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      Press Freedom in the Philippines: Death by a Thousand Cuts

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      In less than two years, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the independent news site Rappler, Maria Ressa, has been issued 10 arrest warrants. The latest accusations against her involve tax evasion and failure to file accurate tax returns, which she testified against on March 4, 2021, before the Court of Tax Appeals. In addition, Ressa faces numerous other charges, including illegal foreign ownership of Rappler Holdings Corporation — the Philippine Constitution restricts foreign ownership of mass media in the country, subject to congressional regulation. The charges amount to 100 years of prison time if she is found guilty. This latest flurry of persecution is a continuum of the country’s troubling history of suppressing press freedom.

      The most high-profile case against Ressa, who is Filipino-American, concluded last year when she was found guilty of cyber libel. After an eight-month trial, Ressa, alongside Rappler journalist Reynaldo Santos Jr., was handed the verdict by the Manila Regional Trial Court on June 15. Ressa denied the charges, and both were released on bail pending appeal. However, they face up to six years in prison unless all appeals are rejected. The case against Ressa and Santos involves the latter’s article published in 2012 by Rappler, which made allegations of businessman Wilfredo Keng’s ties to then-Philippine Chief Justice Renato Corona. Santos’ article also alleged Keng’s involvement in illicit activities that include drug and human trafficking.

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      Based on information published locally by the Philippine Star in 2002 and an intelligence report by the National Security Council, Santos’s piece was published approximately four months before the Cybercrime Prevention Law came into effect in 2012. Its republication in 2014 due to a correction of a typo allowed for the court to give its guilty verdict to Ressa and Santos Jr. retroactively. The case has garnered attention and criticism from local and international media communities. Ressa herself claims the verdict and the numerous charges against her and Rappler are politically motivated. In her statement to the BBC, Ressa lamented, “I think what you’re seeing is death by a thousand cuts — not just of press freedom but of democracy.”

      A Dangerous Place

      Since his election in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has drawn criticism both nationally and abroad. According to The Guardian, tens of thousands of deaths in the Philippines are estimated to be the result of extrajudicial killings prompted by the president’s anti-drug crackdown. Rappler has been at the forefront of extensive coverage and criticism of the campaign. The correlation between Rappler’s reporting and the number of charges against Ressa has fueled the narrative of intimidation tactics by the Philippine government against the free press.   

      The Philippines has a long history of suppressing various forms of free speech and political activism. The current wave of persecution carries echoes of the martial law years during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s 1980s, when journalists and activists were arrested and interrogated by the military and a media lockdown was implemented as newspapers and radio stations were ordered shut.

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      In more recent years, hundreds of farmers, trade union leaders, activists and environmentalists have been targeted by the Philippine government. According to a report by the UN Human Rights Office, at least 248 activists have been killed in the Philippines between 2015 and 2019. While Maria Ressa’s high-profile case has regenerated national and global outrage, it is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how treacherous an environment not only the media, but human and democratic rights defenders have to navigate in the country.

      The Philippines ranks 136 out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index. After the 2009 massacre of 32 journalists in Maguindanao province ordered by a local warlord, RSF has regularly deemed the country as one of the most dangerous places in Asia for journalists. Adding insight to Maria Ressa’s criminal libel case, the organization noted that “Private militias, often hired by local politicians, silence journalists with complete impunity.” Freedom of the press is guaranteed under the country’s constitution, yet in 2018, the Philippine Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility tallied 85 attacks on the media by the Duterte administration, including death threats, killings and attempted murder.

      President Duterte’s public remarks against the media also contribute to the grim state of press freedom in the country. In 2016, the president stated: “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong.” In 2018, responding to a Rappler reporter, Duterte was captured saying, “you have been throwing trash… If you are trying to throw garbage at us, then the least that we can do is explain how about you? Are you also clean?”

      The Cybercrime Prevention Law, which was used to convict Ressa, has itself been criticized by the public as having the potential to further threaten freedom of speech and expression. Signed into law by then-President Benigno Aquino III on September 12, 2012, the legislation was primarily established to address crimes such as hacking, identity theft, child pornography and cybersex. Its additional provisions caused worry amongst the public for expanding its legal parameters to include any libelous speech or statements made by citizens on their private social media accounts. Senator Tito Sotto, who at the time was being attacked on social media for alleged plagiarism, is noted for suggesting the inclusion of the libel provision in the law. According to GMA News Online, “There were fears that even retweeting an offensive comment could land one in jail.”

