Life in the camps
▻http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/MYANMAR-ROHINGYA/010051VB46G/index.html
The #Rohingya crisis
Life in the camps
Makeshift huts crammed onto muddy hillsides. Water wells fouled by nearby latrines. Rapidly-spreading diseases. Health experts say overcrowding, poor sanitation and limited health care in the Rohingya refugee areas of Bangladesh is a “recipe for disaster”. This is a closer look at life in the camps.
December 4, 2017
#Rohingya women sold as sex slaves in Bangladesh
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/rohingya-women-sold-sex-slaves-bangladesh-171203075517252.html
Rohingya girls and women in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar are being sold as sex slaves, according to a victim and aid agencies.
Fifteen-year-old Khartoun* told Al Jazeera she was sold into sex slavery after she arrived in Bangladesh by boat to escape a brutal military crackdown.
She was alone - her mother, father and sister had been killed by a mortar shell fired by the Myanmar military during a sweeping crackdown against Rohingya people. Upon Khartoun’s arrival in September, two women approached her on the beach and told her they would help her.
“They told me if I went with them they would look after me and help me find a husband,” Khartoun said.
Instead, she was locked up for three weeks and sold to a Bangladeshi man, who she said, raped her and sexually abused her for 12 days.
Rohingya Recount Atrocities: ‘They Threw My Baby Into a Fire’
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/world/asia/rohingya-myanmar-atrocities.html?smid=pl-share
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh — Hundreds of women stood in the river, held at gunpoint, ordered not to move.
A pack of soldiers stepped toward a petite young woman with light brown eyes and delicate cheekbones. Her name was Rajuma, and she was standing chest-high in the water, clutching her baby son, while her village in Myanmar burned down behind her.
“You,” the soldiers said, pointing at her.
She froze.
“You!”
She squeezed her baby tighter.
In the next violent blur of moments, the soldiers clubbed Rajuma in the face, tore her screaming child out of her arms and hurled him into a fire. She was then dragged into a house and gang-raped.
By the time the day was over, she was running through a field naked and covered in blood. Alone, she had lost her son, her mother, her two sisters and her younger brother, all wiped out in front of her eyes, she says.
Rajuma is a Rohingya Muslim, one of the most persecuted ethnic groups on earth, and she now spends her days drifting through a refugee camp in Bangladesh in a daze.
She relayed her story to me during a recent reporting trip I made to the camps, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya like her have rushed for safety. Her deeply disturbing account of what happened in her village, in late August, was corroborated by dozens of other survivors, whom I spoke with at length, and by human rights groups gathering evidence of atrocities.
Survivors said they saw government soldiers stabbing babies, cutting off boys’ heads, gang-raping girls, shooting 40-millimeter grenades into houses, burning entire families to death, and rounding up dozens of unarmed male villagers and summarily executing them.
The world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis is taking place in Myanmar. Here’s why. - Vox
▻https://www.vox.com/world/2017/9/18/16312054/rohingya-muslims-myanmar-refugees-violence
Entire villages have been burned to the ground. Women have been raped. Rohingya refugees report that soldiers shot at them as they fled. Along the border with Bangladesh, there are reports that the military has laid land mines to ensure those fleeing won’t return. Though independent observers have no access to the region, the Myanmar government now says 175 villages in the region — 30 percent of all Rohingya villages — are empty.
“We are hearing really horrendous stories of people who have survived by the skin of their teeth,” Paolo Lubrano, an Oxfam worker in Cox’s Bazar, a town on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, told me by Skype Friday morning. Lubrano described “dire violence” and an enormous number of very young, and very traumatized, Rohingya refugees. Among those fleeing Myanmar, he added, are many pregnant women who have been walking for three, four, or even five days to find safety.
The military calls the campaign a “clearance” operation against an insurgent terrorist military group. They claim the crackdown is in response to a series of armed attacks on border police by Rohingya militants on August 25 that left 12 officers dead, the second such type of attacks in the past 12 months. But observers say that though armed Rohingya insurgents exist, their overall numbers are small, and they are poorly equipped. And the crackdown has affected the entire ethnic group.
Meanwhile, in a Facebook post on Sunday, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military, was dismissive: “They have demanded recognition as Rohingya, which has never been an ethnic group in Myanmar.”
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, has dubbed this crisis a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Some are going further — saying the country is tipping toward crimes against humanity and even possibly genocide. On September 14, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke out about the “horrors that we are witnessing occurring in Burma.”
Exclusive: Facebook Silences Rohingya Reports of Ethnic Cleansing
▻http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-rohingya-activists-say-facebook-silences-them
Rohingya activists—in Burma and in Western countries—tell The Daily Beast that Facebook has been removing their posts documenting the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people in Burma (also known as Myanmar). They said their accounts are frequently suspended or taken down.
The Rohingya people are a Muslim ethnic minority group in Burma. They face extraordinary persecution and violence from the Burmese military; military personnel torch villages, murder refugees, and force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Human rights watchdogs say the persecution has intensified in recent months, and a top UN official described a renewed offensive by the Burmese military as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled to Bangladesh. Sen. John McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for reduced military cooperation with the Burmese government because of the violence.
Rohingya people trying to use social media to share information about the attacks on them tell The Daily Beast they have had their posts removed and their accounts shut down, and that they hope Facebook stops silencing them.
A Facebook representative told The Daily Beast the company would look into the situation. “We want Facebook to be a place where people can share responsibly, and we work hard to strike the right balance between enabling expression while providing a safe and respectful experience,” said Facebook spokesperson Ruchika Budhraja in a statement. “That’s why we have Community Standards, which outline what type of sharing is allowed on Facebook and what type of content may be reported to us and removed. Anyone can report content to us if they think it violates our standards. In response to the situation in Myanmar, we are carefully reviewing content against our Community Standards.”
