Welcome to this week's edition of NewsHero for December 14, 2019
We source our reporting from news outlets all across the spectrum. By reading this week’s newsletter you’ll be exploring events from around the globe covered by 27 publications in 73 articles by 102 journalists. And remember, here though, the heroes make the headlines.
Weekly Brief Part 1
Human Rights
Eleanor Roosevelt holding poster of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (in English), Lake Success, New York. November 1949.
Human Rights Day was celebrated on Tuesday, commemorating the United Nations adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. The day is observed annually all over the world, acknowledging the advocates and defenders of human rights. This year the theme is Stand Up For Human Rights, celebrating the power of youth who challenge issues like racism, hate speech, bullying, discrimination, and climate change.
Marking Human Rights Day, the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, and the President of the Organization’s Parliamentary Assembly, Liliane Maury Pasquier, issued a joint statement ahead of the 70th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights in 2020. “Following in the footsteps of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights was opened for signature on 4 November 1950,” the statement reads, adding, “Thanks to the Convention, overseen by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, Europe has the strongest system of international human rights protection anywhere in the world. This is something we can all be proud of.”
Members of the United Nations Security Council moved to hold a discussion Tuesday on North Korea’s rampant human rights abuses, but the Trump administration refused to support the meeting, effectively blocking it for the second year in a row.
Xu Yan, the wife of human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, outside the Xuzhou intermediate peoples court in Xuzhou. He was detained in 2018 and tried in a closed door trial. Photograph: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images
Rights advocates, who say that dozens of prominent Chinese rights lawyers remain detained, referred to China’s hosting the global lawyers forum Tuesday, coinciding with human rights day, a “mockery.”
A panel of five experts from Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand was recruited in September by the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) in Hong Kong to help ensure its probe into allegations of police brutality during months of anti-government protests was credible and free of bias. The experts said on Wednesday they had quit advising the IPCC over doubts of its independence and ability to conduct an investigation.
Women’s Rights
Image: Beautiful News
More women are currently in parliaments around the world, according to recent numbers. Aiding gender equality, countries like Rwanda, Cuba and Bolivia all have parliaments with more than 50% women. Additionally, record numbers of women are now sitting in the Indian parliament and U.S. Congress.
34-year-old Social Democrat Sanna Marin was chosen last weekend to be Finland’s new prime minister. She is the world’s youngest sitting head of government. Marin will head a coalition with four other parties that are all led by women, three of whom are in their early 30s. “I want to build a society in which every child can become anything and in which every human being can live and grow old with dignity,” Marin wrote on Twitter.
The new Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin, 2nd right, with Minister of Education Li Andersson, left, Minister of Finance Katri Kulmuni, 2nd left, and Minister of Interior Maria Ohisalo, right, after the first meeting of the new government in Helsinki, Finland on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019. Finland’s parliament chose Sanna Marin as the country's new prime minister Tuesday, making the 34-year-old the world’s youngest sitting head of government. (Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP)
A list compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks exploiting the country’s poor and vulnerable was obtained by the Associated Press. The list, which offers the most complete figure yet for the number of women caught up in trafficking schemes since 2018, includes 629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China.
Gender segregation in restaurants in Saudi Arabia is ending, the government says. Women and families will no longer have to use a separate entrance from men. Activists say that many laws discriminating against women however are still in place, while several prominent women's rights advocates have been arrested, even as the government has made reforms.
Voters Choose Johnson In High-Stakes UK Election
Israel extends deadlock, goes to historic third election
Pedestrians stand in line to enter a polling station in Kensington, west London Credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
UK Election
Voters headed to the polls on Thursday in an election that would clear the way for Brexit under Prime Minister Boris Johnson or send Britain towards another referendum that could ultimately reverse the decision to leave the European Union. After failing to deliver Brexit by an October 31 deadline, Johnson called the election to break the political stalemate that had prevented Britain’s departure and drained confidence in the economy.
As results came in Johnson’s Conservative Party won a massive majority of seats in Britain’s Parliament that should allow Johnson to fulfill his plan to take the U.K. out of the European Union next month. With 642 of the 650 results declared on Friday, the Conservatives had 358 seats and the main opposition Labour Party 203. Johnson said it looked like the Conservatives had “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done."
The victory makes Johnson the most electorally successful Conservative leader since Margaret Thatcher. It was a disaster for left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who faced calls for his resignation even as the results rolled in. Corbyn had promised voters higher public spending, nationalization of key services, taxes on the wealthy and another referendum on Brexit. Corbyn said the result was “very disappointing” for his party and said he would not lead Labour into another election, though he resisted calls to quit immediately.
