Written by Andrea Marcela Paliza Olivares | Translated by Clara Guest
November 9, 2020, marked the beginning of the most important week of the last 20 years for our country. That day, the Peruvian Congress, after a brief discussion attempting to justify its actions in the fight against corruption, decided to remove the President of the Republic, Martín Vizcarra. The objective of this action, fueled by members of Congress who were subjects of their own criminal investigations, was to control the main powers of the State: the Executive and the Legislature, in order to oppose reforms or support measures that favoured their own interests. …
By Melissa Vida
Dawns in El Salvador are fresh and humid. Whenever I go to this tropical, warm and volcanic country in Central America, I would be woken up at 6 am by the voice of the young man selling bread: “ El pan, el pan,” he calls, while ringing the bell on his bicycle. Even a sleepyhead like me enjoyed this mundane experience of everyday life there. During my latest trip to my mother’s country, however, my nostalgia was replaced by a familiar feeling of suffocation.
I was told that this young man keeps an eye on the neighborhood on behalf of the deadly gangs who live at the end of the street. The bicycle is a cover-up-the bread we buy every morning is a form of surveillance. My fondness dissolved and no morning has ever been the same. …
By Carla Ramos | Translated by Anthony Sutterman
As a Peruvian living in Germany, the main way for me to find out what was going on in Peru was through Peruvian social networks and the Peruvian press. The coverage in Germany on the subject has been minimal, and within the limited amount I have seen, most has come from sources that specialize in covering current issues in Latin America (such as the Deutsche Welle network in Spanish). A cousin of mine, a Peruvian woman in the United States, told me exactly the same thing: the media there have not covered the demonstrations in Peru either. …
Written by Erick Huerta Velazquez | Translated by Teodora C. Hasegan
This article by Erick Huerta Velázquez was originally published on the Comunicares website, and an edited version is published with permission by Global Voices.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the news, especially that related to the telecommunications sector in which I work, seems to reveal that the post-COVID “new normal” is one where Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) will play a significant role. This is especially due to the most horrifying aspects associated with surveillance, such as artificial intelligence.
It seems that we are able to survive thanks to Amazon or to the incredible possibility that all movements are monitored through our cell phones, or with the help of ICT, children can continue to have classes, no matter if that experience is rewarding or not. …
The continued policing of Black bodies and the lasting structure of European colonialism and bondage is a legacy born from the Transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath in the African Diaspora.
In light of the recent deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Tony McDade in the United States, as well as the call to end all forms of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence across the African continent, Latin America, and Europe, the ties to colonial rule and slavery throughout the diaspora have become more and more apparent.
From the early 1500s to the late 1900s, up to 15 million African people were captured and enslaved by Europeans and forcibly brought to the Americas and Caribbean islands. …
By Camilo Gomez
In November 2020, Peru saw one of the largest protests in its history when thousands of people took to the streets throughout the country in a spontaneous movement led by youth and grassroots organizations.
The protests were propelled by what they deemed to be an unlawful coup against their president, Martín Vizcarra, who had been impeached by the Peruvian Congress on November 9.
While legislators were trying to protect themselves from judicial investigations of corruption, the police were snatching the Peruvian flag from protestors. …
By Gulf Center for Human Rights
This post was written by Khalid Ibrahim, executive director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR), an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in the MENA region.
Human rights defenders have nothing but words to defend the civil and human rights of their people. Their enemies, on the other hand, have all the conventional weapons at their disposal, including imprisonment, in their attempt to end peaceful work aimed at building a prosperous future for all.
Human rights activism continues, though, even from within the confines of a prison cell. “Human rights work does not end with imprisonment,” says Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, who in 2017 went on six hunger strikes to demand his rights and those of other prisoners of conscience, while serving life imprisonment for his peaceful human rights work. …
By Filip Noubel
Before COVID-19, Prague was visited, every year, by millions of tourists looking for cheap beer and spectacular architecture. In the 1950s, on the other hand, the capital of then-Czechoslovakia attracted a very different crowd of travelers: Leftist intellectuals from around the world looking to see what life was like under socialism.
Many of those political tourists came from Latin America and included literary giants such as Jorge Amado and Gabriel García Márquez.Long forgotten, this shared history is now slowly being rediscovered and reassessed in the Czech Republic.
As the unfolded, both the West and the Soviet Union engaged in intensive propaganda efforts to demonstrate the superiority of their political and socio-economic systems, usually targeting audiences in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. And b oth sides saw art as one an effective way to relay this message. …
To get away from social media and election night, I took a long walk in the chilly November gloom through my neighborhood. Stretching up into the pitch-black dank darkness of late afternoon, nearly every window in every apartment tower or condominium block was lit up with the glow of gigantic flat-screen televisions, all displaying the identical talking heads and the red and blue election results of CNN. Even in Canada, the election was inescapable.
Returning home, our big screen TV was dominated by Minecraft, not CNN. The stereo in the kitchen played not the news, but an old album by Okuda Tamio as we prepared dinner. My wife, like many people in Japan, follows US politics, but keeps her opinions to herself. …
By Adriana Hildenbrand andMiryam Rivera Holguin | Translated by Teodora C. Hasegan
In Peru, during the government of Alberto Fujimori, 244,234 women and 20,693 men were irreversibly sterilized as part of national family planning policies (1996–1999). These forced surgical procedures were denounced as violations of human rights, especially of indigenous populations in rural areas. Currently, 1,321 women continue to pursue the legal process of seeking justice against a policy that infringed their rights over two decades ago.
On September 17, the activist groups of victims gathered to embroider their names on the Peruvian flag, to highlight their case. Dressed in the red and white colours of the national flag, they held a demonstration on the beach in Lima-socially distanced as a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19-as they continued to denounce the ways in which the Peruvian justice system turned its back on them. Andean women travelled over a thousand kilometers from the mountains to seek justice in the capital. Despite their frustration, they have not given up, but they continue to fight to achieve justice for themselves and for the thousands of other women who have been abused. …
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