Africa

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Participants taking part in the colloquium "The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation", organised in Buenos Aires by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America, within the framework of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 24 2019 (IPS)

Communication can be a key tool for the development of cooperation among the countries of the global South, but the ever closer relations between them do not receive the attention they deserve from the media.

This conclusion arose from the meeting organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America in Buenos Aires on Mar. 22, during the third and final day of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, which brought together representatives of almost 200 countries in the Argentine capital.

“The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation” was the colloquium that brought together journalists, political analysts and officials from international organisations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia."There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs." -- Mario Lubetkin

The colloquium, organised by the regional branch of the international news agency IPS, was one of the parallel meetings to the conference and the only one dedicated to communication.

“Forty years ago, when the first conference, also held in Buenos Aires, approved the Plan of Action that forms the basis of South-South Ccoperation, there was awareness that communication was key,” said Mario Lubetkin, assistant director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“However, that notion has been lost and communication has not kept up with the changes that have taken place since then. This creates a vacuum for our societies,” said Lubetkin, the moderator of the meeting.

“There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs,” concluded Lubetkin, a former director general of IPS, an international news agency that prioritises information from the global South.

In front of an audience made up mainly of journalists and other media workers, the debate was oriented towards the most appropriate tools for developing countries to better disseminate news from the global South, the latest term coined to define the group of nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The president of IPS Latin America, Sergio Berensztein, stressed that “today there is an opportunity for nations like ours, thanks to the fact that there is no longer the biloparity of the Cold War era, nor the unipolarity of the years that followed. Today we are in a time of what we call apolarity.”

Berensztein stressed that at a time when there is a renaissance of protectionism and nationalism in the world, it is necessary for journalists to reinforce the idea of cooperation and ensure that a plurality of voices is heard on the international stage.

“We are living in a moment of crisis in which the old has not fully died yet and the new has not yet been fully born. That is why it is a time of uncertainty and accurate information is an element that favors the peaceful resolution of conflicts,” said Berensztein.

View of the room where the meeting on the role of communication in promoting South-South cooperation was held in Buenos Aires, organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America. The participants agreed that media outlets in the global South must generate attractive content that will allow them to combat a news agenda imposed by the countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The power of the large media based in countries of the industrialised North, which tend to impose their journalistic agenda on a global level, was present in the debate as a worrying factor and as evidence of the failure of initiatives aimed at bringing about a new and more balanced information and communication order.

“What is the best way to foment the mass circulation of information about the global South, in order to escape this problem?” was one of the main questions that arose during the two-hour debate, held at a hotel in the Argentine capital.

From the city of Lagos, in a videoconference, the news director of the Nigerian Television Authority, Aliyu Baba Barau, called for strengthened cooperation between media outlets and journalists from developing countries, through the organisation of trips and mechanisms that favour the sharing of resources.

“Nigerian TV permanently shares its resources with other countries,” he said as an example of what can be done in terms of cooperation in media projects in the South.

“The mechanism of South-South cooperation and its advantages need to be understood not only by those who lead our nations, but also by the global community,” said Baba Barau.

Media representatives from China played a prominent role in the exchange of ideas and reflected the strong interest in Asia’s giant in achieving closer ties with Africa and Latin America.

Participants included Zhang Lu, deputy editor of China Daily, the country’s largest English-language news portal; Cui Yuanlei, Mexico correspondent for the Xinhua news agency, which distributes information in several languages (including Spanish); and Li Weilin, team leader of the CCTV television network in São Paulo, Brazil.

Li said the media in emerging countries should not depend on the information distributed by the news networks of industrialised countries, and said journalism should be a way to share experiences.

He said, for example, that during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, CCTV produced coverage for people in Kenya to see how Jamaica’s star runners were trained, and for Jamaica to meet the Kenyan runners who perform so well in the long-distance and medium-distance races.

Roberto Ridolfi, Assistant-Director General of FAO’s Programme Support and Technical Cooperation Department, stressed that the countries of the South “do not have a shared past, but they do have the same future.”

Ridolfi said communication has a key role to play in the arduous path towards Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to improve the quality of life of the world’s population and bring the South into line with the level of development in the North.

“The media and journalists have the mission of attracting audiences with news linked to sustainability. The proliferation of plastics in the oceans, the devastation of forests or the problems plaguing food production are issues that should be on the agenda,” he said.

Like the other panelists, Ridolfi lamented that societies are unaware of the South-South cooperation mechanisms that have emerged in recent years and said journalists have a lot of work to do in that regard.

“We have yet to demonstrate to the world the real value and benefits of South-South cooperation,” the FAO official said.

The need for African, Asian, Latin American and Arab media to get to know each other better was recognised as a necessity.

The local participants were particularly emphatic about this, since Argentina is a country with deep cultural ties with Europe, where little is known about what happens in the countries of the regions of the South, beyond catastrophes and conflicts.

