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Tributes paid to the Muslim journalist who shot to fame for her hijab

Tributes paid to the Muslim journalist who shot to fame for her hijab
The 27-year-old journalist was born in Somalia in 1992. (File/AFP)
Updated 07 October 2019
Arab News

Tributes paid to the Muslim journalist who shot to fame for her hijab

Tributes paid to the Muslim journalist who shot to fame for her hijab
  • The news resonated in the Muslim community, who was supportive of Yusuf’s career because of her advocacy for Muslim women
  • The 27-year-old journalist was born in Somalia in 1992 and emigrated to Europe at a young age
Updated 07 October 2019
Arab News

DUBAI: Tributes have been paid to the BBC journalist Hanna Yusuf, who shot to fame for publicly defending headscarf-wearing Muslims.

The BBC journalist's family broke the news of her death on October 1, saying they were “deeply saddened and heartbroken,” but gave no further information on her death.

“While we mourn her loss, we hope that Hanna’s legacy will serve as an inspiration and beacon to her fellow colleagues and to her community and her meaningful memory and the people she has touched for many years lives on,” her family said in a statement.

In 2015, she made a video for British national daily the Guardian defending the use of a headscarf, dispelling misconceptions of the hijab as a form of oppression.

In the video she said people should not assume that every woman who wears the hijab had been forced into it.

Andirachid Fidow, a Somalian activist who attended the Yusuf’s funeral in London, along with 6,000 others, tweeted: “Beautiful soul gone to soon, may her soul rest in peace.”

British Muslim journalist and author Hussein Kesvani said Yusuf was a “dear friend” to him, and posted a link to a fundraising campaign created following her death.

According to the Go Fund Me page, the money raised will be donated to a charity in Yusuf’s name, which will serve as her “Sadaqah Jariyah,” a form of ongoing charity usually given after a Muslim’s death.  

UK-based non-profit organization Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks (Tell MAMA) also paid its tribute on Twitter, saying: “This is such a big loss.”

Muslim-focused blog Muslim Girl published a story remembering Yusuf’s work as an investigative journalist, including her stories on the violence in Somalia and her recent investigation into labor conditions at Costa Coffee stores in the UK.

The media industry was equally shocked by the news, and her colleagues quickly paid tribute to Yusuf, who worked her way up from a researcher to a television presenter.

The BBC’s Editorial Director Kamal Ahmed said: “Hanna Yusuf was sharp, witty and allowed us all to understand the important stuff a little better.”

The 27-year-old journalist was born in Somalia in 1992 and emigrated to Europe at a young age. Before her stint at the BBC, she wrote for other British publications including the Independent, the Times, and Muslim-focused news organization Muslim News.

Topics: Muslim journalist BBC journalism Muslim women

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Iranians fear new bill will restrict Internet even further

Iranians fear new bill will restrict Internet even further
Updated 3 min 29 sec ago
AP

Iranians fear new bill will restrict Internet even further

Iranians fear new bill will restrict Internet even further
  • The law would also criminalize the sale and distribution of virtual private networks and proxies
  • Bill has yet to be approved by Iran’s hard-liner dominated parliament, but it is already stirring anxiety among young Iranians
Updated 3 min 29 sec ago
AP

