The New York Times International - 29.07.2019

4 | MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

world

bilities substantiall y. The transformation strikes a strong chord in Hong Kong. The protests began over a proposed bill that would have al- lowed the city to extradite criminal sus- pects to mainland China, where the police and courts ultimately answer to the Communist Party. The authorities in Hong Kong have outlined strict privacy controls for the use of facial recognition and the collection of other biometric data, although the extent of their efforts is unclear. They also appear to be using other tech- nological methods for tracking protesters. Last month, a 22-year old man was arrested for being the administra- tor of a Telegram group. Protesters are responding. On July 21, as another demonstration turned into a violent confrontation with the police, some of those involved shined laser pointers at police cameras and used spray paint to block the lenses of sur- veillance cameras in front of the Chinese government’s liaison office. Riot officers carried cameras on poles just behind the front lines as they fired tear gas and rub- ber bullets. The protesters’ ire intensified after the police removed identification numbers from their uniforms, presumably to keep violent misconduct from being reported to city leaders. To some protesters, the move suggested that the police were taking a cue from the mainland, where officers lack accountability and often do not identify themselves. “Why do the police get away while we’re getting attacked?” said Billy Tsui, a hairdresser. “If they do something wrong, they should face legal conse- quences.” He said that he favored peace

over violence but that he also had some sympathy for the Telegram group that was exposing officers as a check on police misconduct. “The original intention is just to identify who are the policemen,” said Mr. Tsui, 21. “If they hide their numbers and don’t show their identity, this is the only way to know.” Hong Kong police representatives

have said personal information about officers and their friends and relatives has been posted online in an act known as doxxing. On July 3, the police said they had arrested eight people accused of, among other things, disclosing personal information without approval. A police spokesman said members of the police force had reported more than 800 inci- dents in which officers or their family

members had been harassed following the data releases. “Dadfindboy” — a play on the name of a Facebook group created with the stated purpose of helping mothers find their children but which ultimately became a way for pro-government groups to gather photos of protesters — is one forum for the doxxing of police officers. By turns facetious, juvenile, cruel and

profane in tone, the channel repeatedly reveals personal information and photos, some of them intimate, of the family members of police officers, sometimes with intimate social-media photos. The channel has featured calls for violence, often in cartoonish ways, although there is no proof that it has incit- ed any specific acts. One post instructed protesters on how to master using a slingshot. Another explained how to make a blow torch using aerosol deodor- ant. A recent poll queried the channel’s followers about how best to deal with the police. Options included prison, gas chamber, live burial, guillotine and ma- chine-gun execution. Live burial pre- vailed, with about one-third of the vote. The police grabbed Mr. Cheung 11 days after the Telegram channel was created, accusing him of administering it. They also accused him of posting a guide on how to assassinate police officers. Mr. Cheung denies the allegations, and a New York Times search could not find posts matching what the police de- scribed. Mr. Cheung, a skinny 29-year-old, was grabbed at a mall around noon on July 18, according to his account. Four plainclothes officers waited for him to unlock his phone and then jumped on him, trying to pry it out of his hands. After the officers tried to use his face to unlock the phone, they took him to a police station, where, he said, he was roughed up and interrogated. Later, officers went to his home and used a USB drive loaded with hacking software to break into his computers, according to his account of the incident. He said that he had been held for more than 10 hours and that he was not sure how the police had identified him.

The Hong Kong police confirmed the investigation, but they declined to com- ment further on it. The police may have been motivated by the facial-recognition tool, which Mr. Cheung said he had showed off in a Facebook video he posted last month. Making use of Google technology, Mr. Cheung, a college dropout who studied computer science, built an algorithm to identify police officers based on a small collection of photos that had been posted online. He said he did not contin- ue with the project for lack of time. Mr. Cheung said his detention had ce- mented his fears. He said the plainclothes officers who had arrested him had not identified themselves until they reached the police station. Later, an in- vestigator in a suit urged him to open his phone as a way of demonstrating his in- nocence “to the 42nd floor” — a phrase Mr. Cheung said seemed to refer to high- ranking police officials. He did not be- lieve that the police ultimately gained access to the phone, although they did break into his other devices. The police also did not initially allow him to make a call. Only when he said he planned to play Ping-Pong with his un- cle did they relent and let him. He said he contacted a friend instead, adding “I hate sports.” Mr. Cheung also said he believed he had been followed by plainclothes officers since his arrest. When he arrived an hour late to an interview with The Times, he said it was because he had been trying to lose somebody following him. “The cops are getting more and more aggressive,” he said. “I don’t think they have permission to unlock my iPhone or any device.”

