Outrage as Brazil law threatening Indigenous lands advances in congress

Critics denounced ‘lies, hatred and racism’ as legislation moves to senate after being overwhelmingly endorsed by lower house


Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023 

Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in Brazil have voiced horror and indignation after lawmakers approved controversial legislation which opponents fear will strike a devastating blow to Indigenous communities and isolated tribes.

Members of Brazil’s conservative-dominated lower house overwhelmingly endorsed bill number 490 on Tuesday night, by 283 votes to 155.


Outcry as Brazil congress moves to gut environment and Indigenous ministries

“You will have Indigenous blood on your hands,” the Indigenous congresswoman Célia Xakriabá told its rightwing backers as leftwingers took to the podium to protest by smothering their hands in the red dye of annatto seeds.

Critics say the legislation, which now moves to the senate, poses a series of profound threats to Indigenous communities and the environment:

It potentially opens the door to road-building, mining, dam construction, agricultural projects and the use of genetically modified crops on protected Indigenous lands, as well as authorizing contact with isolated Indigenous groups in certain circumstances.

It would allow the government to reclaim land from Indigenous communities whose “cultural traits” are deemed to have changed.

Perhaps most damagingly, the legislation would also invalidate Indigenous claims to lands such groups could not prove they physically occupied on the day Brazil’s constitution was enacted in October 1988. Activists say that “time limit trick” could scupper scores of legitimate claims for the delimitation of Indigenous lands, from groups who had already been evicted from their ancestral lands or whose presence had yet to be recognized at the cut-off date.

The Climate Observatory watchdog said Brazil’s parliament had witnessed “its most shameful day since the 2016 impeachment of Dilma Rousseff” – a “show of lies, hatred and racism” which signaled the environmental chaos caused by former president Jair Bolsonaro was far from over.

Lawmakers had sent “a clear message to the country and the world: Bolsonaro is gone but the extermination [of Indigenous communities and the environment] continues,” the Climate Observatory added.

Sarah Shenker, a campaigner at human rights group Survival International, said: “This catastrophic bill is the most serious attack on Indigenous rights in decades … Hundreds of Indigenous territories home to over a million Indigenous people could be destroyed.”

She added: “There are many examples of uncontacted tribes whose existence and location was not yet officially confirmed by government in October 1988 … so if [this] was approved it could be used by anti-Indigenous politicians who are desperate to steal [such territories].”

When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to Brazil’s presidency in January there was optimism South America’s largest country was entering a new era of sustainable development, environmental protection and respect for Indigenous rights. Lula named the veteran environmentalist Marina Silva as his environment minister and created a ministry for Indigenous peoples run by the Indigenous activist Sônia Guajajara. “We are going to reverse all of the injustices committed against Indigenous peoples,” Lula vowed in his inaugural address, claiming Brazil had a “historic debt” to such groups.

But the rowdy congressional debate that preceded the approval of Bill 490 brought such hopes crashing back down to earth and revealed a starkly divided country.

A succession of white, mostly male lawmakers took the microphone to claim they were supporting the legislation because they considered themselves Indigenous defenders who wanted to help such groups integrate into mainstream society. Many were staunch supporters of Bolsonaro and members of the powerful ruralista bloc linked to agribusiness which boasts 302 of the 513 seats in the lower house and 42 of 81 senators.

Bibo Nunes, a congressman from Bolsonaro’s rightwing Liberal party (PL), voiced outrage that nearly 14% of Brazil’s territory was in the hands of Indigenous people who represented only 0.4% of the population. “What’s the logic? Explain it to me, you lefties!” Nunes bellowed.

Leftist politicians countered that the legislation would endanger Indigenous lives as well as the global struggle against climate change given the crucial role Indigenous communities have in protecting the Amazon rainforest.

“This is a bill of death, backwardness and regression … This is a crime against Indigenous people,” said Juliana Cardoso, a congresswoman from Lula’s Worker’s party (PT).

But such arguments were ignored and the bill passed easily.

Guajajara told activists to remain mobilized in the face of what she called “a serious attack on Indigenous people and the environment”. “We will remain steadfast and united, as we always have been,” Lula’s Indigenous minister said in a video message.

Brazilian lawmakers vote to limit recognition of Indigenous reserves
Agence France-Presse
May 31, 2023

An Indigenous man takes part in a demonstration against the so-called legal thesis Marco Temporal (Temporal Milestone), a bill that stops the demarcation of Indigenous territories, in Manaus, Amazonas State, Brazil, on May 30, 2023. 

© Michael Dantas, AFP

Brazil's lower house of Congress approved legislation Tuesday that would limit expanded demarcations of Indigenous lands, which are considered key to protecting the Amazon and its native peoples.

The text, passed by the Chamber of Deputies on a 283-155 vote, establishes that reserves can only be on land occupied by Indigenous people at the time of the promulgation of the current constitution, in 1988.

The bill, which has yet to move to the Senate, was promoted by representatives sympathetic to the agribusiness sector and other opposition groups, and represents a setback for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's environmental goals.

According to scientists, Indigenous lands create key buffer zones against deforestation in the Amazon, the largest tropical forest in the world.

Hours ahead of the vote, about 100 indigenous people temporarily blocked a highway on the outskirts of Brazil's largest city Sao Paulo, before the police dispersed them with tear gas, according to images broadcast by local TV.

Brazilian Indigenous communities reject the premise of the bill, arguing they have the right to their original territories, regardless of the status of their occupation in 1988.

Critics say many Indigenous peoples did not occupy certain areas that year because they had been expelled during the preceding military dictatorship, which ended in 1985.

'War against Indigenous peoples'

There are a total of 764 Indigenous territories in Brazil, but around a third of them have not yet been demarcated, according to figures from the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI).

Lula recognized six new territories in April, the first in five years after Indigenous rights stalled under far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

The Chamber of Deputies vote sparked protests in Brazil including in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon region. It also drew the attention of international NGOs and activists, including American actors Leonardo Di Caprio and Mark Ruffalo.

The government of Brazil "is being attacked by agribusiness," Ruffalo tweeted ahead of the debate. "There is a war against Indigenous peoples and forests. Our planet is at risk."