      Since the implementation, the law has been cited to charge journalists other than Ressa for cyber libel, including Ramon Tulfo and RJ Nieto. Prior to Ressa’s verdict, Councilor Archie Yongco, from the province of Zamboanga del Sur, was found guilty of cyber libel in March 2020 based on a scathing Facebook post against a rival politician. Although he deleted his post just minutes after its publication, screenshots of his comments were used as evidence in the case. Yongco faces up to eight years of imprisonment and is the first individual to be given a guilty verdict under the Cybercrime Prevention Law. 

      A Series of Threats

      The guilty verdict against Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos Jr. was compounded by a series of legislative threats against the media in 2020. On July 10, the House Committee on Legislative Franchises voted against renewing the franchise license for the broadcasting network ABS-CBN. Ressa, commenting on the closure of the broadcaster, stated: “what happened to ABS-CBN can happen to all of us. Journalists, we have to hold power to account.… We need to continue to demand accountability.” 

      Shortly after the closure of ABS-CBN, there were public concerns over the introduction of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 that came into effect on July 18. The act allows the state to arrest and imprison suspects without a warrant. The alarm among citizens came from the act’s expanded definition of terrorism that broadly includes “engaging in acts intended to endanger a person’s life” and causing damage to public property. Similar to the provisions of the Cybercrime Prevention Law, the new legislation poses threats to users on social media who express political sentiments or dissent. In this case, however, fears are not related to being accused of libel but of so-called red-tagging — the practice of targeting or blacklisting suspected members of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army, both of which have been declared as terrorist organizations by the government.

      The legislation, compounded by the Duterte administration’s worrisome human rights record, incited widespread fears of the decline of freedom of speech and expression. Social media users who criticize the government also voiced concern over the act, especially since the head of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Lieutenant General Gilbert Gapay, expressed interest in including social media in the ambit of the law. Local and international press freedom advocates have filed petitions with the Supreme Court in Manila to reject the legislation, calling it unconstitutional.

      After nearly a year of grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic downturn caused by lockdown measures, the Philippines continues to navigate numerous challenges. Maria Ressa’s and Rappler’s legal battles, as well as the continuous frictions between the Duterte administration and the media, exacerbate fears over the erosion of democratic rights and press freedom during these uncertain times. 

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Violence Against Women in Mexico Rises

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      Home is not a safe space for many women around the world and coronavirus-era quarantines and lockdowns have increased the risk of gender-based violence. In Mexico, statistics reflect this reality and women additionally face the rising risk of becoming targets amid violent drug crime and the militarization of the state security forces.

      According to the Secretariat of Citizen Security (SSPC) last year, 3,752 women were violently killed. Of these were 969 classified as femicides — defined as the violent death of a woman because of her gender — a slight increase on the previous year’s figure. According to data compiled by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico has the second-highest total number of femicides in the region — after Brazil — whilst nearby El Salvador and Honduras have the highest rates per capita. The prevalence of violent crime, a culture of machismo and weak implementation of measures designed to protect women mean Latin America is home to 14 of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world.

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      The first months of the coronavirus pandemic were particularly dangerous for Mexican women, according to Maissa Hubert, the executive sub-director of Equis Justicia Para Las Mujeres, a Mexico City-based NGO. “During the first months of the pandemic, we saw a rise in various forms of gender-based violence,” she says. “In total, 11 women killed each day, compared to 10 per day at the start of 2020.”

      In March 2020, the emergency call centers received 26,000 reports of violence against women, the highest ever in Mexico. The number of women leaving their homes to take shelter in the National Refuge Network quadrupled.

      Outside the home, however, the continued growth of Mexico’s transnational criminal organizations and the militarized response of state security forces have further increased risks to women. While crime dropped in the first months of the pandemic, the security vacuum has increased clashes between 198 active armed groups in the country’s “hyper-fragmented criminal landscape,” according to International Crisis Group.

      Gangs and Militarized State Security

      “Organized crime has aggravated the situation with regards to the murder of women,” says Maria Salguero, a researcher who created the National Femicide Map. “The crime gangs use the dead bodies of women to send messages to their rivals. In states where there is a lot of organized crime, such as Juarez, Chihuahua, Guerrero and Naucalpan, we see high incidences of femicide, disappearances and rape.”