Faces are weapons in Hong Kong protests

H ONG KONG, FROM PAGE 1

After clashes with riot police officers in Hong Kong, many protesters have worn masks to protect their identities.

LAM YIK FEI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Brazil needed to strengthen its environmental protection measures, not weaken them. Mr. Bolsonaro has dismissed the new data on deforestation, calling his own government’s figures “lies” — an as- sertion experts called baseless. During a gathering with international journal- ists last week, the president called the preoccupation with the Amazon a form of “environmental psychosis” and argued that the forest’s use should not con- cern outsiders. “The Amazon is ours, not yours,” he told a European journalist. The Bolsonaro government’s stance has drawn sharp criticism from Euro- pean leaders, injecting an irritant into a trade deal struck last month between the European Union and a bloc of four South American countries, including Brazil. During a recent visit, Germany’s minister of economic cooperation and development, Gerd Müller, called protecting the Amazon a global imperative, espe- cially given the rain forest’s vital role in absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, essential to the effort to slow global warming. When trees are cut, burned or bulldozed, carbon dioxide goes directly back into the atmosphere. Germany and Norway help finance a $1.3 billion Amazon conservation fund, but the Bolsonaro administration has questioned its effectiveness, raising the possibility that the effort could be shut down. “Without tropical rain forests, there’s no solving the climate” issue, Mr. Müller said during an event in São Paulo. During the campaign, Mr. Bolsonaro

promised to do away with the Ministry of the Environment altogether. He ultimately scrapped the plan under pres- sure from the nation’s agriculture sector, which feared the move would incite a boycott of Brazilian products. A few weeks before his inauguration, Brazil abruptly pulled out of its commit- ment to host a global summit on climate change. Then, once he took office, Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration cut the main environmental agency’s budget by 24 percent, part of a broader program of cost savings across the government.

He has denounced environmental fines as an “industry” that needs to be shut down. And his administration has said it plans to weaken the authority of environmental protection agents to burn vehicles and other equipment be- longing to loggers and miners in protected areas. Mr. Bolsonaro has brushed off international criticism of his positions, argu- ing that calls to preserve large parts of Brazil are part of a global plot to hamper his country’s development. This month, he accused European leaders of pushing for stronger conservation of the Ama- zon because they hope to develop it themselves in the future. “Brazil is like a virgin that every per- vert from the outside lusts for,” he said. Brazil previously tried to portray it- self as a leader in protecting the Amazon

and fighting global warming. Between 2004 and 2012, the country created new conservation areas, increased monitor- ing and took away government credits from rural producers who were caught razing protected areas. This approach brought deforestation to the lowest level since record-keeping began. Conservation has suffered setbacks before. As the economy plunged into a recession in 2014, the country became more reliant on the agricultural com- modities it produces — beef and soy, which are drivers of deforestation — and on the powerful rural lobby. Land clearing began to tick upward again. Mr. Bolsonaro has promised to do away with the remaining barriers to de- veloping protected lands. He has also spoken derisively about the environmental agency’s enforcement work, which he has experienced firsthand. On Jan. 25, 2012, environmental agents intercepted a small fishing boat in an ecological reserve in Rio de Janeiro State that Mr. Bolsonaro, then a federal lawmaker, was aboard. He argued with the agents for about an hour and ignored their demands that he leave, said José Augusto Morelli, the agent in charge of the team. Mr. Bolsonaro refused to identify him- self, Mr. Morelli said. But the agent took a photo of Mr. Bolsonaro, who was wear- ing a white Speedo-like bathing suit. Mr. Bolsonaro never paid the fine, which was rescinded shortly after he was sworn in as president in January. In late March, Mr. Morelli was demoted, a decision he sees as a form of retaliation for the 2012 fine. Mr. Bolsonaro’s refusal to pay the fine

is common. All but about 5 percent of environmental fines in Brazil are con- tested in court, a process that often drags on for several years. Now Mr. Bolsonaro’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, wants to create a mechanism that would give a government panel the discretion to lower or suspend environmental penalties, wor- rying former officials who say it would weaken enforcement even further. Mr. Salles, who did not respond to several requests for an interview, has ac- knowledged the shortcomings of the environmental enforcement agencies tasked with policing commercial activi- ty in protected areas. But he has argued that the system had been hollowed out by previous govern- ments. As for the environment, Mr. Salles has said that the government is giving pri- ority to urban problems, like improving waste management and sewage treat- ment systems, which he said were in a “shameful” state. Other senior officials in Mr. Bol- sonaro’s government have responded to the sharp rise in deforestation with a mix of denial and defensiveness. Taking a different approach, Mr. Bol- sonaro’s chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, took aim at what he called attempts from abroad to shape Brazil’s environmental policy. “We’re not naïve,” Mr. Lorenzoni said. “There’s a view out in the world, spon- sored by nongovernmental organiza- tions, that relativizes Brazil’s sovereignty over the Amazon.” But, he warned in a recent meeting with reporters: “Here’s a little message: ‘Don’t play around with us.’”