Brazil's Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara, said Tuesday that the bill "is a genocide against Indigenous peoples, but also an attack on the environment."


She added that she would keep fighting as the bill heads to the Senate.

(AFP)

Frilly dresses and white supremacy: welcome to the weird, frightening world of ‘trad wives’

No longer a far-right subculture, the movement’s anti-feminist tenets are now inserting themselves into mainstream western politics

Protesters at the Women’s March for abortion rights in Washington DC, 22 January 2023. Photograph: Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

Sian Norris

THE GUARDIAN

Opinion The far right

Wed 31 May 2023

“In some more traditional relationships (but not all) the man disciplines the woman either physically (like spanking) or with things like writing lines and standing in the corner,” one woman advises another on the Red Pill Women forum, an online community of rightwing, anti-feminist women.

Welcome to the weird and frightening world of trad wives, where women spurn modern, egalitarian values to dedicate their lives to the service of their husbands. My research into this far-right subculture began during the writing of my book on the far right and reproductive rights. I was curious to learn how the movement, determined to reduce women to reproductive vessels to aid white male supremacy, recruited women to its cause. The answer was a toxic combination of anti-feminism, white supremacy, normalised abuse and a desire to return to an imagined past.



Trad wives can be traced back to the Red Pill Women forum that was set up in 2013. According to research from Julia Ebner in 2020, 30,000 women identified as Red Pill Women or trad wives. As with most far-right trends, most of them appear to be in the US, but due to the networked nature of the modern far right, trends that start stateside don’t remain there. Interviews I conducted revealed that the British far right encourages its women to be trad, with women attending nationalist conferences such as the annual Patriotic Alternative conference, and making a name for themselves on the far-right infosphere.

The subculture shares aesthetics and values across the Atlantic. Long, floral dresses are the norm, idealising a mythic past of feminine modesty. Women should be covered up, as their bodies are just for their husbands. A woman’s role is to stay at home, serving her spouse domestically and sexually, while her partner goes to work to support her. Men should “discipline” women.

Unsurprisingly, they are anti-feminist, with the far right recruiting women to the trad lifestyle by claiming feminism has failed to make them happy. While not a trad wife herself, “alt-right” influencer Lauren Southern shot to fame by claiming feminism taught women “to work 9–5 and drink wine every night until their ovaries dry up”.

And, of course, they’re white. One meme I encountered on Telegram during my research summed up a good trad wife as being “knowledgable about her European roots” and who “loves her family, race and culture”. Leading the tribe is far-right influencer Ayla Stewart, who shot to social media fame when her notorious “white baby challenge” went viral after she declared: “As a mother of six, I challenge families to have as many white babies as I have contributed.”

‘During his time in the White House, Donald Trump weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment and domestic abuse.’

 Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP


The motive behind the white baby challenge, and much of trad wife culture, is a fear of the so-called “great replacement” – a baseless conspiracy theory that believes white people are being “replaced” by migrant people from the global south, while feminists repress the white birthrate via abortion rights. To defeat this so-called “white genocide”, as one Stewart fan expressed it, far-right women need to “Make White Babies Great Again!” On far-right Telegram channels, I found posters following her lead. One far-right woman posted she planned to have six babies, as that was above the “optimum replacement rate”.

What Stewart and her acolytes’ examples show is how the trad lifestyle is fixed to two essential components of fascist ideology that govern the modern far right: white supremacy and patriarchy. What’s concerning is how these aims are becoming more and more influential as the global far right pushes to overturn laws protecting women from gender-based violence and reproductive rights, and their ideas gain traction among mainstream rightwing political parties.

During his time in the White House, Donald Trump weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment and domestic abuse, while Spain’s far-right Vox party is vocal about its desire to overturn laws protecting women from gender-based violence.

The reversal of Roe v Wade met the far-right demands that women be removed from the public sphere into the domestic, and be pinned to reproduction. Poland’s far-right government tightened its already draconian abortion ban. Far-right leaders in Hungary and Italy continue to contest the right to abortion, and in Slovakia the far-right L’SNS party has repeatedly tried to bring in a ban. At the recent National Conservatism conference in the UK, Conservative MPs joined writers and activists who combined anti-migrant speeches with those urging women to have more babies.

Far from trad wives being a niche subculture confined to internet chatrooms, the movement’s core tenets have gripped mainstream politics – and women and their allies should stop at nothing to defend their hard-won rights.



Sian Norris is a freelance investigative journalist and the author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global

Across Europe, the far right is rising. That it seems normal is all the more terrifying

Austria, France, Germany, Sweden and now Spain – the firewall between the mainstream and the far right is crumbling

Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party: a snap general election has been called for July. Photograph: Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA

Owen Jones

THEGUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023 

Normalisation is the process by which something unusual or extreme becomes part of the everyday. What once provoked horror and outrage soon barely registers. The way the presence of Donald Trump became a mere fact of political life is perhaps the most familiar example. But the normalisation of the far right is happening across the democratic world.

Once Trump became “normal”, events that seemed even more extreme did too. A 2022 survey found that two in five Americans thought civil war was “at least somewhat likely” in the next decade. One political scientist speaks of the possibility of rightwing dictatorship in the US by 2030.

The same creep of normalisation is happening in European politics. At the turn of the millennium, when Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) – led by Jörg Haider, who had made comments suggesting he was sympathetic to the Nazi regime – entered a coalition with the conservative People’s party, mass protests not only erupted in Vienna but across Europe and in the US. The EU even imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria. It was understood that an important red line had been crossed; that given Europe’s blood-soaked history, the far right had to be kept firmly outside the tent.

No longer. When the FPÖ formed a new coalition in 2017, the protests were relatively small. Today, the party picks up victories in local elections and leads Austria’s opinion polls. Now the country’s main political force, it has every chance of leading the next government. Meanwhile, under pressure from its right flank, the People’s party has adopted ever harsher anti-migrant policies.

