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A former judge says he has the votes to replace Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Moak, but that Moak has been trying to sandbag the process to prevent his ouster.

Tyree Irving, former longtime Mississippi Court of Appeals judge, told Mississippi Today that 45 of the partys newly elected 80-member executive committee have pledged support to him, and another eight have told others theyll vote for him.

Ive just heard total disappointment and disillusion and unhappiness with the current chair, Irving said. Well over a majority of people on the current committee have said they are going to vote for me, and since most dont know me, the singular driving force is dissatisfaction with Mr. Moak.

Many Democratic leaders and candidates have decried a lack of leadership in the party and support for candidates, particularly amid the partys dismal showing in the 2019 statewide elections. Republicans swept all statewide offices last year, solidifying supermajority control of the state Legislature and increasing down-ticket wins on the local level.

Some party elders have also criticized Moak and other party leaders for failing to devote resources to electing Black candidates, even as white voters have left the party in droves and Black voters have become a substantial majority of the partys base. The last six Democratic Party chairmen, including Moak, have been white.

Irving, who is Black, and others on the committee calling for change said Moak has delayed party leadership elections since the new committee was elected in May.

Irving supporters used a party constitutional clause that allows 25 percent of members to petition and call a special meeting. They called one for Saturday.

We have an entirely new committee being ushered in, and there was no transition of power or leadership, said Teresa Jones, a newly-elected committee member who helped organize the special meeting. I lay all of that at Bobby Moaks feet. As chair, its your job, and especially when we have a major candidate on the ballot in November. Hes holding this committee hostage.

A few days after Saturdays special petitioned meeting was announced, Moak called one for Thursday evening.

But Irving and others question whether Moaks was properly called with a required 10-day notice by mail.

If he did, he didnt send it to anybody opposed to him, Irving said.

Complicating matters, the meetings will be held online. As of Tuesday afternoon, several committee members told Mississippi Today they had not received login information for the Thursday evening meeting, and they were concerned that some members might lack the technological skills to log in and vote at the meeting.

Moak, party chairman since 2016, said his meeting was properly called and noticed and that misinformation is being spread. He chalked much of the internecine battle up to drama and party politics.

Have you not been around Democratic politics? said Moak, 62, a longtime former state lawmaker and former and House minority leader. Theres more drama and party politics here than there was when I was leader of the Democratic caucus in the House.

Former state Democratic Party Chairman Jamie Franks now serves as party parliamentarian and was recently reelected to the state committee. He told Mississippi Today he believes both meetings are properly called.

Nobody has asked me for a ruling, Franks said on Monday. In the past, a chairman has been able to call a meeting as long as he gives the 10-day notice And as long as they meet the criteria and get a proper percentage, they can call a special meeting as well.

Franks said that when he was chairman, I had an issue with people calling meetings while I was out of town. Ultimately, the chairman prevailed, as long as quorum requirements were met.

Irving said his supporters plan to attend Moaks virtual meeting on Thursday, but they have left their Saturday meeting on the books in case the Thursday meeting goes awry.

I plan to attend that meeting (Moak called) and encourage everybody else to, Irving said. If we are treated right and the process is fair and there is a fair election, that will be the end of it.

Moak declined to handicap his re-election as party chairman.

Well know when the vote comes, Moak said. There are some that love me and some that hate me. Ive been doing this stuff for 36 years. Its nothing new.

Irving, 74, a native of Greenwood, was elected to the Mississippi Court of Appeals in 1998, and reelected in 2002 and 2010. He retired in 2018.

Irving was the first African American to clerk at the Mississippi Supreme Court in 1975 and in 1978 became the first African American assistant U.S. attorney in Mississippi since Reconstruction.

Speaking with Mississippi Today this week, Irving said: My vision is turning this state blue.

I know most people would say, What did this guy drink or eat that he things that can be done? Irving said. Ive always been forward looking and optimistic, believing against all odds that we can achieve our goals.

