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New Internet law in Turkey sparks outrage – Features – Al Jazeera English
New Internet law in Turkey sparks outrage – Features – Al Jazeera English.
Controversial web controls implemented after phone-recording leaks raise questions and stoke public anger.Umut Uras Last updated: 25 Feb 2014 13:10
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Street protests and anti-censorship campaigns have been launched to oppose Turkey’s internet law [AFP]
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Turkey’s new law tightening the state’s grip on the Internet has gone into force after President Abdullah Gul approved the controversial legislation pushed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.The legislation changes Turkey’s original 2007 Internet law, and has sparked street protests and various public campaigns against the new online controls.
The conservative government has rejected claims that the law will lead to censorship, arguing instead that it aims at protecting individual rights and privacy. “There is no censorship on the Internet. Freedoms are not restricted. We are only taking precautions against blackmail and immorality,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said. “If the Internet and computers are not used in a proper way under certain monitoring and order, they do not constitute beneficial or educational tools anymore. Instead, they turn into dangers with bitter results.” Last year’s Gezi Park protests against the Turkish government were largely organised through social media, which Erdogan at the time called “the worst menace to society“. #UnFollowAbdullahGul A Twitter campaign – #UnFollowAbdullahGul – was launched after Turkey’s tech-savvy president approved the proposed Internet bill, despite his expressed concerns. His follower count dropped by more than 100,000 in two days last week. In another campaign named #4Saat (“four hours” in Turkish), liberal newspaper Radikal started self-censoring various news stories on its website every four hours – the time needed to block a URL under the new administrative process – to protest against the legislation.
Eyup Can, the editor-in-chief of Radikal, told Al Jazeera the digital campaign aims at providing the Turkish public with a better understanding of the new law. “As the legislation is highly technical both in terms of law and technology, sometimes it is not easy for the public to understand. We wanted to display the practical future outcomes of the law and make the Turkish public grasp what changes it would make in our lives,” he said. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main opposition party, has repeatedly declared it would take the legislation to the Constitutional Court. “The AKP government, striving to restrict freedom in every domain, is stepping up its pressure on the Internet, which is becoming increasingly important in our daily lives,” CHP said in a statement. Turkey is an Internet-savvy country with 21.9 million broadband Internet subscriptions as of last September, according to a report by Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority. There are 68.4 million mobile-phone subscriptions and 47.5 million 3G subscriptions in a country with 75 million people. The European Union, the Council of Europe and the United Nations have expressed concern over the legislation, along with rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. A similar bill proposed by the government in 2011 was shelved following mass street protests. This time, however, the government decided to go forward despite a similar reaction. What is new? The legislation allows Turkey’s telecommunications authority (TIB) to block websites without first obtaining a court order. With a complaint filed for breach of “privacy of persons”, TIB has the power to order the blocking of a URL, which will be carried out by Internet service providers within four hours. A court order must then be sought by the telecommunications authority within 24 hours. However, the web page remains offline until the court makes a decision. The president of the TIB can also block URLs without complaints having been filed, if prospective plaintiffs are not capable of applying, or if a delay could cause “irreversible consequences”. Gokhan Ahi, a lawyer and lecturer specialising in Internet law, told Al Jazeera the TIB could use its newly given authority anyway it sees fit. “Will it monitor delays of complaints [over breaches of privacy] for every citizen, or only for the government? By law, this institution works under the jurisdiction of the government, and it would carry out any written order from it to block a web page when it has such a power,” Ahi said. Blocking web pages immediately after complaints are lodged creates a legal basis to sweep news reports and other online information under the carpet, Ahi said, pointing out that the ensuing court process ensures the URLs stay blocked for some time.
Data will be stored The law also requires Internet service providers to collect all data on web users’ activities for up to two years, and to provide authorities with the data in question on demand. Users’ information on Internet traffic will be collected based on IP and subscriber numbers, instead of URLs, which was criticised as being more intrusive. The collected data will only be accessible by court order. The law allows single URLs to be blocked, as opposed to entire websites, as directed by the old legislation. The blocking of YouTube from 2007 until 2010 for videos insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, was a significant example of that. It also removes prison sentences for content and access providers who violate the law, which was a big obstacle for foreign investors in the sector. However, prison sentences can still be handed down if violators do not pay fines they incur under the law. According to Can of Radikal, there is nothing wrong with regulating the Internet as long as it doesn’t restrict freedom of information. “Through this law, the job [to block web pages] has been left to the initiative of a public employee heading a state institution, and this creates an arbitrary situation,” Can said. Leaked recordings The swift adoption of the new Internet law comes after the online leak of phone recordings that allegedly document corruption in state tenders and bribery involving businessmen and the Turkish government. The latest recording, which was leaked on Monday, purports to be a conversation between Erdogan and his son Bilal, in which the prime minister asked him to move money from his and his relatives’ homes. Bilal supposedly said in the recording that some 30m euros ($41m) still remain to be disposed of. The prime minister has said the recording is fake. Other recordings have revealed Erdogan’s direct intervention in mainstream media coverage. He confirmed one of these conversations at a recent press conference. Some of these recordings were released through court orders and publicised by the CHP, the main opposition party. Others were leaked anonymously on social media and video-sharing websites, and their authenticity has not been challenged by the government.
