India’s Supreme Court ordered police on Wednesday to put five prominent rights campaigners suspected of links to Maoist guerrillas under house arrest as outrage grew over their detention.

Critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government have dismissed the allegations against the activists, who were detained a day earlier, and said the crackdown was part of ongoing attempts to stifle all dissent.

Police detained the campaigners, seized their laptops and mobile phones, in raids on their homes in different cities, triggering protests and a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the action.

Sudha Bharadwaj, who has been fighting for the rights of workers in parts of India such as Chhattisgarh where left-wing guerrilla groups operate, said the action against her was part of a broader crackdown on opponents of the government.

“The effort is whatever is the opposition to this regime, whether it is workers rights, tribal rights, everybody who in the opposition is being rounded up,” she told reporters outside her home in Faridabad, a short distance from New Delhi.

The arrests follow months of tensions between right wing nationalist groups and advocates of free speech that has played out in college campuses and spilled over into the streets.

Critics also say several top journalists have been forced out of their jobs for their critical reporting of the government.

The others detained on Tuesday included were Varavara Rao, a prominent poet from the southern city of Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira from Mumbai and civil liberties activist Gautam Navlakha from New Delhi.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has faced mounting criticism from activists and academics, who accuse it of undermining the secular and pluralistic principles of India’s constitution.

The BJP denies these allegations but says it is opposed to appeasement of any community and has long advocated tough action to protect national security.

“These five are no threat to anyone,” said Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer for a group of leading academics that has petitioned the Supreme Court to release the activists.

“The charges against them on the face of it appear indiscriminate, unwarranted, part of a malicious campaign to threaten human rights defenders, independent journalists, writers and thinkers in the country from critiquing the government and its policies, and an attempt to muzzle dissent,” the petition said.

INTELLECTUAL FORCE

Police have also accused the five of inflammatory speeches at a rally in western India last year which led to violent clashes between Dalits, the lowest in the Hindu caste hierarchy, and right wing organisations.

A police officer said the main case relates to speeches made during a rally held in the city of Pune on Dec. 31, 2017 commemorating the valour of Dalits. The following day, violent clashes broke out between members of the lower caste and hardline Hindu groups.

The police officer, who could not be named because he was not authorised to speak to reporters, said police had seized documents relating to the long-running Maoist insurgency afflicting parts of the country.

The guerrillas are fighting for the rights of the landless in parts of eastern and southern India, dubbed “the Red Corridor”.

The police officer said the five activists gave intellectual force to an insurgency in which thousands of people have been killed over the years.

Modi faces an election next year and opposition parties are trying to forge an alliance to stop his Hindu nationalists from coming back to power.

The Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice Dipak Misra said it would hear the petition challenging the arrests of the activists next week and until then they would be placed under house arrest, and not police custody.

Judge D.Y. Chandrachud, one of the judges on the bench, said the right to criticise was a crucial for democracy.

“Dissent is the safety valve of democracy. If dissent is disallowed, then the pressure cooker may burst,” he said.

Police in riot gear stormed an apartment in southern China on Friday where about 40 student activists and others supporting factory workers seeking to form a labour union were staying, according to activists who said they received a video of the raid as it was taking place.

The video footage, which was shared with Reuters, showed police armed with shields and helmets bursting into the activists’ accommodation and scuffling with the occupants.

The footage appeared to show an apartment where the students were staying in Huizhou, near the southern city of Shenzhen, that had been previously visited by Reuters. The video could not be independently verified.

It was not immediately clear what happened to the activists. Calls to police in the area and five activists who had been staying at the apartment went unanswered. Labour activists in other parts of the country who are following the case and had been in touch with various activists on the scene said they were unable to contact them.

The raid is the latest step by the Chinese authorities to clamp down on a growing labour movement in the southern province of Guangdong that started brewing last month when workers at a welding machinery company, Jasic International, were fired when they tried to create a union.

Labour activism is viewed as a challenge by the ruling Communist Party, which opposes independent unions and punishes protesters.

