Category Archives: Government Oppression

Chris Jones reflects back 27 April 1994, when he participated in the first democratic elections and looks back on the notes he made at the time about his hopes and fears for the future.

Commemorated annually on 27 April,Freedom Dayis a significant day on our national calendar because it reminds us of the first democratic election in our country, held on this day in 1994.

While planning this article for Freedom Day, I revisited the notes I wrote down after participating in the first non-racial election in South Africa, 28 years ago. I made notes of my experience because I was working on my doctorate in Theological Ethics and Human Rights at the time. I focused, among others, on the Draft Bill of Human Rights prepared by the Constitutional Committee of the ANC.

I had two sets of notes. The one was lengthy, focusing on all the possible benefits of the new South Africa. The other one was short it pointed to what possibly could go wrong. I must admit, the latter I wrote quite reluctantly because I firmly believed that the new South Africa would be one ofreconstruction, nation-building, advancinghuman rights, and constitutional democracy.

One of my first remarks in abovementioned notes referred to the fact that apartheid did not just fail morally and politically, but damaged each one of us, the oppressor as well as the oppressed. There were so many invisible injuries people had to deal with. I knew we needed a South Africa in which we could heal our spirits, restore our confidence, and allow our trust to blossom.

Constitutional mechanisms

While scanning through my notes, I came across something written by Justice Albie Sachs in his 1992 bookAdvancing human rights in South Africa: "Yet important though the vote is, we must think beyond it We are not asking for less than the vote. We are exploring means of having the vote plus".

He then continues by making the vital point that the plus is constitutional mechanisms to ensure that inequalities are dealt with in an orderly, progressive, and principled way.

Political democracy, in his words, is essential and necessary, but on its own insufficient. It must not only create an institutional framework within which power is to be expressed, but it must also put mechanisms in place to ensure that human rights are advanced and enjoyed.

I found a further note reasoning that after the euphoria of this first democratic election would be over, our newly elected government which I was very excited about would have to prepare themselves for the problems of the day.

Failure to do so, I wrote, would result in betrayal of everything so many people have fought for. What we were doing during that first election was the beginning of dotting thei'sand crossing thet'sof the ANC'sFreedom Charter.

We must remember that the Freedom Charter was always about people's rights, rather than a people's power document. However, it did not deal with mechanisms to achieve the rights of people, therefore we had to pick up where the Freedom Charter left off.

Considering this, I asked myself in another note: What would the result of the first democratic election be over the next 20-30 years? I was so positive about our future because we were creating new possibilities throughnegotiation, and therefore I reasoned that our people would be spared the destruction and collapse of infrastructures often involved in theseizureof power like in some other countries.

I knew at that stage although I have pushed this idea aside that the danger exists that a new elite could emerge which would use its official position to accumulate wealth, power, and status for itself. And that the poor would remain poor and the oppressed would remain oppressed. Instead of racial oppression, we then would have non-racial oppression and poverty.

There is a saying: Oppression in the name of the good is worse than oppression in defence of the bad.

Making the country governable

I was hoping that the new government would be able to make the transition from being in opposition, mainly accountable to the future, to being in authority, answerable to the present and all its challenges. The freedom organisations during apartheid gained considerable experience in making the country ungovernable in circumstances of racist autocracy, but they had yet to master the art of making the country governable in the context of constitutional democracy.

I was also worried that the years of the long struggle would have made our new government and its officials intellectually weary and that their principal objective would be(come) getting into office and little more. I feared for intellectual fatigue, and a loss of moral imagination.

I came across another interesting quote from Sachs's 1992 book, which encapsulated my worries and fears: "Having resisted the bullets and bombs of lead, we now face the bullets and bombs of sugar, and slowly we succumb to their sweetness. A job for a friend here, a place for a relative there [and] directing contracts".

The danger was always there that the new leaders would just deracialise oppression and poverty and legitimise inequality, and that politics would become the art of the manipulable. However, I rejected these concerns somewhat naively.

Everyone matters

Then came 4 December 1996, the day on which ourConstitutionwas approved, taking effect a bit later, on 4 February 1997. And this I embraced right from the beginning to this day because the Constitution is about human rights, not political power. Constitutionalism is the enemy of opportunism. Constitutional principles cannot be dependent on growth, Sachs reasons. It is rather in circumstances of scarcity that a constitution plays its fullest role through its principles and through fair procedures, deciding what the prioritiesshould be.

Constitutional democracy will live on, not as a form of institutionalised political power, but as active civic involvement in the processes of transformation, based on human rights and constitutional principles. The Constitution should be a glittering shield in which we all see our faces reflected. It is a document that establishes that everyone matters, counts, and that no one is born worthless. As Sachspoints out: "a Constitution is not a product to be sold to the people through skilful advertising. It is something that emerges from our innards, that express our highest idealism while protecting us from our basest temptations".

- Dr Chris Jones heads the Unit for Moral Leadership in the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University.

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OPINION | Chris Jones: A reflection on voting day 28 years ago - News24

The US, European Union and a host of other global partners have pledged to reinforce democracy online and make the internet open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure.

The Declaration for the Future of the Internet, launched by the US and 60 global partners, represents a political commitment by the governments of these countries to advance a positive vision for the Internet and digital technologies. The signatories promised not to shut down access to the internet, or use it to spy illegally on citizens, access an individuals personal data or run misinformation campaigns to undermine elections, the White House said on Thursday. The government also promised to ensure safety of its users, especially young people and women, while promoting access to the internet.

We affirm our commitment to promote and sustain an Internet that: is an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure and to ensure that the Internet reinforces democratic principles and human rights and fundamental freedoms, the declaration said.

Although the declaration is not legally binding, the signatories said in the three-page document that the declaration should act as a reference for policymakers, citizens, businesses and civil society organisations.

According to senior US government officials, the pledge will serve as a counterpoint to countries like Russia and China that have tried to disconnect the internet from the rest of the world, The New York Times reported. The pledge emphasises the need to decentralise and globally interconnect the Internet.

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The document highlights the need to ensure privacy and safety, steps that the EU has taken in recent years through its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Digital Services Act (DSA). The declaration condemns the use of algorithmic tools or techniques for surveillance and oppression, The Verge reported.

On India not being a partner to the declaration, a senior official said the time has not fully passed yet for the country to join. Weve been engaged in in very intensive efforts to have all of these all of these countries join, Business Line quoted the official as saying.

