In Nairobi, a new restaurant is generating business and buzz – not just because of the food, but because of the staff. Robots serving dishes is the main attraction of diners who flock to the Robot Cafe. Juma Majanga reports. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo.
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Month: August 2024
Sweden confirms first case of contagious mpox strain outside Africa
Afghan girl deprived of education in Afghanistan faces uncertainty living as a refugee in Pakistan
Ayesha Rahimi was in 11th grade when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 and barred girls from secondary education. Three years later, Rahimi lives as a refugee in Peshawar, Pakistan, where she hopes to go back to school. VOA’s Muska Safi met with Rahimi in this story narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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Armenia, Azerbaijan in arms race despite peace talks
Azerbaijan and Armenia are in an arms race that threatens to undermine U.S.-backed peace talks between the two Caucasus countries. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Pakistanis frustrated by slowdown in internet service
islamabad — From sharing memes to sealing deals, millions of Pakistanis are struggling to communicate digitally as internet and data services have slowed down across much of the country.
Officials are blaming internet service providers for the slowdown, but media reports indicate the problem may stem from the deployment of a nationwide internet firewall aimed at controlling online content and traffic.
Crippling economy
The problem, which began several weeks ago, has worsened in recent days, frustrating freelancers like Moadood Ahmad, who is seeing a drop in income.
“If I don’t show as available on Upwork or Fiverr, then new clients can’t even approach me. Older clients are also disturbed,” Ahmad told VOA. The Lahore-based digital marketing services provider says he has made virtually no money in the last two weeks.
According to DataReportal.com, 111 million Pakistanis in the nation of more than 240 million have access to internet. The country has nearly 189 million active cellular connections. State Bank of Pakistan put the country’s IT exports at $3.2 billion in the financial year that ended in July 2024.
The spokesperson’s office of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) told VOA it has only heard about issues with internet speed and web access through media. Speaking to VOA in late July, a PTA spokesperson blamed the slowdown at that time on a possible technical glitch.
During a hearing Thursday, the secretary for the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication told a Senate committee that it was gathering data about the situation from mobile operators.
But the slump in services is not limited to mobile data users. In a statement to the media Thursday, an alliance of internet service providers (ISPs) said internet speeds had plummeted by 30% to 40%, “crippling [the] digital economy.”
“Many are leaving the smaller ISPs because they can’t sustain the poor service quality anymore. If this continues, we will see a mass exodus of businesses from Pakistan,” said the Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (WISPAP).
Speaking to VOA, WISPAP Chairman Shahzad Arshad said his alliance members were inundated with customer complaints.
“The authorities should at least tell us a timeframe that we can give to the customer,” Arshad said.
Without mentioning the firewall, WISPAP’s statement blamed increased “security and surveillance” for the decline in service quality.
“While the government remains steadfast in its commitment to enhancing security, the question remains: at what cost to the nation’s digital economy?” the statement asked.
Controlling access
A source familiar with the nationwide firewall told VOA the system — acquired from China and installed through the Ministry of Defense — is based at a cable landing station in Pakistan, the place where the undersea internet data cable meets a country’s internet system.
The firewall, also placed on the systems used by data providers, can give Pakistani authorities information about an individual user’s online activities and where they are operating from, allowing for targeted monitoring, the source said.
Efforts to deploy the firewall on servers that major international companies use to store content close to end users are also underway. This can give authorities deeper access to an individual’s data and control of their online activities.
Digital rights activists reject the government’s claim that the firewall is only a cybersecurity tool.
“To me, this is about political control. This desperation to do whatever they can,” said Farieha Aziz, co-founder of the digital rights group Bolo Bhi, an Urdu name that means “speak up.”
Government officials “are still not transparent and open about the capability [of the firewall], what kind of monitoring is happening,” said Aziz. “What are they attempting?”
The country’s latest efforts to control internet traffic and user activity come as the powerful military frequently complains of rising “digital terrorism,” a term it uses for those who criticize or mock the armed forces on social media.
