same approach that Tom Paine took with a wealth tax proposal he first put forward in 1792, tax historians Bearer-Friend and Williamson argue.

Under Paine’s plan, the pair calculate, today’s billionaires would pay a tax of about 3.5 percent of their personal fortunes during normal market years. That figure is remarkably close to the tax rates that appear in wealth tax proposals that Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have advanced.

Biden’s plan doesn’t take that big a bite. But it does represent a significant step toward taxing the wealth of America’s wealthiest, says Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman.

Mega-billionaires Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Elon Musk, Zucman reminds us, together paid just $1.5 billion in federal income taxes over the five-year period that ended in 2018. Under the Biden proposal, this trio would pay at least 100 times more over the next decade or so.

Paine believed that extreme wealth undermines “the ability of citizens to choose their leaders,” Bearer-Friend and Vanessa Williamson argue, a condition that many will easily recognize today. Freedom, in Paine’s view, “meant both lifting the poor from penury and dependence” and eliminating the “vicious influence” of fiercely concentrated wealth.

THOMAS PAINE COMMONSENSE PDF

PERHAPS the entiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable ou (americainclass.org)

Tom Paine had it right. And if Congress takes up Biden’s new tax plan, we can too.

*Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest books include The Case for a Maximum Wage and The Rich Don’t Always Win. This op-ed was adapted from Inequality.org and distributed by OtherWords.org.

NIGERIA
ASUU strike: Opportunity for students’ engagement in NITDA-NART

By Zeenat Sambo
15 April 2022 

Director-General/CEO of NITDA Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi

The unresolved disagreement between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the federal government weighs heavily on youths out of school. While some have taken to vocational skills, others still lay idle in the discomfort of the economy finding it hard to support themselves and family.

In light of enjoying the free time created by the strike, digital learning has entrenched so wide for many to unravel their potential and access the web of technology for self-development.

It is an indisputable aphorism that “an idle mind is a devil’s workshop”. This continual strike by university lecturers with no compromise from both parties anytime soon can push many “stay-at-home” students into heinous acts.

At this juncture, most students are not practically engaged in ongoing digital skill acquisition initiatives/programs organised by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and other stakeholders in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem.

The strike might turn out beneficial to some students because they have used the time to engage in virtual studies and digital skill development while others still struggle to fit into the digital trend due to financial challenges and others.

Even at this, delay in academics, long reversal of projects, university clearance, mobilization into national service, and the overburdened labour market are many of the challenges Nigerian students foresee within the academic terrain.

NITDA, in its effort to digitalise the nation and de-institutionalize learning, had developed digital channels for free e-learning through the NITDA Academy for Research and Training (NART) to build capacity, develop skills, and reduce unemployment in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.

The platform, in operation since 2020 with fully operational centers across the country, has been a blessing to promote e-learning in the country. In addition to bridging the skill gap between industry and academia, the program is also promoting a more inclusive ICT-driven for various segments of the Nigerian populace.

NART was developed to boost the capacity of Nigerians with courses that will help them to be creative and find their calling in the labour market.

The programme encourages Nigerians to acquire the skills that will help them harness the abundant opportunities to become job providers and wealth creators. Also, it will build capacity and develop skills of Nigerians in emerging IT sectors and reduce the unemployment rate by bridging the widening skills gap in the sector.

The fate of Nigerian students during this strike is reflective of the saying “when two elephants fight the grass suffers”. The unique difference is that there is a platform for students to engage in the attainment of productive skills with no financial challenge.

Thus, NITDA provision for self-development and skills acquisition online or at their community digital centres can be described as a digital solution to curb the effect of idleness on students during the strike.

The NART e-learning facilities and vocational training programs are scheduled into four categories. They are Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) Training, Students Training, General Training, and Digital skills are like realms of digital abilities for youth with preference to their disciplines to help them function better and achieve self-employment at the end of the training.

The programme seeks to increase access to learning opportunities and enhance the general quality of teaching/learning has continued to keep its training free, accessible, and impactful for students and youth in skills required in their discipline, profession, or career.

With hundreds of courses available, the e-learning resources have helped many to envision a realistic future of gainful entrepreneurial and digital competence. For students with little digital knowledge of the internet, programs like digital literacy, introduction to Packet Tracer, Entrepreneurship Courses, and many more are basics to knowing the web of technologies.

