
January 23, 2015
The theater of Epidaurus is famous for its incredible acoustics. In the center of the picture, our guide is tearing up a piece of paper to prove it: Sitting midway to the top of the rows as we were, we heard it perfectly well.
The theater of Epidaurus is famous for its incredible acoustics. In the center of the picture, our guide is tearing up a piece of paper to prove it: Sitting midway to the top of the rows as we were, we heard it perfectly well.
A man rides his bike through Dmytrivka, Ukraine, near the capital Kyiv, where the remains of Russian tanks and military equipment destroyed earlier in the war lie along the street.
Welcome to Tuesday, where “catastrophic destruction” is reported in eastern Ukraine, Japan upholds a same-sex marriage ban and an iconic Hong Kong restaurant is now feeding the fish. Meanwhile, an English Professor reflects in The Conversation on the linguistic implications of the Ukraine war and censorship on speech and silence.
[*Tsonga, South Africa and Mozambique]
Gustavo Petro's victory is not only a response to the social ills of today, but having been part of a Marxist guerrilla group that negotiated with the state decades ago, and returned to the social fold, he embodies the nation's democratic future, writes Colombian daily El Espectador.
After decades of stigmatizing anything to do with the Left — to the point of annihilating an entire political party for its ideas — Colombia has elected for the first time — and quite decisively — a president of the Left. The election of Gustavo Petro and his vice-president, Francia Márquez, was itself one of the promises of the peace Colombia has sought for so long: with an orderly handover of power, the inclusion of all political positions and the possibility to work through our differences by voting.
The elections were a thumping rejection of the outgoing government of President Iván Duque and decades of dominance by the conservative currents led by his mentor, the former president Álvaro Uribe. The question now is: how shall we heal so many festering wounds in this country?
It is important to look back. Petro was a member of the M-19, the Marxist guerrilla group that negotiated with the state decades ago, and returned to the social fold. Since then, its members have been crucial to the state-building effort.
Petro's election confirms the guerrilla's former initiatives and shows the importance of a peaceful path and rejection of arms to win power. The elections have shown that Colombia is committed to the democratic and institutional option, which in itself is to be celebrated.
The figures attained should also mean a decisive mandate, and the presidential authority that comes with it. The experts had their doubts before, but Petro added three million votes to his first-round score, and some 700,000 more than his rival, Rodolfo Hernández.
The participation rate was at around 58%, which is a historic high in our electoral history. If we add to this the votes given to the (leftist) Historical Pact (Pacto histórico) in parliamentary elections, it is clear most Colombians are asking for change.
Petro must now be allowed to govern. Clearly we need oversight, with vigorous institutions that act as counterweights. Political deadlock would particularly signify a rejection of the majority's choice. But the president must also see the massive number of votes cast for his rival as a need to take that constituency into account, and the same may be said of a half million blank votes.
After a vicious campaign, it is now time to speak of unity and reconstruction, with actions complementing the important work of finding the right words.
The election of the country's first Afro-Caribbean vice-president is furthermore a message to the country's forgotten and downtrodden communities. The country's most vulnerable territories backed the Petro ticket, and expect an Equality ministry to start working on healing the country's immense rifts.
Colombia wanted change and has voted for it. What comes next will depend on how well the tattered social threads can be put back together after an election that was particularly divisive.
• Russia-Ukraine update: Governor of Eastern Luhansk region Serhiy Haidai reports “catastrophic destruction” in the controlled-city of Lysychansk. Haidai also said that fights were currently raging “in the industrial zone of Severodonetsk,” as the region is almost entirely occupied by Russian forces.
• Belgium repatriates ISIS relatives: Six women and 16 children born to Islamic State fathers were repatriated to Belgium, in the biggest airlift of this kind bringing back the relatives of jihadists from Syria, the authorities announced.
• Georgians rally for EU membership: Tens of thousands of Georgians marched in Tbilisi for Georgia’s EU membership bid, waving Georgian, Ukrainian and EU flags after the demand was deferred last week by the European Commission.