Then there’s Spain. For years after the financial crash, the country appeared to buck the trend of many European nations because of its lack of a rising far-right party. Leading lights in the leftwing Podemos party had an explanation: the mass indignados protests against austerity, which erupted in 2011, seemed to ensure that discontent was directed at powerful interests, rather than vulnerable groups such as migrants. But in the 2019 general election, the far-right Vox party – defined by its hostility to migrants and opposition to regional autonomy in Spain – came third, and in last weekend’s local elections exceeded expectations. A snap general election has been called for July, and Vox could soon be in government, the first time the Spanish far right would be in corridors of power since the fall of Franco.

The pattern is strikingly clear. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is surging: one recent poll forecast it would come second in a general election, ahead of the ruling Social Democrats. While other parties claim they will refuse to work with the AfD at the national level, such relationships already exist at the local level, leading Foreign Policy magazine to recently declare that “Germany’s far-right ‘firewall’ is starting to crack”.

This is, after all, what happened in Sweden, where other parties refused to work with the Sweden Democrats party, which has neo-Nazi roots. In 2016, Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of the conservative Moderate party, denounced it as racist. But in the last election, it came second, and negotiated a deal to prop up a rightwing government.

In France, Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party scored their best ever results in presidential and parliamentary elections last year. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is of the far-right Brothers of Italy party. In eastern Europe, we have Hungary, ruled by a de facto far-right autocracy, with an even more extreme party – Our Homeland Movement – surging in the polls. Similarly, note Poland, ruled by a hard-right government which is now manipulating the Ukraine crisis to set up a commission to supposedly investigate Russian influence in the country: in practice, just a bogus excuse to harass the opposition.

How did we descend so far into the mire? There’s no question that growing economic insecurities and inequalities provided ample material for far-right parties that offered scapegoating as an answer. If leftwing movements had proved more successful at redirecting that anger at the right targets – like politicians slashing social provision, bosses offering low-paid jobs and a financial system that plunged the world into crisis – then perhaps the far right would have enjoyed less appeal.

But they also wouldn’t be where they are without the complicity of mainstream parties. Trump is clearly the monster created by the very US Republican establishment – with its anti-Obama crankery, Islamophobia and hallucinated anti-communism – that now seems to abhor him. Across the western world, mainstream parties tend not to vigorously oppose the far right and offer an alternative vision of the future, but imitate their rhetoric and policies. All they’ve achieved is legitimising the zealots and allowing them to set the terms of debate.

We thought we had learned from our darkest moments in history. But unless the far right is once again treated as beyond the political pale, new horrors await.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

Missile debris narrowly misses cars in Kyiv – video

A missile fell on a busy street in Kyiv on Monday, the day Russia launched an intense daytime missile barrage at the Ukrainian capital. 

A camera mounted in a vehicle captured the moment parts of what appeared to be a missile fell on a busy street in Kyiv on Monday, the day Russia launched an intense daytime missile barrage at the Ukrainian capital. The falling missile parts appeared to hit a line carrying traffic lights, narrowly missing cars that were driving on the multilane road. The Ukrainian military said it had intercepted all 11 of the ballistic and cruise missiles fired at the city in the attack that began at 11am. A timestamp in the dashcam footage showed the debris hitting the road at 11:22am.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; I SPY

Amazon’s Ring doorbell was used to spy on customers, FTC says in privacy case

In the agency’s latest effort to hold big tech accountable, the company agreed to settle the privacy violations for $5.8m

Reuters
Thu 1 Jun 2023

 
A former employee of Amazon’s Ring doorbell camera unit spied on female customers for months in 2017 with cameras placed in bedrooms and bathrooms, the Federal Trade Commission said in a court filing on Wednesday when it announced a $5.8m settlement with the company over privacy violations.

Amazon also agreed to pay $25m to settle allegations it violated children’s privacy rights when it failed to delete Alexa recordings at the request of parents and kept them longer than necessary, according to a court filing in federal court in Seattle that outlined a separate settlement.



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The FTC settlements are the agency’s latest effort to hold big tech accountable for policies that critics say place profits ahead of privacy.

Amazon, which purchased Ring in April 2018, pledged to make some changes in its practices.

“While we disagree with the FTC’s claims regarding both Alexa and Ring, and deny violating the law, these settlements put these matters behind us,” Amazon said in a statement.

Alvaro Bedoya, the FTC Commissioner, told Reuters the settlements should send a message to tech companies that their need to collect data was not an excuse to break the law. “This is a very clear signal to them,” he said.

The fines, totaling $30.8m, represent a fraction of Amazon’s $3.2bn first-quarter profit.

In its complaint against Amazon filed in Washington state, the FTC said that it violated rules protecting children’s privacy and rules against deceiving consumers who used Alexa. For example, the FTC complaint says that Amazon told users it would delete voice transcripts and location information upon request, but then failed to do so.

Amazon’s Ring cameras were used to spy on customers for months in 2017, the Federal Trade Commission said. Photograph: Jessica Hill/AP

In one instance in 2017, employees of Ring viewed videos made by at least 81 female customers and Ring employees using Ring products. “Undetected by Ring, the employee continued spying for months,” the FTC said.

A colleague noticed the misconduct and the employee was eventually terminated.

The FTC also said Ring gave employees unrestricted access to customers’ sensitive video data said “as a result of this dangerously overbroad access and lax attitude toward privacy and security, employees and third-party contractors were able to view, download and transfer customers’ sensitive video data for their own purposes”.

As part of the FTC agreement with Ring, which spans 20 years, Ring is required to disclose to customers how much access to their data the company and its contractors have.

In February 2019, Ring changed its policies so that most Ring employees or contractors could only access a customer’s private video with that person’s consent.

Amazon’s main UK division pays no corporation tax for second year in a row

Amazon UK Services received tax credit of £7.7m for investment in infrastructure under Rishi Sunak’s super-deduction scheme

Pretax profits at Amazon UK Services rose 9% to almost £222m in 2022 as sales rose nearly 8% to £6.56bn.

 Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Sarah Butler
Guardian
Thu 1 Jun 2023 

Amazon’s main UK division has paid no corporation tax for the second year in a row after benefiting from tax credits on a chunk of its £1.6bn of investment in infrastructure, including robotic equipment at its warehouses.

Amazon UK Services, which employs more than half of the group’s UK workers, received a tax credit of £7.7m in the year to the end of December, according to accounts filed at Companies House, advance details of which were shared by Amazon with the Guardian.

