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After grisly murder, women hold protest in Baku
A group of women holding signs “Femicide is political.” Photo from Gulnara Mehdiyeva's Facebook page, via OC Media and used with permission. This article originally appeared in English on OC Media. An edited version is republished here via a content partnership agreement. Feminists in Azerbaijan held a rally in front of the Government House on February 4 told took away Protestors said the demonstration was given impetus by the brutal murder of Banu Maharramova, a 32-year-old woman whose dismembered body was found in the trash bin in Baku’s Nasimi district on January 27. Local police allege tha...
Global Voices
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In unrecognized Transnistria, a retiree faces criminal charges for ‘anti-Russian’ rhetoric
Screenshot from video interview with the defendant, published on “Zona de Securitate” human rights monitoring website. A 70-year-old retiree from Tiraspol stands accused of offending the president of Transnistria and “denying the positive role of Russian peacekeepers” in the unrecognized republic, according to public records revealed recently. The charges against Mikhail Yermuraki were brought in February 2020 after he had a disagreement with the director of a secondary school in Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, about the rationale for installing a memorial plaque in the school's premise...
Global Voices
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Serbia expels US neo-Nazi after investigative website Bellingcat outed his location
Fascist graffiti in Serbia defaced by antifascist group was changed from “Put migrants into dustbins” to “Refugees welcome.” Photo by Antifascist Action Novi Sad, used with permission. Serbia has expelled Robert Rundo, the “American neo-Nazi and founder of the notorious right-wing extremist Rise Above Movement,” the Serbian daily Blic reported on February 11. According to unofficial information published in the Blic article, Serbian police escorted Rundo to the Trbušnica-Šepak border pass, which connects Serbia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the evening of February 10. Last November, the invest...
Global Voices
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Capturing the mood on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict in Donbas
People rush to the bus stop at the border crossing point in Mayorsk, Donetsk area on December 27, 2016. Photo by Anastasia Vlasova for UNDP Ukraine on Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0). On Valentine’s Day 2021, three Ukrainian soldiers died from an exploding landmine in the Donbas, the region of eastern Ukraine split by fighting between the Ukrainian government and Russian-backed rebel forces. The youngest was born in 1994, three years after Ukraine became an independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The year he was born, Ukraine agreed to get rid of all the nuclear weapons on its soil...
Global Voices
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New Russian law demands self-censorship from social media platforms
Smartphone in crowd. Image by SplitShire from Pixabay. A new Russian law that came into force at the start of February 2021 places the burden of blocking prohibited content on popular social media platforms. This signals a change of pace for the RuNet, where content blocking was previously done by internet service providers or hosting services at the behest of state officials, law enforcement or courts. The new law, №530-FZ, introduces a legal definition for “social networks”: any platform with over 500,000 daily visitors will now officially be classed as such and added to a special state regi...
Global Voices
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Security concerns and legal ambiguities threaten the future of Ukraine's ‘State in a Smartphone’
The “state in a smartphone” project is one of the most ambitious developments of the current Ukrainian government. Photo by JESHOOTS-com on Pixabay. One year ago, the Ukrainian government released the revolutionary mobile application Diia (Ukrainian for “action”), a cornerstone of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign promise of making public services convenient and easily accessible via the internet. The Diia mobile app — and its accompanying online e-services portal — allows citizens to digitize their national ID and biometric passport, personal tax number, student ID, and more, and the di...
Global Voices
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Citizens protest against impunity for online sexual predators in North Macedonia
“Public Room is a Crime” banner on the February 3 protest against impunity for sexual predators. Photo by Vančo Džambaski, CC BY-NC-SA. Hundreds took to the streets of Skopje on February 3 to protest the authorities’ failure to take action against sexual predators who run online networks facilitating the exchange of revenge porn and the abuse of women's private data for online harassment. Some of the same people are also suspected of disseminating child pornography and other criminal behavior in North Macedonia. On January 27, 2021, Ana Koleva, a young woman from Kavadarci, a small town in the...
Global Voices
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Farewell to Japanese sculptor who became a local hero in Prilep, North Macedonia
Ryota Koshika and Ognen Janeski. Photo used with permission. Macedonian journalist Ognen Janeski shared his memories of Ryota “Koshka” Koshika, a Japanese sculptor who spent time in Macedonia and left an indelible mark. Global Voices publishes this verbatim translation of Janeski's Facebook post written on the day of Koshika's death, January 25, 2021: In Memoriam Ryota Koshika – Koshka (1967-2021)Some words about the Japanese who spoke the Prilep dialect — beloved sculptor of Balkan history: I remember that I was already in my teens, at the time living with my family in Prilep. It all happened...
Global Voices
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Some Western observers share Central Asia's misgivings about Alexey Navalny
Screenshot from YouTube channel in which the influential vlogger Yury Dud interviews Alexey Navalny about his views on nationalism. Today, the view among most members of the liberal Russian opposition, as well as in the West, is that whatever mistakes Alexey Navalny might have made in the past should be overlooked in the name of his fight against President Vladimir Putin's political system. Among Central Asians, however, that view is being disputed — and a minority in the West has voiced similar concerns about the way Navalny is being uncritically revered. Nazgul Yergalieva, a consultant from ...
Global Voices
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Alexey Navalny's views on migrants run counter to his pro-democracy discourse
Alexey Navalny on the campaign trail in Irkutsk in 2017 in Central Russia. Credit: Evgeny Feldman for navalny.feldman.photo, used under CC-BY-NC license. While Alexey Navalny has emerged as a rallying figure for a large part of the liberal Russian public and a symbol of opposition to president Vladimir Putin, his image among Central Asians – many of whom live in Russia as migrant workers – is much more nuanced. Indeed, some perceive him as a nationalist who has made discriminatory statements he has neither apologized for nor retracted. Navalny was thrust into the spotlight as a whistleblower i...
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