      The situation is exacerbated by the further militarization of state security. The Bertelsmann Transformation Index’s (BTI) country report on Mexico notes that “the army has been called upon to perform internal security tasks and is receiving large amounts of resources in the context of the war against drug trafficking.” It adds that the widening of the military’s mandate to include civilian tasks could have worrisome implications for consensus building in the country. As noted in the BTI report, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador‘s government risks losing public support if it cannot solve the challenges of corruption and violence in the country. It points out that “the fact that the army, which has so far not signified a threat to democracy, is required to undertake ever more tasks may be a threat in the future.” Such a breakdown in trust for institutions and the security forces could have knock-on effects for all violent crime.

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      On May 11, 2020, the Mexican armed forces and National Guard were given new authority to play a far greater role in policing violent crime in the country — giving them free rein to assume many of the police force’s duties — without any effective audit mechanism.

      The effect of this process on gender-based violence is only now coming to be understood. “The attitude of this government and its predecessors has been that a military response to the security situation will protect all of us and women in particular,” says Hubert. “But the reality is that the increased circulation of firearms has had a tremendous impact on women.”  

      Firearms were the weapon used in 60% of the total 1,844 murders committed against women in 2020. From 1998 to 2019, the number of women killed by firearms in Mexico rose by 375%. Over 2.5 million firearms have entered Mexico from the US over the last decade, and firearms accounted for the overwhelming majority of the total of 34,515 murders registered in Mexico in 2020, the highest number since 2015.

      An Overlooked Issue

      The continued emphasis on militarized security is sapping state funds at a time when resources for programs addressing violence against women in Mexico are being cut. In recent years, Mexican public policy has had a mixed record with respect to gender-based violence. It took until December last year for President Lopez Obrador to talk about gender-based violence, having previously avoided using the word femicide or acknowledge that women faced specific security concerns. In May 2020, he said that 90% of domestic violence-related 911 calls were false. His team failed to provide evidence to support this claim when requested to by NGOs.

      Despite this intransigence at the executive level, in recent years, there has been greater recognition of the problem at the federal and ministerial level, according to Hubert, with many long-lasting public policies proposed by the National Institute of Women, founded in 2001. However, many of the preventative and reactive policies introduced to tackle gender-based violence have been subject to cuts in government spending as a result of the pandemic.

      “We analyzed the activity of the courts at the start of the pandemic, and we found gender-based violence was not being prioritized,” says Hubert. “Issues such as divorce and alimony are crucial for a woman looking to free herself from a violent situation, but they weren’t being attended to by the courts.” 

      For Saguero, the priority is to keep recording the names and identities of the victims of Mexico’s “shadow pandemic” of gender-based violence. “Only by making the victims visible can we really make the scale of the problem visible,” she says, “but we have a lot of work to do because the numbers remain high.”

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Magnanimous Gesture of Mohammed bin Salman

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      Donald Trump famously cultivated a personal friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). To critics of the evil prince, Trump claimed that his loyalty was justified by the hundreds of billions of dollars of arms sales their friendship generated. The fact that those weapons served to engage the US actively in yet another Middle Eastern war appeared to trouble no one in Washington. Despite a growing crescendo of condemnation from the public, US support of a catastrophic military campaign in the name of helping an ally foment a humanitarian disaster in Yemen has continued to this day. The new US president, Joe Biden, has promised to modify that commitment, but not necessarily to cancel it.

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      MBS has made other headlines since becoming the effective head of state in the kingdom. Successfully drawing the US into a genocidal war of his own design is not his only claim to fame. Mohammed bin Salman got major headlines with the Jamal Khashoggi affair in 2018. Trump himself seemed only momentarily embarrassed by the Saudi regime’s gruesome killing of the journalist in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate. In the end, Trump proved wise to count on the passage of time to efface the crime from the public’s and the media’s memory. 

      But the unexpected outcome of the 2020 presidential election in the US meant bad luck for MBS. The Biden administration has promised to release the findings of the CIA’s assessment that pointed unambiguously to the crown prince’s personal responsibility in ordering the crime. Although announced in the days following his inauguration three weeks ago, we are still waiting. The media may soon stop wondering why, like so many other things on Biden’s promised agenda, it is still not forthcoming and focus on more pressing issues. 

      Back in 2018, the uproar in the immediate aftermath of the gruesome killing of a journalist working for The Washington Post drew a few bad reviews from Congress and even provoked the indignation of President Trump’s most loyal supporter in the Senate, Lindsey Graham. Two years have now passed since Graham’s insistence that MBS be “dealt with” and that there would be “hell to pay.” Senator Graham seems to have decided that that reckoning can now wait till the Last Judgment.

