#Arbitrarily arrested

[corvidfeathers]

hey theater friends, I need you to pay attention to this. a friend of a friend of mine, Ahmed Tobasi from the Freedom Theatre, a community-based theatre and cultural centre in Jenin Refugee Camp in occupied Palestine was arrested by the IDF on December 13th, along with his brother and several other theater members. Tobasi was released today, but other members are still being held by the IDF. The theater is asking the international theater community to speak up about this, and let Israel know that our eyes are on this. They say, "we continue to ask people to demand the immediate release of Mustafa Sheta and Jamal Abu Joas, as with the over 100+ people taken by the Israeli Army in the last two days."

You can read the Freedom Theatre's direct updates here. And on their twitter, here.

From their document:

For decades, Palestinian artists have been arbitrarily detained by Israel, sometimes for years, who also target and destroy cultural buildings, a war crime under international law. In the last few weeks in Gaza, an unprecedented number of writers, poets, theatremakers and journalists have been killed, including DR. Refaat Alareer, who was deliberately targeted and murdered.

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on May 1st protests and how the french goverment handled them?

^ The May 1st protests were pretty violent esp. in Paris; two cops were set on fire (they're ok, one has 2nd degree burns), lots of destruction in city streets, and hundreds of injured protesters. The French gov is sticking to its M.O. of denying any police violence against protesters, emphasising protesters' violence and portraying it as mindless anti-democratic savagery rather than the result of their own anti-democratic policies.

There were more people protesting in the streets on Monday than at any other May Day protest in the past 20 years (by a large margin—7 to 10x more people than usual.) And the numbers are still impressive in terms of this current social movement—there were about 1.2 million people at the first protest against the pension reform in January, 900K at one of the February protests, around 1.1M on March 7 and I think 1.2M on March 23rd... We're in May and there were 800K people in the streets on Monday (using the police's probably low estimate). The first marches earlier this year were peaceful; people started destroying shit in March after the 49.3 (=the gov not letting elected representatives vote on the reform); in the following weeks we saw a brutal escalation of police violence + suppression of just about any means of non-violent protest, which results in more violence.

The vast majority of protesters are still peaceful, but in terms of providing context for the increased violence, well—people protested peacefully, peaceful protests got banned. People banged pots and pans, pots and pans got banned and confiscated. People started a petition on the National Assembly website which got a record number of signatures, the petition was closed before its deadline and ignored. MPs asked (twice!) for a national referendum on the reform to be held, their requests were denied. Electricity unionists cut power in buildings Macron was visiting, now he travels around with a portable generator. Unions tried to distribute whistles and red cards (penalty cards) to football supporters before the French Cup finale last week, so the ones who wanted could use them if Macron showed up (he ended up hiding and greeting the footballers indoors rather than publicly on the stadium lawn); the police prefecture tried banning union members from gathering outside the stadium to distribute these items (although the ban was struck down by the judiciary as it was illegal, like most bans these days...)

Confiscating saucepans was already so absurd it felt like a gratuitous fuck you, but now they're trying to prevent the distribution of pieces of red paper. Cancelling petitions that would have had no real impact anyway. Prosecuting people for insulting Macron. Arbitrarily arresting hundreds of nonviolent protesters to intimidate them out of protesting (guess who's left then?). The French gov is systematically repressing democratic or nonviolent means of making your opinion heard, and when people get more violent they're like "This is unacceptable, don't these terrorists know there are other means of expressing dissent??" Where? This week a 77-year-old man was summoned to the police station and will be forced to take a "citizenship course" for having a banner outside his house that read "Macron fuck you" (Macron on t'emmerde). Note that he would have been arrested (like the woman who was arrested at her home and spent a night in police custody for calling Macron "garbage" on Facebook) but they decided not to only because of his age.

So that's where we're at; on Monday two cops caught on fire (well, their fireproof suit did) after protesters threw a Molotov cocktail at them. (The street medic who tried to help them with their burns ended up getting shot by a cop's riot gun a few seconds later—with French police no good deed goes unpunished!) The media talked a lot more about this incident than about the fact that the cop who got most severely injured on that day (broken vertebrae) was injured by an explosive grenade that a colleague of his meant to throw at protesters (you can see it at the end of the video below). If police with all their protective gear get so badly injured by their own weapons, no wonder the worst injuries have been on the protesters' side. (nearly 600 injured protesters on May 1st, 120 severely, according to street medics.) I'm not including images of these incidents in the video but on May 1st a protester had his hand mutilated by a police grenade + a 17 year old girl was hit in the eye by a grenade fragment, may end up losing it (during the Yellow Vests protests, Macron's first attempt at repressing a social movement, 38 protesters lost an eye or a hand).

What you see in the video: cops charging the front of a march to tear a banner off people's hands then retreating and drowning the street in tear gas when protesters throw paint bombs at them (protesters have umbrellas because of police drones); at 0:30, a journalist saying "They're not even arresting him, just kicking him when he's down—they kicked him right in the face!" then police spraying with tear gas protesters who try to fend them off; at 0:46 when a protester being arrested asks a journalist if he's filming and starts reading out loud a cop's ID number, another cop shoves the journalist and throws him to the ground; at 0:54, an Irish journalist runs away from the police tear gas grenades that you hear going off, at 01:08, the incident mentioned above when a cop drops a grenade he tried to throw, which explodes in his group, breaking another cop's vertebrae. There's a lot more I'm not including, like how CNN said "there's so much tear gas in Paris, our foreign correspondent can barely breathe", how another journalist was hit by a sting-ball grenade (he was also bludgeoned on the head so hard it broke his helmet—even though cops know the people wearing helmets are journalists...), and yet another journalist who was calling out a cop for aiming at people's heads with his riot gun (which is illegal) ended up having the guy aim the riot gun at his head from 2 metres away (getting shot with this "less lethal weapon" from that distance would be lethal.)

