global protests and uprisings

Tag Archive for: global protests and uprisings

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

#ArabSpring Activists on How 140 Characters Help Unite

Syrian protests with a coffin being carried through the crowd

Photo Credit: Reuters

Current discourse on the Arab Spring excludes social media as the sole perpetuator of the movement—but scholars and activists alike, agree that technology has helped to unify and project, citizen’s feeling of dissent.

My previous post about last Wednesday’s Future Tense event explored some speaker’s discussion on the West’s connection with new technologies, as either aiding or embedding the revolution.

Other panelists, however, elicited a more homegrown, internal perception on how the uprisings evolved.

Merlyna Lim, Professor of at the Consortium of Science, Policy and Outcomes and the School of Social Transformation – Justice and Social Inquiry Program at Arizona State University, discussed origins of anti-Mubarak protests in Egypt.

She claimed it was rooted before the Tahir moment occurred, stemming from three stages of organization—networks, narratives and claim making—to mobilize collective action.

The first protest organized exclusively online, without physical headquarters, was arranged by Kefaya in 2004. Using a website called Misr Digital, Lim recalls, the organizers increased the reach of the oppositions movement through the websites by engaging weak ties.

After the death of Khaled Said on June 6, 2010, the participatory youth culture, added emotions onto their organizational network’s narrative—and Egyptians feared being killed.

Khaled Said’s passing changed Egyptian’s view on human rights violations, the panelist stated. While it was once an abstract narrative, they are now saw concrete infringements by the regime—such as corruption, torture, and eventual death.

Egyptians shared these contentions, spreading them by networks. “The Tahir moment was facilitated by cabs, signs, cell phones, word of mouth, SMS, and social media provided the organizing platform,” Lim alluded.

Ahmed Al Omran & Oula Alrifai Photo Credit: New America Foundation

Another panel convened by Oula Alrifai and Ahmed al-Omran discussed their firsthand perspectives on the violence in Syria, and the political and social issues of Saudi Arabia.

Alrifai, a Syrian youth activist discussed the origins of the Syrian protests. With no independent media and post-imprisonment of an Al Jazeera correspondent, she stated, social media and video were the only ways to get information about the revolutions to the outside work.

However, the connections to do so were not always available.

For activists, using cell phones with cameras was the easiest way to take pictures and record videos, but since they had no networks in the ground someimtes they had to cross the borders. Some activists, “were crossing the borders to go to Jordan to download the videos in Internet cafés and (would) come back and fight again or be on the street and protest, risking their lives,” Alrifai said.

Ahmed al-Omran, a blogger for his site saudijeans.org, discussed the excitement many have felt across the Gulf of the revolutions.

Though the demand for freedom and justice in his home country of Saudi Arabia is similar, the dynamic is different—elections do not exist, and Saudis are largely politically unaware because citizens are not allowed to, “practice politics”.

Ahmed only became aware of politics when he started blogging in 2004, as he was not raised discussing the government, but social media gave him an outlet to learn about them. “I think that the Internet and social media has given this generation a space where they can express themselves and engage with one another and talk about the issues that are typically hard to talk about in the public sphere,” he said.

Ahmed also stated that an uprising similar to Egypt will be difficult in Saudi Arabia because of the monarchy, but predicts it will occur because time is on the people’s side. “Money is a short term resolution, these issues need a fundamental solution,” Ahmed poignantly observed, “At some point the money will run out, the oil revenues will not be there forever”.

Though opinions vary on how imperative social media was to aiding the Arab Spring uprisings, almost all scholars and activists agree—it is an organizational tool that can bring like-minded individuals to collaborate for change.

July 20, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Asia, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Where we work

#Berish2.0: The Ire of Malaysian Protests

Photo Credit: Saeed Khan/AFP

Social media may have helped fuel the 50,000 demonstrators who gathered in Kuala Lumpur this past Saturday demanding electoral reforms—despite the Malaysian government responding roughly and deeming the peaceful protests illegal.

Police fired tear gas and water cannons at the dissidents demanding change from a electoral system that they claim has unjustly favored the ruling party since the country’s independence from Britain in 1957.

