Global Voices Online

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Translations, and a new, shorter URL

Ethan Zuckerman · 14:56

The Global Voices Manifesto - a statement of our basic principles and beliefs, authored collaboratively by many of the people who joined us at the first Global Voices conference in December 2004 - is now available online in ten languages: Arabic, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Swahili, as well as a “simplified English” version optimized for machine translation. If you're interested in helping translate the manifesto into additional languages, please feel free to join in on the wiki. If you haven't worked on wiki translations in the past, you may want to take a look at the Wikipedia translation tools page. You may also want to get in touch with Global Voices wiki maven SJ, who's been helping organize translations - sjklein AT hcs DOT harvard DOT edu.

In other notes, we've got a nifty new URL for Global Voices - you can now access our main page at www.globalvoicesonline.org or www.globalvoicesonline.com. No need to change your bookmarks, as we're not moving from our existing harvard.edu address - just adding this new address for your convenience.

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Andrew Heavens blogs the violence in Ethiopia

Ethan Zuckerman · 14:13

A few weeks back, the elections in Ethiopia looked like a great victory for supporters of increased openness and democratization. Reporting on the apparent increase of the opposition from 12 seats to 174 in the 547-seat parliament, Abraham McLaughlin wrote in the Christian Science Monitor:

The campaign included surprising signs of openness: massive opposition rallies being allowed in the capital; coverage of the opposition in government-controlled media; and, for the first time ever, more than 300 international observers being invited in to watch the vote.

The increased openness demonstrated by Zenawi's government (he's been in power since 1991, winning three elections widely percieved as being rigged) doesn't neccesarily mean this election process is going to be a peaceful one. Students began rioting in the “Mexico” section of Addis Ababa on Tuesday, and taxi and bus drivers began a general strike on Wednesday. The government has responded by opening fire on demonstrators, killing at least 22.

Andrew Heavens, a freelance journalist based in Addis, has been in the heart of the situation, taking photographs for Reuters. His blog, Meskel Square, is currently filled with harrowing stories and images:

At one point a young man burst out of the morgue roaring with grief. He kept charging on the surrounding doctors, clenching his fists, desperate to find someone to take his grief out on. Seconds later he ran out of the room in tears.

Just for the record, I saw 11 bodies at the Black Lion and Zawditu hospitals, all with gun shot wounds, some to the head. As you know the official count at the moment is 22.

They all seemed to me to be in their twenties or at most their early thirties. Most of the protesters I saw earlier yesterday were much younger - see this picture of stone-throwing youths. The real worry is that this unrest will spread from the students to “street people” across the city, turning the protests into widespread unrest.

Youth armed with stones in the streets of Addis Ababa Andrew is posting his photos on Flickr. They include pictures of students protesting in the streets, youths armed with stones, and far too many photos of the wounded and dead.

The Ethiopian blogosphere is buzzing with speculation about whether Ethiopia is heading towards a Ukraine-style revolution. Opposition bloggers are especially vocal. Ethiopundit has a long post speculating that the election was stolen and arguing that the concession that the opposition had won seats in Addis was a smokescreen to disguise overall election fraud. Dagmawi favors statistical analysis, including speculation that record turnout favored the ruling party and indicates fraud.

Ethiopian Review believes that (opposition party) CUD spokesman Ato Lidetu Ayalew is being held without food and water by the government and asks people to contact the ICRC to ask for help seeking his release.

The Ethopian government appears to be cracking down on the independent press, revoking press permits for Deutchse Welle and Voice of America. Heavens is asking commenters on his blog to keep “comments moderate”, surely aware that his presence in Addis could also be threatened.

The Global Voices aggregator is following half a dozen Ethiopian blogs and may be useful to anyone interested in following developments as they happen.

Photo by Andrew Heavens

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Americas , East Asia , Middle East & North Africa , South Asia , Sub-Saharan Africa

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Africa

The Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa has been hit with anti-government protests and a resultant government crackdown; news reports indicate that at least 22 protesters have been killed. Andrew Heavens, a freelance photographer for Reuters, has been covering the violence on his blog. Andrew’s Flickr feed has more photographs, including eerie images of armored vehicles in downtown, the wounded being treated by doctors. Ethiopundit suggests that perhaps Ethiopia is on its way to a Ukranian-style peaceful revolution; in a separate post, he suggests that the massive gain made by the opposition was actually a fig leaf designed to divert attention from even more massive electoral fraud. Global Voices’ own Ethan Zuckerman has a more detailed update on the situation.

Afrotecnik reports on a rural network of small, solar-powered community radio stations in Niger.

South Asia

A new cricket blog—that’s cricket, the sport that’s cousin to baseball, not cricket, the arthropod—called Fourth Umpire has arrived on the scene. Though the author is based in Manhattan, the blog focuses on cricket in the sub-continent.

Niraj points to a really informative post about the Biharis, a class of stateless people created when Bangladesh became independent in the early 1970s.

Photograph by Steve Evans

The Middle East

Gateway Pundit reports on a candlelight vigil in Cairo that protested violence by government-backed thugs during last month’s elections. In addition, Manal of Manal and Alaa’s bit bucket actually attended the protest; her report includes photographs of the protest.

Al-Ghad, an Egyptian opposition party, has circumvented the state’s control of the radio waves by launching a radio station over the internet, reports *The Arabist Network. The internet stream, which can be found here, seems to feature mostly talk shows with occasional musical interludes.

The biggest news in the Iranian blogosphere today is that Iran beat Bahrain in soccer and thus advanced to next year’s World Cup. What could be bigger than that? The fact that a group of about 30 women entered the stadium for the historic game and cheered their team on to victory. Hoder’s take includes pointers to pictures; Brooding Persian translates the Farsi statement of one of the women; Under Underground celebrates both the soccer win and the advance in women’s rights.

In Iranian election news, Hoder reports that the reformist candidate Dr. Moin (also romanized “Moeen” by some) has the most to lose by a low turnout in the election. And a specialized Flickr group dedicated to the election has been created, featuring images of campaign posters, both en toto and defaced…

In Lebanon, The Lebanese Blogggers has a lengthy post about trust, governance, and it’s application to Lebanon particular and the Middle East in general.

East Asia

Asiapundit notes that the New York Times has picked up on the “China Requires Bloggers to Register” story.

Tokyo Times reports that Tohoku University has managed to develop a ballroom dancing robot. The robot itself seems like a bright pink vision straight out of Metropolis.

Latin America

In La Paz, MABB continues to follow the saga that is Bolivian politics; in its latest update, Congress has accepted President Mesa’s resignation but has not yet appointed a successor. The post has a handy chart comparing and contrasting the three major candidates for the position. As a side note, the Bolivian constitution has a line of presidential succession laid out; the debate over the next president has more to do with the forces that forced Mesa out and less to do with following the letter of the law.