All of these videos are from May 1st (most of them from this account monitoring police violence.)

So yeah, nonviolent protests followed by violent police repression and bans of nonviolent means of protesting result in more violent protests. The French government responds by a) pikachu surpris, b) condemning violent protesters and praising violent police to the skies, c) continuing to ban everything they can think of. Confiscating saucepans didn't work but confiscating pieces of red paper will do the trick! Let's prosecute people for bashing or burning an effigy of Macron, because banning symbolic violence always works to prevent actual violence! And this week after the May 1st protests we learnt that the gov is thinking of making street barricades illegal, because that'll definitely solve everything. It's going to be interesting for history teachers to teach students about the 1789 revolution that allowed us to take down an absolutist regime and become a republic, under a government that banned barricades because they see them as terrorist anti-republican structures.

^ Statue symbolising the French Republic (on Place de la République in Paris) dressed with a 'Macron resign' shirt by protesters on May 1st.

[soon-palestine]

The report, “Handcuffed like dangerous criminals”: Arbitrary detention and forced returns of Sudanese refugees in Egypt, reveals how Sudanese refugees are rounded up and unlawfully deported to Sudan – an active conflict zone – without due process or opportunity to claim asylum in flagrant violation of international law. Evidence indicates that thousands of Sudanese refugees have been arbitrarily arrested and subsequently collectively expelled with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimating that 3,000 people were deported to Sudan from Egypt in September 2023 alone.

“It is unfathomable that Sudanese women, men and children fleeing the armed conflict in their country and seeking safety across the border into Egypt, are being rounded up en masse and arbitrarily detained in deplorable and inhumane conditions before being unlawfully deported,” said Sara Hashash, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“Egyptian authorities must immediately end this virulent campaign of mass arrests and collective expulsions. They must abide by their obligations under international human rights and refugee law to provide those fleeing the conflict in Sudan with safe and dignified passage to Egypt and unrestricted access to asylum procedures.”

For decades, Egypt was home to millions of Sudanese people studying, working, investing or receiving healthcare in the country, with Sudanese women and girls, as well as boys under 16, and men over 49 exempt from entry requirements. Around 500,000 Sudanese refugees are estimated to have fled to Egypt after the armed conflict erupted in Sudan in April 2023. However, in the following month, the Egyptian government introduced a visa entry requirement for all Sudanese nationals, leaving those fleeing with little choice but to escape through irregular border crossings.

The report documents in detail the ordeals of 27 Sudanese refugees who were arbitrarily arrested with about 260 others between October 2023 and March 2024 by Egypt’s Border Guard Forces operating under the Ministry of Defence, as well as police operating under the Ministry of Interior. It further documents how the authorities forcibly returned an estimated 800 Sudanese detainees between January and March 2024 who were all denied the possibility to claim asylum, including by accessing UNHCR, or to challenge deportation decisions.

The report is based on interviews with detained refugees, their relatives, community leaders, lawyers and a medical professional; as well as a review of official statements and documents and audiovisual evidence. The Egyptian ministries of defence and interior did not respond to Amnesty International’s letters sharing its documentation and recommendations, while the Egyptian National Council of Human Rights, the national human rights institution, rejected the findings claiming that authorities comply by their international obligations.

The spike in mass arrests and expulsions came after a prime ministerial decree issued in August 2023 requiring foreign nationals in Egypt to regularize their status. This was accompanied by a rise in xenophobic and racist sentiments both online and in the media as well as statements by government officials criticizing the economic “burden” of hosting “millions” of refugees.

It has also taken place against the backdrop of increased EU cooperation with Egypt on migration and border control, despite the country’s grim human rights record and well-documented abuses against migrants and refugees.

In October 2022, the EU and Egypt signed an €80 million cooperation agreement, which included building up the capacity of Egyptian Border Guard Forces to curb irregular migration and human trafficking across Egypt’s border. The agreement purports to apply “rights-based, protection oriented and gender sensitive approaches”. Yet, Amnesty International’s new report documents the involvement of the Border Guard Forces in violations against Sudanese refugees.

A further aid and investment package, under which migration is a key pillar, was agreed in March 2024 as part of the newly announced strategic and comprehensive partnership between the EU and Egypt.

“By cooperating with Egypt in the migration field without rigorous human rights safeguards, the EU risks complicity in Egypt’s human rights violations. The EU must press Egyptian authorities to adopt concrete measures to protect refugees and migrants,” said Sara Hashash.