The result this time delivered the biggest Tory majority since Thatcher’s 1980s heyday, and Labour’s lowest number of seats since 1935. The Scottish National Party won almost 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats, up from 35 in 2017, a result that will embolden its demands for a new referendum on Scottish independence. The centrist, pro-EU Liberal Democrats took only about a dozen seats. Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson stepped down after losing in her own Scottish constituency.
Israel Election
Supporters of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protesting his indictment on corruption charges last month in Tel Aviv.Credit...Amir Levy/Getty Images
With no success forming a government after two elections, Israel began moving toward a record third election on Wednesday, extending the political deadlock that has stricken the country for nearly a year, guaranteeing at least three more months of divisive campaigning. With the country divided over the fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted on three counts of corruption, there is little indication that the third election will be any more decisive than the first two. Israel’s inability to put a government in place has raised questions about the political system often touted by its citizens as the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel’s next election is expected to be in March.
US Election
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said Moscow wanted to publish a collection of communications with Washington that he said cleared Russia of allegations it interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, but that the United States has blocked their release. It was not immediately clear what communications Lavrov was referring to.
During a joint news conference with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Lavrov once again dismissed the American accusation that Moscow tried to influence the 2016 election. “We suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all suspicions that are baseless: Let us publish this close channel of correspondence starting from October 2016 until November 2017 so it would all become very clear to many people.”
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian state meddled in the election campaign, and a number of Russian citizens and entities were charged by then-U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Pompeo warned Moscow at the news conference against interfering in next November’s U.S. election. “I was clear it is unacceptable and I made our expectations of Russia clear. The Trump administration will always work to protect the integrity of our elections, period. Should Russia or any foreign actor take steps to undermine our democratic processes, we will take action in response,” he said.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced in his inaugural address Tuesday that he'll sign an executive order this week restoring voting rights to more than 100,000 people who've been convicted of felonies. “My faith teaches me to treat others with dignity and respect. My faith also teaches me forgiveness,” Beshear said in a speech outside the state Capitol in Frankfort. “That's why on Thursday I will sign an executive order restoring voting rights to over a hundred thousand men and women who have done wrong in the past but are doing right now. They deserve to participate in our great democracy,” the Democrat said. “By taking this step, by restoring these voting rights, we declare that everyone counts in Kentucky. We all matter.”
House Panel Approves Impeachment Articles
Inspector General says no political bias, criticizes FBI
The House Judiciary Committee voted over Republican objections to advance two articles of impeachment accusing President Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Impeachment charges against President Donald Trump went to the full House on Friday, following approval by the House Judiciary Committee. The House is expected to take up two articles of impeachment next week.
Voting came quickly after two days of hearings at the Capitol and a 14-hour session that was abruptly shut down late Thursday when the Democratic majority refused to be forced into midnight voting. Instead, the impeachment charges against Trump were aired Friday morning for Americans to witness.
Trump is accused, in the first article of impeachment, of abusing his presidential power by asking Ukraine to investigate his 2020 rival, Joe Biden, while holding military aid as leverage, and, in the second, of obstructing Congress by blocking the House’s efforts to probe his actions.
During the 14-hour session ahead of Friday’s vote, Republicans were attempting to make changes to the articles of impeachment against Trump. These changes included the removal of the “power of abuse article;” claiming it was Joe Biden’s son Hunter who was the focus of investigation, not the former Vice president himself; proposing an alternate reason Ukraine aid money was eventually released; removal of the “obstruction of justice” article; and offering no recommendation for removal from office for the President.
Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the Trump administration on November 25 to produce records reflecting how key officials at the Department of Defense and the White House Office of Management and Budget reacted to the President’s decision to halt military aid to Ukraine. The Center for Public Integrity sought the information in Freedom of Information Act requests filed in late September.
The administration has refused to disclose what these officials said to one another about the legality and appropriateness of Trump’s order, yet on Thursday, as the House Judiciary Committee was preparing to vote on two articles of impeachment, Public Integrity received 146 pages of documents that had been almost completely redacted by the government. Every substantive exchange between officials at the agencies was blacked out. Public Integrity is planning to file a motion Friday challenging the government’s response.
The U.S. Constitution mandates 67 votes are required to convict the President and remove him from office. Should President Trump be impeached, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to hold a final vote on acquittal, instead of holding a vote on dismissing the articles of impeachment, as Republicans hope to clear the President of the charges against him.