Over 47 different courses can be accessed on the NART website, and there is virtually every course that a student can delve into and learn. Introduction to computer science for lawyers is another interesting platform for upcoming legal practitioner’s to digitalise the profession and become self-competent before post-graduation.

There have been training of more than 26,000 active students and over 200 women in ICT, provision of tools at the end of the training, development of tech startups, and efficiency in artificial intelligence, among others. These have helped many Nigerians to spend their time meaningfully and get trained on new technologies that will build and develop their capacity in the tech world.

While out of the realm of academics, learning must never stop. In this regard, the Director-General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, recently challenged Universities in the country to devote greater attention to entrepreneurship training to produce graduates that will create job opportunities, rather than become job seekers.

Considering the large number of young Nigerians graduating yearly, the agency must strengthen collaboration with Nigeria University to mandate students to partake in one or two courses that can serve as industrial training in digital communication to widen their scope of knowledge beyond their course of study.

Tertiary and vocational institutions should raise awareness to encourage virtual learning, building innovations, and developing digital skills among students and lecturers. This will enable Nigeria to produce more job creators and solution providers in no distant future.

It is impactful to be able to learn in the comfort of digital devices and be certified in a course/s in capacity building. With over 20 free training centres in Nigeria, the opportunities are available and awaiting more youths to delve into.

A society with multiple dimensions to learning always produces right-thinking, visionary and effective leaders. The ASUU strike should not be allowed to burn off the intelligence of students but expose them to knowledge-building opportunities created by the federal government.

Zeenat O. Sambo writes from Wuye District, Abuja.

WAR IS RAPE

Russia’s Embassy in Estonia claims Russia is the real victim of Russia’s sexual violence in Ukraine


15.04.2022

The Russian Embassy in Estonia has posted a shameful response to a group of women in Estonia who gathered outside their building on Wednesday to protest against sexual violence by the Russian Military in Ukraine.

The protesters sent a powerful visual message around the world by standing with their arms tied behind their backs, their heads covered, and their underwear daubed in fake blood to highlight the horror of sexual violence against women and children as part of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.

Photo: Rauno Volmar / Ekspress Meedia. Photo used with permission.

In a Tweet and Facebook post, the Russian Embassy in Estonia shared a photo of the protest with a short caption in Russian saying that “this is what the faces of local Russophobes look like.” Although few would have expected the Russian Embassy to accept accountability, their response only further highlights the cruelty being excused and the absurdity of using ‘Russophobia’ to deflect from serious criticism of real issues.

Why the women protested

The widespread use of sexual violence against women and children in Ukraine as a weapon of war by the Russian military has been widely documented over the past month, including by journalists and numerous human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

In a addition, a substantial number of intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families casually discuss the practise of rape during their occupation of Ukraine, such as this call this week in which the partner of a Russian soldier gives her approval of the sexual abuse.

And, in a recent shocking case highlighting the widespread perceived acceptability of sexual violence within the Russian military, a Russian solder filmed himself raping a baby and posted the footage to social media. He was detained by the Russian police, although it is telling that he was unable to foresee this consequence for such an open display of Russia’s secret weapon of war.

A senior UN official told the United Nations Security Council this week that the UN is increasingly hearing accounts of rape and sexual violence by the Russian Military in Ukraine and that this is likely “just the tip of the iceberg”. In response, Ambassadors from numerous member states have urged an investigation.

First-hand testimony can be heard in this BBC report. In one reported case, about 25 women and girls aged 14 to 24 hiding in a basement in Bucha were systemically raped during the Russian occupation. According to Ukraine’s ombudsman for human rights Lyudmyla Denisova, “Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn’t want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children.”

In a speech this week to Riigikogu, the Estonian Parliament, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also mentioned the use of rape by the Russian Military in Ukraine among other war crimes, adding that Ukraine with support from international specialists would investigate all war crimes, identify all the culprits and find them “no matter how long it will take”.

Amnesty International says that rape, which it has documented by the Russian Military in Ukraine in addition to killings of civilians, torture, and inhumane treatment of prisoners of war are human rights violations and war crimes. “Those who directly commit war crimes should be held criminally responsible for them. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, hierarchal superiors – including commanders and civilian leaders, such as ministers and heads of state – who knew or had reason to know about war crimes committed by their forces, but did not attempt to stop them or punish those responsible, should also be held criminally responsible.”

