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August 27, 2025

We drilled deep under the sea to learn more about mega-earthquakes and tsunamis

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Morgane Brunet, Postdoctoral researcher, Marine geoscience, Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR)

The Japanese drilling vessel Chikyu (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology)

Far beneath the waves, down in the depths of the Japan Trench — seven kilometres below sea level — lie hidden clues about some of the most powerful earthquakes and tsunamis on Earth.

From September to December 2024, Expedition 405 of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) embarked on a four-month long mission to offshore Japan. Aboard the Chikyu — the world’s largest scientific drilling ship — 60 scientists teamed up with experienced drillers to uncover deep-sea sediment cores from beneath the sea floor.

The scientists included sedimentologists like myself, alongside geochemists, micropaleontologists, structural geologists, geophysicists and paleomagnetists. We drilled into a fault zone where only one prior expedition had drilled directly before. IODP Expedition 405 — also called Tracking Tsunamigenic Slip Across the Japan Trench (JTRACK) — is only the second deep-drilling mission to access this area.

This time, we reached and sampled the décollement, or the basal detachment, of the fault that ruptured during the devastating 2011 Tōhoku mega-earthquake. We collected cores that will help scientists better understand how such powerful earthquakes are triggered.

Expedition 405 of the International Ocean Discovery Program embarked onboard the Chikyu for a four-month long mission offshore Japan.

An unexpected slip

On March 11, 2011, the Tōhoku mega-earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan, triggering a catastrophic tsunami. At magnitude 9.1, it was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded and the deadliest natural disaster in Japan’s modern history.

More than 18,000 people died. The earthquake severely damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant; there was an estimated US$235 billion in damages. Scientists were surprised not by the scale of the earthquake, but by the location of the largest plate slip that had triggered it: not deep underground, but just beneath the sea floor, at the shallowest part of the plate boundary.

The rupture took place along the Japan Trench, where the Pacific Plate dives beneath the Okhotsk Plate. Until then, this shallow section of subduction zones was thought to slip slowly and quietly.

But during the Tōhoku event, more than 50 metres of slip occurred on a fault that ruptured the sea floor, displacing huge amounts of water and generating the devastating tsunami.

Drilling into the fault

During the IODP 405 expedition, we set out to understand the conditions that make such tsunamis possible.

The Japan Trench provides a natural laboratory to investigate the fundamental processes of tsunamigenic earthquakes that trigger massive tsunamis.

For that reason, we drilled deep into the plate boundary fault, the exact zone that ruptured during the 2011 earthquake. This meant drilling more than 800 metres beneath the seafloor and into the fault itself to recover samples of rocks and sediments.

We also installed a long-term observatory to monitor temperature and fluid pressure at the earthquake’s source, hoping to detect subtle signals locked in the material that once unleashed one of the most powerful earthquakes in history.

Retrieving cores

On board the Chikyu, operations ran 24-7. Every three hours, a new core arrived on deck — a long, cylindrical archive of Earth’s memory. As sedimentologists, we got to work right away peering through the transparent liners with flashlights, scanning for traces of sand, volcanic ash or anything hinting at past geological events.

Each core told a chapter of a story written over millions of years. Layer by layer, they revealed a sequence of faulted, fractured or deformed sediments and rocks. Some contained smectite — a slippery clay mineral known to reduce friction along faults. These are precisely the kinds of materials that can allow tectonic plates to slip easily, even at shallow depths near the sea floor — exactly the kind of setting that could produce a tsunami-generating earthquake.

One of the most thrilling moments came when we hit layers of chert — a hard, glassy rock that marks the transition from deep-sea sediments to oceanic crust. We had reached the décollement zone, the very boundary where one tectonic plate dives beneath another.

a woman holding a tube filled with layers of different coloured sediment — A split core recovered from within the fault zone.
(M. Brunet), CC BY-NC-ND

In the lab, slicing open the cores revealed something else: beautifully banded colourful clays, tinted in rich shades of chocolate, vanilla and caramel — a natural palette created from geological processes deep within the Earth.

Each new core entered a tightly co-ordinated workflow: scanned by high-resolution, X-ray-computed tomography, tested for physical and chemical properties, then split in half. One half was carefully preserved in a permanent archive, while the other was examined and sampled thoroughly by scientists from various countries and disciplines.

My research focuses on the sedimentary signature of past earthquakes and tsunamis. On the Chikyu, I searched for deposits called homogenite-turbidite sequences. These form when a quake shakes the sea floor, triggering a submarine landslide (the turbidite), followed by a slow rain of fine particles stirred up by the tsunami (the homogenite). These sequences are geological time capsules, helping us estimate how often giant earthquakes have struck in the past.

Fault evolution

The Chikyu returned to the original site drilled soon after the 2011 earthquake. This gave us something rare in geoscience: an opportunity to observe how the fault has evolved over more than a decade. We installed a borehole observatory, deeper and more advanced than any before in this region.

Installing the observatory in the JTRACK research expedition.

Over the coming years, it will monitor temperature and fluid flow in real time, giving us a window into the living, breathing dynamics of a megathrust fault.

Using this data, scientists will simulate earthquake conditions using numerical models or experiments to test how these rocks respond under pressure. They will analyze the chemistry of the fluids trapped within the fault and use advanced logging tools to build a detailed picture of the fault’s internal architecture.

Others — like myself — will focus on the sedimentary record, deciphering past events to better understand the frequency of earthquakes and tsunamis.

From understanding to preparedness

The Japan Trench is not an isolated case. Subduction zones around the world, from Chile to Alaska to Indonesia, pose similar risks, often just offshore from densely populated regions. If shallow slip can happen there too, then our current models and preparedness strategies must evolve accordingly.

Our goal wasn’t just to understand why the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake happened, but to help prepare for the next one. By improving tsunami hazard assessments and deepening our understanding of mega-earthquake fault behaviour, we contribute to building global resilience.

IODP Expedition 405 marks a major milestone for earthquake and tsunami science. In the coming years, data from the new borehole observatory, along with lab experiments and sediment analyses, will offer unprecedented insights into how these faults evolve and how we can better anticipate and mitigate the impacts of future megathrust earthquakes.

Morgane Brunet receives funding from the European Commission through a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Global Fellowship.

– ref. We drilled deep under the sea to learn more about mega-earthquakes and tsunamis – https://theconversation.com/we-drilled-deep-under-the-sea-to-learn-more-about-mega-earthquakes-and-tsunamis-252010

August 27, 2025

Canada is leading the U.K. and France in boycotting American goods due to Trump’s tariffs

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Shelley Boulianne, Professor in Communication Studies, Mount Royal University

Since taking office, United States President Donald Trump has used tariffs to address perceived trade deficits with other countries. He claims that other countries have cheated and pillaged the U.S. via trade deficits.