The US and the 60 global partners of the declaration will work together to implement the principles in the declaration and promote its vision globally. At the same time, they will respect each others regulatory autonomy within their own jurisdictions.

Continued here:

US, 60 global partners sign the Declaration for the Future of the Internet; India not part of it - CNBCTV18

Misinformation is a profitable racket. Just ask Lee Camp.

In March, the former TV host found himself out of a job when RT America shut down in the wake of Vladimir Putins illegal invasion of Ukraine. Make no mistake though: Camp does not find himself destitute. Since RTs closure he has continually directed his followers to give to him on the fundraising platform Patreon. There he has more than 1,900 donors giving in tiers of $5, $10, $25, and $90. Even assuming his supporters mostly sign up for the lowest one, this would ostensibly net him thousands of dollars a month, possibly six figures a year.

A strong reward for a self-styled leftist, anti-war, anti-imperialist who has seen fit to deny repression and atrocities the world over while often putting forward narratives friendly to Putins invasion of Ukraine.

Camp has a large following even without his platform on RT: tens-of-thousands on YouTube, over 315,000 on Facebook, and more than 150,000 on Twitter. He sometimes claims to be against the war, offering the mildest criticism of Russia, yet the vast majority of his posts are critical of Ukraine as they face invasion from a larger, stronger power. Often they feature misinformation. One of his retweets hinted at the so-called Biolabs conspiracy theory that has spread like wildfire across the internet. This widely debunked notion postulates that the U.S. is somehow involved in producing biological weapons in Ukraine. Another of his retweets intimated his job loss was connected to the Great Reset, another debunked conspiracy theory. Camp is a multi-platform kind of guy, and though he says the death of RT saw many of his videos removed from YouTube, he still has a channel and posts some of them on his Patreon.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Alex Wong/Getty

In one he interviews Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector who was correct about Iraq and WMDs. (Notably, Camp doesnt mention that Ritter is a sex offender. He was arrested in 2001 after contacting cops who were posing as underage girls online, but the charges were dismissed on condition he entered intensive counseling, The New York Times reported. He was convicted for a 2009 incident where he masturbated on a webcam for an undercover law enforcement officer who repeatedly stated he was a 15-year-old girl.)

During the interview, Ritter claims there is a battalion of Azov in every brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forcesa reference to the notorious neo-Nazi Azov battalion. While Azov is very real and represents a very serious and concerning part of the far right in Ukraine, Ritters claims are misinformation. Estimates of Azovs size in recent years range from 900 to around 2,500. This in a Ukrainian military that has more than 200,000 troops counting reserves and Territorial Defense units. Even in the video, Ritter acknowledges that the Ukrainian far right received only a small chunk of the vote in the last election (less than 2.5 percent to be precise). While the far right does have some disproportionate influence in other sectors of society, nowhere is there any evidence of that much Azov infiltration of the military. Camp never pushed back on this, and in order to understand why you need to know a few things about ideology.

In left-wing circles theres a group derisively referred to as tankies. This patois refers to a minority who support authoritarianism, defend dictators, and deny human rights abuses. In my experience they are a small clique even among the far left and are often held in contempt. Yet they are obnoxiously loud on social media and are starting to gain a following.

My observations indicate that many subscribe to an ideology known as Campism (not to be confused with Lee Camp). This idea sees the world divided into competing factions. Hence, their often well-justified criticisms of the United States lead them to reflexively defend Beijing or Moscow, the other camps. There is also the extremely strident belief in multi-polarity, with their often cogent critiques of U.S. hegemony leading them to see the need to help rival nations grow powerful in order to challenge and weaken it. Often this means protecting them in order to help their rise.

I do think the number of people who literally support the invasion is fairly limited. The key problem to me is the dominant anti-war framework in the Western Left subscribes to a worldview and organizing strategy that believes we have no influence on other imperial states, and that we can only critique US/NATO, Promise Li, a Hong Kong-born leftist activist, writer, and member of the Lausan Collective, said in a text message interview. This means that pro-Putin perspectives become condoned, or that we under-emphasize Russias role in the conflict as a crude reaction against liberal interventionist war hawks, rather than trying to find genuinely positive alternatives of solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

One person Li indicated is a particularly bad actor is Sameera Khan, a former RT correspondent and a previous Miss New Jersey. While Camps tenure ended with the networks demise, hers came to an abrupt halt in 2018 after her embarrassing tweets celebrating Stalins gulags caused an uproar. She later apologized. It would seem she has learned very little since.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/YouTube

Some of the most violent, brutal dictators in the world have found in her a staunch defender. With over 90,000 followers, she has tweeted she supports Myanmars armed forces (known as the Tatmadaw) over Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected leader whom they deposed in a recent coup. She not only denies the oppression of the Uyghur people in Western China, she actively mocks it.

Recently, shes railed against those trying to feminize men and masculinize women, and men who let other dudes fuck your wife. She says her love of Russia started when men carried her suitcase on a visit to Moscowanti-beta & anti-woke heaven, she tweeted along with a Russian flag. Until very recently her Twitter banner was a portrait of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Her commentary on the war in Ukraine is littered with much of the familiar propaganda and misinformation. In her case, some of it is tinged with a hefty dose of transphobia and homophobia.

Biden, you should be very afraid of taking on Russia. Your they/them army wouldnt last ten minutes, she tweeted.

This fits into her much larger pattern of bigoted rhetoric like ranting against sanctions on anti-LGBTQ countries and at one point praising the notoriously violent, anti-gay Kadyrov as the ideal man-the perfect husband, warrior, leader all wrapped into one.

While Camp and Khan are vets of RT, others are mirroring Kremlin propaganda, and they are practiced in the skill.

For those who know them, its no surprise that The Grayzone has taken to spreading pro-Russia propaganda. Edited by Max Blumenthal, the publication is infamous for its defenses of dictatorships and its denial of atrocities.

In addition to casting doubt on the reality of the Uyghur Muslims repression in Xinjiang, they published a piece on Nicaragua that cited a false confession extracted under torture. Strangely enough for a leftist, Blumenthal has associated with the far right before, having previously appeared on Tucker Carlsons Fox News show. Now he is flirting with right-wing positions on the coronavirus, writing that lockdowns do little to slow the spread of Covid (most evidence suggests they do help quite a bit). He was listed as a speaker at an anti-mandates event that featured reactionary figures like Will Witt and Lara Logan. At a recent similar event in New York he praised the people in the movement, spun conspiracy theories, stated the issue wasnt one of left versus right, and said: I see this from the perspective of someone whos been in the anti-war movement, organizing against imperialism for years. I see this as a new war on the people.