Estonia is committed to supporting and welcoming Ukrainian refugees arriving in Estonia. If anyone has been a victim of sexual violence, specialist services are available, including from Victim Support, a free public social service that offers emotional support as well as information about support from the Estonian government. Their contact information can be found here.

Russia’s cynical use of “Russophobia”

As recently reported by Propastop (link in Estonian), the term ‘Russophobia’ was near non-existent until 2014 and rarely ever used by the Russian government nor Russian state media.

It’s first prominent use was in 2012 by both the Russian President and Foreign Ministry, although it still did not gain wide usage after that until 2014 when Russia began its war on Ukraine. That’s when ‘Russophobia’, supposedly encouraged by the Ukrainian government, was suddenly emphasised by the Kremlin as a pretext for the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and support for ‘separatist’ movements in Eastern Ukraine, as well as a way to criticise subsequent sanctions. Only then did it become more widely used in Kremlin propaganda, including by the Kremlin’s supporters and aligned media outlets.



Accusations of Russophobia in the Baltic states also increased after that as a way for the Kremlin to characterise the influence of the Baltic states within the EU and Nato, despite the fact that concerns raised by Baltic governments of the Kremlin have proved accurate – most notably by Russia launching its full scale war against Ukraine this year. Propastop has recently written here about the reality of Russian speakers’ rights and life quality in Estonia and the considerable progress made towards integration since the end of the Soviet occupation.

In preparation for Russia’s escalated war, accusations of Russophobia in Ukraine again formed a central part of the pre-text narrative used by the Russian President, most notably in a pseudohistorical article about the unity of Russians and Ukrainians, which further developed into an argument that ‘Russophobia in Ukraine’ was a genocide against Russians.

The United Nations defines genocide as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’, which includes examples that include the documented conduct of the Russian military in Ukraine, such as widespread sexual violence, as well as indiscriminately killing civilians, and conducting mass deportations in occupied areas. In contrast, there has been widespread and fierce opposition to the Russian occupation in predominantly Russian speaking parts of Ukraine, which do not recognise Putin’s accusations of genocide against them by Ukraine.

The Russian Embassy’s use of the term Russophobia to describe protestors against widely documented acts of widespread sexual violence by the Russian military – which even the Russian police felt compelled to act against in its most open form – further exposes the cynical way in which the Kremlin seeks to exploit the concept to deflect criticism from its own crimes.

More pictures of the powerful demonstration are available at ERR here and there’s a video below.

Just a quick note. We initially reached out to ERR to request the use of their photos for this article with a link and credit in order to help further spread the important message of the protesters. Unfortunately, ERR declined due to critical articles about previous ERR coverage in Propastop, including the amount of coverage dedicated to the Russian Embassy’s talking points for which Estonian media experts were invited to provide their own opinions (links in Estonian). We will, however, continue to link to ERR where it is useful for readers and also continue to provide critical analysis of ERR, like all media outlets, when it is deemed fair – but it is disappointing to use this as a reason to block further spread of the protest message. We recommend that activists with a powerful visual message consider if they can issue their own copyright free photos in order to ensure their message is spread as widely as possible.

Thank you for reading

Propastop is run by volunteers at the Estonian Defence League who monitor and fact check propaganda against the Republic of Estonia. For more English language content from Propastop, follow us @Propastop on Twitter here.

RUSSIAN JOURNALISTS NOW POLITICAL PRISONERS


Andrei Novashov, Isabella Evloyeva, Mikhail Afanasyev, Yana Yanovskaya, Sergei Mikhailov

ORGANISATION
RSF_en

The Russian authorities have begun using arrests, raids and fines to harass journalists accused of publishing “false information” about the Russian army’s actions in Ukraine. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns this witchhunt and the growing climate of impunity for attacks on journalists, and calls for the withdrawal of laws establishing censorship.

After dispatching the national independent press, the Russian authorities are now targeting critical local media outlets by means of the new laws establishing war censorship. The victims include Listock, a small newspaper based in Gorno-Altaysk, in western Siberia’s Altai region, which was fined 300,000 roubles (3,300 euros) yesterday for articles “discrediting” the Russian army), while its editor, Olga Komarova, was fined an additional 100,000 roubles (1,100 euros). These are not insignificant sums for a small publication, and more fines could follow.