Facebook is currently facing substantial criticism for what appears to be an indifferent attitude toward promoting divisive material. Last week, ProPublica revealed that the network sold ads tailored to “Jew haters.” Days earlier, The Daily Beast reported that Russian front groups used Facebook to
American Congress approves for ISPs to sell your browsing history
With this comes an end to the privacy rules established by the FCC during Obama, less than a year ago, and where ISPs first had to ask your permission
▻http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/10/27/fcc-adopt-new-broadband-customer-privacy-rules/92822596
Reaction of the EFF:
▻https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/congress-sides-cable-and-telephone-industry
If the bill is signed into law, companies like Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements. Worst yet, consumers will now have to pay a privacy tax by relying on VPNs to safeguard their information.
Article en français:
Higher dementia risk linked to living near heavy traffic, research shows - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
▻http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-05/scientists-link-dementia-risk-to-living-near-heavy-traffic/8164054
People who live near busy roads laden with heavy traffic face a higher risk of developing dementia than those living further away, according to researchers in Canada.
A study published in The Lancet medical journal found that people who lived within 50 metres of high-traffic roads had a 7 per cent higher chance of developing dementia compared to those who lived more than 300 metres away from busy roadways.
“Air pollutants can get into the blood stream and lead to inflammation, which is linked with cardiovascular disease and possibly other conditions such as diabetes,” said Ray Copes, an environmental and occupational health expert at Public Health Ontario.
Researchers at Public Health Ontario conducted the study with colleagues from Canada’s Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.
“This study suggests air pollutants that can get into the brain via the blood stream can lead to neurological problems,” Mr Copes said.
Résumé sur The Lancet
Living near major roads and the incidence of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis: a population-based cohort study - The Lancet
▻http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)32399-6/fulltext
Summary
Background
Emerging evidence suggests that living near major roads might adversely affect cognition. However, little is known about its relationship with the incidence of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. We aimed to investigate the association between residential proximity to major roadways and the incidence of these three neurological diseases in Ontario, Canada.
Methods
In this population-based cohort study, we assembled two population-based cohorts including all adults aged 20–50 years (about 4·4 million; multiple sclerosis cohort) and all adults aged 55–85 years (about 2·2 million; dementia or Parkinson’s disease cohort) who resided in Ontario, Canada on April 1, 2001. Eligible patients were free of these neurological diseases, Ontario residents for 5 years or longer, and Canadian-born. We ascertained the individual’s proximity to major roadways based on their residential postal-code address in 1996, 5 years before cohort inception. Incident diagnoses of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis were ascertained from provincial health administrative databases with validated algorithms. We assessed the associations between traffic proximity and incident dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis using Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for individual and contextual factors such as diabetes, brain injury, and neighbourhood income. We did various sensitivity analyses, such as adjusting for access to neurologists and exposure to selected air pollutants, and restricting to never movers and urban dwellers.
Findings
Between 2001, and 2012, we identified 243 611 incident cases of dementia, 31 577 cases of Parkinson’s disease, and 9247 cases of multiple sclerosis. The adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of incident dementia was 1·07 for people living less than 50 m from a major traffic road (95% CI 1·06–1·08), 1·04 (1·02–1·05) for 50–100 m, 1·02 (1·01–1·03) for 101–200 m, and 1·00 (0·99–1·01) for 201–300 m versus further than 300 m (p for trend=0·0349). The associations were robust to sensitivity analyses and seemed stronger among urban residents, especially those who lived in major cities (HR 1·12, 95% CI 1·10–1·14 for people living <50 m from a major traffic road), and who never moved (1·12, 1·10–1·14 for people living <50 m from a major traffic road). No association was found with Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.
Interpretation
In this large population-based cohort, living close to heavy traffic was associated with a higher incidence of dementia, but not with Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis.
Funding
Health Canada (MOA-4500314182).
Myanmar: Security forces target #Rohingya during vicious Rakhine scorched-earth campaign
The Myanmar security forces are responsible for unlawful killings, multiple rapes and the burning down of houses and entire villages in a campaign of violence against Rohingya people that may amount to crimes against humanity, Amnesty International reveals in a new report today.
▻https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/12/myanmar-security-forces-target-rohingya-viscious-scorched-earth-campaign
#rapport:
▻https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa16/5362/2016/en
#Birmanie #Bangladesh #asile #migrations #réfugiés #destruction #feu #crime_contre_l'humanité #viols
50,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar: Government
DHAKA: Some 50,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar, the foreign ministry in Dhaka said on Thursday (Dec 29), seeking shelter from a bloody crackdown by the army.
Rohingya Refugees in #Bangladesh to Be Relocated to Remote Island
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh’s government is moving forward with a plan to relocate Rohingya refugees staying in camps near the country’s largest tourist resort towns to a remote island that is underwater for much of the year.
#Birmanie #réfugiés #asile #migrations #Myanmar #îles #isolement #déplacement #migrerrance #déportation
cc @reka
Rohingya Face ‘Campaign of Terror’ in Myanmar, U.N. Finds
GENEVA — Members of Myanmar’s Army and the police have slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children, gang-raped women and girls, and forced as many as 90,000 Rohingya Muslims from their homes, according to a United Nations report released on Friday.
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/world/asia/rohingya-myanmar-un-report.html?ref=world&_r=1
#terreur
Rohingya Refugee: ‘They Cut the Bodies Into Four Pieces’
In light of a new U.N. report documenting atrocities against Rohingya in Myanmar, photojournalist Allison Joyce profiles Rohingya refugees who recently fled to Bangladesh and have harrowing stories to tell.