The government’s “super-deduction” scheme for businesses that invest in infrastructure was introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor. It allowed companies to offset 130% of investment spending on plant and machinery against profits for two years from April 2021. Amazon booked a credit of £1.13m in 2021 under the scheme.

It is understood that as a result, Amazon’s main UK division paid no corporation tax but other parts of the group’s UK business did pay an undisclosed amount.

Pretax profits at the main division rose about 9% to almost £222m in 2022 as sales rose by nearly 8% to £6.56bn.

Paul Monaghan, the chief executive of the Fair Tax Foundation, criticised Amazon for failing to disclose its total profits in the UK and the corporation tax paid on that despite calls for more transparency from tax justice campaigners and shareholders.

He said: “Over the last decade, Amazon has grown its market domination across the globe on the back of income that is largely untaxed – allowing it to unfairly undercut local businesses that take a more responsible approach.

“We now have a situation where Amazon UK Services is not only not paying tax, but is being handed tax credits for investment that almost certainly would have happened anyway. Tax credits for old rope, if you will. These super-deductions have not only wiped out the corporation charge for the last two years but will likely do so again in 2023 and possibly 2024.”

An Amazon spokesperson said: “Amazon UK Services is only a small part of our business, and when you look across all our UK companies we paid corporation tax last year. The reduction in tax for Amazon UK Services specifically is a result of our significant capital investments in the UK.”

Amazon’s UK fulfilment centre in Peterborough: the online retailer invested £1.6bn in infrastucture in 2022. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

Details of Amazon’s tax benefits emerged as the online retailer and digital services provider said that its employee numbers had stalled at 75,000 in 2022, having almost tripled from about 27,500 in 2018 after adding 10,000 new roles a year in 2021 and 2020.

Amazon and other digital players have been making cuts as spending online has shrunk since the height of the pandemic, after high streets reopened and restrictions on socialising and office working eased.

In January the business announced plans to shut three of its 30-plus UK warehouses and seven small delivery sites, affecting more than 1,300 jobs. It closed the Book Depository online bookseller in April as part of those efforts.

However, Amazon said it had invested £12bn in the UK last year, spending £1.6bn on infrastructure including more robotics for its warehouses and a software development centre in Swansea for its Veeqo division, which provides online tools for sellers.

Sales across the group’s entire UK network rose £1bn over the year, more than 4%, to £24bn last year, making it bigger than Asda, the UK’s third-largest supermarket, and about twice the size of Marks & Spencer, according to group’s US filings

Amazon said it paid £781m in total taxes in the UK, including business rates, employer’s national insurance contributions and corporation tax, up from £648m a year before.

The UK tax credit at Amazon UK Services was part of €937m (£805m) of tax credits across Europe last year, according to accounts for the group’s Luxembourg-based retail division published in March, after just over €1bn of benefits the year before.


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The credits came after Amazon EU Sarl – an entity that includes the group’s UK, German, Spanish, Italian and other EU retail interests – more than doubled losses to €4.3bn, from €2.1bn a year before, as sales slipped back to €50.9bn from €51.3bn a year before.

Monaghan said income was being “shunted to Luxembourg” where the subsidiary was “generating enormous tax reliefs year after year that will be used in the future to ensure that little or no tax continues to be paid there either.”

However, Amazon said that revenues, profits and taxes for the bulk of its UK business were recorded and paid in the UK.

“Our retail and AWS [Amazon Web Services] revenues – the bulk of our business – are part of Amazon EU Sarl and AWS EMEA Sarl, both of which have a UK branch. Our UK revenues, associated expenses, profits and taxes are recorded here in the UK and reported directly to HMRC,” the company said in a statement.

Amazon has previously said it pays hundreds of millions of euros in corporation tax across Europe.

‘Loss for Iran’s wildlife’: woman jailed in Tehran calls for environmentalists’ release

Seven environmentalists from the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation remain in jail in Iran. Photograph: Handout

Aras Amiri, a British Council employee, was held in Evin prison with seven members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation

Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 1 Jun 2023 00.01 BST

Aras Amiri has kept a low profile since she was released from Iranian detention two years ago, avoiding interview requests after returning to the UK. But now, the British Council employee, who spent three years in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, wants to speak. An injustice has compelled her: the detention of seven friends and environmentalists she left behind.

Kept in solitary confinement for 69 days, Amiri was allowed to return to Britain after serving just under a third of a 10-year prison sentence. In the women’s ward, she not only met fellow British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but Niloufar Bayani and Sepideh Kashani, two of the seven members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation in jail since 2018. Of the nine originally jailed, one has been released after serving his two-year sentence and another, the founder of the group, Kavous Seyed Emami, died in his prison cell only two weeks after his arrest. The authorities called it suicide, but produced no autopsy.

Aras Amiri spent three years in prison in Tehran, where she was confined with the group of environmentalists. Photograph: Family photo.

Amiri said she had previously turned down interview requests because she finds newspaper framing of Iranian prisoners reductionist and populist. But the only crime of her environmentalist friends, she said, had been to try to save nature from extinction.

“They are so close to my heart,” she said. “Can you imagine these people were always under the sky and now, for such a long time, being in a confined space? Lack of freedom is very difficult for anyone, but maybe for those that are used to living in nature, it is made harder.”

Amiri said she learned about Iran’s environment and wildlife through conversations with them in prison, where they held informal workshops for the detainees. “They made prison a better place just by their presence,” she said.

“They always taught if you want to do conservation in a sustainable way, you need local people to trust you so that they continue to support the work, and that applies to conserving the Asiatic cheetah, or dolphins in Qeshm Island, or wild sheep in Larestan, or the Iranian leopard in Golestan national park,” said Amiri. “What makes it more appalling is that the more their imprisonment is prolonged, the greater there is an irreversible loss for Iran’s wildlife, and Iran’s wildlife is also the world’s wildlife.”

For World Environment Day on 5 June, Amiri has helped organise an event at which leading environmentalists will pay tribute to the importance of the group’s work, and again call for their release.

