Latest Posts Page

World Youth Day. “There’s a Rush in the Air!”

Monday, 1 May 2023 8:00

The official anthem of World Youth Day is entitled “There’s a Rush in the Air!”. We talk about it with Father João Paulo Vaz,
author of the texts.

There is an official anthem at every World Youth Day (WYD). It is a song that marks every meeting of young people from all over the world with the Pope. The anthem of the World Youth Day to be held from 1 to 6 August in Lisbon is entitled “There is a rush in the air!” The author of the lyrics is Fr. João Paulo Vaz, a diocesan priest of the diocese of Coimbra, with music by Pedro Ferreira.

For the first time, the anthem was chosen through a competition. In previous editions, an artist or a musical group was always asked to compose the official anthem.

Father João Paulo Vaz does not hide the emotions he feels as his song has been chosen as the official anthem. He says: “I have attended six WYDs and the anthems have always been a milestone in the history and lives of those who have attended. It is almost a memorial to every WYD. The fact that the chosen anthem was the one we performed together with the parish band and that it could become a memorial for millions of young people from all over the world really moved us!”.

The priest continues: “The hymn is an important sign in every edition; music has the power to mark memories: if I hear a song, I remember the moment I heard and sang it. It carries the memory of the heart, the memories and the experiences. In all the involvement and preparation, the anthem becomes a great crescendo culminating in the WYD.”

The author of the WYD anthem also says that every time he hears the anthem of one of the six editions in which he participated, the whole journey comes to mind, the “process and the adventure is one of growth and remains for a lifetime.”

The WYD hymn makes concrete the dream of universal fraternity to which Pope Francis appeals so much. WYD is undoubtedly a meeting of peoples and a communion that can only be experienced here, in this global youth event.

Father João Paulo Vaz underlines the universal and fraternal dimension of the anthem, “once the anthem is accepted as the official anthem of a WYD, it is no longer mine or Pedro’s; it becomes the anthem written and composed by young people from all over the world and it is the young people who sing it and live it. The WYD anthem is the anthem of the Church! A legacy that becomes everyone’s inheritance.”

Proof of this is that it has already been translated into Spanish, French, English, Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish and Thai, not forgetting sign language – this is also an innovation of the organization
of WYD Lisbon 2023!

The musical styles of the various versions of the anthem also abound, from pop-rock to rap to electro. Another expression of this universality and fraternity is the fact that this hymn will now be officially sung not by its authors, but by the WYD Lisbon 2023 choir which is preparing to sing at the central WYD events. This choir is made up of young people from all the dioceses of Portugal and some foreign countries.

Father João Paulo Vaz explains to us how the entire process of composing the text of the hymn was born. “The genesis of these texts, because I took it as a very great challenge, is in the journey travelled in recent years since the last WYD in Panama in 2019. The themes of WYD 2019 with ‘Mary’s yes’ and that of 2023 ‘She got up quickly’
are two Marian themes.

Then the themes of the intermediate WYDs celebrated at the diocesan level, in 2020 and 2021, showed us a direction. The first was ‘Young people, get up and go!’; the second was ‘Young people, I make you witnesses of what you have seen and heard!’. So, in addition to the central theme which was Mary, we had ‘Get up’ and Mary’s ‘Yes’. Making these reflections, I said to myself ‘This is the key to this hymn!’

What message does the hymn ‘There’s a rush in the air’ contain? The author of the WYD hymn explains: “In the four verses of the hymn there are the four themes: Panama, the two intermediate ones and that of WYD 23. So, all this has been left here as a catechesis of the themes of the previous WYDs. In 2019, the theme of WYD was ‘May it be done to me according to your Word!’. The hymn of WYD 23 already invites in the first verse to say ‘Yes’ with Mary. A Yes to serve and do the will of the Father wanting to give, to be willing to say yes to imitate Mary.”

In 2020, on National Youth Day, the theme invited young people to ‘Get up and go’, thus setting out to discover, come, see and bear witness to what each one has seen. It is an invitation to come with others and to “look beyond what you do that does not allow you to smile and love” in order to “Go fearlessly on this mission”.

In 2021, with the theme “Young people, I bear witness to what you have seen and heard”, the hymn of WYD 23 states that it was Mary who was the first to bear witness and to welcome “the great surprise of life without end”. And like her, I am urged “not to be silent, not to be able to stop saying: ‘My Lord, count on me, I will never be silent again’”.

The priest points out: “Once we have experienced God’s unconditional love for each of us, we can no longer stand still – the invitation to be missionaries of God’s love with all whom we meet on our way, but also to go far and proclaim this love to those who don’t know him yet. This was the experience of Mary who set off in haste to announce to her cousin Elizabeth the great news that she had just received from God”.

Father João Paulo Vaz concludes: “Without a doubt, music and art are one of the most efficient and effective means and languages to bring the Good News to everyone today, but above all to young people. It is one of the new languages of evangelization. May we all learn to “do the will of the Father” by setting out quickly, full of happiness and enthusiasm”. (Photo: Sebastião Roxo)

Filipe Resende

Mozambique. Living the missionary spirit.

Monday, 1 May 2023 8:00

He received the appointment as auxiliary bishop with “fear and trembling”. But with a great desire to serve the church. We spoke about it with the Combonian Msgr. António Manuel Bogaio Constantino was recently consecrated as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Beira.

The archdiocese includes the entire province of Sofala in the central part of Mozambique. The archiepiscopal see is the city of Beira, the second most important city in the country, where the cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary is located. The territory is divided into 46 parishes.The new auxiliary bishop, originally from Tete, was ordained a priest on 13 June 2001 in Beira and has so far been provincial superior of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (since 2016) and president of the Conference of Religious in Mozambique (since 2018).After completing his postulancy with the Comboni Missionaries in Nampula and attending the seminary in Matola, he carried out his novitiate in Uganda. On 10 May 1997, he made his first vows in Kampala and subsequently obtained a baccalaureate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. After his ordination (from 2001 to 2007) he graduated in journalism in Madrid, Spain.

Msgr. António Manuel Bogaio Constantino was consecrated as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Beira, on 19 February.

Having returned to Mozambique, he was appointed parish priest of Anchilo, in the archdiocese of Nampula, and collaborator at the Catechetical Centre of Anchilo (2008-2011), and subsequently parish priest of São João XXIII in Chitima and of Santa Maria in Mucumbura, in the diocese of Tete (2011- 2016).
Pope Francis appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Beira last December. The episcopal consecration took place on 19 February with a solemn celebration in the Multipurpose Pavilion of the Ferroviário in Beira. In his first speech as bishop, Msgr. Bogaio Constantino explained that he received the noble, thorny and demanding mission of pastor with “fear and trembling”, moved by the desire to “Serve, serve and serve the Church”.

What are the major challenges you will encounter in Beira in the exercise of your ministry?
Although originally from Beira, I lived far from my city for 30 years, returning only occasionally. During this time, both the Church and Mozambique have experienced a great transformation. I have therefore not given myself any kind of agenda or planning, let alone any special goal. The local Church has grown and matured a lot. I feel that I simply have to enter it with a sense of openness, a desire to learn and above all with a missionary spirit in the service of the people of God.

The greatest challenge is to help believers, and young people in particular, to consolidate their faith in a time when it is put to the test by modernity and by the attraction towards the many religious formations that have arisen over the years. I believe, however, that only after some time from my entry will I be able to better define and face today’s challenges.
Moreover, the archdiocese has already given itself a clear pastoral plan: I undertake to study it so as to give my contribution to its implementation. And this together with the many travel companions.

