Free Speech Radio News

Global Stories, Local Voices

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New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/fsrn-weekly-edition-april-28-2017/

FSRN Weekly Edition - April 28, 2017

Lawmakers go through the motions of appropriations showdown ritual

Texas House passes most hardline immigration bill since Arizona’s SB 1070

Turkish officials carry out fresh purges; opposition contests referendum results

Snake charmers in India lament loss of culture following outlawing of their practice

Whistleblowers play a key role in Nigerian anti-corruption push…at their own risk

FSRN signs off the air after 17 years of grassroots radio journalism

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  Lawmakers go through the motions of appropriations showdown ritual

In what’s become a ritual on Capitol Hill, the U.S. House and Senate faced off in a government shutdown showdown this week. FSRN’s Nell Abram has more.

  Texas House passes most hardline immigration bill since Arizona’s SB 1070

In the wee hours Thursday morning, the state’s lower house passed a bill immigration policy observers say is the most radical state legislation since Arizona’s controversial SB 1070. It comes on the heels of a 9th Circuit Court ruling against the Trump administration’s attempts to deny federal funding to cities where local police do not take on federal immigration enforcement duties. The Texas bill, SB 4 passed the state Senate in February. Lawmakers from both chambers must reconcile final language before the bill heads to the desk of the governor who openly supports the measure. Shannon Young has more.

  Turkish officials carry out fresh purges as opposition continues to contest referendum results

In Turkey, the government carried out a fresh series of raids this week, arresting another 1000 people and purging the police force of more than 9000 officers allegedly connected to the US-based cleric who President Recip Tayyip Erdogan blames for last summer’s attempted coup.

The country remains under a state of emergency, extended after protesters took to the streets decrying what they say was fraud in the recent referendum. The plank of constitutional reforms that would grant President Erdogan much of the powers previously held by Parliament and the Judiciary officially passed with 51 percent of the vote, but opposition parties are contesting the results. Umar Farooq reports from Istanbul.

  Snake charmers in India lament loss of culture following outlawing of their practice

Since ancient times in India, snake charming has been a popular form of entertainment. It’s also been the only source of livelihood for hundreds of thousands of snake charmers. But several years ago the practice was declared illegal, leaving practitioners in dire economic straits. Bismillah Geelani, brings us the story of a community struggling for survival.

  Whistleblowers play a key role in Nigerian anti-corruption push…at their own risk

In Nigeria, millions of dollars of stolen public funds have been recovered in recent months, as President Muhammadu Buhari wages a war against corruption. Whistleblowers are playing a major role, but exposing corruption can come at great cost in Nigeria, a country where graft is deeply entrenched and impunity has long been the norm. Whistleblowers, like journalists and anti-corruption activists face threats, including the risk of assassination. FSRN’s Sam Olukoya reports from Lagos.

  FSRN signs off the air after 17 years of grassroots radio journalism

Since 2000, Free Speech Radio News’ mission has been to provide factual reports on important international and domestic news stories often missing in the corporate press — and to amplify the voices of the ignored and unheard. Those voices have been broadcast on radio stations across the U.S. in tens of thousands of news stories spanning 17 years. Today FSRN itself is in the news because of the stories we can no longer tell.

The very first story reporter Lena Nozizwe produced for FSRN was about a transgender college student. Today her last report for us is about the beginnings, and the end of FSRN.

Music in today’s program is by Sway via Jamendo.com 

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/fsrn-signs-off-the-air-after-17-years-of-grassroots-radio-journalism/

FSRN signs off the air after 17 years of grassroots radio journalism

Since 2000, Free Speech Radio News’ mission has been to provide factual reports on important international and domestic news stories often missing  in the corporate press — and to amplify the voices of the ignored and unheard. Those voices have been broadcast on radio stations across the U.S. in tens of thousands of news stories spanning 17 years. Today FSRN itself is in the news because of the stories we can no longer tell.

The very first story reporter Lena Nozizwe produced for FSRN was about a transgender college student. Today her last report for us is about the beginnings, and the end of FSRN.

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The year was 2000. The state of Vermont became the first to pass legislation legalizing same-sex couple unions. Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate. And in a contested presidential race, the Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush was the winner.

2000 also marked the birth of Free Speech Radio News, founded when a group of reporters went on strike against the Pacifica Radio network. The strikers said management was censoring coverage of internal politics at the flagship community radio organization. Independent radio stations across the country supported the strike by airing the newscast.

“One of my first recollections of Free Speech Radio News was when it split from Pacifica and became an entity all to it its own – an entity that was very collective in it’s nature which was rather unique,” says General Manager of WERU in Blue Hill, Maine, Matt Murphy, who was a listener and fan from the beginning. “This was an independent group and a group that we really valued very much. Free Speech Radio News rapidly became our daily news that came on the airwaves just before Democracy Now.”

FSRN became a worker-run collective and pioneered the decentralized newsroom model, with production staff in different cities around the world, rather than concentrated in media hubs like New York or Washington, D.C.

Nell Abram soon joined the international team.

“Staff were in their offices or their homes or their studios, all around the world and gathered via conference calls to make decisions about what stories they could cover,” Abram recalls.

That was part of the allure for former FSRN anchor Dorian Merina: “On any given day at FSRN you could have an editor sitting in New Delhi, another in Oaxaca, Mexico, a producer in Miami, Florida, another in Los Angeles, and another still in the Philippines. And to me, this is what made FSRN so special. You had a network of people all over the globe coming together to decide what story should be told and how they should be told. And it made for something unlike anything else on the air during its time.”

More than 100 stations across the country soon began airing the daily newscast. One of them was KPFT in Houston, where FSRN grabbed the attention of Shannon Young as a listener in 2002.

“That’s when I heard Fariba Nawa on FSRN,” says Young. “She had phoned in a commentary that succinctly summed up just why it’s so important to go to journalists who are from or who live in the communities they report on, precisely because they understand and can convey a nuance that outsiders simply don’t pick up on.”

During seventeen years of reporting the news often ignored in the corporate media, hundreds of reporters around the world amplified the voices of the people in their communities – content that went into producing more than 23,000 headlines, features and documentaries heard on more than 100 stations around the United States.

Then in late 2013, all of FSRN’s voices, including Nawa’s, were silenced. The program ran out of funding after their main client and distributor fell months behind – and then defaulted – on payments.

During the silence, a skeleton team retooled and a few months later relaunched as FSRN, the Weekly Edition. Since early 2014, FSRN has been produced and edited by a bare bones staff of two, Abram and Young, plus part time technical engineer, Reaux Packard.

But even so, producing the program comes at a price that FSRN is no longer able to pay. Despite continued support from individual members and carriage fees paid by radio stations, it’s simply not enough. Abram says credible, well produced content is expensive.

“We’ve had no luck finding major funding, like grants from foundations or organizational support from The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and despite station carriage our direct distribution using social media has been slashed by algorithms that drastically limit the reach of our content,” Abram explains.

The loss is already felt by news director Aileen Alfandary, who says FSRN has been a staple at KPFA Community Radio in Berkeley, a station that was supportive of the initial strike that led to FSRN’s creation. And she wonders about the impact on journalism.

“FSRN’s demise comes at a time when too much of the news has been reduced to short soundbites, or yes tweets. The commitment of FSRN to dive deep into an issue has been more important than ever,” Alfandary says. “I am also concerned about what happens to the freelance journalists who have been filing for FSRN and whether if this will tip some of them out of the field, whether this will be the straw that broke the camel’s back, especially at this time, we need more independent journalism, not less. I am very, very sorry to see FSRN go.”

And she’s not the only one.

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/lawmakers-go-through-the-motions-of-budget-request-showdown-ritual/

Lawmakers go through the motions of budget request showdown ritual

In what’s become a ritual on Capitol Hill, the U.S. House and Senate faced off in a government shutdown showdown this week. FSRN’s Nell Abram has more.