Dr Christian Walzer, now director of health at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, who has worked with members of the Iranian group since 2007, said they were “really instrumental” in work to get the near-extinct Asiatic cheetahs defined as a distinct subspecies and to get collars on the animals to track their movement across huge areas.

Unfenced roads, drought, the decreasing population of the prey species, and habitat loss have all led to the decline to as few as 12 Asiatic cheetahs, although Walzer said the precise data was unclear. In March, a female cheetah pregnant with three cubs was killed by a car. Walzer said since the group’s arrest, international cooperation with Iran had withered.

Asked why this group was targeted, he said: “It is incomprehensible. … Putting up camera traps [treated as espionage by their accusers] is standard practice all over the world. We might talk about politics, but just as normal chit-chat. They would talk about rock climbing or fixing Land Cruisers so we could chase animals.”

The imprisoned environmentalists were involved in work to save the endangered Asiatic cheetah. 

Photograph: Houman Jowkar

If there was anything distinctive about the group, it was that some members, such as Morad Tahbaz, a British-Iranian-American trinational, had international connections.

Asked why they were arrested, Amiri said: “Everyone has their own reading. Often stopping the exploitation of nature conflicts with those in power, including governments and big corporations. This is true in Iran and elsewhere ... It is hard to find a direct logic. Sometimes it can be random: perhaps it is to create fear.”

Homan Jowkar, one of the group of seven members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation imprisoned in Iran, with a Persian leopard. Photograph: Houman Jowkar

But Amiri cannot understand why the group has been treated so harshly, even by the standards of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Two weeks of solitary confinement is difficult, she knows from her own experience, so two years is unimaginable. One of the prisoners, Bayani, sent a letter detailing the interrogation techniques used against her, including sexual threats and warnings that she would end up dead.

Amiri was arrested after she had flown to see her grandmother, who was in a coma in Tehran. She was charged with forming a group to subvert the regime. She said all her work at the British Council had focused on fostering knowledge of Iranian art and artists in the UK. “It was transparent, and agreed with the foreign ministry.” Despite living in the UK since the late 80s, she had an Iranian passport, and chose not to campaign for her release in the UK, hoping discreet lobbying by her family would make the judiciary grant her appeal.

“The principle for me was not to collaborate if I could tolerate the pressure. It is hard if the threats are to your life and people that you know and love,” she said. “The interrogators know their job very well.”

Undaunted: the untold story of women in American journalism

Charlotte Curtis in the New York Times newsroom. Photograph: Penguin Random House

Brooke Kroeger’s eye-opening new book looks back at the many women in journalism who fought to have their voices heard in a male-dominated industry

Veronica Esposito

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023

“Getting the cold call email from him was crazy,” said author and journalist Brooke Kroeger, telling me about how her latest project, Undaunted – which recounts the two-century-long story of women in journalism – originated with a phone call from a male editor. “I had some idea of who he was, I was aware of him. I knew he was senior, and I looked him up pretty quick.”

The man in question was Jonathan Segal, a vice-president at Knopf who has published seven books that went on to receive Pulitzer prizes. He was offering Kroeger the assignment of a lifetime. Segal had determined that there was no good trade book available covering the history of women in journalism in the United States, and he was hoping Kroeger would be willing to write it.

“He was looking for a history of women in journalism but couldn’t find one, and he thought this book should exist,” said Kroeger. “You don’t get invitations like that all the time. I mean, this is just not my karma at all.”

Kroeger shared that the only comparable non-academic title she could find was 1936’s Ladies of the Press by Ishbel Ross, a novelist and author of non-fiction books known for bringing to prominence unsung women like Elizabeth Blackwell, who is remembered as the first woman in the US to receive a medical degree. For nearly 100 years, no new book for a wide audience had been published documenting the contributions of women to journalism. It was certainly time for an update, especially considering that, while Ross’s Ladies as a substantial accomplishment, the work can be critiqued for, among other things, not including a single Black woman among the 300 journalists that it celebrates.

With the invitation from Segal, Kroeger prepared to put off her plans for retirement and take on a major new project. She noted that the substantial work on what would eventually become Undaunted was somewhat lightened by her 40-year career as a journalist. “I’ve been working on this material in one way or another for a long time, so I was prepared in a way to write this. And also, I’ve lived a lot of it in its own right, and a lot of my work has traced these avenues. So it wasn’t altogether new.”

Starting in the 1840s with pioneering journalist Margaret Fuller, Undaunted aims to document how women have changed American journalism. This includes, for instance, how women transformed war reporting during the second world war, when they were mostly only permitted to cover the home front. “Most were confined to the civilian story, so, once confined, they made the most of that,” said Kroeger. “They showed initiative and helped create a form, because now I think that’s become as important a part of war reporting as any other, which I don’t think was the case then. That’s a balance that’s tipped.” Kroeger went on to explain how women have also created change in news organizations, transforming how media institutions “change the way you care for the people who do the work”.

Margaret Fuller circa 1840. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

As Kroeger makes clear in the book’s preface, Undaunted is not an attempt to create a new canon so much as it wants to relate how women have managed to succeed in a field that “men have dominated in the 180 years since mass media began”. Guided by questions like “Which stories best illustrated what women were up against in their professional lives?” and “Assuming talent and hard work, how much did background, privilege, strategy, charisma, style, looks, advocacy, connections, or luck figure in their ascent?” the book focuses heavily on stories of transformation and innovation.

“My goal to make present the extent to which a women’s point of view changes institutions,” said Kroeger. “I think I make a pretty good case for how they have changed American journalism. It’s the experiences of women in the field: what they overcame, what they did, what they brought. Those would be the three goals. Not to canonize new people – although it would be great if people get their due. It’s a satellite view, not a helicopter view.”

Another thing that Undaunted demonstrates is that, while a certain number of truly gifted women were able to find a way to succeed in a male-dominated field, it is only recently that the nature of journalism has changed, granting greater equality and access beyond those fortunate few. According to Kroeger, this is something that has only really come about in the past few decades, where women have become less and less of token figures or individuals relegated to certain undesirable beats, instead becoming central players in the field.