How do you view your future mission in your ministry as a bishop?
Evangelization and the first proclamation of the Gospel is the specific vocation of the Comboni Missionaries. My ministry in Beira will therefore have at its centre the announcement and the importance of the missionary dimension and therefore of the commitment of every Christian to be a promoter, speaker and witness of the Gospel, also promoting the ability to work united and in communion. With Archbishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna I will follow the pastoral path he has already outlined in the pastoral plan of the diocese. In fact, the Beira region too is feeling the effects of the climate of general instability and I think we are called to stimulate not only the Christian communities but the whole of society to recover the moral values of non-violence and commitment to peace.

Msgr. António Manuel Bogaio Constantino (first on the right) visiting displaced people in Cabo Delgado

What does it mean for you to be a Comboni missionary bishop?
Enormous work has been done by the Comboni Missionaries since their arrival in Mozambique (1946) and their generosity is truly inimitable. Today the local Churches, have developed a lot and on the ministerial level they have very committed and valid native priests, religious and lay people. Missionary institutes therefore pass from the role of protagonists to offer support and encouragement alongside local pastoral workers. The work of the Comboni Missionaries has contributed in an important way to the growth of the Christian communities in Mozambique, and so fulfils the dream of our founder, St. Daniel Comboni, of “regenerating Africa through the Africans”.

What specific contribution can you make to the local Church?
As I have already mentioned, my greatest satisfaction is to recognize the level of maturity reached by the Church. The pastoral fruits of so many years of work are confirmed by the many vocations and the numerous lay ministries exercised in the Christian communities. In fact, I must say that in the difficult years of the socialist government that took over after independence, the great challenges posed to the Church contributed to an enormous flowering of ecclesial activities and above all to the flowering of the charisms of the laity.

Msgr.Bogaio with Archbishop of Beira Claudio Dalla Zuanna.

In many parishes, they ended up replacing foreign priests and religious in every area, who in many cases had had to leave the parishes and the country. I think that today we must in some ways recover that pastoral dynamic that has been somewhat lost, such as small Christian communities, where the laity truly put to good use the gifts that the Spirit grants them for the benefit of the whole community. And to live in a missionary spirit, that is, constantly going out of oneself, announcing and bearing witness to one’s faith with concrete life.

Pope Francis speaks of an “outgoing Church” and of active, synodal participation, capable of involving all the faithful.
The process of preparation for the synod which will be celebrated next autumn is continuing more or less intensely in all the dioceses. The themes suggested by Pope Francis are truly stimulating: communion, participation and mission. In them, the trajectory to be followed for the great celebration on a universal level is outlined. The second phase, i.e., on a continental level, has begun in Beira after the results of the consultation of all the ecclesial realities in the first diocesan phase have been sent to Rome. I will do everything to join immediately in the synodal journey and offer my contribution so that it truly becomes a moment of ecclesial renewal and the reawakening of faith in all Christians. I firmly believe that the Lord wants to use me to help the Church in Beira to experience more and more the beauty of ecclesial communion. (C.G)

Peru. The Asheninka Cultural Identity and Spirituality.

Monday, 1 May 2023 8:00

The Asheninka live in the departments of Pasco and Ucayali, which are part of the central jungle of Peru. They are estimated to be around 15 thousand people. The term Asheninka has to do with blood family and community family and means ‘Our kinfolks’.

The social environment of the Asheninka is based on family, which is considered the nucleus of the community. Marriage between a man and a woman implies reciprocity and mutuality. Each of them has their role; the women of the community raise children, and therefore they play a special role in the family, while the men are those that create and strengthen social relationships in the community. Singlehood status is seen as a sad experience, single men or widowers are considered to be unhappy, because they have to live with their relatives, they have their meals separately, in another house, and they are not supposed to offer their friends even a ‘masato’. For this reason, a bachelor loses prestige and has no influence within the Asheninka community.
The Asheninka make a clear distinction between family house and social house. The first is associated with women, while the second with men. The social house is the place where the sherampares (men) meet to share their experiences, to talk about hunting and other topics. For their part, the tsinanis (women) gather in the family house, where they take care of their children and cook.

The Ashaninka community is guided by a chief, the jiwari or jewawentseroni; he is generally an elder. Decisions are taken
during community assemblies.
What sustains the coexistence of the Ashaninka community are its ancestral traditions, such as the Mink’a and the faena (communal work for purposes of social utility), its principles and values, such as harmony, parity, freedom along with dialogue, sharing, respect and honesty.
The Asháninka language is spoken in the central eastern territory of Peru, in the departments of Cusco, Junín, Pasco, Huánuco and Ucayali. Such a wide distribution certainly offers multiple dialectal varieties. However, speakers of these different tongues can often understand each other. The Asháninka traditional dress for both, men and women, commonly known as kushma, is a robe made from cotton that is collected, spun, dyed and woven by women on looms. Dyed stripes always figure in the design, vertical for men’s garments and horizontal for women’s. The women’s kushma is adorned with snail shells and small bones. Ashaninka mothers use the aparina to carry their baby. The chief of a community wears a badge, representing a crown with snake figures woven with black thread or another colour and adorned with large macaw feathers which are embedded in the crown. He also wears a tuft of small feathers hanging on his shoulders.
The feathers, which have particular meanings to this ethnic group can be of curassows, herons or some other bird. The Ashaninka also make up their faces by drawing figures with achiote paste. Each figure has its meaning. Others have blue-coloured tattoos on their cheekbones. All these social traditions, typical clothes and make up, create the cultural identity of the Ashaninka.

The Ashaninka celebrate life with festivals such as the masato festival, which takes place at the time of full moon, in the summer months. It is a moment to share typical food and drinks. Masato and their typical food are also elements that are part of the Ashaninka cultural identity. This ethnic group also like to celebrate the end of a mink’a, which can be the construction of a house or another activity.
On these occasions all participants in the mink’a drink masato, eat traditional dishes, share stories and experiences, sing their traditional songs and dance to the rhythm of the drums, keeping alive, by doing so, their ancestral customs.
The Asheninka worldview is tripartite. This ethnic group believe that there are three existential spaces: Jenoki-sky (God, sun, moon and stars), Kepatsi-earth (man, nature, animals, rivers and other living beings) and Jaavike-underworld. The universe to the Asheninkas is characterised by the harmony between men and the spiritual beings, and between men and nature.

The Asheninka spirituality is rooted in the ancestral wisdom they have received from their ancestors. Creation, to this group, is the expression of the divine that reveals itself in many different ways: for instance, through animals that are considered sacred or somehow associated with the divine such as the jaguar, the manitzi, and the puma chánari. There are also other sacred animals, which indigenous people are not supposed to kill or eat, such as the caracara or atatawo bird, since they are believed to be shamans that transformed themselves into animal forms, therefore eating them would be an act of cannibalism. The anaconda is called yacumama (water mother) by indigenous people in South America. Besides sacred animals there are also places and plants that are sacred to the indigenous peoples: the salt hill, some sites in the Qollpa village, waterfalls, leafy trees (shihuahuaku, lopuna and others), medicinal plants (piri piri, matico, coca and others).
Masato is considered both a sacred and nutritional drink, and is used in social and ceremonial gatherings.
Drinking masato during festivals or family celebrations strengthens family and community relationships. Finally, the Ashaninka’s ancestral wisdom is present in their mythological stories, as oral narrations, which have been passed down through generations.

Jhonny Mancilla Pérez

Ivory Coast and France.

Monday, 1 May 2023 8:00

The prolonged phase of unrest reduced the influence of Ivory Coast on the international scene. During the Houphouet-Boigny era the Ivorian president was a powerbroker in the region.

He was considered a pillar of Francafrique, the network created by France to control her former colonies in Africa and therefore to play a prominent role on the African scene. Houphouet-Boigny, for good or bad, thanks to his personal abilities and the means he had could influence the political life of the neighbouring countries. After 1993 Cote d’Ivoire remained a leading country in West Africa, due mainly to its economy that kept on functioning and, on some occasions, growing the internal conflicts notwithstanding. But foreign leader, such as former Burkina Faso president Blaise Compaore, had the possibility to interfere in the internal matters of Ivory Coast first of all supporting one of the factions (in his case the northern rebel group) during the civil wars.