On July 27, police detained 29 people, including laid-off workers, their families and supporters. Fourteen people remain in detention.

Since then, support has poured in, with about 50 labour activists, most of them students, travelling to Guangdong to back the workers.

An activist who shared the footage of the raid with Reuters said the raid Friday took place just after 5 a.m. The activist, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the footage, said the images were received directly from students in the room when the police entered.

GROWING PRESSURE

Pressure had been mounting on the activists.

In interviews with Reuters a day before the raid, 15 activists involved in the Jasic case described a multi-pronged effort to force them to disengage from the workers’ cause.

The authorities have flown many of the young activists’ parents to Guangdong and put them up in hotels to undergo “training sessions” about how to raise their children, according to interviews with several students.

Authorities lectured the parents on text messages to send to their children. They also arranged to have parents show up at various places where their children were, including the apartment and shopping areas where protests have been staged, they said.

The Ministry of Education issued a notice five days ago to universities across the country telling them to stop students from travelling to Guangdong to participate in the protests, according to screenshots of messages sent by universities to students.

The universities gave a range of explanations to students about why it was unsafe for them to go to Guangdong including an approaching typhoon and the risk of being recruited into a pyramid scheme, several students said.

Reuters was unable to verify the order and the ministry did not respond to faxed questions.

The hashtag “What’s up with Guangdong?” started trending on Weibo as the Ministry of Education notice spread.

Several of the students’ university advisers had apparently also flown to Guangdong to try to persuade them to leave, according to some of the activists.

The protests have spread to Beijing where, on Wednesday and Thursday, a group of 20 students, activists and two worker representatives from Jasic submitted petition letters at the headquarters of the All-China Federations of Trade Unions and the All-China Women’s Federation.

An opposition Ugandan lawmaker was charged with treason on Thursday over his alleged role in the stoning of President Yoweri Museveni’s convoy this month.

A civilian magistrate ordered Robert Kyagulanyi remanded in custody until Aug. 30 and granted him access to private doctors, citing the “health of the accused”, according to footage broadcast on private broadcaster NBS Uganda.

Kyagulanyi, who only entered parliament last year, has been left unable to stand after being beaten while in detention, his lawyer told Reuters, citing relatives who visited him. The Ugandan government says the assault accusation is “rubbish”.

In the TV footage, Kyagulanyi was seen walking with one crutch and the assistance of prison wardens when entering the courtroom.

Earlier on Thursday, a separate military court dropped charges of unlawful weapons possession against Kyagulanyi, a popular musician whose songs’ biting criticism of Museveni’s government has won him a large youth following.

His detention, along with and four other politicians critical of Museveni, sparked two days of anti-government demonstrations in the capital Kampala and other parts of the country this week.

Three other lawmakers and dozens of other people have also been charged with treason over their alleged role in the convoy stoning.

Separately, police arrested two opposition politicians on Thursday for defying orders not to leave their homes after police placed them under “preventative arrest” to try to head off further unrest.

Ugandan police spokesman Emilian Kayima said police had received “intelligence reports that these leaders were inciting people to riot yet they have other lawful avenues, like petitioning a higher court, to seek redress about the fate of their colleague”. He was referring to Kyagulanyi.

“We don’t want to experience what we went through on Monday,” he said, referring to a demonstration in Kampala at which Ugandan police fired tear gas and military units were deployed to disperse protesters.

Representatives of several prominent opposition politicians had said on social media that they had been prevented from leaving home and that they had planned to attend Kyagulanyi’s court appearance.

Protesters and opposition supporters accuse Museveni, in power since 1986, of stifling dissent through intimidation, beatings and detentions, charges which his government denies.

Last October, when parliament was debating whether to remove a constitutional age limit that would have barred Museveni from seeking re-election in 2021, security forces and protesters clashed on the streets and two protesters died.

The presidential age limit has since been removed.

