Published on June 14th, 2019

By Charley Dutil

Ever since the Sudanese military arrested the countries former dictator Omar al-Bashir in light of democratic protest in April, Sudan has been ruled with a military iron fist.

Promising a slow but peaceful transition of power over a three year period to a democratically elected government the military has now halted talks with the representants of democratic groups after democratic activists lost trust in the military and resumed protests.

On June 3rd, the Military opened fire on protesters killing over 100 protesters according to local doctors who found 118 bodies floating in the Nile river.

Following the Massacre the Sudanese Professionals Association have called for a nationwide strike, a call that seems to have been heard by a large number of Sudanese as the country is now a week and a half into a general strike.

On June 4th, Britain and Germany called for an emergency UN security council meeting to hear a briefing from UN envoy Nicholas Haysom, who has been working with the African Union (AU) on a solution to the crisis in Sudan. However, Russia and China blocked any bid to condemn the Sudanese military government actions such as the killing of civilians and refused to issue an urgent call from world powers for an immediate halt to the violence.

Al Jazeera’s Diplomatic Editor James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York was told

“that China adamantly refused the draft statements, saying it was an internal matter”. He also added that “They were backed in that by Russia, and Kuwait [who] said the draft needed amendments”. Russian Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy also said that the proposed statement was “unbalanced” and stressed the need to be “very cautious in this situation”.

However, this begs the question of what’s unbalanced about a call to stop the Sudanese army from killing its civilian population.

Well for Russia and China there are multiple reasons why supporting a bid to condemn a military dictatorships massacre of protesters may be problematic.

First of all, for China, the countries communist government has been dealing for years now, with democratic protests of its own in Hong Kong and has used violence when it has judged necessary. Condemning the Sudanese government would only add oil to the fire in Hong Kong as protesters would now be able to call out the government on its hypocrisy.

Russia has also had its own problems with democratic protesters, usually protesting Putin’s rule and the country corruption. Over the years the government has routinely arrested and imprisoned protesters for protesting the Putin government

Finally, it is also worth noting that both Russia and China in the past, have illegally sold military equipment to Sudan. In fact, both countries have been known to break UN embargoes to sell weapons to Sudan. China also has major investments in the countries infrastructure and development that it wishes to protect and a stable military dictatorship indebted is the best way to protect such investments.

 

Published on November 9th, 2018, by Charley Dutil

Photo credit: Open Culture

Following the release of the Freddy Mercury biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody last Friday, many critics loathed the film for not exploring in depth Mercury fight with HIV/Aids. Many in the late 80’s and early 90’s died or were left with gruesome side effects from early HIV/Aids medication. With that said, we’re now almost 30 years removed from that time period so what exactly going on with the fight against aids?

Well, according to the latest numbers from the United Nations department on HIV/Aids research, there are approximately 36,9 million people in the world living with HIV/Aids. Of those 36,9 million, 21,7 million have access to life-saving antiretroviral therapy. Adults aren’t the only ones affected by the disease, 1.8 million kids are currently suffering from the deadly condition. Most modern-day cases and new cases of aids are found in eastern Europe, central Asia, and the middle east all areas were access to treatment are limited due to their high cost.

Every year, it’s estimated that 1,8 million people become infected with the disease and, 940 000 people die from it. Approximately only 75% of people affected by the condition know they carry the disease. Overall since the beginning of the HIV/Aids epidemic, 77,3 million people have been diagnosed with HIV/Aids with a little bit under half perishing. According to the United Nations, there has been about 35,4 million death related to HIV/Aids.

However, it’s now possible especially in developed countries to live with the disease in Canada, it is estimated about 63 110 Canadians are living with HIV/Aids, of that number about 35% live in Ontario, 25% in Quebec. In 2016, there were 2344 new cases of HIV/Aids in Canada one of the biggest increases in the last two decades. About 75% of all new cases every year are diagnosed in men.