TEHRAN: For Ali Hedieloo, a 40-year-old making wooden furniture in Iran’s capital, Instagram is more than just a surfeit of glossy images. Like an estimated 1 million other Iranians, it’s how he finds customers, as the app has exploded into a massive e-commerce service in the sanctions-hit country.
But now, the social media platform has come under threat. Iran moved last week toward further government restrictions on Instagram and other apps, as hard-line lawmakers agreed to discuss a bill that many fear will undermine communication, wipe out livelihoods and open the door to the banning of key social media tools.
“I and the people working here are likely to lose our jobs if this bill becomes effective,” said Hedieloo from his dimly lit workshop in the southern suburbs of Tehran, where he sands bleached wood and snaps photos of adorned desks to advertise.
The bill has yet to be approved by Iran’s hard-liner dominated parliament, but it is already stirring anxiety among young Iranians, avid social media users, online business owners and entrepreneurs. Iran is a country with some 94 million Internet devices in use among its over 80 million people. Nearly 70 percent of Iran’s population uses smartphones.
Over 900,000 Iranians have signed a petition opposing the bill. The protest comes at a tense time for Iran, with Ebrahim Raisi, the former judiciary chief and hard-line protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, assuming the country’s highest civilian position this week. Journalists, civil society advocates and government critics have raised the alarm about the possible increase of social repression once he takes office.
The draft legislation, first proposed this spring by conservative lawmakers, requires major foreign tech giants such as Facebook to register with the Iranian government and be subject to its oversight and data ownership rules.
Companies that host unregistered social media apps in Iran would risk penalties, with authorities empowered to slow down access to the companies’ services as a way to force them to comply. Lawmakers have noted that the crippling US sanctions on Iran make the registration of American tech companies in the country impossible, effectively ensuring their ban.
The law would also criminalize the sale and distribution of virtual private networks and proxies — a critical way Iranians access long-blocked social media platforms like Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube. It also would bar government officials from running accounts on banned social media platforms, which they now use to communicate with citizens and the press. Even the office of the supreme leader has a Twitter account with over 890,000 followers.
And finally, the bill takes control of the Internet away from the civilian government and places it under the armed forces.
The bill’s goal, according to its authors, is to “protect users and their rights.” Hard-liners in the government have long viewed social messaging and media services as part of a “soft war” by the West against the Islamic Republic. Over time, Iran has created what some have called the “halal” Internet — the Islamic Republic’s own locally controlled version of the Internet aimed at restricting what the public can see.
Supporters of the bill, such as hard-line lawmaker Ali Yazdikhah, have hailed it as a step toward an independent Iranian Internet, where “people will start to prefer locally developed services” over foreign companies.
“There is no reason to worry, online businesses will stay, and even we promise that they will expand too,” he said.
Internet advocates, however, fear the measures will tip the country toward an even more tightly controlled model like China, whose “Great Firewall” blocks access to thousands of foreign websites and slows others.
Iran’s outgoing Information Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, whom the hard-line judiciary summoned for prosecution earlier this year over his refusal to block Instagram, warned that the bill would curtail access to information and lead to full-blown bans of popular messaging apps. In a letter to Raisi last month, he urged the president-elect to reconsider the bill.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Social media is a highly contested space in Iran, where the government retains tight control over newspapers and remains the only entity allowed to broadcast on television and radio. Over recent years, anti-government protesters have used social media as a communication tool to mobilize and spread their message, prompting authorities to cripple Internet services.
During the turmoil in the fall of 2019, for instance, the government imposed a near-complete Internet blackout. Even scattered demonstrations, such as the recent protests over water shortages in Iran’s southwest, have seen disruptions of mobile Internet service.
But many ordinary Iranians, reeling from harsh American sanctions that have severed access to international banking systems and triggered runaway inflation, remain more preoccupied with the bill’s potential financial fallout.
As the coronavirus ravages Iran, a growing number of people like Hedieloo have turned to Instagram to make a living — tutoring and selling homemade goods and art. Over 190,000 businesses moved online over the past year.
Although much about the bill’s fate remains uncertain, experts say it already has sent a chill through commerce on Instagram, where once-hopeful users now doubt they have a future on the app.
“I and everyone else who is working in cyberspace is worried,” said Milad Nouri, a software developer and technology analyst. “This includes a teenager playing online games, a YouTuber making money from their channel, an influencer, an online shop based on Instagram.”
He added: “Everyone is somehow stressed.”

Topics: Iran Internet

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Algeria shuts down offices of Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath

Al-Arabiya logo. (File/Al-Arabiya)
Al-Arabiya logo. (File/Al-Arabiya)
Updated 03 August 2021
Arab News

Algeria shuts down offices of Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath

Al-Arabiya logo. (File/Al-Arabiya)
  • Algeria shuts down Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath offices in the country for “practicing media misinformation”
Updated 03 August 2021
Arab News

LONDON: The Algerian Ministry of Communication issued a decision on Saturday to withdraw the accreditation of Al-Arabiya’s representative office in Algeria.

The statement by the ministry highlighted that the decision was due to Al-Arabiya’s “failure to respect the rules of professional ethics and its practice of media misinformation and manipulation.”

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Algerian authorities to reverse the decision and to ensure that the channel operates freely inside the country.

Topics: Al-Arabiya Algeria misinformation

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Belarus sends reporter to prison over deleted chat messages

Belarus sends reporter to prison over deleted chat messages
Updated 03 August 2021

Belarus sends reporter to prison over deleted chat messages

Belarus sends reporter to prison over deleted chat messages
  • Belarus sentences journalist to 1.5 years in prison for insulting the Belarusian president in a deleted chat group
  • Belarusian authorities have ramped up the pressure against non-governmental organizations and independent media in recent weeks
Updated 03 August 2021
KYIV: A court in Belarus convicted a journalist of insulting the president in messages in a deleted chat group and sentenced him to 1 1/2 years in prison, the Belarusian Association of Journalists said Monday.
The verdict in the case against Siarhei Hardziyevich, 50, comes as part of a massive crackdown that Belarusian authorities have unleashed on independent media and human rights activists.
Hardziyevich on Monday was found guilty of insulting the president and slandering police officers, according to the association. The court sentenced him to a prison term and a $1,600 fine.
The charges against the journalist from Drahichyn, a city 300 kilometers (185 miles) southwest of Belarus’ capital of Minsk, were brought over messages in a chat group on the messaging app Viber which was deleted last year.
Hardziyevich, who worked for a popular regional news outlet, The First Region, has maintained his innocence. His defense team demanded the charges be dropped due to a lack of evidence and because the crime was impossible to establish.
“I have nothing to do with these crimes, I don’t consider myself guilty,” Hardziyevich said in his address to the court before the verdict.
The Viasna human rights center declared Hardziyevich a political prisoner.
Belarusian authorities have ramped up the pressure against non-governmental organizations and independent media in recent weeks, conducting more than 200 raids of offices and apartments of activists and journalists in July alone, according to Viasna.
Authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has vowed to continue what he called a “mopping-up operation” against civil society activists whom he has denounced as “bandits and foreign agents.”
Lukashenko faced months of protests triggered by his being awarded a sixth term in an August 2020 vote that the opposition and the West saw as rigged. He responded to demonstrations with a massive crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police.
A total of 29 Belarusian journalists remain in custody either awaiting trial or serving their sentences.