Ivory Coast under Ouattara is one of the few remaining allies for France, together with Senegal and Chad.

One of the causes of the gradual loss of power of France in Africa is the absence of credible leaders linked to Paris that could act as a transmission belt and implement France’s decision in the region. But the major cause of this crisis for France is the lack of means to act as a world power, linked with an uncertainty about how to play a role on the global scene. To sum up, the French leadership is loosely speaking divided between those who think Paris must act autonomously and go on with some sort of Francafrique framework (and therefore intervene in Africa to remain a world power) and those who support a deeper integration with Western countries (EU and NATO).
Due to these reasons, France has been losing ground in West Africa for years. Countries such as China, Turkey and (on a smaller scale) United Kingdom have created strong relations with those countries at the expenses of France. Recently the rivalry between France and Russia gained media attention. In the latest years Moscow entered the scene in countries such as Central African Republic, Mali and Burkina Faso with an explicit anti-French stance. A propaganda war between Paris and Moscow is ongoing in Africa.
Russia is exploiting the anti-French sentiment widespread in West African countries that were French colonies and during the years have been subjected to the initiatives of Francafrique.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. A propaganda war between Paris and Moscow is ongoing in Africa.

African populations do not forget that Paris supported autocratic regimes and influenced the economies of their countries through initiatives such as the CFA franc. Truth to be told, in terms of democracy the intervention of these new partners did not help the development of more inclusive institutions. This phenomenon at the moment translates more into a new support for local regimes that are (in some cases) autocracies than into a positive turning point for the populations. To put it bluntly, these countries risk to pass from being French colonies to being Russian or Chinese colonies.
In this scenario, Ivory Coast under Ouattara is one of the few remaining allies for France, together with Senegal and Chad. The African country still hosts French troops and is seeking support from Paris to empower its security forces. But the anti-French sentiment is present also in Cote d’Ivoire, especially between pro-Gbagbo supporters. They do not forget that Gbagbo was chased from power in 2011 with the help of French soldiers. A change of alliance for Cote d’Ivoire is not impossible, even under Ouattara. A massive plan of economic and/or military support from an external power could push the Ivorian leadership to a shift in the alliances. (Open Photo: Abidjan.Swm Archive)

(A.C.)

Africa. Organised crime and global supply chains.

Monday, 1 May 2023 8:00

The fishing and cocoa industries show how criminal networks and corrupt officials exploit multinational supply chains.

Transnational organised crime is usually associated with violent mafia-style groups that traffic drugs, people, arms and wildlife.
Less dramatic but equally damaging is the effect of organised crime on global supply chains for legal goods.

These logistics networks provide many opportunities for crime syndicates to commit various illegal activities. Illicit labour practices, business fronting, and misrepresenting price and quantity are just some examples that threaten the procurement, transportation and retail systems for the global commodities trade.

Industries and governments are familiar with shrinkage from global supply chains and consider the loss of tax revenue as ‘the cost of doing business.’ However, the increasing involvement of organised crime networks raises the risk of financial and reputational damage.
It also makes consumers unwittingly complicit in unsavoury
sourcing and supply practices.

There are many vulnerable supply chains from and in Africa. The fishing and cocoa industries are good examples of how multinational logistics systems present opportunities for exploitation by insiders, criminal networks and corrupt government officials.

The global fish industry generated over US$164 billion in exports in 2018, 60% of which came from developing countries.
Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing makes up a significant portion of this global economy.

It is conservatively estimated that the European Union alone imports 500 000 tonnes (worth €1.1 billion) of illegal fish annually. In African waters in particular, this practice has profoundly negative effects – depleting fish stocks, decreasing biodiversity, damaging ecosystems and threatening food security.

About two-thirds of cocoa production for the US$30 billion global chocolate industry occurs in West Africa. Illegal activity in that region has fuelled the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and is responsible for an array of human rights abuses. A complex web of licit-illicit relationships – both witting and unwitting – facilitate criminality at various stages of the supply chains in these two industries.

Human trafficking for forced labour onboard fishing vessels is a serious problem. Brokers use deception or coercion to recruit fishers and migrant workers to toil in terrible conditions. Unethical fishing practices, such as the illegal use of high sea drift nets of up to 20 km long, damage fragile marine ecosystems and result in overfishing. The haul is then sold on to illegal middlemen.

Transhipment (moving fish from fishing vessels to refrigerated transport ships at sea) allows overfishing, ‘laundering’ of the catch by mixing illegal and legal fish, and misreporting actual volumes extracted.

In the chocolate industry, cocoa farmers help drive deforestation in Côte d’Ivoire by allowing loggers and timber traders to illegally remove trees from protected areas to make way for cocoa crops. The industry is also dogged by reports of forced and child labour, sustained by human smuggling and trafficking networks.

This criminality becomes murkier when other professionals are involved. These include industry experts who develop legitimate business infrastructure to front illicit operations; or business owners, lawyers and bankers who launder money and evade taxes. It also entails corrupt state officials who enable smuggling and other criminal transactions. Legitimate transport networks are also drawn in to smuggle stolen commodities, drugs, arms or people alongside legal stock.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is often hidden by document fraud, scant inspections of containerised shipments and bribes for government officials. The fishing industry can also be a cover for other forms of organised crime, including drug and arms trafficking.

The same applies to the chocolate business. In 2019, significant lapses in compliance reviews of the cocoa industry resulted in the approval and certification of cocoa from West African farms that violated child labour and deforestation laws.

Similarly, a recent investigation revealed that licensed buying companies and farmer groups in Ghana were illegally renting their cocoa certification licences to cocoa traders.
This allowed them to export ‘certified’ cocoa from uncertified farms, making a sizeable profit in the process since licences enable farmers to charge a premium on their beans.

The range of crimes that can be committed along these supply chains makes it difficult to accurately quantify the overall impact. Disrupting crime at one point in the system may not curtail criminality at other points, and may even cause new offences to emerge elsewhere.

Businesses and individuals invested in supply chains who know or suspect that crime is happening may not even know where to direct law enforcement. These challenges are exacerbated by the involvement of corrupt government officials, sometimes at the highest levels, and the transnational dimensions of supply chains and crime networks. And the lack of cooperation between countries doesn’t help.

Several good practice interventions have been tested. These include voluntary standards, certification and traceability systems, and artificial intelligence security. However, these actions don’t always eradicate the targeted crime, and are undermined by corrupt public and private actors willing to break or circumvent the law for a price.

This systemic form of transnational organised crime presents fundamental barriers to development, the rule of law and good governance. Even national security is threatened by the creation of a parallel, illicit and unregulated economic system.

Prevention requires closely monitoring individual commodity supply chains to understand where their fault lines lie, and developing corresponding interventions. This will entail a whole-system approach involving public-private partnerships that gather and share information, pool resources and develop innovative solutions. And central to any solution is taking aim at corruption. (Essaouira Port, Morocco.123rf)

Romi Sigsworth, Research Consultant,
ENACT, ISS

South Africa. Much More than Tricks.

Monday, 1 May 2023 8:00

Fantasy and imagination but above all, ingenuity. 200 apprentices from different walks of life train their hands to demonstrate that magic ‘makes the impossible, possible’.