Digital rights activist Aziz also criticized telecom companies and internet service providers for not being transparent with users about the reasons for service disruptions.
Digital freedom is limited in Pakistan. Global rights watchdog Freedom House describes Pakistan as “not free,” with a low score of only 26 out of 100 on its internet freedom index.
Pakistanis trying to bypass poor connectivity and speed by using VPNs are not faring much better either.
“Even those who use VPNs, and use our internet services, are unable to connect,” WISPAP’s Shahzad confirmed to VOA.
A PTA official told the Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, earlier this month that the regulator was working on a plan to approve certain virtual private networks. All other VPNs would be blocked.
Senator Palwasha Khan, chairperson of the Senate’s standing committee on IT, told VOA she expected internet speed to normalize in Pakistan within days. She said the committee was not informed if the problem was because of the firewall, but said she supported the censorship tool.
“I do agree that if some security measures are taken to control the chaos on social media, I don’t have any problem with that,” said Khan, a senator from the Pakistan People’s Party, which is part of the ruling alliance.
Struggling to share voice notes and visual content with clients via a popular messaging app, freelancer Moadood Ahmad told VOA he regretted moving back to Pakistan from the United Arab Emirates.
“I am thinking I made a mistake,” Ahmad said. “I should go back.”
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Even in exile, Russian journalists not ‘100% safe’
Prague — When the opposition activist Ilya Yashin spoke after being freed from a Russian prison as part of the historic prisoner swap between Washington and Moscow, he said he had been warned never to return.
Speaking in Bonn, Germany, Yashin said that a Federal Security Service agent told him that if he came back from exile, his “days will end like Navalny’s” — a reference to opposition figure Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony in February.
But as the experiences of Russian journalists and critics already in exile show, distance from Moscow is no assurance of safety.
Alesya Marokhovskaya fled Moscow for Prague shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, thinking she would be safe in the Czech capital. Then the threats started.
Several menacing messages directed at her and a colleague came via the feedback form on the website of IStories, the Prague-based Russian outlet where they work.
Sent over the course of several months last year, the messages included detailed information about where they lived, their travel plans, and even that Marokhovskaya’s dog had breathing problems.
“I was thinking I was safe here, and it was a big mistake for me because it’s not true,” Marokhovskaya told VOA. “It’s hard not to be paranoid.”
Even when Marokhovskaya moved to a new apartment, the assailants took notice.
“Rest assured, you can’t hide from us anywhere,” an August 2023 message, originally in Russian, said. “We’ll find her wherever she walks her wheezing dog. None of you can hide anywhere now.”
The threats underscore a troubling pattern of transnational repression in which Moscow reaches across borders to target exiled journalists and activists around the world.
Well-documented tactics to silence critics include online harassment, legal threats, surveillance and suspected poisonings, press freedom experts say.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry declined to answer specific questions about threats and harassment facing journalists. A spokesperson instead said “protecting the rights of journalists” is the ministry’s “constant focus of attention.”
The emailed response shared a list of instances in which foreign governments fined, banned or suspended Kremlin-run media. Russia’s Prague embassy, meanwhile, did not reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.
At first, Marokhovskaya thought the threats didn’t impact her. But she later noticed changes in her lifestyle. She didn’t leave her home as often, she said, and she worried about surveillance.
“Physically, I’ve never faced any aggression. It’s just words for now, but it makes my life really messy,” she said. “But only in a psychological way.”
It’s a sentiment shared by her colleagues at IStories and other exiled Russian journalists who spoke with VOA in Prague.
“Any journalist, whether he’s working at IStories, or The Insider, or any other media outlet in exile, is, in a way, risking his or her life. You can’t be 100% safe,” IStories founder Roman Anin told VOA.
Restricted by Russian laws that effectively banned independent coverage of the war in Ukraine, hundreds of journalists — and their newsrooms — fled. Most resettled across Europe in cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, Riga, Vilnius, Tbilisi and Prague.
