Covid-19 leads to increase in homelessness in Angola.
The coronavirus pandemic isn't just a threat to the health of people around the world. It also puts their livelihoods at risk. The pressure is especially high for people in Angola, where the loss of income has left many people evicted and homeless.
Our today's guest is Papa Orange. He will share with us his non-fiction story caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
My name is Papa Orange, the covid-19 pandemic affected me negatively, as a result I became a homeless person. I have no food and I'm very strongly asking for support to get a house to live in.
I sing, I would like to show one of my talents!
Baby stay here
Baby stay here
I want to be with you, I want to be only with you
Baby stay with me, you can stay with your friends but I just want to be with you
Baby, you'll kill me if you're not with me
My dream is just to be with you until the end.
This is the first and the only Coronavirus show in Angola where the most ordinary citizens show their brilliant talents.
The heroes of the program are the most ordinary citizens - they share with the audience their songs, poems and real stories of how the Coronavirus pandemic affected their lives.
In September, popular South African health and beauty retailer Clicks sparked widespread anger after publishing an advertisement that reinforced Eurocentric beauty standards in a country still suffering the effects of its painful racist past.
The online advertisement, commissioned by TRESemme, a haircare brand under Unilever, portrayed photos of Black women with natural hair captioned by the words “dry & damaged” and “frizzy & dull”. While on the opposite side of the spectrum, it showcased white women with hair it called “normal” and “fine & flat”.
People were outraged; angry posts filled social media, crowds gathered to protest outside Clicks stores, and thousands called the company out for discrimination. Many others shrugged off the anger as just a “hair issue”, but the advertisement was much more than that. It was blatantly racist – a direct reinforcement of the anti-Blackness constructed by colonisation, that stripped Black people of their human dignity by positioning Blackness as “abnormal” in relation to whiteness.
This is something that stretches back to the 1600s when European colonisers used whiteness as the model of humanity and deemed Blackness as inferior – an idea that became deeply embedded in the minds of both Black and white people over the centuries.
The racism in the Clicks advertisement – just the latest public iteration of the messaging that Black women are forced to face on a daily basis – took me back four years to the #StopRacismAtPretoriaGirlsHigh movement, which I co-founded in 2016.
As Black pupils at Pretoria High School For Girls – a historically whites-only institution – we protested against the school’s racist policies, starting with its hair policy that favoured whiteness in its framing of neatness and professionalism.
The policy stated that all hairstyles had to be “conservative, neat and tied at the nape of the neck” while braids had to be “1cm in diameter”. No allowances were made for natural Black hair, like Afro hair, which was verbally prohibited by the headmistress at the time. “Afros and dreadlocks are not permitted in Girls High,” she had said.
Beyond the policies themselves, the enforcement of these rules had echoes of apartheid-style policing: Institutional white authorities – in this case, teachers – would use derogatory terms including the “K-word” – South Africa’s equivalent of the N-word – against Black girls, describing Black hair as “dirty, untidy, demonic, uncontrollable”, and likening it to a bird’s nest.
At the time, the school prohibited the use of Indigenous African languages by Black girls when speaking to each other. Informally, it also prohibited Black girls gathering in groups by asking us to disperse and accusing us of “conspiring” against the institution, and it clamped down on pupils addressing the existence of white privilege in the institution by giving us warnings, demerits or detention when we raised the topic of racism within the school. These were all issues our movement protested against.
Eurocentric norms
In the early 1990s, when South African schools first desegregated, Pretoria Girls High and many other white institutions opened their gates to other races. But the dominant Eurocentric culture of these schools was not so easily changed. Black children who walked into these historically white spaces seeking the “quality education” that was not afforded their parents’ generation, left carrying large amounts of trauma because of the unequal treatment, exclusion, and discriminatory cultural standards they were forced to endure.
When our movement called out the racist policies at our school and took it a step further to advocate for the decolonisation of South Africa’s wider basic education sector, the message gained traction with young Black people in schools across the country.
From wider discriminatory hair policies that ultimately force us to erase our Blackness, to the exclusion of our African languages in school subjects and recess spaces, to the Eurocentric syllabus which – starting from kindergarten – is the first form of indoctrination that socialises us to view our Blackness as inferior by teaching us that “skin colour” is “light peach” and showing us book characters who are mostly blonde and blue-eyed, the issues resonated with every Black child who has been subjected to harsh institutionalised racism at school.
