Rafael Reyna, a 47-year-old father of four, is on life support after a fight with another man in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium on Friday night left him with a fractured skull, according to Amy Powell of ABC7.com.
“He was hit, and his head hit the ground and caused a skull fracture, and now his brain is swelling,” his wife, Christel Reyna, said. “He’s bleeding on the brain.”
“I was hearing the arguing happening, and then I heard like a smack, a crack,” she added, noting she had been on the phone with Rafael at the time. “It sounded like a baseball bat, and then I heard him start moaning.”
“Last night, an altercation occurred suddenly between two men who were leaving the stadium. One of the men was injured as a result of the altercation. A witness immediately reported the incident to stadium personnel, and emergency medical technicians were promptly dispatched to provide medical assistance at the scene. The matter is now being investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Dodgers are cooperating fully with the investigation.”
According to Powell, the suspect is believed to have left the scene in a “white SUV, possibly a Toyota 4Runner.”
Rafael Reyna is currently at LAC+USC Medical Center with family members.
According to the league’s two-minute report (h/t Mark Medina of the Mercury News), the NBA agreed with official Marat Kogut’s ruling that Minnesota’s Keita Bates-Diop fouled Kevin Durant before he sunk what would have been a game-tying shot with just 4.4 second remaining in the overtime session.
The two-minute report noted that Bates-Dip “places two hands on Durant and makes contact with him prior to the start of his upward shooting motion.”
The league also backed Leon Wood’s decision to call a foul on Durant with less than a second remaining for fouling Karl-Anthony Towns. While the Warriors disputed the call on the basis of the inbound from Anthony Tolliver flying out of bounds, the two-minute report noted that “the path of the throw-in has no bearing on the illegal action.”
Bosh Is Getting His Jersey Raised to the Rafters in Miami
Steph Returns to Houston for 1st Time Since His Moon Landing Troll
Lou Williams Is Coming for a Repeat of Sixth Man of the Year
Pat Beverley Has the Clippers Stealing the LA Shine
LeBron Keeps Shredding NBA Record Books
Young’s Hot Streak Is Heating Up the ROY Race with Luka
LeBron and 2 Chainz Form a Superteam to Release a New Album
Wade’s #OneLastDance Dominated February
Warriors Fans Go Wild After Unforgettable Moments with Steph
Eight Years Ago, the Nuggets Traded Melo to the Knicks
Two Years Ago, the Kings Shipped Boogie to the Pelicans
ASG Will Be Competitive Again If the NBA Raises the Stakes
Will Harden Burn Himself Out Before the Playoffs?
When MJ Wore #12 After His Jersey Was Stolen Before a Game
15 Years Ago, LeBron, Wade and Melo Took Over All-Star Weekend
14 Years Ago, Iverson Dropped Career-High 60 Points
The Kyrie and LeBron Bromance Is Back!
Bats Have Become an Unexpected Attraction at Spurs Games
KD Giving Back to His Hometown with Durant Center
Four Years Ago, Klay Drops Record 37 Pts in One Quarter
Saudi political prisoners suffered torture and malnutrition, according to leaked medical reports prepared for King Salman, the Guardian newspaper has revealed.
The medical reports are understood to have been prepared for the king along with recommendations that include potential pardoning for the prisoners or early release due to health concerns.
The medical examinations included in the report are believed to have been conducted in January for up to 60 prisoners as part of an internal review ordered by the king, despite objections by aides of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the Guardian wrote.
The report was to be circulated around the royal court, a source told the British newspaper.
The conditions of the prisoners as reported in the leaked documents are consistent, the Guardian said, with several reports that have emerged in recent months involving claims of torture in Saudi prisons.
MBS, the kingdom’s de facto leader, is also facing reproach over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi , who was killed inside his country’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 by a team of Saudi operatives in what has been described as a “premeditated murder”.
Saudi Arabia pressured after female activists allege torture
Repeated requests by the Guardian for comment from the Saudi government were declined or left unanswered, but officials did not challenge the authenticity of the reports.