In mid-December, the government was hit by unexpected and comprehensive corruption probes, mainly targeting the sons of ministers, bureaucrats and prominent businesspeople. The government alleged the investigations were organised by a “parallel state”, an apparent reference to Gulen, a religious group formerly allied with the AKP whose followers are widely believed to wield significant influence over Turkey’s police and judiciary. Erdogan linked the phone leaks several times to the Gulen Movement. The government’s reaction to the corruption investigations was to initiate a country-wide comprehensive reshuffling in the Turkish Police Forces, which, according to media reports, halted a planned second and third wave of detentions. Prosecutors who launched the investigations were removed, and the AKP-dominated parliament recently adopted a new law increasing its influence over the judiciary. Hilal Kaplan, a pro-government columnist for the Yeni Safak daily, linked the revamped Internet law to the recent phone leaks. “The rush of phone recordings to the Internet is so disgusting that, I believe, accelerating the legal decision-making mechanism [for blocking URLs] is in line with the principle of right to privacy protected by Article 20 of the constitution,” she recently wrote. The government has rejected any link between the phone leaks and the new legislation, saying it had worked on the text of the law for the past two years. Radikal’s editor Can disagreed, however, saying the leaked recordings had spurred the government to push through the new Internet controls before local elections scheduled for March 30. “The government would not bring the bill to the parliament this fast if it was not for the recent developments. It is an issue that should have been widely discussed in the country, as there are no certain global norms about the use of the Internet,” he said. Follow Umut Uras on Twitter: @Thriceee |
Ethiopia – Land for Sale – People & Power – Al Jazeera English
Ethiopia – Land for Sale – People & Power – Al Jazeera English.
Just a few decades ago, Ethiopia was a country defined by its famines, particularly between 1983-1985 when in excess of half a million people starved to death as a consequence of drought, crop failure and a brutal civil war.Against this backdrop, it is impressive that in recent years, Ethiopia has been experiencing stellar economic growth. The headline statistics are certainly remarkable: the country is creating millionaires faster than any other in Africa; output from farming, Ethiopia’s dominant industry, has tripled in a decade; the capital Addis Ababa is experiencing a massive construction boom; and the last six years have seen the nation’s GDP grow by a staggering 108 percent.
But it is not all positive news, because for all the good figures there are still plenty of bad ones. Around 90 percent of the population of 87 million still suffers from numerous deprivations, ranging from insufficient access to education to inadequate health care; average incomes are still well below $1500 a year; and more than 30 million people still face chronic food shortages. And while there are a number of positive and genuine reasons for the growth spurt – business and legislative reforms, more professional governance, the achievements of a thriving service sector – many critics say that the growth seen in agriculture, which accounts for almost half of Ethiopia’s economic activity and a great deal of its recent success, is actually being driven by an out of control ‘land grab’, as multinational companies and private speculators vie to lease millions of acres of the country’s most fertile territory from the government at bargain basement prices. At the ministry of agriculture in Addis Ababa, this land-lease programme is often described as a “win-win” because it brings in new technologies and employment and, supposedly, makes it easier to improve health care, education and other services in rural areas. “Ethiopia needs to develop to fight poverty, increase food supplies and improve livelihoods and is doing so in a sustainable way,” said one official. But according to a host of NGO’s and policy advocates, including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and the Oakland Institute, the true consequences of the land grabs are almost all negative. They say that in order to make such huge areas available for foreign investors to grow foodstuffs and bio-fuels for export – and in direct contravention of Ethiopia’s obligations under international law – the authorities are displacing hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples, abusing their human rights, destroying their traditions, trashing the environment, and making them more dependent on food aid than ever before. “The benefits for the local populations are very little,” said renowned Ethiopian sociologist Dessalegn Rahmato. “They’ve taken away their land. They’ve taken away their natural resource, because these investors are clearing the land, destroying the forest, cutting down the trees. The government claims that one of the aims of this investment was to enable local areas to benefit by investing in infrastructure, social services … but these benefits are not included in the contract. It’s only left up to the magnanimity of the investor.” And those investors, he continued, are simply not interested in anything other than serving their own needs: “They can grow any crop they want, when they want it, they can sell in any market they want, whether it’s a global market or a local market. In fact most of