Most cases are now treatable thanks to medication developed in the last three decades but each individual case may be treated using different medication and treatment methods. The most popular drugs to treat HIV/Aids are antiretroviral drugs such as Nucleoside/Nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs), Non-nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NNRTIs) and Protease Inhibitors (PIs) which all work on certain proteins to weaken the decease ability to reproduce and stop its spread through the body. In Canada, most medication is covered under private and public health care plans.

Nevertheless, there is still no clear cure for HIV/Aids… lack of funding, research for cures for other diseases and funding being mostly concentrated on long-term care for those already affected for the disease are all hurdles scientist have to jump to even do research on a possible cure. Another big problem for scientists is the fact that HIV can spread to areas in the body where it is undetectable and impossible for modern technology to find. This impedes scientist to track the spread of the disease and to fully understand its development.

With that said knowing that there exist effective treatments and medication to fight HIV/Aids and had he been infected with the disease in 2018 chances are Freddy Mercury could have lived with the condition…

By Charley Dutil, Published October 30th, 2018

Photo Credits: The Indu Times

In Canada, the truth and reconciliation commission shed a light on the true evil of the residential school system. Rooted in racism and colonialism, the goal of residential schools was to root out native culture out of first nations children and convert them to Christianity and teach them Canadian values’.

Halfway around the world in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang, the Chinese government has been ramping up its efforts in the last three years to re-educate the Muslim population of the region and cleanse its inhabitants from any Islamic culture or values.

Since taking over as the president of China in 2013, Xi Jinping has vowed to unite all of China’s different ethnical groups into the ‘’Chinese identity’’. An identity centered around Jinping himself their one and only spiritual leader as well as the modified communist ideology of the Chinese communist party and certain Chinese stereotypes.

For Jinping, the Uighurs, the name given to the Xinjiang provinces Muslim population, represent a threat because they don’t believe him to be their spiritual leader or see him as a great figure of authority. The Uighurs, are Sunni Muslims and culturally close to Turkish Muslims, most of them don’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese as they speak a dialect known as the Western Yugur language. Furthermore, the province of Xinjiang is closer to Istanbul then Beijing.

But here’s the thing, the term residential schools might have been appropriate in 2015, 2016 and maybe even 2017 but now the Chinese residential schools have turned into internment camps where people are imprisoned and don’t get to leave. In the beginning, once reeducated the Uighurs would be released from the “schools” but now nobody leaves.

When asked by the BBC what these camps were for, the local non-Uighur population told them they were to educate the Uighurs about China. However, it would seem their new purpose is to separate the Uighurs from Chinese society and hold them captive to protect the population from their Islamic influences and culture which the government sees as opposed to the communist party’s values and Jinping leadership.

The Chinese government has also issued propaganda depicting Uighurs as terrorists and as the enemies of the Chinese people. Demonizing a segment of the population is usually a step to genocide, the Germans did it to the Jews, the Hutsis did it to the Tutsis in Rwanda and etc…

But the story doesn’t end there… since April 2018, according to the BBC, the internment camps have doubled in size and more and more Uighurs are detained and taken from their homes every day. It is estimated that China is currently imprisoning over 1 million Uighurs in these internment camps.

According to escapees and former detainees, the Chinese aren’t just ‘’re-educating’’ the Uighurs they’re torturing them physically and mentally. The prisoners are also detained in poor conditions and receive limited rations of food according to former detainees.

This could very well be a genocide in the making…

Photo Credits: The Washington Post

By Charley Dutil

Khashoggi assassination highlights dangers journalists face every day

It’s now been two weeks since Jamal Khashoggi lost his life in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Killed by a team of trained Saudi assassin in the consulate, the journalist never left the establishment, and his disappearance became the source of an international blame game between Turkey and Saudi Arabia into what had exactly happened to the Washington Post columnist. Denying the first accusations of any wrongdoing, Saudi Arabia has now declared through state-run media that Khashoggi died following a fistfight with Saudi officials. Turkey and many other countries including Canada believe this was a political assassination against an outspoken critic of the Saudi Royal family.