Male prisoners reportedly examined for the review include Adel Ahmad Banaemah, Mohammed Saud Al Bisher, Fahad Abdullaziz Al-Sunaidi, Zuhair Kutbi, Abdullaziz Fawzan al-Fawzan and Yasser Abdullah al-Ayyaf, reported the Guardian.
Female prisoners include Samar Mohammad Badawi, Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi and Abeer Adbdullatif Al Namankany.
‘Physical abuse’
The reports suggest the political detainees have been severely ill-treated and suffer various health issues, with remarks including: “The patient suffers from severe weight loss with continuous bloody vomiting. There are also a number of wounds and bruises scattered in several areas of the body.”
Another remark was: “The patient cannot move at all due to wounds in both legs as well as severe weakness in the body due to malnutrition and lack of fluids.”
In most cases the report demanded urgent transfer of the detainees to a medical centre.
On Thursday, Saudi Arabia temporarily released three of the women’s rights activists held in custody for almost a year following a court hearing in which the detainees alleged torture and sexual harassment during interrogation.
Several reports named the women as blogger Eman al-Nafjan, Aziza al-Youssef, a retired lecturer at King Saud University, and academic Rokaya al-Mohareb.
Riyadh has previously denied using torture and said arrests were made on the basis of suspicious contacts with foreign entities and offering financial support to “enemies overseas”.
The spokesperson of the Saudi embassy in Washington has also previously said that the kingdom “takes any and all allegations of ill treatment of defendants awaiting trial or prisoners serving their sentences very seriously”, noting that Saudi Arabia signed the convention against torture and prohibits its use.
But in November last year, Amnesty International reported that Saudi activists, including women, arrested in a government crackdown this year have faced sexual harassment and torture during interrogation,
More recently, a United Nations human rights watchdog urged Saudi authorities to free more than a dozen rights activists detained in the kingdom, alleging some had been tortured or mistreated during interrogation.
Analysis: The Saudi justice system and human rights
Using Google to translate Spanish text into English is a trick used by high school students to avoid doing their Spanish homework â not something youâd expect to see from candidates for the highest office in the land.
Yet several Democratic White House hopefuls appear to be doing precisely that. Theyâre posting passages in Spanish on their websites that bear striking similarities to the output from Googleâs translation service, appearing to perform only minor cleanup before publishing the copy on their sites. While Google Translate can serve as a workable starting point, more often than not it needs a human hand to produce Spanish that would pass muster with a native speaker.
The Spanish-language sites represent an effort by the Democratic candidates to court the burgeoning Latino electorate, estimated at 27 million by Voto Latino, a group that works to register Latino voters. But good intentions aside, the errors risk producing the opposite effect, prompting Spanish speakers to question how seriously the candidates are taking them if they canât even get basic English-to-Spanish translation right.
Kamala Harris
Harris’ site misused the verb “gastar,” which resulted in her saying she “wasted” her life defending U.S. values. The error was corrected shortly after a congressional staffer flagged it on Twitter.
âIt’s the front door to the campaign. And it’s indicative,â said Lisa Navarrete, an adviser at UnidosUS, the oldest Latino advocacy organization in the United States. âIf you’re not investing in this ⊠it will indicate to us that perhaps you’re not taking the other parts of reaching out to the community as seriously.â
POLITICOâs review looked at everything from basic grammar, to use of idioms, to how closely the text aligned with the often-poor Google-generated translation. The candidates fell into three rough categories: top of their class, average performers and the truly struggling.
Three candidates, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang and John Delaney, earned failing grades for not having Spanish websites at all, while Beto OâRourkeâs and Sen. Bernie Sandersâ websites were incomplete.
Though all the candidates made at least a few mistakes, some were far superior to the others.
Harris got off to a somewhat rocky start with her Spanish website. In late January, a former congressional staffer spotted her misuse of the word âgastarâ â the Spanish verb âto wasteâ â to mean spending her life âdefending the values of our country.â The former staffer, Frederick Velez III, questioned why campaigns didnât put more of an effort into hiring a diverse staff.
The publication Latino Rebels also pointed out her websiteâs other errors.