In response, many political leaders have implemented retaliatory tariffs on American products, although Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently lifted many of them in an apparent peace offering amid Canada-U.S. trade negotiations.

Citizens have also been engaged in these trade wars by avoiding the purchase of American products and services, as well as avoiding travel to the U.S.

From June 25 to July 8, 2025, Kantar, a global research and consulting company, conducted a survey through its online panels of 1,500 respondents in Canada, France and the United Kingdom, respectively.

Strict quotas were used to ensure the survey respondents would match the census profile of the adult population in each of the three countries.

Surveying consumers

As a social scientist who examines citizen engagement in civic and political life, I designed the survey questions. Respondents answered yes or no to:

Due to Trump’s recent tariffs, have you boycotted: a) American products, including grocery items; b) American services, such as Facebook, Amazon, or TV streaming services; and c) Travel to the United States.

The graph below outlines the results. Compared to the U.K. and France, Canadians were far more likely to report boycotting American products, services and travel.

Canadians, of course, have greater opportunities to boycott compared to other countries, given historically high levels of travel and international trade with the U.S. and Canada’s close proximity to the country. Statistics Canada reports that Canadian trips to the U.S. are down by 28.7 per cent from last year.

This case study of political consumerism reveals important distinctions compared to traditional boycotts.

Politically motivated boycotting is typically associated with those holding left-wing views.

In this case, both left-wing and right-wing people are participating in the boycott of American products. There are no ideological differences in participation in Canada and France. However, in the U.K., those on the right are more likely to boycott American products, services and travel than those on the left.

Existing research also shows well-educated people are more likely to boycott, particularly in Canada and France.

But in the Kantar survey, education did not impact participation in the boycott of American products, services and travel. All educational groups were motivated to participate.

Expressing discontent

Boycotting is a particularly attractive form of political behaviour in the case of international relations, because angry international citizens cannot simply contact Trump to express their discontent.

In fact, criticizing U.S. policies under Trump may result in being turned away at the American border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Instead, consumers can express their discontent through the choices they make when grocery shopping, when making travel plans, and finally, in their choice to refrain from using American-owned social media like Facebook.

This situation is also unique because Trump actively encourages citizens to boycott companies with which he disagrees. Despite his own calls to boycott companies, Trump and American officials have called Canadians “nasty” for boycotting U.S. alcohol and travel in retaliation of American tariffs.

Follow the leader?

Now Canada has lifted most of the retaliatory tariffs, with Carney explaining that Canada has the “best deal with the United States right now.”

Canadians may choose to follow the direction of their prime minister or they may view this as an opportunity to take more responsibility and continue to use their purchasing choices to influence trade relations.

The responses may also differ across countries.

The U.K. says it has negotiated the lowest U.S. tariff rate so far and therefore, British citizens may choose to end their boycotting.

In contrast, political leaders in France continue to criticize the European Union’s recent trade agreement with the U.S. In this case, French citizens may follow suit and continue to use their purchasing power to influence trade relations.

Shelley Boulianne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Canada is leading the U.K. and France in boycotting American goods due to Trump’s tariffs – https://theconversation.com/canada-is-leading-the-u-k-and-france-in-boycotting-american-goods-due-to-trumps-tariffs-263395

August 27, 2025

South Africa’s service delivery crisis: why protesters are using more militant tactics

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Kenny Chiwarawara, Senior Lecturer, University of Johannesburg

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterised by frequent public protests. On average, between 2007 and 2013, there were over 11 protests daily. Research shows that protests almost doubled in the 20 years after 1997.

Service delivery protests – over basic services such as housing, electricity, refuse removal, water and sanitation – feature most prominently in these protests.

These protesters employ diverse tactics at different times: marching to government offices, barricading roads, destroying property and attacking unpopular individuals.

Often people ask why protesters resort to destroying public and private property and attacking people.

I have researched poor people’s struggles for housing and basic services in South Africa since 2012.

This article draws from a study involving 20 in-depth interviews and two focus group discussions in Gugulethu and the same number in Khayelitsha. These are low-income black townships in Cape Town.

The study investigated three inter-related questions: the reasons for protests, the tactics used by protesters, and the character and organisation of the protests. This article focuses on when, how and why different tactics are used in these protests.

It may be easy to blame protesters for barricading roads, vandalising property and attacking people. However, as my study shows, protesters often initially engage in peaceful and orderly marches. They resort to more radical tactics only when peaceful tactics fail to yield results.

Rather than placing the blame squarely on protesters, there is a need to consider the seriousness of their grievances (such as lack of water), and the failure by the authorities to respond speedily and adequately. Genuinely acknowledging and addressing the grievances discourages more militant protest tactics.

Findings

There is often a perception that communities have an appetite to engage in violent protests. But my research shows that this is not the case.

Aggrieved communities often engage in protests to push for the delivery of basic services.

Usually, poor communities first engage in rounds of orderly and peaceful means of engagement with government officials to alert them to their grievances.

These means of engagement – which are less reported by the media – include holding meetings with the officials responsible for addressing their challenges, and handing them written demands.

When all these means of engagement fail to yield fruit, communities resort to more dramatic means of engagement. These include barricading roads to pressure the government to meet their demands. Even when they turn to dramatic tactics, they first exhaust less dramatic ones.

As the scholar-activist Trevor Ngwane has rightly remarked,

When people start hitting the streets, they should have a banner saying: ‘All protocols observed’, because they’ve gone through all the channels … People feel that the only way to be heard, to get attention, is to burn tyres and engage in some of protest.

My research in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha found that a lack of response, or a poor or unsatisfactory response, led to more radical tactics.

For example, a pastor I interviewed explained the rationale for more radical protest tactics with a compelling metaphor. He explained that pain was necessary in order for someone to take action. He gave an example of a person with a sore arm, but who did nothing to address the source of the pain. He reasoned that if someone else pinched the sore arm, this would compel the patient to take necessary steps to ensure that the arm was healed.

In the same way, he explained that the government knew about the “sore arms”, or poor conditions that impoverished communities endured, but chose to ignore them.

To pressure the government to address their grievances, communities sometimes employ radical protest tactics (pinching). For communities enduring appalling service delivery, the momentary inconveniences ensuing from the “pinching” pale in comparison to the ignored service delivery challenges (sore arms).

My research, for example, highlights the precariousness of living in shacks, lacking a bathroom, toilet, running water and electricity.

It is these challenges that residents episodically protest against using primarily orderly means of engagement and sometimes more radical protest tactics to pressure (or pinch) the government to address the challenges.

What should be done?

Tactics such as the destruction of property and attacks on people that sometimes accompany protests should be discouraged. At the same time, it is important to condemn the circumstances that necessitate such radical tactics.

A more responsive government would try to make it unnecessary for people to turn to militant protests to air their grievances. The government should proactively address service delivery challenges and swiftly respond to the complaints raised by communities.