▻https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/02/07/rohingya-refugee-they-cut-the-bodies-into-four-pieces
Rohingya camps in Bangladesh and Thailand, worlds apart
Differences in how the two countries have treated the persecuted Rohingya could not be more stark.
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/asia/2017/01/rohingya-camps-bangladesh-thailand-worlds-170127113046730.html
#Thaïlande #camps_de_réfugiés
Birmanie. Le monde n’a pas encore pris conscience du drame des Rohingyas
Des centaines de morts sont devenus des milliers : “Plus de 1000 musulmans appartenant à la minorité des Rohingyas pourraient avoir été tués par la répression de l’armée birmane dans l’État d’Arakan” à l’ouest du pays, affirment deux officiels de l’ONU à Reuters, repris par The Irrawaddy.
Inside a Rohingya refugee camp
Rohingya refugees plant paddy as they work as daily labor near the #Kutupalang Unregistered Refugee Camp in Cox�s Bazar, Bangladesh. Bangladesh is already host to hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees, and says the latest influx has strained its limited resources. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain
Hundreds of Rohingya ’return home’ from Bangladesh
DHAKA: Hundreds of Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh to escape persecution in Myanmar have returned home, community leaders said Sunday, adding that most had gone back temporarily to fetch relatives.
▻http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/hundreds-of-rohingya-return-home-from-bangladesh/articleshow/57236651.cms
#retour_au_pays
Rohingya Volunteers Help Rape Survivors Find Solace in Women-Only Hubs
In the Rohingya refugee camps of southern Bangladesh, women-only support centers run by volunteers offer a safe space for those who have survived violence during Myanmar’s brutal military campaign.
Nine months on, a race against time to find pregnant Rohingya rape survivors
Nearly nine months after Myanmar’s military was accused of widespread sexual violence in a crackdown against Rohingya communities, aid groups in Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps are scrambling to identify women and girls now pregnant by rape.
▻https://www.irinnews.org/feature/2018/04/16/nine-months-race-against-time-find-pregnant-rohingya-rape-survivors
Nine months after Myanmar assaults, Rohingya camps ready for spate of births
Agencies braced for spike in unwanted children who were conceived as a result of sexual violence by Myanmar soldiers and militiamen
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/01/nine-months-after-myanmar-assaults-rohingya-camps-ready-for-spate-of-bi
Foodora strikes in Italy – the dark side of the sharing economy | Struggles in Italy
▻https://strugglesinitaly.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/foodora-strikes-in-italy-the-dark-side-of-the-sharing-ec
1. The sharing economy?
2. Foodora in Italy
3. New conditions and first strikes
4. Evolution of the struggle
5. Flexibility and the Italian labour market
6. Sources
1. The sharing economy?
Newspapers report every day how our world is changing because of digital technologies. We often read about full automation, digitalization of life and the end of work. All these themes are interwoven in the sharing economy: apps that connect supply and demand to share a particular good. Foodora is not one of them, as nothing is shared. Foodora is part of the gig-economy, like Uber, MechanicalTurk or Task Rabbit.
Foodora offers restaurants the possibility of new customers by providing a flexible fleet of couriers. An app monitors purchases and assigns them to the couriers based on an algorithm that calculates speed and distances. Restaurants get new orders without employing any more people, paying 30% only on completed deliveries, meaning they have no additional costs. Customers get the food they want from a great variety of restaurants, at home, by paying €2.90 per delivery. Young cyclists, who the company calls “riders” (even in Italian), get to earn some money by moving through the city in their free time. Foodora, the once-small Berlin-based startup has grown into an international business, located in 10 countries and 36 cities. It opened in Italy two years ago, starting in Turin and Milan (northern Italy) and will soon be expanding to Rome, with prospective sales volume growing at a rate of 75% every month.
Currently the riders, roughly 300 in Turin and 600 in Milan, are not directly employed by the company. Instead, they are employed using a contract structure known as “co.co.co” (“contract for continued collaboration on a project”). These contracts effectively result in the riders being regarded as autonomous workers collaborating with the company, which enables the company to bypass several labour regulations which apply to direct employees.
2. Foodora in Italy
It’s been sold for a figure of several tens of million of euros yet Foodora has the typical appeal of a startup: young and friendly international people working in an open space office in #Berlin and young students delivering food by bike as an easy side-job.
It landed in #Turin as a mirror image of the Berlin base. The managers, all under 30, meet every so often in a co-working space in the city center, are informal and speak using English words. The fleet of couriers are also young, educated, and are paid €5 per hour.
This image started to crack when in August Deliveroo couriers in London went on strike and a month later their counterparts in Paris also protested. The reason was, oversimplifying, that once the company had attracted enough “workers”, pay shifted from a fixed scheme to per-delivery compensation only.
Ever since the company opened in Italy, workers had been meeting and talking to one another informally, especially where they are waiting for new deliveries. They had held informal assemblies, sometimes even meeting with management in order to discuss many issues. When a change in contract similar to London and Paris happened at Foodora in Turin, the protest flared up.
The usual problems affecting all delivery workers are that deliveries may be in harsh weather conditions and usually involve moving a lot (60-80 kilometers per shift in Foodora’s case). Nor is it new that there are long waits for the food to be ready or the next delivery.
