To distract you from the news about the latest coronavirus variant, I bring you (mostly good) news like:
- The youth is protesting in Kurdistan
- We finally have more jaguars in Mexico
- Drug checking is legal in New Zealand now
- United Kingdom returned stolen art to Ethiopia
what happened last week
We demanded a better future for our youth in Kurdistan, so they don't flee to Europe -- and got tear-gassed for it
Thousands of people (literally, look), many of them students, in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq took to the streets in different cities (including my hometown Slemani) to demand that financial stipends be restored. 'We can't build a future like this!'
(For this piece, and for you, I talked to several people on the ground as well as analysts outside of Kurdistan to better understand what's going on.)
Financial stipends?
Yes, money -- up to US$80 per month -- given out to public university students since 2005. The region's government, KRG for short, stopped paying those around 2014. Journalist Renwar Najm told me that the government did so because 'We don't have enough money! Look, oil prices are down! Plus we have to fight ISIS, plus blah blah blah' and that none of these excuses are valid now. "Students have the right to ask for their rights," Najm wrote.
They just want their allowance back? That's it?
No. In fact, they want so much more. I talked to two protestors; to keep their identities safe, I'm quoting them as Mina and Rozhan. Mina went straight to the point: "We have goals and our goals is to clear our education system from politics and those who break our hopes and disrespect us as students!" Rozhan told me that dozens have been hurt and arrested. "The police brutality is extreme! So many of us are traumatized. We've protested before but we have been disappointed many times."
People in the Kurdistan region have become more and more frustrated over the years. Journalist Abdulla Hawez told me that, 'KRG has quietly introduced tuition fee in public universities a decade ago,' meaning that for students who depend on their families, going to university can be quite a difficult thing to do.
How did the protests go?
Really well or really bad, depending on how you view it. Really well because, as Najm told me, "this is the largest only-student protest in the last decade". As a result, the government has announced that it will re-allocate resources for those stipends to be handed out again (but students remain skeptical; rightly so). Really bad because, during the at-first-peaceful protests, government forces used a water cannon, fired tear gas and then live bullets to break up the masses. Dozens of people have been arrested so far.
Can you zoom out a little? Kurdistan is a bit niche, isn't it?
I asked several journalists why they thought this news mattered on a global scale:
- Abdulla Hawez: This news "sheds light on the deteriorating socioeconomic and political conditions in the region; and we have to remember that the coverage of Iraqi Kurdistan has mostly been that the region is the bacon of democracy and hope for the Middle East. The growing protests and the mass migration are the only chance for people to tell the world things are far worse than the reports of their media suggest or used to suggest."
- Kamal Chomani: "This news tells us that the Kurdistan Regional Government model is also a failure like the majority of the failed nationalist and monarchy Middle East countries. Failure of the KRG will continue as far as this government remains under the control of the two families of Barzani and Talabani where militias, monopoly over market and natural resources rule rather than democratic principles." (Kamal Chomani has also written this excellent piece for New Lines Magazine last week.)
Why this matters:
Many of the migrants knocking on Europe's doors in Belarus or crossing the Channel from France (and dying on their way) are from the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Many of them are young and full of hope. They flee their homes because building a good future there seems (and probably is at this moment) a really, really difficult thing to do. Maybe even impossible.
What can I do as someone from outside of Kurdistan?
- Abdulla Hawez: "I believe the role of the...
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Below you'll find some of the sources used for this issue. Only sources that support "media embedding" are included.
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Young people in northern Iraq are so disillusioned that many are trying to leave the country any way they can. Some fear widespread discontent could push people toward potentially dangerous religious fundamentalism.
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Protests erupted in Sulaimaniyah and other parts of Iraq’s Kurdish region, demanding reintroduction of monthly stipend.
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As officials grapple with crisis, even more Kurds are preparing to make dangerous journey to Europe
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The jaguar (Panthera onca) is one of the most threatened carnivores in the Americas. Despite a long history of research on this charismatic species, to date there have been few systematic efforts to assess its population size and status in most countries across its distribution range. We present here the results of the two National Jaguar Surveys for Mexico, the first national censuses in any country within the species distribution. We estimated jaguar densities from field data collected at 13 localities in 2008–2010 (2010 hereafter) and 11 localities in 2016–2018 (2018 hereafter). We used the 2010 census results as the basis to develop a National Jaguar Conservation Strategy that identified critical issues for jaguar conservation in Mexico. We worked with the Mexican government to implement the conservation strategy and then evaluated its effectivity. To compare the 2010 and 2018 results, we estimated the amount of jaguar-suitable habitat in the entire country based on an ecological niche model for both periods. Suitable jaguar habitat covered ~267,063 km2 (13.9% of the country’s territory) in 2010 and ~ 288,890 km2 (~14.8% of the country’s territory) in 2018. Using the most conservative density values for each priority region, we estimated jaguar densities for both the high and low suitable habitats. The total jaguar population was estimated in ~4,000 individuals for 2010 census and ~4,800 for the 2018 census. The Yucatan Peninsula was the region with the largest population, around 2000 jaguars, in both censuses. Our promising results indicate that the actions we proposed in the National Jaguar Conservation Strategy, some of which have been implemented working together with the Federal Government, other NGO’s, and land owners, are improving jaguar conservation in Mexico. The continuation of surveys and monitoring programs of the jaguar populations in Mexico will provide accurate information to design and implement effective, science-based conservation measures to try to ensure that robust jaguar populations remain a permanent fixture of Mexico’s natural heritage.
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A confederation of states must choose whether to follow the bloody path of the former Yugoslavia or the prosperous model of the European Union.
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Benin’s President Talon travelled to Paris to bring home the artefacts that were stolen by French forces 130 years ago.
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The white men pursued and shot dead Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia in what some called a modern-day lynching.
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Thousands of demonstrators around the world took part in protests to highlight violence against women and LGBTQ groups.
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A police station, a Parliament building and several shops have been set on fire by looters in Solomon Islands after what started in the morning as a peaceful protest turned ugly around mid-afternoon.
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Social-media platforms must monitor the accounts of celebrities and report violations to the state as China cracks down on the entertainment industry.
Each week, What Happened Last Week curates news and perspectives from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The newsletter is written by Sham Jaff and focuses on stories that rarely receive sustained attention in Western media.
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