Kenny Chiwarawara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. South Africa’s service delivery crisis: why protesters are using more militant tactics – https://theconversation.com/south-africas-service-delivery-crisis-why-protesters-are-using-more-militant-tactics-241045

August 27, 2025

Mother Vera: beautiful documentary film about a nun’s dilemma – reviewed by a priest

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Hall, Professor, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University

Nuns loom large in the European imagination. They are often caricatured to the point of dehumanisation. Either as a grotesque comic creation, like the chocolate-obsessed sister in Father Ted (1995-1998), or a monstrous aberration, like the demon Valak from the Conjuring (2013-2025) films.

Either way, by rendering the nun unreal, and stripping her of personhood, these portrayals allow viewers to avoid confronting the uncomfortable questions that a flesh and blood nun raises. In contrast, nuns who are not safely contained in the realm of fiction, but live and breathe in our world, force us to consider whether the aspirations and desires that society expects women, and indeed human beings, to feel, are in fact cultural rather than innate.

If we take the dangerous step of acknowledging that nuns are no different from anybody else, we face the unsettling question of whether we too could reshape our experience of sexuality, fulfilment, interpersonal connection and community. Watching the new documentary film Mother Vera pushes viewers forcefully to take that step.

Following a conversation with a family member, Mother Vera, the protagonist nun of the film, is compelled to reclaim buried memories and face the events that led her to choose life in a convent. This leads her on a journey of renewal and transformation, with all of the losses and gains bound up with change. However, the visual storytelling weaves a complex tapestry of emotions and ideas as this unfolds.

Mother Vera is an immersive work of art and the beauty of the cinematography is almost hypnotic. Countryside, animals and people move across the screen and pull observers into a different time and place. On occasion it is so vivid that it is almost possible to catch the scent of the candles in a darkened church, or the smell of cattle in the yard.

Yet while it is highly evocative, Mother Vera is a demanding watch. The audience is permitted to enter into the life of the nun and her order, and given an infinitesimal, but powerful, taste of the silence and stillness of that domain.

Engaging with it is radically different from seeing a film propelled forward by constant dialogue, or framed in a way that leads viewers inexorably towards a prescribed moral conclusion or emotional response. Mother Vera not only gives those watching space to react and reflect individually, it almost compels them to do so.

This is not to suggest that the film ever pretends naivety or neutrality – it is far too carefully constructed for that. It also plays with some very well-worn tropes in respect of nuns and indeed religion. The story arc centred on a slow burn of inner and outer liberation is a familiar one.

Equally, the central character is depicted in a way that sets her apart from the audience. The clothes that she wears and the physical setting through which she moves call to mind not just another era, but another period in history. There are moments when she seems almost medieval, as she is shown from a distance riding on horseback, long garments flowing, or when the camera pans to a close up of her face, framed by stark black cloth.

Playing with archetypes

At times, Mother Vera teeters on the verge of being overdone. It comes close to the cliché of presenting nuns as distinct from other members of society, and needing to shed something of their otherworldly nature if they are to reintegrate, or even authentically interact, with those outside of the cloister walls.

However, the sophistication of the film as a whole means that we are not expected to unquestioningly consume these cardboard cut-out ideas. Instead, we are invited to play with the archetypes on screen and interrogate the extent to which we really believe in them.

The trailer for Mother Vera.

These archetypes are complicated because they are not entirely without grounding in reality. Members of religious orders are indeed secluded and set apart from the wider population, and live their lives according to an alternative set of parameters. When entering an order, there are formal rites of passage, as a person moves from one context into another. The question of what it might mean to walk in the opposite direction, creating more personal symbolism, is a recurring theme.

Significantly, within the protagonist’s journey there are threads of continuity: most obviously, but not uniquely, her bond with horses. These points of continuity demonstrate that in some respects, both the distinct periods of an individual’s life, and the sacred and secular realms of society, are part of an integrated whole.

We are captivated by the crossroads at which this particular nun has found herself, because her dilemmas and decisions resonate with our own, regardless of belief, gender, language or other characteristics. Not only does Mother Vera vividly evoke its specific setting, in doing so, it lays bare universal struggles.

Mother Vera is beautifully constructed and manages to be both lavish and minimalist at the same time. The existential nature of the material that it explores, combined with its appeal to the senses, mean that it lingers in the mind long after the film has ended.

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Helen Hall is a priest in the Church of England

– ref. Mother Vera: beautiful documentary film about a nun’s dilemma – reviewed by a priest – https://theconversation.com/mother-vera-beautiful-documentary-film-about-a-nuns-dilemma-reviewed-by-a-priest-263746

August 27, 2025

Why personal finance is harder when you’re a migrant

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kumbirai Mabwe, Senior Lecturer in Banking and Finance, Cardiff Metropolitan University

Skilled migrants play an important role in the UK economy. But while the UK celebrates the skills they bring, it doesn’t always make it easy for them to thrive financially.

Migrants tend to arrive with a good work ethic, qualifications, professional experience and a drive to succeed. But unlike UK natives who grow up with the country’s financial system, they have to navigate unfamiliar banks and financial products. They might also come up against unwritten rules, such as needing a good credit score to access mortgages, loans and even mobile phone contracts.

The UK has relatively high levels of financial literacy compared to other countries. However, financial literacy and financial behaviour tend to vary between natives and migrants. Additionally, migrants may face other disadvantages such as unrecognised qualifications or pay gaps.

The UK government has made banking easier in recent years, but opening an account can be a challenge for newly arrived migrants. They may not be able to meet stringent identity document requirements, for example.

Most skilled migrants arrive with no knowledge of the credit score system. Those who do are sometimes still surprised that they cannot bring their overseas credit score and need to start again from scratch.

home screen of experian website on a phone surrounded by pound coins — Having no UK credit score can leave migrants invisible to financial service providers.
Ascannio/Shutterstock

A lack of UK credit history isn’t a reflection of migrants’ financial irresponsibility. Rather, it is a consequence of coming from a different financial system. But without a UK credit record, lenders cannot assess reliability, often restricting migrants’ access to credit. This has short and long-term financial consequences. Migrants are not “poor”, but they are financially invisible and may end up paying more for credit.

Migrants also often face distinct challenges in terms of their financial priorities (things like cost of visas, supporting family or investing in their home country, for example). These may delay or limit their engagement with the UK financial system.

These differing priorities are shaped by cultural norms, attitudes towards debt and risk, and varying levels of trust in financial institutions. Skilled migrants often arrive with debt from their move and may take on more while settling in the UK.

But unfamiliarity with the UK financial system can then make it hard to distinguish between good and bad debt –in other words, the kind of debt that might ultimately make them wealthier like a mortgage or loan to pay for education, as opposed to high-interest borrowing, for example.