Listock’s owner, Sergei Mikhailov, was jailed in Altai yesterday after being arrested the day before near Moscow, while his home and the newspaper’s premises were searched. He is now facing up to 15 years in prison on a charge of publishing “false information” about the Russian army in Ukraine in his newspaper. Listock has provided non-stop coverage of the war from the start – including an interview with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, anti-war columns and reports about the Bucha massacre – and has repeatedly used the word “war” although it is banned by Roskomnadzor, the media regulator.

A similar sequence of events took place on 13 April in eastern Siberia’s Khakassia region. Police raided the apartment of Mikhail Afanasyev, the editor of the local online newspaper Novy Focus, and confiscated his equipment in reaction to a – now deleted – article about riot police refusing to go to Ukraine and about the activities in Ukraine of soldiers from Khakassia. Afanasyev is now being held in Abakan, the region’s capital, pending trial.

In the southern Siberian city of Prokopyevsk, Andrei Novashov, a correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s local offshoot, Sibir.Realii, has been under house arrest on a “false information” charge since 22 March for sharing a video on the Russian social media Vkontakte about Russian army attacks on the Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

In Kudymkar, in the Urals region, Parma-Novosti editor Yana Yanovskaya was fined 50,000 roubles (550 euros) on 30 March for “discrediting” the armed forces in an anti-war editorial. Proceedings were initiated on 25 March against Isabella Evloyeva, the editor of Fortanga, the Caucasian Republic of Ingushetia’s only independent news website, for writing in a Telegram post that the letter Z used on Russian tanks in Ukraine was “synonymous with aggression, death, pain and barefaced manipulation.”

Other journalists have been sentenced in the southwestern city of Elista, in Kemerovo (in eastern Siberia) and in the Sverdlovsk region (in the Urals).

“The Russian authorities have embarked on a painstaking witchhunt designed to silence the few local journalists still daring to provide reporting or commentary that runs counter to the prevailing propaganda about the war launched by Russia in Ukraine,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. “The terrible blow dealt to the national media was a signal authorising local authorities to eliminate the last critical regional newspapers. Trampling on press freedom and the related international obligations only further isolates Moscow on the world stage. RSF calls for the repeal of the laws establishing censorship.”


Under an amendment adopted on 4 March, any Russian or foreign person can be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for spreading “false information” about the Russian armed forces. Many independent media such as Novaya Gazeta, The Bell, Taiga.info, VPost and Prospekt Mira responded by announcing that they were terminating their coverage of the war in Ukraine and deleting previous stories about it in order to protect their journalists from criminal prosecution. Under another law passed on 22 March, “false information” about the activities of “Russian state bodies” operating abroad ­– including the presidency, executive, parliament, national guard and Federal Security Service (FSB) – is also punishable by up to 15 years in prison.


A bill due to have its first reading in parliament on 18 May aims to complete the control that the authorities exercise over news and information. It would allow the prosecutor-general to cancel the licence of any Russian or foreign media outlet and immediately block them – without warning and without reference to a court – in response to the dissemination of “false information” about the army, “lack of respect for the authorities,” calls for sanctions, and participation in “unauthorised events.” The licences of foreign media could also be rescinded “in retaliation” if they are from countries that have banned or restricted access to a Russian media outlet. The sanction will be final. There is no provision for any appeal procedure.

In a sign of the climate of impunity threatening journalists, Novaya Gazeta editor and Nobel peace laureate Dmitry Muratov was attacked on the Moscow-Samara train on 7 April by a man who sprayed him with a mixture of red paint and acetone. After conducting their own investigation into the attack, the newspaper’s staff denounced the inaction of the police.

The environment of total censorship – in which most media have been blocked or forced to close and outspoken journalists are in danger – is prompting a massive exodus of Russian media personnel. Together with its partners, RSF is supporting Russian journalists by means of its Operation Collateral Freedom, which enables media outlets to circumvent censorship, and the JXFund, which helps them to continue working from abroad.