The legal aid group Setevye Svobody, or Net Freedoms Project, estimates that at least 1,000 journalists have left since the war broke out. Rights group OVD-Info estimates roughly the same number of political prisoners are held in Russian custody. Among that number, say watchdogs, are several journalists.
Had she stayed on Russian soil, Rita Loginova thinks she would have been among them. Originally from the Siberian city Novosibirsk, the journalist faced police harassment before fleeing in March 2023 on the encouragement of her editors.
“I didn’t want to become a prisoner, because a mother near her children is better than a mother in prison. That’s why I’m here,” Loginova told VOA one evening at her favorite pizza place in Prague.
Between puffs on her vape and sips of beer, she spoke about leaving home “because we had a lot of risk for our life and our liberty,” and how she misses her mom, her dog and the view from her old apartment.
Although she likes Prague, Loginova, who works at the independent outlet Verstka, says she is beset by financial hardship, a challenge experienced by many exiled Russians.
More broadly, reporting on Russia from abroad is a challenge, especially for outlets like IStories that have been branded “undesirable” organizations by the Kremlin — a designation that exposes staffers and sources to criminal charges and jail time.
As a result, says IStories founder Anin, finding sources in Russia willing to speak can be hard. And yet the exiled journalists know they are luckier than the political prisoners in Russia, let alone Ukrainians grappling with Russia’s invasion firsthand.
“We have not an easy job, but simultaneously, we shouldn’t complain,” Anin said.
In June, Russia issued an arrest warrant for Anin on charges of spreading “false information” about the military, a charge the Kremlin often uses to retaliate against independent journalists or critics who speak out against the war.
“I was a little bit surprised why it took them so long to take this legal step,” says Anin, who left Russia in 2021 for vacation but never returned after learning of his likely arrest.
Beyond legal threats and harassment, hacking is another problem.
Anna Ryzhkova, a journalist at Verstka, says that in December 2023, she received an email from someone posing as a journalist at another exiled Russian outlet, accusing her of plagiarism and asking her to click a link to the article in question.
Ryzhkova realized it was likely a scam designed to hack her accounts. She then learned several colleagues had received similar emails. Two months later, she discovered there had been a sophisticated attempt to hack her Gmail account.
“I was really frightened,” Ryzhkova said, adding that she believes the Russian government was behind both incidents.
Sitting outside a stylish cafe playing Charli XCX music, Ryzhkova admits these incidents make her consider quitting journalism entirely.
“But then you take half a day off. You breathe,” she said. “And you start again. You choose some dangerous topics again.”
These cases show that nothing is out of bounds for Russia, according to Gulnoza Said of the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
“Russia can do anything to silence government critics,” she told VOA. “The challenges they face make it very difficult for them to stay mentally healthy and continue working as journalists.”
There’s a strange irony in being an exiled Russian journalist who fled your home to continue reporting on it. Moscow may be more than 1,000 miles from Prague, but it doesn’t feel that far.
“Physically you’re here, but mentally you’re still in Russia, because you keep writing about Russia,” Ryzhkova said, adding that sacrifice is a unifying factor for all who do it.
“We all miss our home,” she said. “Most of us had to sacrifice something important to be here.”
But for many, the often-personal costs are worth it.
“It’s important to do this work. It’s important,” Alexey Levchenko, a journalist at The Insider, said at Prague’s Cafe Slavia, a venue on the banks of the Vltava that has a history as a hub for writers.
“What can we do to stop the war? We don’t have many possibilities,” he said. “Journalism is one of the most effective possibilities.”
Anin agreed. He views their work as integral to thwarting Moscow’s effort to distort the truth about the war.
“We work 24/7,” he said. “Even if you can’t change the reality with your stories, we’re saving the history for future generations.”
Prague has a long history of literary dissidents, and these exiled Russian journalists are just the latest chapter.
Asked if she is happy, Ryzhkova is briefly caught off-guard. “I am,” she says, before breaking into laughter.