      It is too early to have a clear idea of how the Biden administration intends to deal with Saudi Arabia. MBS has reason to worry now that his BFF Trump has checked out of the White House. Especially after Biden announced, as The New York Times reported, “that he was ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, including some arms sales.” The fact that this dramatic announcement concerns “some” arms sales rather than, say, simply “arms sales” may mean Biden is hedging his bets. Or simply it is intended to reassure those who are counting on the windfall of continuing arms sales. But its ambiguity should worry anyone who was expecting a reversal of traditional US obsequiousness to the Saudis, which has been the pattern since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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      With the surprising announcement of the release of activist Loujain al-Hathloul after three years of imprisonment, MBS seems to be playing a similar game. It consists of announcing what appears to be a sudden change of policy, in this case, the loosening of his dictatorial grip on Saudi society. Most commentators see his gesture as an attempt to seduce President Biden, who MBS fears may be under pressure to keep his promises concerning both Yemen and the Khashoggi assassination. 

      Hathloul is a young Saudi female who has been incarcerated and tortured for the crime of publicly denouncing Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving, which MBS subsequently lifted. Biden has applauded the crown prince’s clemency. The Guardian quotes Lina al-Hathloul, the sister of Loujain, who isn’t quite so pleased: “What we want now is real justice. That Loujain is completely, unconditionally free.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Real justice:

      An unattainable ideal in which most governments expect people to believe, while at the same time manipulating events and institutions in such a way that the workings of the judicial system conform to the reigning laws of hyperreal justice

      Contextual Note

      Nobody expects a dictatorship to be a paragon of justice. But even the most Machiavellian dictatorship needs to make its people believe it is capable of being just. The author of “The Prince” made that very point when he famously wrote in chapter 18 that “it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.” MBS is, of course, beyond Machiavellian, since, unlike Italian princes five centuries ago, who had to earn their position of power through acts of valor, he was handed power on a gold-plated platter. He never needed to cultivate Machiavelli’s art of appearances.

      Despite the popular belief that democracies provide a recourse against injustice and offer — to quote the American pledge of allegiance — “liberty and justice for all,” the principle that determines how justice is meted out (or withheld) is eerily similar in democracies and totalitarian regimes, differing only in degree. Injustice will exist in any regime to the extent that power believes it can escape criticism for its injustice.

      Any good lawyer will tell you that the law and justice should never be confused. Every nation has laws that permit — and may even encourage and reward — unjust acts. Their effective enforcement protects some forms of injustice and punishes acts that challenge the injustice. That protection and punishment is brazenly given the name of justice because it is managed and enforced by the nation’s judicial system. To those who criticize such a system, Machiavelli would object that “real justice” in the real world can only be an illusion.

      The case of Hathloul nevertheless tells a more extreme story. Like so many things in Saudi Arabia, it represents a total travesty of justice. Loujain was branded a terrorist and imprisoned for speaking her mind on an issue — allowing women to drive a car — that MBS himself turned into law shortly after she was thrown in prison. The point was that every good citizen must trust the rulers of the kingdom to determine what is just. Doubting their impeccable judgment is treasonous.

      But the real travesty of this case concerns the nature of the punishment. The Saudi government denies the young woman’s claim of being tortured while in prison. Following her release, she has been subjected to a five-year travel ban and three years of probation. To survive, she must remain silent. If she so much as recounts the torture she claims to have undergone, she will be undoubtedly be punished, probably by further imprisonment and torture.

      Historical Note

      Dictatorships are not alone in producing unjust laws. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy in America” (chapter XV) that democracies are equally capable of passing and enforcing unjust laws: “When a man or party suffers an injustice in the United States, to whom can he turn?” Responding to his own question, the French aristocrat carefully listed the various possibilities of recourse and discounted each of them. So long as the majority adopts a position and passes laws, democracy is capable of enthroning certain forms of injustice as the law of the land.

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      Loujain al-Hathloul’s sister rightly demanded “real” justice as opposed to the purely legal justice of enforcing the written laws. But the real justice she cites is an abstraction that political regimes, in their pragmatism, have no need to recognize or comply with. 

      Saudi Arabia has the luxury of never having to speculate on the intellectual distinction between its established justice system and a philosopher’s ideal of justice. Democracies encourage intellectual activity, even when they avoid applying its lessons. Authoritarian regimes feel comfortable promoting justice as identical to the autocrat’s will. Mohammed bin Salman deemed that eliminating the discordant voice of Jamal Khashoggi was a form of justice. After all, it costs nothing to remain silent, so why should Khashoggi or Hathloul choose to make waves at their own peril?