DOJ Report
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz spoke Wednesday about his findings on Crossfire Hurricane, the counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump campaign associates were working with the Russian government to influence the presidential election. Horowitz stood by his conclusion that there was no political bias in launching the investigation back in 2016, rebutting Attorney General William Barr, but criticized the FBI's handling of the probe.
Horowitz said Wednesday during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the dossier prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele did not prompt the original DOJ investigation into members of the Trump campaign. Although the probe was said not to be motivated by political bias, the watchdog found “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI's application to the secretive court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as part of its efforts to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Politifact took a look at Attorney General Barr’s criticism of the Inspector General’s report. Barr had said the report “now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions.” Politifact rated this statement as “mostly false,” adding that “the decision to start the Russia investigation was justified. But the FBI did secure a FISA warrant to surveil Page, a technique that is permitted but considered intrusive.”
Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court last week rejected a request by President Trump’s administration to proceed with plans to carry out the first executions of federal death row inmates since 2003. The justices left in place a hold imposed by a federal judge on four executions that had been scheduled by Attorney General William Barr as Trump’s administration embraces the death penalty at a time when increasing numbers of states have given up the practice.
Immigration
A federal judge on Tuesday issued a permanent injunction barring President Trump’s attempt to transfer $3.6 billion in military construction funds to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Judge David Briones, of U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas, issued the injunction in a 21-page ruling.
The Pentagon’s independent investigations office announced Tuesday that it will evaluate the legality of the Trump administration’s use of the military at the U.S. border with Mexico. Glenn Fine, the acting inspector general of the Defense Department who had served as the Justice Department Inspector General for 11 years, said his probe will assess several aspects of the military’s border mission, which some in Congress call a misuse of the military.
Civil Rights
Two lawsuits filed on Tuesday on behalf of the Compton Unified School District, four students, and six community organizations allege the University of California is violating state civil rights laws by requiring applicants to take the SAT or ACT, standardized tests that unlawfully discriminate against disabled, low-income, multilingual and underrepresented minority students. The lawsuits demand that the 10-campus UC system eliminate the testing requirement.
U.S./Afghanistan
An American soldier on patrol in Parwan, Afghanistan, in 2014.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times
An exclusive report by The Washington Post said a confidential collection of government documents has been obtained, revealing that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become un-winnable. The documents were generated by a federal project examining the root failures of the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. They include more than 2,000 pages of previously unpublished notes of interviews with people who played a direct role in the war, from generals and diplomats to aid workers and Afghan officials. The U.S. government tried to shield the identities of the vast majority of those interviewed for the project and conceal nearly all of their remarks. The Post won release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after a three-year legal battle.
Weekly Brief Part 2
Climate
Climate activist Greta Thunberg photographed on the shore in Lisbon, Portugal, on Dec. 4, 2019. Photograph by Evgenia Arbugaeva for TIME
Time magazine has chosen 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as its person of the year. She is the youngest individual to be recognized. “Thunberg has become the biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet—and the avatar of a broader generational shift in our culture that is playing out everywhere from the campuses of Hong Kong to the halls of Congress in Washington,” Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote.
President Trump criticized Time’s selection, tweeting, “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!” Thunberg responded by including contents of the Presidential tweet on her own Twitter profile page.
Victoria Falls, where southern Africa’s Zambezi river cascades down into the earth, have drawn millions of vacationers for decades to Zimbabwe and Zambia for the stunning views. But the worst drought in a century has slowed the waterfalls to a trickle, adding to fears that climate change could kill one of the region’s biggest tourist attractions. While they typically slow down during the dry season, officials said this year had brought an unprecedented decline in water levels.
Journalism/Journalists
In this Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019 photo, Lebanese anchorwoman Dima Sadek uses her cellphone to film an anti-government protest, in Beirut, Lebanon. Sadek, who last month resigned as an anchorwoman at the LBC TV, blamed Hezbollah supporters for robbing her smartphone while she was filming protests, and said the harassment was followed by insulting and threatening phone calls to her mother, who suffered a stroke as a result of the stress. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanese journalists are facing threats and harassment in their work, including verbal insults, physical attacks, and death threats, while reporting on nearly 50 days of anti-government protests. Nationwide demonstrations began in October over a plunging economy, quickly swelling into calls for pushing aside Lebanon’s ruling elite. Local media outlets are now widely seen as pro- or anti-protests, with some journalists feeling pressured to leave their workplaces over disagreements about media coverage.