Harris has recovered since that stumble. Her Spanish site is virtually error-free, and she took the additional step of providing real-time translation at a March 1 campaign town hall in Nevada. Harris has also hired Latinos to several senior roles, including campaign manager and digital organizer. Her campaign chair is the labor rights icon Dolores Huerta.
Booker has done similarly well: He gave one of the first interviews after his Feb. 1 announcement to UnivisiĂłn, speaking entirely in Spanish.
Where Google Translate text roughly matches campaign text
Cory Booker, A-
Bookerâs website has some apparent changes from the Google Translate output, demonstrating that major cleanup was done to make the language more familiar and easy to read.
English Website
When Coryâs parents tried to move into a neighborhood with a good school district, no one would sell them a home because of the color of their skin. A group of volunteer lawyers, who had seen what happened on Bloody Sunday in 1965 and were inspired to help black families in their own community, stepped in to help the family get their home.
Exact Google Translation
Cuando los padres de Cory intentaron mudarse a un vecindario con un buen distrito escolar, nadie les venderĂa una casa debido al color de su piel. Un grupo de abogados voluntarios, que habĂan visto lo que sucediĂł el domingo sangriento en 1965 y se inspiraron para ayudar a las familias negras en su propia comunidad, intervino para ayudar a la familia a tener su hogar.
Campaign Translation
Cuando los padres de Cory intentaron mudarse a una comunidad con buenas escuelas, nadie les querĂa vender una casa sĂłlo por el color de su piel. Luego de ver lo ocurrido en el Domingo Sangriento de 1965, un grupo de abogados voluntarios se inspiraron a ayudar a familias afroamericanas en su comunidad y se ofrecieron a proveer ayuda a la familia de Cory para obtener un hogar.
Notes
Great Spanish compared to your peers.
Common Mistakes
A reference to football on your website should be translated to âfĂștbol americano,â otherwise it doesnât make sense showing a picture of you in shoulder pads if you were playing soccer.
âMy Spanish isnât perfect, but I want to speak directly to the people,â Booker told UnivisiĂłn. The former mayor of Newark, N.J., learned most of his Spanish through a language-immersion program in Ecuador, where he lived with a host family, and he earlier had also studied the language in Mexico.
Two lesser-known candidates also demonstrate proficiency. Rep. Tulsi Gabbardâs (D-Hawaii) Spanish website has relatively clean copy, and she shows cultural sensitivity by using the phrase âvoluntario/aâ to include the male and female genders. Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state whose platform hinges on counteracting climate change, uses mostly appropriate terms for a highly technical subject.
Jay Inslee & Tulsi Gabbard
Inslee and Gabbard’s websites have robust Spanish translations, even accounting for gender sensitivity and technical language..
Castro, the former Housing and Urban Development secretary, has a complicated relationship with the Spanish language. The only Latino in the field, he announced his candidacy in both English and Spanish at an event in San Antonio, Texas, to the tune of mariachi trumpets.
But Castro has acknowledged he is not fluent in the language. In that way, heâs representative of a large swath of immigrant-descended Hispanic Americans who grew up entirely in the United States.
JuliĂĄn Castro
The date format in Spanish would be: â11 de enero del 2019.â
âDudaâ is a feminine noun, so âno doubtâ should be âninguna duda.â
Verb conjugations in the subjunctive are tough. This would be âuna vision que nos una, no que nos divida.â
âI speak Spanish to some extent â Iâm just not completely fluent at it,â Castro told NPRâs LatinoUSA podcast in February, as he also spoke of the abuses that his mother, a Chicana activist, faced in Texas, including being subjected to corporal punishment for speaking the language. âWe were beating the Spanish out of families. Because of that, families made a decision to focus a lot of times on teaching their kids English because they thought that that was the ticket to make sure that they could get ahead.â
Passages on Castroâs Spanish website also bear a close resemblance to the Google-translated text, leading to some awkward phrases.
Where Google Translate text roughly matches campaign text
JuliĂĄn Castro, B+
Castroâs translation largely matches the translation generated by Google, but in his case, the sentences are coherent. Other mistakes are apparent on the website, though.
English Website
America isnât just my home and my country â itâs always been a promise for a better life. A promise that every American deserves.