So I dont know if you noticed, but as soon as our corporate, feudal lords ran out of variants to frighten us into submission, as soon as the Moderna stock started slipping on the Dow, and the masks began to come off, they found a new war to keep the public in a state of mass formation psychosis and to continue the process of corporate looting, he said. In this war they are lying about biolabs in Ukraine, sponsored by the Pentagons Biological Threat Reduction Agency, and you know what they say, that their function was just as legitimate as Hunter Bidens job.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Sputnik via AP

At a point, his speech slipped into incoherent ranting.

They called you an anti-vaxxer, anti-masker, trucker, fascist, Tucker-watching traitor, trucker, fascist, Tucker lover, anti-vaxxer, anti-masker, all their insults just get lost, it all blends into one, the same bullshit, the same war, the same war, he said.

In another instance, an editor I worked with named Muhammad Idrees Ahmad noted Blumenthal went on what he described as a junket to Damascus, and there attended a forum presided over by Bashar al-Assad.

I should note here that Blumenthal and Ahmad have what seems to be a mutually hostile relationship, with both accusing the other of various things, including harassment. That said, the pieces depiction of Blumenthals behavior as dishonorable matches up well with his record. His publication, The Grayzone, has consistently denied that the Assad regime used chemical weapons on its own people when, indeed, they did. Blumenthal has gone so far as to make fun of the very idea by putting a bag over his head to derisively mimic the desperate actions of Syrian civilians. One of his past assertions was that the White Helmets, famed for their rescue efforts on behalf of innocents, were nothing more than al Qaedaa conspiracy theory that has been thoroughly exposed and refuted. According to a report published in The New York Review of Books, Blumenthals bizarre reversal from his earlier criticisms of the Assad regime happened after a 2015 trip to a Moscow event celebrating RTs anniversary.

The Grayzones record regarding the current conflict isnt very good so far. In a long, humiliating video interview with Russian diplomat Dmitry Polyanskiy posted on Feb. 15, Blumenthal offered no skepticism when his guest denied Russia was planning an invasion. Eleven days later, Blumenthal tweeted his assertion that Ukraines regular military was vanquished. Very embarrassing in light of the fact that Ukraines military fights on quite effectively. He also appeared to snidely defend Tucker Carlson and effectively advanced the biolabs theory. Russian officials have taken notice with Blumenthal earning retweets from both Polyanskiy and his fellow diplomat Alexander Alimov. In similar fashion to their denial of war crimes in Syria, The Grayzone has denied claims that Russian forces bombed a theater in Mariupol, killing as many as 300 by a city council estimate.

The Grayzone mirrors the Russian Defense Ministry by heavily implying the bombing was a false flag by Azov Battalion, but they offer extremely thin evidence, including a questionable Russian language Telegram post and sporadic information gathered by pro-Kremlin outfits.

An obvious falsehood in their argument is that Russia stood nothing to gain militarily by bombing the theater in Mariupol. While that might appear true on a surface level, the same could be said of the many civilians recently killed by Russian bombardment in Syria. In both places, the bombing of civilians serves the purpose of intimidating and demoralizing enemy populations. Both Li and scholar Lily Hamourtziadou have pointed out how Russian denials of civilian casualties in Ukraine mirror their obvious falsehoods about Syria. While it is true that some sources have suggested Russia has held back a bit with its air power, the UN estimates that thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict, mostly by artillery and airstrikes. The vital context of Russias recent pattern of killing civilians in the Middle East does not make it into The Grayzones story.

Its an oversight I doubt they would make when dealing with the actions of the United States.

Like Camp, Benjamin Norton also successfully fundraises on Patreon and enjoys a large social-media following, especially on Twitter. A former long time Grayzone editor now running his own website called Multipolarista, he has often denied the increasingly well-documented suffering the Russian military has inflicted on Ukraine. On Feb. 25, he retweeted a post that read: A striking difference between Russian and US military operations is that Russia targets military installations and weapons almost exclusivelywhile the US deliberately targets civilian infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, dams, and water treatment plants.

Given the widely available evidence from both Syria and Chechnya, this is a clear, demonstrable lie that Norton put forward for his hundreds of thousands of followers. Nortons commentary can also be glaringly hypocritical.

The United States has turned Latin America and the Caribbean into a key battlefield in its new cold war on China and Russia, invoking the 200-year-old colonialist Monroe Doctrine to justify aggressive interventionist policies, he tweeted.

Apparently he can find all the outrage in the world for Americas unjust domination of its neighbors, but cant hold Russia to the same standard in Eastern Europe.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Facebook

Norton often recycles the same lines of argument. He called the leadership of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution Fascist Horthyitesa ridiculous assertion given that leaders like Imre Nagy were longtime Communist Party members. Its useful to remember here that the word tankie finds its origins in those who supported sending the Soviet tanks in to crush the Hungarian uprising. Norton is old-school.

When speaking about Ukraine, he often plays up the influence and extent of the far right in the country. In fairness, some of his videos acknowledge facts like the far rights small vote share, but he still hyper-focuses on them while waving off the tremendous impact Russian fascist Alexander Dugin has on Putin. The white supremacist Russian mercenaries fighting in Ukraine seem to not merit much mention from him either.

Despite all of what Grayzone, Blumenthal, and Norton have done, theyve often met with approving tweets from Camp, and this is illustrative because these personalities seem to form something of a community. Oftentimes that looks to be based on shared ideology, but in some cases it is more formal.

Danny Haiphong is a writer, podcaster, and an advocate for authoritarian regimes in the aforementioned tradition.

As a co-editor of Friends of Socialist China, his advocacys raison detre seems to be defending the modern Chinese Communist Party. In the interest of full disclosure, Ill note here Ive been publicly critical of the Chinese government before. In an email exchange, he touted Chinas accomplishments on multiple issues.

I spend ample time on China because the United States is the most propagandized country in the world, with majorities holding a negative view of a country that is leading the way globally on matters that literally will determine humanitys future, he wrote.