There are, though, completely new aspects connected to the digital nature of the work relationship. Working time is 24/7 meaning there is no such thing as work/non-work division. Riders can theoretically decide when they are available, though they do not know whether they will actually work as the management decides to accept, modify or even delete the shifts, at any time, even during the shift itself. As an algorithm decides in real time the work rhythms (according to volume of requests and positions of the couriers), there are hours of absolute rush and hours of complete stand-still. Not to mention that both bike and phone are provided by the courier, with all the related costs of maintenance and repair. In some interviews workers even mentioned privacy issues as continual geolocalization goes against privacy law, especially if done by an app from the Apple and Google Play stores.
All of this for €500 a month, working 25 hours a week.
3. New conditions and first strikes
Riders demanded better working conditions. In May 2016, they wrote a letter signed by 85 out of 100 workers, but the requests were answered with a mix of procrastination and excuses, such as that the head of the company was elsewhere at the time. Finally, in July, a meeting took place but management said the contract could not be modified. What turned dissatisfaction into protest was that the contract could actually be changed, and the company did that.
In September Foodora issued a new contract, applying to all new riders, and from November 30, to all riders. This new contract eliminates the fixed income and replaces it with a variable one: €2.70 per delivery. The number of deliveries per shift is not a factor that riders can influence, as if they were factory workers, but it will still determine their income. For an income of €500, they will have to make a delivery every half hour, at any hour, regardless of the day, time or period of the year.
The managing director, Gianluca Cocco, refused to discuss the new terms with the base union, SiCobas, that the workers had chosen to represent them, saying that autonomous workers have no right to unionise. The management agreed only to face-to-face meetings with individual workers and many were removed from the group used to communicate with them or blacklisted.
The informal connections between riders turned into the platform for a strike: on October 8th in Turin there was the first strike in Italy of workers employed through an app. Around 50 riders blocked the service for the whole Saturday, biking through the city distributing leaflets in the restaurants affiliated to Foodora. There were basically three demands:
abolition of the “temporary collaboration” contract described above, as well as the per-delivery pay, and introduction of a flexible part-time (20 hours minimum) contract. This kind of contract guarantees sick leave, insurance and vacation.
a basic salary (€7.50 per hour) with a variable bonus (€1 per delivery).
halting of any threat towards and disciplinary sanctions of the protesting workers.
Further demands include a proper formal communication channel with the employer (rather then a whatsapp group and an app), fair assistance from the company towards the cost of bike and phone, and proper insurance covering not only accidents but also recovery days and illness.
4. Evolution of the struggle
The protest was so successful that it carried on all day, was joined by many locals and was immediately reported by newspapers, mainly because of the newness of the technologies involved. There was significant disruption of the brand image: ‘modifications’ of the company logo (from a hand carrying a tray to one carrying an iron ball with chain) and a “shitstorm” on social media where the company had to delete insults and messages of solidarity. The over-exposure of Foodora’s brand on these platforms made them a great place to show digital solidarity. All this was linked to local assemblies and street action: going to each restaurant to give out leaflets and speeches. The message spread wider, a proper boycott was launched, and restaurants started to join it. In the end a meeting with the managing director to discuss their requests was fixed for October 10. At the end of this meeting the management, both Italian and German, promised to issue a statement in response to every point. It’s worth mentioning that during the meeting a group of people from the co-working space used by Foodora came together to show solidarity and that the co-working space dissociated itself from any connection to Foodora.
While management was deciding how to answer, an indirect answer came through a ‘rather strange layoff’. Two promoters who went to a riders’ assembly to understand and show solidarity were excluded from the app. Their contract was not over, but they were effectively laid off as they were not being given any shifts. The clear written answer to the protesters arrived at 00.02 of the 14th (despite a deadline of the 13th): not €2.70 euro per delivery but €3.70. The same morning the riders went to the Turin office but found it empty. No one from management showed or picked up the phone. Two labour inspectors were sent directly from the Ministry of Labour, though, to check the legality of the situation, while the Minister himself expressed solidarity with the riders. Unfortunately more and more riders were locked out of the app as they spent their day giving out leaflets about their protest. A group went to the main HQ in Milan twice, once finding it unexpectedly closed and the next time forcing the management to lock themselves in the office for three hours. Both occasions were used to meet some colleagues in the city, organizing info-events for the coming week and spreading the strike.
Under the pressure from the workers the company decided to answer at least one of the demands. It issued a statement that three bike shops were authorized to give 50% discount. According to the riders, no-one has ever received such a discount. The company’s real reaction, though, was to employ a massive number of new riders, promising them at least two deliveries per hour, a promise that has been broken by either fewer deliveries per hour or fewer hours per week, and blame laid at the door of the striking riders.
Two weeks after the first strike not only workers but even restaurants that expressed solidarity have been denied access to the app. From the beginning the striking riders have used different methods to decentralize their struggle: frequent change of the representative speaking with management, use of fake names and distorted voices. Once Foodora identified who it thought were the leaders, they were completely banned from any communication, although not officially fired. There are, though, interviews where workers who were ready to accept the new contract were subjected to the same sanctions, just because they took part in assemblies. How the management knew about their participation is a matter of speculation.
Meanwhile labour inspectors are investigating and the workers have been received by both the municipality and the Labour Ministry. Since both occasions proved unfruitful (Foodora failed to attend the meeting with the municipality), the strikers kept on organizing several public meetings. The role of social centers and squats cannot be underestimated: media reporting and coverage as well as practical solidarity and support came immediately from local grassroots movements. Public assemblies in Milan were held at social center COX, and in Turin assemblies were promoted by activists at the local university and at the social center Cavallerizza, while a solidarity dinner was held in anarchist squat Asilo.