My path to public service did not begin with me. It began when my grandmother, Victoria, came to the United States at seven years old. She never made it past the fourth grade, but worked hard to teach her family the value of hard work as she cleaned houses and worked as a maid.
Exact Google Translation
Estados Unidos no es solo mi hogar y mi paĂs, siempre ha sido una promesa para una vida mejor. Â Una promesa que todo estadounidense merece.
Castro makes an effort to write well, but could benefit from asking someone else to check his work.
Common Mistakes
Other parts of the website include mistranslated email and phone number fields, grammatical errors in his blog, and repetition of formal and informal pronouns in his listserv sign-up form.
Castro also maintains a blog on his website, but the Spanish version is riddled with typos. And many of the entries in English are not translated into Spanish at all.
The campaign did not return repeated requests for comment.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand once had a tense relationship with the immigrant community, having supported a measure earlier in her political career that would have made English the official language of New York, where 19 percent of the population is Hispanic, according to Pew.
Until her recent official campaign launch, the Spanish website for the now-presidential contender featured a video introducing readers to Gillibrandâs background, but offered no translation or subtitles for it, making it inaccessible to Spanish speakers. Other campaigns with videos have this flaw, too.
Before its relaunch, the website also left a policy proposal up with a headline mixing both English and Spanish.
âService members and veterans, national security and gun safety miembros de las fuerzas militares, veteranos, seguridad nacional y regulaciones para armas de fuego,â the title read.
Elizabeth Warren
United States is a plural noun, so this should be âunos Estados Unidos que funcionen.â
âThe edge of the middle classâ doesnât really translate well to âal borde de la clase media.â
Estados Unidos is a plural noun, again, but this phrase also doesnât read well because of the repetition.
This should use the preposition âde.â
The verb âconocerâ is usually used to refer to meeting people or places â it would be much better to say, âAprenda mĂĄs.â
Kirsten Orthman, a spokeswoman from the campaign, said of the errors: âA handful of typos were brought to our attention and we have been in the process of correcting them. We’re also continuing to update our website â both the English and Spanish versions. And yes, we have Latinx staff working on this and we’re always working to expand our content and make it as strong as possible.â
The Warren campaign also updated some errors after POLITICO pointed them out while requesting a comment.
Klobucharâs Spanish website has perhaps the most egregious mistakes, leaving readers to wonder whether the text was copied and pasted straight from Google Translate.
Line by line, the text is almost identical.
Where Google Translate text roughly matches campaign text
Amy Klobuchar, C
The overwhelming majority of the main text on Klobucharâs website is an exact match with Google Translate, causing unfortunate translations like the following, in which she says she is speaking from inside the Mississippi River.
English Website
On a cold February day in Minneapolis on the mighty Mississippi River, with thousands of friends and supporters at my side I announced that Iâm running for President of the United States. As I said that day in our nationâs heartland, we must heal the heart of our democracy and renew our commitment to the common good.
Klobuchar could follow in the footsteps of other candidates by doing more revisions to the text to make it familiar and fluid.
Common Mistakes
Spanish readers can tell when the wrong gender is used to refer to your mother!
Klobucharâs English text, written colloquially in an apparent bid to highlight the senatorâs Midwestern roots, speaks of her parentsâ and grandparentsâ working-class background and their struggles to help their children achieve post-secondary education. But âsendingâ someone to college does not translate to âenviar,â a verb Klobuchar uses that is more commonly used for postal packages or emails.
The text also has some gender and number disagreements, notably using a male adjective and a plural verb conjugation for Klobucharâs mother.Â
In a statement, a spokesperson from the campaign wrote that it âhired a professional translator who is a native Spanish speaker to translate [the] site.â The D.C.-based firm, Trill Multicultural, disputed the errors pointed out by POLITICO, saying it came down to mere word choice and that only a well-informed professional would be able to notice the finer points.
âWe will always correct errors and make improvements when they are needed,â the Klobuchar campaign said.
Amy Klobuchar
This preposition means a person is in the river, not near it or by it.