      The democracy known as the United States of America has recently demonstrated similar reasoning with the cases of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Like beauty, justice will always be in the eye of the beholder. But it will be concretely applied only by those beholders who have a firm grip on the reins of power.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Is China the New Champion of Globalization?

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      On January 25, addressing a virtual World Economic Forum, China’s President Xi Jinping not only strongly advocated for a multilateral approach to the COVID-19 pandemic but insisted on the virtues and systemic benefits of free trade and globalization. Jeopardizing those elements may introduce conflict into the international system, Xi warned, clearly referring to, although not mentioning, the United States. This is not the first time Xi has credited himself as the “champion of globalization,” in particular when attending meetings in Davos. In 2017, in the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, with the long shadow of barriers to trade and isolationist policies just starting to appear on the horizon, China’s president made important remarks encouraging free trade and opening up the markets.

      However, with Trump out and Joe Biden now in the Oval Office, there seems little to suggest any substantial change in US policy, at least in the foreseeable future. If the US isn’t particularly eager to work with China toward free trade and multilateral cooperation, the European Union, and Germany in particular, quickly opted for a completely different approach, signing a key investment deal with Beijing at the end of last year. The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) will grant a greater level of market access for investors than ever before, including new important market openings.

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      Washington did not miss the opportunity to express its concerns about a deal that suddenly and unexpectedly sidelined the United States at a moment when, after four years of relative anarchy and opportunism, restarting transatlantic relations should be a priority. Writing in the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman recently pointed out how little sense it makes to rely on a US security guarantee in Europe while undermining its security policy in the Pacific, considering how much Europe has benefitted from the fact that for the past 70 years, the world’s most powerful nation has been a liberal democracy. Germany, in fact, was able over the last decades to exercise a sui generis role of Zivilmacht (civilian power) by framing its national interest in geoeconomic terms, encouraging German exports worldwide while outsourcing its defense to the reassuring presence of US troops.

      To better understand Xi’s quasi-imperial stance at the World Economic Forum, it has to be placed not only against the backdrop of the recent investment deals with the European Union or with the 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific region, but on the big news that China is on course to overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2028, five years ahead of earlier predictions, mainly due to the asymmetric impact of COVID-19. While it is clear that China has successfully contained the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak and the Chinese economy is now recovering at a higher speed than other countries, it is also true that a lack of transparency and delays in sharing information with the international community about the virus have contributed to an acceleration of the pandemic at a global level.

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      Nonetheless, in the current debate over shaping more efficient emergency policies, China is still emerging as the model to follow and imitate, despite being unpopular. There is little doubt that in the “social imaginary” of liberal societies, as reports from Europe and the US suggest, authoritarian regimes are seen by many as more efficient and better prepared to deal with crises than democracies. Yet we must not forget that this efficiency comes at the inevitable cost of political and civil rights.

      Xi Jinping is well aware that the Biden administration can finally change course for the US and its allies, forging a united and progressive front after years of populist, nativist and authoritarian politics. Perhaps this element can help understand Xi’s assertiveness at the World Economic Forum better than the recent economic successes. After all, political and civil rights are China’s Achilles’ heel. Criticism of the Communist Party, let alone advocating for basic human rights such as freedom of speech or the rule of law, inexorably leads to repression that falls with equal severity on the rich metropolis of Hong Kong and the poor areas of Xinjiang, sweeping up ordinary citizens and billionaires alike, from Joshua Wong to Jack Ma.

      Can China credibly profess the virtues of globalization to achieve harmony and balance in an international system if it doesn’t adhere to international law? Can Beijing speak of cooperation to solve global problems when it has withheld vital information about the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic? As Xi Jinping continues to steer the Middle Kingdom out of its historical isolation, avoiding challenging the United States for the position of world leader will be difficult, given China’s demographics and economic status. Will these two Weltanschauungen, two comprehensively different conceptions of the world, sooner or later present the international community with a choice?

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Myanmar: What Comes Next for Minority Groups?

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      The military coup in Myanmar has been widely denounced as a lethal blow to a fledgling democracy. But it also increases the likelihood of further atrocities and mass displacement. The world cannot forget that the Myanmar military is the same institution that led the campaign of genocide against the Rohingya people.

      The coup will negatively affect much of the population in Myanmar, rolling back tentative democratic reforms and freedoms and leading to further mass arrests. But ethnic minority groups, which have long been a target of military abuses, have particular reason to be concerned.