5. Flexibility and the Italian labour market
Further reflection should be given to the bigger picture. The truth is that Foodora was able to offer such low salaries (compared, for instance, with France where a rider gets €7.20 an hour + €2 per delivery) because the Jobs Act and previous reforms have deregulated the Italian job market and removed general protection for workers. When the deregulated market meets the hyper-fragmented employment form of Foodora it results in a terrible mix. Furthermore, Foodora has been accused of taking advantage of the high youth unemployment rate in Italy (around 40% in 2015, according to ISTAT): what the company terms a “side job” is, for the riders, one of the only ways to have an income.
Luckily the struggles of the riders and many others keep our eyes open and our hopes high.
You can find info and statements (in Italian) about the striking riders on their FB page: Deliverance Project. Feel free to express your solidarity to them, or on the Foodora FB page.
Myanmar’s War on the #Rohingya
#Myanmar has long persecuted the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, denying it basic rights to citizenship, to marry, to worship and to an education. After violence unleashed in 2012 by Buddhist extremists drove tens of thousands of Rohingya out of their homes, many risked their lives to escape in smugglers’ boats; more than 100,000 others are living in squalid internment camps. Now, a counterinsurgency operation by Myanmar’s military is again forcing thousands of Rohingya to abandon their villages.
UNHCR urges Myanmar to protect civilians in northern Rakhine state
This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today’s press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
Myanmar’s Leader Faulted for Silence as Army Campaigns Against Rohingya
Human rights advocates accuse her of condoning a military campaign designed to drive the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in this majority-Buddhist nation, off their land in Rakhine State and out of the country. The United Nations human rights agency has said the abuses may amount to crimes against humanity.
The use of helicopter gunships and the “wholesale burning of villages” amounted to “gross violations of human rights,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an early supporter of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/12/01/myanmarmap/3a03efffca9e5ae0620a79ef5552b418314354fc/1202-web-MYANMARmap-Artboard_2.png 
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cynd5mFXgAE-qsx.jpg Des #images qui pourraient servir à un travail de #forensic_architecture
Burma: Military Torches Homes Near Border
New Satellite Images, Data Show 62 Destroyed Rohingya Villages
Birmanie : Massacre par l’armée de dizaines de villageois rohingyas
Des soldats ont abattu et poignardé des hommes et des garçons dans le village de Maung Nu, dans l’État de Rakhine
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2017/201710asia_burma_muhamedul.jpg?itok=ahXt8Dxf#.jpg 
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2017/201710asia_burma_damagemaungnu.jpg?itok=_vo-qYe9#.jpg cc @aude_v
Rohingya crisis: drone footage shows scale of refugee camp in Bangladesh – video
Aerial video shows the sprawling spread of makeshift tents and shacks at the Balukhali refugee camp in #Cox's_Bazar, #Bangladesh. Released by the Disasters Emergency Committee, the video was shot across several days in October. The arrival of more than half a million Rohingya Muslims from Buddhist-dominated Myanmar since 25 August has put an immense strain on camps in Bangladesh, where there are growing fears of a disease epidemic
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/oct/09/rohingya-crisis-drone-footage-shows-expanse-of-refugee-camps-in-banglad
#drones #vidéo
Burma: New Satellite Images Confirm Mass #Destruction
288 Villages, Tens of Thousands of Structures Torched
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2017/201710asia_burma_rohingya.jpg?itok=y1xf_Jet#.jpg 
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/styles/1070w/public/multimedia_images_2017/201710asia_burma_rohingya2_0.jpg?itok=w1wsfqxS#.jpg ▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/17/burma-new-satellite-images-confirm-mass-destruction
The ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya is visible from space
The imagery below comes from Planet, a satellite imaging company that photographs the entire landmass of earth daily. It shows #Kutupalong refugee camp, spreading over an area a little larger than ten square miles. The left side of the photo is Bangladesh; the right side, Myanmar.
▻https://qz.com/1127120/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-the-rohingya-is-visible-from-space
Burned to the ground
For nearly 200 years, Rohingya Muslims have lived alongside Buddhists in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state, despite generations of ethnic tensions. A military crackdown after an Aug. 25 Rohingya militant attack, caused around 655,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh, and has left much of northern Rakhine burnt-out and empty. A Myanmar military investigation released on Nov. 13 cleared security forces of all accusations of atrocities. The United Nations has denounced the crackdown as a classic example of ethnic cleansing. Myanmar’s military did not respond to Reuters’ questions about its role in the atrocities against the Rohingya described in this graphic.
Burma: Scores of Rohingya Villages Bulldozed. New Satellite Images Show Destruction Indicating Obstruction of Justice
New satellite imagery reveals the Burmese government has been bulldozing scores of depopulated Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations Security Council, the UN and its agencies, and Burma’s donors should demand the Burmese government immediately halt the demolition of Rohingya villages, which should be treated as crime scenes that should be preserved until the UN Fact-Finding Mission is given access to the area to carry out investigations.
Exclusive: #Rohingya women say Myanmar soldiers raped them amid crackdown on militants
Rohingya Muslims say Myanmar soldiers raped or sexually assaulted dozens of women in a remote village in the northwest of the country during the biggest upsurge in violence against the persecuted minority in four years.
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-exclusive-idUSKCN12S0AP
#viols #militaires #armée #Myanmar #femmes #violences_sexuelles #Birmanie
Rohingya Women ‘Raped at Gunpoint’ in Burma Army Sweep for Suspected Jihadists, Report Says
Parts of Arakan state are on lockdown as the military searches for suspected militants connected to a deadly attack on border police
▻https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/gettyimages-617916022.jpg?quality=85&w=1100
▻http://time.com/4548834/rohingya-burma-myanmar-suu-kyi-maungdaw-rape/?xid=tcoshare
Myanmar detains police over Rohingya abuse video
Myanmar said Monday it has detained several police officers over a video shot by a fellow policeman that shows them beating Rohingya civilians, a rare admission of abuse against the Muslim minority.