âAbueloâ should be followed by âquienâ â who â and not âque,â which means âthat.â Also, numerals in spanish are separated by periods instead of commas (1.500).
âEnviar a la universidadâ is not really an idiom in Spanish â the verb is used to mean sending packages or letters.
Here, used âun orgulloso,â a masculine article and adjective, to refer to your mother. Try âuna orgullosa miembro.â
Here, a plural verb conjugation on “brindaron” is used to to refer to âmother,â which is a singular noun.
Navarrete, the adviser from UnidosUS, acknowledges that it is reasonable to expect that some campaign websites will not be perfect.
But the campaign websites of Buttigieg, Yang and Delaney have no Spanish-language counterpart. Just this week, Buttigieg claimed he could do Spanish interviews with his local Spanish radio station while talking about his eight language proficiencies.
Neither the Buttigieg nor the Yang campaign returned repeated requests for comment.
Michael Starr Hopkins, national press secretary for Delaneyâs campaign, said that the website was just relaunched and the former Maryland congressman is working on publishing a Spanish website. âWe plan on campaigning for the votes of everyone in this primary, including Latinx voters, which is why we’re going to campaign in all 50 states during the primary.â
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Beto OâRourke, on the other hand, have launched only landing pages for their sites, so they have less text to translate. Other campaigns they have promoted in the past, such as Sandersâ 2016 presidential run or OâRourkeâs 2018 Texas Senate run, have had appropriate copy. Even so, both campaigns made some mistakes.
Bernie Sanders & Beto O’Rourke
Thus far,Sanders and O’Rourke have translated only their landing pages. The rest of their sites do not have translations.
President Donald Trump is in a whole different category, and not a good one for Spanish speakers interested in his policies. He didnât have a Spanish website during his 2016 campaign, and his official White House site doesnât have one, either. Same goes for his reelection campaign.
Pope Francis has joined Morocco‘s King Mohammed VI in saying Jerusalem should be a “symbol of peaceful coexistence” for Christians, Jews and Muslims, on the first day of a visit to the North African country.
The spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics was invited by King Mohammed VI for the sake of “interreligious dialogue” according to Moroccan authorities.
He is expected to celebrate mass at a Rabat stadium with an estimated 10,000 people attending as well as visiting a church-run social services centre and meeting with Catholic priests and other Christian representatives on Sunday.
In a joint statement on Saturday, the two leaders said Jerusalem was “common patrimony of humanity and especially the followers of the three monotheistic religions”.
“The specific multi-religious character, the spiritual dimension and the particular cultural identity of Jerusalem… must be protected and promoted,” they said in the declaration released by the Vatican as the pontiff visited Rabat.
Deadliest Gaza protests in weeks amid US embassy move 2:09
The Moroccan king chairs a committee created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to safeguard and restore Jerusalem’s religious, cultural and architectural heritage.
The joint statement came after US President Donald Trump‘s landmark recognition of the disputed city as the capital of Israel, which sparked anger across the Muslim world, especially from Palestinians who see Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Improving relations with other religions has been a priority for the Argentine pontiff, whose papacy has been marred by clergy facing a wave of child sex abuse allegations.
Opposing extremism
Addressing thousands of Moroccans who had braved the rain to attend the welcome ceremony, Francis said it was “essential to oppose fanaticism”.
He stressed the need for “appropriate preparation of future religious guides” ahead of meeting trainee imams later on Saturday.
Catholics are a tiny minority in Morocco, where 99 percent of the population is Muslim. The king is revered across West Africa as “commander of the faithful”.
Speaking at the ceremony at the Tour (or tower) Hassan mosque and nearby mausoleum in Rabat, the monarch also voiced opposition to radicalism.
“That which terrorists have in common is not religion, it’s precisely the ignorance of religion. It’s time that religion is no longer an alibi… for this ignorance, for this intolerance,” he said.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI invited the pope for the sake of “interreligious dialogue” according to Moroccan authorities [Youssef Boudlal/Reuters]
Francis rode to the ceremony in his Popemobile, passing rows of Moroccan and Vatican City flags and an estimated 12,000 well-wishers who packed the esplanade.