them are not interested in the local markets.” He cited as an example a massive Saudi-owned plantation in the fertile Gambella region of south west Ethiopia, a prime target area for investors: “They have 10,000 hectares and they are producing rice. This rice is going to be exported to the Middle East, to Saudi Arabia and other places. The local people in that area don’t eat rice.” But the most controversial element of the government’s programme is known as ‘villagisation’ – the displacement of people from land they have occupied for generations and their subsequent resettlement in artificial communities. In Gambella, where two ethnic groups, the Anuaks and the Nuers, predominate, it has meant tens of thousands of people have been forced to abandon a traditional way of life. One such is Moot, an Anuak farmer who now lives in a government village far from his home. “When investors showed up, we were told to pack up our things and to go to the village. If we had decided not to go, they would have destroyed our crops, our houses and our belongings. We couldn’t even claim compensation because the government decided that those lands belonged to the investors. We were scared … if you get upset and say that someone stole your land, you are put in prison. If you complain about being arrested, they will kill you. It’s not our land anymore; we have been deprived of our rights.” Despite growing internal opposition and international criticism, the Ethiopian government shows no sign of scaling the programme back. According to the Oakland Institute, since 2008, an area the size of France has already been handed over to foreign corporations. Over the next few years an area twice that size is thought to be earmarked for leasing to investors. So what does all this mean for the people on the ground? In Ethiopia – Land for Sale, filmmakers Veronique Mauduy and Romain Pelleray try and find out. |
Cambodia police use force to break up rally – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English
Cambodia police use force to break up rally – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English.
![]() Cambodia imposed an indefinite ban on demonstrations in Phnom Penh after a wave of protests in early January [AP]
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At least eight people have been injured in Cambodia’s capital as police fired smoke grenades and used electric batons to break up an anti-government demonstration.Several hundred people, led by radio station owner Mam Sonando, gathered in front of the Ministry of Information on Monday to press demand for the government critic to be allowed a license for a television channel.
The government last week rejected the application, saying there was no frequency available. All existing stations are closely linked to Prime Minister Hun Sen and Cambodia has been accused of only granting television licences to pro-government media. Protesters and journalists were hit by police batons during Monday’s rally, according to rights activists. Activist Am Sam Ath of local rights group Licadho condemned the crackdown on the protesters as a “serious violation of human rights”. Phnom Penh City Hall spokesman Long Dimanche said police dispersed the protest because it had not been permitted and could have led to violence. Protest ban The government imposed an indefinite ban on street demonstrations in Phnom Penh after a wave of protests in early January challenging the results of last year’s election, which the opposition alleges was rigged.
“It was illegal demonstration. So the authorities just implemented the law,” Long Dimanche said. Sonando, who has dual Cambodian-French citizenship, was convicted in October 2012 on charges including insurrection and inciting people to take up arms against the state. He was released from jail last March after a court cleared him of a secessionist plot, slashing his 20-year jail term and ordering his release from prison. Baton-wielding police clashed on Sunday with protesters – including Buddhist monks – demanding higher wages for garment workers and the release of 23 people arrested during a recent bloody crackdown on striking garment workers, which left at least four civilians dead. Authorities have quelled recent street protests against Hun Sen. He faces mounting criticism by rights groups of his government’s suppression of street protests intended to challenge his nearly three-decade rule. Human Rights Watch has condemned the recent actions by the Cambodian government and is urging the United Nations member countries to press the country’s leadership to abide by previous commitments and fulfil new rights pledges. Cambodia is scheduled to appear before the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva on Tuesday. “Hun Sen’s government violates human rights on a daily basis by violently preventing the opposition, trade unions, activists and others from gathering to demand political change,” said Juliette de Rivero, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch. |
Audit slams World Bank agency – Features – Al Jazeera English
Audit slams World Bank agency – Features – Al Jazeera English.
![]() Disputes over land in Honduras’ Bajo Aguan Valley have led to the deaths of 63 people, mostly peasants [AP]
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An internal World Bank investigation says the bank’s private lending arm violated its own social and environmental rules in approving a $30m loan to a Honduran palm oil magnate allegedly tied to the forced eviction and deaths of dozens of land activists.