Day-to-day money

Though skilled migrants may have budgeting and saving skills, their struggle to find appropriate financial products can mean resorting to risky and unregulated ways of accessing credit such as rotating credit and saving associations. These schemes are typical in developing countries and involve a group pooling their money, with one member periodically receiving a lump sum.

Skilled migrants can also face restrictions when it comes to accessing public funds such as welfare benefits. This underscores the importance of maintaining emergency funds, perhaps covering three to six months of living expenses but which migrants tend not to have.

This financial preparedness becomes even more important given the tightening in the job market, changing immigration rules and rising visa costs. These bring uncertainty, which can affect long-term financial planning for things like retirement and pensions.

Our research has also uncovered gender-based differences in skilled migrants’ financial behaviour. Unfortunately, female migrants seem to be more financially vulnerable than their male counterparts – often because of lower levels of education as well as remaining reliant on male partners, who may have arrived in the UK before they did.

Ultimately, though, the longer someone has stayed in the UK the better from a financial point of view. They tend to become familiar with the system, and their financial literacy improves.

Services like the Money and Pensions Service offer financial guidance, including debt advice. Citizens Advice and MoneyHelper also play an important role in supporting migrants to improve their understanding of budgeting, debt and access to financial services.

But these services may still lack understanding of the cultural diversity and dual lives of migrants. Tailored financial advice is essential to help these people make informed decisions and achieve long-term stability. This advice could come from ethnic-minority financial wellness coaches who take into account migrants’ diverse values, lifestyles and opportunities.

The journey of a skilled migrant to the UK is a testament to their ambition. It is vital that banks and policymakers invest in education, products and services that are tailored to migrants’ specific financial needs.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why personal finance is harder when you’re a migrant – https://theconversation.com/why-personal-finance-is-harder-when-youre-a-migrant-262976

August 27, 2025

Gaza: civilian death toll outpaces other modern wars

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neta Crawford, Montague Burton Chair in International Relations, University of Oxford

Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel, mostly unarmed civilians, in its surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023. Using Gaza health ministry statistics, the UN says more than 62,000 people have subsequently been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas. An additional 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank.

The statistics do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. But Israeli government officials have consistently said their military works hard to keep civilian harm to a minimum. As Ophir Falk, a foreign policy adviser to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 2024: “Any civilian casualty is a tragedy for sure. Israel seeks to minimise the civilian casualties, while Hamas seeks to maximise them.”

Falk added: “We seek to minimise them for two main reasons … one, it’s the right thing to do. We’re the only Jewish country on Earth, and that is our policy to minimise civilian casualties. And the other reason is because it’s effective.” By effective, he means that hurting civilians can backfire. It can lead to a loss of domestic and international support for the war, as well as increased Palestinian resistance.

Israeli media outlets have also detailed the “extensive measures” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it takes to keep civilians in Gaza safe. And they have repeated claims such as: “What the IDF has been doing in Gaza in this war is unprecedented in urban warfare, both in pace and caution.”

Israeli officials dispute the numbers of Palestinian civilians reported to have been killed in Gaza. Some have even claimed that the Gaza health ministry and UN have “lied” about the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the war.

But figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database, reported recently by the Guardian, indicate that 83% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza as of May have been civilians.

Preventing civilian harm

The protection of civilians in war has not always been taken for granted. The US only began to emphasise the minimisation of inadvertent harm to civilians, or “collateral damage”, after the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

The inadvertent killing of civilians and massacres such as My Lai, where as many as 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers were killed by US soldiers in 1968, were widely condemned. Precautions to avoid civilian harm, known as civilian casualty or civilian harm mitigation, have been gradually integrated into US military operations since then.

The US developed a practice of making pre-strike estimates of possible civilian harm – collateral damage estimates – in the 1990s. This was refined during the post-9/11 wars.

If civilian harm is estimated to be above a certain threshold, and disproportionate to the expected military advantage of an operation, the US military might change how it engages or not strike at all. US methods to minimise civilian casualties have been consistently updated, as recently as August 2022 and July 2024.

These precautions have not always been adhered to. They have also sometimes been relaxed when the US believes doing so is justified. But when they have been followed, the rate of civilian killing has been reduced.

A sculpture commemorating the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
Steve Barze / Shutterstock

The impetus for the US military to develop these programmes was not only to minimise harm to its own reputation and a desire to follow the laws of war. The point was also to avoid creating more militants by killing civilians.

The 2007 US Counterinsurgency Field Manual underscores the importance of avoiding civilian harm. It states: “an operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if collateral damage leads to the recruitment of 50 more insurgents.”

It was equally important to convince observers that every effort was being made to ensure civilians were protected. As a 2006 study by US-based thinktank RAND corporation, paid for by the US air force, said:

By emphasizing the efforts that are being made to reduce civilian casualties (such as increased precision, smaller blast effects, improved target verification and so on), the Air Force and Department of Defense can help ensure that the US Congress and public have continued reason to trust that the US military is seeking new ways to reduce the prospects of civilian deaths in future military operations.

A demonstrated commitment to a philosophy of continuous improvement may be what is needed to ensure this trust in the future, and in the case of foreign audiences, to build trust in the first place.

Israel also began to use some of these methods. And it developed its own, context-specific practices in its wars with the Palestinians and other neighbours. In fact, Israel was a pioneer in the use of targeted drone strikes that it said were aimed at killing Palestinian militant leaders while avoiding civilian harm.

However, investigations have shown that Israel loosened its rules of engagement after the October 7 attacks. The New York Times reported that an order by military leadership authorised officers to risk killing up to 20 people in each airstrike targeting Hamas. In one extreme example from July 2024, a strike on Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif killed at least 90 civilians and injured around 300 more.

Israel’s own military data also now shows that Israeli officials have both overstated the number of militants they say have been killed and, by implication, the ratio of civilian to militant deaths.

Prior to the Guardian’s report, Israeli officials said the military had killed 17,000 to 18,000 Hamas combatants and other “terrorists”. They also implied that 50% of the total deaths in Gaza were Hamas or other combatants. Netanyahu simultaneously decried what he called “outrageous” claims of civilian casualty rates of up to 70%.

But Israel’s own numbers show the actual civilian casualty rate in Gaza is much higher than the figure Netanuyahu calls outrageous. It is also high compared to other conflicts. Research by the Costs of War project, which I co-founded, show that the rate of civilian casualties in American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were 68% and 26% respectively.

Civilians never deserve to be harmed through carelessness, inadvertence or deliberate targeting. Yet given the kind of war Israel is fighting – using large, indiscriminate weapons to destroy buildings and failing to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant – it has unsurprisingly produced high civilian casualty rates.