“The EU must also carry out rigorous human rights risk assessments before implementing any migration cooperation and put in place independent monitoring mechanisms with clear human rights benchmarks. Cooperation must be halted or suspended immediately if there are risks or reports of abuses.” Arbitrary arrests from streets and hospitals

The mass arrests have mostly taken place in Greater Cairo (encompassing Cairo and Giza) and in the border areas in the governorate of Aswan or inside Aswan city. In Cairo and Giza, police have conducted mass stops and identity checks targeting Black individuals, spreading fear within the refugee community leaving many afraid to leave their homes.

Following arrest by police in Aswan, Sudanese refugees are transferred to police stations or the Central Security Forces camp, an unofficial detention place, in Shallal region. Those arrested by Border Guard Forces in Aswan governorate are detained in makeshift detention facilities including warehouses inside a military site in Abu Simbel and a horse stable inside another military site near Nagaa Al Karur before being forced into buses and vans and driven to the Sudanese border.

Conditions in these detention facilities are cruel and inhumane, with overcrowding, lack of access to toilets and sanitation facilities, substandard and insufficient food, and denial of adequate healthcare.

Amnesty International also documented the arrest of at least 14 refugees from public hospitals in Aswan, where they were receiving treatment for serious injuries sustained during road accidents on their journeys from Sudan to Egypt. Authorities transferred them – against medical advice and before they had fully recovered – to detention, where they were forced to sleep on the ground after surgery.

Amira, a 32-year-old Sudanese woman who fled Khartoum with her mother was receiving treatment at an Aswan hospital following a car crash on 29 October 2023 that left her with fractures to the neck and the back. Nora, a relative of Amira, told the organization that the doctors told her she would need three months of medical care, but after just 18 days police transferred her to a police station in Aswan where she was forced to sleep on the ground for around 10 days. Cold and rat-infested detention facilities before collective expulsions

Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab reviewed photos and verified videos from January 2024 of women and children sitting on dirty floors amidst rubbish in a warehouse controlled by Egyptian border guards. The former detainees said the warehouses were infested by rats and pigeon nests and those detained endured cold nights with no appropriate clothing or blankets. Men’s warehouse conditions were overcrowded, with over a hundred men crammed together and limited access to overflowing toilets, forcing them to urinate in plastic bottles at night.

At least 11 children, some under the age of four, were detained with their mothers at these sites.

Israa, who has asthma, told Amnesty International that guards at the overcrowded horse stable near Nagaa Al Karur village ignored her request for an inhaler, even when she asked to buy one at her own expense.

After periods of detention ranging from a few days six weeks, police and Border Guard Forces handcuffed males and drove all detainees to the Qustul-Ashkeet border crossing and handed them to Sudanese authorities, without individualised assessment of risk of serious human rights violations if returned. None was given the opportunity to claim asylum even when they had registration appointments with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), asked to speak to UNHCR or pleaded not to be sent back. Such forced returns violate Egypt’s international obligations under human rights and refugee law, including the principle of non-refoulement.

Border Guard Forces expelled Ahmed, his wife and two-year-old child together with a group of roughly 200 detainees, on 26 February 2024, after detaining them for six days in Abu Simbel military site.

Since the conflict in Sudan began, Egyptian authorities have failed to provide statistics or acknowledge their policy of deportations.

[etherealvistas]

Driving in Palestine now is more dangerous than ever.

Yesterday, I drove from Ramallah to Dura, a village near Hebron to attend the funeral of Ahed, my friend’s baby sister, who had just become a mother. She was shot by an Israeli sniper. A heartbreaking loss.

If I could use Israel’s apartheid roads designated for settlers, it would be an 80-90 minute drive, but it took me 4 hours.

Why?

First, we’re forced to take segregated Palestinian only roads which make it a 2.5 hour drive because of checkpoints.

But these days, it’s even worse as Israel has imposed an even more strict strangulation policy over the West Bank, which means even some of those segregated roads are blocked and there are 10 times as many checkpoints.

Taking this drive outside our village/cities of residence is extremely dangerous for three reasons:

Settler attacks: Israeli settlers are in rampage mode, and you don’t know when you could get hit by a rock or bullet from one of their raging mobs.

Soldiers at the end of a wrong turn: There are no signs for what “roads” are currently opened or closed for us, you have to guess or stop to ask locals every few miles. If you make a wrong turn and end up face to face with soldiers, they can shoot you, and claim you attacked them.

Arrests for social media posts: If you’re stopped at a checkpoint, soldiers these days are taking folks’ phones and checking their WhatsApp’s and telegram and instagram. If you have a message standing in solidarity with Gaza, or anything the Israeli soldiers see as offensive, they’ll beat you to a pulp, and could even arrest you. My friend Diala, a human rights lawyer, was just arrested at one of these checkpoints this evening. We don’t know why, but it likely relates to her work and messages they found on her phone about it.

On my end, driving back at night was a nightmare, mainly because I had a friend in the car and was worried about him.

As we drove back, these historically busy streets were ghostly empty because nobody is taking the risk of driving at night unless necessary.

Every turn I’d take, I’d slow down to a crawl to make sure there was no trigger happy soldier or angry settler ready to pounce.

I got lucky as, although we waited at a checkpoint for an hour, the soldiers got bored and literally opened the checkpoint for all the cars to pass without any security check — proof they’re using these checkpoints arbitrarily as collective punishment.

In Dura, I saw where Ahed was shot.

The soldiers had stormed her village as part of their intimidation tactics in the West Bank to keep people anxious. Ahed ran to her roof to warn her husband to come home. An Israeli sniper shot her in the head.