As Coda Story has noted, Haiphong is a strident denier of the atrocities in Xinjiang. A fact which he does not deny but justifies. In an interview conducted by Camp, he heavily implied that a Uyghur woman, Tursunay Ziawudun, who has spoken publicly about her sexual assault in a Xinjiang concentration camp, is not to be believed. This despite the fact that other women have corroborated her story, suggesting a deep and horrifying rape culture exists there.

In an email to The Daily Beast, Haiphong claimed that the story Ziawudun told the BBC is inconsistent with her other interviews; that she was resettled by an organization that has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy; and that the claims she has made at present should be further investigated.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/YouTube

The BBCs reporting actually addressed this point: Ziawudun has spoken to the media before, but only from Kazakhstan, where she lived in constant fear of being sent back to China, she said. She said she believed that if she revealed the extent of the sexual abuse she had experienced and seen, and was returned to Xinjiang, she would be punished more harshly than before. And she was ashamed.

It should be further noted that false rape allegations are very rare. It was rather stunning to see this supposed man of the left blithely dismiss a marginalized woman in this way. Frankly, it was misogynistic in the extreme.

In the circles Haiphong seems to run in we frequently see the same characters uplifting each other on their platforms. Norton was interviewed by Friends of Socialist Chinas Haiphong and Carlos Martinez on March 10. In January 2021, The Grayzone advertised Haiphong as appearing on a livestream with Blumenthal and Norton acting as two of the hosts. Haiphong admits he considers Blumenthal and Norton to be friends who he respects, and has recently been apoplectic over Ritters Twitter ban. In October, 2021 Friends of Socialist China hosted a webinar featuring Norton, Haiphong, and CGTN host/social media personality Li Jingjing.

Li was recently identified by the Associated Press as an influencer who pushes propaganda, and whose accounts are often inconsistently labeled as Chinese state media.

While the invasion was being condemned as a brazen assault on democracy, Li Jingjing presented a different narrative to her 21,000 YouTube subscribers, posting videos that echoed Russian propaganda and promoted misleading claims, the story said. On YouTube, Li Jingjing says shes a traveler, storyteller and journalist. But she does not reveal in her segments that shes a reporter for CGTN, articulating views that are not just her own but also familiar Chinese government talking points.

Li Jingjing was also named in a New York Times story detailing how the Chinese government seeks to shape public opinion. Her large social media presence includes a whopping 2,500,000-plus followers on Facebook. She often uses her YouTube channel to disseminate cutesy travel blogs that are kind to the positions of the ruling party. She has appeared in Xinjiang happily traipsing about, chitchatting, and eating. The message is clear: everything is fine, people are happy. This type of messaging has been noted by other journalists as a method of propaganda in no way unique to her. Lis vlogs are even more embarrassing in light of footage from Xinjiang put forward by Vice and Frontline that tells a very different story from hers.

When Li recently interviewed Norton on her YouTube channel, she offered the mildest criticism of Russia. Yet, she did not push back as Norton put forward the bizarre misinformation that Ukraine is not a sovereign nation because of the overthrow of the government during the Maidan Revolution in 2014. Neither morally nor according to international law can one credibly argue that Ukraine lost all claims to sovereignty in 2014. Even if one believes that the post-Maidan regime was a puppet, as Norton claims in the interview, a new government led by Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in a landslide in 2019. In the comments Li says she is not taking a side, and claims to only be giving context that many mainstream media and governments are not talking about. Allowing the spread of blatant pro-Russia disinformation is a funny way of showing such self-proclaimed neutrality.

What Li doesnt mention in either her interview with Norton or Haiphong is that theyre all listed as co-signatories of an ideological statement deriding the propaganda war against China. The document laments: Unsubstantiated accusations of genocide and forced labour in Xinjiang echo endlessly in Western media and governments, along with conspiracy theories about the origins of the pandemic.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/YouTube

It should also be noted that a recent independent inquiry found that China was guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uyghurs. The amount of evidence is vast, including satellite photos, individual testimony, and investigative reporting done in Xinjiang.

This link between soft Russian apologism and Uyghur genocide denial stems from the problem I identified earlier, an inability for the Western Left to understand that there are other imperialist actors, and that a Campist division of the world forces people into a complete misreading of how imperialism works and how various nation-states are implicated in the same system and techniques of global imperialism, Promise Li told me in a text interview.

Considering the fact that Li Jingjing, Norton, and Haiphong appear to have been three of the original 30 signatories of the Friends of Socialist China statement, one cant imagine it is something they forgot. It should be remembered that even on her personal channel she puts herself forward as a journalist, and her vlogs have the air of journalistic programming. Totally lacking in transparency, the fact that Li doesnt mention the statement during relevant interviews cannot, in my opinion, be construed as journalistically ethical. Haiphong defended himself from my criticism that this is deceptive and unethical on his part by indicating his Twitter bio reveals his involvement with Friends of Socialist China.

Haiphong hasnt limited himself to just denying repression in Xinjiang. Hes also put forward familiar propaganda that lines up with Russian justifications for the invasion, including the misinformation about biolabs. He does not deny this. Like Camp, he has found himself monetarily rewarded for his efforts on Patreon.

After taxes, I make well below the income required to meet the cost of living in NYC, Haiphong claimed in an email interview.

Still, he has more than 450 subscribers, and that couldnt hurt. He is excited with its growth and sees it as vital to his operations, tweeting, Many thanks to the new subscribers. I've reached 410, my goal for the month. Im building toward the capacity to support myself and plan trips to China and elsewhere in the socialist world to conduct on the ground analysis. You can support me here!

When confronted with videos from Haiphong and Camps channel, YouTube said they do not violate their policies.

In general, we have established policies that prohibit content inciting violence or promoting hatred, including towards the Uyghur people. Additionally, as weve shared, our teams are working quickly to remove violative content related to the war in Ukraine, and weve removed more than 1,200 channels and more than 30,000 videos for violating our policies, a YouTube spokesperson said via email.

Meta (Facebook) claimed it is taking active measures against disinformation.

We take extensive steps to combat misinformation using a wide range of tools including our industry-leading network of more than 80 independent partners who fact-check claims across the globe. We also label media outlets that are wholly or partially under the editorial control of their government to help people better understand the sources of news content they see and prevent advertisers who repeatedly post misinformation or otherwise break our rules from running ads on our platform, a Meta (Facebook) spokesperson said in an email.

