Hearing Voices from Mexico and Russia

Journalist Sam Quinones in his book, Dreamland, challenged me to think about where we get the news of the world that we tell our children. He wrote, "Mexican media rarely covered the stories of anyone outside the upper classes...." A few days later, I read in Time magazine (March 16, 2015) that RT (Russia Today) beams President Vladimir Putin's view of the world to 700 million people in at least 100 countries. Mikhail Lesin, who was credited with inspiring the creation of RT, was found dead in a Washington, DC hotel on November 5, 2015. Although the Russian embassy claimed Lesin died of a heart attack, in March, 2016, DC's chief medical examiner said the cause of his death was blunt force trauma to the head. His body also showed injuries to his arms, legs, neck, and torso. When the US imposed financial sanctions on Putin's closest associates after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Lesin failed to comply with an order to bring home his foreign assets and those of his children.

     Quinones tells the story of the well-mannered farm boys from Xalisco, in the Mexican state of Nayarit, who are much different from the imagined image of heroin dealers. Instead of cold, conniving cartel killers or thugs; they don't use drugs; and they crave all things American: cars, action heroes, McDonald's, and girls.

     The stories Quinones finds among U.S. immigrant communities would make for an illuminating family dinner table conversation about U.S. immigration legislation and executive orders. A question like, "Did you know Cambodians don't know what doughnuts are?" could lead to the story of the Cambodian refugee, Ted Ngoy, who now runs an empire of doughnut shops in the Los Angeles area. Ngoy brought his nephew to the U.S. only after the young man escaped from a Cambodian re-education camp, walked through the jungle while being stalked by panthers, feared ambush by Khmer Rouge gunmen every step of the way, and spent a year in a Thai refugee camp.

     Russia as victim and the West as villain is an ongoing theme on RT. Protests led by Zoran Zaev in Skopje, Macedonia, were blamed on the West. Albanians who make up nearly a quarter of Macedonia's population, demanded greater rights, and Zaev's opposition demands the resignation of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevaki. His administration is being charged with wiretapping the press, judiciary, elected officials, and religious leaders. When these recordings were released, they appeared to show vote rigging and a murder cover-up.

     In February, 2015, RT viewers heard that the murder of dissident Boris Nemtsov, while he was walking near Red Square, was the work of enemies determined to discredit the Russian government. In later developments, TIME magazine (June 28, 2015) reported a Russian deputy commander of an elite Chechen battalion was charged with Nemtsov's murder. (Chechen hit men also were accused of murdering Anna Politkovskaya. See the earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future.) A re-education campaign once changed Russia's Chechnya rebels into fighters willing to follow orders from President Putin. Chechen forces took over part of Ukraine as volunteers acting for Putin, By tattooing his name and address on his arm, Lesin had avoided a similar deployment in Angola in an unmarked uniform. If his dead body were found there, Russia's clandestine involvement in this 1970s Cold War proxy conflict would have been exposed. Currently, Ramzan Kadyrow seems free to act on his own agenda in Chechnya. After Nemtsov's murder, dissidents in Russia realized they have to fear both Chechen assassins and Putin's security forces.

     Apparently Moscow also fears some of the returning volunteers, who went to Ukraine to defend ethnic Russians, consider Putin's government ineffective and corrupt. (See mention of Putin's corruption in regard to Litvinenko's assassination in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future.") Realizing these troops are combat trained and capable of leading protests, they are being closely monitored and any weapons they are trying to smuggle home are being confiscated at the border. In a reaction to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, the U.S. has plans to deploy missiles in Poland and Romania.

     At the time of Nemtsov's assassination, Russian TV viewers did not see the Moscow march protesting Nemtsov's murder, because RT showed a documentary about U.S. racial abuses. Reports of Nemtsov's murder failed to mention he was compiling information to challenge President Putin's claim that Russia was not supplying military equipment and regular Russian army troops to support separatists in Ukraine. Although 80% of older Russians receive their news from state-television, where anti-Putin activists and journalists are not allowed to appear, during Putin's 17 years in power, the younger generation has slipped away to watch YouTube and other social media outlets that show authorities with millions in assets and Russian troops seizing Crimea. Technically, we now know some of the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine were volunteers who had temporarily resigned from Chechen's regular army. Coffins returned to Russia following battles at a strategic rail hub in Ilovaisk and at Debaltseve in Ukraine. Some of Nemtsov's information came from relatives of dead Russian soldiers who had not received the compensation that they had been promised.

