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We demanded a better future for our youth in Kurdistan, so they don't flee to Europe – and got tear-gassed for it
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Thousands of people (literally, look), many of them students, in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq took to the streets in different cities (including my hometown Slemani) to demand that financial stipends be restored. 'We can't build a future like this!'
(For this piece, and for you, I talked to several people on the ground as well as analysts outside of Kurdistan to better understand what's going on.)
Financial stipends?
Yes, money – up to US$80 per month – given out to public university students since 2005. The region's government, KRG for short, stopped paying those around 2014. Journalist Renwar Najm told me that the government did so because 'We don't have enough money! Look, oil prices are down! Plus we have to fight ISIS, plus blah blah blah' and that none of these excuses are valid now. "Students have the right to ask for their rights," Najm wrote.
They just want their allowance back? That's it?
No. In fact, they want so much more. I talked to two protestors; to keep their identities safe, I'm quoting them as Mina and Rozhan. Mina went straight to the point: "We have goals and our goals is to clear our education system from politics and those who break our hopes and disrespect us as students!" Rozhan told me that dozens have been hurt and arrested. "The police brutality is extreme! So many of us are traumatized. We've protested before but we have been disappointed many times."
People in the Kurdistan region have become more and more frustrated over the years. Journalist Abdulla Hawez told me that, 'KRG has quietly introduced tuition fee in public universities a decade ago,' meaning that for students who depend on their families, going to university can be quite a difficult thing to do.
How did the protests go?
Really well or really bad, depending on how you view it. Really well because, as Najm told me, "this is the largest only-student protest in the last decade". As a result, the government has announced that it will re-allocate resources for those stipends to be handed out again (but students remain skeptical; rightly so). Really bad because, during the at-first-peaceful protests, government forces used a water cannon, fired tear gas and then live bullets to break up the masses. Dozens of people have been arrested so far.
Can you zoom out a little? Kurdistan is a bit niche, isn't it?
I asked several journalists why they thought this news mattered on a global scale:
- Abdulla Hawez: This news "sheds light on the deteriorating socioeconomic and political conditions in the region; and we have to remember that the coverage of Iraqi Kurdistan has mostly been that the region is the bacon of democracy and hope for the Middle East. The growing protests and the mass migration are the only chance for people to tell the world things are far worse than the reports of their media suggest or used to suggest."
- Kamal Chomani: "This news tells us that the Kurdistan Regional Government model is also a failure like the majority of the failed nationalist and monarchy Middle East countries. Failure of the KRG will continue as far as this government remains under the control of the two families of Barzani and Talabani where militias, monopoly over market and natural resources rule rather than democratic principles." (Kamal Chomani has also written this excellent piece for New Lines Magazine last week.)
Why this matters: Many of the migrants knocking on Europe's doors in Belarus or crossing the Channel from France (and dying on their way) are from the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Many of them are young and full of hope. They flee their homes because building a good future there seems (and probably is at this moment) a really, really difficult thing to do. Maybe even impossible.
What can I do as someone from outside of Kurdistan?
- Abdulla Hawez: "I believe the role of the international audience and public opinion is extremely important in the case of Iraqi Kurdistan because the region is built based on western support and any change in the region is also connected to the attitude of the western governments including the [United States] and [European Union]; the public opinion and support groups can pressure their governments to not support the status quo in the region and push for change because currently there is little local people in Kurdistan can do to actually change the reality without the backing of international and regional actors."
- Kamal Chomani: "The international community should shift its policy from 'stability, stability, stability and then democracy' toward Kurdistan and Middle East to 'stability and democracy' because any stability on the expense of democracy will bring more instability."
- Protestor Rozhan: "Write about what's happening over here. Our mainstream media is spreading false propaganda. Talk to us, we will give you our perspective. We have no other way to tell the world what our government is doing to its very own people."
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NORTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA
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We saved the lives of 800 jaguars in Mexico
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Mexico's jaguars are growing in numbers. 'Yaaaaay, our jaguar protection strategies are f*cking working!', researchers said in a paper recently published in the journal PLOS One.
Why this matters: The jaguar is a super vulnerable animal that typically hangs out in areas ranging from northern Mexico through Central America, the Amazon Basin, and into northern Argentina. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed them as 'Near Threatened'. Plus, ecologists had never really counted jaguars in Mexico before. As a result, it was difficult to design a protection program altogether.
Give me the numbers
From 2010 to 2018, 800 more jaguars were born in Mexico. “It was incredible to see jaguars in so many places where there weren’t any before,” said ecologist Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, founder of Mexico’s National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation and lead author of the paper.
What now?
Researchers are like, 'I think we can use this protection program for other big cats or other species that are critically endangered.'
What's the protection program like?