The Committee to Protect Journalists released its annual survey Wednesday revealing that China has surpassed Turkey as the leading jailer of journalists this year, partly because of severe repression in China’s Xinjiang region and Turkey’s eradication of “virtually all independent reporting.” The rights advocacy group also found that authoritarianism, instability and protests in the Middle East had led to a steep rise in the number of journalists incarcerated in that region. Saudi Arabia and Egypt now share the rank of third-worst jailer of journalists, the group said.
Sameh al-Titi, a reporter for the Hebron University-affiliated broadcaster Radio Alam, was arrested by Israeli soldiers on December 9 after they raided his home at a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, according to reports by this brother, his employer, and a regional press freedom group. The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling on Israeli authorities to disclose any charges against al-Titi or release him immediately.
Staff at the U.S.-headquartered, Nigeria-focused Sahara Reporters news website say its Nigerian bank account was frozen without advance notice in October, significantly hampering operations. The website was said to have been separately disabled twice over allegations of copyright infringement, and staff report cyberattacks and increased surveillance outside their Lagos office. The Committee to Protect Journalists is demanding Nigerian authorities to halt all efforts to intimidate journalists working with Sahara Reporters.
The ongoing detentions of Nigerian publisher Agba Jalingo and Ethiopian editor Fekadu Mahtemework, the only journalists behind bars for their work in their countries, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ latest prison census, don’t tell the whole story of their governments’ crackdowns on freedom of expression. The detentions were found to be more connected with their political activities than their journalistic work, the rights group says.
The Committee to Protect Journalists opposes the extradition of Julian Assange, saying that for the sake of press freedom, he must be defended. “Taken together, the 18 counts in the DOJ indictment criminalize key reporting practices and the publication of information obtained through them. And the extraterritorial application of the U.S. Espionage Act means that any journalist anywhere in the world could potentially be prosecuted for publishing classified information,” the rights group said in a statement published on its website.
Health
A health worker puts on protective scrubs before entering an Ebola treatment center in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo. (Vincent Tremeau/World Bank)
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced last week that it was withdrawing staff from the town of Biakato in the Democratic Republic of Congo following attacks by a group reportedly armed with sticks and machetes. The medical charity was managing an Ebola Treatment Centre in the town. While the deadliest ever Ebola outbreak has shown signs of slowing in recent weeks, militia attacks, anti-UN protests, and chronic community distrust are undermining the 16-month effort to end the epidemic.
Michigan’s second-highest court has ruled that Nestlé’s commercial water-bottling operation is “not an essential public service.” The court of appeals ruling is a victory for Osceola township, a small Michigan town that stopped Nestlé from building a pumping station that doesn’t comply with zoning laws. But the case could also disrupt Nestlé’s attempts to privatize water around the country.
Humanitarian
A nurse feeds a malnourished child at a mobile clinic for displaced families in western Afghanistan’s Herat. Several major aid groups say it’s now safer to be headquartered outside the capital, Kabul. (Stefanie Glinski/TNH)
According to the International NGO Safety Organization, which advises humanitarian groups on security, at least 24 aid workers were killed in Afghanistan between January and November. Of the 56 aid worker deaths the group has counted this year in 13 hotspot countries, more than 40 percent were in Afghanistan. There were also 37 abductions and 42 aid workers injured. The New Humanitarian reports that some ten million people in Afghanistan need aid, yet local and foreign humanitarians are themselves a target in a conflict now killing or injuring more than 10,000 civilians a year.
Aid groups are predicting a major increase in food shortages in South Sudan after weeks of torrential rain destroyed thousands of acres of cropland. South Sudan’s lean season, the window between harvests when households run out of stored food, is typically between March and August. But after the substantial crop losses, it may now come as early as January.
New Zealand military specialists recovered six bodies from a small volcanic island Friday days after an eruption claimed at least eight other lives and left a toxic and volatile landscape. The eight specialists wearing protective clothing and using breathing apparatuses landed by helicopter and found six of the bodies thought to remain on White Island since the eruption Monday. The bodies were airlifted to a ship near the island off New Zealand’s eastern coast where scientists and other police and military personnel monitored the risky operation. Scientists have warned that gases on the island are so toxic and corrosive that a single inhalation could be fatal.
LGBTQ
Kenyan gay and lesbian organizations demonstrate Nigeria's anti-gay law outside the Nigerian High Commission in Nairobi on February 7, 2014.
Forty-seven Nigerian men pleaded innocent on Wednesday to a charge of public displays of affection with members of the same sex, an offense that carries a ten-year jail term. Homosexuality is outlawed in many socially conservative African societies where some religious groups brand it a corrupting Western import. The Nigerian men, who appeared at a court in the commercial capital Lagos, were among 57 arrested in a police raid on a hotel in the impoverished Egbeda district of the city in 2018.