The recent rally puts pressure on Prime Minister Najib Razak in the racially stimulated Southeast Asian nation, as Malaysia’s next general election is planned for 2013.

Peaceful protesters in Malaysia’s capital were met with police violence, and 1,667 arrests over the span of the weekend, according to reports. In lieu of the aggressive response, Amnesty International urged the UK government yesterday to press Najib to honor the freedom of assembly

“As a current member of the UN Human Rights Council, the Malaysian government should be setting an example to other nations and promoting human rights. Instead they appear to be suppressing them, in the worst campaign of repression we’ve seen in the country for years”, Donna Guest, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Asia-Pacific. Amnesty International, states.

Bersih (The Coalition for Fair and Clean Elections) is the oppositional NGO that organized the electoral reform movement called Bersih 2.0.

Bershish 2.0 Poster

The original Berish protests occurred on November 23, 2006 in the Malaysian Parliament, such attendees included political party leaders, civil society groups and NGOs, including People’s Justice Party (PKR) president, Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail

The electoral reform demands of Berish 2.0, also known as 709, can be summarized in the eight following points:

Clean the electoral roll
Reform postal ballot
Use of indelible ink
Minimum 21 days campaign period
Free and fair access to media
Strengthen public institutions
Stop corruption
Stop dirty politics

Social media’s role in the Malaysian movement was to coordinate groups and record demonstrations.

As of today, the Berish 2.0 Facebook page had over 169,000 fans calling for Najib’s resignation, and the official Twitter account had close to 18,000 fans.

Though there are 10 million Facebook users in Malaysia, the preferred social media platform, protesters shared information over Twitter on how to circumvent sealed off roads and closed train stations to get to the protests.

@ask_ivan's Google map of the Malaysian government's roadblocks

While Facebook and Twitter were used for mobilization purposes, videos circulated on Youtube broadcast the movement to the world.

Over the span of the weekend 2,000 Youtube videos were uploaded with 2,774,812 total views based on the single keyword “Bersih 2.0″ on YouTube

As the case with the Arab Spring protests, the truth behind the movement is told by first hand perspectives of civil society, not the political parties. Social media is not a panacea current uprisings, but rather serve as a medium for organization and propagate that truth.

July 12, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Syria Protests: Making Amends Through the Lens

Photo Credit: © Sham News Network

Muhammad, 27, fled his home in the port city of Latakia last March, and deserted his job as cameraman for the Syrian state television network.

He now opts to use his acquired skills for media activism.

Similarly, Osama, 22, is a soldier for the state army who refuses to shoot at his fellow Syrians in protests.

He now arms himself with a brand-new-video-equipped smartphone, instead of a gun.

These two cases exemplify a recent transformation from Syria’s previous state media and soldiers, to activists who are “bearing witness,” to the atrocities being committed by the Syrian government.

Caption: Supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad shout slogans in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, March 27, 2011. REUTERS/George Ourfalian

"Supporters" of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad shout slogans in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, March 27, 2011. Photo Credit: Reuters/George Ourfalian

The Syrian government uses their state television network as a medium to propagate images of citizens attacking soldiers during protests, when the opposite is reality; and airs images of peaceful demonstrators at pro-Assad rallies, instead of showcasing dissidents.

Civil society wants to achieve social change by recording what their eyes and ears see and hear.

Muhammad is rectifying his work on the state channel, arguing that the station “threatens people’s lives,” by refusing to film the violence against protesters, or blaming them for soldiers deaths.

He is making amends through his work exposing the true stories of Syria’s pro-democracy uprising, with a great combination of technical skill and secrecy.

The true stories of Syria’s revolution are unreported, he says, because the intelligence community, called the Mukhabarat, control everything projected outwards. “The world does not know what is happening here,” he says, “The Mukhabarat are killing people without any media attention.”

“Syrian media lies, lies, lies,” Muhammad states. “I had to leave my job to protect the Syrian people, here in the valley and everywhere else.”

Muhammad is part of a group of cyberactivists who clamor to obtain footage of military forces as they roll into towns. There are also Syrians within the military itself engaging in the cyberactivist movement, despite personal costs.