It is difficult to escape illusion and optimism when you walk through the gate of the large colonial-style house that houses the College of Magic, in the Claremont district of Cape Town. It’s not Saturday – the day when the more than 200 future magicians spend the whole morning practising card tricks, ventriloquism, juggling or visual effects – but the activity is frenetic due to the visit of a group of students from the Bright Student Learning Centre.Magic, which in many African countries is often associated with witchcraft or bad luck, is an entertainment art that requires conscientious practice, as well as the ability to transport viewers into a changing world, without much explanation. “Adults don’t believe in magic” is one of the arguments most often repeated by the centre’s graduates, now instructors or volunteers, to underline the generosity with which children and young people instead contemplate it. “It’s a demanding audience, very attentive, but also receptive and expressive of what surprises them”, says Thando Rala, one of the instructors, as he collects the gadgets from his latest performance.

David Gore founder of the College of Music. (Photo: José Luis Silván Sen)

“And do you see the blue, the green, the yellow, do you see them?” asks the magician Sinethemba Bawuti who studied at the College of Magic in 2005, and today being a magician has become his profession, during the show, and continues: “One, two, three, abracadabra… Say your colours and they will appear … What happens?! The magic makes all those colours seem connected”. Completely surprised, the audience applauds him and asks for an encore.
The College of Magic is much more than a place to learn to do magic, “It has been a school of life since it was founded in 1980”, explains David Gore, founder and director of the initiative. “During apartheid, the meaning of school was very special because we had young people of different social classes, origins, and skin colours…and we did it against the law. Now, in the middle of the 21st century, it is still relevant because here they mix, they meet socially, coming from different areas and from opposite economic strata. Their common interest is magic, and this makes them tolerant and understanding of their differences. This is the real magic of the place”, he adds.

Students from The College of Magic. (Photo: The College of Magic)

It is unprecedented that for more than a decade the apartheid regime did not close the school, “the government turned a blind eye, Gore argues, because they were unable to comprehend the degree of coexistence we had fostered through learning from something they considered trivial. Today – Gore adds – the project is still very necessary because South Africa has to face enormous challenges such as poverty, AIDS and criminal violence. Young people come with many difficulties and challenges. Magic makes them socialise in a different way. We not only teach them how to do tricks, but we give them the opportunity to perform with the support of social educators. We also provide them with their basic diet and training. We try to help so that they may become the protagonists of the future of our country”.

Learners from Kleinberg Primary School graduated from the College of Magic school. (Photo: José Luis Silván Sen)

For Gore, magic is a combination of what “leads us to wonder about things” with the surprise of the unknown, which is not easy to understand because it is outside the parameters we are used to. “The magician is capable of generating illusion, of bringing surprise into people’s lives. Magic is a tool for young people and also a skill that is easy to ‘carry’ and share in one’s community. It is also based on a universal language, which is why it also becomes the hope we need in South Africa”.He continues: “When people think of magic, they think it’s something small, silly, but I’ve found it to be a powerful tool in young people’s lives. There is a transformation in our graduates, whether they live by magic or participate in television broadcasts or theatre. We have many personal success stories”.Through the “Magic in the Community” program, they select boys and girls in the suburbs or in rural areas to see if they are interested in magic. Students from poor families are helped. In fact, says Gore “we want to help those who live in the poorest areas of the city. While not wearing a uniform, they are asked to dress as elegantly as possible. To do this, they provide them with costumes that make them feel different, artists, ‘capable of doing magic’”.

(Photo: The College of Magic)

Magician Bawuti points out that “magic is everything, it’s a weapon to escape the bad things in life, something that allows you to grow as a person. Putting a smile on someone’s face is very rewarding and you help other children by showing them that they can do other things besides playing football or video games and that there is something called magic that empowers them and can change their lives forever just as it happened to us”.
After the show in the school theatre, we asked him how he felt, and he assured us that the tricks have become his own therapy: “I’m fine, the magic heals me. When you get the chance to go on stage, everything changes. I feel like I am floating on air after every show in which I perform thinking, perhaps, that what they saw was important to some of them”, concludes Bawuti, who discovered College of Magic while living with his family in the suburb of Kayelitza. Six years later he was travelling to Las Vegas (USA) and Austria to attend shows.The magician Rala started at 17 – the maximum age they can enter, the minimum is 10 – and now she is one of the volunteer graduates who support the training. “Magic has positive values; it teaches you many things. When I started learning to do magic and act, I was able to overcome the shyness that kept me from being myself. By entertaining other people and bringing joy to other children, I end up forgetting my problems”.

(Photo: The College of Magic)

“What would life be like without magic?”, we ask those who accompany us on the visit. The answer is unanimous: “Very boring.” Of course, they also mention the sacrifice of training an average of seven hours a day to advance and be able to appear in contests or auditions. “I like to mix magic with theatre. What I enjoy the most is tricks with boxes where people disappear or ‘break’ them. You have to be quick and you know you did well because of the astonished face that the audience can’t suppress,” Rala adds.
Khanya, on the other hand, poses as a professional conjurer. “Magic for me is making the impossible possible. For example, to be successful in life, you have to break those established concepts and achieve the impossible through practice, until you achieve it”, he explains, noting that magic is used to generate self-confidence, to build peace and, above all, to establish a single channel of communication with people. (Sinethemba Bawuti with a group of students visiting the College of Music. Photo: José Luis Silván Sen)

Carla Fibla García-Sala

Rwanda. Mending Broken Hearts.

Saturday, 1 April 2023 8:00

This April, Rwanda commemorates the 29th anniversary of the genocide. The bitter fruit of the ethnic division between Hutu, Tutsi and Twa has distant roots. Father Marcel Uwineza, a Rwandan Jesuit reflects on those tragic events and the progress made towards reconciliation and peace.

The genocide (April-July 1994) was made possible following a process of mutual dehumanization; then it was the Tutsi who paid the highest price (some say 800,000 dead, another 500,000), but the Hutu, by the tens of thousands, also suffered the same fate.
The murders took place in public but also in religious spaces: schools, administrative buildings, social centres, churches and places of worship, etc. Structures that should have been for defence and comfort were transformed into scenes of massacres.
In recent years Rwanda – even if relations with the DR Congo and Uganda remain problematic – has made internationally recognized economic progress.The government has pushed for the creation of a non-low-income economy based only on agriculture but also on entrepreneurship and services. The fight against infant mortality and malaria has achieved considerable success with the increase of dispensaries, clinics and the use of anti-mosquito nets.

Kigali is the capital and largest city of Rwanda. Photo: 123rf

In many ways, however, it seems easier to build new infrastructure than to rebuild people’s hearts. For true human and inner growth, the young people of Rwanda need someone to help them read the country’s history. Education has been made accessible to many, regardless of ethnicity. However, it is a great challenge to find work and put what you have learned to good use. The unemployment rate is still too high but, while the need to grow further remains, it must be recognized that the country has made considerable strides in improving living conditions.
Looking back on the tragic events of 1994 and the following years, the memory recalls, among other things, the schoolchildren of Nyange High School, killed by the Interahamwe militia in March 1997, when their leaders refused to divide them along ethnic lines. The sacrifice made by these students continues to inspire many.
Computer and technology education expanded after thousands of miles of fibre-optic cable were laid across the country boosting the use of the internet. Finally moving from a single national university in 1994 to over ten private universities in 2022 has certainly contributed to changing the mentality of Rwanda.

The Gacaca courts have helped in the process of reconciliation.

Women have also achieved prestigious goals: today they represent over 60% of the national parliament, a higher percentage than in all other African countries. Women have been at the centre of reconciliation efforts in traditional Gacaca courts, managing to help people confess to what happened in the genocide. Thanks to them, I myself learned the circumstances of the tragic loss of my brothers and sisters. Though imperfect, the Gacaca courts have helped in the process of reconciliation, while also reducing the huge number of people languishing in prison.
As a Jesuit priest, today I am serene because I have understood how my wound connects me deeply to God, allowing me to see his grace. And I manage to help others who are still suffering the consequences of the serious events that occurred, to seek reconciliation and peace.