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Friday morning, the House authorized a one-week extension to keep the lights on while they try to reach an agreement on funding for the balance of the current fiscal year.

Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee called the continuing resolution a can-kicker, saying lawmakers still need to grapple with a budget proposal that undermines the governance of the nation.

“My Houston Housing Authority has now stopped vouchers for families in Section 8 Housing for fear of not having the money,” the Texas Democrat told her colleagues on Friday. “They had breaking news two days ago saying those families ‘Don’t don’t show up, because we have no money to house you — similar to no money and no room at the inn.”

The Senate followed suit hours later.

The continuing resolution came a day after the GOP once again pulled a proposal for rewriting the nation’s health care law, failing a second time to rally enough votes within their own party. Moderate Republicans were concerned that insurers would be able charge consumers with pre-existing conditions exorbitant premiums.

President Trump also capitulated on a trade-off: leaving subsidies to offset health insurance premiums for the poor in place while backtracking on a demand for a $1.4 billion “down payment” on the southern border wall he has repeatedly boasted Mexico would pay for.

But plans to ramp up an immigration clampdown appear to be on track, with funding to expand immigration detention capacity by at least 21,000 beds and hire thousands of new Border Patrol and ICE agents still in the budget request.

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/turkish-officials-carry-out-fresh-purges-as-opposition-continues-to-contest-referendum-results/

Turkish officials carry out fresh purges as opposition continues to contest referendum results

The government of Turkey carried out a fresh series of raids this week, arresting another 1000 people and purging the police force of more than 9000 officers allegedly connected to the US-based cleric who President Recip Tayyip Erdogan blames for last summer’s attempted coup.

The country remains under a state of emergency, extended after protesters took to the streets decrying what they say was fraud in the recent referendum. The plank of constitutional reforms that would grant President Erdogan much of the powers previously held by Parliament and the Judiciary officially passed with 51 percent of the vote, but opposition parties are contesting the results. Umar Farooq reports from Istanbul.

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Every day since the referendum, thousands of people have taken part in protests like this one in Istanbul.

“We are protesting here today because there were some frauds,” explains an anonymous protester. “We noticed the – I don’t know how to translate it – election committee, let’s say, changed the rules while the voting was still going on, and we think these changes were just for the government – Erdogan’s government’s – profit.”

Scores of protesters have been detained, leaving some, like this man, too frightened to give their names. But they keep coming out each night because they are angry at Turkey’s Supreme Election Commission, which has refused to entertain allegations of fraud. The Commission’s decisions are final and cannot be appealed to any court.

Gürkan Özturan is part of Dokuz 8, one of several civil society groups that monitored the voting and collected evidence of electoral irregularities like ballot stuffing and the presence of armed men inside polling stations.

“Mostly these kinds of stories but also reports regarding unstamped ballots, the invalid ballots. They have been reporting throughout the day, starting from morning until evening, that people have been saying that on the envelopes, on the ballots, there were no official stamps making it a valid ballot,” says Özturan. “So this we have started seeing throughout the day, from very early hours.”

Opposition parties, as well as a team of monitors from the European Union, say both the campaigning and the vote itself were not free and fair. With the results, so close and the stakes so high, they are calling for a revote.

But Harun Armagan, a member of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, says the opposition is unhappy with the results and is trying to sidestep what was a historic moment for Turkey’s democracy: “When the result is very close – in terms of percentage, not in terms of numbers, because the numbers say 1.4 million difference between two votes – they just want to create an atmosphere to create a question for national and international bodies, that this result is not trustable [sic].”

Armagan says Turkish voters approved the constitutional reforms that consolidate power in the president’s office, so their demands can be more efficiently met by the government.

“This is about taking the country to a more democratic system and taking the country to a more efficient system, a more progressive system. Because we have seen the system that Turkey currently has was set up to dysfunction. It’s a very slow process, it’s taking a lot of time to make even simple decisions, and there are a lot of coalitions that don’t last long,” says Armagan. “And the president and prime minister usually are from different political opinions, which creates problems for Turkey. And we have seen that how Turkey can actually progress a lot when these are not the problems. We have experienced this personally, during AK Party time.”

The referendum ended up being not so much about the balance of powers in the country, but about the track record of Erdogan’s party. Since it came to power in 2002, Turkey’s GDP per capita has tripled, and many legal restrictions on overt religious practices, for instance wearing the headscarf in public schools, have been repealed. There was even a period where the government engaged in a peace process to end a three-decade old separatist Kurdish insurgency.

For many of Turkey’s conservatives, Erdogan is the man who can ensure those policies continue, even if that means he must be handed broad powers. As long as Erdogan keeps winning elections, Armagan says, he cannot be called a dictator.

But for activists like Özturan, the referendum, and Turkey’s struggle to become a true democracy holds an important lesson for the rest of the world.

“When democratic process is considered as a tool of the few, or a certain kind of ideology this, in time, tends to create an antithesis, an anti-system party decides to become more radical, and over time can become more popular among the society depending on the number of people who feel excluded from the system from the society and from the legal procedure,” Özturan explains. “If people feel their vote does not count, their rights cannot be sought through the legal procedure, then populist waves can come, and if the people feel the discomfort they will eventually slide towards more populist authoritarian figures which promise them leadership and comfort.”

Opposition parties have announced they will appeal the referendum results to the European Court of Human Rights. But there is little indication the government will reconsider the raft of constitutional amendments, which it says now has the public’s support.

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/texas-legislature-poised-to-pass-most-hardline-immigration-bill-since-arizonas-sb-1070/

Texas Legislature poised to pass most hardline immigration bill since Arizona's SB 1070

In the wee hours Thursday morning, the lower house of the Texas state legislature pass a bill immigration policy observers say is the most radical state legislation since Arizona’s controversial SB 1070. It comes on the heels of a 9th Circuit Court ruling against the Trump administration’s attempts to deny federal funding to cities where local police do not take on federal immigration enforcement duties. The Texas Senate is expected to pass SB4 in the near future. Shannon Young has more.

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After 16 hours of heated debate that ran until 3 a.m. Thursday, the Republican majority of the Texas House of Representatives pushed through SB 4, known as the ‘anti-sanctuary city’ bill. It prohibits cities and counties from enacting laws that prevent the use of local resources for immigration enforcement. During the hearing phase of the bill, even police chiefs and sheriffs spoke out against it, saying that it will undermine public safety.

Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice Education Fund, says the bill is a radical measure in the national context.

“This is a dramatic enabling of a federal strategy with a now coerced, local cooperation to make undocumented immigrants and their families so terrified of staying that, if they’re not picked up and deported that they pick up and leave on their own,” Sharry says.

SB 4 not only mandates collaboration between federal and local police, but an amendment tacked onto the bill could allow for the removal or criminal prosecution of elected officials or law enforcement who refuse to comply.

Austin City Council member Greg Casar says the measure is unconstitutional and he will continue to openly oppose it: “I represent the most immigrant parts of Austin, in north Austin. Many of my neighborhoods are majority immigrant neighborhoods. And during the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement door-to-door raids that occurred, I saw terror in homes and in children’s eyes like I’ve never seen before. I sat in constituents’ homes where they had duct-taped sheets across the windows and were packing all their things up to go and abandon homes that they themselves owned. What this bill is asking us to do is not only unconstitutional, but is trying to push us into making children and families feel that kind of fear every time they see a police officer, not just every time that there is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid.”

In addition to its substantial population of immigrants with legal status, Texas is home to 1.5 million undocumented residents, according to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute. The state is also one of four so-called ‘minority-majority’ states, where people of color outnumber whites.

Jose P. Garza, Executive Director, Workers Defense Project says SB 4 is the latest example of a bill that marginalizes members of the state’s demographic majority.