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      Even with the veil of a quasi-civilian government in recent years, the military has continued to commit atrocities against the Kachin, Karen, Rakhine and other states inside Myanmar. For the 600,000 Rohingya still living in Myanmar, the threat is even clearer. They survived the military’s genocidal campaign in August 2017. Indeed, the head of the military and now of the country, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has referred to the Rohingya as a long-standing problem and an “unfinished job.”

      The coup will also affect refugees outside of the country. The more than 1 million Rohingya living in Bangladesh now face even greater odds against a safe return to their homeland in Myanmar. In a way, the coup only underscores the reality that conditions for return have been far from safe and sustainable all along.

      Rohingya in Bangladesh have told Refugees International that they are alarmed by the coup and worried about the fate of loved ones still in Myanmar. At least with the quasi-civilian government, there was some hope that international pressure could eventually inspire a change. But as long as the military — the entity responsible for the genocide — remains in charge, the idea of a safe return seems inconceivable.

      International Pressure on Myanmar

      If there is a silver lining, it is that the newly galvanized international outrage about the coup might break the inertia in addressing the military’s abuses. In a report released in January 2021, Refugees International laid out critical policy advice for the Biden administration to address the Rohingya crisis. The report recommendations also provide a playbook for responding to the coup.

      As a first move, the Biden administration must recognize the crimes committed by Myanmar’s military for what they are: crimes against humanity and genocide. Given the ample evidence available, it is perplexing that the United States and many other countries have not yet made this determination. A genocide declaration would not only speak truth to power about what the Myanmar military has done to the Rohingya, but it would also galvanize more urgent global action. It would signal how serious the US and other allies take the threat of the Myanmar military.

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      Second, the Biden administration should use the urgency of the coup and a genocide determination to engage allies and lead a global response marked by diplomatic pressure and coordinated targeted sanctions. The Biden administration has already said it is considering new sanctions and is reaching out to other countries to coordinate. Those sanctions should be placed both on Myanmar’s military leaders and military-owned enterprises, including, but not limited to, the two large conglomerates, the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL). Future lifting of sanctions should be phased and tied not only to a return to the quasi-civilian government elected in 2020, but also progress on creating conditions conducive to the return of Rohingya refugees.

      Third, the US and other allies must push for a multilateral arms embargo. Ideally, this would be done through the action of the UN Security Council. But as long as China and Russia are likely to block such actions, countries like the United States and European Union members that have already ended arms sales to Myanmar should use diplomatic pressure to urge others — including India, Israel and Ukraine — to do the same.

      Fourth, countries must revitalize support for international accountability efforts, including at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court. The Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar at the ICJ has the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Canada and the Netherlands have expressed their intent to intervene in the case. The US and other allies should add their support.

      Finally, the United States and other allies must push for coordinated high-level diplomatic pressure at the UN Security Council, even with Chinese and Russian reluctance to allow stronger measures. As an important first step, the Security Council did issue a statement that expressed concern about the coup and called for the release of detainees; however, it fell short of outright condemnation of the coup and did not commit to any concrete action. Nonetheless, a discussion at this highest level still adds pressure on Myanmar’s military by keeping the possibility of stronger action alive. The fact that there had been no UN Security Council session on the Rohingya for the past two years is ludicrous and only fueled the Myanmar military’s impunity.

      Ethnic minority groups in Myanmar know all too well that the military is capable of — and willing to execute — mass atrocities. The US and all states that stand for democracy, and against mass atrocities, must act now while the eyes of the world are on Myanmar.

      *[Daniel Sullivan is the senior advocate for human rights at Refugees International.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Is There New Hope for Human Rights in Bahrain?

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      Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a Bahraini human rights activist, was arrested on the night of April 9, 2011. During the arrest at his family home in Bahrain, he was brutally assaulted and his jaw broken in four places. On June 22, barely two months after his arrest, he was sentenced to life in prison after a show trial in a military court that violated any principles of judicial fairness.

      He has now spent more than 10 years in Jau Prison, notorious for its ill-treatment of inmates. Khawaja was granted political asylum in Denmark in 1991, later receiving citizenship, but he returned to Bahrain in 1999 during a period of political relaxation and reform. On January 22 this year, more than 100 organizations wrote to the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, calling for her government to “renew and strengthen efforts to ensure his immediate and unconditional release so he can be reunited with his family and receive much needed medical treatment and torture rehabilitation in Denmark.”