South Korea. A Change of Pace.

Saturday, 1 April 2023 8:00

An outgoing church that experiences the presence of the Holy Spirit. The synodal journey of the ecclesial community. The challenge of young people. The desire for reconciliation with North Korea.

It is perhaps the metropolis of Asia on which the spotlight has focused most in recent years. From the rhythms of K-pop to the success of the Seoul TV series that broke into homes around the world. Including the contradictions of this metropolis of 10 million inhabitants, which the death of 158 young people in the Halloween crowd last October was a symbol. Also for the Church, South Korea has long been a significant place: for years it was the Catholic community of records, the one that was growing at a rate unimaginable in other areas of the world.

The Saenamteo Martyrs’ Shrine. CC BY-SA 2.0/ Craig Rohn

And even today when its faithful have settled at around 11.3% of the population, the Korean Church remains a vital reality, which gives the rest of Asia missionaries, and precious support. Yet, even in Seoul, the Christian presence feels the need for a change of pace. Above all, Monsignor Peter Chung Soon-taick, Archbishop of Seoul since December 2021, is convinced of this. “As Pope Francis says, we must be an outgoing church. We cannot wait for people in our churches. We must get close and accompany them”. Peter Chung Soon-taick was born in Daegu in 1961. He studied engineering before entering religious life in the Discalced Carmelite order. A priest since 1992 and a biblical scholar, he was a member of the general curia of his order before being appointed auxiliary bishop of Seoul at the age of 52 alongside Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-Jung.

A strong Catholic presence
Speaking of the priorities of the church in Seoul he says: “First of all, we must take care of the spiritual well-being of our Christian communities. During this pandemic when we have relied on our faith and spirituality as never before, we must continue to offer everyone the opportunity to take time to examine our experience of ‘living in the Spirit’. I firmly believe that spirituality should be the heart of the Church. Through these efforts to deepen our relationship with God, we will be able to explore together how the Church can play a vital role in contemporary society. Secondly, as the Pope wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation ‘Christus Vivit’, to welcome and walk with young people who are protagonists of the future, especially those who are exhausted and who struggle with so many issues. Thirdly, I hope and strive to make the Seoul Archdiocese renewed and transformed through this synodal process. The day following my appointment as Archbishop, I asked the faithful to define a Church that lives the Synod in the presence of the Holy Spirit and to journey together. In the synodal journey of the ecclesial community, I want to commit myself to making the Church the salt of the earth, the light of the world, listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit and sharing her love with others in communion with God”.

The Archdiocese of Seoul has 232 parishes, with 1.5 million Catholics, about 15% of the total population.

The Catholic Church has a strong presence in Korean society. Out of a population of about 10 million inhabitants, the archdiocese of Seoul has 232 parishes, with 1.5 million Catholics, about 15% of the total population. There are 945 priests and 186 seminarians. Within 32 male religious institutes active and present in the area, there are 500 members, while for the religious women, about 2,100 nuns work in 75 female congregations. In 2019 we baptized around 17,000 children and adults. The Church is strongly committed to social works that witness our faith in Christ: with 34 kindergartens, 12 middle and high schools and 2 universities. As well as the service that is also carried out in hospitals and in ten social centres that promote works of charity for the marginalized, the poor and the excluded, there are five cultural centres and the Church has a committed presence in the field of mass media.

On Friday, February 3, the Archdiocese of Seoul ordained 24 new priests and 20 new deacons.

Referring to the main challenge facing the Church, the archbishop of Seoul pointed out: “Today, South Korea is certainly a materialistic society with an extremely performance-oriented culture which suffers from a lack of ethics, standards, and respect for human dignity. The 70-year-long division between North and South Korea has caused political conflicts and turned them into enemies. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic has further amplified social discrimination and inequality, while spiritual and evangelistic activities have been greatly reduced within the Church. Last but not least, we must recognize and address the serious problem that all dioceses around the world have in common; lapsed Catholics make up the second-largest religious body while young people leave the Church as young adults. Therefore, a priority has been identified for young people, to be recipients of special programs of evangelization and youth ministry which the religious are called to carry out”.

Uniting the youth around a project
On the day of his inauguration as archbishop of Seoul, he wanted to be accompanied by a group of young people. Archbishop Peter Chung Soon-taick says: “We need a turning point for our youth ministry. This is why we want to bring World Youth Day to Seoul in 2027. We are presenting our candidacy to be the diocese that will host the world gathering with the Pope in the edition following this year’s event in Lisbon. The other bishops of Korea have also given their support. Nothing is decided yet, but we are preparing the dossier
to be sent to the Holy See”.

“We want to bring World Youth Day to Seoul in 2027”.

Hosting a WYD in Seoul would be “an event that would not begin and end in the space of a couple of days: it is a journey. Its preparation could become an excellent opportunity to bring young people together around a project, making them protagonists. And even once it is finished, it would be nice to share what we have experienced with everyone: it would become a missionary opportunity to make the values of the Gospel known in our society”.

North Korea. Opening doors
As Archbishop of Seoul, Msgr. Peter Chung Soon-taick is also the Apostolic Administrator of Pyongyang, where the Catholic Church has been eliminated since the rise of the communist regime. Looking at the current situation, he says with regret: “Since the Singapore summit between then US President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un failed three years ago, Pyongyang has severed relations with all countries and especially with South Korea. Previously there had been some contact: we too as a Church were able to send aid.”

“ We must take care of the spiritual well-being of our Christian communities”.

“Now everything is blocked; we have no access”. As the apostolic administrator of Pyongyang reminds me, “I can do practically nothing. But if any possibility arises, I will do my best to reopen the doors. I also hope to be able to help Pope Francis visit North Korea. He has repeated many times that he would like to go there. And even Pyongyang has said that they would welcome it. They are two parties that say the same thing: they just have to meet”. The war in Ukraine has recently seen heightened tensions and missile tests in Pyongyang. “We have to think creatively – says the Archbishop of Seoul – to bring North Korea back to open its doors. Some bishops in South Korea have serious doubts about the sanctions that the United States and other countries have imposed on Pyongyang for many years. They made people’s lives more difficult, without preventing the government from continuing to arm itself. Another way has to be found. If we stopped looking at them as enemies what would happen? Wouldn’t they change too”?
Archbishop Peter Chung Soon-taick concludes: “The war has never ended; only a ceasefire has been in force for seventy years. But we desperately need reconciliation. We are the same people, the same nation, we have the same history. As Archdiocese of Seoul, we keep this question alive: we have a special committee for peace and reconciliation which has the task of exploring every way to connect, communicate with, and help the North”. (Open Photo. The Han River at sunrise. CC BY-SA 4.0/Brit – Monsignor Peter Chung Soon-taick, Archbishop of Seoul)

Giorgio Bernardelli/MM

Latin America. Lithium Is a Key Resource for the Future.

Saturday, 1 April 2023 8:00

Lithium is an increasingly important resource for clean energy systems of the future. Latin America, very rich in this material, however, has to deal with the meager earnings that derive from its extraction and the environmental impact that this entails.

Among the raw materials that have had a significant increase in price in recent times, there is certainly also lithium, which recently reached its all-time high with a value almost ten times higher than two years ago. This sudden price increase was dictated by the high demand due to the market shift towards electric vehicles, given that lithium carbonate is a key component of many batteries, to which is added a structural supply deficit which has meant that countries and automakers try to secure as much of this type of resource as possible. From 2035, all new cars and light-duty vehicles sold in the EU will have to produce no CO2 emissions.

