National Public Radio: Hooking Up Gets Easier To Do In Saudi Arabia

She's wearing stylish high-heeled shoes and a black abaya, a traditional floor-length cloak. But her flowing hair is not covered. She asks NPR not to use her name for fear her family would find out about her dating past. Until recently, she says, it was "taboo to be seen with a man who was not your relative."

Nowadays, things are getting easier for many Saudis on the heterosexual dating front. The Gulf kingdom now allows things like movies, music and theater that it once forbade. More men and women are openly mixing in public than before. Though some in the deeply conservative country are bothered by it, a growing hookup culture is one of the latest signs of gradual social change. [...]

"I've seen girls who are pro-active and if they like a guy, they would go to him, and that's happening a lot right now," she says. "Girls are becoming more powerful — I love it."

Others are unsettled by it, like one young man who spoke to NPR in a different area of Riyadh. He also doesn't want to use his name, saying his family would be angry with him for talking to foreign media.

read the article or listen to the podcast

Quartz: Ethiopia will end its state of emergency early, as part of widening political reforms

The council of ministers sanctioned the decision on Saturday (June 2) after noting that “law and order has been restored,” prime minister Abiy Ahmed’s chief of staff, Fitsum Arega, said on Twitter. The parliament, where all 547 members belong to the ruling party, was expected to rubber-stamp the order, even though it is unclear when that would take place. [...]

For over two years, Oromo and the Amhara communities agitated for social change, economic equality, and political inclusion. The government’s crackdown has been brutal, with more than 1,000 people dead and tens of thousands of people put behind bars, according to advocacy groups. Ethiopia’s authorities also imposed emergency rule between Oct. 2016 and Aug. 2017, following deadly demonstrations.

Calling time on the emergency order marks a significant moment for Abiy’s nascent administration, which has promised and undertaken reforms since coming to power in April. Besides releasing thousands of political prisoners and journalists, the government has ended an internet blackout, started talks with exiled opposition members, and dismissed charges against diaspora-based media outlets. Yet despite the improvements, many observers and critics awaited the end of the state of emergency—the last one was extended for four months at the end of its term—as a signal that Abiy was truly walking the talk.

read the article

Deutsche Welle: UN report slams US for criminalizing poverty as destitution grows

Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, said the Trump administration appears determined to pull the social safety net out from under millions of poor people while rewarding the wealthy with tax cuts. [...]

In a country of about 325 million people, nearly 41 million live in poverty — including 18.5 million in extreme poverty. Alston said children accounted for 33 percent of the poor. No other industrialized country had so many children mired in poverty, he said. [...]

Women, Hispanics, immigrants and American Indians also suffer disproportionately high rates of poverty and unemployment.

He criticized the criminal justice system, noting that it sets large bail bonds for a defendant seeking to go free pending trial. This means wealthy suspects can afford bail while the poor remain in custody and often lose their jobs as a result, even if they are ultimately acquitted.

read the article

openDemocracy: How Russian state pressure on regional languages is sparking civic activism in the North Caucasus

The draft law is the result of a statement made by President Putin last year, in which he claimed that “forcing someone to learn a non-native language is just as unacceptable as lowering the level of Russian education.” During the meeting of the Council for Cross-National Relations that took place in Yoshkar-Ola in July 2017, Putin urged the heads of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to pay “special attention” to this issue. [...]

This statement led to a series of inspections by prosecutors in republics across the Russian Federation. North Ossetia, where Ossetian has been taught as a state language, was one of them. However, at that time, Putin’s statements drew little attention in the North Caucasus. It seemed as if the region was indifferent to the fate of its languages. Tatarstan was the only region that stood up against the Kremlin in the fight for the fundamental rights of Russia’s federal organisation. [...]

Following the example of North Ossetian activists, intellectuals and civic activists in Kabardino-Balkaria addressed the heads of the executive and legislative powers in an open letter at the end of April. The letter was published on the Kabardino-Balkarian Human Rights Centre website: “The bill proposed by the State Duma flagrantly violates the constitutional rights of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria (KBR), as well as those of other national republics: all of them are legal state entities that have a right of self-determination within the legal framework of Russian Federation, including the right to choose a model for preservation and development of their native languages. On that basis we categorically object to the adoption of the bill, and we demand that it be removed from the (legislative) agenda immediately because, apart from its destructive power that aims to completely obliterate national languages, it can also seriously destabilise the socio-political climate of the multinational state.” [...]

According to Khatazhukov, over the last decade the time dedicated to learning the native languages of Kabardino-Balkaria has been reduced by 50%, elementary classes that were taught in Kabardin and Balkarian languages have been closed, and native language learning in pre-school education has been gradually phased out. Khatazhukov believes that these are the causes of public outrage and criticism towards this new draft legislation on the voluntary learning of native languages.   [...]

The Russian government needs to rethink its linguistic policies at least for the sake of preserving stability. It is quite clear that villages, where regional languages still dominate, should use different educational approaches and even different textbooks in contrast to urban centres where knowledge of regional languages is often weak. As far as the educational system is concerned, these features must be taken into account. National activists also believe it is important to emphasise the presence of languages in the regional media.

read the article

BBC4 In Our Time: The Emancipation of the Serfs

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1861 declaration by Tsar Alexander II that serfs were now legally free of their landlords. Until then, over a third of Russians were tied to the land on which they lived and worked and in practice there was little to distinguish their condition from slavery. Russia had lost the Crimean War in 1855 and there had been hundreds of uprisings, prompting the Tsar to tell the nobles, "The existing condition of owning souls cannot remain unchanged. It is better to begin to destroy serfdom from above than to wait until that time when it begins to destroy itself from below." Reform was constrained by the Tsar's wish to keep the nobles on side and, for the serfs, tied by debt and law to the little land they were then allotted, the benefits were hard to see.

With

Sarah Hudspith Associate Professor in Russian at the University of Leeds

Simon Dixon The Sir Bernard Pares Professor of Russian History at UCL

Shane O'Rourke Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York  

listen to the podcast