Animal Welfare
The Humane Society of the United States addressed this week a story from The Washington Post telling of Joseph Thomas and other individuals involved in caring for more than 60 chimpanzees in Liberia. The chimpanzees are the survivors of hepatitis B and blood cleansing experiments carried out beginning in the 1970s. Thomas and the other caretakers kept the chimpanzees alive even in an uncertain moment some years ago, never abandoning them. Their actions made it possible for the Humane Society to step in with a commitment to ensure a better outcome for the chimpanzees and the people who devoted themselves to the animals’ care.
NewsHero Editorial
Art by Mark Minnig
UN Calls Rohingya Violence Genocide, Myanmar Leader Defends Government
International Court of Justice holds hearings on treatment of ethnic minority
Rohingya form a human chain in support of Bangladesh in Cox’s Bazar on the first day of International Court of Justice hearings against Myanmar, Dec. 10, 2019. Radio Free Asia
More than 740,000 members of Myanmar’s Rohingya community fled into neighboring Bangladesh in 2016 and 2017 during the forcible expulsion of Rohingya from Myanmar, which the global community has come to describe as ethnic cleansing. United Nations officials have said the nation’s military generals should be tried for the gravest crimes against humanity. Survivors have recounted harrowing atrocities including gang-rape, mass killings, torture and widespread destruction of property at the hands of the Myanmar army. The violence has been described as genocide by a United Nations fact-finding commission.
Addressing the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Peace Palace in the Netherlands, Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi defended her government from accusations of genocide against the Rohingya community. The Nobel Peace Prize winner said at the United Nations’ top court on Wednesday that "genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis" regarding Myanmar military's operations in Rakhine state in the summer of 2017, calling the allegations “incomplete and misleading.”
Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said before the hearings that ever since Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, came to power after winning landslide elections in 2015, she has been "singing from a different song sheet.” The special rapporteur said that when she pushed Suu Kyi to visit Rakhine state, her access to the country was threatened.
The ICJ case is the first international legal attempt to hold Myanmar accountable for the Rohingya crisis. Based in The Hague, the 15 judges of the ICJ are tasked in part with settling legal disputes between states.
Only seven soldiers have ever been prosecuted on charges relating to the Rohingya crisis. They served less than one year of a ten-year sentence for the killing of 10 Rohingya men and boys in the village of Inn Din.
In a landmark lawsuit filed by the West African nation Gambia on behalf of a group of 57 Islamic countries, Myanmar stands accused of genocide. Gambia’s case, which it began presenting to the court on Tuesday, relies on testimony from numerous witnesses and human-rights experts, along with reporting from the UN fact-finding mission.
Protesters Turn Out Against Citizenship Bill In India
Critics concerned over mistreatment of Muslims and threats to secular life
Indian students and activists participate in a protest against the Citizenship Amendment Bill in Gauhati, India, on Dec. 6. (Anupam Nath/AP)
Violent protests have broken out in India's ethnically diverse northeastern states of Assam and Tripura over the passing of a controversial bill that offers a path to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from three neighboring countries.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) was approved by President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday. It has been described by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government as a means of protecting vulnerable groups from persecution.
Critics say the bill marginalizes Muslims and undermines the country's secular constitution. Others say it risks bringing an unwanted influx of immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan into India's northern states.
Indigenous groups in both states fear naturalizing large numbers of immigrants will change the region's demographics and way of life, fearing the impact on jobs, government subsidies and education.
Angry protesters marched through major cities Wednesday night and Thursday with flaming torches. Police arrested and clashed with the protesters, using batons and firing tear gas. About 1,800 people have been detained in Tripura since Wednesday, according to Rajiv Singh of the Tripura police force.
On Thursday, Indian military and paramilitary forces were deployed across the two states. In the Assam capital of Guwahati, the state's largest and most important city, authorities have shut down the internet “for an indefinite period,” and announced a curfew.
Thousands defied the curfew through Thursday after the All Assam Students Union (AASU) asked people to gather at Latasil cricket ground for a public meeting. Local celebrities joined the students, using anti-Modi, anti-CAB and anti-government slogans.
Following the end of the procession, protesters dispersed into small groups and some were later tear-gassed.
Earlier in the morning, police had tried to stop the protests by firing tear gas shells and stun guns. The AASU has announced a mass hunger strike in Guwahati Friday and have asked people to join them.
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