“I did an analysis of the Pulitzer prizes won every year – I’m really a nerd, you know, a super nerd,” said Kroeger. “So it takes 20 years for the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize – Anne O’Hare McCormick, 1937 – and then 14 more until Marguerite Higgins wins it for her coverage of the Korean war. Contrast that to analysis I did of the 10 best stories of the year – for 2000 to 2009, four of 10 were by women, and for the next group up to 2020, seven of the 10 were by women. How impressive is that?”

In addition to getting into major transformation in the field of journalism, Undaunted is also a delight for the many personal stories it relates. Kroeger shared how one theme she discovered was that “women are flowering after 40, which I loved about this book!” She was also impressed by the degree to which women were able to make the most of their people skills to succeed despite incredible amounts of bias and sexism. “People like Margaret Fuller, and so many of these women, are master networkers. I feel like that’s really great career advice. I mean, who gets to do that in 1840?!”

Ultimately, Kroeger told me she’s inspired by her own female journalism students, whom she believes represent incredible new talent that will continue to transform journalism in coming decades. And she’s also mindful that the nature of journalism is that it’s mostly meant to disappear – meaning that maybe one of those students will eventually succeed her in writing the next chapter of the story. “Journalism is ephemera, we are meant to disappear, it’s OK, that’s the nature of the work. You can’t feel bad about that, because it’s all about the work today. When someone survives that, it’s really extraordinary.”

Undaunted is out now

How a Mexican state siphoned off millions – and a reporter risked her life to expose it

María Teresa Montaño Delgado was kidnapped while investigating suspicious contracts worth $300m awarded by the state of Mexico

María Teresa Montaño Delgado was kidnapped while investigating suspicious government contracts in the state of Mexico. Composite: Guardian Design/Alamy

LONG READ

by Nina Lakhani in Mexico City
THE GUARDIAN

Wed 31 May 2023

It was a muggy summer day when the veteran reporter María Teresa Montaño Delgado drove almost 450 miles from Toluca, capital of the state of Mexico (Edomex), to a rundown neighbourhood in Coatzacoalcos, an oil city on the Gulf coast.

Montaño carried with her a $35m contract for “specialist human capital management” with the government of Edomex – the last bastion of power for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which has ruled the state uninterrupted for almost a century.

She double-checked the company address, which turned out to be a second-floor apartment in a pastel-pink residential building, on an unremarkable street with boarded-up bars and empty lots.

The company, one half of a consortium with contracts with three agencies worth about $55m – existed on paper, but there was no sign of any business operations or employees.

“I was shocked by the crumbling building, but it confirmed my suspicions: the contract was completely illogical,” said Montaño, founder and editor-in-chief of the independent news website the Observer. “This was a fake company, part of a scheme to embezzle huge amounts of public money … That’s why they tried to silence me.”

Coatzacoalcos seemed an unlikely location for a human resources company with multimillion-dollar contracts on the other side of the country. All the contracts were signed on 29 December 2018, at a time when a vicious turf war between rival cartels had helped make the port city one of the most violent places in Mexico.

When the Guardian visited in January, the seafront boulevard was lined with burned-out hotels, abandoned shopping malls and decrepit housing blocks, and the streets patrolled by marines. A few courageous women were out selling seafood cocktails and coconuts, but it looked like a hurricane had swept through downtown.

The $55m contracts weren’t the only questionable deals that Montaño had uncovered while trawling through the government’s information portal. In early 2021, Montaño had noticed other contracts worth millions of dollars with companies and individuals across Mexico – many for vaguely defined products and services available locally such as cleaning, office furniture, construction and computer software.

On paper, the companies and contracts looked legitimate but there were multiple “red flags”, according to Muna Dora Buchahin Abulhosn, a forensic accountant who has led investigations into state-run embezzlement schemes.

A cursory search on Google Maps found companies awarded lucrative contracts were often located in residential streets, abandoned lots and shopping malls. Some addresses were linked to several companies – or didn’t exist; other companies had no functioning website despite multimillion dollar contracts.

Montaño’s reporting was potentially embarrassing for the PRI, which is desperate to hold on to the state in elections on 4 June. But investigating corruption can be deadly in Mexico, particularly for local reporters.

Last year 15 journalists were killed in Mexico, making it the most dangerous country for the media apart from Ukraine. The violence – and the impunity that fuels it – has a chilling effect, with reporters routinely silenced by threats, bribes and blacklists blocking access to jobs and information.

María Teresa Montaño writes on her computer. Photograph: Ginnette Riquelme/Ginnette Riquelme for The Guardian

“The contracts were signed with companies far away to make it almost impossible for local journalists to physically verify. The government has so much control but I kept asking questions and downloading documents,” said Montaño. “That’s why I think I was kidnapped.”

On 13 August 2021, Montaño’s car broke down en route to a medical appointment in Toluca. She left it parked at a convenience store and took a bus to the clinic, close to the state congress building which is surrounded by surveillance cameras.

By the time she was finished it was just after 7.30pm. A huge rainstorm had broken and Montaño was soaking wet, when a white car that looked like a shared taxi signalled for her to get in.

Almost immediately, a skinny man in the passenger seat pulled out a revolver. “Don’t scream and you won’t die,” he said. In the back, a second man covered her eyes with her Covid mask and pulled up her jersey to expose her stomach and chest.

The driver added: “You’re the journalist, aren’t you?”

Fearing for her life, Montaño denied she was a reporter, but the kidnappers knew where she lived and even where she’d left her car.

“Is your son home?” the driver asked as they pulled up at her gated housing complex.

A residential building in Coatzacoalcos, at the address on a $35m contract for ‘specialist human capital management’ signed by the government of the state of Mexico. Photograph: Nina Lakhani/The Guardian


The two assailants ransacked Montaño’s tiny home, before leaving her blindfolded on a dusty lot a few miles away at about 11pm. She had no phone and no money, but following a distant light, she found her way to a shopping mall and called her family.

She reported the kidnapping to the authorities immediately. It was only later that she realised the assailants had taken her laptops, phone, voice recorder, camera, notebooks and documents – but not the TV or other valuables.

“They stole my whole investigation. The message was clear, but I survived – and this information is too important to keep to myself. Before the people go to vote, they need to know.”

Over the past six months, the Guardian and Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) have worked with Montaño as part of an initiative by the Paris-based non-profit Forbidden Stories to continue the work of threatened and murdered journalists.