As I drove home, thinking of Ahed, her heart broken family, the families of my friends in Gaza, all the souls we’ve lost, and how easy my life could be taken for simply driving across my ancestral lands to help my friend in her grief.

It shouldn’t have to be said, but our lives are precious. They’re beautiful. They’re equally worthy of joy and basic dignity.

I’m committed to one day being able to drive across my people’s ancestral land a free man, surrounded by my liberated people.

If Israel’s death machine is haunting us around every corner, we might as well live fighting for a life worth dying for.

[sissa-arrows]

I’m getting fed up by the French people saying “People are rioting all over France” as a way to absolve themselves from what’s happening. If your reaction is to go “not all white people” you are part of the problem.

Here are the facts:

More than 1 million was raised for the cop who killed Nahel.

Far right militia are in the streets beating up and arresting our little brothers.

The Ministry of justice is blaming parents and asked the judges to a harsh and automatic punishment for the protesters getting arrested. In the same interview the term “decivilization” was used but it’s not in the article.

Black and Arab children (AS YOUNG AS 11) and adults are getting arrested arbitrarily and they are getting higher sentences than white people with LESS proof. They also have lawyers who are throwing them under the bus.

I could go on for hours. And there’s thousands of videos. White teenagers looting a shop. The police arrive right after ask them if they saw who did it but don’t check their bag (filled with stolen stuff) and the kids most likely blame some North African or Black teens and get away with it. Meanwhile in an other video a Black man was just walking alone and eating a sandwich the police pushed him on the floor and started pushing him for no reason. The people who filmed were white and they sarcastically said “We are wearing all black with our face partially hidden but the cops didn’t even come and see us. That’s totally not because we are white”. In an other video the cops arrest a North African child he looks 13 at most and they put him in front of them so the protesters don’t come near.

The white people protesting actually know what’s happening and are not using their participation as a way to absolve France of white people off their complicity with racism. It’s the one in the comfort of their houses who are

You’re uncomfortable because my posts make you feel like an accomplice (if the shoe fits…) ? Well the situation and what’s happening is scaring me, those kids getting beat up and killed they are my friends, my little brothers, my future children. Have some fucking empathy.

[i-am-aprl]

FACT: Israel has 26 times more hostages in captivity than Hamas does. These are people Israel kidnapped and holds hostage for years, even decades, ALL without charge or trial. The thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, arbitrarily held in 'administrative detention' by Israel are every bit as much hostages as those seized by Hamas on 7 October. Israel has detained one million Palestinians in the occupied territory, including tens of thousands of children, for various lengths of time, since 1967 according to the UN. At least 9,500 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank are in captivity — a sharp uptick from the 5,200 who were in prison before Israel launched an assault on Gaza. Since then, Palestinians have been arrested for actions as innocuous as raising a Palestinian flag or social media posts expressing empathy with victims in Gaza, where more than 35,000 people have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war. Most Palestinian captives captured by the Israeli army in the West Bank or police in occupied East Jerusalem, are hostages. Under Israeli law, any Palestinian of any age can be seized at any time — day or night — with no warrant, no charges, and held for months or years under “administrative detention”. If eventually charged, the charge is typically a broad threat to state security or is never disclosed, according to many attorneys of apprehended Palestinians. This is worse than textbook hostage-taking … this is actually textbook state-sponsored terrorism.

[gothhabiba]

Ethnic cleansing in Masafer Yatta reaches unbearable level: Call to Action

Colonial violence and ethnic cleansing is quickly escalating in Masafer Yatta, a rural region south of Hebron, in the West Bank.

Settler militias are terrorizing Palestinians by invading their villages during pogroms, armed with assault rifles, often wearing Israeli army uniforms and accompanied by Israeli soldiers. Palestinians and ISM activists have reported and documented cases of settlers beating up Palestinian residents, including women, children and the elderly; settlers and soldiers shooting towards Palestinian houses and houses, destroying water pumps and electric grids, uprooting trees and taking up Palestinian fields, planting Israeli flags on Palestinian land and houses, and even forcing Palestinians to sing pro-Israel chants and to wave an Israeli flag while holding them at gun-point and filming them.

Last night [October 29, 2023], settlers and soldiers invaded the village of Susyia and threatened residents that if they don’t leave within 24 hours, they will be back and start killing Palestinians in the village. A similar threat to residents of the village of Khirbet Zanuta has already resulted in the community leaving the land in order to save their families.

CALL TO ACTION: Residents call on people around the world to “check in” to Masafer Yatta on FB and Instagram in solidarity with the villagers facing imminent violence. This will throw off Israeli security forces tracking the online activities of both Palestinians and local solidarity activists speaking out against settler violence. It will also show settlers and soldiers that the world is watching and that the residents of Masafer Yatta are not alone.

Check out the hashtag #savemasaferyatta and share content on Masafer Yatta from pages like:

Youth of Sumud

Masafer Yatta (Instagram)

ISM Instagram, ISM Facebook , ISM Twitter

What follows is just a summary of some outstanding cases of settler violence

On October 25th Israeli settlers and soldiers invaded the land belonging to a Palestinian family in Tuwani and used a bulldozer to uproot trees and destroy the family’s garden.