This while the geospatial divides in South African education also reinforce systemic racism: Black schools in townships and rural areas are left to fall apart with inadequate access to resources, while historically white institutions prosper with first-class resources and prestigious physical and financial conditions.
And all of this has been allowed to take place in the “democratic” Republic of South Africa, which won some gains at the end of apartheid in 1994 – such as the exchange of political power and the erasure of racist laws – but has not yet eradicated the systems it entrenched.
‘Privatised apartheid’
Decades since the end of apartheid rule, and four years on from the movement at Pretoria Girls High, the Clicks incident again raises questions about why Black bodies continue to be disrespected and how a direct insult to Black lives is able to make its way to publication in 2020, in a country that is majority Black.
Sadly, the reality is that South Africa has deep unresolved socioeconomic racial tensions that stem from the negotiated transition from apartheid to “democracy” – a divide that has prevented it from fully arriving at the “post-apartheid” destination it promised in the early 1990s.
The system of apartheid that was once constitutionalised did not end just because the law changed in 1994. Instead, it was privatised and institutionalised – and its effects continue to negatively shape the lives of Black people socially, politically and economically. Although the political system was reformed, it means nothing without a shift in economic power and radical social change. Without the complete abolition of the systems apartheid created, the structures that separate Black people from equal opportunities, education, employment and access to wealth and land will continue to exist.
The Clicks advertisement is a glimpse of this privatised form of apartheid – a space where the system has not been completely annihilated, and where the racially exclusionary foundation built by the apartheid regime remains active in the corporate and education arena.
Systemic power in South Africa’s corporate sector still predominantly lies in the hands of white men. White people make up about 8 percent of South Africa’s economically active population, but occupy 65 percent of top management positions. In contrast, Black Africans who are about 79 percent of economically active people comprise 15 percent of top management positions, according to a 2019 report from the country’s Commission for Employment Equity.
After more than 400 years of historical white rule in South Africa, the dominant voice at the decision-making table is still white and, whether by default or design, still speaks to the interests of whiteness. Black women make up 36 percent of South Africa’s economically active population, a significant number that should see themselves present in corporate boardrooms and better represented in the decisions corporations make. Yet the publication of such a tone-deaf advertisement portrays the evident lack of Black female representation in the marketing sector and the mainstream beauty industry. If it were more diverse and inclusive, it would have been able to better reflect Clicks’s consumers – the majority of them young, Black women.
Accountability and justice
In response to the national outrage sparked by the advertisement, Clicks, TRESemme, and Unilever issued public apologies. However, those apologies were not accompanied by sufficient accountability, such as disclosing the names of those liable for the advertisement, dismissing the staff responsible, or disclosing the demographic representation of their companies’ boards – demands that were made by many activists, members of the public, and the opposition political party the Economic Freedom Fighters.
Unilever admitted publicly through its social media platforms that the advertisement was racist but still refused to name those responsible, which showed no will to hold those who perpetuate racism accountable for their actions. In a nutshell, what the company did was pure “damage control” for their brand, as their apologies were not accompanied by any real accountability.
Similarly, in the wake of our 2016 protests at Pretoria Girls High, there was no accountability by the educators who perpetuated racism and no justice for the pupils who were victims of the human rights violations that took place. Although there was an investigation into the school’s racist policies in 2016, then, like now, the outcomes worked in favour of the institution.
The investigation concluded that the policies were indeed racist, but what followed was a reform of the hair policy, rather than the complete abolition of the existence of a hair policy, as we had been calling for – since the mere existence of a “hair policy” allows room for discrimination by granting a handful of – usually non-Black – people power over the expression of Black African identity.
Meanwhile, the specific educators who enforced those racist policies and perpetuated racism were not held accountable for their actions. It was argued that pupils did not have substantial evidence of the racist incidents they reported – incidents which usually took place when pupils were left alone with the racist educator. In the end, the teachers’ identities were kept hidden to protect them.
In both cases, the school protests and the fallout from the Clicks advertisement, accountability by those responsible is important to help pave the way towards justice. Because without it, we allow direct insults to Blackness to be ignored, once again undermining the confidence and personhood that Black people have spent generations fighting to reaffirm.
Decolonise the system
Some have attributed the Clicks incident to the “unconscious bias” of the companies involved, in an effort to justify the advertisement. But the danger of naming it that means that those responsible are not held accountable, and we remain blindfolded to the harsh, long-lasting effects of colonisation and apartheid that South Africans continue to grapple with.