Neta Crawford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Gaza: civilian death toll outpaces other modern wars – https://theconversation.com/gaza-civilian-death-toll-outpaces-other-modern-wars-263685

August 27, 2025

Xi, Putin and Modi to meet in China – but don’t expect their Eurasian bloc summit to agree on anything important

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

The upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, will be the organisation’s largest gathering of heads of state to date. It comes at a time when the existing liberal international order is rapidly disintegrating. But rather than offering a concrete new order, the SCO demonstrates the persistent difficulties that anti-liberal powers such as China and Russia have in agreeing and implementing a credible alternative.

Founded in Shanghai in 2001 with just six members – Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – the SCO has grown rapidly over the past decade. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023, and Belarus in 2024. Beyond these ten member states, the SCO also has two observers – Afghanistan and Mongolia – and 14 dialogue partners, including Turkey, Egypt, Armenia and Azerbaijan, several of the Gulf states, and a number of other Asian states. If measured by population of its core member states, it is the world’s largest regional organisation.

Size clearly matters, but in the case of the SCO it creates problems rather than contributing to their resolution. The organisation did little in response to escalating tensions between India and Pakistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Kashmir that eventually brought the two long-standing rivals to the brink of nuclear confrontation. It took US mediation to de-escalate the violence. The SCO’s subsequent failure to condemn cross-border terrorism explicitly in a joint statement of the meeting of defence ministers at the end of June led India to refuse to sign it.

When Israel attacked Iran, the SCO issued a strongly worded condemnation of the attacks. But India distanced itself officially from the SCO statement.

These and other simmering tensions, such as between India and China over a new dam project in Tibet, are likely to be papered over at the SCO summit in Tianjin. China’s president, Xi Jinping, will be keen to demonstrate his country’s leadership of a large coalition of like-minded nations who oppose the hitherto US-led liberal international order.

However, the theme of this year’s summit is “Upholding the Shanghai Spirit: SCO on the Move”. This sounds more like an aspirational plea to member states, observers and dialogue partners rather than a concrete plan for action.

The so-called Shanghai spirit – a hazy mixture of standard Chinese talking points about mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation – is little more than empty rhetoric. It is also very fragile.

Two member states – India and Pakistan – have recently gone to war with each other. Two SCO dialogue partners – Armenia and Azerbaijan – have been involved in several full-scale violent confrontations since they became dialogue partners almost a decade ago. And if they have now embraced the Shanghai spirit, they did so, ironically, in Washington and after their relations with Russia significantly soured.

Nor does the SCO have much of a track record of constructive involvement in internal conflicts in its member states and dialogue partners, such as Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar. This is even more obvious in the case of Afghanistan where Russia’s recent official recognition of the Taliban government poses yet another challenge to the SCO.

China has cautiously welcomed Russia’s recognition but not followed suit, while several Central Asian member states of the SCO already have a wide range of economic ties with Afghanistan. But Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states remain deeply ambivalent about the Taliban regime.

It’s also worth noting that the SCO’s very selective commitment to the Shanghai spirit does not extend to relations between the organisation and non-member states. That much is evident from the SCO’s lack of condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine. So it’s difficult to see where the SCO will move. Previous summits in 2022, 2023 and 2024 produced lengthy declarations of intent – but little follow-through.

Elephant in the room

The marked difference to these previous summits is, of course, Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

On the one hand, Trump has demonstrated the near-irrelevance of the SCO as a security player compared to the indispensability of the US when it comes to managing crises, such as those between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan and Cambodia and Thailand.

On the other hand, Trump’s weaponisation of trade has created a new dynamic within the SCO. The US president’s imposition of punitive tariffs might see the organisation’s most powerful countries – China, Russia and India – align more closely against the US.

Sanctions against Russia, however unlikely they may be to be fully implemented by Trump, are still on the table. Heavy tariffs have now been imposed on India for continuing to buy Russian oil. And the trade war with China is only paused but not settled.

For their own sake, and even more so for the sake of their actual and potential partners in the global south, China, Russia and India must demonstrate a unity of purpose at the SCO summit. They will condemn the US and the liberal international order, which Trump himself is actively eroding. But their unity of purpose will be limited and performative.

Meanwhile, the differences that remain between them and their conflicting individual aspirations of leadership in a post-American international order will prevent them from offering a credible alternative.

Undoubtedly, there will be carefully choreographed displays of solidarity and aspirational statements of how the spirit of Shanghai will shape a new international order. But these rest on the false premise that a post-American international order will be a non-American order.

Trump may try to make a deal with Russia and China on a new world order, but a president who publicly muses about renaming the US department of defence to the department of war is unlikely to cede global leadership – at least not without a fight.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

– ref. Xi, Putin and Modi to meet in China – but don’t expect their Eurasian bloc summit to agree on anything important – https://theconversation.com/xi-putin-and-modi-to-meet-in-china-but-dont-expect-their-eurasian-bloc-summit-to-agree-on-anything-important-262243

August 27, 2025

Escaped slaves on St. Croix hid their settlements so well, they still haven’t been found – archaeologists using new mapping technology are on the hunt

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Justin Dunnavant, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles

The red square on this 1767 map of St. Croix marks where Danes believed the Maroon settlement was. Paul Kuffner/Royal Danish Library

“For a long time now, a large number of [escaped slaves] have established themselves on lofty Maroon Hill in the mountains toward the west end of the island [of St. Croix]. … They are there protected by the impenetrable bush and by their own wariness.”

Those are the words of Christian Oldendorp, a Danish missionary who visited the Caribbean island of St. Croix in 1767. His account is one of the few Danish historical records of Maronberg, a community of escaped slaves, known as Maroons, in the northwest mountain ranges of the island.

In 1733, the Danish West India-Guinea Company purchased St. Croix from France and quickly expanded the island’s sugar and cotton production. This also meant expanding the slave population to harvest lucrative plantations. But the Danes were never able to fully control the island – or the enslaved. By the end of the 1700s, nearly 1,400 people – more than 10% of the enslaved population – successfully escaped captivity. But where did they escape to? Only recently have researchers started to shed more light on this centuries-old mystery.

As an archaeologist specializing in slavery and resistance, I’ve excavated plantations in the Americas and used geographic information systems to model Maroon escape routes by sea. Recently, I turned my attention to Maroon settlements on land, working with a team of archaeologists to locate Maronberg.

Maroon Ridge on St. Croix is believed to have been home to hundreds of escaped enslaved people from 1733-1848.
Justin Dunnavant, CC BY

Honoring a legacy

I first learned about Maronberg on a nature tour of St. Croix given by local activist and University of the Virgin Islands professor Olasee Davis in 2016. At that time, I was on the island to excavate a sugar plantation, a project that gave my colleagues and me a unique perspective on the enslaved experience in the Danish-controlled Caribbean.

In August 2025, Davis’ decades-long campaign to create an official heritage sanctuary to protect Maronberg finally came to fruition. The local government purchased 2,386 acres of land to serve as the U.S. Virgin Islands Maroon Territorial Park.