Military service is compulsory in Syria, unless they are the only male child or pay a heavy wage, and lasts almost two years. In 2010, army regulars were estimated at 220,000 troops, with an additional 300,000 in reserve.

22-year-old Osama is a Syrian soldier who obtains footage while serving since he bought a brand-new video-equipped smartphone in the Syrian tech capital of Bahtha.

“They told me that Israel had occupied Daraa, and some people there were siding with Zionism against our president, so we had to go and liberate the city,” he says. But “there was no Israeli occupation there. We were actually occupying the city, there was nobody else”.

In a still frame from video posted online by Syrian activists, a soldier appeared to plant ammunition among the bodies of protesters who had been shot and killed. Photo Credit: NYTimes

According to an article in Wired.com, Osama frequently takes days off to visit a friend’s house with a satellite link. The individual coordinates these teams of so-called video soldiers, taking their full flash cards and gives them back empty ones. He has recently been uploading and distributing the mobile camera footage on Youtube and Facebook.

One clip, posted online in the beginning of June and shared on a Syrian activist Facebook page, was supposedly produced by one of the shabiha, the militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

This featured activist’s video shows heroic music over images of heavily armed men in uniforms smiling and laughing as they chat near the bloody corpses of two men in civilian clothes.

“I decided to start filming and documenting the truth when I realized the amount of lies we are forced to believe at the army,” says Rami, who is another Syrian soldier interviewed by Wired.com.

“This will be my weapon,” Osama asserts, and wonders: “Maybe one day, when this is over, I will throw my gun away and become a video reporter. Inshallah.”

While the outside world has been watching video clips of barbarism, Syria’s state-controlled media has repeatedly published and broadcasted violent images that the government maintains stems from protesters. It seems, however, both state media and shabiha are taking initiatives to show the reality of the situation, one video at a time.

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July 5, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

State Department Defends Innovative “Internet Suitcases”

Last week a State Department official responded to the NY Times article on the “Internet Suitcases,” defending the main goal of the U.S.’s investment on the innovative technology as upholding the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

The Times article cited that the U.S. government is investing in individualized mesh networks, which are networks connected through individual nodes that do not have to rely on a central server to capture and disseminate information.

It was contested that this type of technology is ideal, and being provided by the U.S., for dissidents living in oppressive regimes to subvert censorship and avoid Internet shutdowns.

Acknowledging this, the official maintains, “…to fight against regimes is not the main aim, but rather, leveraging modern communication to uphold the freedom of expression of opinion is.”

Arguably, governments that respect the rights of civil society have nothing to fear in freedom of speech and opinion, further, they have no reason to fear freedom of the Internet.

The official admits that the Internet is not a one-size-fits-all solution and recent grants have been given to developing technology itself along with raining, and have been used on mobile innovation, citing mobile causing a, “pocket phenomenon.”

According to the official, “…the need is not one particular piece of technology or one silver bullet. The need is to be responsive to the ongoing challenges of people who are trying to call out the problems in their societies and give voice to their own future.”

The official referenced a Sudanese blogger writing about a YouTube video of a ballot box being stuffed, commenting that the National Election Commission would not investigate any evidence that was posted on the Internet. Instead, he/she cited, people posting the video were the ones being targeted and investigated.

In cases like these, the official recounted, it is the State Department’s obligation to help aid these freedoms by re-crafting the current model.

“And it hasn’t worked for Mubarak, and it hasn’t worked for Qadhafi, and it’s unlikely to work for Asad, and there are others who eventually will have to deal with either the stark choice of giving people the space to have a role in crafting their own futures or the lack of sustainability of their present model,” the official stated.

However, when asked by reporters which countries or groups this type of technology was being developed for, the official deferred questions about China, only stating that the Great Chinese Firewall and their type of censorship is a “different kind of freedom threat.”

…our goal is to make sure that we are doing what we can to amplify the voices and create the space for free expression and freedom of association and assembly online regardless of who the group is

The State Department’s recent statements are in light of the recent U.N. report declaring Internet access as a basic human right. The mesh networking innovation has the potential to leapfrog connectivity barriers and deliver freedom of expression to the oppressed.