It is no surprise that racists persist in their harmful behaviour towards Black people since there are no harsh consequences or systems put in place to hold them accountable for their actions and to serve justice to victims of racial discrimination. This itself is as a result of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, a process which was not focused on the complete abolition of all systems architected by the apartheid regime.
As a result, South Africa is politically transformed; yet economically and socially, our systems continue to advance the lives of white people over Black people – granting them everyday socioeconomic privileges such as better access to opportunities, quality education, wealth and capital, employment, and representation in every facet of society from the workplace to the mainstream beauty industry to institutions sanctioned by the state.
Over the years, much of the response to racism has been reactionary. But in seeking to abolish the structures that disadvantage Black South Africans, we need to be actively anti-racist every day, working to build inclusive systems created by us, and for us which will advance Black communities in every aspect.
The “norm” and standard of whiteness was historically used as a tool to plant self-hatred in Black people – and its effects have been long-lasting. Even in the 21st century in a South Africa “freed” from the physical shackles of apartheid, the country is still governed by elements of white aesthetics and dynamics of anti-Blackness.
This raises the urgent need for decolonisation as a means for Black South Africans to free ourselves psychologically and reclaim our identities. We have been socialised to be reliant on white approval, which has led to our continuous support of white entities and businesses like Clicks, which serve no purpose in empowering and uplifting Black people and our identities. But we can make a change by placing emphasis on supporting Black businesses and calling for the complete abolition of the man-made, socioeconomic systems of racial inequality that exist as a result of apartheid, and continue to disadvantage Blackness while advancing whiteness.
The Clicks advertisement is much deeper than just a “hair issue”.
It is a glimpse at the systemic racism that exists in South Africa today, and a reminder that it is time to abolish the systems architected by apartheid, and no longer just reform them.
Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz will appear in a Geneva court next month to defend himself against corruption and forgery charges in connection with mining contracts in Guinea, his lawyer told Reuters.
Steinmetz was indicted in August 2019 by a Geneva prosecutor who accused him and two aides of paying or having $10 million in bribes paid to one of the wives of former Guinean President Lansana Conte for mining licences between 2005 and 2010.
“There are two charges, corruption and forgery. Both are categorically contested. The charges have no basis in fact or in law,” Marc Bonnant, a prominent Geneva lawyer representing Steinmetz, told Reuters on Friday.
The lawyer questioned whether the late Conte was married to Mamadie Toure, named as a spouse of the late president in the indictment, during that time. Reuters attempted to contact Toure through social media, but she could not immediately be reached for comment.
“Beny Steinmetz never paid a cent to Mme. Mamadie Toure. Mamadie Toure was not the wife of the president (Lansana Conte) and she is not a public agent and therefore cannot be corrupted,” Bonnant said.
“Beny Steinmetz never signed forged documents, he was never an instigator of the signature of forged documents,” he added.
Bonnant, asked whether Steinmetz, a former Geneva resident who moved back to Israel in 2016, would attend the trial, said: “He came to all the pre-trial hearings where he was asked to appear. And naturally he will attend the trial.”
The trial had been expected early this year, but was delayed by the closure of the Swiss judicial system for several months during the COVID-19 pandemic. A second source close to the case confirmed that the proceedings were set for Jan. 11-22.
Claudio Mascotto, a Geneva prosecutor who began the investigation in the Swiss city where allegedly some of the bribes transited, said last year he was seeking prison terms of between two and 10 years for Steinmetz and his two associates.
Mascotto is no longer handling the case and has been replaced by two other prosecutors, Bonnant said. The second source confirmed the change to Reuters.
Development of Simandou – one of the world’s biggest iron ore deposits, containing billions of tonnes of high-grade ore – has been hindered by years of legal wrangling involving several big mining companies.
As part of international efforts to improve transparency, Guinea’s government under President Alpha Conde, elected in 2010, launched a review of mining contracts signed before 2011.
The review panel investigated how Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) had obtained rights to the Simandou deposit in 2008 and, after levelling corruption allegations, the government stripped the company of its rights to Simandou and a smaller deposit.
BSGR has always maintained it did nothing wrong. It walked away from the Simandou project as part of a settlement announced in February 2019 with the Guinean government, in which both parties agreed to drop outstanding legal action.
It has been more than two years since Sayragul Sautbay was released from a re-education camp in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang. Yet the mother of two still suffers from nightmares and flashbacks from the “humiliation and violence” she endured while she was detained.