“This act of discrimination perpetuated by the state legislature is not an act that is happening in isolation,” Garza points out. “In the very recent history, at least three federal courts have found that the State of Texas passed legislation that had a discriminatory impact and a discriminatory intent. Some of those findings were specific to populations along the Texas-Mexico border.”

The counties in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas are the most heavily Latino in the United States, with 9 in ten residents identifying as Hispanic according to U.S. Census data.

“Those communities are so militarized right now, what with local law enforcement, what with the Department of Public Safety, Border Patrol, state guard,” Terri Burke, Executive Director of the ACLU of Texas, says SB4 plus militarization in border communities is a recipe for abuse of power. “This is an invitation to racial profiling. When 90 percent of the people who live in an area are brown skinned and look ‘foreign,’ they’re going to be asked for their papers, they’re going to be asked to prove that they have legal status.”

The ACLU is already seeing dash cam footage of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers detaining people for more than an hour during traffic stops so that immigration agents can check their status. While legal permanent residents can show a green card, for citizens the documentation can be bulkier.

“If you’re a U.S. citizen, a native-born, I guess, you’re going to have to carry your birth certificate or passport,” says Burke. “I mean, I think that people are just going to have to carry a little pouch of all their documents to prove that they’re here legally.”

While cities in California double down on resisting the Trump Administration’s anti-sanctuary policies, Texas’ SB4 is putting the Lone Star state and its large immigrant population on the front lines of a 21st century civil rights battle.

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/snake-charmers-in-india-lament-loss-of-culture-following-outlawing-of-their-practice/

Snake charmers in India lament loss of culture following outlawing of their practice

In India, snake charming has been a popular form of entertainment since ancient times. It has also been the only source of livelihood for hundreds of thousands of snake charmers. But several years ago, the practice was declared illegal, leaving snake charmers in dire straits. Bismillah Geelani reports on how the community is now struggling for survival.

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At the Surajkund Craft Fair on the outskirts of Delhi, a group of local folk musicians is entertaining the visitors. Wearing orange dresses with matching turbans, they play melodious tunes of popular Hindi songs on the gourd flute – or Been. Their performances enthrall the audience and many break into dance. But the musicians themselves don’t look very enthusiastic.

“This is not what we want to do; it’s been thrust upon us,” says 75-year-old Badri Nath, who heads the troupe. “But since our original work has been banned, this is the all we can do. Whether we are happy or not doesn’t matter.”

Badri and his companions are all snake charmers. For generations, they made their living street performing with snakes in villages and towns across India. But snake charming in no longer legal, and Badri says that leaves them unable to make ends meet.

“Snakes and snake charmers have been together from time immemorial. This is the only thing we and our ancestors have known and lived on for centuries. Now it has been taken away from us. We have not only lost our livelihood we have been cut off from our roots,” says Badri. “These performances here can sustain a few us for a few days, but what after that? And what about the rest of the community?”

Snake charming was banned under the Wildlife Protection Act in the late 1990s. The law prohibits catching, owning and performing with snakes. Initially, the government didn’t enforce the ban, and snake charmers carried on with their work. But a few years later, animal rights activists pressured authorities to clampdown on snake charmers.

“They basically dehydrate them; they stick them in a box and forget about them, use them whenever they want to make a performance or beg some money from people,” explains Kartik Satyanarayan, from the conservation group Wildlife SOS, who says the charmers abuse the snakes, and there’s been a noticeable decline in their numbers. “Once the job is done they just throw the snake away, because they don’t care, and snake then sometimes dies, it takes some weeks of starvation to die because the fangs have been removed, the venom glands have been removed, they can’t really hunt and fend for themselves any more.”

But nnake charmers strongly deny the charges of animal cruelty. The ban affected an estimated 800,000 snake charmers living in India. Many switched to other occupations, like rickshaw pulling, street vending and working as construction and agricultural laborers. But an overwhelming majority remain jobless.

Some, however, refuse to give up the tradition.

Like this snake charmer performing on a Delhi street. He opens his baskets, and three cobras rise up, flaring their hoods in a menacing stance and appearing to dance to the music from his Been.

He then moves closer to the audience, showing them the reptiles and explaining differences between the species. But soon a policeman arrives and the snake charmer quickly flees the scene.

His brother, Birju Nath, says they are used to playing this game of hide and seek with the both the police and forest officials.

“They arrest us and take away our snakes. But if we stop doing this, what else is there for us?” Nath asks. “We have no business or land to fall back on. Without this we will simply starve to death.”

But the younger generation shows no interest in continuing the legacy. Youth, like 21-year-old Shankar, want to do something more attune to modern times.

Back at the craft fair, the snake charmers are playing a Sufi song – or Qawwali. The audience is swaying and whirling to its tunes. With their baskets empty, the snake charmers are pinning all their hopes on the Been.

Another member of the music troupe Vikrambir Nath, explains: “There are so many musical instruments out there but the Been stands out. It belongs exclusively to us and it is completely homemade. We make it with gourd and bamboo. It represents us as a community and our unique way of life and it is part of India’s cultural heritage. It needs to be preserved and that would require state patronage and promotion.”

Vikrambir Nath says unless the government invests in preserving the history and music of the snake charmers, within a few decades the centuries long practice will disappear without a trace.

And without cultural preservation, the very instrument with which they’ve plied their trade – the Been – could become extinct.

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/whistleblowers-play-a-key-role-in-nigerian-anti-corruption-push-at-their-own-risk/

Whistleblowers play a key role in Nigerian anti-corruption push...at their own risk

In Nigeria, millions of dollars of stolen public funds have been recovered in recent months, as President Muhammadu Buhari wages a war against corruption. Whistleblowers are playing a major role in the government’s anti-corruption drive. But exposing corruption can be at great cost in Nigeria, a country where corruption is deeply entrenched and impunity has been the norm. Whistleblowers, like journalists and anti-corruption activists, face threats including the risk of being assassinated for exposing corruption. Sam Olukoya reports from Lagos.

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Street protests to call on the Nigerian government to combat corruption and provide basic public services like water infrastructure, electricity, roads and healthcare have become commonplace.

Infrastructure is often either lacking in Nigeria or poorly maintained due to widespread corruption like looting of the public coffers or cutting corners in the construction of public works projects.

The current president, Muhammadu Buhari, has been trying to make good on campaign promises to root out corruption and has thus far been successful in a number of high profile cases. Some of them involve billions of public dollars. In these investigations whistleblowers have played a key role, and some have paid a high price.

Olu Ibirogba said he was fired from his job as a school financial administrator and harassed after he brought forward allegations of corruption at his workplace.

“My office was sealed off; my official residence where I was staying was locked up. And I am being persecuted and I was remanded in prison custody for two weeks. Even the psychological trauma is there,” Ibirogba recalls. “I am suffering here in silence. Those who have done the right thing should not be made to look as if they have done the wrong thing.”

A crowd in Nigeria welcomed a former state governor after he served a jail term in Britain. This is the Nigerian irony. Many of those who steal public funds give part of the loot to people who become their loyal supporters. These supporters always stand by them, especially when they get into trouble with looted funds.

Most of those involved in high profile corruption cases are senior government officials. They’ve been known to use their positions to hunt down those who exposed them. Key witnesses in corruption cases have been harassed or even assassinated.

The same silencing tactics have also been deployed against journalists uncovering corruption. Stella Nwofia is with the International Press Center in Lagos.

“Most times journalists who are involved in whistleblowing are arrested, detained and nothing comes out of it,” explains Nwofia. “For example one journalist was beaten to a point of stupor and nothing was done about it. So, most times journalists are at risk for doing their job, bringing information to the people.”