But one problem remains: We have yet to find the physical remains of the settlement. Locating and preserving Maronberg’s historical artifacts and buildings could provide new insight into residents’ way of life and give greater meaning to the sanctuary.

Fortunately, advanced computer modeling and high-resolution maps are helping us get closer to pinpointing the settlement.

Finding what was meant to remain hidden

Many Maroon settlements in the Americas have proved difficult to locate. This makes sense when you consider that their inhabitants were trying to hide from colonial settlers. If the Danes had found Maronberg, they would have either killed its inhabitants or forced them back into slavery.

Runaways tended to settle in areas that were intentionally difficult to access, like remote swampy or mountainous terrain. Houses and other shelters often consisted of semipermanent structures so that Maroons could relocate as needed to avoid detection.

The boundaries of Maronberg and the size of the settlement along the northwestern mountain range remain unknown. Colonial militias attempted periodic raids, but historical records report that they were met with rugged terrain, booby traps and counterattacks.

The missionary Oldendorp wrote: “[The Maroons] keep every approach safe by attempting carefully to conceal small, pointed stakes of poisoned wood so that the unwary pursuer might wound his foot on them and therefore be prevented from continuing the chase as a result of the unbearable pain.”

All those precautions paid off: The Danes were never able to penetrate the Maroons’ encampment.

Using new tech to see 300 years into the past

Recent attempts by researchers to locate Maronberg began in 2007, with more extensive geographic information systems mapping conducted in 2008. These digital, computer-based geographic programs allow researchers to store a range of geological data and model spatial patterns across vast terrains.

Pairing a historical map with a low-resolution elevation map from the U.S. Geological Survey, archaeologist Bo Ejstrud created a predictive model to assess the probable location of the Maroon settlement. He considered elevation, slope and colonial infrastructure to identify the most remote areas of St. Croix with the least visibility from colonial lines of sight.

Back in the 1700s, urban centers accounted for only a small percentage of the overall landmass of the 83-square-mile (215-square-kilometer) island. Much of the land was either plantations or uninhabited forests and mountains. Ejstrud’s model reaffirmed the likelihood of a Maroon settlement in the northwest region. But it left us with a massive survey area. The map also didn’t account for the possibility that the settlement moved over time.

In 2020, I teamed up with archaeologists Steven Wernke, from Vanderbilt University’s Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory, and Lauren Kohut, from Winthrop University’s Geospatial Environmental Modeling Lab. Together, we developed and visualized a more dynamic model using advances in mapping since 2008.

We began by digitizing two of the most detailed colonial maps of St. Croix – one from 1750 and another from 1799. These maps, created by Danish military engineers and surveyors, detail the spread of plantations, roads and settlements over time.

Next, in order to build a digital elevation model of the island’s terrain, we incorporated high-resolution light detection and ranging, or lidar, data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Whereas traditional digital elevation models can be skewed by dense vegetation and trees, lidar uses laser pulses that penetrate through the forest canopy to map the Earth’s surface. This technology allows us to analyze some of the most secluded, inaccessible areas on the island. Prior to 2013, lidar was too costly for archaeological research purposes. But these days, it’s built into many cellphones.

By layering these datasets in geographic information systems software, we created a suitability model that estimated where Maroon settlements were most likely to have existed. In addition to isolation and visibility, we also incorporated accessibility to water sources and terrain ruggedness to model the degree of mobility through the landscape.

This approach allowed us to simulate how the opportunities and constraints the landscape offered to people seeking refuge shifted as colonial society grew over time.

side-by-side maps of where Maroon settlements were believed to be on St. Croix in 1750 and 1799 — The red areas indicate where on St. Croix that Maroons may have settled. The area shrank between 1750 and 1799, as the Danish settlers spread out.
Lauren Kohut, Steven A. Wernke and Justin Dunnavant, CC BY

Mapping changes

In addition to providing more nuance to the picture of the areas where Maroons potentially settled, our research suggests that the Maroon settlement wasn’t static, but likely waned as colonial infrastructure increased on the island. Our model implies that the area of suitable land for clandestine Maroon communities shrank by more than 90% in just 50 years.

It’s possible that over time there were fewer runaways. More likely, more Maroons left the island by boat for destinations such as Puerto Rico and Tortola.

Where we go from here

Though our findings still don’t provide an exact location for Maronberg, they get us one step closer to locating the physical remains of this centuries-old Maroon community. The next step will be to visit these sites and survey them for evidence of historical settlement. Archaeological research at these sites would help us understand more about the Maroons who turned a rugged landscape into a sanctuary for freedom.

Ultimately, identifying artifacts and historical sites within the newly established U.S. Virgin Islands Maroon Territorial Park would help us develop educational tours and honor the Maroon legacy.

Justin Dunnavant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Escaped slaves on St. Croix hid their settlements so well, they still haven’t been found – archaeologists using new mapping technology are on the hunt – https://theconversation.com/escaped-slaves-on-st-croix-hid-their-settlements-so-well-they-still-havent-been-found-archaeologists-using-new-mapping-technology-are-on-the-hunt-237291

August 27, 2025

Tchad : l’emprisonnement de Succès Masra, symbole d’un espace politique verrouillé

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Bourdjolbo Tchoudiba, Doctorant en Sciences Politiques-Université Paris-Est Créteil, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire d’Études du Politique Hannah Arendt (LIPHA), Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne (UPEC)

L’ancien Premier ministre tchadien et chef du parti d’opposition Les Transformateurs, Succès Masra, a été condamné à 20 ans de prison et à une lourde amende d’un milliard de FCFA (1, 666 million de dollars US). Masra a été reconnu coupable de « diffusion de messages à caractère haineux et xénophobe » et de « complicité de meurtre » dans les violences communautaires qui ont fait une quarantaine de morts en mai dernier.

Le Tchad semble ainsi se refermer sur son opposition. Après la mort violente de Yaya Dillo en 2024, c’est autour de Succès Masra, qui incarnait l’espoir d’un pluralisme politique, d’être neutralisé. En tant que chercheur ayant étudié la vie politique du pays, Bourdjolbo Tchoudiba décrypte les effets politiques de ce verdict, y voyant un stratagème visant à rétrécir l’espace démocratique, au risque d’installer une crise politique et sociale durable.

Comment analysez-vous ce verdict par rapport à la carrière politique de Succès Masra ?

L’affaire Masra, depuis son arrestation le 16 mai 2025 — survenue deux jours seulement après le conflit communautaire de Mandakaou, au sud du Tchad — a été entachée d’irrégularités à toutes les étapes de la procédure. Le verdict du 9 août 2025 de la Chambre criminelle, le condamnant à 20 ans de prison ferme, confirme la thèse d’un procès politique avancée dès le début de cette affaire.

Plusieurs médias, organisations de la société civile et ONG considèrent qu’il s’agit d’un procès à motivation politique .