Knowledge was key. A team of 20 ecologists were like, 'we just need to get to know them better and see where jaguars really lived and how many roamed in each of the country's protected conservation regions.' Then, they created a plan to tackle the most critical issues affecting Mexico’s jaguars: preserving wildlife corridors and sanctuaries; advocating for helpful laws and public policy; and avoiding or resolving conflicts with livestock owners.
For example?
For example, the government paid people living near protected areas to not deforest sanctuaries, compensated them for cattle losses from jaguar predation, and provided electric fences to prevent jaguars from killing livestock. The on-the-ground efforts paid off.
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We legalized drug checking in New Zealand – it's the first country worldwide
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New Zealand permanently legalized drug checking last week – as the first country worldwide. The new law will take effect December 6.
What's drug checking?
Getting your pills tested before taking them to avoid people passing off rat poison as MDMA. (Maybe they should call it “drug contents verification” or “drugs purity tests”; checking sounds like a bucket list, tbh.)
How come?
Well, the government's pilot program that started in December 2020 proved to be super successful. They basically checked drugs for an entire year at festivals. And now, the government's like, 'please continue and expand. You were so successful!'
How successful?
"68 percent of participants changed their behavior as a result of accessing the service, and 87 percent said they better understood the harms of drug use after talking with the people performing it." It does not legalize possession, buying or selling of drugs. However, no one involved can be criminally charged with possession, nor can the results be used in any later criminal proceedings.
Oh, that's so great!
"There’s plenty of work still to do," said Wendy Allison, director of KnowYourStuffNZ, a volunteer drug-checking organization (they also ran the pilot). “But this feels like quite an achievement. We have been working towards this for seven years and so many people have worked so hard to get us to this point. Today we’re celebrating our success.”
Did drug checking exist beforehand?
Yes, but without legal protections. Many businesses were scared away from working with them, which limited their services. The new law now offers a broad range of those protections.
What about other countries?
It's a legal grey area in many countries, like in the United States; meaning this means volunteers who perform the work do so at risk of being criminally prosecuted. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, have services that are government-sanctioned.
Why this matters: Making drugs 'safer' > allowing people to take poison. Empowering people to make more informed decisions > banning drugs altogether. People are going to consume drugs, at least let them do it safely. Btw, drug checking isn’t 100 percent accurate, there’s always a risk.
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We finally returned artefacts we had stolen from Ethiopia more than 150 years ago
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United Kingdom has returned 13 cultural artefacts that it had stolen from Ethiopia more than 150 years ago.
What's Ethiopia's reaction?
Nasise Challe, the country's tourism minister, is super happy about it and reminded everyone that, "Our country’s ancient civilization’s history, artefacts, fingerprints of indigenous knowledge, culture … have been looted in war and smuggled out illegally."
Tell me more about the artefacts
Al Jazeera published some pictures. They were taken in 1868 after the battle of Maqdala between the British and Ethiopian empires; and bought (!) back by The Scheherazade Foundation, a cultural nonprofit organisation, and handed to the Ethiopian embassy in September. They were returned to Addis Ababa last weekend and will go on display at the Ethiopian National Museum in Addis Ababa.
Where were the artefacts before?
In private collections in the United Kingdom. Some commentators online are worried that this might not be the right time to return them, given that the country is in the middle of a full-out war at the moment.
That's it?
No, the work is far from over. Ethiopia also wants to bring back 12 tabots from the British Museum in London. Tabots are replicas of the Ark of the Covenant that are sacred in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, one of the world’s oldest churches.
Why this matters: Ethiopia is one of the world's oldest countries with a rich and ancient cultural and religious heritage. “If there is no treasure, it means there is no history; if there is no history, there is no nation,” said Teferi Meles, Ethiopia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Zoom out: A couple of weeks ago, France returned 26 treasures back to Benin. And this user on Twitter, @ZakesMda, is talking about Nigeria's stolen art in United Kingdom.
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OTHER NEWS YOU MIGHT FIND INTERESTING
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United States: The three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia, United States, in February 2020 are found guilty of murder and aggravated assault.
Australia: The armed group Hezbollah and the neo-Nazi paramilitary group The Base are now considered terrorist organisations in the country.
Italy: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets on November 25 in Rome to protest against male violence against women. There were protests in Munich, Germany, too.
Chile: The country might be on its way to legalize same-sex marriage. The lower house has approved a bill; now it's up to the Senate and it's looking quite promising.
Solomon Islands: People are super frustrated with the government and are calling for Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare to step down. They're so frustrated that a police station, a parliament building and several shops have been set on fire.
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(Still undecided if this is funny, smart or scary but) Celebrities in China can no longer "show off wealth" or "extravagant pleasure" on social media, according to the Cyberspace Administration of China.
Why? 'You must promote socialist core values,' the government (basically) said.
- Btw, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are blocked in China. People there use Weibo, Renren and Youku.
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That's it. 'See' you next week. And again, thank you for your patience,
Sham
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