Even members of parliament are not immune to  intimidation tactics. Abdulmumin Jibrin, a parliamentarian who accused some of his colleagues of corruption, was shouted down on the floor of the house mid last year. He was subsequently suspended from parliament and he had to flee Nigeria following death threats.

Many who were victimized on account of exposing corruption are not as powerful and have fewer recourses to fight back against retaliation.

Bamidele Ajinde, who lost his job after exposing corruption, says he is going through difficult times: “So, I have been jobless, my last son is at home now. I can’t send him to school. Even to eat now is extremely difficult. Even, I can’t perform my minimum responsibility as a father and a husband at home.”

There are now calls for a law to protect whistleblowers giving the risks they face. Rashidat Okoduwa is of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC. The commission prosecutes people involved in corrupt practices. She says she looks forward to the enactment of a law to protect whistleblowers.

“We do hope it will be enacted very soon because it is a major obstacle to our work. People are afraid that when they blow the whistle on corrupt acts, they will be victimized, their lives might be in danger. You will find that when you protect them, they know that they are protected, their families are protected they will come out more,” Okoduwa points out. “We still have people reporting now, but they are doing it under a lot of fear. We have people working in organizations, they report some people in that organization they are afraid for their lives, so we want that law to be enacted.”

The irony perhaps is that, while on the one hand, the government is fighting corruption, majority of the attacks on whistleblowers are being instigated or perpetrated by government officials who still want to remain corrupt in spite of the anti-corruption drive.

Which hand wins will come down to the force of political will.

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New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/indigenous-brazilians-protest-stalled-process-for-legal-protections/

Indigenous Brazilians protest stalled process for legal protections

An Indigenous protest in Brazil’s capital Brasilia erupted in violence Tuesday, with police firing gas and rubber bullets to push back the protesters from the seat of Congress. The demonstration is part of a four day, mass mobilization of Indigenous leaders from across Brazil who gathered in the capital, calling for land rights and against the weakening of indigenous institutions and anti-Indigenous legislation. From Brasilia, Sam Cowie reports.

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Organizers in Brasilia estimate more than 3,000 Indigenous people protested outside of the nation’s congress Tuesday before police dispersed them using tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and pepper spray.

Kleber Karipuna, an indigenous leader from the Amazon state of Amapa, said that it was a peaceful protest that turned violent because of the police.

“What happened today was a demonstration of how this illegitimate government treats its people, in our case, indigenous people: with total disrespect, not fulfilling their duties, being confrontational and attacking indigenous people like they have always been attacked,” Karipuna says.

Indigenous groups from across the country are camped near the seat of Congress as part of a four-day mobilization of indigenous people in Brazil called Free Land Encampment, an annual event now in its 14th year, organized by the Articulation of Brazil Indigenous People.

This year’s event is focusing on indigenous demarcations, which give indigenous people land tenure and legal mechanisms to defend their territory against encroachment by invading groups, like illegal loggers or miners.

The process of enshrining demarcation in law has stalled and no new territorial demarcations have been decreed in more than a year.

Participants in the Free Land Encampment also say the post-impeachment government [of current President Michel Temer] is weakening indigenous institutions like Brazil’s National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) by funding cuts and advancing legislation like congressional amendment PEC215 which would transfer demarcation power to Brazil’s Congress.

The event comes as indigenous leaders say their communities’ rights are under increasing threat from a government heavily aligned with agribusiness and resource extraction interests in the midst of economic recession.

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New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/trump-administration-budget-requests-highlight-aims-to-expand-detentions-and-deportations/

Trump administration budget requests highlight aims to expand detentions and deportations

The Trump administration now has pending budget requests before Congress to expand the federal government’s ability to detain and deport immigrants. This, as three progress reports mandated by Trump executive actions on immigration and border enforcement come due. Shannon Young has more.

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The Trump administration hits its 100-day benchmark this week and is reaching to check off bullet points from its list of campaign promises: several of them pertaining to immigration enforcement. Within days of taking office, President Donald Trump signed executive orders, calling for expanded criteria under which agents can detain and deport foreign-born residents. As part of those orders, the administration required periodic progress reports from both the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

Tom Jawetz, Vice President of Immigration at the Center for American Progress, says the Trump administration has accomplished two important things not on the list of goals: “First, he’s managed to spread fear and chaos in immigrant communities across the United States, breaking apart families and diminishing public safety. And second, he’s managed to galvanize widespread, popular opposition to those attacks on immigrants, which has both strengthened the resolve of state and local elected officials and also helped to build the foundation for progress in the years ahead.”

The 100-day bench march also comes as Congress goes through the motions of its now-routine government shutdown showdown over federal budget appropriations. The White House has insisted Congress loosen its purse strings to put a so-called down payment on the border wall Trump boasted Mexico would ultimately pay for. But the request has encountered opposition, including from Republican lawmakers representing border states.

On Monday, Trump indicated he’s backing off that demand, but funding to expand immigration detention capacity by at least 21,000 beds is still in the budget request.

“The expansion of the detention system is designed to create more due process violations, and so if folks aren’t given a chance to fight their cases then we’ll see a decrease in percentages of folks who are able to win their cases because they were never given the chance to fight them,” says Mary Small, Policy Director of the Detention Watch Network.

Another thing the appropriations request seeks to fund is a hiring surge of Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agents. Many of them would be deployed in the strip of territory that extends 100 miles inside the physical border and is nicknamed ‘the Constitution-free zone’ because not all legal protections guaranteed elsewhere in the U.S. apply. Christian Ramirez of the Southern Border Communities Coalition says this will only exacerbate militarization on the ground for tens of millions of residents.

“We get racially profiled on our way to school,” Ramirez explains. “In fact, if I want to take my child to visit his grandparents in the neighboring county, of Imperial County in southern California, I have to go through a checkpoint. If I want to take my child to visit Disneyland in neighboring Orange County, north of where I live, I also have to go through a border control checkpoint.”

In order to rapidly expand the force, the administration has suggested scrapping precautionary measures like polygraph tests for job applicants. Tom Jawetz says the those tests were put in place by Congress after the last hiring surge resulted in inadequate vetting of the force and an increase in corruption complaints and use of force violations.

“The polygraph has shown a function of trying to weed people out early in a process that we don’t end up both spending money on them in the academy and then having to reject them because they fail to meet the qualifications, or even more dangerously, letting them get into the process, letting them become agents, and then having that deteriorate the quality of the corps,” Jawetz points out.

Border Patrol and immigration agents in the border region’s constitutional exception zone already have broader powers than their civilian police counterparts in the interior. Ramirez says lowering vetting standards to beef up staffing can be a dangerous combination for border residents.

“We even asked the administration and several law enforcement experts, including the Police Executive Research Forum and the Homeland Security Advisory Council, proposed in current reforms to ensure that CBP was able to abide by 21st century law enforcement best practices,” says Ramirez. “So, to have a police force that is unaccountable, that has very little oversight mechanisms, that is opaque at best, and deploy these folks to our communities clearly undermines our safety.”

The administration continues to insist the so-called ‘bad hombres’ and immigrants with violent criminal histories are the focus of what may shape up to be the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history. But Trump’s first 100 days of immigration policy have shown that foreign born individuals without current authorized status can be deportation priorities – including immigrants with U.S. born children who have been reporting to authorities for regular check ins for years and even people with residency and work permits under DACA.

While still early in the administration, data sets from its first few weeks indicate the vast majority of removal proceedings initiated since Trump’s inauguration have been against people whose only crime is living in the U.S. without immigration authorization.

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Earth Day 2017: When support for science and evidence-based research became motives for a march

On Saturday – Earth Day 2017 – hundreds of thousands of people in more than 600 locations around the world demonstrated in support of empirical evidence and scientific research. In the U.S. recent executive actions and threats of defunding the EPA and NIH have alarmed scientists and citizens, and statements and tweets by the president have not only underestimated science, but expertise of all kinds. So professionals in scientific fields are doing something they never imagined would be part of their job: getting active and vocal. FSRN’s Larry Buhl has more from a rally in Los Angeles.