The soldiers then shot a half a dozen warning shots towards ISM and Israeli activists who were filming the scene.

On October 13th, an Israeli settler invaded Tuwani and shot a Palestinian man in the stomach at point blank range, while being protected by an Israeli soldier. The day before, Israeli settlers dressed in Israeli army uniforms had invaded Palestinian agricultural land, planted Israeli flags and started shooting towards Palestinians and solidarity activists. Israeli soldiers robbed ISM activists of their phones.

On October 26th, a resident of the village of Khallet al-Dabaa was arbitrarily arrested by Israeli soldiers. When he was released two days later, he showed clear signs of abuse and turture on his body.

On October 26th, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) flew drones over villages in Masafer Yatta transmitting the following message in Arabic: “We can see you everywhere. Wherever you are, we are coming for you”.

On October 27th, Settler militias destroyed over 200 trees, along with irrigation pipes, water pumps, electrical cables, and a water tank belonging to local Palestinian residents in the Al-Ain Al-Bayda village in Masafer Yatta.

They also severed the water supply pipeline for the community in Saddet al-Tha’ala village, while making death threats against local residents.

The same day, a large group of settlers attacked residents in the village of Susiya, who confronted the colonists and forced them to run away after an outbreak of a fistfight. Several people suffered bruises. The settlers threatened that they would come back at night with Israeli soldiers, and they did.

On October 28th, armed settlers forcibly removed a Palestinian man from his car, in the village of Umm Al-Khair, and then destroyed his car by throwing large rocks and by shooting at it.

On the same day, two armed Israeli settlers dressed in Israeli army uniforms assaulted and detained 6 Palestinians, including a 16 year old girl, who got her hand broken by the settlers during the attack.

On October 29th, armed settlers and soldiers raided the village of Susiya again and threatened Palestinians there that if they did not leave the village within 24 hours, they would come back and start shooting and killing residents.

The same day, armed settlers invaded the village of Khirbet Zanuta and told residents: “If you don’t leave, we’ll do to you what we are doing in Gaza”. The community decided that they had to leave to save their families, knowing that they have nobody to protect them.

The same day, armed settlers raided the village of Tuba and stole 6 sheep from a Palestinian family, as well as a gas cilinder, a phone and a sheep feeder. A few days earlier, settlers had entered Tuba during the night and damaged the water tanks with knifes. Palestinians and ISM activists in Tuba have reported that the settlers appear to be building a new illegal outpost just meters away from the houses of Palestinians in Tuba.

On October 29th, armed settlers invaded the village of Umm Al-Khair and forced some Palestinians to raise the Israeli flag over their houses and to record videos of themselves in which they spoke against Palestinians in Gaza. The settlers then said that they would come back the next day and that if they did not see the Israeli flags on people’s houses, they would displace Palestinian families.

--International Solidarity Movement, October 30, 2023

Stop the Wall ("Palestinian grassroots anti-apartheid campaign") is calling for a "world tour" for Masafer Yatta: plan an educational activity, demand your government defund Israeli apartheid, and pressure corporations and institutions to stop funding Israeli apartheid (BDS).

[itstokkii]

I've been thinking about how someone recently called the cold war "a war of edging" and its like. why is this still a sentiment across rusame spaces on tumblr. frankly I don't care if it was a joke because it's ill-intentioned at best and blatantly disrespectful at worst.

(here's the part where I emphasize that I'm not telling you not to ship rusame. i'm saying that BEFORE you make statements like this and gloss over the warcrimes of the us and russia at the time, think about the people who suffered at their hands at the very least, and write about them responsibly.)

families weren't forced apart and jejuans weren't massacred in korea for you to call it "a war of edging."

uzbek muslims weren't tortured and arbitrarily arrested for you to call it "a war of edging."

people in vietnam weren't killed by napalm and massacred regularly by us soldiers for you to call it that.

kindly shut up. i'm exhausted from having to regularly tell this fandom, especially the rusame shippers, that the cold war was in fact a real thing that happened between Imperialist 1 and Imperialist 2 and destroyed culture, families, and whole people from the global south and not something that solely exists in your spicy fanfics.

because you're so disconnected from the global south that you simply factor them out of your head in conversations about the cold war.

[sanctus-ingenium]

What are some of the other countries in the alt-history your Inver stories are set in? Is Armorica roughly where modern day Brittany would be? :0

Because our concept of countries is very modern & constructed it's not quite that Armorica or Hibernia were Countries as we might understand them. They were mostly made up of smaller fractured kingdoms and cultures which were always fighting one another. Armorica was a region which was roughly here (map and history ramble under the cut SORRY i basically didn't answer your question i got carried away)

(this map is from the 1860s! not Finbarr's time.. I still need to make a map of that)

but it was never a country, just a region alternatively ascribed to Inver or Aquitan. It fell on the northern side of the Inver border with Aquitan whenever it was established but the border was put there rather arbitrarily and cut across the region without consideration for the people who lived there.

So there IS in fact a whole other history which doesn't even concern Inver at all. There is a small city-state on the southern coast of Aquitan called Suzette, which was founded by the pseudo-Catholics of this world and used as their main base of operations. It's basically just the Vatican, but an early actually-Catholic historical figure called (Saint) Alexandre led a schism with the church and was successful. The schism dealt with the legality of using magic to advance the church's position, Alexandre argued that it was a moral imperative to preserve the ability to use magic within the ranks of their holy knights. Alexandre became a very polarising figure but his most famous follower was military leader called Renzo who, in the renaissance period, basically upturned and reshaped the entirety of the Mediterranean region.