The Cauchari Olaroz project in northern Argentina, a new frontier for lithium extraction in South America (Photo: Government of Jujuy)

This apparently should be good news for South America, given that the salt flats of the so-called ‘Lithium Triangle’ – made up of Argentina, Chile and Bolivia – contain about half of the world’s known lithium. In fact, most of the lithium industry’s profits come from the long value chain that creates lithium batteries. Countries that only mine and export lithium have very limited earning potential.
The top 10 manufacturers of batteries for electric vehicles, for example, by market share, are all based in Asian countries, concentrated in China, Japan and South Korea, and they are those who gain most from this ‘green revolution’ of the market.
The production of lithium inevitably also entails important environmental and social costs. Most of Latin America’s production comes from fragile ecosystems, where lithium extraction from salt flats is associated with concerns about contaminating local watersheds with harmful chemicals. These basins are home to biodiversity that depends on the delicate balance between fresh and brackish water. Furthermore, many of these areas are inhabited by indigenous communities who depend on water for their main economic activities.

Brine evaporation ponds of SQM, the second-largest lithium company in Chile (Photo: SQM).

In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, for example, lithium mining could cause a water sustainability crisis in a country that has already had water shortages for some time. The extraction takes place through a process that involves procedures lasting up to 18 months, in which the quantity of water required is particularly high: about 2.2 million litres of water are needed to produce a ton of lithium. With the impact of climate change around the world, the importance of lithium as a strategic mineral will increase exponentially, becoming an essential component for what will be the clean energy systems of the future. The paradox is that while on the one hand, lithium will be fundamental in the transition to alternative energies, on the other, its particular extraction process used in the Lithium Triangle presents many environmental problems.
The European Union and Chile have announced the end of their negotiations to update the association agreement in force since 2002, demonstrating the Union’s strategic interest in diversifying its economic relations and guaranteeing access to those materials useful for the energy transition process, including lithium.

The Uyuni Salt Flat. Bolivia is the holder of the world’s largest known lithium reserves. CC BY-SA 4.0/ Dan Lundberg

This deal can reduce Europe’s dependence on China in the lithium import sector. Since lithium supply chains will be crucial to the future of technology and clean energy, lithium will play a key role in the competition between the United States – and the West in general – with their competitors, mainly China. It is no coincidence that Beijing is currently the world leader in the production of electric vehicles. In large part, this is because it has acquired 55% of the supplies of the chemical lithium needed for electric vehicle batteries, largely due to its early investments in Australia’s largest mining production operations. At the end of January 2023, the Bolivian government of Luis Arce signed a $1 billion deal with the Chinese companies CATL, BRUNP and CMOC (CBC) and the Bolivian state company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB), to explore the deposits of lithium in the South American nation. The CBCs are Chinese firms with previous involvement in lithium mining, battery recycling, and metal mining, respectively. Between 2018 and 2020, China invested about $16 billion in mining projects in the Lithium Triangle and is likely to continue to invest in the region in the coming years. (Open Photo: Bolivas Salar de Uyuni. 123rf.com)

Matteo Barbanera/CgP

Music. Tems, the Rebel.

Saturday, 1 April 2023 8:00

Before long, Temilade Openiyi known professionally as Tems quickly made her way into the R&B scene. Until international recognition last February. A journey that began with the song Mr Rebel.

Last February, the young Nigerian singer Tems won a Grammy (the Oscars of music) for the ‘Best Melodic Rap Performance’ category, awarded to her for her participation in the song Wait For You by Future, a thirty-nine-year-old African-American rapper, among the most important of his generation. Tems is the first Nigerian to obtain the prestigious award, taking into account that the singer Sade Adu or simply Sade (four Grammys in her career), is Nigerian by birth but raised in England and of British nationality.
The Grammy is just the latest in a series of successes that Tems has collected in very few years. Born in 1995 in Lagos to a Nigerian mother and a British Nigerian father, Tems – born Temilade Openiyi – arrived in Great Britain with her parents shortly after her birth, and returned to Nigeria at the age of five, following their divorce. She grew up with her mother in Ilupeju, then Lekki and Ajah.

Photo: Zenith Bank Plc

In her childhood her mother allowed her to listen only to Christian music. At school, a teacher, realizing her singing skills, encouraged her to learn to play the piano. As a teenager Tems began listening to R&B (which combines elements of rhythm and blues, hip hop, pop, soul and funk) and hip hop, but very early on she struggled to avoid imitating her favourite artists and sought her own identity; an introverted girl, she wrote songs and sang at home, sometimes with her brother who accompanied her on the guitar.
Obeying her mother, she half-heartedly studied economics in South Africa. She returned to Lagos and worked in digital marketing, but in 2017 she resigned to devote herself to music, starting from scratch.
In 2018 she wrote a song, Mr Rebel, and not being able to afford a good producer she followed the instructions found on YouTube on how to produce a song and did it herself and then recorded it in a friend’s studio. Another friend helped her work out how to get onto the platforms, and in July 2018 she released Mr Rebel just as a song, with no video. She then announced the single on social media. The rest came by itself: a radio station contacted her, and she immediately found the support of many fans who were struck by her deep voice, the sound and rhythm of the song, the non-trivial, evocative text and the particular taste shown by Tems.

Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0/ NdaniTV

There followed more hit songs and a slew of collaborations at the highest level: with the Nigerian star Wizkid; with a prominent rapper like the Canadian Drake; with Future, the Grammy-winning collaboration; with global superstar Beyoncé, as a guest (together with Grace Jones) on a song of the album Renaissance (i.e., the most important pop album of 2022); with another superstar, Rihanna, as co-writer of Lift Me Up, a song in tribute to the late actor Chadwick Boseman, included in the album/soundtrack Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In less than five years she became an international R&B star. Tems is in many ways an emblematic figure of a Nigerian music scene that has changed enormously from the past. The difference between the epic and romantic universe of Fela Kuti and the complex and abundantly materialistic, but also vital and passionate, Nigerian musical landscape of today lies in one more letter ‘s’.
The most internationally known style of Nigerian music is certainly Afrobeat, created more or less half a century ago by Fela Kuti and drummer Tony Allen. In the world today, there is an infinite number of groups that decline Afrobeat in their own way, which moreover in its homeland it is not extinct at all, and is carried forward for example by the sons of Fela but not only. But what matters today in Nigeria is above all Afrobeats: a term that does not indicate a precisely defined genre, but rather a large area of popular music from West Africa that has been influenced by hip hop and electronic dance music since the 1990s and by R&B. A phenomenon therefore not exclusively Nigerian, but in which Nigeria has a leading role. To avoid confusion with Afrobeat and its implications, there is no shortage of artists who are protagonists of Afrobeats but who prefer terms such as afro-pop or Afrofusion.

Photo: Tem/website

The new technologies diligently used by Tems for her debut are fundamental to the Afrobeats scene on several levels. The most sensational aspect is the relationship in Nigeria between music and online scams. The so-called ‘yahoo boys’, the boys who live off scams, are often the financiers of young people trying to emerge in the jungle of Afrobeats, and for years a quantity of passages accounts for the gigantic economic-social phenomenon of the ‘yahoo boys’.
Nigeria has several megastars, such as Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido, who also hold large concerts in European and overseas metropolises. But apart from the Nigerian and African and diaspora audiences in general, Nigerian artists in the Afrobeats field are attracting interest at an international level not from fans of ‘African music’, as in Fela Kuti’s time, but from listeners who follow tout court hip hop, R&B, dance electronics and the most up-to-date trends, regardless of the continents of origin. The case of Tems shows how African music has changed in recent decades to present itself on the global stage, and how African artists are increasingly entering mass consumption and increasingly integrated musical worlds. And in all this, Nigerian music is leading the way. (Photo: Zenith Bank Plc)
Marcello Lorrai

Israeli spooks sought to influence 30 elections around the world, mostly in Africa.

