Greater Middle East

Egypt: ‘cybersecurity’ law restricts social media

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi signed a cybersecurity law  that gives the government broad authority to block websites deemed to constitute a threat to national security or the economy, imposing prison terms for anyone found guilty of running or just visiting such sites. Amnesty International described the new law as giving "the state near-total control over print, online and broadcast media." More than 500 websites had already been blocked in Egypt prior to the new law being signed. There is another cybersecurity law before the president, which would places all Twitter accounts with more than 5,000 followers under government supervision. With street protests in Egypt all but banned, the Internet has been one of the last spaces left for dissent. (Photo: Egypt Daily News)

North Africa

Podcast: Toward Berber-Palestinian solidarity

In Episode 16 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses how Berbers, Palestinians, Sahrawi Arabs and other subjugated peoples of the Middle East and North Africa are pitted against each other by the Great Game of nation-states. Berbers in North Africa and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories face identical issues of cultural erasure, yet the Arab states' support for the Palestinians and retaliatory Israeli support for the Berbers constitute an obstacle to solidarity. The Sahrawi Arabs meanwhile fight for their independence from Morocco in the occupied territory of Western Sahara. But the Arab-nationalist ideology of their leadership is rejected by the territory's Berbers—leading to Sahrawi-Berber ethnic tensions in Morocco. Yet there are also signs of hope. Arabs and Berbers were united in the 2011 "Arab Revolution" protests in Morocco, and greater Berber cultural rights were a part of the constitutional reform won by those protests. And the new protest wave in Morocco's Rif Mountains over the past year has again united Arab and Berber. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. (Image of Berber flag via Kabylia Information Agency)

Europe

Russian repression mounts against Crimean Tatars

Four years after Russia's annexation of Crimea, repression is mounting against the peninsula's Tatar people—whose autonomous powers, officially recognized under Ukrainian rule, have been unilaterally revoked. The group Human Rights in Ukraine is demanding that Russian authorities provide details on the death at the hands of Russian agents of Vedzhie Kashka, an 83-year-old veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement. Last November, a team of Russian National Guard troops  and FSB secret police carried out raids in which five Tatar leaders were detained while their homes were searched. Kashka was among those targeted, and died during the operation. An initial report said Kashka had died of natural causes, but an investigation carried out after her family had contracted a lawyer revealed that she had suffered several broken ribs. Kashka was a survivor of Stalin's 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan. She had been agitating for greater political rights for the Tatar people since they were allowed to return to Crimea in 1954. (Photo: Crimean News Agency)

Inner Asia

China: anti-Islam police state —and Muslim protest

China is denying claims aired by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that up to a million Muslim Uighurs have been detained in “re-education camps” in Xinjiang region. But Beijing appears to be imposing harsh surveillance and restrictions on freedom of worship on Muslims throughout China, even requiring those making the pilgrimage to Mecca to be fitted with GPS tracking devices. Yet such methods almost always prove counter-productive, leading to resentment that only fuels the unrest that Chinese authorities are responding to. This week saw mass protests in Weizhou, Ningxia province, after authorities attempted to demolish a newly built mosque which they said had not received construction permits. After days of protest, authorities backed down and agreed to postpone the demolition. (Photo of protest at Weizhou Grand Mosque from Weibo via BBC News)

North Africa

Libya sentences 45 to death over 2011 massacre

A Libyan appeals court sentenced 45 former pro-Qaddafi militiamen to death by firing squad for their involvement in murders that occurred during the 2011 uprising. The defendants were accused of opening fire on a crowd of demonstrators calling for the end of Moammar Qaddafi’s regime in the Abu Salim district of Tripoli. An additional 54 people were handed five-year prison sentences, and 22 of the militiamen were acquitted. The Abu Salim massacre was part of the wave of repression that tipped Libya into civil war in February 2011. (Photo: 2011 protests in Libya via WikiMedia Commons)

Mexico

Will AMLO fight for Mexico’s indigenous peoples?

Turkey’s TRT World runs a report recalling the Chontal Maya blockades of the Pemex oil installations in Mexico’s southern state of Tabasco in 1996, to protest the pollution of their lands and waters. This is a struggle that is still being waged today by the Chontal of Tabasco, but back in 1996 the figurehead of the movement was Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO)—now Mexico’s left-populist president-elect. The report asks if AMLO as president will remain true to the indigenous struggle that first put him on Mexico’s political map. In a segment exploring this question, TRT World speaks with Melissa Ortiz Massó of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre and CounterVortex editor Bill Weinberg. 

Syria

Afrin and Raqqa: fearful symmetry

Reports of rights abuses in the north Syrian enclave of Afrin, taken by Turkish forces and rebel allies from Kurdish defenders in March, continue to mount. Amnesty International charges that Afrin residents have been arbitrarily detained and tortured, with houses and businesses looted and confiscated, and schools destroyed or taken over by militia forces. Meanwhile the Syrian opposition cited sources on the ground accusing the Kurdish militia that was driven out of Afrin, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of press-ganging youth for compulsory military service in Raqqa. Afrin is a formerly Kurdish-majority city where displacement of Kurds and an influx of Arabs under Turkish occupation is affecting a demographic shift. Raqqa is an Arab-majority city which has been under occupation by Kurdish-led forces since it was liberated from ISIS last October. This situation obviously further heightens the risk of Kurdish-Arab ethnic war in northern Syria. (Photo: SDF)

Planet Watch

Global revolt against automotive terror

Bangladesh has seen huge demonstrations over the past week, as tens of thousands of university students and schoolchildren protest lax traffic enforcement after two young students were killed by a speeding bus. The protests have for days paralyzed Dhaka, with roadblocks erected on major thoroughfares. Meanwhile, in southern Italy's Puglia region, hundreds of African farmworkers downed tools and marched from the fields after 16 migrant workers were killed when their vans were hit by trucks hauling produce. Authorities pledge a crackdown on the "mafia" that controls agribusiness in Puglia, but the farmworkers have continued to press their protests. (Photo:  Dinamopress via El Salto)

The Amazon

Ecuador top court: Chevron must pay for pollution

The Constitutional Court of Ecuador issued a long-awaited ruling in favor of those affected by the transnational oil company Chevron, which operated through its subsidiary Texaco in Ecuador between 1964 and 1990. Chevron will now have to pay $9.5 billion for the repair and remediation of social and environmental damage that, according to audits and expert reports, were a result of oil company operations in the Amazonian provinces of Sucumbíos and Orellana. The court found that Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic oil waste on indigenous lands in the Amazon rainforest. (Photo via Mongabay)

Palestine

Arabs, Druze protest Israel nation-state law

Tens of thousands of marched in Tel Aviv to protest Israel's new "nation-state law," which officially establishes Israel as "the national home of the Jewish people" and downgrades the Arabic language from official to "special" standing. The march, led by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, follows a similar mobilization in Tel Aviv one week earlier by members of Israel's Druze community. Both rallies filled the city's Rabin Square. Under the banner "Abolish Nation-state Law – Yes to Equality," the Arab-led march was organized by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and allied groups. In a joint statement, participating organizations said the Nationality Law "will turn racism, discrimination, humiliation and segregation into an inseparable part of our lives…. Our statement is clear: All citizens—all of them—are equal." (Photo: Druze elders from the Golan Heights, via LookLex)