The Amazon rain forest in Para State, Brazil. Environmentalists fear staggering losses of one of the world’s most important resources.

MAURO PIMENTEL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Trees are falling faster

A MAZON, FROM PAGE 1

The government has pulled back on enforcement measures like fines and the seizure or destruction of illegal equipment.

The death last week of Tunisia’s first democratically elected president accel- erated the timetable for choosing his successor, placing new strain on a political system in which power is shared among several parties, many voters are disillusioned and leaders are con- fronting a struggling economy. But if the death on Thursday of Presi- dent Béji Caïd Essebsi, at age 92, shook up the only surviving democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring, the system so far has worked as planned. The usually divided Parliament made a swift, orderly transfer of power, voting with little drama or opposition to make its leader, Mohamed Ennaceur, the interim president. “Everyone was sad but at the same time proud to be Tunisian,” said Watfa Belaid, an adviser to Prime Minister Youssef Chahed. “I think we showed the entire world that the institutions which were born from our revolution are rock solid and that they work. We did this in a peaceful way.” But greater challenges lie ahead for a young democracy so fractious that the Constitutional Court remains vacant five years after it was established, because Parliament cannot agree on nam- ing its members. Mr. Ennaceur, 85, is limited by the Tunisian Constitution to 90 days as interim president, so the election authority moved the date of the presidential election to Sept. 15 from Nov. 17. The compressed campaign schedule may be all the more difficult to manage because the period for candidates to for- mally enter the race has not begun, and some possible contenders have not made their intentions clear. Legislative elections are also planned for October. “This could be really challenging because every political party has to review its entire strategy and campaign,” said Larbi Chouikha, a political scientist and author. “Many of them were aiming at legislative elections to have a good base and then support a presidential candi- date. This changes the whole dynamic.” In 2011, a mass campaign of protests, strikes and civil disobedience forced

Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the autocrat who had ruled Tunisia for 23 years, to flee the country. That spurred a series of attempts to remove or reform repres- sive rule in other Arab countries. Several movements were brutally quashed by leaders who held onto power, but the longtime rulers of Egypt and Libya were overthrown. In Libya, a long-running civil war followed; in Egypt, Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood took power in the country’s first free elections, but then were toppled and suppressed by the military. But in Tunisia a multiparty democracy took hold, and in 2014 Mr. Essebsi won the country’s first free presidential election. Before his death, political tensions ran high in Tunisia. The prime minister, Mr. Chahed, broke away from the president’s secular Nidaa Tounes party and was elected as leader of a new party, Tahya Tounes, creating a source of fric- tion that has been evident in Parliament. Hostilities reached a climax when the government proposed amendments to the electoral law that would bar candidates who have worked in business, charities or civil society groups. The amendments appeared tailored to block the presidential candidacies of a media mogul, Nabil Karoui, and the founder of a cultural foundation, Olfa Rambourg. Civil rights groups criticized the changes as anti-democratic and unfair in their timing, just a few months before the elections, though Parliament passed them and sent them to the president. But before his death, Mr. Essebsi ef- fectively blocked the amendments by not acting on them. He sent them back to Parliament for revision, or to propose a referendum on the matter. That makes the proposed electoral law changes into a problem inherited by the interim president. “If the new president does not promulgate these amendments, he will dis- avow what his own Parliament voted,” said Mr. Chouikha, the political scientist. “If he does promulgate them, he will make strong political enemies. So even if we are in an emotional time and still in mourning, this raises challenges for the next step of the transition.” But others hope that the calm, follow- the-rules response to Mr. Essebsi’s death is an optimistic sign. “We are still a fragile democracy, but what happened on Thursday is a re- minder that we manage to work togeth- er and this is the most important,” said Zied Krichen, editor in chief of Le Ma- ghreb, a daily newspaper.

Power transfer tests

Tunisia’s democracy

TUNIS

Initial transition succeeds after president’s death, but challenges lie ahead

BY LILIA BLAISE

Tunisians paid tribute to President Béji Caïd Essebsi, who died on Thursday, in Tunis.

HASSENE DRIDI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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The New York Times International - 29.07.2019

Trees are falling faster

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