      Tunisia: The Pending Goals of the Revolution

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      The letter provides graphic details of the treatment meted out to Khawaja from the moment of his arrest. While blindfolded and chained to his hospital bed, he was tortured by security officers immediately after major surgery to his broken jaw, which “forced the doctor to ask the security officers to stop as it would undo the surgical work.”

      Throughout his imprisonment, he has conducted hunger strikes to protest prison conditions, the curtailment of his family’s visiting rights and phone calls, and the removal from his cell of all his reading material. He has declined medical treatment when he can in protest at being strip-searched, blindfolded, and hand and leg cuffed before being seen by medical staff. 

      The letter to Frederiksen notes that in a recent call, Khawaja stated that “prison authorities are arbitrarily denying him proper medical treatment and refusing to refer him to specialists for surgeries he requires.” The letter adds: “[D]enying a prisoner adequate medical care violates the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules.”

      A Reset in Bahrain?

      With US President Joe Biden now in the White House — and multiple signals emanating from his new administration that human rights, utterly disregarded by his disgraced predecessor, are now on the front foot — the Bahraini government may want to have a reset on its own awful human rights record and its treatment of political prisoners.

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      Among those pressing for the reset is the New Jersey Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski. He was unceremoniously ordered out of Bahrain in 2014 when he was the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under the Obama administration. Malinowski had had the temerity to meet with the head of the opposition Al Wefaq political society, Sheikh Ali Salman, a move the Bahraini regime deemed was “counter to conventional diplomatic norms.”

      Sheikh Salman was subsequently arrested and, in 2018, sentenced to life in prison on charges related to the Gulf feud with Qatar that were transparently bogus. Al Wefaq was outlawed in 2017.

      Malinowski may well find a bipartisan ally in Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio. The senator is on record calling for an end to repression in Bahrain. As he argued in a letter to then-President Donald Trump in September 2019 (co-signed by the Democratic senators Chris Murphy and Ron Widen): “Bahrain is a strategic ally in an important region and, critically, Bahrain hosts the United States Fifth Fleet. It is precisely for these reasons that we are so concerned by the government of Bahrain’s concerted efforts to silence peaceful opposition and quash free expression.”

      Rubio specifically mentioned Khawaja by name, noting that he and others have been jailed for peaceful protest: “These prisoners are merely representative of the thousands of others who remain locked away for exercising their right to free expression.”

      As Biden settles into office, Middle East dictators are nervous. The US president has sent a clear message that the pass Donald Trump gave them to crush dissent with impunity is well and truly canceled. As they strategize on how best to deal with the new norm, sending positive messages will not go amiss.

      One such message would be to set Abdulhadi al-Khawaja free. He and the many other political prisoners are being held in Jau simply for calling for the right to speak freely and openly without fear of consequence.

      *[This article was originally published by Gulf House.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Tunisia: The Pending Goals of the Revolution

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      A decade after the Arab Spring, Tunisians have made significant progress in the field of democratization with respect to the constitution and the guarantee of public and private freedoms. However, economic performance remains modest, and many of the demands of the Tunisian Revolution are still pending.

      Tunisia commemorated the 10th anniversary of the revolution with violent youth protests alongside peaceful demonstrations in major cities like Tunis, Sousse and Nabeul, and inland cities of Siliana, Kasserine and Kairouan. The protesters demanded employment and comprehensive development. They expressed their discontent with high prices, monopolies and the deterioration of the purchasing power of citizens. There was also consternation about the increasing number of COVID-19 victims and the mishandling of the pandemic.

      What Is the Key to Tunisia Successfully Beating COVID-19?

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      The reality is that the demands for employment are stagnating, ending the isolation of marginalized areas is still a distant dream, and achieving transitional justice is at a stalemate. While the population of Tunisia suffers, many members of the former regime who opposed the revolutionary struggle are still there at the forefront of the media, clinging to impunity.

      The Youth Unemployment Problem

      Tunisia has not yet succeeded in developing effective solutions to the unemployment problem that first sparked protests in December 2010. According to the National Institute of Statistics, the unemployment rate in the country during the third quarter of 2020 was 16.2% of the total active population, translating to approximately 6,766,000 people. This figure includes no fewer than 225,000 university graduates, with the rate rising to between 30% and 40% in several inland governorates.

      The youth population in Tunisia is the most vulnerable to joblessness. The latest field survey on employment by the National Institute of Statistics showed that around 70% of all those unemployed are below 30 years of age. Unemployment is effectively marginalizing youth in Tunisia and is among the main reasons behind both the 2010 revolution and the current protests. The continuing absence of employment opportunities for young people, the spread of favoritism among government and business elites, the rampant administrative and financial corruption and nepotism resulted in a perception of injustice that fueled discontent among many of those who have been unemployed for a long time.