    Using online video to inform scattered dissidents of opposition protests is an aim of Open Russia, a foundation founded by exiled oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom Putin issued an arrest warrant for in December, 2015. Just as Putin, in his annual question-and-answer session on TV, was claiming that Russia's oil and gas based economy, which has shrunk 4.6%, would recover in two years and downplaying the conflict in Ukraine, security forces from the anti-extremism office of the Interior Ministry raided the Moscow offices of Open Russia. On May 26, 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza, the coordinator of Open Russia and an adviser to Nemtsov, had collapsed in his office as a result of being poisoned by a toxin that shuts down a whole body in six hours. That attempt failed as did another in early 2017. Kara-Murza, who holds dual UK-Russian citizenship, believes he is targeted due to his successful effort to pass the Magnitsky Act in both the US and UK. The Act, which is named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax expert, sometimes characterized as a lawyer, who died in a Russian prison in 2009, prevents powerful Russians who abuse human rights at home from keeping their wealth in Western banks. Kara-Murza also believes athletes should attend competitions, such as the 2018 World Cup, in Russia but western democracies should not honor Putin by sending their leaders to such games.

     Russia, which planned  to deliver S-300 surface-to-air defense missiles to Tehran, along with  the United States, China, France, the UK, Germany and the European Union, negotiated what Iran calls the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to impose restrictions on Iran's nuclear program. Once Putin determined ISIS brought down Russian Flight 9268 over the Sinai peninsula in October, 2015, Russia agreed to join the US and French bombing ISIS positions in Syria. But  Russian bombers also operated against forces fighting Syria's dictator rather than ISIS. In March, 2016, Putin announced Russian troops would leave Syria before the cost escalates, but Russia would keep a naval base, air base, and air-defense systems there. In April, 2017, Syrian civilians died from chemical poison dropped on them from a Russian-made airplane which may or may not have been piloted by a Russian.

     Voices abound in this age of apps, the Internet, broadcast and cable TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, books, and movies. The more we see, hear, and read, the better we are able to help children form an accurate view of their world and ours.

Hope for the Future

When we hear that terrorist groups have attacked tourists in Tunisia, burned a Jordanian pilot to death, or killed journalists in Paris, it is well to remember, not only other losses, but also bright victories.

     Children look forward to their birthdays, trips to the playground, and new pets. When they begin to discover the world, with all its pluses and minuses, they have more to anticipate, and they expand their opportunities for potential happiness. They might make friends with foreign pen pals, save to travel abroad, raise enough walkathon money to buy a cow for a family in Vietnam, rejoice when a political prisoner is set free, or help a nation survive a natural disaster. Some day they even could come up with inventions to improve the lives of impoverished families, just like Marcin Jakubowski and Gabriele Diamanti did. For posting a free tractor design, budget, and instructional video online and designing the Eliodomestico solar powered water distiller, Time magazine credited these inventors with two of the 25 best inventions of 2012.