The months-long investigation found the bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) failed to properly vet Honduran powerbroker Miguel Facusse’s Corporacion Dinant, a palm oil and food giant embroiled in one of Honduras’ deadliest land conflicts in recent history. The IFC said it was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life resulting from the land conflicts – risks the agency determined were “manageable” when it initially assessed the palm oil project in 2008. Both the IFC andDinant said they disagree with parts of the audit released Friday but that they are taking the allegations seriously. Due diligence The audit by the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) says a standard news search required by the World Bank revealed damning allegations against Facusse. Public news articles show Facusse allegedly misused his political influence, was accused of involvement in the murder of an environment activist and land disputes with indigenous communities, had an arrest warrant issued in relation to environmental crimes, and had his properties used for drug trafficking. The search, the CAO said, shows “IFC staff either knew about these allegations and perceptions and failed to deal with them as required … or did not conduct the required news agency searches”. David Pred, executive director of Inclusive Development International, said the case shines a spotlight on the kind of “dirty business” the World Bank is increasingly engaged in as it expands its investments in high-risk environments. “This audit, and the Bank’s response to it, shows that IFC’s social and environmental requirements, touted as the ‘gold standard’, come with a wink and a nod that companies like Dinant can literally get away with murder and still boast the World Bank’s stamp of approval,” Pred said in an email to Al Jazeera. A history of conflict The blood is being shed in Honduras’ northern Aguan Valley, where land disputes are age-old. Agrarian reforms of the 1970s saw indigenous-held land redistributed to farmer cooperatives. Those cooperatives ended up in bankruptcy with neoliberal reforms, and in the 1990s, the government and cooperatives sold the land to a few wealthy Hondurans, including Facusse.
Activists claiming ownership of Dinant properties are known to play a game of cat and mouse with security forces, occupying disputed properties, being evicted, and then returning. The confrontations often turn violent, according to groups like the International Federation for Human Rights, which have monitored the conflict. The CAO audit notes the murders of at least 102 people affiliated with the peasant movement in the Aguan Valley between January 2010 and May 2013, according to civil society groups. Forty of those deaths, the CAO said, were specifically linked by human rights groups to Dinant properties and security forces. The audit also notes allegations that at least nine Dinant security personnel were killed by affiliates of the peasant movement. Dinant’s spokesman Roger Pineda has denied the company’s involvement in violence against anyone embroiled in land disputes surrounding Facusse’s property. He told Al Jazeera Dinant’s security forces are the victims of attack by armed invaders trespassing on the palm plantations. Pineda also rejected allegations Facusse’s landing strips were used to transfer drugs. He told Al Jazeera that drug traffickers had forcibly taken over the property and that Facusse surrendered his airstrip to local military authorities until recent months. Accountability The five-point plan issued by the IFC in response to the audit said it would help Dinant conduct a massive security review and that the company would collaborate with local authorities to investigate credible allegations of unlawful or abusive acts. “Moving forward, we will continue to monitor the implementation of Dinant’s environmental and Social Action Plan, and look to bolster our procedures in relation to environmental and social risks in fragile and conflict-affected areas,” the IFC said in response to the audit. Leaving the job of investigating abuses to the people allegedly complicit in them is wrong, according to Jessica Evans, senior international financial institutions researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of the accurate, adequate, and objective assessment of the allegations its policies require, the IFC is leaving the job to the fox that raided the chicken coop in the first place,” Evans said. “Human lives and livelihoods are at stake here. The IFC should demand an external, expert investigation that could create a framework for Dinant to remedy any violations of its responsibility to respect human rights.” The IFC said Dinant would lose its funding if it doesn’t comply with the action plan. The lending agency already put a hold on half of its $30m loan to Dinant in mid-2010, following human rights complaints by the Washington-based group Rights Action. However, that did not stop the IFC from calling Dinant owner Facusse a “respected businessman” and later approving a $70m investment in one of Dinant’s biggest lenders, Banco Financiera Comercial Hondurena (Ficohsa). The investment will give the IFC a 10 percent stake in the Honduran bank. ‘Smart’ risks The Word Bank watchdog found the IFC’s “deficiencies” are a by-product of its culture and incentives that measure results in financial terms. “In a risk-averse setting, accountability for results defined primarily in financial terms may incentivise staff to overlook, fail to articulate, or even conceal potential environmental, social and conflict related risks,” the CAO said. “The result, however, as seen in this audit is that the institution may underestimate these categories of risk.” The case is considered a test of World Bank President Jim Kim‘s leadership. Kim has staked his reputation on taking “smart risks” to end poverty, and on learning from past mistakes. The CAO is conducting another investigation into how smart the risks were in another IFC project in Honduras. Its query into the human rights impact of the IFC’s investment in Ficohsa, and its relationship to Dinant, is due to be completed in June. |