Saturday, 1 April 2023 8:00

By mid-February of this year, an investigation team of journalists from 30 outlets, including the London Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde and the Israeli daily Haaretz, under the supervision of the French-based non-profit Forbidden Stories revealed that an Israeli firm tried to influence more than 30 elections around the world – with the two-thirds in Africa – by hacking, sabotage
and disinformation inter alia.

The company, with no legal existence, was dubbed ‘Team Jorge’ by journalists who posed as potential clients. They chose this nickname after the pseudonym of its boss, 51 years old Tal Hanan. The company, who offers a range of ‘black ops’ to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies. Its offices are located in Modi’in, in an industrial area between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Hanan is also CEO of Demoman, an Israeli private security company, founded in 1999 whose skills are political and corporate intelligence and disinformation with offices in the US, Switzerland, Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Ukraine.
Tal Hanan served in as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the Israeli Army special forces (IDF). He has also been the IDF’s liaison officer to the US Sixth Fleet Special Forces Command.

“Jorge,” whose real name is Tal Hanan. Photo from undercover recording.

According to its website, Demoman offers consulting services for government agencies around the globe, in North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia. Demoman’s motto is ‘the best defense is offense’.
Its assistance also involves countering complex threats, using sophisticated intelligence and covert operational services. Its management team includes former senior security, intelligence, military and law enforcement officers from Israel, United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada, and Spain. However, write the investigative journalists, Tal Hanan, cannot use directly Demoman’s hacking skills because the company is registered with the Israeli Defence Ministry and because the activity he performs through Team Jorge, is illegal.
Another important figure of Team Jorge is 63 year old Mashy Meidan aka Max, specialized in psychological warfare and influence operations. He is the former boss of an Israeli Security company in Panama. Beforehand, he worked with Shin Bet home intelligence service as another Team Jorge’s member called Shuki Friedman.
Eventually, there is Hanan’s 55 year old brother, Zohar, a specialist in Intelligence and hacking-for-hire, influence operations and former intelligence officer and polygraph expert
Clients include multinational firms in Europe or African governments who wish to influence an election. In order to do that, one of the tools used by Team Jorge is a platform called AIMS for ‘Advanced Impact Media Solutions’ used to create fake profiles on Instagram, Twitter, Bitcoin, Amazon, YouTube or Facebook.

Team Jorge’s office in Modi’in, Israel. Photo: ZDF

According to the investigators, by 2023, it had set up 40,000 fake profiles to manipulate the social media and created an army of cyborgs or avatars who post comments or intervene in debates. Team Jorge reportedly began such job in 2017, as a subcontractor of the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica which was accused to have spread fake news on Donald Trump’s adversaries.
According to the consortium of journalists, Team Jorge hacked the mailboxes of several African leaders and when asked by a potential client if it could postpone of cancel the result of elections it said it would charge the client 6 million Euros for the job. Reportedly, Tal Hanan is using the most sophisticated tools on the market, namely for the personal data collection and the location of users, enabling thus hackers to access data from mobile phones. However, the investigators were unable to find a list of Team Jorge’s clients. Last but not least, Team Jorge has developed mediatic intelligence. That means detecting that for instance a media is writing a story on a client, meet the journalist who is investigating the story and warn the client about a looming crisis. Then, set up a retaliation, either by creating a distraction from the topic or by undermining the credibility of the information or of its author.

Hanan’s main success: Macky Sall’s reelection in Senegal in 2019
In Africa, Team Jorge’s main success was the reelection of President Macky Sall in Senegal, in 2019.

President of Senegal, Macky Sall. (Photo President Office)

According to Le Monde, Hanan and his team helped him to secure a victory, while The Guardian claims that the team spread disinformation through digital robots. The former Israeli intelligence officer told proudly his visitors that he was hired by Macky Sall to influence the election through the dissemination of fake news, the hacking of political rivals, the creation of fake accounts and the manipulation of media.
It is difficult to estimate precisely Team Jorge’s real influence in the campaign. Yet, Macky Sall was reelected for a five-year mandate with 52.26 percent of the votes.

“The Great Hack” in Nigeria
Previously, Team Jorge was subcontracted by Cambridge Analytica to influence the presidential election in 2015 and help President Goodluck Jonathan to be reelected and win against Muhammadu Buhari. A few weeks before the ballot, Hanan travelled to Nigeria and exchanged e-mails to that effect with Cambridge Analytica’s expert Brittany Kaiser, which were published in a Netflix documentary titled “The Great Hack”.
Team Jorge’s task consisted in the search for intelligence which could be used against Buhari, say the authors of the investigation.
According to The Guardian, Buhari’s e-mails were hacked during the campaign. The Forbidden Stories investigation also reveals that Hanan told its reporters that the cell phones of Buhari’s party leaders stopped working on Election Day.

Nigeria president, Muhammadu Buhari received former president, Goodlack Jonathan (Photo: Premium Times)

A partial victory was achieved by Team Jorge which managed after the publication of a report on women who had not been able to cast their votes on time to obtain a six weeks postponement of the ballot. Hanan does not disclose the name of its clients but reporters note that during the campaign, Cambridge Analytica was working with Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign team. Former Cambridge Analytica employees also claimed that “Israeli hackers” gave them medical and financial documents relating to Buhari. But all in vain, since Goodluck Jonathan was severely defeated.

Hacking Kenyan presidential candidate’s aides
More recently, Team Jorge was involved in the August 2022 presidential election in Kenya. Several aides to the candidate William Ruto who eventually won the ballot were hacked by Team Jorge. One of them, the investigation revealed, was Farouk Kibet – the right-hand man of the now Kenyan President William Ruto.

William Ruto, president of Kenya. (Photo President Office)

Jorge and his staff also showed to undercover journalists hacked email and Telegram accounts of Davis Chirchir, at the time head of Ruto’s campaign and presently Minister of Energy, of former MP James Omingo Magara and of the election campaign adviser Dennis Itumbi.
However, the destabilization attempt failed since eventually Ruto won the election by a narrow margin against his rival, Raila Odinga (50.49% against 48.45%). Yet, the material hacked by Team Jorge was used in the delegitimization campaign that followed the announcement of the results and led to violence and a legal battle contesting the outcome. Raila Odinga’s campaign was indeed partly based on allegations that named two individuals whose accounts had been hacked.

Launching an anti-Polisario campaign on behalf of Morocco
Team Jorge does not only try to influence elections but carries out also operations. Hanan’s cyborgs army conducted a campaign in 2022 with the hashtag #PolisarioCrime, claiming that the movement for the liberation of Western Sahara (the Polisario Front) has ties to Hezbollah and Iran. Team Jorge encouraged the broadcast by the French news channel BFM-TV of a documentary voicing the Kingdom of Morocco’s propaganda over Western Sahara. According to the Paris daily Libération, BFM-TV’s anchorman Rachid M’Barki who is a French-Moroccan binational broadcasted this turnkey footage over an Economic Forum which took place at Dakhla, the capital of the portion of Western Saharan which is not considered as Moroccan territory by the international community. M’Barki who referred nevertheless to the “recognition by Spain of the Moroccan Sahara”, was sacked in February after being exposed by the Forbidden Stories investigation.

In another episode of this saga, undercover reporters were shown by Hanan how to generate a smear campaign against the Chadian government. In a few seconds, Hanan managed to produce ten negative tweets, dubbing the “incompetence and nepotism” of the Chadian President, Idriss Deby Junior. Since a Team Jorge operator can manage simultaneously up to 300 fake profiles, in two hour time, a country can be flooded with this kind of narrative.
Tal Hanan also hacked the Gmail account of the Mozambican Agriculture Minister Celso Ismael Correia. According to Zohar Hanan, there are only three no-go areas for Team Jorge: Israel’s territory because “we don’t shit where we sleep”, accordingly. The others are American domestic politics and “Mr Putin”.

François Misser

Iraq. Maryam al-Adhra Monastery. An Open Space.