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Tens of thousands people gathered in downtown Los Angeles Saturday, carrying signs evoking anger and irony, and heavy on science puns. The march brought out scientists and average citizens worried that statements and policy out of Washington not only ignore scientific conclusions, but undermine science itself.

“There is a force coming out of Washington, D.C. called the Trump administration that is out to deny truth and bury science,” said Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen Climate. “They’re doing this because they’re putting corporate profits ahead of clean air, clean water and the safety of the planet. “

“Our job is to try to understand reality, not to make decisions for society. When I worked with Mayor Garcetti at city hall, I didn’t tell him what to do. I came in to make sure he understood the implications of his decisions,” seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones recalled. “That’s what science is about – making sure we understand what’s real.”

“My years on the house science committee taught me that policy should be guided by scientific consensus,” said U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman.

They were among dozens of speakers who scolded the administration for dismissing scientific research.

They say the proposed six billion dollar cut to the National Institute of Health, the slashing of earth science research at NASA, whacking the EPA’s budget by 30 percent, and policies like the rollback of fuel economy standards, amount to a war on science by a president who’s cabinet includes climate change deniers. And when one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses backtracks on international climate agreements, the results are global.

Protesters say the Trump administration is only the most immediate threat in a longer-term war on evidence-based research. They say the march was a grassroots response to disciplines that should never be politicized.

“Scientific research has reached certain conclusions, and those are irrespective of politics,” explains Philip Wheeler is a former chemist and co-organizer of the Los Angeles rally. “However, when politicians decide to ignore scientific research, or, more important, scientific findings, evidence, data that goes against their ideology, they’re the ones bringing politics into it.”

What started off as a march of literal scientists in Washington, D.C. quickly morphed into a worldwide phenomenon, a grassroots outpouring aided by social media and modeled on the Women’s March in January.

Professionals in science disciplines are not accustomed to promoting their work; they assume it speaks for itself. But the American public doesn’t always agree.

A 2014 Pew poll showed significant gaps between the views of scientists and the general public. Eighty-six percent of scientist polled said childhood vaccines should be required, but only 68 percent of the general public thought so. Eighty-seven percent of scientists said climate change was caused by human activity, versus only 50 percent of the public.

Saturday’s marches are partly an acknowledgement that professionals in scientific fields need to do a better job of communicating the difference between scientific conclusions and opinion.

“As scientists, we need to stand up for the fact that what we do is important and has real world implications for what’s happening today and what’s going to happen in the future,” oceanographer Adam Savosh said.

“We realize that we have to preserve science as an institution because it’s under attack right now at the federal level,” said Eddie Isaacs of 314 Action. “And we want to recruit scientists, engineers, doctors to get involved in public life and eventually run for public office.”

“If it’s not all of us making this change, then it will be just a few lawmakers who profit from the oil and gas industry making decisions that affect all of us living beings,” educator Leah Garland explained.

Organizers admit that one day of protest won’t be enough to turn around years of political attacks on science-related fields. They say in coming weeks they’ll be brainstorming on how to harness the energy of these rallies and push back on those who try to marginalize science.

Or as one banner put it: “What do we want? Science-based policy. When do we want it? After peer review.”

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FSRN Weekly Edition - April 21, 2017

French voters prepare for first round of presidential elections amid surge in right-wing nationalism

Turkey referendum results test country’s polarized political system

Brazilian public workers push back against unelected government’s austerity plans

Lakota immersion class works to recover lost language while strengthening culture

Residents of Seattle’s South Park immigrant community build the kind of walls they can support

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  French voters prepare for first round of presidential elections amid surge in right-wing nationalism

As voters in France gear up for the first round of presidential elections this weekend, a gunman opened fire on police in Paris Thursday. One officer died, two others were injured — and the gunman was shot and killed as he tried to flee the scene on the city’s storied Champs-Élysées. The incident that French President François Hollande  said appeared to be an act of terrorism is adding fuel to the nationalist fire that’s thrust the country’s far right-wing party to the top of the polls just days ahead of the vote.

The election in the country that’s both a NATO partner and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, is the latest ballot box test for an international surge in right-wing nationalism, which has seen recent wins in the UK, Hungary and Poland. And as with the 2016 U.S. election that brought Donald Trump to power, analysts in France claim that Russia is interfering in the political process. Candidates once considered part of the extremist fringe are now riding a wave into the political mainstream… and possibly into France’s highest office. FSRN’s Khaled Sid Mohand reports from Paris.

  Turkey referendum results test country’s polarized political system

While France may well be on the path to placing another ultra-nationalist on the world slate of global leaders, pro-democracy groups in Turkey are challenging the outcome of a recent referendum on constitutional reforms. If enacted, the reforms would dramatically alter Turkey’s parliamentary system, and reduce checks and balances in the country located smack dab between the Syrian civil war and the EU refugee crisis. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed a razor thin win by a 2.8 percent margin. But despite widespread allegations of ballot fraud, the country’s electoral commission has refused to annul the results. FSRN’s Fariba Nawa is based in Istanbul, and explains how the changes would restructure the government and consolidate power in the office of the president.

  Brazilian public workers push back against unelected government’s austerity plans

We now go to Brazil, which is dealing with its own collective crisis. In 2016, an impeachment, which many likened to a legislative coup, forced the leftist president Dilma Rousseff from office. Now the biggest political corruption scandal in memory continues to unravel, as the country tries to dig itself out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The current Michel Temer-led government seized the opportunity to push through austerity reforms, which have frozen public spending for the next 20 years. Now, congress is debating an overhaul of the country’s pension and social security systems. If approved, the reform would slash benefits and raise the retirement age for federal employees. Michael Fox has more from Brazil.

  Lakota immersion class works to recover lost language while strengthening culture

A Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has introduced its first Lakota language immersion program. A small kindergarten class is the start of a revolving door immersion concept that will see students remain in a culturally-rich environment through the 4th grade. Jim Kent visited the Red Cloud Indian School to talk with the Lakota language teacher and her young students about the importance of retaining a language to preserve a culture.

  Residents of Seattle’s South Park immigrant community build the kind of walls they can support

Hear the phrase “green walls” and you might think perhaps the southern border wall proposed by the Trump administration is taking on a eco-friendly theme. But these green walls are going up in Seattle’s South Park, and are designed to clean the air and reduce air pollution. And many members of the immigrant community are putting up the walls themselves. Martha Baskin has our story.

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Residents of Seattle's South Park immigrant community build the kind of walls they can support

Hear the phrase “green walls” and you might think perhaps the southern border wall proposed by the Trump administration is taking on a eco-friendly theme. But the green walls going up in Seattle’s South Park are being built to clean the air and reduce air pollution. And they’re walls many in the immigrant community are putting up themselves.

A project of the Duwamish Community Action for Clean Air Project, the first set of green walls were put up on the grounds of the South Park Public Library. The local merchant’s association says they’re ready to help build more and talks are underway with the Port of Seattle whose trucks run through the neighborhood, for a bigger project. Martha Baskin has our story.

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Beneath hand-crafted green wall panels on the site of a public library, youth in Seattle’s South Park immigrant community plant honeysuckle, jasmine and clematis. Soon their leafy vines will climb metal cables welded onto the panels. When fully grown, the green walls will filter particulates and help clean the air in a neighborhood dominated by highways, air traffic, and industry.

“We’re doing a green wall because in South Park we think there’s lots of pollution.” Hodan Mire is a local high school student.”So, we’re trying to put our hand in and help out with that.”

Asthma rates for young people here are double compared to the rest of Seattle. Life expectancy is also 13 years lower. So the community came together to find solutions.