June 23, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Innovative “Internet Suitcases” to Bypass Government Censorship

boy with binoculars and man with mac computer in afghanistan

Photo Credit: NYTimes

The State Department is financing the creation of external wireless networks that would enable dissidents to undermine repressive authoritarian governments trying to censor or disable telecommunication networks, according to a New York Times report.

According to the Times story released on Sunday, Internet and mobile phone networks are being created so they can be deployed in an area independent of government control.

The State Department-led project involves the building of a $2-million prototype “Internet in a suitcase”, and independent “shadow” phone networks by a group operating out of a building on L Street in Washington, D.C.

This comes to light after the U.N. and the U.S. proclaimed Internet access and Internet freedoms as central to free speech and human rights.

“We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote to the Times.

The new technologies made to circumvent oppressive regimes are currently in development by the New America Foundation under their nonpartisan think tank, Open Technology Initiative (OTI). The D.C. entrepreneurial engineers are cultivating both new technologies, and finding ways to utilize the tools from the previous uprisings.

The State Department, for example, is financing projects to create stealth wireless networks, including a $2 million grant to develop the “Internet in a suitcase.” The networking access points are designed to look like regular suitcases that communicate with each other to create mesh networks connected to the global Internet.

Diagram of a stealth network and wireless mesh network

Photo Credit: NYTimes

These suitcases, which contain all the necessary hardware, could be smuggled into a country and deployed over an area to create a service independent of government control in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, according to participants in the projects.

The other project is even more ambitious, the article states, where the State Department and Pentagon have spent $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan to offset the Taliban’s ability to shut down the official Afghan services.

This all comes after the “Arab Spring” uprisings over the past several months, which have drawn attention to network shutdowns and censorship conducted by regimes under threat like the Syrian and Egyptian governments. They attempt to stifle citizens’ ability to communicate with each other and to inform the outside world of what’s going on in the protest zones.

“The implication is that this disempowers central authorities from infringing on people’s fundamental human right to communicate,” recounted Sascha Meinrath, project director of the OTI, who is leading the “Internet in a suitcase” project.

However, Meinrath cautions that the cultivation of these independent networks also have can have a negative aspect:

Repressive governments could use surveillance to locate and arrest activists who use the technology, or persecute them for simply bringing hardware across the border.

Others believe that the risks are outweighed by the potential impact. “We’re going to build a separate infrastructure where the technology is nearly impossible to shut down, to control, to surveil,” says Meinrath.

The Times specifically discusses the foreign policy implications of these U.S. financed projects. After a decade long struggle in fostering media to evade hostile regimes like Voice of America, these ambitions are grandiose in scale. Alternatively, the creation of these new tools could be the next step helping to empower civil society.

June 14, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Rule of Law

Uganda Blames Food Price Protests on Media

Ugandan man throwing a brick into a fire

Photo credit: Reuters/Edward Echwalu

Protests over rising fuel and food prices continue despite Ugandan government attempts to slow them down by blocking Facebook, Twitter, and censoring media content.

Last week, President Yoweri Museveni cited social media and negative media coverage as primary proponents of fueling social unrest amid state led violence.

Protestors boycotted fuel purchases by “walking to work” for the past two months in an effort to demonstrate against the government spending at a time of heightened government expenditures.

In Uganda, the price of staples such as wheat have increased up to 40%, according to the World Bank.

UCC wrote to all ISPs last month asking them to block access to the two social media websites for 48 hours, but their request was denied.

“If someone is telling people to go and cause mass violence and kill people and uses these media to spread such messages, I can assure you we’ll not hesitate to intervene and shut down these platforms,” Godfrey Mutabazi, executive director of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) stated last month.

The Uganda’s communications regulator relies on Internet service providers to enforce their demands, as they cannot block access to the sites themselves.

Separately, last week Museveni described both local and international media, like the BBC, as “enemies of the state” at a time when journalists are reporting brutal assaults and harassment by security forces.

Journalists have imposed a news blackout on the Ugandan government in protest against what they described as rising brutality against covering demonstrations over the high prices. The media blackout includes official police and army functions.