• Israel’s prime minister to dissolve parliament: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced the dissolution of his weakened coalition and called for new elections, which will be the fifth in three years. Foreign Affairs Minister Yair Lapid will take over from Bennett as early as next week until a new government is sworn in.
• Heavy rains in China: About 200,000 people have been evacuated and more than 2,700 houses were destroyed in Southern China, in the heaviest torrential rain the country is experiencing in 60 years. According to the authorities, the damage so far is estimated at more than $254 million.
• Same-sex marriage ban upheld in Japan: Japanese court ruled that the government’s ban on same-sex marriage does not violate the constitution, dealing a setback to LGBTQ+ rights activists. Japan is the only G7 country that doesn’t recognize same-sex unions.
• Iconic Hong Kong restaurant sinks: The Jumbo Kingdom, Hong Kong’s iconic floating restaurant and tourist attraction, has sunk in the South China Sea. This comes less than a week after it was towed away from the harbor of the city.
Today’s front page of Catalan language daily Segre, based in Lleida, Spain, shows the mayor of Alòs de Balaguer walking in an ash-gray calcined forest. Its title “fires under control” brings great relief after six days of firefighters battling against wildfires in Catalonia.
Dmitry Muratov, the Russian editor-in-chief of independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has auctioned off his Nobel Peace Prize medal for $103.5 million. He said that all will go to help refugees from the war in Ukraine.
In The Conversation, English Professor Jacob Edmond takes a look at the creative ways that Russian journalists, writers and artists are turning forced silence into powerful statements.
📣 What would you do if your country launched a war of aggression, causing tens of thousands of deaths and displacing millions? What if the price of protest or even posting objections on social media was arrest and imprisonment? What if even mentioning the word “war” online, in print, or on the street was illegal? Would you speak out, or keep quiet and bide your time? They are questions of ethical, familial, and national obligations. They are questions of personal risk, strategy and tactics. They are questions about how best to speak through silence.
🗞️ One powerful if all too brief example of how silencing can be turned into speech is Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian news outlet that held out longest against the new censorship regime. Throughout March, Novaya Gazeta held up official lies for ridicule. Following new censorship laws, the newspaper used blanks to mark the silencing of any mention of the war: “Asked whether he is ready to stop the ___ , Putin answered ‘no’.” Newsagents began refusing to sell certain issues, and by March 28 Novaya Gazeta received its second official warning and was forced to close. The dance with censorship — the newspaper’s attempt to speak through silence — had come to an end.
🤐 Russian writers and artists living abroad who oppose the war also have a vexed relationship to speech and silence. Latvia-based poet Kuzmin has turned his energies towards helping Ukrainian refugees and translating and disseminating Ukrainian poetry. Kuzmin argues for prioritizing Ukrainian over Russian voices in this time of war. Other Russians living abroad dismiss this view, insisting their work must carry on regardless of the war and that the silencing of Russian culture serves no end. “Should we shoot ourselves in the leg out of solidarity? What is the benefit of that?,” asks the film director Kirill Serebrennikov.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
“You’re my hero.”
— U.S. actor and Goodwill ambassador Ben Stiller met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine. In the meeting, the actor commended Zelensky for quitting his own acting career to lead his country and rally the world in support of its people.
A man rides his bike through Dmytrivka, Ukraine, near the capital Kyiv, where the remains of Russian tanks and military equipment destroyed earlier in the war lie along the street — Photo: Sergei Chuzakov/SOPAimages/ZUMA
✍️ Newsletter by Lila Paulou, McKenna Johnson, Joel Silvestri and Lisa Berdet
Let us know what’s happening in your corner of the world!
Banding together, once rivals created a wartime system where media groups share several air hours a day, which are broadcast by all six central TV channels to ensure around-the-clock broadcasting.
Why has Russia invaded Ukraine? Internet readers want to know. What will Ukraine be like after the war? That's a question to start answering, even if the battle is far from over.
English Professor Jacob Edmond takes a look at the creative ways that Russian journalists, writers and artists are turning forced silence into powerful statements.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.