Sautbay, a medical doctor and educator who now lives in Sweden, recently published a book in which she detailed her ordeal, including witnessing beatings, alleged sexual abuse and forced sterilisation.
In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, she shed more light on other indignities to which the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities were subjected, including the consumption of pork, a meat that is strictly prohibited in Islam.
“Every Friday, we were forced to eat pork meat,” Sautbay said. “They have intentionally chosen a day that is holy for the Muslims. And if you reject it, you would get a harsh punishment.”
She added that the policy was designed to inflict shame and guilt on the Muslim detainees and that it was “difficult to explain in words” the emotions she had every time she ate the meat.
“I was feeling like I was a different person. All around me got dark. It was really difficult to accept,” she said.
Testimonies from Sautbay and others provide an indication of how China has sought to crack down in Xinjiang by taking aim at the cultural and religious beliefs of the mostly Muslim ethnic minority, implementing widespread surveillance and – from about 2017 – opening a network of camps it has justified as necessary to counter “extremism”.
But documents made available to Al Jazeera show that agricultural development has also become part of what German anthropologist and Uighur scholar, Adrian Zenz, says is a policy of “secularisation”.
According to Zenz, the documents and state-approved news articles support talk within Uighur communities that there is an “active” effort to promote and expand pig farming in the region.
In November 2019, Xinjiang’s top administrator, Shohrat Zakir, that the autonomous region would be turned into a “pig-raising hub”; a move that Uighurs say is an affront to their way of life.
One news article published in May that Zenz recorded describes a new farm in the southern Kashgar area, which aims to produce 40,000 pigs every year.
The project is expected to occupy a 25,000-square-metre (82-square-foot) area in an industrial park in Kashgar’s Konaxahar county, renamed Shufu, according to the Chinese-language website, Sina.
Ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang say that the government is deliberately trying to erase their cultural and religious traditions [File: Diego Azubel/EPA]
The deal was formally signed on April 23 this year, the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month and states that the pig farming is not meant for export purposes, but instead “to ensure the supply of pork” in Kashgar.
The Uighurs make up 90 percent of the population in the city and the surrounding area.
“This is part of the attempt to completely eradicate the culture and religion of the people in Xinjiang,” Zenz told Al Jazeera.
“It is part of the strategy of secularisation, of turning the Uighurs secular and indoctrinating them to follow the communist party and become agnostic or atheist,” he added.
‘Three evils’
Beijing has defended its policies in the region, saying the approach is needed to fight the “three evils of extremism, separatism and terrorism”, following deadly riots in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009.
It has denied the existence of the re-education camps in which the United Nations has said more than one million people have been held, instead saying it operates vocational centres that allow it to “retrain” the Uighur population and teach them new skills.
Like Sautbay, Uighur businesswoman Zumret Dawut has first-hand experience of detention. She was picked up in March 2018 in Urumqi, the city where she was born.
According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in September, there are at least 380 re-education camps and detention centres in Xinjiang [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters]
For two months, Dawut said authorities demanded explanations about her links to Pakistan, her husband’s homeland. They questioned her as well about how many children she had, and whether or not they had studied religion and read the Quran.
She says she was humiliated repeatedly and on one occasion was slapped in the face with a rolled paper after displeasing her interrogator.
Another time, she had to beg the camp’s male officers to allow her to go to the restroom, only for them to leave her handcuffed and watch her the whole time she was in the toilet.
She too says she was served pork repeatedly.
“When you sit in a concentration camp, you do not decide whether to eat, or not to eat. To be alive, we had to eat the meat served to us,” she told Al Jazeera through an interpreter.
Zumret Dawut, who is now living in exile in the US, was detained for two months in her hometown of Urumqi and was repeatedly forced to eat pork while in detention [File: Nathan Ellgren/AP)
Yet those experiences could not have prepared her for what would happen next.
She and several other female detainees were sterilised to prevent them from having more children. The controversy was reported earlier this year by the Associated Press news agency, drawing widespread condemnation.
Sautbay, who was from the town of Ili, ended up in another camp after authorities learned that her husband and their two children had left for neighbouring Kazakhstan in early 2016.
She had originally planned to join them but by then authorities had confiscated her passport and that of other civil servants.
Because of her medical background and experience in running preschools, Sautbay was assigned to teach her fellow detainees the Chinese language, allowing her to closely observe what was happening to the Uighurs.
She says the practice of making Muslims eat pork went beyond the detention camps.