Planting trees was the first solution. Trees are carbon storage experts. Seven hundred have been planted over the last year and a half. The second was to build “green walls.” Paulina Lopez is an organizer with the Duwamish Community Action for Clean Air, which launched the green wall project.

“Green walls are walls that we need,” Lopez refers to community members learning about the walls for the first time. “When we have been telling them about the walls they just hear, ‘the walls’ and they are thinking, what are you talking about? They have been saying these are the only walls that we want, we need more green walls.”

The South Park Merchant Association has agreed to help build more green walls and talks are underway with the Port of Seattle, whose trucks run through the neighborhood, for a bigger project.

The historically industrial neighborhood of South Park has long dealt with environmental hazards never fully remedied, including a river filled with legacy toxins and storm run off, Puget Sound’s most persistent clean water challenge. But after a report highlighted the area’s cumulative health impacts, air quality became a priority.

“You can work on air quality upstream, you know, by changing emission standards,” explains Linn Gould with Just Health Action, who authored the report and was on hand to help with planting the first green wall. “But how do you work on air quality from the community where they have the opportunity to take action.”

Initial support came from the EPA’s Environmental Justice Cooperative Problem Solving Agreement. Then the county’s wastewater treatment division stepped in with a green grant and the Seattle Parks Foundation.

“You put green walls where you can’t put trees,” says Gould. “You put them in places that are unique, where other things can’t happen.”

A Clinical Instructor at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, Gould says a key ingredient to improving health is self-confidence and social cohesion: “When you think you can do something together, it actually improves your health and so here are these kids. They see what they can do for the community and they want to do it elsewhere. They want to make a difference.”

The youth are done planting. Now high-schooler Hodan Mire and her friend, Natividad, tie the vines of a honeysuckle around the slender cables of the hand-crafted green wall panels.

“We’re tying it around so they don’t fall,” Mire explains. “Because if they fall, they’re not going to grow like we want them to grow.”

With fresh mulch for nutrients and water retention, and Seattle’s ever present rain, that likely won’t be a problem.

Green wall project manager, Andrew Schiffer, says the concept was to merge public art with public good. Artists and welders donated their time. The site chosen for installation of the community’s first green wall, a public library across from a highway, already had a depiction of the Duwamish River on the ground.

“So, we wanted to add into that and become a part of that,” says Schiffer, pointing to raindrops suspended from metal cables. “So we have the raindrops falling down on the metal cut out panels and then the plants help the water to evapotranspirate, to go back up and evaporate.”

Evapotranspirate, a rarely used word about the way plants and trees move water into the atmosphere, sounds right for an equally rare public health project.

The installation of seven green wall panels may seem symbolic, but a granular approach is what it takes to integrate green growing things into existing hardscape or industrial landscapes, says Sean Watts with the Seattle Parks Foundation.

“These are not luxuries. These are not add-ons that you do if you’ve got the funding,” Watts says. “This kind of amenity needs to be core to creating a livable city that we want to see in the future.”

For South Park the future is now, with green walls made from climbing honeysuckle, jasmine and clematis.

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French voters prepare for first round of presidential elections amid surge in right-wing nationalism

As voters in France gear up for the first round of presidential elections this weekend a gunman opened fired on police in Paris Thursday. One officer died, two others were injured and the gunman was shot and killed as he tried to flee the scene on the city’s storied Champs-Élysées. The incident is adding fuel to the nationalist fire that’s thrust the country’s far right-wing party to the top of the polls just days ahead of the vote.

The elections come amid an international surge in right-wing populism. And as with the recent U.S. election that brought Donald Trump to power, analysts in France claim that Russia is interfering in the political process.

A confluence of factors has pushed what were long the major political parties in the country to the backseat, and minority outsiders are riding up front in another election that could the nation’s presidential contest. FSRN’s Khaled Sid Mohand reports from Paris.

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The long dominant center-right and center-left parties in France are eclipsed in this election by three formerly fringe candidates: Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National party, the radical left Jean Luc Mélanchon and a new face on the political landscape, Emmanuel Macron.

Macron served as the Minister of Economy in the socialist government of François Hollande. The former executive at the Rothschild Bank graduated from the prestigious National School of Administration.

His popularity has grown within a political vacuum created by the disaffection of right-wing party voters, Les Républicains, whose candidate is engulfed in a corruption scandal, and the socialist party of the current, and deeply unpopular, president, François Hollande.

But how could Macron, only 39-years-old and with no political platform when he declared his presidential ambitions, climb so high in the polls?

“I wouldn’t say he didn’t have any program, he had a lot of new ideas. He wanted to provoke and create a change in the society, that everyone altogether, you can be from the left side, the right side or from center,” says Mariana Mendza, one of Macron’s spokespeople. “Your main goal and your main altogether, it’s to generate a progress into the society.”

Journalist Nadia Sweeney works at the weekly newspaper Politis and has attended most of Macron’s rallies: “He doesn’t really have ideas. It’s quite empty. We listen to his speeches, they’re long sentences without real content. But he has succeeded in selling himself like a yogurt — with a whole marketing plan. He’s sent teams into the streets, but unlike his rivals, they conducted market studies with a questionnaire and then used the results to adjust his speeches at local rallies.”

The shifting political ecosystem in France is also shaped by corruption in the country.

Philippe Preau is a history teacher. At an anti-corruption rally, he said he was shocked by what foreign media has dubbed Penelope-gate – a scandal involving the wife of a center-right candidate François Fillon.

Preau explains the effect these scandals have not only on his pupils–but also their parents.

“We try to teach them the republican values. We tell them that the Republic is the best political system. We tell them about liberty, equality and brotherhood,” says Preau. “But it’s been hard to fulfill our task these days, because children talk about it –the scandals. They say that they are all rotten and all corrupted.”

As France continues to struggle with an influx of refugees, right-wing nationalism is on the rise and many see candidate Marine Le Pen as an emergency exit.

“What would happen if, under Merkel’s pressure, one of her protégés, Macron or Fillon, continues to accept millions of migrants? Your neighborhood, your village, your children’s school, your life, your wages will inevitably be impacted by immigration,” Le Pen says. “I, as a president, will put borders back in place the first day in office.”

The leader of the National Front has intensified her recent speeches to consolidate her electoral base – and her popularity has skyrocketed. But what explains the spectacular rise of the far-right party?

Marwan Mohamed, Director of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, says it’s their ability to recode racism against Arabs and blacks into anti-Muslim rhetoric which, in France, is more publicly acceptable.

“Islamophobia, in its political form, has been able to capitalize on concepts that have a positive connotation in France, for example the concept of laicité [secularism] or women’s rights or even freedom of expression, that have been taken away from their initial meaning and recoded into a form of exclusion,” Mohamed explains. “So, for example, laicité, which describes the state-church separation and it has been reinterpreted, recoded into a form of religious censorship.”

From the other side of the spectrum comes Jean Luc Mélanchon, a radical-left candidate and former member of the socialist party who launched his own movement, known as “insubordinate France” – or “La France Insoumise.”

John Mullen is a French-British national who has lived in France for more than 20 years. Mullen is a professor at Rouen University and is an active member of the movement.

“Well, he does have some resemblance to the ideas of Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn. And he’s running for this election on a very radical program: full employment, 100 percent organic agriculture, 100 percent renewable energy,” Mullen says. “He’s really saying it’s time to completely change the way the economy works. “

Unlike the fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany, far-right ideology here lies in the history of the French colonial empire – and more specifically in its loss.

Historian Françoise Vergès worries about the chances that Marine Le Pen might win the second round of the election and secure the presidential post.

“Aymé Césaire in 1956 talked about the boomerang effect, the fact that colonialism will come back to you, and colonial history reentered the French imagination through the migration and the migrants as the enemy – are the internal enemy,” explains Vergès. “So we could have a Trump moment in France flattering the worst feeling, flattering the fact that the other is your enemy.”