À première vue, ce verdict constitue une victoire pour le régime militaire tchadien qui a visiblement opté pour le rétrécissement de l’espace politique depuis le début de la transition politique en 2021 en neutralisant les principaux leaders de l’opposition. L’assassinat physique et politique de Yaya Dillo, l’un des principaux opposants du régime en 2023, et la condamnation de Masra en sont les exemples les plus palpables.

Mais ce verdict fragilise aussi le lent processus démocratique enclenché depuis 1990 et cristallise des tensions qui ne se résorberont pas aussi facilement.

La peine infligée à Masra témoigne de l’instrumentalisation de l’appareil judiciaire. Elle s’inscrit dans une longue séquence de répressions visant opposants, société civile, leaders d’opinion. La justice apparaît ainsi comme arme politique. À ce rythme, le climat politique déjà tendu risque de replonger le Tchad dans l’instabilité.

Est-ce la fin de la carrière politique de Succès Masra ?

Le parcours atypique du président du parti Les Transformateurs, sa capacité de résilience et à incarner une véritable alternative semblent avoir pesé dans l’issue du verdict. Opposant majeur du régime, il a été contraint à un court exil après la répression de la manifestation du 20 octobre 2022. Cette mobilisation réprimée dans le sang avait fait plus de 300 morts. Elle avait été organisée pour protester contre la prolongation unilatérale de la transition.

Il est revenu en novembre 2023 à la faveur d’un accord de «réconciliation». Quelques semaines plus tard, il a été nommé Premier ministre le 1ᵉʳ janvier 2024, puis a démissionné pour se présenter à l’élection présidentielle du 6 mai 2024.

Lors de ce scrutin, Masra a été officiellement crédité de 18,53 % des voix face à Mahamat Idriss Déby (61,03 %), des résultats qu’il a contestés.

Sa condamnation après ce procès expéditif laisse penser à la fin de sa carrière politique. Par ailleurs, le départ de certains cadres influents fragilise davantage son parti, confronté à un véritable défi de survie.

Ce verdict fige son image. Il renforce en même temps sa popularité auprès de sa base et des sympathisants qui le perçoivent comme une victime d’une justice instrumentalisée par le régime au pouvoir.

Cette condamnation rétrécit ainsi son espace d’action (emprisonnement, inéligibilité de facto) tout en augmentant son capital symbolique de martyr dans une trajectoire politique déjà marquée par la répression du 20 octobre 2022 (« Jeudi noir »).

Beaucoup de Tchadiens évoquent la possibilité d’une grâce présidentielle suivie d’une amnistie pour donner une seconde vie politique à Succès Masra. Il peut également bénéficier de la réduction ou de l’annulation de peine après le recours en appel introduit par ses avocats.

Comment cette condamnation pourrait-elle reconfigurer le rapport de force entre pouvoir et opposition au Tchad ?

À court terme, cette condamnation renforce l’emprise du parti au pouvoir sur l’échiquier politique tchadien. Depuis le verdict, Les Transformateurs traverse déjà des fractures internes. Cela réduit le risque pour le régime d’une figure unique capable de cristalliser la contestation dans la rue et de s’imposer dans les urnes. Cet emprisonnement affaiblira forcément la capacité de mobilisation du parti Les Transformateurs et occasionnera le départ de certains de ses membres influents, à l’image du vice-président Dr Sitack Yombatina Béni, qui, quelques jours après le verdict, a démissionné.

C’est d’ailleurs l’un des objectifs qui se cache derrière cette condamnation. Celui de décapiter le parti et de coopter ses membres influents. Mais cette stratégie de déstabilisation, déjà tentée par le passé, peut-elle aboutir cette fois-ci ?

La direction collégiale mise en place sous l’ordre de Succès Masra, dans la foulée de sa condamnation, pourrait se réorganiser autour de certains leaders clés qui incarnent l’idéologie de ce parti. La désignation de la vice-présidente chargée de la condition féminine, Claudia Hoinathy pour assurer l’intérim à la tête du parti, sonne comme un choix stratégique caractéristique de la résilience des transformateurs.

À moyen terme, l’avenir ce parti demeure incertain. Le pouvoir multiplie les manœuvres dans un jeu politique déséquilibré, visant la déstabilisation totale de l’opposition. La condamnation de Masra s’inscrit dans une dynamique où l’opposition, décapitée et fragmentée, peine à construire un front uni. Le scénario le plus préoccupant reste celui d’une dissolution du parti, comme ce fut le cas pour le Parti socialiste sans frontières (PSF) de Yaya Dillo en 2023, après son assassinat.

Enfin, le Tchad n’est pas aussi stable que certains pourraient le penser. L’appareil sécuritaire et de défense est déjà éprouvé par des répressions sanglantes des évènements de 2021–2022 (usage récurrent de la force contre les rassemblements) et marqué par de dérives diverses (défection, règlement de compte, incompétence, impunité, conflit d’intérêt, etc.). Ce qui pourrait fragiliser et provoquer la déstabilisation du pouvoir si la contestation se déporte vers des formes de guérilla urbaine ou de manifestation violente.

La dissuasion à court terme imposée par la condamnation de Masra pourrait se traduire, à long terme, par un durcissement du conflit politique, qui risque de rompre l’équilibre déjà précaire du pays.

Quel impact ce verdict pourrait-il avoir sur la démocratie et les libertés au Tchad ?

Cette condamnation suscite déjà de vives critiques. Par exemple, Human Rights Watch dénonce un procès à caractère politique et estime que la peine « envoie un message effrayant aux détracteurs du gouvernement ». Le risque d’une crise socio-politique se dessine à travers ce verrouillage de l’appareil judiciaire qui pourrait provoquer des tensions violentes.

Plusieurs signaux convergent vers un recul démocratique et la violation des libertés au Tchad. Depuis le début de la transition politique tchadienne en 2021 jusqu’à aujourd’hui, les libertés publiques (réunion, expression, association, presse, etc.) se sont considérablement restreintes. Les organisations de la société civile, de défense des droits humains et de la presse ont été suspendues.

L’interdiction des manifestations, les arrestations de dissidents et la suspension d’organisations civiles et médiatiques confirment cette dérive autoritaire.

Le précédent d’octobre 2022 illustre cette dynamique. Il criminalise la parole publique à travers des accusations d’incitation, de xénophobie ou de violences intercommunautaires. Ce qui a installé un climat d’autocensure. En neutralisant le pluralisme politique, il favorise de fait une dérive monopartiste qui rappelle les années sombres ayant suivi l’indépendance en 1960.

Des affaires visant des opposants de premier plan – de Yaya Dillo en 2024 à Succès Masra après une élection contestée – renforcent l’inquiétude sur l’indépendance de la justice. Elles alimentent aussi la perception d’une crise de légitimité du pouvoir.

Si le verdict est confirmé, il risque de compromettre les promesses de réconciliation nationale et d’aggraver la défiance envers des institutions judiciaires déjà discréditées.