At the time, Aquitan was a kingdom with an absolute monarchy and the same werewolf-based religion as the nobility of Inver (the winners of Finbarr's war were the Aquitanian werewolves and it became the dominant religion in Inver as well). Renzo led a religious crusade against the monarchy of Aquitan, to wipe out all that pagan werewolf stuff. He blindsided the queen of Aquitan, who had been running her own campaign of expansion against the king of Notte [placeholder name], on the far-western coastline of Iberia. When Renzo began winning substantial victories in the southern countryside of Aquitan, the queen immediately turned around and ""allied"" with the king of Notte, by mounting an invasion against the city of Notte and forcing him to surrender and play nice. She sent him off on an enforced holiday under house arrest, aware that her play relied on not martyring this king while she ruled his country in all but name. With the combined might of these two kingdoms she was certain she could crush Renzo, and this began a decades-long war.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the king of Notte was killed by bandits who didn't even know who he was, before he ever reached his holiday home. The nondescript carriage was ambushed and there were no survivors. The queen, in a panic, chose not to publicise his death.

Well guess what Renzo was doing with his holy knights' blood magic. With each victory his army grew, because he raised the dead to serve him. Resurrection and immortality were key themes of Saint Alexandre's teachings and although Renzo's war crimes would result in his own religion banning the practice of this type of magic, it was kind of a-ok back then (the Church of Suzette would later go on to be pioneers of medical innovations such as antibiotics, germ theory, and safe anaesthesia). And you'll never guess whose dead body Renzo's knights found one day, dumped on the side of the road. Renzo alone recognised what had just come into his possession, and he formulated a counter-play against the queen by using the dead king as his own pawn. Using the king, he got the entire Iberian peninsula to turn on the Aquitanian monarchy, so instead of it being 2-on-1 against Renzo, it was suddenly the queen who was dangerously outnumbered and deeply unpopular.

The monarchy of Aquitan was finally defeated by its own people sixty years after the war began, and a theocracy based on the teachings of Saint Alexandre was founded there, along with the city-state of Suzette. The final execution of the monarchists had severe ripple-effects that reached Inver, which had been pretty insulated from the war by virtue of being a kinda pointless place to invade and housing a population of faeries outnumbering humans 10 to 1. The monarchy of Inver took pride in its links to the Aquitanian nobility and now that was gone. The result was a death spiral for the Kingdom of Inver, as the werewolf monarchists, fearing their imminent extinction, began to fight one another to grab as much power and wealth as possible before the Suzettes reached them, too. They banned the church at the border, only allowing the harmless priests of Suzette's poor Austerity sect to build their hospitals, though they were forbidden from holding religious services and actively converting the public, you have to willingly join.

The final Hibernian families who bought into the monarchy of Inver included the descendants of Finbarr, who had largely betrayed everything he would have stood for by assimilating into their enemies' ranks. And, as anyone might have predicted, their assimilation did not protect them when the nobles of Inver chose to prune their own ranks to concentrate power. One of these families was the noble and now extinct Mercier family, the family of one of our protagonists of Said the Black Horse (bowman lol). The other two protagonists are a second-gen immigrant Hibernian and a war orphan originally from Notte.

[whencyclopedia]

Alien and Sedition Acts

The Alien and Sedition Acts were four laws passed by President John Adams and the Federalist-controlled Congress in 1798 that restricted immigration and free speech in the United States. Framed by the Federalist Party as a necessary measure to protect national security during the Quasi-War (1798-1800), the acts were deeply controversial and were challenged as being unconstitutional.

The acts were passed in response to heightening tensions between the United States and Revolutionary France in the aftermath of the XYZ Affair. Concerned by the recent influx of French and Irish émigrés, whose loyalties were considered questionable, the Federalist Party enacted three 'alien' acts during the summer of 1798. The first was the Naturalization Act, which increased the amount of time an immigrant must live in the United States before being eligible for citizenship from 5 to 14 years. Next came the Alien Friends Act, which allowed the president to deport any non-citizen he deemed to be a threat to national security. This was supplemented by the Alien Enemies Act, in which non-citizens hailing from a country at war with the United States could arbitrarily be detained or deported; the Enemies Act remains in effect today and has been invoked several times, most notably during the world wars of the 20th century. Finally, the Sedition Act criminalized the printing of material considered to be "false, scandalous, or malicious" about the president or the US government.

The Alien and Sedition Acts caused a major uproar, with members of the Democratic-Republican Party (Jeffersonian Democrats) condemning them as unconstitutional. Although no one ended up being arrested or deported under the Alien Acts, several people were arrested, tried, and convicted under the Sedition Act, accused of printing material critical of the Federalist-controlled government. Vice President Thomas Jefferson, leader of the opposition, denounced this as a clear violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and press. The backlash against the Alien and Sedition Acts helped Jefferson win the presidency during the election of 1800 and forever stained the reputation of the Federalists, who would never again win the presidency or enjoy the heights of power they had achieved in 1798.