The team analysed dozens of state contracts issued during the current administration led by Alfredo del Mazo Maza – whose family has governed Edomex for 29 years – visited every company address and consulted experts on corruption and politics in Mexico.

As Edomex prepares to go to the polls on 4 June, the investigation can reveal that the outgoing government issued at least 40 contracts involving at least 15 front and shell companies worth more than $300m.

In some cases there was no company at the listed address: no sign, no workers and no infrastructure. In others, real companies were contracted for goods or services they had no expertise in. Several companies shared the same address and/or legal representatives. Unusually, many were awarded at the end of the year when most government employees are on leave. Freedom of information requests for evidence on each procurement was ignored.

The Del Mazo government said that it complied with the law at all times and all contracts were awarded through competitive tender to the “best provider”; it said it respected press freedom and journalists, and had no prior knowledge of Montaño’s kidnap.

All the contracts were authorized by the department of finance, which coordinates the state’s procurement process. Approached by the consortium for comment, the department said it was obliged by law to open tenders to companies across the country, and provided a dossier of photocopies of undated photos and documents purporting to prove that all the contractors were legitimate.


But further investigation revealed multiple inconsistencies and irregularities in the government’s evidence, including offices which were apparently not in use, or addresses in use by seemingly unrelated companies.

Together, the contracts illustrate a pattern of “acts and omissions” that suggest an embezzlement scheme involving public officials and private individuals, according to Buchahin, the forensic accountant.

In Monterrey, a city 600 miles north of Toluca, the company Sevacom was contracted to provide materials for workshops – such as jewellery-making, balloon decorating and dressmaking – by six different government agencies, including the governor’s office and department of rural affairs. The consortium found 12 identical contracts worth almost $5.2m. There is a business called Sevacom at the address on the contract, but it is a retail store selling household cleaning products. The owner denied receiving any public contracts or any knowledge of workshops. A website for Sevacom was created after the first contracts were awarded, but telephone calls, letters and messages to the contact details it contains went unanswered.

In its dossier, the Edomex government provided photocopied photographs of an unidentified warehouse and women receiving boxes of government aid, as well as photocopies of a social security letter and documents provided by two commercial certification companies. It provided no evidence that any workshops had taken place.

The address listed on a half-million-dollar outsourcing contract with a supposed construction company in Edomex was actually a tiny house belonging to a woman with a makeshift neighbourhood nail salon, who said she had never heard of the deal. In another case, a nearly $100,000 contract for elevator maintenance was awarded to an audiovisuals company. The mismatch between the firm’s specialism and the contract it won was another red flag, said Buchahin

The supposed HR company in Coatzacoalcos, Instituto C&A Intelligent, was awarded another three contracts worth $67m with an address in Edomex that doesn’t exist. The company was listed online at a different but nearby location - an office building on which the company logo has appeared and disappeared several times this year. A phone number listed for the company is out of service, emails to its address bounced back and the company website is defunct.

The Edomex government provided copies of photographs showing people standing outside the building. Consortium reporters visited the site four times over the past year, but saw no sign of activity in the building. On Monday, a neighbour said he saw workers reattaching the company sign to the building’s facade last week, adding that the building was mostly empty apart from a few residential renters.

The address for a company awarded four contracts for office furniture worth a total of $2.4m is an unattended office in a strip mall on the outskirts of the city of Querétaro, 120 miles north-west of Edomex, with no answering machine. The government provided photocopies of photos showing stacks of furniture ostensibly taken at a company warehouse in the state of Puebla. The consortium visited the address, and found a modest metal workshop, whose employees said they had no knowledge of the company.

The findings suggest a new version of an old embezzlement scheme.

María Teresa Montaño, smokes a cigarette while walking during a break. Photograph: Ginnette Riquelme/Ginnette Riquelme for The Guardian

In 2017, the Federal Audit Office (ASF) and investigative journalists uncovered an alleged multimillion-dollar embezzlement enterprise involving at least 11 federal government agencies, eight public universities and more than 120 fake companies registered in several states. The case, known as La estafa maestra or the master swindle, took place during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, former governor of Edomex – and Del Mazo’s cousin.

No one was ever charged over the allegations, which implicated several institutions and PRI officials in Edomex. Peña Nieto has denied any wrongdoing.

Eric Sevilla. Photograph: Future Publishing/Getty Images

Such impunity has allowed the “modus operandi” to continue, said Buchahin, who previously led the ASF forensic accounting unit. Some of the companies implicated in the estafa maestra continue to receive government contracts, while officials suspected of wrongdoing were simply moved to new roles.

Alejandra del Moral. Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

Nine of the 40 contracts analysed by the Guardian involved the Edomex department of social development. Alejandra del Moral, who led the department in 2022, is running for governor. Eric Sevilla Montes de Oca, the 2018-2020 director, is currently president of the PRI in Edomex and running the governor’s election campaign. Neither Sevilla nor Del Moral responded to the allegations.

“This is a network of powerful senior officials who simulate contracts and payments which are supported by legal but unsupported invoices in order to get money out … It continues because they know nothing will happen, impunity is generalised. Everybody knows and nobody does anything. The state of Mexico is the most corrupt in the country, it’s where they get money for all the others,” said Buchahin.

Edomex is Mexico’s largest state by population, with 17 million people: a sprawling conurbation of dormitory communities, industrial sites and colonial pueblos wrapping around the capital city. It is home to members of the political, economic and criminal elites, but includes some of the country’s most dangerous municipalities – especially for women and girls.

Del Mazo Maza – whose grandfather, father and uncle have also governed the state – eked out an election victory in 2017 amid widespread allegations of fraud. Next week’s election matters because Edomex is the only state that the PRI – which ruled the country uninterrupted between 1929 and 2010 – has clung on to.

Governor Alfredo del Mazo Maza. Photograph: Mario Guzman/EPA

“The state of Mexico has both great political and symbolic value for the PRI – and their opponents,” said Rogelio Hernández, a political scientist at the College of Mexico. For the PRI, retaining the state would prove that it is still relevant as a party; for Morena – the party which is in government nationally but in opposition in the state – a victory would be a much-needed token of support for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

PRI’s success in Edomex is partly down to its control of the media. Most news outlets – and many journalists – depend on the state government for advertising and off-the-books monthly payments, known as chayotes, in exchange for non-critical coverage.