Buildings had been repainted, lawns manicured and security stepped up ahead of the first papal visit to Morocco since John Paul II in 1985.
A 17-year-old was arrested after trying to throw himself onto the king’s limousine to seek the monarch’s help, the police said.Â
Some 130,000 people across Rabat watched the first stage of the pope’s visit, which was beamed onto giant screens, officials said.
‘Right to a future’
After stopping by the royal palace, Francis and Mohammed visited an institute where around 1,300 students are studying to become imams and preachers.
There they heard from a French and a Nigerian student of the institute, which teaches Islam and is backed by the king.
In Morocco, where Islam is the state religion, authorities are keen to stress the country’s “religious tolerance” which allows Christians and Jews to worship freely.
But Moroccans are automatically considered Muslim, apart from a minority who are born Jewish. Apostasy is socially frowned upon, and proselytising is a criminal offence.
Those who try to “rock the faith of a Muslim or to convert him to another religion” risk a prison term of up to three years.
After years in the shadows, since 2017 the small number of converts have called openly for the right to live “without persecution” and “without discrimination”.
Around 30,000 to 35,000 Catholics live in Morocco, many of them from sub-Saharan Africa.
The pope finished his Saturday schedule by meeting migrants – including children dressed in colourful hats – at a centre run by Catholic humanitarian organisation Caritas.
“Everyone has the right to a future,” said Francis, who has throughout his papacy highlighted the plight of migrants and refugees.
He criticised “collective expulsions” and said ways for migrants to regularise their status should be encouraged.
Caritas centres in Rabat, Casablanca and Tangiers welcomed 7,551 new arrivals in 2017, according to the charity, helping migrants access services.
The number of people taking the sea route from Morocco to Spain has recently surged as it has become harder for them to pass through Libya.
Rabat claims to have a “humanistic” approach to migration and rejects allegations by rights groups of “brutal arrest campaigns” and “forced displacement” to the country’s southern border.
Kaduna, Nigeria – On February 3, Khadijah Adamu, a 24-year-old pharmacist in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, told her Twitter followers about a harrowing case of physical abuse, detailing claims of how an ex-boyfriend almost killed her.
“It was a burden that I was carrying around for two years,” Adamu told Al Jazeera. “Talking to people didn’t work, praying didn’t work, nothing worked, and to make matters worse my abuser refused to leave me alone.”
Fakhriyyah Hashim, an entrepreneur and development worker in the Nigerian capital Abuja, noticed Adamu’s tweet and replied with empathy, adding the hashtag #ArewaMeToo.Â
Arewa is the general term used to refer to northern Nigeria, which has a majority Muslim population and a conservative society where issues surrounding sex and sexuality are rarely discussed in public.
Soon, young women and men from the north started sharing experiences of rape and abuse on Twitter, using the hashtag.
Some tweets even named the alleged abusers.Â
For conservative northern Nigeria, where women are typically meant to be seen and not heard, I think the bravery of the women is similar to a revolution.
Betty Abah, director of the Centre for Children’s Health, Education, Orientation and ProtectionÂ
Drawing on the success of the global #MeToo movement, which started in late 2017, the project’s founders hope to break down cultural, economic, social and institutional barriers, which stand in the way of addressing sexual abuse and harassment.
“We don’t talk about sex because we have this perception that we are a morally upright society,” says Hashim, who leads the ArewaMeToo movement.
“We want to be angry, but we don’t want to show it. We don’t want to come up with objective resolutions on how to approach a lot of these problems.”
Growing movement
For now, #ArewaMeToo is fledging but plans are under way to put up a more coordinated fight. Three men and seven women, including Hashim and Adamu, lead the team.
Local chapters are active in the cities of Kano, Maiduguri, Niger, Sokoto, and Zamfara.
They have received more than 100 messages from young women and men, writing to share their experiences.
“You have to be open with them and tell them the legal implications if it turns out to be false information,” says Khadijah Awwal, one of the team’s four lawyers.
They ask for “concrete evidence” such as chat records, photos, medical reports and sometimes request members to visit their office to verify their identities.
Once they are satisfied with authenticity of a victim’s report, they connect them to NGOs that offer psychosocial support and legal aid.