We have got to have a really good messaging program going, and weve got to convince a lot of white Mississippians that they are constantly voting against their economic interests. Thats a tall order. The problem is the white leadership that you have. If they have tried, they have failed at it.

Irving continued: Theyve been running away from the national party all the time at least the white politicians in recent times have. Weve got to change that culture if we are going to build this party and have any chance at statewide elections.

Moak recently outlined his accomplishments in an email he fired back in response to complaints from a top Democratic officeholder. He referred to that letter this week as his statement to Mississippi Today.

Moak said the party has offered much organized help to candidates in the latest election cycles, has created an unprecedented social media outreach and had fundraising success.

The financial condition of our party is now solid after correcting the same problems that in the past had this party in receivership, Moak said. The same folks that got us there now want to lead and that is a concern.

I personally raised more than $150,000 for the (state party and national party), Moak said. For the first time, approximately $80,000 was sent back to county parties for local rebuilding.

(The party has) the opportunity to actually have a Finance Council once again, with real monied supporters that left long ago after becoming discouraged as to how the party had been run, Moak said.

Moak said the partys email list has increased from 3,500 to 69,868 and its telephone list was increased to include more than 1.2 million new cell phone numbers.

I could go on, but you get the idea, Moak said in his email. The party has been brought from a financial disaster. It has gained respect from the DNC as well as local folks that thought they would never come this way again.

But many party loyalists, including executive committee members, have openly questioned Moaks leadership this year. Moak has fielded public criticism for how hes chosen to spend the money hes raised the past four years.

Many seasoned political operatives have criticized Moaks focus on the email and telephone lists.

Theyve failed us, said Jones, talking about Moak and party leadership. You had a Democratic stronghold in this state, and you failed us. Youve got a whole generation of young people in this state trying to figure out how to make progress. Now were having to deal with their failures their campaign failures, their financial failures, not addressing certain issues.

If youre truly advancing the party, then do something to advance the party, Jones continued. But dont get pissed when you get called out and voted out of office.

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'They've failed us': Inside the battle for control of the Mississippi Democratic Party - Mississippi Today

1 Population Council, United Nations Population Award to Indira Gandhi and Qian Xinzhong, Population and Development Review 9, no. 4 (December 1983): 74753.

2 U.S. Funding for the U.N. Population Fund: The Effect on Womens Lives: Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Terrorism of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 107th Cong. (2002) (statement of Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute).

3 Bernard D. Nossiter, Population Prizes from U.N. Assailed, New York Times, July 24, 1983.

4 Population Council, United Nations Population Award, p. 751.

5 Tom Elliott (@tomselliott), Jane Goodall @ Davos: All these [environmental] things we talk about wouldnt be a problem if there was the size of population that there was 500 years ago. The world population 500 years ago is estimated btwn 420 and 540 million6.7 billion fewer people than today, Twitter, January 24, 2020, 8:13 a.m., https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1220696092532187136.

6 His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, Forces for Change: HRH the Duke of Sussex Interviews Dr Jane Goodall for the September Issue, Vogue, July 30, 2019.

7 Chris Perez, Bill Nye: Should We Penalize Parents for Having Extra Kids?, New York Post, April 26, 2017.

8 Ian Schwartz, Maher: Falling Birth Rates Are a Good Thing; World Is Too Crowded, Real Clear Politics, April 13, 2019.

9 Travis Rieder, Science Proves Kids Are Bad for Earth. Morality Suggests We Stop Having Them, NBC News Think, November 15, 2017; and Todd May, Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?, New York Times, December 17, 2018.

10 Why Having Kids Is the Worst Thing You Can Do for the Planet, Fast Company, April 10, 2019, video, 4:00.

11 Julia Manchester, Sanders Under Fire for Remarks on Population Control, The Hill, September 5, 2019.

12 Nicole Goodkind, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Asks: Is It Still OK to Have Kids in Face of Climate Change?, Newsweek, February 25, 2019.