     There have been many reasons to celebrate in the recent past. What an exciting day it was in 1990, when South Africa's heroic leader, Nelson Mandela, was released from Robben Island after 27 years in prison! Again in 2008, how thrilling it was when a daring rescue freed Ingrid Betancourt, former presidential candidate, from the guerrilla group who had held her captive in Colombia's jungle for six years! And, what rejoicing there was in 2010, when 33 Chilean miners who were thought lost were successfully rescued after spending 69 days underground. Again in 2010, supporters in Burma had reason to cheer when the country's repressive military regime released opposition leader and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest. In 2015 her party would win the first civilian majority in parliament in 50 years, and, in 2016, her aide, Htin Kyaw, would be elected the first civilian President in over 50 years.  Joy erupted in 2011, when China released Ai Weiwei, the artist/activist who dared to criticize the country's Communist Party on Twitter. Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer China imprisoned for helping women forced to have abortions, was freed in 2012 and is now living in the United States. Malala, the Pakistani girl shot in the head for espousing education for females, not only recovered but won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. By year end, 2014 also saw the release of U.S. AID worker, Alan Gross, in Cuba and the restoration of U.S.-Cuban relations, as well as North Korea's release of Kenneth Bae and two other Americans. Three other Americans were released from North Korea prior to a summit between Kim Jong Un and President Trump in 2018. In February, 2015, India announced that Taliban captors had released Father Alexis Prem Kumar, who had been serving as director of Jesuit refugee services in Afghanistan when he was abducted. And the Ebola virus stopped spreading in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Four US citizens were released from prison in Iran in 2016, and, in August, 2016, a cease fire in Colombia marked the beginning of the end of a fifty year battle between government troops and the Marxist guerrillas known as FARC. In Venezuela, the Holts, who were arrested on fabricated weapons charges after an American man married a Venezuelan woman, gained freedom in May, 2018 thanks to the negotiations by a U.S. delegation that included Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee and Senator Orin Hatch from Mr. Holt's home state of Utah.

      Indeed, it took eight years, but in 2014 five men finally were convicted in Russia for killing outspoken human rights activist and journalist, Anna Politkovskaya (See more details about those charged with her murder at the later blog post, "Hearing Voices from Mexico and Russia."). Nine years after two assassins used Polonium-210 to kill Alexander Litvinenko, former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB is a successor to the KGB) officer turned critic of Putin's corruption and MI6 source after he escaped to Britain in 2000, London's high court laid out the details of its Metropolitan police investigation. Results of an inquiry will be disclosed by the end of 2015. Since about 97% of all polonium, which is a silent, invisible, normally unidentifiable agent of death, is produced at a Russian nuclear site, Litvinenko's murder appears linked to Russia, and possibly Putin's connection to Russia's biggest organized crime syndicate. Two later Russian attempts to poison enemies failed. Former military spy, Sergei Skripal, left the hospital in late May, 2018. Finally, it has taken three decades, but Pyongyang agreed in July, 2014, to investigate the disappearance of Japanese nationals missing in North Korea.

      There is hope that joy will erupt again some day, when all of the 276 female students Boko Haram kidnapped in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014 are released (82 were exchanged for six of the terrorist group's imprisoned members in May, 2017, and more were released in 2018.). There will be other causes for joy when  Russia overturns the three and a half year sentence of Oleg Navalny, the younger brother of anti-government blogger, Alexei, who was given house arrest after his three and a half year prison term for fraud was suspended (Alexei removed his ankle monitoring device, continues to walk around Moscow like a free man, and inspired an anti-corruption protest march on March 26, 2017; he again was arrested and released after another rally in July.); Syria and the ISIS terrorist group send captives home alive; Hamas and Israel reach an agreement that frees an Israeli soldier; North Korea ends its threats of a nuclear missile attack on the U.S. and overturns the ruling that sentenced US college student, Otto Warmbler, to 15 years of hard labor (Warmbler was sent home in a coma and died in June, 2017). China has yet to release human rights lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, or cancel the prison sentences of dissidents, Xu Zhiyong and Liu Xiaobo (diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and died in July, 2017), a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy movement and winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Liu Xiaobo's widow, Liu Xia, was released from house arrest in 2018 and allowed to go into exile in Germany. Some day peace will come to Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen the way it emerged from conflict in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. To prevent future tragedies, we also can hope that much will be learned from the U.S. drone attack on an al-Qaeda compound in January, 2015 that inadvertently killed Italian humanitarian worker, Giovanni Lo Porto, and Dr. Warren Weinstein, a U.S. A.I.D. contractor captured when his guards were overcome while they were eating breakfast in Pakistan.

     Speaking at a 2008 conference on health and national development sponsored by the Association on Third World Affairs, Albert Santoli, president of the nongovernmental organization (NGO), Asia America Initiative, told how he, as a non-Muslim working among an almost completely Muslim population in the Sulu Archipelago, the tri-border area of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, was adopted by the largest guerrilla band. The medicine his organization provided cured the leader's daughter of malaria. When Muslims heard that help was coming from people who did not know them, including Christian colleges, they were shocked, said Santoli. "Whoever needs help gets help and that opens up doors and it builds bridges," he said.