Twitter claimed the platform has increased the labeling of accounts as Chinese, Belarusian, and Russian state-funded media, deleted bad actors, curated reliable information in Twitter Moments, and monitors for dishonest narratives among other actions. Patreon said that in seeking a balance between free expression and safety, the platform only takes action on accounts when misinformation demonstrates an immediate capacity to hurt people. They have specifically banned COVID-19 and QAnon disinformation in light of this, but did not say that this policy applies to dishonesty around Ukraine or Xinjiang denialism.

When it comes to misinformation, were mindful that were balancing two responsibilities: first, protecting the expression & livelihoods of those using the platform; & second: keeping the platform safe for all those who use it, a Patreon representative said in an email.

When I pointed out some of The Grayzone and Max Blumenthals statements on COVID-19, they said their Trust and Safety team will review the material and make the determination. As of now The Grayzones Patreon is still up and has more than 800 donors. During a recent interview, Blumenthal denied The Grayzone receives any state funding through Russia or China saying, Well, you can see we get a lot of support on Patreon, and anyone who supports us outside Patreon are like private friends of mine who are basically progressive Americans who support progressive media.

When sent an emailed list of questions regarding this article, a clearly angry Lee Camp called them demonstrably false and defamatory statements disguised as questions which he did not go on to answer. And when contacted, Khan directed me to get in touch with another pro-Russia internet personality shes associated with who tweets under the name InfraHaz. She did not answer the questions sent to her.

Li also did not answer questions about her funding, editorial independence, or her close ties with Norton and Haiphong. Instead, she wrote back saying she believes China is being presented in an unfair light and that she has not seen repression in Xinjiang with her own eyes. She said that it is the U.S. government, mainstream media, and separatists groups that have encouraged misinformation. This is, again, in contrast with the great preponderance of evidence showing that the oppression of the Uyghurs is very real.

Norton and Ritter did not respond to multiple attempts to contact them for this story.

Blumenthal, meanwhile, took to tweeting screenshots of my email to him, writing that the questions read like unhinged neocon hate mail or qs from a McCarthy era prosecutor, and go on & on.

As some on Twitter pointed out, Blumenthal would likely be furious if I didnt do the ethical thing and give him a chance to respond. His notion that questioning him about what has been laid out in this column represents some kind of McCarthyism, hate mail, or neoconservatism is preposterous. My reporting has cast a critical eye on U.S. foreign policy before, so my issue with him is not that he criticized the United States; it is with his irresponsible and unethical conduct, flirtation with reactionaries, seeming contempt for the oppressed, and what I believe to be his incessant licking of tyrants boots.

It might be easy for some to write these people off as cranks, but they have accrued tens or in some cases hundreds of thousands of followers and donors. Perhaps more importantly, they have gained influence despite their long history of bad acts. Indeed, it was none other than former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff who spoke on a recent Friends of Socialist China webinar.

Ive been publicly critical of many of these figures before, but my own frustrations are not the problem. Those who are harmed, who really suffer, are the people in Ukraine, Syria, and Xinjiang. Their stories and pleas are often ignored in light of the misinformation. Pleas like those of the Ukrainian leftists Promise Li advocates we listen to as they call for people to fight to cancel the Eastern European countrys foreign debt.

In the end, efforts like that are what these disinformation peddlers obstruct as they, uplifted by big tech, deny the bombs that fall on civilian heads, justify the tanks that roll forward in a war of aggression, and aid the boot that fall on the neck of the oppressed.

Mathew Foresta is a writer and journalist. His work has appeared in USA Today, HuffPost, VICE, and Los Angeles magazine.

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Meet the Sneakiest Defenders of Putin's Invasion of Ukraine - The Daily Beast

Muslim activists have accused the Policy Exchange think tank of having an Islamophobic agenda after it released a report heavily criticising them for opposing the governments Prevent counter terror strategy.

Deligitimising Counter-Terrorism singled out several Muslim groups including 5Pillars, MEND, CAGE, Prevent Watch, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Islamic Human Rights Commission accusing them of effectively being enablers of terrorism.

The report, backed by former Prime Minister David Cameron, said that Prevent risks being scrapped because of malicious campaigns set up by Islamist groups to denounce the anti-terror programme as Islamophobic.

CAGE called the Policy Exchange report an academically poor and desperate attempt to defend the Islamophobic Prevent strategy by smearing Muslim organisations for challenging the policy and holding the government to account for the targeting of their community.

Muhammad Rabbani, Managing Director of CAGE, said:The report stands as a testament to the unified resilience of Muslim organisations, against all odds, in effectively defending their communities from one of the most pernicious and insidious government policies, that is Prevent.

Despite the government having a near absolute monopoly on power and access to mainstream media and PR agencies, the report promotes a false reality of unopposed activists critiquing Prevent in order to explain away communities wholesale rejection of Prevent.

The report fails to contend with any of the substantive arguments presented by CAGE and others against Prevent. It is a rinse and repeat of tired Islamophobic tropes, stereotypes and mischaracterisations.

It is very telling that in its attempt to defend Prevent, Policy Exchange has completely ignored the vast body of critique from beyond the Muslim community. This underlines their open Islamophobic agenda.

Its indicative of Islamophobia in the UK when former PMs give their name to such open hostility to Muslim civil society.

Civil society organisations defending their communities are no stranger to state sponsored defamation. Hence, to suggest critiquing Prevent equates to enabling terrorism is not only desperate, but also libelous. The former Prime Minister and Policy Exchange seem wholly unable to respect the long standing democratic tradition of dissent and holding those in power to account.

Dr Layla Aitlhadj, Director at Prevent Watch and co-chair of the Peoples Review of Prevent, said: The Policy Exchange report offers little in terms of research or academic criticism but presents a series of attacks on Muslim civil society organisations and individuals who are critical of the governments toxic Prevent programme and its impact on Muslims and wider society.

This is very poor attempt to shutdown the wave of criticism that will follow the long overdue Shawcross review into Prevent.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission also condemned the report.

It said: Academics, civil society organisations and activists have all condemned Prevent for being a tool of government oppression against the countrys Muslims and part of a social engineering exercise to create a politically compliant community.