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      While some impacted by the unemployment crisis attend sit-ins or demonstrate, others risk death on the high seas in search of work that guarantees dignity. In 2020, nearly 10,000 Tunisians arrived in Europe illegally. According to Romdhane Ben Amor, spokesman for the Tunisian Economic and Social Rights Forum, between 150 and 200 families have left Tunisia to Europe clandestinely over the last year, evading the Tunisian coast guard.

      A report by the forum found that “most of the illegal immigrants, aged between 18 and 30, share a fundamental characteristic as they lived the ‘school failure experience’ through early drop-out. They refer such drop-out to several reasons ranging from economic difficulties, and reluctance to continue to study, because the school, in their view, is no longer useful in light of the high unemployment of high-ranking people.” In addition, many who give up hope either take the path of organized crime or get involved with international terrorist networks.

      There is an urgent need to develop inclusive strategies aimed at empowering youth in the labor market. This is possible through the development of educational programs, vocational services and training courses to enhance the social investment role of the state by creating new productive projects directed at the domestic or foreign consumer market that would create jobs for the young.

      Marginalized Regions Remain Isolated

      A decade after the revolution, the inland and remote governorates have not yet gotten their share of comprehensive development. Rather, they are still suffering from marginalization, the ravages of high rates of illiteracy, poverty, unemployment and school dropouts. They lack basic facilities such as infrastructure, health services and educational institutions even though the new constitution stipulates the necessity of implementing a policy of positive discrimination concerning these underprivileged areas. It is not known where the financial allocations and in-kind assistance that the successive governments, the European Union and the Gulf states have allocated to those governorates have gone.

      It is worth noting that, according to the European Commission, “Since 2011, EU assistance to Tunisia has amounted to almost €3 billion (over €2 billion in grants and €800 million in macro-financial assistance).” With an average of €300 million ($360 million) per year between 2017 and 2020, these funds go toward the “Promoting good governance and the rule of law,” “stimulating a sustainable economic growth generating employment” and “Reinforcing social cohesion between generations and regions.” It is likely that these marginalized areas suffer locally from financial corruption and administrative misbehavior and are dominated by bureaucratic lobbies. Such underprivileged areas are often exploited politically by party and trade union elements to serve as a reservoir of popular protest against government policies.

      Likewise, ruling parties only pay attention to these marginalized regions during election campaigns. This has made the residents suffer the brunt of inequality and injustice. It leaves them with a difficult choice: to continue staying in neglected regions despite dire conditions or to leave their lands for major cities or to board migration boats to Europe. There is a definite need to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants of these regions, to provide them with resources for a decent living, to encourage greater investment in these regions and to revive the spirit of citizenship that will help regain confidence in the state.

      No Truth or Dignity

      In another context, the demand for justice for the victims of tyranny that the revolutionaries called for back in 2010 has not yet been fulfilled in an atmosphere where the transitional justice process is still stumbling. This includes the many obstacles that the Truth and Dignity Commission, which carries the mandate of investigating human rights abuses by the state, has faced — a lack of cooperation from state agencies and executive institutions being one of them. Observers have noticed that the perpetrators of violations did not attend the hearings and did not respond to lawsuits by judicial departments.

      This failure reinforces the culture of impunity and intensifies the suffering of the victims of the dictatorial regimes of President Habib Bourguiba (1956-1987) and his successor, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1987-2011). The state must make use of its authority to bring to justice the perpetrators, apologize to the victims and authorize reparations for their material and mental suffering so that they can resume their lives as part of the Second Republic.

      It is true that the revolution has, to some extent, removed the fear of the government and led to a decline in repression and the power of the president, the censors and the police. Critics were also released, the culture of protest spread, politics became a public affair and governance an ordinary exercise in which competing parties maintained an atmosphere of peace and democracy, with no single party having a monopoly.

      However, it is evident that some of the revolution’s goals have not been implemented. What is required is to make those goals not just promises and slogans, but a reality. The need of the hour for Tunisia is to further reform the judicial and government systems, ensure decentralization and comprehensive development to win citizens’ trust in the state, the revolution and the project of democratization.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Addressing the Fragile Limits of Female Autonomy

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      On October 22, 2020, the United States co-sponsored a Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family. However, despite its name, this declaration states that “in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning.” While it doesn’t legally impact access to abortion in the United States, it bars …
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