Global Voices Online

Stories

Extensive Flooding in Suriname

HEAVY FLOODING has affected more than 157 villages in Suriname over the past 48 hours and 15,000 people have been displaced already. “Operation Falawatra” (Operation “Low Tide”), the government's aid operation currently being carried out by the national army and police, has been hampered because of continued torrential rainfall, and the situation is deteriorating further. Several hours ago, the President of Suriname issued a state of emergency and at the time was expected to request international assistance. Up to the time of writing this had not been done, however, despite several relief teams having placed aid and personnel on standby.

Since most of the information available is in Dutch and as there is minimal coverage by the mainstream media regarding the situation in Suriname, the World Wide Help Group have been blogging around the clock, after having made contact with people on the ground. Volunteers are also helping translate information from live broadcasts from Dutch into English.

Maya Matawlie, who's been doing an amazing job of reporting from the ground in Suriname says that:

“the National Coordination Center for Disaster Relief (NCCR) is the central point for the disaster relief in Suriname, NCCR is also known as the relief crisis center and their evacuation plan is being executed from the airstrips of the villages of Djumu and Godo Olo. In these villages relief camps have been set up and the army is already in the area. The size of the disaster and the amount of help that will be needed is not apparent yet. According to the statistics there are approximately 15,000 people living in the upper Suriname-river area and about 9000 people in the upper Tapanahony area. The villages that have suffered the most damage are : Botopasi, Pikin Slee and Asindonhopo. The newsflash that several children have perished is being denied by the Minister of Regional Development”.

(more…)

2 comments · read »

We Media 2006: In London and Reflecting

Neha Viswanathan · 17:18 · Western Europe

The WeMedia Conference in London on the 3rd and 4th of May 2006, saw quite a few authors from Global Voices making sure they were heard. Authors from GVO included Eduardo, Kamla, Lisa, Rachel, Rebecca, Salam and Neha (me). We had our hopes high given some of the items on the agenda. Kamla wrote before heading off for the conference -

In many ways this conference is perhaps a sign of the changing times and how emerging technology and tools like blogs, podcasts, video blogging, wikipedia, social networking etc is changing the landscape of the media world-wide. This conference highlights the changing times and will see the intersection and interaction of traditional media and citizen journalism.

Even before the conference started, Salam unwrapped the nuances for the logo chosen for We Media and how it indicated posturing and posing. I was a little disturbed by the fact that Gender didn't make an appearance either in the agenda or in any of the discussions. Rachel comments on how the conference appeared to be a We Media UK and US Forum. Rebecca points to a crucial factor that would greatly determine the extent of which media becomes more representative of its users and loses its obvious weight of bias.

Media will only become more democratic if concerted efforts are made to bridge digital divides, build communities of conversation in places not heavily covered by the media, and then amplify the new voices.

Here's what I had to say on the issue of trust as discussed at We Media. Salam is torn between BBC and Reuters who each hosted the conference for a day. He takes a good look at the bag of goodies given by both to decide who wins. Lisa reflects on women and blogging and on our hosts, with a generous quip on why Reuters is referred to as Al Reuters. Both Salam and Lisa expressed doubts on the way the panel for Middle East was conducted. Even as BBC appears to have done a less than stellar job, Rachel talks of the World Service team -

The World Service was represented, at the end of the day. The teams of the (rather injudiciously merged for the occasion) programmes World Have Your Say and Africa Have Your Say put out a special radio programme live from the television studio, threading their way carefully between the tables, talking to people from the audience, allowing callers from countries as diverse as Iraq and Nigeria to question people in the audience.

Rebecca conducted some panels on the second day while Rachel kept a close eye on the online chatroom conversations. The session on Citizen Journalism made me question some of the assumptions made by the panelists.

2 comments · read »

Russia, Ukraine: Victory Day

Veronica Khokhlova · 16:16 · Eastern & Central Europe

kyiv veteran
A WWII veteran in Kyiv, Ukraine - by Veronica Khokhlova

On May 9, former Soviet states marked the 61st anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in WWII. Veterans and troops (as well as ultra-nationalists and Stalinists) marched in Moscow, Kyiv and other cities.

