Month: March 2020

Hari Singh, a migrant worker in Mumbai, walked for two days with just a few stops as he tried to reach his village more than 800 kilometers away in northern Rajasthan state after India announced a nationwide lockdown on Wednesday. He spent the night on the roadside. He was not alone. There were about 200 others trekking on the road, hoping to return to the sanctuary of their homes and villages. Singh is among the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers desperate to leave cities where they are stranded without work or money as India shuts down for three weeks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. With all transportation, such as trains and buses, suspended, many are making arduous journeys of hundreds of kilometers on foot, lugging bags or clutching small bundles. For Singh, 21, even that option did not work — police turned him back after he had trudged over 150 kilometers. Following reports of an exodus of workers from cities, authorities have tightened surveillance to prevent people from crossing states amid fears that they could carry the virus to the vast countryside, defeating the effort to contain its spread.   A migrant worker carries a child on his shoulders as his family waits for transportation to their village in New Delhi, India, March 28, 2020.Trains and buses went out of service on Sunday with almost no notice, giving people little time to leave.India has recorded more than 800 cases of coronavirus and 19 deaths but hopes the lockdown will stave off a bigger outbreak. The clampdown caught migrant workers in its teeming cities unaware. Numbering about 100 million and coming from poorer states, they build roads and swanky buildings, work as shop assistants, security guards and cooks, and do other casual jobs to keep the wheels of metropolises like Delhi and Mumbai running.  The federal government has asked local authorities to provide food, sanitation and accommodation to migrants, but rolling out those benefits will take time. Neither will they be able to access food rations and cash transfers announced under a $22 billion package for poor people, because they don’t have identity cards in cities.   That is why migrant workers are yearning to return to the security of their villages, where they have homes, food and support systems from close-knit communities. And many are risking a difficult journey on foot despite reports of police turning back those trying to leave. The long trek along highways is not easy — eateries are shut and water is scarce. Raman Kumar, a resident of a satellite town near Delhi, who operated a small food joint with two friends, hit the road on Saturday morning with two others to his village 600 kilometers away in Punjab state. “It will take me eight or 10 days. I don’t know whether I will reach but I will definitely not turn back. It is better to die,” he asserted. He was hoping to hitch rides with trucks carrying vegetables or food, which are still plying the roads, but he had not met with any success so far. Kumar was able to get one meal from some good Samaritans, who were distributing rice and lentils.  Girdhari Lal, who works as a laborer in Maharashtra, has waited for the past week to collect his dues from his contractor, but has not been able to contact him. Having run out of money, he has no option but to try to reach his village in Rajasthan on foot.“I will start walking this evening. Will I have a problem? Please tell me if you can find out anything,” he asked me in desperation.A nonprofit group running shelters for the homeless in the Indian capital says that it has been overwhelmed by migrants knocking on its doors in recent days. “Thousands of such people have started coming to our shelters because their resources are getting exhausted. And we cannot say no to anyone. There is huge pressure on us,” said Vishwajeet Ghosal at Prayas JAC Society.As the numbers of those exiting cities swells, authorities in some states have begun organizing buses to ferry home those stuck on the road. And there have been heartening reports of people handing out food and water to migrants on the march.While announcing the lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told citizens that protecting the lives of Indians was his top priority.In an editorial, the Indian Express said that along with addressing the public health challenge, the country will have to find ways to alleviate the mounting distress of rickshaw pullers, construction workers and other daily wagers.Those racing to mitigate the impact of the lockdown on the most vulnerable say more planning was needed before the world’s biggest shutdown came into effect. An official at a nonprofit, who did not want to be named, said authorities would have to move quickly to ensure that the prospect of hunger facing migrants does not aggravate the problem posed by the pandemic. “People should go home. That is where they will be safer,” said Khandelwal of Aajeevika.  