Why the laughter? She tucks her blonde hair behind her ears before answering.
“If you had asked me the same question three years ago, when I lived in Moscow in my house, with my husband, with my dog, and if you had described to me everything that would happen to me over the next three years, I would say there is no way to stay happy in such circumstances,” she says. “But somehow I am.”
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As Paris readies for Paralympics, disability advocates call for bigger sea change
With the 2024 Summer Olympics wrapped up, Paris is now getting ready to host the Paralympics later this month. More than 4,000 athletes with disabilities along with tens of thousands of spectators will attend the events that run from August 28 to September 8. Olympic authorities praise the city for the steps it has taken to make them accessible to all. But disability advocates say much more needs to be done — across France — to change infrastructure and mindsets. Lisa Bryant reports from Paris.
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Educators worry as Latvia phases out Russian in schools
Latvia’s government has been moving to phase out teaching in the Russian language in the country’s schools. It’s part of a bid to reduce Moscow’s influence in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But as Henry Wilkins reports from the Latvian capital’s largely Russian-speaking Daugavgriva neighborhood, some educators and security experts say the move could be playing into the hands of the Kremlin’s propagandists.
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Chad seeks assistance to deal with floods as neighboring Cameroon pleads for help with drought
Yaounde, Cameroon — Officials in Chad are asking for international assistance to save thousands of people from persistent flooding, while officials in neighboring Cameroon are seeking help to cope with the opposite problem – severe drought.
Officials say floods for the past three days have forced about 53,000 people to flee several towns and villages in Sila, a southeastern province bordering Sudan and the Central African Republic.
Forty-two-year-old farmer Regine Bumbai said her house was swept away by floods on Tuesday.
She said she is seeking refuge for herself and her three children at the Koukou-Angarana village primary school because heavy rains triggered flooding that is destroying houses and plantations and also displacing animals.
Bumbai told Chadian state TV Wednesday that flood victims are pleading for humanitarian assistance to save the lives of several hundred civilians, most of them children facing hunger and malnutrition.
This week, government officials, the United Nations and humanitarian agencies reported that 14 people had died and more than 245,000 civilians are affected by floods in 13 of Chad’s 23 provinces.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said about 60,000 structures have been destroyed or damaged.
Chadian state TV has been broadcasting a message in which President Mahamat Idriss Deby calls for solidarity with all flood victims.
In the message Deby said Chad is not the only victim of devastating floods and other shocks caused by severe changes in normal environmental patterns. He said there should be international solidarity in fighting climate shocks that also affect the world’s most powerful nations.
Chad says it is building temporary shelters in several dozen towns and villages including the capital, N’djamena, and providing relief materials for affected families. The families include thousands of civilians fleeing internal armed conflicts and refugees fleeing Boko Haram terrorism and violence in conflict-ridden Sudan.
As Chad steps up efforts to help flood victims, Cameroon is facing a different situation, as rains that were expected in July have yet to come in many regions of the country.
This week, Muslims in Garoua, a northern town near Cameroon’s border with Chad and Nigeria, held public prayers for rain.
Ibrahim El Rachidine, traditional ruler and Muslim spiritual leader of Garoua, organized the prayers.
He said he held the gathering after farmers complained that the lack of rain since July is causing droughts and making crops dry up in plantations. He says he is also calling Cameroonian government officials attention to the looming famine as droughts are already forcing farmers from their land.
Cameroon and Chad said last month the lives of more than 5 million people in the two countries were threatened by a severe humanitarian crisis triggered by the climate shocks and ongoing conflicts.
Officials in both countries have called for international aid, though neither has given much detail on what they need.
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Somalis try to embrace alternative energies as climate change wreaks havoc
Mongolia finds ways to align with the West without alarming China, Russia
Washington — Landlocked between Russia and China, analysts say Mongolia is finding ways to balance its outreach to Western democratic nations without alarming it neighbors to the north or south.