13 Joe Biden, Remarks by the Vice President at Sichuan University (speech, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, August 21, 2011).

14 William J. Ripple et al., World Scientists Warning of a Climate Emergency, BioScience 70, no. 1 (January 2020): 812.

15 Ed Markey (@SenMarkey), 11,258 scientists are sounding the alarm: we are in a climate emergency. And not just climate scientists. Biologists, ecologists, & more. The crisis touches every aspect of our lives. So must the solution. Thats why we need a #GreenNewDeal to fundamentally transform our society, Twitter, November 6, 2019, 9:42 a.m., https://twitter.com/SenMarkey/status/1192089825798737920; Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders), 11,258 scientists from 153 countries came together to say: Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and tell it like it is. Its time we listen. Congress must declare a climate emergency and act boldly to protect our only home, Twitter, November 5, 2019, 3:41 p.m., https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1191817868930932739; Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen), 11,258 scientists in 153 countries are raising the alarm about the biggest existential threat to our planet: climate change. I share their view that weve failed to address this emergency. The GOP must stop listening to fossil fuel lobbyists and start listening to scientists, Twitter, November 6, 2019, 5:21 p.m., https://twitter.com/ChrisVanHollen/status/1192205406904496131; Susie Lee (@RepSusieLee), 11,258 scientists from 153 countries say that our planet clearly and unequivocally faces a climate emergency. When they say emergency, they mean it. We need to act now, Twitter, November 5, 2019, 4:00 p.m., https://twitter.com/RepSusieLee/status/1191822495172579328; and Jimmy Gomez (@RepJimmyGomez), 11,258 scientists from 153 countries are NOT messing around: We are in a full-blown #ClimateEmergency. Its past time for @realDonaldTrump & the @GOP to get on the same page as the rest of the world & realize we NEED to #ActOnClimate to protect our planet for future generations, Twitter, November 7, 2019, 2:28 p.m., https://twitter.com/RepJimmyGomez/status/1192524159122698240.

16 Andrew McAfee, More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resourcesand What Happens Next (New York: Scribner, 2019); Ronald Bailey, The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015); Nicholas Eberstadt, The Human Population Unbound, Current History 113, no. 759 (2014): 4346; and David Osterfeld, Prosperity versus Planning: How Government Stifles Economic Growth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 104138.

17 Julian L. Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

18 See, for example, Gale L. Pooley and Marian L. Tupy, The Simon Abundance Index: A New Way to Measure Availability of Resources, Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 857, December 4, 2018.

19 Fertility Rate, Total (Births per Woman)Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank.

20 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects.

21 Armenia and Azerbaijan have the worlds second and third most imbalanced sex ratios. Sex-selective abortion is common in both of those countries because of a strong cultural preference for sons, showing that sex-selective abortion can become widespread even without government policies limiting childbearing. See How Chinas One-Child Policy Led to Forced Abortions, 30 Million Bachelors, NPR, February 1, 2016.

22 Mara Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (New York: Public Affairs, 2012), p. 6.

23 Sex Ratio, Health Situation and Trend Assessment, World Health Organization.

24 Thomas Robert Malthus, Of the Consequences of Pursuing the Opposite Mode: Book IV, Chapter V, in An Essay on the Principle of Population (London: John Murray, 1826), http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong.html?chapter_num=47#book-reader.

25 The Supreme Court Ruling That Led to 70,000 Forced Sterilizations, NPR, March 7, 2016.

26 Adolf Hitler, for example, became obsessed with the Malthusian idea that available resources limit population and thereby justified military expansionism. See Ken McCormick Madmen in Authority: Adolf Hitler and the Malthusian Population Thesis, Journal of Economic Insight 32, no. 2 (2006): 18; see also Hitlers words from Mein Kampf: The annual increase of population in Germany amounts to almost 900,000 souls. The difficulties of providing for this army of new citizens must grow from year to year and must finally lead to a catastrophe, unless ways and means are found which will forestall the danger of misery and hunger, as quoted in Bryan Caplan, Hitlers Argument for Conquest, EconLog, March 19, 2005; and Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 84.

