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World Bank critics threatened, jailed: rights group
Washington: The World Bank Group has done little to prevent or dissuade governments from intimidating critics of the projects it funds in some countries including India, Human Rights Watch has said.
A 144-page report, “At Your Own Risk: Reprisals against Critics of World Bank Group Projects,” details how governments and powerful companies have threatened, intimidated and misused criminal laws against outspoken community members who stand to be displaced or otherwise allegedly harmed by projects financed by the World Bank and its private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
The World Bank and IFC have failed to take adequate steps to help create a safe environment in which people can express concern or criticism about projects funded by the Bank Group without risk of reprisal, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.
“The World Bank has long said that public participation and accountability are key to the success of the development efforts it funds,” said Jessica Evans of Human Rights Watch.
“But the World Bank’s repeated failure to confront intimidation or harassment of people who criticize its projects risks making a mockery out of these principles.”
Human Rights Watch found that people who have publicly criticized projects financed by the World Bank and IFC have faced threats, harassment and trumped-up criminal charges in Cambodia, India, Uganda, Uzbekistan and elsewhere.
When reprisals have occurred, the Bank Group has largely left victims to their fate, preferring silence or “quiet diplomacy” over the kind of prompt, public and vigorous responses that could make a real difference.
In spite of what are often grave risks, affected community members in numerous countries have spoken out about the problems that they see with Bank-supported projects.
In India, a 30-year-old Sita, not her real name, described how employees of the company in charge of constructing a hydropower dam in the country’s north publicly ridiculed community members protesting the project as “prostitutes”, viciously insulted them referencing their caste, and warned them of “severe” consequences if they continued their protest.
The World Bank Group generally has high-level access to the governments it supports and could exert pressure to push them to tolerate divergent views and accept criticism about development projects as valuable rather than cracking down on dissident voices, Human Rights Watch said.
But it has repeatedly avoided difficult conversations with partner governments, Human Rights Watch found.
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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