In 2017 a UN Human Rights Council report said Prevent was inconsistent with the principle of the rule of law. And in 2020, UN Special rapporteur Fionnuala N Aolain said that religious groups, minorities and civil society actors in particular have been victims of rights violations under the guise of countering extremism and that the programme was counter-productive and should be scrapped.

In fact the tide of opposition to Prevent has been so powerful and so wide that we find it surprising for the Policy Exchange to be trying to rescue a floundering policy. Prevent has been so widely discredited that it is beyond resuscitation. Its time to let it die.

And MEND said Policy Exchange had launched a blatant Islamophobic attack on Muslim critics of the Prevent strategy and the Shawcross review into the strategy.

It said: In recent years there has been sustained criticism of the Prevent strategy put forward by experts from across society, including three special rapporteurs to the UN, the NEU (formerly known as the NUT), the NUS, the former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Amnesty International, Rights Watch UK, the Open Society Justice Initiative, the Joint Committee for Human Rights, and more than 140 academics, politicians and experts inone instance alone.

For Policy Exchange to claim that legitimate and well-founded critique of Prevent is an Islamist and extremist narrative is nonsense, and a thinly disguised and blatant attempt to shut down criticism from various Muslim groups and delegitimise them.

The report acknowledges that MEND is frequently accepted as a partner at the local level by police services, the NHS and regional Police and Crime Commissioners. Clearly, Policy Exchange are troubled by the fact that these agencies can think and act independently of the Government and make judgments for themselves as to whether we are Islamist extremists or are articulating the reasonable concerns of the Muslim community. As a national grassroots organisation, we will continue to work with local partners on this and many other issues.

Prevent strategy

The Policy Exchange report said that thePrevent anti-terror programme is at risk of dying the death of a thousand cuts because of failure to defend it from critics.

It warned of numerous but overlapping campaigns and activist voices aimed at establishing that the strategy is Islamophobic, andsuggested the Government set up a new communications unit to rebut disinformation about counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies.

The end goal of these Islamist-led campaigns is the scrapping of Prevent and the counter-extremism programme, said the report.

In a foreword, David Cameron warned: So just as we need to counter the Islamist extremist narrative, we need to counter the anti-Prevent narrative.We need to show that delegitimising counter-terrorism is, in essence, enabling terrorism.

The authors called for a Centre for the Study of Extremism to give Ministers the tools to properly push back against campaigners, with a separate communications unit to disseminate rebuttal, and a due diligence unit.

Fiyaz Mughal, founder of Faith Matters and Tell Mama, said: This report is much needed to highlight the smoke and mirrors that some groups have thrown up around Prevent. I know that many lives have been changed from the trajectory of self-destruction and harm to others, because of Prevent and the work that many have done to stop some people heading into a very dark place. It is not a perfect scheme, but it is not the threat to Muslims that some of these divisive groups promote for their own self-interests.

The lobby of groups painting Prevent as a threat to Muslims, need to take a long hard look at their actions and its impacts on public safety. Indeed, in placing themselves as saviours for Muslim communities, some within them take a very intolerant set of positions against Muslims with alternative views on Prevent. Which begs the statement that their Putinesque actions of enforcing their will and views on others, needs to be resisted at all costs. The public deserve to be safe and British Muslims not held in the sway of such shape shifters who promote fear, untruths and in some cases divisiveness.

And Khalid Mahmood MP said: Opposing Prevent is a die in a ditch issue for a small number of determined activists. This investigation shows however that it is not just Prevent, but virtually any counter-terrorism policy, from any government, which is denounced. In the real world, we do not have the luxury of behaving in this manner. The need for communities to come together, to work with the authorities to oppose extremism, is as great as ever. It is time to push back against those who seek to divide us.

Read more:

Muslims accuse David Cameron-backed think tank of Islamophobia over Prevent report - 5Pillars

Article content

TORONTO, April 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is calling the 2022 Ontario Budget too little, too late for working Ontarians. After four years of attacks on workers rights, further privatization of public services, and backtracking on bad decisions, Fords Conservative government has proven they are not in it for working people.

Fords Conservatives have had four years to do right by workers in Ontario, and they have failed. Lets get it done, lets get rid of Doug Ford, said Patty Coates, Ontario Federation of Labour President. Over the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Ontarians needed investments in public services most, Fords Conservatives repeatedly prioritized big corporations over peoples well-being. Todays budget announcements will not change any of that.

Many of the announcements made in todays faux budget were previously announced by the Ford government, but the Ontario Federation of Labour says they are not enough to make real improvement in the lives of Ontarians.

Tax breaks and license plate rebates are not the solution to making life more affordable. We need real, sustained investments in public services, including health care and long-term care, and the repeal of Bill 124, said Coates. The priorities the Ford government outlined today, show they have learned nothing from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.

To truly build for the future, the Ontario Federation of Labour says that Ontarians need a $20 minimum wage, decent work, affordable housing, permanent paid sick days, well-funded public services, livable income support for all, climate justice, status for all, and an end to racism and oppression. These demands are part of the workers-first agenda that people across the province are rallying for in a province-wide day of action this Sunday, May 1.

Its time for more than empty platitudes. Its time to actually put workers first, said Coates. On May 1, International Workers Day, we are taking action to make sure that the issues that mean the most to working people and their families are on the table on June 2.

The Ontario Federation of Labour represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario. For information, visitwww.OFL.ca and follow @OFLabour onFacebook andTwitter.

For more information, please contact:Melissa PalermoDirector of CommunicationsOntario Federation of Labourmpalermo@ofl.ca l 416-894-3456

Cope343

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Ontario Federation of Labour calls Ontario Budget 2022 an election ploy and demands a real workers-first agenda - Financial Post

President Joe Biden speaks during the 2022 Teachers of the Year ceremony at the White House on April 27, 2022. (Photo/Darren Thompson)

Washington, D.C.On Wednesday, President Joe Biden, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona hosted the Council of Chief State School Officers 2022 National and State Teachers of the Year ceremony to honor some of the countrys top educators at the White House.

A winner from each of the 50 states, as well as the Department of Defenses education program were included in the ceremony.

Three of those recognized either teach on Indian reservations or are American Indian.

Bill Stockton teaches on the Flathead Indian Reservation and works to incorporate Tribal culture in high school science. Deanne Moyle-Hick is an elementary teacher on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Indian Reservation; and Jerad Koepp is a member of the Wukchumni and currently serves as the Native student program specialist for North Thurston Public Schools in Olympia, Washington.