Although Mongolia regards China and Russia as its top foreign and economic priorities, with most of its trade transiting the two, it has also committed to deepening and developing relations with the United States, Japan, the European Union and other democracies, calling these countries its “third neighbors.”
Sean King, senior vice president of Park Strategies, a New York-based political consultancy, tells VOA, “They’re smart to involve us as much as possible as a counterweight to Moscow and Beijing.”
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded his latest trip to Asia earlier this month in Mongolia, where he emphasized the country is the United States’ “core partner” in the Indo-Pacific and that such partners are “reaching new levels every day.”
Blinken’s visit came after the two sides held their first comprehensive strategic dialogue in Washington.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was scheduled to visit Mongolia this week, but the trip was canceled as Japan braces for a rare major earthquake predicted for the coming week. Instead, the two sides spoke by phone on August 13.
Leaders of democracies who visited Mongolia the past few months include German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo. French President Emmanuel Macron visited Mongolia for the first time last year.
The State Department said that including Mongolia as one of two countries in Campbell’s diplomatic debut “underscores the United States’ strong commitment to freedom and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.”
Charles Krusekopf, founder and executive director of the American Center of Mongolian Studies, told VOA, “Being able to have some regional presence by having a close relationship with Mongolia, having a friend in the region, I think, is important to the United States.”
The June 2019 edition of the U.S. Defense Department’s “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report” includes Mongolia, along with New Zealand, Taiwan and Singapore, in the camp of Indo-Pacific democracies, positioning them as “reliable, competent and natural partners.”
Despite its geographical location, which limits its diplomatic space to maneuver, Mongolia has managed to maintain close relations with all parties, from the U.S., China, and Russia to North and South Korea, making it an exception in complex geopolitics.
At last month’s Mongolia Forum, government officials and strategic experts from eight countries, including Britain, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, gathered in Ulaanbaatar to discuss the most pressing strategic issues in Asia today, including tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“It’s one of the rare places in which people from all countries of the region can come together to meet, and it’s considered kind of a neutral ground,” Krusekopf tells VOA.
Mongolia abstained from U.N. resolutions in 2022 and 2023 that condemned Moscow’s annexation of Ukrainian territory and demanded that Russian troops leave the country.
Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh and Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai also met with Chinese leaders Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, respectively, last year.
Oyun-Erdene visited China just a month before his state visit to the U.S., where the two countries issued the U.S.-Mongolia Joint Statement on the Strategic Third Neighbor Partnership.
Shortly before Blinken’s visit this month, Mongolia held its annual military exercise called Khan Exploration, which, although it was a peacekeeping exercise, was attended not only by troops from the U.S. and Japan but also China.
Krusekopf says with most of Mongolia’s foreign trade being mining exports through China, Beijing doesn’t feel a threat from Western security interests there.
“Mongolia is friends with everyone in the region. It’s never been a threat to other countries, and they’re seen as a middle country. And it’s a broker in that region,” he said.
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Thousands march in India to protest doctor’s rape, murder
Bangladeshi students on guard as exiled PM urges show of strength
Dhaka, Bangladesh — Hundreds of Bangladeshi students wielding bamboo rods patrolled the site of a planned gathering Thursday of ousted premier Sheikh Hasina’s supporters, vowing to quash any show of strength.
Hasina, 76, fled by helicopter last week to neighboring India, where she remains, as student-led protests flooded Dhaka’s streets in a dramatic end to her iron-fisted 15-year rule.
Thursday is the anniversary of the 1975 assassination of her father, independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, during a military coup — a date her government had declared a national holiday.
Previous years saw huge rallies around Bangladesh to mark the occasion, but the students who toppled Hasina were eager to ensure supporters of her Awami League party did not have a chance to regroup.
“Awami League will try to create chaos on Thursday in the name of observing (the) mourning day,” prominent student leader Sarjis Alam told reporters the previous day, according to the Daily Star newspaper.
“We will remain on the streets to resist any such attempts.”
With no police in sight, hundreds of students on Thursday patrolled the street leading into Hasina’s old family home where her father and many of her relatives were gunned down nearly 50 years ago.