Children can help

In her book, How to be an Everyday Philanthropist: 330 Ways to Make a Difference in Your Home, Community, and World--At No Cost, Nicole Bouchard Boles seized on the notion that those who want to help need to find small ways to start. Since nongovernmental organizations already have begun to unravel world problems, either individually or collectively as students in school, scouting, and other youth groups, children can participate in ongoing NGO projects. Local Rotary Clubs, for example, may need help packing the ShelterBoxes Tom Henderson developed to provide the supplies people need after floods, earthquakes, and other international disasters. The website, charitynavigator.org, is among those that help identify organizations most worthy of support.

     By now, many youngsters have gone Trick-or-Treating for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), while they collected Halloween candy for themselves. What they may not know is that they can take credit for raising funds that have provided immunizations, vitamins, antibiotics, food, clean water, and education to help the world's poorest children get a good start in life in 190 countries and territories. Information about where to pick up and return UNICEF collection boxes is available at the website, trickortreatforunicef.org, or by calling 1-800-FOR-KIDS. Should schools and organizations be looking worthy projects, they might consider raising funds to buy mosquito nets, blankets, or water wells through UNICEF's "Inspired Gifts Program." Information about this program is available by calling 1-866-237-2224 or by visiting inspiredgifts.org.

     Operation International Children, launched originally as Operation Iraqi Children in 2004, is another project directly related to students. Promoted by actor Gary Sinise, the organization was founded by U.S. soldiers who distribute kits containing pencils, rulers, crayons, notebook paper, and other school supplies in war torn areas. Information about how to get involved with this program is available at the operationinternationalchildren.com website.

     Learning that a Ugandan coffee farmer earns 66 cents for every $100 a coffee consumer spends in a developed country's grocery store could inspire a student to facilitate direct distribution to consumers. If students can arrange to have their schools or other community groups host a sale, the nonprofit organization, SERRV, can supply coffee and chocolate from their farmer partners, as well as individually made, handcrafted items from artisans, around the world. To obtain an information packet, visit serrv.org/SERRVOurWorld or call 1-800-423-0071.

     Heifer International taps into children's love of animals. Instead of bringing gifts to a birthday party, one mother asked young partygoers to bring donations for Heifer International that would provide impoverished families with dairy cows, pigs, chicks, ducks, goats, sheep, and bees. To raise money for Heifer, one 13-year-old girl in North Carolina makes jewelry and sells her creations at craft fairs, the public library, churches, and other venues. Her efforts have raised over $10,000. The Heifer International brochures and heifer.org website picture the happy young recipients who have received and are learning to care for the animal gifts funds provide. Since aided families pass on each animal's offspring to other families, children who make donations to Heifer International are part of an endless chain devoted to eliminating world hunger and poverty.

     For over 50 years, Amnesty International has made sure the names of political prisoners, such as those mentioned above, are not forgotten. The Chinese proverb, "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness" inspires the letter writing campaigns and human rights defenders that provide hope that freedom of speech can become a universal human right. When learning that someone has been imprisoned for speaking out, adults can help students write to their government leaders to ask them to initiate diplomatic contact that will help free these victims. In the US, students also can find the addresses of the US Embassies of foreign countries in A World Almanac and send letters over and over again to the offending country asking for the prisoner's freedom.

     Entrepreneurial children who line up neighbors willing to pay for lawn mowing, snow shoveling, baby sitting, and dog walking are the perfect prospects to develop the creative ideas and activities needed to remedy festering global ills. Proactive youngsters will find outlets for their energy in sister city events related to international issues. In Madison, Wisconsin, for example, young people learned that after East Timor (now Timor-Leste) gained independence from Indonesia in 2002, it lost much, when the departing military and militias burnt homes, schools, and hospitals. these young people then rode their bikes in "Tour de Timor," which publicized the plight of sister city, Ainaro.

     Like cities with sister cities, churches often send youth delegations to help with projects in sister parishes. When the young travelers return, they multiply the effect of their visits by inviting congregations to hear their informative presentations. Since religions cross national boundaries, churches often are active on the international scene in other ways. Their affiliated youth groups can participate in good works, such as those performed by the Quakers Friends' Service Committee and the Lutheran World Relief program that provides quilts and layettes to babies in Africa.