▻https://www.yahoo.com/news/myanmar-investigate-police-abuse-rohingya-071610389.html
Myanmar promises action over Rohingya abuse video
Rare admission of abuse in #Rakhine state follows release of selfie-style video filmed by border police showing #torture.
▻http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/myanmar-promises-action-rohingya-abuse-video-170102112251701.html
Addressing gender-based violence amid the Rohingya refugee crisis: horrific stories, urgent action
Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh - When Shakila* arrived at a UNFPA Women Friendly Space she was tired and traumatized. Having fled the violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, the 36-year-old Rohingya refugee needed urgent medical services for the sexual violence she had suffered. UNFPA-trained personnel tended to her immediate needs, but the emotional scars from seeing her husband and baby girl killed in front of her will be tougher to treat.
▻https://reliefweb.int/report/bangladesh/addressing-gender-based-violence-amid-rohingya-refugee-crisis-horrific-st
On s’en serait douté mais... une étude scientifique montre que la quasi-totalité des variétés modernes de #pommes (après 1920) remonte à une demi douzaine de variétés, qui sont susceptibles aux maladies. Et la plupart ont un pedigree qui contient plusieurs fois ces variétés, réduisant la diversité génétique intrinsèque à la variété.
“The apple varieties used in the modern commercial apple cultivation are nearly all genetically based on six relatively disease susceptible “ancestorvarieties”: Golden Delicious, Cox Orange, Jonathan, McIntosh, Red Delicious and James Grieve. This applies to varieties bred after 1920 until today, including the new scab resistant varieties. The following article shows the dimension of the genetical narrowing and problems concerning the vitality of modern apple varieties. The author has compared the healthiness of old and new apple varieties in his trialorchard under no fungicide-spray conditions. As a conclusion out of his observations he calls to bethink an overall—not just reduced on scab resistance—term of vitality, as well as to use also the genetical potential of old apple varieties.”
▻http://www.kulturpflanzen-nutztiervielfalt.org/sites/kulturpflanzen-nutztiervielfalt.org/files/z.K.%20Apfelz%C3%BCchtung.Genet_.Verarmung-u.Tenden
#diversité #génétique #plant_breeding #amélioration_variétale
Angleterre : la députée travailliste #Jo_Cox victime du terrorisme d’extrême droite
▻http://lahorde.samizdat.net/2016/06/24/angleterre-la-deputee-travailliste-jo-cox-victime-du-terrorisme-de
Une semaine après l’assassinat de Jo Cox, députée travailliste britannique qui s’était engagée pour le maintien de la Grande Bretagne dans l’Union européenne et prononcée en faveur de l’accueil des réfugiés sur le sol britannique, il est temps de revenir sur les circonstances de ce meurtre politique et d’examiner ce que les médias français ont [&hellip
#Grande-Bretagne #International #Allemagne #Anders_Breivik #Britain_First #National_Alliance
Morte pour l’Europe
▻http://www.taurillon.org/morte-pour-l-europe
L’assassinat de #Jo_Cox, députée travailliste anti-Brexit, par la main d’un nationaliste anglais qui a motivé son geste en hurlant « Britain first », représente un tournant dans l’imaginaire collectif pour l’Europe. Jusqu’ici personne n’était mort pour l’Europe. Pour la première fois, en 70 ans d’existence, l’Europe pleure l’un de ses morts.
/ #Royaume-Uni, #Brexit, Jo Cox
Le #Royaume-Uni s’interroge sur les leçons à tirer de la mort de #Jo_Cox
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/190616/le-royaume-uni-sinterroge-sur-les-lecons-tirer-de-la-mort-de-jo-cox
La campagne sur l’Europe, suspendue depuis jeudi, devait reprendre ce dimanche en #Grande-Bretagne. Les deux camps promettent un climat « plus respectueux », à cinq jours à peine de cette consultation décisive. Certains voient dans la mort de Jo Cox le révélateur effroyable de tout ce qui ne tourne plus rond dans la politique britannique.
#International #Brexit #David_Cameron #europe #Jeremy_Corbyn #UE
#Brexit : le meurtre de #Jo_Cox bouleverse la campagne
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/170616/brexit-le-meurtre-de-jo-cox-bouleverse-la-campagne
La députée Jo Cox, en mai 2015. © Reuters À six jours du scrutin, l’assassinat de cette députée travailliste, favorable au maintien de son pays dans l’UE, bouleverse la #Grande-Bretagne. Il pourrait obliger certains des partisans les plus bruyants du Brexit à baisser d’un cran leur rhétorique anti-migrants, très agressive depuis des semaines.
#International #David_Cameron #europe #Jeremy_Corbyn #Royaume-Uni #UE
#Brexit : après le meurtre de #Jo_Cox, une nouvelle campagne s’ouvre
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/170616/brexit-apres-le-meurtre-de-jo-cox-une-nouvelle-campagne-souvre
La députée Jo Cox, en mai 2015. © Reuters À six jours du scrutin, l’assassinat de cette députée travailliste, favorable au maintien de son pays dans l’UE, bouleverse la #Grande-Bretagne. Il pourrait obliger certains des partisans les plus bruyants du Brexit à baisser d’un cran leur rhétorique anti-migrants, très agressive depuis des semaines.