“Intimidating journalists has been a constant for many decades in the state of Mexico – just like chayotes. It’s how the PRI has been able to remain in power, and why there is virtually zero independent and investigative journalism in the state,” said Lenin Martell, media studies professor at the autonomous university of the state of Mexico.

Journalists who reject the status quo often pay a great personal and professional price.

Montaño has spent her whole career reporting on politics, crime and corruption in Edomex, mostly as a correspondent for national newspapers, and has a track record of irking powerful people.


But after refusing to accept an envelope of cash in early 2018, she started getting pressure from editors to send fewer freedom of information requests. Colleagues and sources cut her off and it became harder to make ends meet.

After the kidnap, she left Mexico for several months but returned determined to continue the investigation. Despite CCTV footage of at least one assailant withdrawing cash using her bank card, no one has been arrested. Prosecutors investigating the case have denied that the kidnapping was related to her journalism.

A spokesperson for the Del Mazo government said that it fully “complied with the law at all times with its transparency and accountability obligations” and that procurements for all goods and services had been consolidated under the finance department “to obtain technical and economic advantages”. The government did not respond to specific questions about the investigation’s conclusions, or the use of threats, publicity and payments to control the media.


Mexico media say president’s attacks on journalists are ‘invitation to violence’

The finance department said that all contracts were awarded through competitive tender to the “best provider” regardless of their location, taking into account factors including price, quality and financing, and that the process was supported by an oversight committee.

“It’s a miracle that María Teresa has continued reporting in a state totally controlled by mafia politicians, where government publicity is disguised as journalism and independent reporters are isolated and punished, leaving the public with a huge black information hole,” said Marcela Turati, co-founder of investigative news site Quinto Elemento Lab. “The violence continues because impunity is guaranteed.”

Reporting team, María Teresa Montaño Delgado (El Observador), Lilia Saúl Rodríguez (OCCRP) and Nina Lakhani. Additional reporting by Aïda Delpuech and Paloma Dupont de Dinechin (Forbidden Stories)

China’s 11.6m graduates face a jobs market with no jobs

With youth unemployment at a record high, the problem of overeducated young people is acute

Amy Hawkins Senior China correspondent
THE GUARDIAN

Thu 1 Jun 2023

With a master’s degree in applied linguistics from one of Australia’s top universities, Ingrid Xie did not expect to end up working in a grocery store. But that was where she ended up after graduating from the University of Queensland in July last year.

Xie did her undergraduate degree in China, studying English in the shade of palm trees at Hainan Tropical Ocean University. She went abroad for her master’s because she thought that would help her find a better job.

‘The last generation’: the young Chinese people vowing not to have children

But after working at a Korean supermarket in Brisbane for several months after graduating, in February she decided to return to her home city of Kunming, in the south-west province of Yunnan, to find a job as an English teacher.

Xie soon discovered that “a lot of people studied abroad and want the same thing”. She says a friend in the same city recently sat an English teacher recruitment test, along with about 100 other people. Her friend did not get the job.

Youth unemployment in China hit a record high in April, with 20.4% of 16- to 24-year-old jobseekers unable to find work. Xie is 26 and has not managed to find a job in China since leaving higher education. “It makes me really frustrated,” she says.

Nearly 11.6 million students are set to graduate in June, facing a labour market that looks increasingly hostile.

The problem of overeducated unemployed youths has become so acute that people have started comparing themselves to Kong Yiji, a fictional character from a story by Lu Xun, one of the greats of Chinese literature. Kong is a scholar turned beggar who is mocked by the locals at a tavern he drinks at for his pretentious airs.

Graduates look for work at a jobs fair in Haikou, Hainan province. Photograph: Shutterstock

State media has criticised these memes, accusing them of being self-indulgent. In March a commentary in state media said youths were “unwilling to engage in jobs that are lower than their expectations”.

China’s economy is suffering from a mismatch between the jobs available and the qualifications of jobseekers. Between 2018 and 2021 the number of graduates majoring in sports and education increased by more than 20%, according to Goldman Sachs.

But in 2021 the government suddenly banned for-profit tutoring, decimating an industry that had previously been worth $150bn. That eased the homework burden for schoolchildren but torpedoed jobs for young graduates, including Xie, who had previously looked at tutoring as a way of getting teaching experience.

The country is also struggling to fill jobs in the right places. Xie has seen job advertisements that require the teacher to work in a rural school for a year. “I don’t like [the idea of] teaching in a rural area as it is hard to survive in that environment, especially for girls,” she says.

A queue at a graduate jobs fair at Jianghan University in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, in April. Photograph: Shutterstock

Eric Fish, the author of a book about Chinese millennials, says the value of an international degree has diminished in China’s jobs markets. “Some recruiters think that students might have inflated expectations or are too westernised.”


China overtakes US in contributions to nature and science journals

The government is aware of the problem. In April it published details of a set of policies designed to stimulate the jobs market, including subsidies for companies that hire unemployed university graduates. The government wants state-owned enterprises to recruit 1 million trainees in 2023, and has set an overall target of creating 12m urban jobs this year, up from 11m in 2022.

This year the government also abandoned the use of the employment and registration certificate, a document that was used for decades to approve a graduate’s transfer from a university to an employer.

Although the certificate was mostly a bureaucratic relic, its cancellation would “make it more convenient for college graduates to seek employment”, the ministry of human resources and social security said in a notice on 12 May.

China is not alone in struggling to rebalance its economy after being battered by the Covid pandemic. Researchers at Goldman Sachs noted that in 2021 youth unemployment in several European countries was more than 20%, while in the US it was close to 10%.

But the dearth of opportunities also creates pressure to take any job regardless of interest, says Xie. “You don’t even know what you want to do when you’re 25.” For now she is resigned to spending a long time with her parents and looking after her cat, Shrimp. “What I’m looking for is enough private time and a job with work-life balance but I can’t find that.”

Additional research by Chi Hui Lin