Background

By the late 1790s, the United States was experiencing a deep partisan rift. The nationalist Federalist Party championed a strong national government, big banks, and a build-up of the American military. In international affairs, Federalists tended to support Great Britain, which they regarded as a natural ally to the US and condemned the radicalism of the concurrent French Revolution (1789-1799). Their rival Democratic-Republican Party (Jeffersonian Democrats), by contrast, emerged in favor of decentralized government and republicanism and denounced the Federalists as too aristocratic. They supported the French Republic and rejected the influence of Britain, which they feared would only lead to a re-emergence of monarchism in the United States. Despite President George Washington's Farewell Address, in which he warned against such partisanship, the divide between the two factions had only widened since Washington left office in March 1797. By the start of John Adams' presidency, each party viewed the other as an existential threat to the country.

President Adams was a Federalist, the only member of that party to ever occupy the presidency. But he was not as radical as the Hamiltonian wing of the party and was not as averse to dealing with France as some of his party may have been. This was significant since, at the time Adams was inaugurated in March 1797, the United States and Revolutionary France were on the brink of war. The French Republic was already at war with Britain and had interpreted the signing of the Jay Treaty – a controversial commercial agreement between the US and Britain – as a British-American alliance. In retaliation, French privateers began attacking neutral American shipping in late 1796, arguing that any American ship carrying British cargo was liable to be seized as a valid prize. Within a year, French privateers had captured nearly 300 American ships and had mistreated their crews. While many Federalists clamored for war, President Adams preferred negotiation. In the autumn of 1797, he dispatched three envoys to Paris – John Marshall, Elbridge Gerry, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney – to assert American neutrality in the ongoing French Revolutionary Wars and to hopefully restore relations between the US and France.

This diplomatic mission failed. In an incident known as the XYZ Affair, French agents refused to open negotiations unless the United States agreed to pay a large bribe, resorting to thinly veiled threats once the American envoys resisted the notion. On 5 March 1798, President Adams told Congress that negotiations had failed and, shortly thereafter, requested a build-up of the American army and navy. The aging former President Washington was pulled out of his retirement at Mount Vernon and named commander-in-chief of the American army, which was being organized by the Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton. American and French frigates clashed on the high seas; although this conflict, the Quasi-War, never wound up escalating beyond limited naval skirmishes, for a time it seemed as though France and the United States were on the brink of a major war.

Naval Battle during the Quasi-War, between USS Constellation and L'Insurgente

John William Schmidt (Public Domain)

In the months after the details of the XYZ Affair were published, the American public were firmly behind the Federalists; Adams reached the height of his popularity in mid-1798, allowing him and the Federalists to begin their military build-up program practically unimpeded. The blatant disrespectful behavior of the French agents left the Democratic-Republicans with little ammunition, giving them little recourse but to stand to the side and announce that the country was making a bad decision by going to war with France. This was the context – deep partisan rivalry and the looming threat of war – that led Adams and the Federalists to create the Alien and Sedition Acts, policies that ultimately helped lead to the decline of the Federalist Party itself.

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[georgeromerosanalcavity]

Brooklyn 99: Yeah they’re cops but they acknowledge.. some.. problems bout cops but oh look they’re friends and look they’re arbitrarily arresting and beating people up isn’t that so funny

Reno 911: Watch this fucking pig lose his left ball to a dog lol

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Apple's business model made Chinese oppression inevitable

A month ago, a wave of rare political protests swept China, centered on Beijing, where Premier Xi Jinping was consolidating his already-substantial power by claiming an unprecedented third term:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/china/china-party-congress-overseas-students-protest-intl-hnk

Protest organizers in China struggle with the serious legal and extrajudicial penalties for anti-government activities, backed by a sophisticated digital surveillance grid that monitors and blocks online communications that might challenge government authority.

Though this digital surveillance network is now primarily supplied and serviced by Chinese tech companies, it can't be separated from western tech companies. The first version of the Chinese digital surveillance grid was built by Cisco:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest-attempt-dodge-responsibility-facilitating-human-rights-abuses-export

Tech companies like Yahoo went into China knowing that they'd have to censor the internet, and ultimately turned over their users' data to Chinese authorities, who subsequently arrested and tortured some of those users:

https://www.technewsworld.com/story/yahoo-charged-with-complicity-in-chinese-torture-case-57011.html

Google pulled out of China in 2010, after the Chinese government hacked and arrested Gmail users. But eight years later, Google was secretly working on Project Dragonfly, a censoring, surveilling search product designed for the Chinese market:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/19/138307/how-google-took-on-china-and-lost/

Apple plays a key ongoing role in Chinese state surveillance and oppression. Like most tech giants, Apple depends on access to low-waged Chinese factory workers with weak labor protections to hold down the wage bill for its manufacturing.

Apple also relies on selling phones and computers and services to the titanic Chinese middle class, a category that's loose enough that estimates of its size range from 350m to 700m - but even the lower figure is larger than the entire US population.

Apple's dual reliance on poor Chinese workers and rich Chinese consumers gives the Chinese state enormous leverage over the company. The Chinese government can order Apple to participate in its digital surveillance and dissent-suppression efforts and threaten the company with the loss of revenues and manufacturing if it balks.