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The Taliban have refused to engage in talks with a team of negotiators announced by the Afghan government, saying the move violates the insurgent group’s peace-building pact with the United States.The insurgent refusal came on a day when Taliban fighters unleashed a new wave of attacks against government forces in northern Afghanistan and overran a district.  Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government on Thursday announced a 21-member “inclusive” team to negotiate a sustainable peace and power sharing with the Taliban.  U.S. special representative Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated and signed the deal with the Taliban on February 29, also hailed the proposed negotiating team as a “meaningful step,” saying it moved the parties “significantly closer” to intra-Afghan negotiations. But chief Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Saturday dismissed the team, insisting it lacked representation of all Afghans. He said in a statement the Taliban has long maintained the government can participate in intra-Afghan negotiations only as a group like other factions in the country. “But as the team is announced by the Kabul administration, it thus violates our principled policy and the agreement concluded with America,” Mujahid insisted.  The Taliban denounces the government as illegitimate and an American puppet. Mujahid alleged Kabul’s move was meant to “monopolize” the issues and create “impediments” on the way to intra-Afghan negotiations.  “We shall only sit for talks with a negotiation team that conforms with our agreements and is constituted in accordance with the laid-out principles,” Mujahid said.  FILE – Jailed Taliban fighters are seen inside the Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, Dec. 14, 2019.Prisoner swap After weeks of hesitation, the Afghan government this week agreed in a video conference with Qatar-based Taliban leaders that Kabul would begin releasing 5,000 insurgent prisoners starting March 31 in exchange for 1,000 detainees, mostly security forces, in Taliban custody.Under the U.S.-Taliban agreement, intra-Afghan talks would begin immediately after the prisoner swap was concluded.  But it was not clear whether the prisoner release would go ahead in the wake of refusal by the Taliban to negotiate with the government-appointed team. For its part of the agreement, Washington has agreed to withdraw all American and coalition forces from Afghanistan in the next 14 months. The U.S. drawdown has already begun.  Fighting amid virus spread Officials said Saturday that the Taliban had assaulted several northern provinces, including Kunduz, Badakhshan and Faryab.  The insurgents inflicted heavy casualties on Afghan security forces and captured the beleaguered Yumgan district in Badakhshan, while heavy clashes were reportedly also raging in the nearby Jurm district.  The Taliban were also targeting government outposts near the capital of troubled Kunduz province.The renewed fighting comes amid domestic and international appeals for a cease-fire to help limit the spread of the coronavirus in Afghanistan, where more than 100 people have tested positive for the pandemic disease and cases are on the rise. Afghan authorities have imposed a partial lockdown in Kabul and the western city of Herat, where most of the coronavirus cases are located. Herat borders Iran, and Afghan officials say nationals returning from the neighboring country have imported the deadly virus.  
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Michael Girma wants to go home.The 25-year-old student misses his sister and brother. He misses his mother, and his friends 5,000 miles away.Since late January, Girma has been trapped in Wuhan, China, the original epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.Girma studies electrical engineering at Hubei University of Technology, along the Xunsi River, near the middle of Wuhan.He’s also an Ethiopian citizen, and like hundreds of other Ethiopian college students studying in China, he has not been evacuated.Instead, he’s spent the past two months at the heart of a pandemic that has now spread to six continents.“I mostly spend my time watching movies on Netflix,” Girma told VOA. “I try to read, but it’s more depressing at a time like this. My mind is numb right now,” he said.‘It is now messing with our minds’China’s efforts to curb the spread of the disease have produced dramatic results.After weeks of surging cases, Beijing reported no new local infections March 19. Now, imported cases, from Chinese returning from overseas, pose the gravest risk.However, containing the outbreak has required an aggressive response, particularly in Wuhan, where travel in and out of the city has been blocked, and sick patients not needing hospitalization have been separated from their families in isolation shelters.Girma and other foreign students stuck in Wuhan have been told it will be until at least mid-April before travel restrictions are eased.That’s little comfort to those who have felt trapped for months.“It is now messing with our minds,” Girma told VOA via WhatsApp. “For some, it is getting worse psychologically. Some of them even don’t have friends and are separated from them, so they are lonely and depressed,” he added.Government responsesGirma credits the Chinese government with taking decisive action to save people’s lives.