]]> 7845 https://www.faith-matters.org/us-social-media-platforms-dismantle-disinformation-campaigns/ Wed, 22 Aug 2018 13:00:39 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=7823

Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc. collectively removed hundreds of accounts tied to an alleged Iranian propaganda operation on Tuesday, while Facebook took down a second campaign it said was linked to Russia.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the accounts identified on his company’s platform were part of two separate campaigns, the first from Iran with some ties to state-owned media, the second linked to sources which Washington has previously named as Russian military intelligence services.

Officials in Iran, where it is a holiday to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival, were not immediately available to comment. Moscow has repeatedly denied using hacking or fake social media accounts to influence foreign elections. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move by Facebook and others is the latest attempt by global social media giants to guard against political interference on their platforms. It comes as concerns are rising about foreign attempts to disrupt the U.S. midterm elections in November.

The United States earlier this year indicted 13 Russians for alleged attempts to meddle in U.S. politics, but the latest alleged Iranian activity, exposed by cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. suggests the problem may be more widespread.

“It really shows it’s not just Russia that engages in this type of activity,” Lee Foster, an information operations analyst with FireEye, told Reuters.

FireEye said the Iranian campaign used a network of fake news websites and fraudulent social media personas spread across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google Plus and YouTube, to push narratives in line with Tehran’s interests.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

The activity was aimed at users in the United States, Britain, Latin America and Middle East up through this month, FireEye said, and included “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes” as well as advocacy of policies favorable to Iran such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal.

FireEye said the Iranian activity did not appear “dedicated” to influencing the upcoming election, though some of the posts aimed at U.S. users did adopt “left-leaning identities” and took stances against President Donald Trump.

That activity “could suggest a more active attempt to influence domestic U.S. political discourse” is forthcoming, Foster said, but “we just haven’t seen that yet.”

‘DISTINCT CAMPAIGNS’

Facebook said the Russia-linked accounts it removed were engaged in “inauthentic behavior” related to politics in Syria and Ukraine. It said that activity did not appear to be linked to the Iranian campaign.

“These were distinct campaigns and we have not identified any link or coordination between them. However, they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,” the company said in a statement.

Facebook last month removed 32 pages and accounts tied to another misinformation campaign without describing its origins, but which U.S. lawmakers said likely had Russian involvement.

Microsoft said this week that hackers linked to the Russian government sought to steal email login credentials from U.S. politicians and think tanks, allegations the Russian foreign ministry described as a “witch-hunt.”

FireEye said the U.S.-focused Iranian activity ramped up last year, just months after Trump took office, with websites and social media accounts posting memes and articles, some of which were apparently copied from legitimate U.S. and Iranian news outlets.

In some cases, the domains for the fake websites like “US Journal” and “Liberty Free Press” were originally registered years before the 2016 election, in 2014 and 2013, but most remained inactive until last year, FireEye said.

Arabic-language, Middle East-focused websites appear to be part of the same campaign, the company added.

The technology companies variously said they linked the accounts to Iran based on user phone numbers, email addresses, website registration records and the timing of account activity matching Iranian business hours.

FireEye expressed “moderate confidence” about the Iranian origins, but said it has not been able to tie the accounts back to a specific organization or individuals.

Hundreds of thousands of people followed one or more of the Facebook pages implicated in the campaign, Facebook said.

It shared examples of removed posts, including a cartoon depicting an Israeli soldier executing a Palestinian and a fake movie poster showing President Trump embracing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Postings cited by FireEye expressed praise for U.S. politicians and other Twitter users who criticized the Trump administration’s decision in May to abandon the Iranian nuclear pact, under which Iran had agreed to curb its nuclear weapons program in exchange for loosening of sanctions.

Some Twitter and Facebook accounts were designed to appear as if they were real people in the U.S., Britain and Canada, according to FireEye. The accounts used a combination of different hashtags to engage in U.S. culture, including “#lockhimup,” “#impeachtrump” and “notmypresident.”

Twitter, which called the effort “coordinated manipulation,” said it removed 284 accounts.

Facebook said it removed 254 pages and 392 accounts across its flagship platform as well as its Instagram service. Some of the accounts had events and groups associated with them.