In one school in Altay, a city in northern Xinjiang, students were also forced to eat the meat and when many refused and demonstrated against their school administrators, the government sent in soldiers to intervene, Sautbay said.
The Xinjiang government also started an initiative called “free food” for Muslim children in kindergarten, serving them pork dishes without their knowledge, she added.
The idea was that by starting them young, the Muslim children would acquire a taste for non-halal food.
The Xinjiang government has also reportedly started feeding Uighur children pork, with the idea that by starting them young, they would develop the taste for non-halal food [File: Diego Azubel/EPA]
“China is using and will use different tactics to force Uighurs and other Muslim population to eat pork,” Sautbay said.
Last year, the Italy-based AsiaNews alleged that during the Chinese Lunar New Year, which happened to be the “Year of the Pig”, government officials reportedly delivered pork directly to Muslim households in Ili, and insisted that Uighurs decorate their homes for the festive season.
‘Normalising’ the forbidden
Arslan Hidayat, a Turkey-based Uighur rights activist and secretary-general of the Uyghur Revival Association, told Al Jazeera that whether it is breeding pigs, or eating pork and drinking alcohol, the Chinese government is attempting to “normalise” prohibited practices for Muslims in Xinjiang.
In 2018, as part of official state policy, the Xinjiang government also announced that all halal restaurants in the region would be required to “operate normally” during Ramadan, in contrast to previous years when those same establishments were closed during the month-long ritual of fasting.
According to the Xinjiang government website, which published the memorandum containing the provision on Muslim food establishments, the directive was meant to ensure “normal life order during Ramadan.”
But Zenz believes the directive meant the government wanted to make sure “Uighurs eat and don’t fast” during the day.
He also shared two other official documents, written in the Chinese language, which showed the government in Kashgar allotting money for food for their mostly Muslim Uighur staff during Ramadan.
Taken together, this constitutes a pattern of the Chinese government carrying out a “war against halal”, Zenz noted referring to the term used in Islam to describe acceptable food and other daily practices.
In 2018, the Reuters news agency also reported on an “anti-halal campaign” in Urumqi “to stop Islam penetrating secular life and fuelling ‘extremism’”.
‘Radicalised’
Speaking to Al Jazeera about China’s overall policy towards Uighurs, Einar Tangen, a China affairs expert based in Beijing, said that the Chinese government “feels strongly” that many of Xinjiang’s residents have been “radicalised” in recent years.
Exiled Uighur groups living in Turkey hold a protest in Istanbul to call attention to alleged rights abuses by the Chinese government in Xinjiang [File: Yasin Akgul/AFP]
In Beijing’s view, the only way to address the situation in Xinjiang is to give residents “the education that they should have gotten when they were younger.” Thus the “training camps”.
“This is what they [government] say, and they are moving people through this education camps. They teach them skills, language, history, and that’s their way of dealing with it.”
But the activist Hidayat notes that even non-observant Uighurs, many of them government employees who had tried to adopt a lifestyle similar to the Han Chinese, had not escaped punishment. They too were sent to the camps, by virtue of their racial identity alone, he said.
Tangen, however, pointed out that the economic situation in Xinjiang had “improved dramatically over the years” and people there were better off.
“People live longer. They have better opportunities,” Tangen noted.
“So there is always this tension between what the West says is your human rights, to speak freely, do what you want, and the idea that without economic opportunity and food on the table, rights don’t mean a lot.”
With regards to the specific allegations of forcing Muslims to eat pork, Tangen said that he did not know whether the information was “factual”, but if it was taking place it was not the result of “central government policy.”
The documents seen by Al Jazeera are among a cache that also detailed the alleged sterilisation programme reported by AP.
“I am sure that there are things that are happening that should not be happening. But unless I have some of the facts, it is impossible” to determine the veracity of the allegations, Tangen said.
In a huge bureaucracy like that of China, there may be “some people” who might commit abuses, he said.
“The key is to find these people and punish them.”
The Chinese government has had little to say about the issue, although various state-controlled publications questioned the credibility of both Sautbay and Dawut when they made allegations of other abuses in Xinjiang.
Beijing has also accused Zenz, the German anthropologist, of “fabricating facts and falsifying data” and pointed to his links to “right-wing” factions of the US government. China observers also raised questions about his “sudden expertise” on Xinjiang and the Uighurs.
Al Jazeera has sought an official response from China’s foreign ministry but has yet to receive a reply. It has also requested comment from the Institute for Human Rights at China University of Political Science and Law, but it had yet to respond at the time of publication.