LJ user drugoi has posted photos of Moscow veterans and Russian ultra-nationalists. In the veterans' set, the self-made poster held by a woman in the first photo reads: “Glory to our fathers” (RUS).

One black-and-white photo of a veteran has been posted separately by drugoi and carries this note (RUS):

Last year, two people showed up from his 931st infantry regiment. This year, he hasn't found anyone. His grandson held a placard with the number of the battalion, regiment and division on it, and the infantryman stood leaning on his grandson's hand and cried like a child.

(more…)

0 comments · read »

Bloggers Bomb for Blogger

Rachel Rawlins · 15:00 · Middle East & North Africa

Not the life-threatening variety of course. I'm talking about a campaign to bring attention to the situation of detained Egyptian blogger Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, as well as the more than 40 other peaceful protesters held by the authorities.

Blogging supporters have started a new site to track the latest information at Free Alaa!. There are many banners and pictures available as photographs on flickr tagged alaa.

In addition bloggers are using another technique to bring Egypt and the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian Government's human rights record to public attention.

Close examination will show that each occurrence of the word “Egypt” above is linked to freealaa.blogspot.com. This is a well-known technique - if enough people make the same link to the word “Egypt” then eventually a search on the word will give the site as one of the top results.

Alaa is a popular blogger and supporter of blogging. He and his wife Manal run the Egyptian Blog Aggregator. It seems fitting that other bloggers are using the medium to the fullest extent to campaign for his release.

(more…)

5 comments · read »

Jahanbegloo, a Scholar in Jail & Islamic Dress

Farid Pouya · 13:13 · Middle East & North Africa

Several bloggers talked about why and how Dr.Ramin Jahanbegloo, a Canadian- Iranian scholar & journalist, was arrested. Some bloggers have started different activities to help him out or at least, let people know what is going on in Tehran. Jahanbegloo has been charged having “relations with foreigners” by government.

Toronto group for Iranian Studies has launched a blog to cover Jahanbegloo’s news. In this blog we read:

“Ramin Jahanbegloo, head of the Tehran-based private non-governmental organization Cultural Research Bureau and an internationally prominent human rights advocate, was arrested in late April when he transited Tehran Airport returning from India for a conference in Brussels. When Jahanbegloo failed to arrive at the Brussels conference on Saturday, his colleagues contacted Canadian officials, who in turn contacted authorities in Teheran. Iranian officials told their Canadian counterparts that Jahanbegloo is receiving ‘medical care' but refused Canadian officials an opportunity to visit him.”

(more…)

1 comment · read »

Access to MSN Spaces in China

Frank Dai · 11:49 · East Asia

Many people have said that their MSN Space blog is inaccessible or experiences diffculties in connection, including Nina Wu, sister of detained blogger and Global Voices colleague Hao Wu, with many MSN bloggers confirming the problem (1,2).

According to this article, the inaccessiblity of MSN Space lies in Live.com. Mircosoft change its .NET Passport login process into Live.com, this required Chinese users to redirect to live.com to sign in their credentials and Live.com is probably blocked in China. So all the MSN related websites have been inaccessible during recent weeks.

This post also provides some other means to login and continue use MSN sites without running a proxy as listed below:

using https protocol: click here and login
using the original .NET Passport service: click here and using Messenger 7.0 version to access Hotmail and MSN Space

Tests show two things: first, after using above techniques to access them, MSN and Hotmail services are returning to normal; second, Live.com is only accessible with a proxy like that of Tor.

Several days before the block stopped for an interval but resumed just within few days. It's still unclear whether this problem is due to outage of servers of Microsoft's China Branch. With the recent visit by President Hu Jintao to Microsoft and Bill Gates the block seem quite unreasonable. No confirmation from Microsoft is available at present.

1 comment · read »