#International #David_Cameron #europe #Jeremy_Corbyn #Royaume-Uni #UE
Une députée britannique est tuée, la campagne est suspendue
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/160616/une-deputee-britannique-est-tuee-la-campagne-est-suspendue
Stupeur au #Royaume-Uni : #Jo_Cox, députée du Parti travailliste, favorable au maintien dans l’Union européenne, a été agressée puis est décédée de ses blessures, jeudi 16 juin, alors qu’elle tenait sa permanence électorale. La campagne en vue du référendum du 23 juin a été suspendue.
Une députée britannique est tuée, la campagne électorale est suspendue
▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/160616/une-deputee-britannique-est-tuee-la-campagne-electorale-est-suspendue
Stupeur au Royaume-Uni : #Jo_Cox, députée du Parti travailliste, favorable au maintien dans l’Union européenne, a été agressée puis est décédée de ses blessures, jeudi 16 juin, alors qu’elle tenait sa permanence électorale. La campagne en vue du référendum du 26 juin a été suspendue.
#International #Fil_d'actualités #référendum_26_juin #royaume_uni
#FreeMoussa : une soirée de soutien le 4 mars 2016 - Communiqué - @s_assbague
Soutenu par plusieurs associations et personnalités, le Comité pour la libération de Moussa Tchantchuing a décidé de dédier une soirée de soutien à l’humanitaire français.
Elle aura lieu le vendredi 4 mars 2016, à partir de 19h, dans une salle mise à disposition par la municipalité de Montreuil. Au programme :
• projection d’un court documentaire retraçant le parcours de Moussa,
• interventions d’élus, de journalistes et d’acteurs associatifs (notamment
d’humanitaires travaillant auprès des Rohingyas)
• prestations musicales d’artistes tels que Médine, Mokobé, Nekfeu, Youkoff...
Près de 600 personnes sont attendues pour cet événement dont l’objectif principal est de sensibiliser le grand public à la détention arbitraire de ce militant des droits humains ainsi qu’aux causes qui lui tiennent à cœur. « Le 4 mars, cela fera 73 jours que Moussa est incarcéré au Bangladesh. Cette soirée, c’est notre manière de continuer à faire parler de lui et de mobiliser toutes les bonnes volontés pour sa libération » précise Kamdem Tchantchuing, le petit frère tout juste revenu d’un voyage sur place.
Cette mobilisation est d’autant plus importante que, outre l’opacité de la justice bangladaise, les conditions de détention et l’état de santé de Moussa inspire de vives inquiétudes.
Rappel des faits :
Le 22 décembre dernier, alors qu’il effectuait une mission humanitaire au Bangladesh, Moussa Tchantchuing était interpellé et placé en détention à Cox’s Bazar, dans le sud du pays. Les autorités bangladaises lui reprochent alors de ne pas les avoir informées de son travail auprès de la minorité Rohingya et d’utiliser son nom de conversion au détriment de son nom officiel, à savoir Maxime Puemo Tchantchuing. Malheureusement, ce qui aurait dû passer par de simples vérifications auprès des associations concernées et des services consulaires français s’est transformé en de terribles accusations d’ « activités suspectes ». Des accusations injustes et infondées visant un homme qui a passé ces dernières années à tenter d’améliorer le quotidien des plus démunis, en France comme à l’étranger. Tous ses proches, tous les bénévoles et bénéficiaires qu’il a croisés parlent de ce jeune français de 28 ans comme un homme dévoué et rigoureux, un homme au « cœur grand et lumineux » qui passait le plus clair de son temps à organiser des maraudes à Paris ou à plaider la cause des Rohingyas, minorité considérée par l’ONU comme la plus persécutée au monde, au Bangladesh, en Birmanie ou en Malaisie.
Son histoire, popularisée par les associations avec lesquelles il travaille, a suscité une belle et grande vague de mobilisation sur les réseaux sociaux, notamment avec le hashtag #FreeMoussa. La pétition réclamant sa libération immédiate a, quant à elle, récolté près de 386 000 signatures en quelques jours et permis une intervention rapide des services consulaires français. Moussa Tchantchuing a ainsi reçu la visite de M. Bernard Regembal, consul de France au Bangladesh.
Pour autant, un mois après son incarcération, Moussa Tchantchuing n’a toujours pas retrouvé le chemin de la liberté. Pire encore, alors que la Cour de Cox’s Bazar avait fini par statuer en faveur de sa libération, on apprenait, le 13 janvier dernier, l’annulation de cette ordonnance. Une annulation d’autant plus surprenante que c’est par une simple que la libération de l’humanitaire français a été remise en cause. D’après les avocats, ce revirement serait dû à une implication directe du Ministère de la Justice bangladaise.
À ce jour, toutes les demandes de remise en liberté ont été rejetées. Le comité de soutien, les associations humanitaires proches de Moussa et ses avocats sont déterminés à tout mettre en œuvre pour le faire sortir le plus rapidement possible.
Contacts presse :
Fatiha Khettab – 06 65 96 65 86
George Tchantchuing – 06 99 05 82 30
«Compression vs. Art»
▻http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tvgp1
#Trevor_Cox asks whether #compression can detract from our enjoyment of recorded music - does it matter that what we hear may not be the same as what the musicians heard in the studio? How important is high quality reproduction? He looks at attempts to make music recordings sound louder and louder (the so-called Loudness War) and asks whether anything is lost in the process. And he considers whether making audio file sizes smaller, so that they take up less space on portable devices, means that some of the musical detail is lost. He talks to record producer Steve Levine (who produced Culture Club among many others) mastering engineer Ian Shepherd, the musician Steven Wilson, members of the BBC Philharmonic, and Dr Bruno Fazenda, Senior Lecturer in Audio Technology.