Following Museveni’s warning this week, the outgoing Minister for Information, Kabakumba Masiko, told BBC’s Network Africa program that Ugandan laws would be amended to deal with any journalist who behaves as an “enemy of the state”.

She state on the program:

If you look at the way these media houses have been reporting what has been going on in our country, you realise they were inciting people and trying to show that Uganda is now ungovernable, is under fire as if the state is about to collapse.

Early last year the minister took a proposed Press and Journalist Amendment Bill to the Cabinet, where it creates a new publication offense of “economic sabotage”.

Ugandan president Museveni with paper accusing media of sabotage

Museveni accused media of sabotage in 2008 address Photo credit: Monitor

If passed, the law would give absolute dominance to Media Council, the statutory regulator, the authority to revoke the license of any media outlet that publishes “material that amounts to economic sabotage”.

The officials’ efforts are part of a recent trend by autocratic governments to block social media sites and having media blackouts to control social movements.

The US State Department spokesman issued a statement of concern in how blocking communication mediums adversely affects civil society.

“We are also concerned by reports that the Ugandan government has attempted to restrict media coverage of these protests and, on at least one occasion, block certain social networking websites,” the statement said.

The ongoing role of social media and the concurrent suppression of media freedom in anti-government protests make governments’ actions against civil society measurable and accountable.

It is clear that the future of reporting will be increasingly difficult for authoritarian countries to really control what their people see and hear.

June 1, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Time-Lapsed Map of Global Protests and Uprisings

Two weeks ago, John Caelan of Swamppost.com created a one-and-a-half minute, time-lapse video of the major uprising and protests around the world between December 18 to March 7, 2011.

By analyzing a wide field of news sources, he argues that the map is adequately scaled, and reflects the density of reported demonstrations across a wide field of news sources. However, he does acknowledge that the video does not represent all the events of protests or uprising in the world.

The colors for the icons represent:

Red: resulting in death
Orange: major injuries, damage, arrests
Yellow: minor injuries
Green: Peaceful

The number of pickets is the size:

1: Under 100
2: 100-1000
3: 1000-10000
4. 10K – 100K
5. Over 100K.

By utilizing open media research of worldwide news sources, Caelan compiled 80 maps for each day with the events added as they are discovered, so the apparent “blossoming” of events is simply a reflection of data that is available early on. His general methodology was to filter through the first thousand results of a news search on any given day, record the event, and archive them on an Excel sheet. The information in Excel was organized by day, and then further categorized by the location of where the events occurred, which he extracted from the articles manually. The flag icons were chosen by the average of reporting, as 100% accuracy in reporting the actual count of people at any gathering is intrinsically difficult, regardless of slant that the involved media parties tend to apply. Each day’s sheet was turned into a .csv file, and imported into the mapper supplied by Zee Maps. Caelan said that each day would be copied into the Excel sheet, with new events added–events older than 5 days are deleted, and those events older than 2 days turn to gray. Each event remains in color for two days, to account for the crossover of time zones. As he built most of these in retrospect, the December and early January time frame has less of the more obscure demonstrations because they were more difficult to research.

In addition, the video below compliments the original Global Protests & Uprisings video, however, this is the time-lapse series of maps focused in on North Africa and the Middle East for the period of December 18, 2010 to March 7, 2011.

Caelan, however, is aware of the unreliability of these results in showing worldwide trends. Due to the mainstream media now actively providing coverage and following the protests, he says, this map shows how the reporting on uprisings or protests have dramatically increased. Although he does not that this does not necessarily accurately reflect the quantity of protests themselves. He comments on the website:

Before ‘protest’ came to the forefront of international lexicon, there was much less density of reporting on demonstrations, and this was the primary reason for the perceived ‘viral’ pattern of the global uprisings. Suddenly, it’s pages upon pages of search results; however, as you point out, thousands of actions go unnoticed, even more so eclipsed by the weighty mass of popular revolt than before.

To find out more information about the uprisings shown in the video where you can click on the different icons and read information on the protest that was recorded at that point in his interactive map.

March 24, 2011/by actualize

Tag Archive for: global protests and uprisings

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