Dawut, the Uighur businesswoman now living in exile in the US, says she stands by her story of what happened to her inside the camps.
Meanwhile, Sautbay, the Kazakh medical doctor, said that by sharing her ordeal, she hoped to be a voice for those who remain in captivity.
“The days I have spent in the concentration camp will not be erased from my memory, and I have to live with it my entire life,” she said.
President João Lourenço manifested last Saturday his willingness to continue taking steps towards boosting the relations, in various domains, with Burkina Faso.
The intention is expressed on a message of congratulations from the Angolan Head of Sate to his counterpart of Burkina Faso, Rock Marc Christian Kaboré, in the ambit of the latter’s reelection as president of the West African country as a result of the elections held on 22 November this year.
On the letter, João Lourenço encourages Rock Marc Christian Kaboré to continue making efforts to consolidate peace and security in Burkina Faso.
Agency for Private Investment and Exports (AIPEX) presented Friday in Macau (China) the needs for the sectors of agricultural and agro-industrial production, as part of the diversification of the national economy.
A video on new business environment and opportunities available in the country was showed at the 11th International Infrastructure Investment and Construction Forum, in Macau.
AIPEX video highlights the set of new structural and legal measures that make the private investment process in Angola less bureaucratic, offer incentives, guarantees and protection to investors in terms of competition and repatriation of dividends.
At the forum, the Angolan ambassador João Salvador dos Santos Neto held separate meetings with some investors, during which he spoke of Angola's interest in the sustainable exploration of its arable land, fishing and mineral resources for the country's sustainable development.
Regarding the needs and opportunities in the agro-industrial sector, the diplomat suggested the construction of factories for fertilizers, insecticides, machinery and agricultural inputs.
He also spoke of the acquisition of farms, already structured, under the privatisation process of 195 companies and assets of the Angolan State, under implementation until 2022.
According to him, Angola is looking for new partnerships for the execution of projects aimed to speed up diversification of its economy and contributing to the development of the country.
The event discussed and exchanged experiences and strategies for the construction of new infrastructures in the post-pandemic era.
It also analysed models of cooperation and sources of financing, transfer of technologies and improvement of local staff skills, mainly in developing countries.
Petro de Luanda moved last Saturday to the second stage of the race of access to the final phase of the African Champion Clubs Cup, after drawing 2-2 with Akonangui of Equatorial-Guinea.
This second-leg match took place in 11 de Novembro Stadium without public.
By half time, Petro de Luanda were ahead of the score by 1-0, a goal scored by Thiago Azulão. The second goal was scored by Yano when the opponents were ahead of the score.
In the first-leg encounter, Petro de Luanda beat the opponent by 1-0, a goal scored by Thiago Azulão.
The Republic of Angola expects to receive by April 2021 a total of 15 million doses of vaccine against Covid-19, announced last Friday, in Luanda, the minister of Health, Sílvia Lutucuta.
According to the minister - who spoke Friday to journalists, on the fringes of the launching ceremony of the vaccination campaign against poliomyelitis, measles, and the administration of Vitamin A – the referred number of Covid-19 vaccines will arrive in the country by stages.
She went on to inform that initially the country will get five million doses of the vaccine. The prevision, she said, is that the country will receive 15 million doses by April 2021.
According to the Health minister, in the first stage, the authorities intend to immunize those professionals that are normally on the frontline of the fight against the pandemic (Covid-19), such as health workers and those that deemed active cases (diseased).
Minister Sílvia Lutucuta also announced that the government has been working with Covax - made up by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, World Health Organization (WHO) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)) – with goal to guarantee the country’s access to vaccines.
“(…) We’ll only use vaccines certified by the WHO”, she assured.
Ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang say that the government is deliberately trying to erase their cultural and religious traditions [File: Diego Azubel/EPA]
According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in September, there are at least 380 re-education camps and detention centres in Xinjiang [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters]
Zumret Dawut, who is now living in exile in the US, was detained for two months in her hometown of Urumqi and was repeatedly forced to eat pork while in detention [File: Nathan Ellgren/AP)
The Xinjiang government has also reportedly started feeding Uighur children pork, with the idea that by starting them young, they would develop the taste for non-halal food [File: Diego Azubel/EPA]
Exiled Uighur groups living in Turkey hold a protest in Istanbul to call attention to alleged rights abuses by the Chinese government in Xinjiang [File: Yasin Akgul/AFP]