Twitter partners with AP, Reuters to battle misinformation on its site

Twitter partners with AP, Reuters to battle misinformation on its site
Updated 03 August 2021

Twitter partners with AP, Reuters to battle misinformation on its site

Twitter partners with AP, Reuters to battle misinformation on its site
  • Twitter will partner with AP and Reuters to provide credible information on the platform and combat the spread of misinformation
  • Twitter said it will collaborate with the newswires during breaking news events to add accurate context
Updated 03 August 2021
LONDON: Twitter Inc. will partner with the Associated Press and Reuters to more quickly provide credible information on the social networking site as part of an effort to fight the spread of misinformation, it said on Monday.
Like other social media companies, the San Francisco-based firm has been under pressure to remove misleading or false information on its site. Earlier this year Twitter launched a program called Birdwatch, asking its users to help identify and fact-check misleading tweets.
Twitter said it will collaborate with the newswires during breaking news events to add accurate context, which could appear in various places on Twitter, such as a label attached to tweets about the event or as a “Moment,” which curates information about trending topics on Twitter.
The partnerships mark the first time Twitter will formally collaborate with news organizations to elevate accurate information on its site, a Twitter spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added Twitter will work separately with both the AP and Reuters, a division of information services company Thomson Reuters Corp, and the newswires will not interact with each other.
“Trust, accuracy and impartiality are at the heart of what Reuters does every day ... those values also drive our commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation,” Hazel Baker, global head of UGC (user-generated content) newsgathering at Reuters, said in a statement.
Tom Januszewski, vice president of global business development at the AP, said: “We are particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts.”

US to evacuate journalists, aid workers from Afghanistan

Afghan interpreters at a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, before the beginning of the U.S. troop withdrawal in April. (File/Getty Images)
Afghan interpreters at a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, before the beginning of the U.S. troop withdrawal in April. (File/Getty Images)
Updated 03 August 2021
AP

US to evacuate journalists, aid workers from Afghanistan

Afghan interpreters at a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, before the beginning of the U.S. troop withdrawal in April. (File/Getty Images)
  • The Biden administration expands efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghan citizens and give them refugee status in the US
  • Afghans eligible for asylum now include current and former employees of US-based news organizations, US-based aid and development agencies and other relief groups
Updated 03 August 2021
AP

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration on Monday expanded its efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghan citizens from Afghanistan as Taliban violence increases ahead there of the US military pullout at the end of the month.
The State Department said it is widening the scope of Afghans eligible for refugee status in United States to include current and former employees of US-based news organizations, US-based aid and development agencies and other relief groups that receive US funding. Current and former employees of the US government and the NATO military operation who don’t meet the criteria for a dedicated program for such workers are also covered.
However, the move comes with a major caveat: applicants must leave Afghanistan to begin the adjudication process that may take 12-14 months in a third country, and the US does not intend to support their departures or stays there.
Nevertheless, the State Department said the move will mean that “many thousands” of Afghans and their immediate families will now have the opportunity to be permanently resettled in the US as refugees. It did not offer a more specific number of those who might be eligible for the program.
“The US objective remains a peaceful, secure Afghanistan,” it said in a statement. “However, in light of increased levels of Taliban violence, the US government is working to provide certain Afghans, including those who worked with the United States, the opportunity for refugee resettlement to the United States.”
The creation of a “Priority 2” category for Afghans within the US Refugee Admissions Program is intended for Afghans and their immediate families who “may be at risk due to their US affiliation” but aren’t able to get a Special Immigrant Visa because they did not work directly for the US government or didn’t hold their government jobs long enough.
To qualify for the Priority 2 category, Afghans must be nominated by a US government agency or by the most senior civilian US citizen employee of a U.S-based media outlet or nongovernmental organization.
The first group of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants — most of whom served as translators or did other work for US troops or diplomats — who have cleared security vetting arrived in the US on Friday. That group of 221 people are among 2,500 who will be brought to the US in the coming days.
Another 4,000 SIV applicants, plus their families, who have not yet cleared the security screening are expected to be relocated to third countries ahead of the completion of the US withdrawal. Roughly 20,000 Afghans have expressed interest in the program.

Topics: Afghanistan Journalists The United States Taliban Afghan refugees

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