World
Dutch minister steps down seven weeks before elections
The Hague: Seven weeks before the general elections in the Netherlands, Dutch Minister of Security and Justice Ard van der Steur has quit his post. The move came on Thursday after a debate in parliament following new allegations on a controversial crime deal, Xinhua news agency reported. Van der Steur said he did not feel the confidence of the members of the parliament anymore and that he did not want to wait for a possible motion of no confidence. The debate therefore ended with the minister resigning.
“I already took my decision, but I wanted to do this debate to defend myself against false accusations,” Van der Steur told the parliament. According to revelations in a book by journalist Bas Haan, Van der Steur misinformed the parliament on knowledge he had about an amount of money paid in a crime deal. Van der Steur claimed the revelation did not contain new information and that he never had the intention to hide something, but opposition parties claimed he wanted to fool members of parliament.
Van der Steur is not the first political victim of the “Teeven deal”, a controversial deal with a convicted drug lord which dates back to 2001. In exchange for information on an even bigger drug lord, Fred Teeven, the public prosecutor at the time had given 4.7 million Dutch guilders ($2.24 million) to criminal Cees H., who led a drugs syndicate in the eighties and nineties. At that time, the deal was kept secret from the tax services.
Van der Steur’s predecessor Ivo Opstelten and Teeven, who was State Secretary of Justice, stepped down in March 2015 following misinformation on the settlement. In December 2015, an investigation committee slammed the controversial deal, stating it should not have been struck. Following a report by the commission, Anouchka van Miltenburg, at that time president of one of the chambers of the Dutch parliament, the House of Representatives, also stepped down.
Her role had been blasted because she had put a letter from an anonymous bell-ringer, in which all the details of the Teeven deal were pointed out into a shredder, and denied any knowledge of the deal against the commission.For Van der Steur, a period of no longer than two years as minister comes to an end. It was not the first time he came into trouble since his appointment in March 2015. In April last year, the 47-year-old had already survived a vote of no confidence during a fierce debate on the fight to end terrorism. The opposition parties questioned whether the terrorism fight was in good hands with Van der Steur after he had made a series of mistakes and had given misinformation. Stef Blok, currently acting as Minister for Housing and the Central Government Sector, will replace Van der Steur.
Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.
Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai
Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.
Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.
Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.
WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.
Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.
Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy
Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.
The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.
Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.
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