Russia is ranked 150th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

Shanghai Stakes: Why COVID In China's "Bourgeois" Capital Is A High-Risk Affair

The port city is China's most international and cosmopolitan, which helps explain the ongoing culture clash between its residents and Chinese authorities aiming to enforce a strict Zero-Covid policy of restrictions on movement and freedom.

Walking in an empty Shanghai

Sherwin Ker/Unsplash

As Zongcheng, a Shanghai-based writer, puts it, "Being a mixture of socialism, state capitalism and market economy, Shanghai's dilemma creates a livelihood issue as well as a political issue."

Dan Wu
April 15, 2022
WORLDCRUNCH

Shanghai, a metropolis of 25 million inhabitants with a rich and colorful history, stands apart in China.

The southern port boasts the most international and cosmopolitan population on mainland China, where commercial wealth and relative personal freedom meet. The natives of Shanghai are often chided by other Chinese as the nation's "bourgeois" class.

Through the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had first spread around the world from Wuhan — another Chinese mega-city some 500 miles to the west — Shanghai had largely been spared from its effects, with local administrations being praised for “precise epidemic prevention.”

All that has changed over the past month. Both its special status and previous success in keeping the virus at bay help explain the crisis engulfing the city over the past month. With the sudden spread of the Omicron variant, a strict lockdown has been in force since March 28. And locals are pushing the limits in what is, despite local attitudes, an authoritarian regime in China.

For most Shanghai residents, the gravity of the current situation has been less about the alarming number of infections (as of Friday, there are a little more than 17,000 confirmed cases and seven deaths), and more focused on the frustration and rising acts of disobedience in the face of the harsh lockdowns of the government's Zero-COVID policy.

"Control your soul's desire for freedom"

In recent days, reports — though not yet confirmed by reliable sources — have circulated, echoing the tension at play in the city's COVID outbreak: On the Weibo social network, a video was posted that shows the light of a drone above a Shanghai neighborhood on April 5, broadcasting a female voice telling residents to "control your soul's desire for freedom."

This came after Shanghai’s citywide lockdown prompted residents in the neighborhood to shout from their windows that they were running out of food and basic necessities.

Indeed, the continuing Zero-COVID strategy has caused high levels of anxiety — and worse — for a bourgeois population used to living a comfortable urban life. It has also shown the frightening power of China's bureaucracy and its dreadful consequences: patients of other illnesses that could only be treated if in possession of negative PCR test results, leading to tragic and unnecessary deaths; COVID-positive children separated from their parents in isolation, with officials authorizing parents to accompany their children only if they, too, were infected; pets in COVID-hit households that got beaten to death, etc.
Residents shouted from their windows that they were running out of food and basic necessities.

Discontent and disillusion are growing in Shanghai. The current climate of fear in the metropolis lead a correspondent for The Initium to ask himself: “Will I be separated from my family tomorrow? Will I be able to buy groceries tomorrow? What will happen to my children and pets if I am sent to a COVID-only hospital? It's 2022, what kind of life is this?!”

Volunteers transport vegetable in an agricultural products distribution center in Shanghai
Yang Qing/Xinhua/ZUMA

Shanghai's Dilemma: A Political One

Despite the ongoing issues, China insists that its Zero-COVID strategy is the right approach, although voices of dissidents are growing louder even within the central government. On April 2, a recording of a conversation between a Shanghai citizen and a governmental pandemic control expert was widely circulated on social media. The expert expressed her frustrations that in the course of her work she had devised many contingency plans, recommending home isolation for patients with mild asymptomatic illnesses, but "no one is listening to what the professionals are saying. Now the pandemic has become a political one, and so many resources and money are being spent on a disease like the flu.”

The recording was released to the public with the expert’s consent, but superior administrations soon declared that “experts were not allowed to express their opinions in inquiries.”

Shanghai's dilemma creates a livelihood issue as well as a political issue.

Up to this point, some districts in Shanghai were allowed to lift restrictions once COVID cases dropped, although the Zero-COVID strategy remains as strict as ever. Complaints are shared on the internet — but many also get censored, while authorities still ask people to be "grateful". A special TV gala for those "combating the epidemic" was planned to be aired on April 13, but was canceled after an online call to boycott it.

As Zongcheng, a Shanghai-based writer, puts it, "Being a mixture of socialism, state capitalism and market economy, Shanghai's dilemma creates a livelihood issue as well as a political issue."