The accounts spent about $12,000 to advertise through Facebook and Instagram using a variety of currencies, Facebook said. The company said it had notified the U.S. Treasury and State departments of the purchases, which may potentially violate sanctions.

Alphabet, which includes Google and YouTube, did not respond to a request to comment.

Google has added a section to its twice-yearly transparency report to show who buys U.S. election ads on its platform and how much money is spent on political advertising, the search engine giant said on Wednesday.

The move follows similar steps from Twitter and Facebook in late June, as social media platforms face the threat of U.S. regulation over the lack of disclosure on such spending.

The new data from Alphabet Inc gives details on advertisers who have spent more than $500 on political ads from May 31, 2018.

With a spend of $629,500, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a fundraising organization for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, stood as the top U.S. political ad spender, according to the data.

Google said it would update the report every week and the public can view new ads that get uploaded or new advertisers that decide to run ads.

Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, brandished his nationalist and religious credentials on Friday amid reports he had come under pressure from Islamic party allies to accept a conservative cleric as running mate in next year’s election.

In a last-minute decision, Widodo announced on Thursday Ma’ruf Amin, who heads the board of advisers of the country’s biggest mass Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), would be his vice presidential candidate for April’s poll.

The duo will be challenged by the former general Prabowo Subianto and the private equity tycoon and Jakarta deputy governor Sandiaga Uno.

Wearing a crisp white shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Clean. With the people. Real work.”, Widodo told supporters on Friday he would “safeguard national resources”.

He cited as evidence recent policy decisions to nationalise oil and gas assets and seize majority ownership of the huge Grasberg gold and copper mine from the U.S. based Freeport-McMoran.

“It is proof that we are sovereign,” he said.

Amin later led the crowd in prayer, asking God to “give us the capability and spirit to safeguard us against forces that try to destroy, to weaken us and our country.”

The pair left the stage as Islamic singing, rendered in Arabic, played.

The cleric then delivered a sermon at Friday prayers at Jakarta’s biggest mosque.

Prabowo and Uno were to have gone to the mosque before formally registering as candidates at the election commission but changed their plans and prayed at a nearby mosque instead.

‘STAUNCH CONSERVATIVE’

Amin also heads the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), an influential group for clerics that has issued fatwas hostile to minorities, including the Islamic sect Ahmadiyah and the gay community.

He also issued a statement accusing former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama of blasphemy for insulting the Koran, an edict that led hundreds of thousands of protesters to swarm the streets of the Indonesian capital demanding his ouster last year.

Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian, lost the election as he divided his time between campaigning and defending himself against blasphemy charges in court. He was later jailed for two years.

Kevin O’Rourke, a political analyst, said Amin was a “staunch conservative” and “adroit manipulator”.

“As VP, he can bolster Islamic groups and perhaps give some other religious conservative a chance to succeed Widodo,” he wrote.

Indonesia politics analyst Marcus Mietzner said Amin’s appointment could neuter attacks on Widodo’s alleged lack of religious conviction and elevate nationalist themes in the election campaign.

“(The Opposition) are probably going to shift their focus onto ultra-nationalist themes: sell-out to China, invasion of foreign workers, evil imports, predatory investors,” he told Reuters in emailed comments.

“These are classic Prabowo themes anyway, but they will become even more pronounced this time.”

Widodo and Prabowo contested the last presidential election in 2014. Widodo won but his popularity slumped mid-campaign after false reports were spread online that he was a Christian and an ethnic Chinese descendent.

After Friday prayers, Prabowo declared himself the candidate for the poor, touching on another central theme of his campaign: inequality.

“Our job as leaders is to eliminate people’s suffering so that nobody is hungry, naked or suffering … no matter what their religion is.”

“Our friends here are sometimes considered radicals, but believe me, there is no radical Islam in Indonesia,” added Prabowo, who has forged close ties with hardline Islamists.

‘DEPENDENT’

According to party officials from the president’s coalition, Widodo had favoured an alternative to Amin, former constitutional court chief justice Mahfud MD.