The challenge, now that new technologies have democratised communication but have also put it at risk, is to generate information from the South in attractive formats that allow a better understanding of the realities and opportunities in developing countries and between the countries and regions of the South.

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Traffickers held hostage a group of Bangladeshi fortune seekers in Benghazi, forced families at home to pay ransom

By Shariful Islam
Mar 23 2019 (IPS-Partners)

Mominur Islam had paid Tk 3 lakh to some manpower brokers in Naogaon to go to Malaysia as a worker.

The brokers, who were actually members of a human trafficking gang, sent him to Benghazi of Libya where he was confined to a den and tortured on a regular basis for ransom.

Mominur Islam

“Torture for ransom was an everyday affair,” 21-year-old Mominur, who recently returned home, told The Daily Star about his 13-day captivity.

“They used to slap and kick me, beat me with an iron pipe and even put out burning cigarettes on my body.”

On February 16, he along with eight other fortune seekers from Bangladesh was taken to the den where 30 other Bangladeshi youths were already confined for ransom, Mominur said.

He was lucky enough to get released and return home after police in Bangladesh had caught three members of the gang.

Saifullah of Begumganj in Noakhali was arrested in an Uttara hotel while two of his cohorts — Ehsan Russell of Bumna in Barguna and Gulzar Hossain of Raninagar in Naogaon — were held at Shahjalal International Airport.

Mashiur Rahman, deputy commissioner (north) of Detective Branch of DMP, said they arrested the trio upon receiving complaints from Mominur’s mother Bithi Akhter.

“Instructed by Saifullah, his associates in Libya released Mominur on February 28 and Mominur returned home on March 2,” he added.

Bithi filed a case with Airport Police Station on March 4 and the next day Mominur made a statement before a magistrate describing his ordeal.

DB Sub-Inspector Nasir Hossain, the investigation officer of the case, said, “The traffickers showed us live video of releasing the rest but we are not sure whether they were freed or taken to another den.”

Though there was no visa on the passport of Mominur, an officer of Airport Immigration Police officer said he first went to Sharjah on a tourist visa on February 12.

“The human traffickers are taking people abroad using such visas,” said the official on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to talk to the media.

“We stopped allowing people to go to Dubai on tourist visa but we had to resume it after an influential quarter convinced the authorities,” he further said.

Mominur said he and other job seekers went to Libya from Sharjah en route to Tunisia.

After they flew to Sharjah from Dhaka by an Air Arabia flight, a person called Monir received them at the airport and took them to a hotel where they stayed for two days.

Monir arranged their air tickets for Tunisia to where they travelled without any hassle.

In Tunisia, another Bengali speaking man received them and arranged their tickets for a Benghazi-bound flight.

Mominur said after they landed at the Benghazi Airport on February 16, a trafficking ring member named Zahid took them to the den in Tukra area.

THE TORTURE CELL

Mominur said there were many rooms in the den guarded by Bangladeshi and Libyan people. “One of the rooms was used as torture cell,” he said.

“If anyone dared talk to other inmates, he would be tortured severely.”

Through video calls, they used to show the pictures of torture to the victims’ family members and even threaten to kill the hostages if ransom was not paid.

Mominur’s mother said she had given Tk 1 lakh to Abdus Sattar of Naogaon and his two sons Abdus Salam and Abul Kalam as their counterparts in Libya threatened to kill her son and dump the body into the sea.

“They again asked her to give another Tk 2 lakh to Shafiullah, Russell and Gulzar,” Bithi added.

This time she sought help from the Detective Branch of police.

Earlier on January 8, Mominur’s family gave Sattar and his sons Tk 3 lakh after they assured her of sending Mominur to Malaysia where his father is already working as a labour.

She said they decided to send Mominur, who passed SSC in 2017, to Malaysia to ease their financial hardship.

“We took a loan of Tk 3 lakh from a bank and relatives,” she said.

She borrowed Tk 1 lakh at a high interest rate from a lender without having a clue as to how she would repay the loans.

A HOTSPOT OF TRAFFICKING

According to the Police Headquarters data, 7,840 people fell victim to human trafficking between February 2012 and June last year.

The Rapid Action Battalion data shows they rescued 810 victims — 704 male and 106 females — and arrested 600 suspected human traffickers since 2006.

There are extensive reports on human trafficking gangs in Libya who kidnapped Bangladeshis seeking jobs abroad and held them hostage for ransom.

Some 24 Bangladeshis among 200 migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East died when two vessels carrying about 500 migrants, including 78 Bangladeshis, sank into the sea after leaving Zuwara off the Libyan coast for Italy in September 2015.

In November 2016, Libyan police rescued at least 65 Bangladeshis from a traffickers’ den in Tripoli.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

The post Tortured in Libya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Traffickers held hostage a group of Bangladeshi fortune seekers in Benghazi, forced families at home to pay ransom

The post Tortured in Libya appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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