Khadijah Awwal is a lawyer with the #ArewaMeToo movement, helping survivors access legal aid [Linus Unah/Al Jazeera]
As the campaign unfolded on social media, one of the leaders, Maryam Awaisu, was arrested by police officers with the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (or SARS).
A man who had been named on Twitter for allegedly abusing several girls had complained about defamation.
The police wanted to access Awaisu’s phone and laptop. She claims that they took her to another city for questioning.Â
Today we rallied together in Minna to walk against sexual abuse, in the quest to push #ArewaMeToo outside social media. Grateful for a great and passionate team. Next week, we begin the secondary school visits for awareness and enlightenment for students. #ArewaMeToopic.twitter.com/Jmq5Y0FFK3
â Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu (@WaasiShaffii) March 2, 2019
Awaisu’s teammates raised alarm on Twitter as Amnesty International condemned the arrest and called for her release.Â
“I foresaw it because you cannot talk about these things that nobody dares to without consequences,” says activist and writer Awaisu, who was later released.
She believes the arrest was “intentionally done to intimidate us”, but reaffirmed her commitment to the cause.
Isa Sanusi of Amnesty International Nigeria says the #ArewaMeToo team, and its allies, “must not be silenced or punished for the vital work they do”.
She added: “It is unacceptable that women working on behalf of these victims are subjected to intimidation and online bullying, and we fear that these actions may prevent victims of sexual violence from pursuing justice.”
Al Jazeera contacted officials at the justice and women affairs ministries in the nothern states for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publishing.
‘Not the way to go about it’
While survivors and activists have welcomed the movement, critics have accused the campaigners of bringing “disrepute” to Islam and “executing a Western plot”, while others blamed survivors for dressing “indecently”.
Some of those accused have also hit back.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, a man who has been accused of sexually assaulting women says he was “surprised and shocked” by the allegations, which he denies.
“I have been described as a serial rapist among other things, which to date, no one has proved,” he said.
“Social media isn’t an avenue to prove one’s innocence or guilt, so I have deliberately refused to say anything online since this very well-planned campaign of calumny started against me.
“Again, if the end game for the alleged accusations was justice, that wasn’t the way to go about it”.
Beyond social media
Beyond naming and shaming, the activists want to address the root causes of sexual abuse and push for reforms.
They have so far used the momentum to take their message to schools, markets, local communities and radio stations.
They have also approached traditional and religious leaders to win their support.
Betty Abah, director of the Centre for Children’s Health, Education, Orientation and Protection (CEE-HOPE) NGO, believes social media is a “powerful and effective tool” in amplifying issues such as sexual assault and can help in getting justice because “nothing unsettles a sex predator like an outspoken victim.”
The “ripple effect” of the initiative will be felt for years to come, she said.Â
“For conservative northern Nigeria, where women are typically meant to be seen and not heard, I think the bravery of the women is similar to a revolution.”
Although Nigerian law does punish sexual offences, survivors have cited inefficiency in the legal system and social stigma in preventing justice.
“From my experience, the biggest barrier hampering justice daily in Nigeria is … the determination of law enforcement officers to scuttle justice,” says Abah.
“This is particularly true with the police. We have had several cases where we found ourselves applying the same battle tempo against the perpetrators as well as the police who attempt to stymie justice after obviously taking bribes.”
Going forward, #ArewaMeToo campaigners are pushing for state assemblies in the north to adopt the Child Rights Act, which was passed by Federal Parliament in 2003. It outlawed intercourse with anyone below 18 and stipulated lifetime imprisonment for offenders. But only 26 out 36 states have adopted it; all the remaining states are in the north. â
“It is important that we get as many prosecutions as we can,” says Hashim, “because that would make people to believe that the system works and nobody is untouchable.”
#ArewaMeToo leader Fakhriyyah Hashim says naming and shaming abusers online without prosecution is counterproductive [Linus Unah/Al Jazeera]
https://t.co/yte75m1ZDB
https://t.co/wG3waV6lhh
#COYS https://t.co/0DEqTAq9F7
Daily Trends Hunter 