Saturday, 1 April 2023 8:00

A visit to Maryam al-Adhra monastery; a place of dialogue and peace in Iraqi Kurdistan.

It can only be seen at the last moment and only if you are looking for it: in the heart of Sulaymaniyya, among narrow streets and pedestrian alleys, small shops and tea rooms, finally a large building appears around a corner, not very dissimilar from those all around, and a small bell tower. It is precisely the latter that indicates that we have arrived. Unlike most of the monasteries that scale mountains, that of Deir Maryam al-Adhra (Virgin Mary) must literally be found in the oldest part of the second largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan: two million inhabitants, almost all Muslims and a small group of Christians
of various denominations.

Father Jens in the chapel. The monastery of Maryam al-Adhra was founded 11 years ago from what remained of an abandoned parish.

The monastery of Maryam al-Adhra was founded 11 years ago from what remained of an abandoned parish. With a double root: the one that binds it to this territory and to the history of an ancient Christianity of which, however, few traces remain; and the one that connects it to the experience of the al-Khalil community and the Mar Musa monastery in Syria founded by Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, the Italian Jesuit kidnapped on July 29, 2013, in Raqqa.
Father Jens and Sister Friederike are today the religious personnel who carry on this experience of dialogue and peace. He had left overland for Japan. Once he arrived in Syria, they took him to the monastery of Mar Musa. “I remember it as if it were yesterday – he says – as I was leaving, Father Paolo greeted me saying: ‘I’m not saying goodbye, because tomorrow you will return’. I found it a bit strange. At that time, I was not even baptized and was attracted by the Japanese world. Then I actually went back several times to Mar Musa and for longer and longer periods, until I spent a whole year there as a volunteer. At that time everything seemed too good to me: the place, the meetings, the possibility of speaking different languages every day with different people. I was experiencing a sort of cultural hyperventilation. This is why I decided that I had to go back to Switzerland to distance myself a bit from that experience that so excited me and to be able to reflect more ‘coldly’. In the end, I decided to ask to be part of the community”.

Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, the Italian Jesuit kidnapped on July 29, 2013, in Raqqa in Syria.

In 1996, Jens was baptized and in 2000 he entered the community. It was he who initiated the experience of Deir Maryam al-Adhra in Sulaymaniyya, at the end of 2011 and at the invitation of Monsignor Louis Sako, then Archbishop of Kirkuk and now Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, who had asked Father Paul to also initiate there a Christian presence in dialogue with Islam in the style of Mar Musa.
Sister Friederike, on the other hand, arrived here in 2013. She, too, embarked on a journey that started from afar, in every sense. A German, she worked in the theatre and in mime and was particularly fascinated by Sufi spirituality: “In my prayers, I saw a monastery in the desert, I felt it was calling me… I knew about Tibhirine’s experience and I understood that it was just that kind of spirituality that I was looking for. I had a very strong image. And when I came across Mar Musa, I understood that this was where I belonged”.
Friederike went there for the first time in 2008 and stayed for five weeks. “Father Paolo – she recalls – invited me to share some moments of the community. Then I went to the monastery of Mar Elian, in the city of Qaryatayn, and I felt that this was just the kind of spirituality I was looking for”. From there, Friederike embarked on the entire journey that would lead her to becoming a nun in the al-Khalil monastic community, which today has eight men and women religious with perpetual vows, a novice and a couple of postulants divided into four monasteries: Mar Musa and Mar Elian in Syria, Maryam al-Adhra in Iraqi Kurdistan, and San Salvatore a Cori, in the province of Latina in Italy.

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri and Cardinal Mario Zenari visiting Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi. The first on the left Sister Friederike.

“In 2012 –Sister Friederike continues – the presence in Syria had become too dangerous due to the advance of the Islamic State. So, we decided to come here to Sulaymaniyya”.
The following years are strewn with tragedies: in 2013 Father Paolo was kidnapped and he has not been heard of since; in 2015 also Father Jacques Mourad, rector of the Mar Elian monastery, was kidnapped for five months by jihadist militiamen, first alone then with 150 other Christians from the city of Qaryatayn; in 2016, even the monastery, which houses the relics of Saint Elias (miraculously saved), was attacked and partially destroyed. Last February, Father Mourad was elected the new Syro-Catholic archbishop of Homs, the ancient local episcopal see.
In all this long period of violence and suffering, only the Sulaymaniyya monastery has remained a place of relative peace even though it has not escaped the consequences of the war; in fact, millions of refugees fleeing both from southern Iraq and from Syria have poured into all of Iraqi Kurdistan. And so, the monastery of Deir Maryam al-Adhra also becomes a base and a refuge for both the non-Syrian monks of the community and for refugees.

Christians are a very small minority of about 2,300 people out of a population of 2 million inhabitants.

From 2014 to 2017, in fact, the community worked very hard to offer hospitality and support to about 50 Christian families (250 people in all) fleeing the Nineveh plain, invaded by Isis. “We hosted them for three years in the monastery, in three houses and in some prefabricated buildings. Today, a third of them have managed to flee abroad, many have returned home, while some have remained mainly in the suburbs of Erbil”, Father Jens explains. “Even today – adds Sister Friederike – we still try to assist in various ways the refugees and displaced persons of various origins who are found in the Sulaymaniyya area. Not only that though. The monastery is currently, above all, an open space for dialogue with local society, especially with young people and adults who attend the library and the many courses we organize: languages, journalism, photography, theatre, professional training, but also workshops and conferences in particular on themes of dialogue,
peace and coexistence”.

“Christians – Father Jens explains – are a very small minority of about 2,300 people out of a population of 2 million inhabitants. They are basically divided into three groups. The first is made up of 500-600 people who have lived here for three generations, speak Kurdish and dress like Kurds; the majority are Chaldeans, but there are also some Assyrians and two Armenian families. A second group is made up of 400-500 people who fled Iraq after the 2003 violence; these are mainly Chaldeans and Syro-Catholics. Finally, the third group is made up of Christians who fled ISIS attacks in 2014; they number about 400 and some have found work here and do not think of returning to their homelands because they have lost everything. Then there are several foreigners who are Christians, but not very practising: about twenty participate in the festive Mass celebrated in English”.
In the city there is also a Chaldean parish, a Coptic church and four groups of evangelical Protestants; in the neighbourhood of the monastery there were also Jews and still today there are some women of Jewish origin who married Muslim men.

The heart of Sulaymaniyya is, in a small way, the mirror of a country where a great variety of languages are spoken (Kurdish, Arabic, Neo-Aramaic, Turcoman, etc.) and where there are various ethnic-religious components: Sunni Muslims and Shiites in their various streams and with a deep-rooted Sufi tradition; Christians belonging to the Chaldean, Syro-Catholic, Syro-Orthodox and Protestant Churches; but also, Zoroastrians, Yazidis, Manichaeans, Kakai. In short, as often happens in the Middle East, even in this corner of Iraqi Kurdistan, ancient and complex pieces of history are condensed, showing many cracks and great efforts, but also a very special charm.Even the church of the monastery tells a troubled story. Inspired by a similar building in Sanandaj, in Iranian Kurdistan, it was built by Christians from Iran in 1862; it is one of the oldest buildings in Sulaymaniyya.
Father Jens is well aware of the difficulties but looks forward with confidence. And he shows us two ‘details’ which, as always, mean a lot: a traditional cloth on the altar made by a woman who wove a similar one for the Pope on his visit to Iraq in March 2021; and a small image of Our Lady in a niche in the courtyard. After all, the whole history of Christians of these lands – and also of this same monastery – is studded with many miracles great and small.

Anna Pozzi/MM

Photo Gallery – Jubilee 2025. Pilgrims of Hope

Advocacy

Baobab

Youth & Mission