27 Margaret Sanger, The Goal, in Woman and the New Race (New York: Brentanos, 1920).

28 Emphasis added. Margaret Sanger, The Humanity of Family Planning (speech, Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Bombay [Mumbai], India, November 26, 1952).

29 Quoted in Mike Gallagher, Population Control: Is it a Tool of the Rich?, BBC, October 28, 2011.

30 Quoted in Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 1995 and 2016), p. 100.

31 For example, see Lyndon Johnsons remarks in Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, 1 Pub. Papers 3 (January 12, 1966): I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid program . . . to help those nations that are trying to control population growth; and Remarks in Independence, Mo., at a Ceremony in Connection with the Establishment of the Harry S. Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace, 1 Pub. Papers 42 (January 20, 1966): The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth in its resources and the growth in its population come into balance. . . . We will give our help and our support to nations which . . . ensure an effective balance between the numbers of their people and the food they have to eat; and in 1966, Johnson signed the Food for Peace Act, which required United States Agency for International Development officers to pressure the governments of famine-stricken countries to take steps to reduce their population in exchange for food aid, Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection, p. 33.

32 Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 1012.

33 Paul Wagman, U.S. Goal: Sterilizations of Millions of Worlds Women, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 22, 1977.

34 Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, pp. 57, 118.

35 Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), p. 11.

36 Quoted in Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 229.

37 Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Romes Project on the Predicament of Mankind (Washington: Potomac Associates, 1972).

38 Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 25; and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Population, Resources, and the Environment: The Critical Challenges (New York: UNFPA, 1991), pp. 1819.

39 Quoted in Gallagher, Population Control, BBC, October 28, 2011.

40 Connelly, Fatal Misconception, p. 379.

41 Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 102.

42 Hartmann, p. 99.

43 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Policies 2009, 2010, p. 50, Table 5.

44 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Policies, p. 46, Table 2.

45 Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection, pp. 104, 141.

46 Emphasis added. United Nations Populations Fund et al., Family Planning in the 1980s: Challenges and Opportunities (paper, International Conference on Family Planning in the 1980s, Jakarta, Indonesia, April 2630, 1981), pp. 9798.

47 Bahgat Elnadi and Adel Rifaat, Interview with Jacques-Yves Cousteau, UNESCO Courier, November 1991, pp. 813.

48 Nicholas Eberstadt, Population, Poverty, Policy: Essential Essays from Nicholas Eberstadt, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute Press, 2018), pp. 1819.

49 Susan Greenhalgh, Just One Child: Science and Policy in Dengs China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), p. 136. The words quoted are Greenhalghs.

50 Mei Fong, One Child: The Story of Chinas Most Radical Experiment (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2016), pp. 51, 56.

51 Susan Greenhalgh, Science, Modernity, and the Making of Chinas One-Child Policy, Population and Development Review 29, no. 2 (June 2003): 170.

52 Sui-Lee Wee and Hui Li, Insight: The Backroom Battle Delaying Reform of Chinas One-Child Policy, Reuters, April 8, 2013.

53 Susan Greenhalgh, Missile Science, Population Science: The Origins of Chinas One-Child Policy, The China Quarterly 182 (June 2005): 266.

54 Greenhalgh, Science, Modernity, and the Making of Chinas One-Child Policy, p. 170.

55 Greenhalgh, Missile Science, Population Science, p. 100; and Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection, p. 139.

56 U.K. House of Commons International Development Committee, DFID and China: Third Report of Session 20089, vol. II (London: The Stationary Office, March 12, 2009), p. 101.

57 Connelly, Fatal Misconception, p. 343.

58 Population Council, United Nations Population Award, p. 749.

59 Population Council, p. 751.

60 Lawrence W. Green, Promoting the One-Child Policy in China, Journal of Public Health Policy 9, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 273.