Its a really exciting time for Native education, said Koepp told Native News Online at the White House. The work thats being done speaks to the needs of our people.

According to Koepp, just 0.7 percent of teachers in the state of Washington are Native American. We need representation in the classroom, he added. His school district requires Native civics and history courses that also provide college credit to students. We want our students to see our knowledge and what they are learning in the classroom as an asset, he said.

He also helped co-write legislation that requires all administrators and teachers in Washington to understand government-to-government relationships with Tribes.

Dr. Biden, who also teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College while serving as First Lady, applauded the work of teachers, saying, right now, someone out there is a better thinker because of you. Someone is standing a little taller because you helped her find the confidence that she needed. Someone is working a little harder because you pushed him to try. Someone is a little kinder because you showed her what that meant. And someone is braver because you helped him find his courage.

Story continues

This years National Teacher of the Year is Kurt Russell, from Ohio, spoke briefly after the First Lady. Russell teaches history and developed a course on race, gender, and oppression. It's important that my students see themselves as I see them: With unlimited potential and full of gifts, said Russell. School is where dreams come alive.

The ceremony was hosted amid a Republican-led effort nationwide to restrict lessons related to sexual identity, gender and race nationwide.

Im here today, because someone taught me, Presiden Biden said. American teachers have dedicated their lives to teaching our children and lifting them up. We ought to stop making them a target of the culture wars. That's where this is going.

Biden closed by pledging support for education and stating that First Lady Dr. Jill Biden fully supports teachers and education in America.

About the Author: "Darren Thompson (Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe) is a freelance journalist and based in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where he also contributes to Unicorn Riot, an alternative media publication. Thompson has reported on political unrest, tribal sovereignty, and Indigenous issues for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Indian Country Today, Native News Online, Powwows.com and Unicorn Riot. He has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Voice of America on various Indigenous issues in international conversation. He has a bacheloru2019s degree in Criminology & Law Studies from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "

Contact: dthompson@nativenewsonline.net

Originally posted here:

Teachers of the Year Honored at the White House - Yahoo News

Beijing [China], April 6 (ANI): Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, the Chinese government has used various means to capture more than 2,500 fugitives from overseas and compel them to return to China under a state-sanctioned abduction program, according to the report.

Since the Chinese Communist Party launched Operation Fox Hunt in 2014, followed by Operation Sky Net in 2015, over 10,000 individuals have been extradited to China.

The Washington Times reported that China is using compulsion and illegal means to extradite unwilling individuals as case studies and reports issued by Safeguard Defenders expose the scope of the Chinese governments transnational oppression and describe Chinas repeated violations of sovereignty of foreign nations.

According to a recent media report, a Chinese man Sun Hoi Ying charged in the US over Beijings Fox Hunt for overseas fugitives.

Sun, accused of enlisting others, including a US law enforcement officer, to spy on and blackmail his victims, allegedly targeted about 35 overseas Chinese who were in trouble at home, seeking to pressure them to return to China, reported The Washington Times.

While, on January 18, a human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders published a report highlighting organized and secretive methods used by the Chinese government to compel refugees to backpedal to China from overseas.

The report uses the term involuntary return to refer to the fact that the Chinese government uses compulsion and illegal means to extradite unwilling individuals.

The Washington Times said that case studies and reports issued by Safeguard Defenders expose the scope of the Chinese governments transnational oppression and describe Chinas repeated violations of the sovereignty of foreign nations.

Since Xi Jinping became president in 2013, the monitoring operation has undergone multiple revisions. Operation Fox Hunt was launched by the Ministry of Public Security in June 2014 to trace individuals who alleged to be involved in economic crimes. The programs aim is to extend Xis anti-corruption campaign overseas.

In 2015, China launched Operation Sky Net under the auspices of the Supreme Peoples Procuratorate Chinas highest national agency responsible for legal prosecution and investigation. It was later consolidated with Operation Fox Hunt, and also includes other significant operations synchronized by state and party agencies, the US-based media outlet said.

Moreover, in 2018, Operation Sky Net was undertaken by the National Supervisory Commission, a state agency launched to expand the powers of the CCPs internal anti-corruption body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, it added. (ANI)

This report is auto-generated from ANI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

Excerpt from:

Chinese authorities coerced over 10,000 fugitives to return from abroad - ThePrint

Its been clear for a long time now that masks are more than just face coverings. They are a flashpoint in the culture war, with those on one side seeing them as symbolic of a social obligation to protect our fellow citizens as well as ourselves and those on the other side seeing them as symbols of government oppression, a violation of individual freedom and God given rights. I see them simply as a symbol of common sense.

After having opted out of our annual two-month ski trip to the Berkshires last season, we decided, despite the omicron surge, to risk it this year. Non-skiers cannot imagine how joyful it is to fly down the flanks of beauteous mountains surrounded by a wonderland of ice-encrusted trees that glitter like thousands of huge diamond brooches. How peaceful it is to experience the vastness of wilderness amid a silence that is broken only by the rush of wind past helmets and the scritch of skis on icy snow.

A bonus was the added pleasure of reuniting with old friends with whom we could ride the lifts through crisp, clean air without fear of infection. It was the most socialization we have had in a long time, the first time in two years we felt fully alive, connected and free of anxiety.

We strictly complied with the conditions we had imposed on ourselves prior to the trip. That meant avoiding crowded public spaces. We limited indoor time to the sparsely occupied locker room where we changed in and out of our boots, to the supermarket we visited early Sunday mornings when it was devoid of customers and to a sparsely populated wine store with a mask policy. We sacrificed precious ski days on weekends and holidays when the mountain is always mobbed. The rest of the time we ensconced ourselves in splendid isolation in our rented flat where we prepared every single meal, never setting foot in a restaurant. Most importantly, when unavoidably indoors, we always, always masked.

As the surge appeared to wane, people became more cavalier about precautions. Even those in our merry band gathered at the bar after skiing. But we limited our apres-ski to a few outdoor lunches with them. Its understandable people feel at the end of their ropes with restrictions. So do we. We miss dining out, attending theaters and joining friends in their homes, but we intend to adhere to precautions as long as reality and common sense dictate. The sad reality is that just as, once again, government and the CDC are endorsing letting our guards down, a new surge is building in Europe and probably, pushed along by the annual spring break madness, will make its way across the pond just as the boosters are losing their protective edge. While COVID is far from over, it has ceased to be the only reason we intend to continue masking and some of the other precautions we have embraced during its unwelcome stay.