However, as horrible as Khashoggi death is, he isn’t the first critic of the Saudi Royal family to be assassinated, locked up or have faced cruel punishment for speaking up against backward and authoritarian Saud policies and actions.

Blogger Raif Badawi is still imprisoned in the kingdom despite multiple calls from countries such as Canada for his release. Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1000 lashes for creating an online group that advocated for liberal values and democratic reforms in Saudi Arabia

Others weren’t so lucky…

Ali Al-Nimr, Dawood Al-Marhoon and, Abdullah Al-Zaher were all convicted of crimes against the state for protesting the monarchy back in 2012 when they were all under 18. Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the United Nations on the rights of the Child which prohibits the life sentencing or death sentence from being applied to minors.

Since its inception in 1932, Saudi Arabia has been a country ruled by an absolute monarch. Saudi Arabia first king was Ibn Saud who established the Islamist doctrine of Wahhabism as the kingdoms only religion and instilled a Wahhabi version of sharia law as the kingdoms official legal system. This legal system mixed with the iron fist the monarchy exercises over its kingdom has lead to the use of unusually cruel punishment for any critic of the king and his policies. Saudi Arabia currently ranks 169th on the freedom of the press index by reporters without borders.

But it’s not only Saudi Arabia that’s been doubling down on its punishment of journalists and free speech advocates. Khashoggi death is the result of a more disturbing trend of violence against journalists that can be observed worldwide.

Just last week, Bulgarian journalist Viktoria Marinova was raped and assassinated. Marinova was the host of a news show in Bulgaria which was critical of the Bulgarian government, denouncing corruption and giving a platform to investigative journalists.

The country is currently ruled by prime minister Boyko Borisov who denied all allegations that the government was behind Marinova assassination despite heavy scrutiny and accusations from the international community. Bulgaria has a shady past when it comes to freedom of the press.

Bulgaria currently ranks 111 out of 180 on reporters without borders freedom of the press index.

Sadly according to the committee to protect journalists, 44 journalists have died this year in the line of duty. In 2017, 46 journalists were killed, 2012 is the worst year on record with 73 journalists killed.

But it’s not only governments that target journalists. Many journalists have been assassinated by either terrorist’s groups or individuals who targeted them for things written about them in the past.

On June 28th, gunman Jarrod Ramos opened fire at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland killing 4 journalists and an editor. Ramos targeted the Gazette for its 2011 coverage of his harassment case. Ramos had filled several unsuccessful defamation suits believing that the paper had ruined his reputation.

In February, Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend were shot dead at his Velka Maca house. Kuciak had been investigating higher-ups in the governing social democratic party Smer for tax fraud and links to individuals believed to be part of the Italian Mafia.

According to the committee to protect journalists

‘’At the time of his death, the journalist was collecting records on men considered by Italian police to be extremely dangerous, the OCCRP stated. The OCCRP has since published the uncompleted version of Kuciak’s article, which alleged embezzlement of EU funds.’’

In Afghanistan the country with the most deaths among journalists this year,  9 reporters lost their lives in a double suicide bomb attack back on April 30th of this year. Daesh claimed responsibility for the attacks which killed 25 people. Afghanistan has been in a perpetual state of war since the early 2000’s and is an extremely dangerous place for journalists to work.

This goes to show that states aren’t the only perpetrators of crimes against journalists, as individuals and groups regularly target journalists for a wide range of reasons.

But assassinations aren’t the only danger facing journalists.

For example, President Donald Trump recently said that it’s ok to body slam reporters at a rally following an incident in which saw a journalist be body slammed by a Republican candidate in Montana and encouraged more to do it.

Being a journalism student and having talked to multiple journalists, harassment isn’t uncommon. The #Metoo movement in 2017, highlighted major sexual misconduct in newsrooms and showed the conditions that especially female journalists are faced with every day at the office or on the field. Having covered events, it’s also isn’t rare to be screamed at, slurs and accusations of fake news. Although these may be a false equivalency to previous examples of violence against journalism it remains that these are the problems Canadian journalists face on a daily basis and they shouldn’t.