And polls suggest this could happen. The far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen is currently holding the lead just days ahead of the first round this Sunday.

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Brazilian public workers push back against unelected government's austerity plans

Brazil is in a collective crisis. In 2016, an impeachment -which many likened to a legislative coup – forced leftist president Dilma Rousseff from office. The biggest political corruption scandal in memory continues to unravel, as the country tries to dig itself out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The government of Michel Temer has taken the opportunity to push through austerity reforms, which have frozen public spending for the next 20 years. Now, congress is debating an overhaul for the country’s pension and social security system. If approved, the reform would slash benefits and raise the retirement age for federal employees. But many Brazilians aren’t taking it sitting down. Michael Fox has more from Brazil.

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It’s a chilly April evening in Southern Brazil. Roughly two dozen public employees are gathered in the capital of the state of Santa Catarina, to discuss how the country’s proposed pension and social security reform could affect them.

They’re upbeat, but nervous, if not for themselves, then for their co-workers.

That’s the case for 55-year-old Anderson Loureiro. He’s been paying into Brazil’s Social Security system for 36 years and he’s looking to retire, which he can. But if the proposed reform had been in place when he began as a social worker in 1981, he would still have another decade left on the job and a smaller pension to expect at the end.

This could be the new reality across Brazil, for those who will enter the workforce, and many already in it.

“At lot of people who started working 20 years ago had an idea of what it would be like when they got to a certain age. And in the middle of the road, the government is changing the rules. What do you do?” Loureiro asks. “I have a son who is 25-years-old. Well, he’s never gonna retire.”

The reform will affect millions of public sector workers and labor unions fear it could lead the way to a piecemeal overhaul of state and local pensions across the country.

The reform is part of a larger government push to roll back the progressive gains achieved under the Workers’ Party that was ripped from office last year in what many here regard as a legislative coup. The ensuing assault on Brazilian labor rights isn’t like anything seen in decades.

“Even during the dictatorship, they took away our right to expression and freedom of speech, and the two-party system, but the attacks against the working class and worker’s rights over labor law were not as intense as they are today,” explains Ana Julia Rodrigues, the president of the state chapter of Brazil’s largest labor federation, the CUT, which has been mobilizing to push back. “Yes, they took away many rights, but not like today.”

Last month, more than a million people marched against the reform in cities across the country. The organizing seems to be paying off. Shortly after the March protests, President Michel Temer announced that the reform would only apply to federal employees. And more concessions have been promised in a move to win over the public and reluctant legislators.

Although Brazil’s conservative Congress is largely in sync with president Temer, pension reform has proved to be complicated. The legislation is unpopular and Temer’s approval rating has fallen to only 10 percent. But powerful proponents are pushing for the reform.

Arthur Maia is the congressional representative in charge of the legislation. He says that future workers won’t be able to cover the cost of retirees and that regulations are necessary to save the system from disaster. It’s an argument that may sound familiar in many countries where social security reform has come up. But unlike in the U.S., the retirement age in Brazil is significantly younger, due to a much lower life expectancy.

“People today retire very early, at age 50 or 55, and they receive their retirement for longer, some times, than they even contributed to the system,” Maia points out. “Naturally social security can’t continue like this.”

But according to lawyer Luis Fernando Silva there is plenty of evidence that the current system is more than sustainable. He’s an adviser to the federal public employees union, Sintrafesci, and he believes the reform is actually a move to gut pensions enough so that workers look for other options.

“This whole reform is just to incentivize privatization without calling it privatization. It doesn’t mention the issue of privatization,” Silva says. “Instead it naturally pushes people away. People are going to migrate into the private sector.”

Regardless, labor is readying for the fight. Nine central labor unions are calling for a national strike on April 28, which they hope will send a strong message to Brasilia. If it is successful, it’ll be the largest nation-wide labor protest in Brazil since 1996.

A vote on the reform is expected within the next six weeks.

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Turkey referendum results test country's polarized political system

Turkey’s electoral commission has refused to annul the results of Sunday’s referendum, after opposition groups claimed ballot fraud. President Erdogan claimed a razor thin win by a 51.4 to 48.6 percent; he says voters approved changes to the country’s constitution that would dramatically concentrate power in the office of the President. But opposition groups are crying foul. FSRN’s Nell Abram has more.

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Nell Abram: Turkey’s top electoral body says they will not invalidate the vote, after appeals were filed alleging ballot stuffing; opponents of the measure say they will take up the issue with the European Court of Human Rights. Sunday, voters considered an 18-point constitutional reform measure that if enacted will dramatically alter the parliamentary system in the country located smack dab between the Syrian civil war and the EU refugee crisis. FSRN’s Fariba Nawa joins us from Istanbul. Fariba, first the referendum comes after last July’s failed coup attempt against President Reccip Tayyip Erdogan to which he responded with a widespread crackdown on civil society and academia. What was at stake in the weekend’s referendum and what do we know about the results?

Fariba Nawa: What was at stake, for some people, democracy. Many are saying that our democracy has been destroyed by this referendum because President Erdogan is now more powerful than he’s ever been. That said, it is similar to the U.S. presidential system in many ways, however, the checks and balances that are present in the U.S. presidential system are not in Turkey; the fact that so many people can be rounded up and, just as we speak, about 38 people who were demonstrating this so-called win are now in jail – they have been detained. Houses have been raided, and this is just today. Demonstrations are going on to protest what the no-voters are calling fraudulent, and the response from the government has been another crackdown. So, this is going to be another test for Turkey’s polarized political system.

NA: What powers does this bestow on the president?

FN: The president’s going to have an opportunity to run for another two terms, and he’ll most likely win. But we don’t know that right now, because one thing that was interesting about this vote was that nobody expected it to be so close. The AKP, the ruling party and Erdogan, have won with much bigger margins in the past, and he’s been in power since 2002 – as prime minister and subsequently as president. So now, there will not be a prime minister, that role has been abolished. Parliament will have increased seats, but it will lose leverage on decision making. One decision that parliament can make, that it couldn’t before, is the right to impeach the president, but that’s not going to be an easy task knowing how grand Erdogan is in the eyes of his supporters; some of the people worship him, they see him as almost like a god here.

NA: Today, Turkey’s Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, said that while opposition parties can file official appeals of the election results, public protests are ‘unacceptable.’ You mentioned the people under arrest today, but what’s been going on the last few days and what do you anticipate will come in the days to come?

FN: Well, the opposition parties oppose the initial results of the election, showing videos of possible ballot stuffing and the way the votes are done in Turkey is paper ballots, people have to put it in an envelope and then it has to be stamped to be official; many of these envelopes were not stamped and, in the past, those would have been considered invalid, but now the election commission, which is run by the government, is excusing that and saying those ballots are also valid. We’re talking about over a million ballots here. What prompted after that was protests, and Turkey extended its state of emergency – it’s been in a state of emergency after the July coup – and the state of emergency was supposed to be lifted today, I think, and instead it was the first thing they did, was extend it for the next three months. Which means that demonstrators could be thrown in jail for the next 30 days, they don’t have the right to protest.

NA: Fariba, let’s talk about the refugee situation for a moment. In a bid to secure membership in the EU and visa free travel for Turkish citizens, a little more than a year ago President Erdogan entered an agreement to essentially take back refugees trying to reach Greece from Turkish shores. And just last weekend, the International Organization for Migration said that nearly 9,000 people were rescued at sea in the Mediterranean. How might the outcome of this referendum affect the refugee crisis?