61 Quoted in Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 160.

62 Du Minghua, UNFPA Praises Chinas Family Planning Policy, Peoples Daily, March 15, 2001.

63 Raj Karan Gambhir, Should India Follow Chinas Lead on Environment?, Harvard Political Review, October 29, 2018, http://harvardpolitics.com/covers/should-india-follow-chinas-lead-on-environment/.

64 Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, The Effects of Chinas One-Child Policy.

65 Fong, One Child, p. 73; Kay Ann Johnson, Chinas Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-Child Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 17; Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 155; and Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection, p. 135.

66 Fong, p. 71.

67 Fong, pp. 73, 75.

68 Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection, p. 143.

69 Fong, One Child, p. 72.

70 Fong, p. 73.

71 Only Me Generation, directed by Sophie Zhang (New York: Baraka Productions, 2013).

72 Fong, One Child, p. 194.

73 Fong, p. 195.

74 Johnson, Chinas Hidden Children, p. 18.

75 World Contraceptive Use 2019, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2019.

76 World Contraceptive Use 2019.

77 Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 154

78 Sui-Lee Wee, After One Child Policy, Outrage at Chinas Offer to Remove IUDs, New York Times, January 7, 2017.

79 Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, p. 156.

80 Susan Greenhalgh, Controlling Births and Bodies in Village China, American Ethnologist 21, no. 1 (February 1994): 23.

81 Fong, One Child, p. 78.

82 Simon Denyer, Horrors of One-Child Policy Leave Deep Scars in Chinese Society, Washington Post, October 30, 2015.

83 Fong, One Child, pp. 67, 78.

84 Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Annual Report 2016, October 6, 2016, p. 151.

85 Jiawei Hou, Yinfeng Zhang, and Baochang Gu, Ideal and Actual Childbearing in China: Number, Gender and Timing, China Population and Development Studies 3 (January 2020): 99112.

86 Johnson, Chinas Hidden Children, pp. 18, 63, 69.

87 Fong, One Child, pp. 67, 82.

88 Malcolm Moore, 336 Million Abortions under Chinas One-Child Policy, The Telegraph, March 15, 2013.

89 Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection, p. 143.

90 China Forced Abortion Photo Sparks Outrage, BBC, June 14, 2012.

91 Fong, One Child, p. 77.

92 Greenhalgh, Controlling Births and Bodies in Village China, p. 23.

93 An Evaluation of 30 Years of the One-Child Policy in China: Hearing before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, 111th Cong. 45 (2009).

94 Fong, One Child, p. 195.

95 Fong, p. 76.

96 Verna Yu, I Could Hear the Baby Cry. They Killed My Baby . . . Yet I Couldnt Do a Thing: The Countless Tragedies of Chinas One-Child Policy, South China Morning Post, November 15, 2015.

97 Robyn Dixon, China May Be Ready to Drop Limits on Child-Bearing, but the Pain of its One-Child Policy Endures, Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2018, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-china-one-child-20181228-story.html.

98 Denyer, Horrors of One-Child Policy.

99 Fong, One Child, pp. 11, 80.

100 Johnson, Chinas Hidden Children, p. 97.

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Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion - Cato Institute

Heard told the court that Depp was "very good at manipulating people" and would blame his actions on a "self-created third party" he called the "monster," according to PA Media.

"He would speak about it as if it was another person or personality and not him doing all these things," she said.

During previous testimony earlier this month, Depp denied the allegations, calling them sick and completely untrue.

In a written witness statement submitted to the court, PA Media reports that Heard accused Depp of subjecting her to verbal and physical abuse including "screaming, swearing, issuing threats, punching, slapping, kicking, head-butting and choking her," as well as "extremely controlling and intimidating behavior."

She went on to say: "When Johnny puts his attention on you, with all his intensity and darkness, it is unlike anything I've ever experienced.