In a television interview, Mahfud said he was asked “in some detail” to prepare to be the running mate and was on standby to be anointed on Thursday.

Mahfud said it was Widodo’s decision to overlook him.

But, as quoted by the news portal Detik.com, NU board member Robikin Emhas said NU leaders, including Amin, told Widodo that they could not support Mahfud.

Mietzner said Widodo had initially discounted NU’s opposition to Mahfud.

“The implications are that four years into his presidency, Jokowi is still much more dependent on his supporting parties than he cares to admit. (It’s) a demonstration of his continued weakness,” he said, referring to Widodo by his nickname.

A presidential spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

A leader of NU-aligned National Awakening Party (PKB), Muhaimin Iskander, told reporters on Thursday it was a surprise Amin was selected and that Mahfud was Widodo’s initial preference.

“I thought Mahfud was chosen. But it turned out to be Ma’ruf Amin,” he said.

Slovenia’s five centre-left parties nominated Marjan Sarec, a comedian turned politician, to become prime minister and form a government following an inconclusive June 3 general election.

The nomination is expected to end Slovenia’s longest political stalemate since an election.

The anti-immigrant Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) of former Prime Minister Janez Jansa, the strongest single party in the parliament with 25 seats, could not find a coalition partner to form the government.

Under Slovenian law, lawmakers may nominate candidates for prime minister if the president fails to name a candidate because no party holds a majority in parliament.

The parliament is due to vote on Sarec’s nomination on Aug. 17. He would need support of an absolute majority – at least 46 out of 90 parliamentary members – to be elected.

Sarec is a former actor and comedian whose second term as mayor of Kamnik in northern Slovenia expired this year.

His LMS party has agreed a minority coalition with the Social Democrats, the Party of Modern Centre, the Party of ex-Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek SAB and pensioners’ party Desus.

The coalition also expects to get the backing of the Left party, though it earlier said it would not participate in the government.

The five parties together hold 43 seats, and with the Left’s nine seats they expect to secure a slim majority in the parliament. If confirmed, Sarec will have 15 days to nominate his cabinet.

One of the first tasks of the new government would be to start the sale of Slovenia’s largest bank, state-owned Nova Ljubljanska Banka. Slovenia has committed to sell a 75 percent stake in NLB in exchange for European Commission approval of state aid to the bank in 2013.

Brazilian far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday tipped as his running mate a controversial retired military general who said last year that a military coup was possible in the country.

General Antonio Hamilton Mourão warned last September that the military could seize power if Brazil’s courts do not punish corrupt politicians. Mourão was later removed from his post as the army’s finance chief after similar remarks that the military could step in the event of chaos in Brazil.

Going into Brazil’s most wide open presidential election in decades, Bolsonaro leads in opinion polls that exclude jailed former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolsonaro, running as a candidate for the small Social Liberty Party (PSL), has pegged much of his candidacy on controversial remarks, whether defending the past military dictatorship or suggesting acts of violence against homosexuals.

In an interview last year with Reuters, the candidate for the Social Liberty Party (PSL) played down Mourão’s remarks.

“It was just a warning. Nobody wants to seize power that way,” Bolsonaro said. “Maybe we could have a military man winning in 2018, but through elections.”

Bolsonaro had struggled to find a running mate as other parties tried to distance themselves from his controversial comments. Other proposed vice presidential candidates – including another general, an astronaut and a sitting senator – ultimately fell through.

Mourão’s selection was part of a flurry of political announcements in Brazil on Sunday, the final day for parties to choose candidates for the October election.

Lula’s Workers Party selected Fernando Haddad to run as his vice president, according to the ex-president’s official twitter account, confirming the former São Paulo mayor who had long been considered for the role.

Lula, who has been jailed since April, is widely expected to be barred from standing for office under a law that excludes those with corruption convictions upheld on first appeal. Polls suggest support for Haddad would jump if Lula were to back him as the presidential candidate in his stead.