FN: Well, I think the relationship with Europe is pretty sour right now and the refugee deal with Europe still holds, but that remains to be seen. Turkey’s still hosting 3 million refugees, mostly Syrians but also Afghans, Libyans – anybody who’s had a war is here, working or not working, legal or illegal, and Turkey’s basically just looked the other way in many cases. At this point, I don’t think Erdogan’s powers are going to change how refugees are treated, especially because Syrians support Erdogan, and in fact, at least 10,000 of them are in the process of getting Turkish citizenship. So, it is that demographic that he really appreciates and helps him keep getting votes.

NA: Despite, or perhaps because of, the country’s step backward from Democracy, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Erdogan on the referendum results and the two are set to meet next month. What’s been the reaction to Trump’s response and how have other global leaders reacted to the results?

FN: It’s interesting, because the final results, because of this dispute about fraud, have not been announced. They should be announced in the next week. But still, President Trump congratulating President Erdogan before the final results are announced is a little premature some people think, especially the no-voters. And the yes-voters love Trump. It was interesting because Trump and Erdogan have a lot in common in terms of populism and how they approach the people of their country. As far as European leaders, I think that’s where there’s a divide between how Trump sees this and how European leaders, especially Angela Merkel – they are demanding for basically an investigation into this so-called win and the referendum and recount of votes, saying that democracy must be respected if Turkey’s even interested in joining the EU. But it doesn’t look like Turkey’s all that interested in the EU anymore.

NA: Finally, Fariba Nawa, what else is important for us understand about what’s happening in Turkey?

FN: What’s happening now, I think, someone called it that Turkey’s democracy’s on life support and it may just end. It might be a little over-dramatic to say that, so I think we can see in the days to come what will happen. What is Erdogan going to do with this power? Will he use it to unite his people, who are obviously polarized and divided, or will he use it to basically create more of an opposition and jail more people? Right now, we’re talking about 140,000 people who have been either fired, suspended, or jailed since the coup. That’s a lot of people and it’s guilty until proven innocent in Turkey.

Fariba Nawa is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul.

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New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/lakota-immersion-class-works-to-recover-lost-language-while-strengthening-culture/

Lakota immersion class works to recover lost language while strengthening culture

A Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has introduced its first Lakota language immersion program. The small kindergarten class is the start of a revolving door immersion concept that will see students remain in a culturally-rich environment through the 4th grade.

Jim Kent visited the Red Cloud Indian School to talk with the Lakota language teacher and her young students about the importance of retaining a language in order to preserve a culture.

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The Red Cloud Indian School is nestled within the rolling hills of Western South Dakota and lies just a few miles north of the village of Pine Ridge.

Founded in 1888 as the Holy Rosary Mission, its bucolic setting belies a history that saw Lakota children spend half their day taking classes while spending the other half performing domestic duties, such as kitchen work and farming, to keep the mission operating.

While Catholicism flourished in the early part of the 20th century, many Lakota families chose to send their children to Holy Rosary instead of the federal government’s boarding schools.

But no matter which institutions they were a part of, the process of assimilating Native children into the dominant non-Native society resulted in a loss of their language.

Savannah Greseth is one of the teachers at the Red Cloud Indian School’s Lakota Kindergarten Immersion Class. She says although her students have attended a daycare immersion program starting as young as 18 months-old, most come from an environment where Lakota isn’t spoken.

“When they come over to the daycare, most of them do not come from Lakota speaking families. So the children that are here now, a lot of the parents are learning alongside the children with classes that our program offers,” Greseth says. “We do have one little boy, his grandparents are fluent speakers, but…”

But that little boy is the exception. And though the Lakota Immersion class only has five students, the ratio for non-speaking tribal members is much higher than reflected by these numbers. In a population of some 40,000 on the Pine Ridge Reservation, it’s estimated that there are only about 6,000 fluent Lakota speakers.

As a result, this immersion kindergarten class, like the day care school the students have already attended, concentrates on speaking all-Lakota all-the-time.

The results are most readily seen when children from the immersion class associate with their non-Lakota speaking counterparts at Red Cloud, says Greseth: “So, it’s really interesting being here because we do a lot of the same activities with them. So we’ll go to gym with them. We’ll go to arts, library, different things. And so we’ll be with that other classroom. But as teachers we don’t, we don’t break our Lakota with our kids. And it’s interesting because the other children, they really intently listen, they’re like ‘well, I know what that means too’ and they get excited.”

And though Greseth makes a point to use words from the children’s culture and even their home life when instructing them in subjects like basic math, changing times have brought challenges to her job.

“Like robots. We had a book about robots – ‘máza wičháša,’” Greseth recalls. “And, so, the kids get really excited because they’re familiar with the subject, but it’s also interesting because the fluent speakers will say, ‘Well, what’s a good way of describing this.’”

That’s when the Lakota linguistics expert will meet with the natural Native speaker to come up with a new word for a centuries old language.

Of course, teaching Lakota isn’t just about a traditional language keeping pace with the modern world. It’s about the Lakota culture’s survival into the new millennium since the culture and the language are inexorably linked. Red Cloud executive vice-president Robert Brave Heart, Sr. explains.

“You can’t teach the language without teaching the culture. And you can’t teach the culture without teaching the language,” Brave Heart points out. “And our elders tell us when you lose your language, you lose your culture. So they go hand-in-hand. And, so, we try to do that. You just can’t teach the language in a vacuum. Just as a language itself.”

To that end, the 5- and 6-year-old students in the Red Cloud immersion kindergarten class are taught the traditional way to introduce themselves in Lakota.

“Okay, now you’re down. Now, what’d you say?” FSRN asks one student.

“My name is. And my mom and my dad, and my sister and my brother,” the student answers.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the immersion school’s effects was the unwillingness or inability for the young students to easily shift back to speaking in English when I asked them to translate what they’d said in Lakota.

But that’s a good problem to have, observes Robert Brave Heart Sr., considering the history of Native American children in boarding schools being punished for speaking their traditional languages.

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New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/04/mugabe-calls-for-unity-as-zimbabwe-marks-37-years-of-independence/

Mugabe calls for unity as Zimbabwe marks 37 years of independence

Tuesday marks 37 years of independence for the south African nation of Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe addressed thousands of Zimbabweans amid continued economic and social depression in the country, but touched neither on the challenges facing the nation nor any plans to restore the country’s once blooming economy. FSRN’s Garikai Chaunza’s reports from today’s independence commemoration held at the national stadium in the nation’s capital of Harare.

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President Robert Mugabe is the only president Zimbabwe has ever had since the southern African country attained independence in 1980.

Fourteen and a half million Zimbabweans were expecting to hear what plans the veteran leader has to reverse the years-long economic decline in the country which has resulted in cash shortages and skyrocketing unemployment.

“Let me now ask you, that what we have done in the past to bring about unity is not enough we need to continue as true patriots, true sons and daughters of the soil, to continue that unity to ensure that we all belong to Zimbabwe regardless of our affinities, whether these are religious, tribal, political or any other,” Mugabe says. “We are all Zimbabweans and we should respect each other.”

The president’s message of a hoped-for unity was completely absent of the realities faced by the clear majority in the country. For two years, the cash crunch has forced those few who still have jobs to sleep in bank queues hoping to access their meager earnings.

Mugabe also failed to acknowledge a healthcare crisis in which hospitals are running out of essential drugs, leading to premature deaths.

Dr. Pedzisai Ruhanya, Director of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, says the 93-year-old Mugabe deliberately skirted national issues because of his own ill health.

“Precisely not because those issues are not there but at the moment Mugabe is concentrating on his own life, his own personal health,” Ruhanya explains. “That is the immediate question that surrounds Mugabe and that is what Mugabe attends to.”

The next elections in Zimbabwe are set for 2018, and the nonagenarian Mugabe has already been endorsed by his party to run for the top post in the land once again. But his Zanu PF party is grappling with vicious factional infighting involving his wife Grace and the vice president – Emmerson Mnangagwa – battling to succeed him.