"When I say he was dark, he had a violent and dark way of speaking the way he talked about our relationship being 'dead or alive' and telling me that death was the only way out of the relationship."

She added: "He could be very intense and dark. It was the polar opposite of the 'warm glow.'"

Lawyers for NGN have previously told the high court judge that its description of Depp is "entirely accurate and truthful," PA Media reported.

Heard alleged: "Some incidents were so severe that I was afraid he was going to kill me, either intentionally or just by losing control and going too far. He explicitly threatened to kill me many times, especially later in our relationship," PA Media reported.

Heard also said that Depp's team would try to convince her to stay with the actor after "violent episodes" and that she did, because she thought she could "fix him," according to PA Media.

Giving evidence in court earlier this month, Depp described accusations that he subjected her to "torture and other abuse" as "sick" and "completely untrue," PA Media reported, and he claimed that Heard was physically abusive to him.

"The claimant's position is clear Ms. Heard's allegations are complete lies. The claimant was not violent towards Ms. Heard, it was she who was violent to him," Depp's barrister David Sherborne said in a written outline of the actor's case, PA Media reported earlier in July.

Depp denied he was abusive to Heard at the time, and through his representatives, claimed Heard had made up the abuse.

The estranged couple settled their divorce months later, releasing a statement saying they "have agreed to resolve their divorce proceeding privately." Heard initially obtained a restraining order against Depp, but then withdrew a petition to extend it.

Read more from the original source:
Amber Heard says Johnny Depp 'threatened to kill me many times' - CNN

A prominent Pakistani journalist known for his hard-hitting criticism of the countrys military and other institutions has been released after he was kidnapped by heavily armed men in Islamabad.

At least 10 men in three vehicles intercepted Matiullah Jan on Tuesday soon after he arrived to pick up his wife from a school where she was teaching, according to Jans brother Shahid Akbar Abbasi. He said the kidnapping occurred at around 11am local time.

Abbasi indicated he thought the countrys intelligence and security agencies were behind the kidnapping. I believe those who are wielding power, they are the people who took him, he said.

But on Tuesday night Abbasi said his brother had been released.

I have talked to Matiullah Jan, he is safe, all right and on his way home, Abbasi said, adding it was too soon to know what had happened to Jan.

An Islamabad police spokesman said officers had begun gathering information in the case.

The militarys media department did not respond to requests for comment.

In a tweet earlier, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan demanded the government immediately ensure the safe recovery of journalist Matiullah Jan.

In 2018 the military labelled Jan anti-state for his criticism of the judiciary and army. Jan has called a crackdown on the countrys media outlets a systematic attempt by the military and its intelligence agency to assert control with a facade of a democratically elected government.

Human rights groups and some journalists have been sharp critics of the military and Imran Khans government for what they say is a heavy-handed crackdown on free speech and independent journalism.

Media houses and TV news channels have been warned against covering events critical of the military, particularly the activities of a Pashtun rights group known as the Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement, which accuses the military of abuses in the tribal regions. Protesters have been arrested and columnists who supported their right to protest have had their columns pulled from publication.

Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, the owner of the Jang Group, one of Pakistans largest media houses, and a strident critic of the government, is in custody charged under the auspices of the National Accountability Bureau, which investigates charges of corruption,. Human rights groups have questioned whether the allegations are politically motivated.

Jan was active on social media and had recently been charged with contempt of court for a tweet critical of the judiciary. He was to appear in court within the next week.

The Austrian-based International Press Institute (IPI) joined the chorus of calls for Jan to be freed. We fear that Matiullah Jans life is in danger, and immediate steps must be taken to locate him and ensure his release from his apparent kidnappers, the IPIs deputy director, Scott Griffen, said in a statement. Given the history of violence against journalists in Pakistan, the authorities cannot delay in seeking to protect Jans safety.