“For the time being from China,” he said, “the Chinese government is doing its best and it is doing its best for its citizens who need monitoring and assistance due to the virus.”He faults the Ethiopian government, though, for not doing more to assist its citizens in Wuhan.In early March, some African countries — but not Ethiopia — evacuated their citizens as the virus began to spread rapidly in Hubei province.Instead, the Ethiopian government began providing students in Hubei a two-month $400 allowance to buy food and necessities, Girma said.Ethiopia’s ambassador to China, Teshome Toga Chanaka, helped coordinate a task force with the student union in Wuhan.“The situation was very scary and worrisome given the nature of the virus. We therefore focused on protection and care for them where they are,” Chanaka said.According to Girma, though, only about half of 300 students budgeted had received the stipend several weeks later. Even now, Girma and other students in Wuhan have identified at least 66 Ethiopians who have not received the payments.“Everyone is begging for a response right now,” Girma said.Students have been receiving aid, Chanaka said, but the Ethiopian government didn’t have accurate information for all its citizens.“The Ethiopian Embassy in Beijing has been processing the transfer based on the address and bank account of each student,” Chanaka said. “In the process, we have faced the problem of getting the correct address and account number for about 50 students.”Longing for homeGirma is the eldest of three children. His 19-year-old sister and 21-year-old brother live in Addis Ababa, along with their mother.Three months ago, Girma’s father died. Girma could not return home because he feared losing his student visa.When he finally returns home, he plans to eat injera, Ethiopia’s national dish, “nonstop” and talk to his mother around the clock. For now, he waits alone in his off-campus apartment, where, he figures, he has a better chance of leaving than his classmates on campus.As he waits, he’s seen the threat spread back home. As of March 27, Ethiopia had 16 confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 3,700 cases across Africa.
 
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Jeff Kao is a ProPublica reporter who FILE – In this Feb. 16, 2020, photo, a policeman stands guard at Tiananmen Gate following the coronavirus outbreak, in Beijing.Twitter continued, “Based on our intensive investigations, we have reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation. As Twitter is blocked in PRC, many of these accounts accessed Twitter using VPNs.”The accounts belonged to a “larger, spammy network of approximately 200,00 accounts” that the platform suspended for violating a range of rules covering all users.“I think when social media was created, people in general hoped that it would encourage a more open civil society, discussion of opinion would be easier,” said Vincent Wang, dean pf the College of Arts and Sciences and political science professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York.“But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took advantage of the open society and freedom of speech in the West and made it a tool for its own propaganda against democracy,” he said.Kao told VOA Mandarin that he noticed the accounts tweeting about Hong Kong changed.  As the coronavirus spread, the accounts focusing on Hong Kong changed to focus on the epidemic initially covered up by Beijing after it was linked to a market in Wuhan selling wildlife, such as bats, for human consumption. Many coronaviruses, such as COVID-19, start out in animals and jump to humans.As the epidemic raged through China, many of the accounts “became cheerleaders for the government, calling on citizens to unite in support of efforts to fight the epidemic and urging them to ‘dispel online rumors,’” wrote Kao. As the epidemic spread worldwide and became a pandemic, the accounts pointed out China’s response at home.FILE PHOTO: Employees wearing face masks work on a car seat assembly line at Yanfeng Adient factory in Shanghai, China, as the country is hit by an outbreak of a new coronavirus, February 24, 2020.“We were not scared during the outbreak because our country was our rearguard. Many disease fighting warriors were thrust to the front lines” said one. Others pointed out Beijing’s aid to countries such as Italy to ensure Staff members move barriers in front of a railway station of Wuhan on the first day of inbound train services resumed following the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Wuhan, China, March 28, 2020.“So, it’s a pretty vast effort, and it really makes it pretty difficult for people to understand what’s the truth, particularly if the whole thing is just designed to create one narrative.”Calls to the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment Friday evening were directed automatically to an operator, then went to music before cutting off.Wang called for congressional hearings on nations’ use of Twitter and other platforms to spread disinformation. He wants lawmakers to find a way to protect the principle of freedom of speech while stopping the Chinese Communist Party from “making negative use of the technology for its own propaganda.”He said he believes it would be futile to block China’s accounts.“If you do that, China would have a lot of ways to cope with it by setting up even more new accounts.Wang told VOA Mandarin the best way to combat China’s disinformation efforts is “to raise (the) public’s awareness, so that people using social media can understand that if a so-called news (item) is bad quality information, a lie or disinformation, no matter how many times it is repeated, even if thousands times, it still will not become truth.”
 
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