Models and motivation

Technology savvy youngsters can find models among the experts who saw natural disasters, medical emergencies, poor educational opportunities, dangerous kerosene lamps, and a lack of information about product markets as problems that could be solved by computers, satellite access, solar panels, and cell phones. Engineers already have come up with ways to aid farmers in lesser developed countries with low-tech, hand-cranked, foot-pedaled, and bicycle-powered radios, water pumps, oil seed presses, and laptop computers. For example, an African entrepreneur invented a playground merry-go-round that South African students turn to pump clean water for Boikarabelo, their village outside Johannesburg.

      To encourage students to create technological solutions to the world's toughest problems, Microsoft sponsors the Imagine Cup for high school and college students 16 years and older. Find details at imaginecup.com, and aim to compete in the World Wide Finals. One Billion Minds, a program similar to the Imagine Cup, was founded in 2007 by Sanjukt K. Saha. He plans to motivate a billion minds to use science, technology, design, and social innovation to solve problems in the emerging world. To date, graduates from 180 universities in 103 countries have gone to the onebillionminds.com website to find out how they can participate in this program as Challengers or Solvers. Each year, Hult International Business School, with five campuses in the U.S., U.K.,China, and the UAE, challenges teams of university students to solve global social problems posed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The winning team and NGO partners then receive $1 million to launch their solution. Find competition details at hultglobalcasechallenge.com.

     Nobel Prize winners listed on the nobelpeaceprize.org website also can inspire children to serve the global community in other ways. Young girls can derive inspiration from women such as Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who won the prize in 2004 for mobilizing a campaign to fight global warming by planting trees. Like the three women who were honored in 2011 for their efforts on behalf of women's rights, they too can identify and work to correct discrimination against women. Tawakkui Karman, the first Arab woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, exemplifies how anti-government protests, like the Arab Spring revolution she helped lead in Yemen, are only democratic when they recognize women's equality. The two Liberian honorees, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee, showed how women, including Christian and Muslim women, can work together to end wars and attacks on them by men.

     Nobel Prize winners also can start young people thinking about ways to alleviate the world's physical and economic suffering. Frenchman Bernard Kouchner saw the need to minister to those injured in war torn areas and pulled together the international group of medical volunteers who won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for "Doctors Without Borders." In 2006, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh was honored for founding the Grameen Bank, a financial institution that provides microsized loans to small businesses, often owned by women, in less developed countries. Following in his footsteps, Nancy Barry, president of Women's World Banking, has loaned 18 million poor women $10 to $10,000 each to start their own businesses. Through kiva.org, students can make their own $25 microloans to small overseas entrepreneurs, farmers, or students who lack tuition funds. In The International Book of Bob, you can read about Bob Harris' visits with those who run Kiva-financed projects.

      Since 2003, every year TIME magazine has published an issue devoted to "The 100 Most Influential People in the World." Students can read through the short biographies of titans, leaders, artists, pioneers, and icons to find a place in the world where they could do the most good.

     Those who have witnessed world suffering can inspire young people to action. For Nathaniel Wright, the talk Sudanese Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis gave on genocide in the Darfur area of the Sudan was more than another class lecture. It motivated him to form STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur), a national student movement designed to raise awareness of the refugees suffering in Darfur, Sudan, and to provide the education and rehabilitation needed to improve their lives. His website, standnow.org, joins savedarfur.org as a resource children can check to find information about benefit events for Darfur as well as dates for fasts and protests. Recognized by Reebok as the first recipient of its Human Rights Young Activist Award, Wright has gone on to become an analyst in the Office of Congressional Ethics at the U.S. House of Representatives.

     Although many global problems remain, there have been successes besides those already mentioned: apartheid has ended in South Africa, the Berlin Wall no longer exists, and Germany has been reunited. Some of those who thought they could get away with committing human atrocities have been indicted and prosecuted by international and domestic courts. There is hope and happiness in the future. Both fill the hearts of the children who will become future world leaders.