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Pakistani journalist and army critic released after being kidnapped in Islamabad - The Guardian

As national and state leaders struggle to get COVID-19 under control, minority groups are at a higher risk for the virus. And that includes Indianapolis Burmese refugees, a tight-knit community. But providing these refugees with accurate information about the virus has been a challenge for public health workers.

Drive along the neighborhoods on Indianapolis southside and its hard to miss the international grocery stores, Burmese restaurants, and Chin-Christian churches. The city is home to an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Burmese refugees, and on the south side, most of them are Chin, an ethnic group that fled religious persecution in the southeast Asian country of Myanmar.

It's a very close and tight-knit community, says Juno Siang, a Burmese community health advocate with the Franciscan Health hospital network.

Read more: COVID-19 information for the Burmese-American community

Siang says its difficult to know how bad COVID-19 is in the Indianapolis Burmese community.

It is very hard to answer those questions because, you know, cultural beliefs and values become a big portion of discussing this issue, Siang says. It is kind of regarded almost like a taboo to talk about.

Kate Hill-Johnson, administrative director of community health improvement for Franciscan Health, says rising case counts could be due to more testing, but its difficult to know for sure.

Is there an uptick? It kind of sounds like it based on stories that are going through the communities. she says. Do I have hard data on that? No.

She says Burmese refugees often avoid going to the doctor until its necessary.

I think it's not a matter of if but when, Hill-Johnson says. And how significant does it become, given these cultural challenges, to treating something like a pandemic?

One of the biggest barriers to providing accurate information about COVID-19 is that not all Burmese refugees are fluent in English. This means some struggle to make sense of the pandemic through traditional media.

Also, in Indianapolis there are dozens of Chin languages that are spoken, with Hakha Lai the most common. And concepts like social distancing, which were new for most Americans in March, can be lost in translation.

The Chin Languages Research Project, based out of Indiana University, has been working to translate COVID-19 documents into Hakha Lai.

Peng Hlei Thang, a recent IU grad, has been working with the project for several years.

Well we try to make it as simple as possible, for socially distancing we simply said, Stay six feet away. Contact tracing its hard to translate those kinds of terms, so its been challenging. Thang says. We just try as best as we could to make it understandable for our audience.

However, many of the refugees worked as farmers in remote areas of Myanmar, and arent literate in the regional language, Siang says.

This means information has to be communicated verbally, a challenge during times that require social-distancing to stem the spread of COVID-19.

For a long time, churches have served as a mainstay of information in the Chin-Burmese community, and services would often begin with community announcements. But with church services moving online, it presents a challenge for people without internet or technology skills.

Everything in the community is like, really, really kind of like based on gossip and rumors currently, Siang says. A lot of unnecessary fear is spreading around the community.

In June, the Marion County Public Health Department told Side Effects there was a COVID-19 outbreak in the citys Burmese community. A few weeks later, they walked this statement back saying they dont have specific demographic data.

The department did recently open a southside testing site, near a prominent Burmese community association.

The other challenge that we are seeing is that we are not following the quarantine rules because we don't understand the system, how it works, says Van Uk, who works for Windrose Health Network, a federally funded health center on the southside.

Uk says recently theres been more willingness from Burmese refugees to seek testing for COVID-19. But all the new rules of the pandemic have proved confusing.

So for example, you know, if someone is supposed to be quarantined, and they need to be seen by the doctor, instead of calling the doctor office they will show up in person, Uk says.

People in the Burmese community say fear also has kept some refugees from speaking up if they think they could be sick. Some people have reported harassment for being Asian, others fear losing their jobs or being the center of rumors and gossip.

Uk works closely with churches to help spread reliable information about COVID-19. So, we need those people to give them the courage ... Hey, it's okay to let your doctor or your pastor, to let them know that you have COVID-19 symptoms. That way we can help you.

This story was produced by Side Effects Public Media, a news collaborative covering public health.

Read more here:
Is COVID-19 Spreading Among Burmese Refugees? Here's Why It's Hard To Know - Side Effects Public Media