Interestingly, after all these months we have become accustomed to masks. We dont love wearing them, but unlike some right-wing types, we do not remotely feel like we are being rounded up and transported to the gas chambers when we put them on. The way we see it, insistence on individual rights, when exercised without regard for the welfare of others, becomes its own form of tyranny, anarchy actually, and a sign of a selfish, if not outright antisocial, personality. Even more so, a sign of foolhardiness.

We have come to understand why many people in other countries had been routinely masking in public long before COVID came along. Over the time we have employed masks, we have had nary a sniffle. This in contrast to two out of the half dozen ski trips we took after moving south, which were cut short by severe respiratory infections despite our having had flu shots.

Its likely we will resume some of the activities we have eschewed during the pandemic once it truly passes. Whenever that is. But we intend to avoid crowded indoor gatherings and continue to use masks when we have to be indoors with the general public for a while yet. Maybe permanently.

Certainly some people will look askance at us for doing so, maybe even be angry and berate us, but we hope that others, when asked the question, Who was that masked man, anyway? will reply, Who knows? But he sure must be one smart hombre.

Norman Dovberg is a former resident of the Capital Region now living in Virginia.

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Mask appeal for respect of others - Times Union

New EU and US sanctions have targeted Vladimir Putin's daughters as the West seeks to punish Russia further for the invasion of Ukraine. The Russian leaders closest family members have been added to what is a growing list of restrictions. While Western allies move to pressure Putin from the outside, the Russian president is doing everything in his power to quash any opposition to his invasion within Russia. Police have detained thousands of protesters across Russia, and media in the country has been further restricted by the Kremlin.

Yuri Felshtinsky, an expert on Russia and an enemy of Putin's, told The Sun in February that the Russian President fears being killed like Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi.

It has been reported that he has watched obsessively videos of Colonel Gaddafi being brutally murdered after he was cornered by a mob in 2011.

Mr Felshtinsky argued that Putin will have to use more authoritarian measures in order to prevent his demise.

He said: Correct this he knows.

Hes bright enough to know that under normal rules, his system of government cannot exist. Hes not an idealist.

He knows theres no way he can survive unless he continues to oppress.

The lesson that Putin will have learnt after the recent events is that he should control more and that he should repress more. And thats what we will see.

Mr Felshtinsky is a respected academic, and also helped Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko escape to the UK where he was later murdered, likely by Russian FSB agents, according to a report into his death.

He believes a similar fate awaits Alexei Navalny, the most prominent opposition figure in Russia who was sentenced to nine more years in prison after being found guilty of large-scale fraud and contempt by a Russian court earlier this year.

Mr Navalny dismissed the latest criminal case against him as politically motivated and pleaded not guilty.

After the sentencing, he tweeted a quote from the US television series The Wire.

He said: Nine years. Well, as the characters of my favourite TV series The Wire used to say: You only do two days. Thats the day you go in and the day you come out.

READ MORE:'Rude' EU slammed by China over 'dialogue of the deaf' attack

It was claimed last month that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has survived three assassination attempts.

Mr Zelensky's adviser said: Our foreign partners are talking about two or three attempts. I believe that there were more than a dozen such attempts.

We have a very powerful network of intelligence and counterintelligence, they track it all.

Western intelligence is right to say that the main target for [Vladimir] Putin was Mr Zelensky in terms of attacking the government quarter and trying to kill the countrys key manager.

Prior to this, The Times reported that Mr Zelensky survived three assassination attempts made by Kremlin-backed Wagner mercenary group and Chechen special forces.

Link:

Putin attempting to avoid death by using oppression: Knows he cant survive - Express

Iain Anderson's letter hits out at the Prime Minister for the "deeply damaging" move to exclude trans people from protection

The UKs LGBT business champion has resigned with a heavy heart over the Governments profoundly shocking position on banning conversion therapy for transgender people.

Iain Anderson said trust and belief in the Governments commitment to LGBT rights has been damaged, after a series of U-turns on plans to introduce legislation to ban conversion therapy.

He is the latest in a series of high-profile individuals and groups to hit out at the Government, with at least 100 organisations pulling out of its forthcoming landmark LGBT conference.

More than 80 LGBT groups and more than 20 HIV groups have said they will not take part in the Safe To Be Me conference, scheduled for June, unless Boris Johnson reverts to his promise for a trans-inclusive ban on conversion therapy.

Last week it was initially announced that ministers were scrapping plans to ban the practice, sparking a furious backlash.

A Government spokesman confirmed that they were looking instead at ways of preventing it through existing law and other non-legislative measures.

Iain Anderson Gov.uk

Prime Minister Boris Johnson Hannah Mckay

Within hours the PM was said to have changed his mind and a senior Government source was quoted as saying legislation would be introduced.

The Government now says it is committed to a legislative ban, but that separate work is required to consider the issue of transgender conversion therapy further.

When announcing the initial consultation into the conversion therapy ban, the Government had said the protections would cover people in terms of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Mr Anderson said it had been the honour of his life to serve as the UKs first LGBT business champion, but felt he had no choice but to resign.

In a letter to Mr Johnson shared on Twitter he wrote: As a young gay man I lived through fear and oppression under the backdrop of Section 28.

I could never have dreamt then that a government any government would appoint an LGBT champion later in my lifetime.

However the recent leaking of a plan to drop the Governments flagship legislation protecting LGBT people from conversion therapy was devastating. Conversion therapy is abhorrent.

Only hours later to see this plan retracted but briefing take place that trans people would be excluded from the legislation and therefore not have the same immediate protections from this practice was deeply damaging to my work.

Mr Anderson added that it was profoundly shocking that the Government had backtracked on protection for transgender people during the same week that the first trans MP felt able to share his journey.

Jamie Wallis, Conservative MP for Bridgend, last week came out as trans in a highly personal statement.

Posting on Twitter on Monday, the 37-year-old rallied against ministers plans to limit a ban on conversion therapy for gay people.

He said it was wrong to exclude protections for a whole group of people from a practice described as abhorrent.

The backbencher argued that it would be a broken promise to allow conversion therapy to be banned, but for it not to apply to trans people.

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LGBT business champion resigns from Government with scathing letter on conversion therapy - GB News