The landmark was until recently a museum to her father, but it was torched and vandalized by a mob hours after her fall.
In her first public statement since her abrupt departure, Hasina had this week asked supporters to “pray for the salvation of all souls by offering floral garlands and praying” outside the landmark.
Thousands of civil servants were required to join public demonstrations marking her father’s death during her tenure.
Awami League organizers would also set up temporary public address systems around Dhaka to blare Mujib’s old speeches and devotional songs praising his leadership.
The caretaker administration now running Bangladesh cancelled observance of the politically charged holiday on Tuesday, requiring bureaucrats to remain in the office.
And on Thursday, the prevailing sound in the city of 20 million people was the horns and motors of its perennially gridlocked traffic.
‘Identified and punished’
Hasina’s statement came hours after a court in the capital opened a murder case into her, two senior Awami League allies and four police officers related to last month’s unrest.
Several other top Awami League politicians have also been detained in unrelated probes, including former law minister Anisul Huq and business adviser Salman Rahman.
Hasina’s statement also demanded an investigation into violence during the unrest that forced her out of office, with the culprits to be “identified and punished.”
Police weaponry was the cause of the more than 450 people killed during the protests that ousted Hasina, according to police and hospital figures previously gathered by AFP.
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Russia evacuates more residents from Kursk region
Prosecutors investigate gender-based cyber harassment of Olympic boxer Imane Khelif
PARIS — French prosecutors opened an investigation into an online harassment complaint made by Olympic boxing champion Imane Khelif after a torrent of criticism and false claims about her sex during the Summer Games, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Wednesday.
The athlete’s lawyer Nabil Boudi filed a legal complaint Friday with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office that combats online hate speech.
Boudi said the boxer was targeted by a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” as she won gold in the women’s welterweight division, becoming a hero in her native Algeria and bringing global attention to women’s boxing.
The prosecutor’s office said it had received the complaint and its Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crime had opened an investigation on charges of “cyber harassment based on gender, public insults based on gender, public incitement to discrimination and public insults on the basis of origin.”
Khelif was thrust into a worldwide clash over gender identity and regulation in sports after her first fight in Paris, when Italian opponent Angela Carini pulled out just seconds into the match, citing pain from opening punches.
Claims that Khelif was transgender or a man erupted online. The International Olympic Committee defended her and denounced those peddling misinformation. Khelif said that the spread of misconceptions about her “harms human dignity.”
Among those who referred to Khelif as a man in critical online posts were Donald Trump and J. K. Rowling. Tech billionaire Elon Musk reposted a comment calling Khelif a man.
Khelif’s legal complaint was filed against “X,” instead of a specific perpetrator, a common formulation under French law that leaves it up to investigators to determine which person or organization may have been at fault.
The Paris prosecutor’s office didn’t name specific suspects.
The development came after Khelif returned to Algeria, where she met with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Wednesday and will be welcomed by family later this week in her hometown of Ain Mesbah.
In Algeria, Khelif’s former coach Mustapha Bensaou said the boxer’s complaint in France was initiated by the Algerian authorities and should “serve as a lesson in defending the rights and honor (of athletes) in Algeria and around the world.”
“All those involved will be prosecuted for violating Imane’s dignity and honor,” Bensaou said in an interview with The Associated Press. He added: “The attacks on Imane were designed to break her and undermine her morale. Thank God, she triumphed.”
The investigation is one of several underway by France’s hate crimes unit that are connected to the Olympics.
It is also investigating alleged death threats and cyberbullying against Kirsty Burrows, an official in charge of the IOC’s unit for safeguarding and mental health, after she defended Khelif during a news conference in Paris. Under French law, the crimes, if proven, carry prison sentences that range from two to five years and fines ranging from 30,000 to 45,000 euros.
The unit is also examining complaints over death threats, harassment or other abuse targeting six people involved in the Games’ opening ceremony, including its director Thomas Jolly.
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