Senator and former agriculture minister Katia Abreu accepted an offer to run alongside left-wing presidential contender Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), according to a representative for Abreu.

Gomes had sought to ally with a wide array of parties but was rebuffed, leading him to choose fellow party member Abreu as his running mate.

The deputy leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party increased pressure on its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, over anti-Semitism on Sunday, saying the party could “disappear into a vortex of eternal shame” unless he tackled a growing crisis.

Corbyn has been criticised by Jewish groups for what they describe as his tolerance of anti-Semitism in Labour, a crisis that has threatened his standing at a time when the governing Conservatives are struggling to unite behind a Brexit plan.

Corbyn’s again appealed to Jewish members on Sunday, using a video message to press his pledge to drive anti-Semitism out of the party “for good” after a similar attempt fell flat for several Jewish groups on Saturday. One — the Jewish Labour Movement — called for action, not words.

In an interview with the Observer newspaper, deputy leader Tom Watson took aim at Corbyn saying the party had to “take a long, hard look at ourselves, stand up for what is right and present the party as fit to lead the nation – or disappear into a vortex of eternal shame and embarrassment”.

“I think it’s very important that we all work to de-escalate this disagreement.”

He called on Corbyn to adopt in full an internationally accepted definition of anti-Semitism. Labour says it has concerns about part of the definition but had re-opened discussions to take into account Jewish community concerns.

In his message, Corbyn did not refer to the definition but apologised for the hurt caused to many Jewish people and pledged to speed up disciplinary cases in Labour to drive out anti-Semitism.

“People who use anti-Semitic poison need to understand: You do not do it in my name, or the name of my party. You are not our supporters,” he said.

The Labour Party has been benefiting in the polls from a row in the Conservatives over Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans for Britain to leave the European Union, which has deepened divisions and raised the possibility of an early election.

But some Labour members fear the growing row over anti-Semitism will damage the party before an election, which is due in 2022.

Politics and religion combined on Sunday to halt much of Israel’s train service at the start of its working week.

Bowing to demands by ultra-Orthodox partners in the governing coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered rail maintenance suspended on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath – when work is ritually forbidden – and found himself widely blamed for a transportation snarl-up a day later.

With a section of track north of Tel Aviv dismantled for repairs just before the sabbath began on Friday evening, the national railway stopped most services on Sunday so the work could be completed.

That left thousands of commuters, including soldiers heading back to base after weekend leave, scrambling for seats on replacement buses and Netanyahu laying the blame on his transport minister, a rival in his right-wing Likud party. Road traffic was heavier than usual.

It was all, Israeli media commentators said, avoidable and the product of petty politics.

“The Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), as far as Netanyahu is concerned, come before everything else,” columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the Maariv newspaper, referring to a desire to keep intact a coalition alliance with religious parties.

Netanyahu’s coalition, which includes 13 legislators from two ultra-Orthodox parties, controls 66 of parliament’s 120 seats.

For decades, a delicate balance between modern-day life and religious observance has been maintained by a status quo between Israel’s secular majority and a Jewish Orthodox minority.

Under that arrangement there is largely no bus or train service in Jewish cities and villages on Saturdays, but maintenance work has been routinely allowed.

In recent weeks, however, ultra-Orthodox political leaders have faced criticism on Twitter and in religious newspapers over the issue of railway repairs on the Sabbath as pressure mounted on them to challenge the government.

Transport Minister Yisrael Katz had insisted the work continue, but Netanyahu stepped in a week ago to limit its scope and then halt it completely on Saturday.

“Had Netanyahu only put his foot down and pounded on the desk (ultra-Orthodox politicians) would have capitulated … Things are good for them,” popular Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office accused Katz, who has been locked in a power struggle with Netanyahu, of having initiated the crisis with the religious community “in order to damage (Netanyahu’s) public image”.

Katz has made no public comment. Taking his usual seat next to Netanyahu at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, he was stone-faced as the prime minister admonished him in front of cameras.

“Ministers are appointed to resolve crises, not create them,” Netanyahu said.