Feeling like a Grinch ? At least it won’t shorten your life | Fox News
▻http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/12/10/feeling-like-grinch-at-least-it-wont-shorten-your-life.html
Previous studies have linked happiness to longevity but researchers now say there’s no such scientific connection. So while being sick makes you unhappy, just being grouchy isn’t enough to make you ill or shorten your life.
The results are based on questionnaires from more than 715,000 British women aged 50 to 69 who were enrolled in a national breast cancer screening program in the late 1990s.
The women were asked things like how often they felt happy and how healthy they were. Nearly 40 percent of the women said they were happy most of the time while 17 percent said they were unhappy. After a decade of tracking the women, 4 percent had died.
Scientists found the death rate among unhappy women was the same as those who were happy. The research was published online Wednesday in the medical journal Lancet.
Étude accessible, ici
Does happiness itself directly affect mortality?
The prospective UK Million Women Study
▻http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)01087-9/fulltext
Summary
Background
Poor health can cause unhappiness and poor health increases mortality. Previous reports of reduced mortality associated with happiness could be due to the increased mortality of people who are unhappy because of their poor health. Also, unhappiness might be associated with lifestyle factors that can affect mortality. We aimed to establish whether, after allowing for the poor health and lifestyle of people who are unhappy, any robust evidence remains that happiness or related subjective measures of wellbeing directly reduce mortality.
Methods
The Million Women Study is a prospective study of UK women recruited between 1996 and 2001 and followed electronically for cause-specific mortality. 3 years after recruitment, the baseline questionnaire for the present report asked women to self-rate their health, happiness, stress, feelings of control, and whether they felt relaxed. The main analyses were of mortality before Jan 1, 2012, from all causes, from ischaemic heart disease, and from cancer in women who did not have heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive lung disease, or cancer at the time they answered this baseline questionnaire. We used Cox regression, adjusted for baseline self-rated health and lifestyle factors, to calculate mortality rate ratios (RRs) comparing mortality in women who reported being unhappy (ie, happy sometimes, rarely, or never) with those who reported being happy most of the time.
Findings
Of 719 671 women in the main analyses (median age 59 years [IQR 55–63]), 39% (282 619) reported being happy most of the time, 44% (315 874) usually happy, and 17% (121 178) unhappy. During 10 years (SD 2) follow-up, 4% (31 531) of participants died. Self-rated poor health at baseline was strongly associated with unhappiness. But after adjustment for self-rated health, treatment for hypertension, diabetes, asthma, arthritis, depression, or anxiety, and several sociodemographic and lifestyle factors (including smoking, deprivation, and body-mass index), unhappiness was not associated with mortality from all causes (adjusted RR for unhappy vs happy most of the time 0·98, 95% CI 0·94–1·01), from ischaemic heart disease (0·97, 0·87–1·10), or from cancer (0·98, 0·93–1·02). Findings were similarly null for related measures such as stress or lack of control.
Interpretation
In middle-aged women, poor health can cause unhappiness. After allowing for this association and adjusting for potential confounders, happiness and related measures of wellbeing do not appear to have any direct effect on mortality.
J’aime pas les études sur le bonheur.
Statistics Done Wrong
▻http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/index.html
The woefully complete guide
by Alex Reinhart
If you’re a practicing scientist, you probably use statistics to analyze your data. From basic t tests and standard error calculations to Cox proportional hazards models and geospatial kriging systems, we rely on statistics to give answers to scientific problems.
This is unfortunate, because most of us don’t know how to do statistics.
Statistics Done Wrong is a guide to the most popular statistical errors and slip-ups committed by scientists every day, in the lab and in peer-reviewed journals. Many of the errors are prevalent in vast swathes of the published literature, casting doubt on the findings of thousands of papers. Statistics Done Wrong assumes no prior knowledge of statistics, so you can read it before your first statistics course or after thirty years of scientific practice.
Statistics Done Wrong — Statistics Done Wrong
▻http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics
If you’re a practicing scientist, you probably use statistics to analyze your data. From basic t tests and standard error calculations to Cox proportional hazards models and geospatial kriging systems, we rely on statistics to give answers to scientific problems.
This is unfortunate, because most of us don’t know how to do statistics.
Statistics Done Wrong is a guide to the most popular statistical errors and slip-ups committed by scientists every day, in the lab and in peer-reviewed journals. Many of the errors are prevalent in vast swathes of the published literature, casting doubt on the findings of thousands of papers. Statistics Done Wrong assumes no prior knowledge of statistics, so you can read it before your first statistics course or after thirty years of scientific practice.
Saine lecture ! En CC-By…
Au hasard…
Another example: In the United States, counties with the lowest rates of kidney cancer tend to be Midwestern, Southern and Western rural counties. How could this be? You can think of many explanations: rural people get more exercise, inhale less polluted air, and perhaps lead less stressful lives. Perhaps these factors lower their cancer rates.
On the other hand, counties with the highest rates of kidney cancer tend to be Midwestern, Southern and Western rural counties.
La suite, avec l’explication, là (c’est le dernier paragraphe)
▻http://www.refsmmat.com/statistics/regression.html
A Ripple Conversaton with The Iron Maidens
▻http://chewbone.rickshide.com/2013/10/26/a-ripple-conversaton-with-the-iron-maidens
Kirsten “Bruce Chickinson” Rosenberg on vocals, Linda “Nikki McBURRain” McDonald on drums, Courtney “Adriana Smith” Cox and Nita “Mega Murray” Strauss on guitars, and Wanda “Steph Harris” Ortiz on bass. I spoke with Bassist Wanda Ortiz and drummer Linda McDonald of the Iron Maidens ,fresh from their tour of South America. As the world’s number [...]