Quelles conditions seraient nécessaires pour apaiser les tensions politiques liées à cette affaire ?

Après la répression du 20 octobre 2022, Masra était rentré d’exil grâce à l’« accord de Kinshasa », signé sous l’égide de la Communauté économique des États de l’Afrique centrale (CEEAC). Cet accord, suivi par une amnistie, lui garantissait ses droits politiques et juridiques.

Mais ce verdict lui ôte toutes ces garanties auxquelles les autorités tchadiennes s’étaient engagées devant la communauté internationale.

À ce stade, il est urgent que la communauté internationale, et en particulier la CEEAC ainsi que le facilitateur désigné, le président de la RDC Félix Tshisekedi, interviennent pour assurer la médiation et faire respecter l’accord de Kinshasa. Elle doit rappeler à l’État sa responsabilité d’assurer une justice équitable et exiger le respect des libertés politiques et civiques, condition indispensable à une véritable réconciliation.

Bourdjolbo Tchoudiba does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Tchad : l’emprisonnement de Succès Masra, symbole d’un espace politique verrouillé – https://theconversation.com/tchad-lemprisonnement-de-succes-masra-symbole-dun-espace-politique-verrouille-263399

August 27, 2025

Latin American literature contains warnings for American universities that yield to Trump

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Charlotte Rogers, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia

Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, who fled Colombia after learning that the government planned to arrest him, returns to his hometown, Aracataca, in 2007 for the first time in 20 years. Alejandra Vega/AFP via Getty Images

As university leaders work to make deals with the Trump administration, many college presidents are at an ethical crossroads. On the one hand, they must do all they can to restore funding for vital research. On the other, they risk ceding to the demands of a president with views that don’t align with their missions.

As the fall semester begins, academic administrators could look to literature for guidance. Latin America’s rich archive of fiction over the past century features this dilemma in numerous stories about living under dictatorships.

Among many others, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, Colombian writer and journalist Gabriel García Márquez and Argentine author Luisa Valenzuela have mined the region’s turbulent political history to explore how authoritarian rulers bend institutional leaders to their will by cultivating fear.

Lessons from the bookshelves

In these works, some threats are more overtly coercive than others.

Vargas Llosa’s “The Feast of the Goat” details how Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo reportedly fed insubordinate underlings to voracious crocodiles, an image that, for me, has echoes in Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz. In García Márquez’s “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” an illiterate strongman takes over all institutions to such an extreme that “él solo era el gobierno” – he alone was the government.

Yet to me, the greatest danger that Latin American literature foretells for higher education is the insidious way capitulation to authoritarians changes both individuals and institutions.

This is the subject of “The Censors,” a 1976 short story by Valenzuela. Back then, all but four Latin American countries were dominated by authoritarian regimes.

The main character in Valenzuela’s story is an average Joe – aptly named Juan – who writes a letter to his beloved Mariana, now living in Paris. Soon after he mails the letter, Juan is beset by fear that despite its innocuous sentiments, his message will be construed by authorities as subversive. He worries that secret military forces will fly to Paris and kidnap Mariana from her apartment. (Masked men forcing people into unmarked vehicles is a common sight in dictatorships, then and now.)

Juan decides he must “sabotage the machinery, throw sand in its gears.” So he becomes a censor for the regime in hopes of intercepting his own letter as it works its way through the painfully slow Post Office Censorship Division.

University leaders, much like Juan, begin with the best of intentions. They initially collaborate with the government’s demands because they want to protect the university’s mission.

A woman with blonde hair presents a medal on a stage to an older woman with short, black, curly hair. — Journalist Silvia Lemus, left, presents an award to Argentine writer Luisa Valenzuela at the Guadalajara International Book Fair on Dec. 1, 2019.
Leonardo Alvarez Hernandez/Getty Images

But once the concessions are made, things begin to change.

In “The Censors,” Juan discovers he has a knack for redacting questionable letters. Assigned to a division that checks correspondence for explosives, he watches as a co-worker’s right hand gets blown off. Yet when a colleague tries to organize a demonstration advocating for safer working conditions, Juan reports him to the authorities and is rewarded with a swift promotion.

Juan justifies his opportunism as a one-off rather than a personal transformation: “Una vez no crea hábito” – “One time doesn’t create a habit” – he reassures himself as he leaves his boss’s office.

As he reaches the highest echelons of the censorship authority, Juan’s sense of purpose blurs beyond recognition. He now considers flagging subversive letters and condemning their authors to be “a truly patriotic task, both self-sacrificing and uplifting.”

At this exact moment, Juan encounters his own letter to Mariana. “Naturally,” the narrator declares acidly, “he censored it without regret.” In the last lines of the story, the narrator reveals that Juan was executed the following day.

Juan, Valenzuela concludes with devastating irony, is “one more victim of devotion to his work.”

Universities in the crosshairs

In his zeal to capitulate, Juan deals himself a death blow, and I can’t help but wonder if universities are heading down the same perilous path.

In an official statement, Brown University noted on July 30, 2025, that it will “comply with the Trump administration’s vision” on admissions practices. Likewise, Columbia University has agreed to direct governmental oversight of its Middle East studies department, while the University of Pennsylvania will no longer allow trans women on female sports teams.

At the University of Virginia, where I’m an associate professor of Spanish, President James E. Ryan resigned under intense pressure from the Department of Justice in June 2025.

For most of his seven years in leadership, Ryan set out to make the university more diverse and open doors for first-generation and low- to middle-income students.

Middle-aged man with short, brown hair, wearing a suit and tie. — University of Virginia President James E. Ryan resigned in June 2025.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

By the time of his resignation, however, the university had already yielded to demands from a conservative alumni group to de-emphasize the history of enslavement during campus tours. And it had adopted “institutional neutrality,” meaning it would no longer take a position on, say, mass starvation in Gaza.

In March 2025, the university’s governing board voted to dismantle the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion office at the behest of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Three months later, Ryan was gone.

More to come?

As the White House continues its pressure campaign, academic administrators may face more funding threats in the future. I worry that if humanities programs are cut – the University of Chicago just paused admissions to doctoral programs in literature, philosophy, the arts and languages, citing “this moment of uncertainty” – students will lose the opportunity to be introduced to works like “The Censors.”

Columbia maintains it has safeguarded academic freedom by making a deal. But as Wesleyan University President Michael Roth told PBS, the academic community remains skeptical about the durability of these agreements.

Perhaps some administrators believe, as Juan did, that “one time doesn’t create a habit.”

But higher education, I fear, is being swallowed by its leaders’ “devotion to their work.”

The perspectives in this article do not reflect the official position of the University of Virginia.

– ref. Latin American literature contains warnings for American universities that yield to Trump – https://theconversation.com/latin-american-literature-contains-warnings-for-american-universities-that-yield-to-trump-262679