But that's true of any western company that seeks to hold down costs and generate revenues through Chinese manufacturing and Chinese sales. What makes Apple uniquely vulnerable to Chinese state pressure is its business-model choices - choices that, ironically, are touted as a way to keep its users safe.

Apple's Ios platform is "curated." Ipads and Iphones ship locked to Apple's App Stores. Users aren't supposed to be able to install software unless it is delivered via the App Store. Apple describes this as a safety measure, a bulwark against the tricks that hackers and identity thieves use to lure users into installing malicious software.

But Apple also makes billions of dollars through this arrangement. The App Store is a chokepoint, and any software author who wants to sell an app to an Iphone owner can only do so if Apple approves of the transaction.

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Apple can arbitrarily withhold this permission, if, say, it has a competing product and doesn't want to have to win out over a new market entrant in a fair fight.

Apple can also burden its competitors: if you want to sell media that competes with Apple Books, Apple Music or Apple Video, the company will charge you 15-30% on each sale, while its own offerings escape this charge.

That means that media stores that competes with Apple's own retail storefronts have to either charge more than Apple, or make less money, or not sell media via an app at all - instead, they have to implement a clunky two-step whereby customers buy their media on the web and they flip back to an app to download it.

Even when an app maker doesn't compete with Apple, Apple can turn it to its advantage: the company simply appropriates 15-30% of ever dollar that changes hands when Iphone owners buy software and media from app makers.

This is "feudal security." In a lawless realm of roving bandits, Apple offers us a high-walled fortress bristling with fierce infosec mercenaries who promise to defend us from the threats outside the walls. In return, Apple uses its control over the gateway to the outside world to extract a tax from everyone who brings us the things we need.

Apple has every incentive to make this fortress as impregnable as possible. From the lowest levels of its chip designs to its lobbying blitzes to criminalize jailbreaking devices, the company is fully committed to ensuring that Ios device owners can't make choices Apple disapproves of.

This is the source of China's extraordinary leverage over Apple. Apple can't afford to leave China, because that would mean losing manufacturing and customers. Because of this, the Chinese state can order Apple to take any measure that Apple is technically capable of delivering.

Because of its business-model choices, Apple has the technical capability to introduce defects in the apps on its customers' devices. It can order every software vendor in the App Store to break their privacy tools so that the Chinese government can spy on those customers.

If companies don't comply, Apple can simply block them from delivering software to Chinese users altogether. An absolutely foreseeable consequence of this product design is that the Chinese state will order Apple to neuter all the privacy tools available to Chinese Ios users, which is exactly what happened:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Apple offers cloud storage to its Ios users. Because Apple can't afford to anger the Chinese state, the Chinese state can order Apple to introduce defects into the encryption on its cloud servers so that Apple customers can be spied on by the Chinese government. That's also exactly what happened:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

Apple's business-model decisions reduce the consequences for betraying its customers. If defects in Apple's cloud product come to light, it can simply order all the other cloud services in the App Store to introduce similar defects, on pain of being kicked out of the store.

Last month's Chinese protests were coordinated in part thanks to a novel technological tactic, one that made use of one of Apple's most innovative technologies: Airdrop. Airdrop is an ad hoc, peer-to-peer file transfer protocol that lets two nearby Ios users exchange files with one another without identifying themselves.

Anti-Xi organizers used Airdrop to exchange forbidden protest literature. Because these files travel directly between Ios devices, they weren't visible to the censors and spies who monitor other digital communications tools in China.

This use of Airdrop is a canonical example of the ways that digital technologies can be part of human rights struggles, giving people new tools that give them leverage over powerful state actors.

Right on schedule, the Chinese government has ordered Apple to break Airdrop so that it can't be used to organize protests, requiring users to opt into receiving files from strangers every ten minutes, rather than letting them set their devices to publicly visible until they are ready to turn it off:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/11/apple-limits-iphone-filesharing-feature-used-by-protesters-in-china

Apple called this a "security update." It updates the security of the Chinese state from democratic accountability.

There's a strain of technology criticism that sees incidents like this as proof that digital tools have no place in human rights struggles, because they will always be turned against their users.

But no one forced Apple to launch its "curated computing" service, nor to design it so that its customers can't override it. Apple built a walled fortress in full knowledge that it might be called upon someday to turn that fortress into a prison.

The feigned outrage of tech companies when the weakenesses in their business-models are exploited by third parties is an obvious and shabby trick to deflect blame. Apple put the gun on the mantelpiece in Act I. It can't expect us to forgive it when Xi Jinping fires the gun in Act III.

Of course, this sin isn't unique to Apple. Google has designed a location-harvesting system that is impossible to opt out of, so that it can accumulate and sell access to a database of every movement of every person.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#goog

Having assembled this database, Google doesn't get to act surprised when cops show up with "geofenced reverse warrants" that demand the identity of every participant in a Black Lives Matter protest (or the January 6 riot):

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/5/22918487/fbi-geofence-seattle-blm-protest-police-guild-attack

Or take the scandal of Adobe customers' files being wrecked by the company's dispute with proprietary color system vendor Pantone. Pantone cancelled Adobe's license to use its technology and wants Adobe customers to spend $21/month to keep Pantone colors.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

But this doesn't just affect files created after the Adobe/Pantone split. Due to Adobe's subscription-based business model, which requires customers to pay monthly for software as a service (SaaS), Pantone can demand that Adobe break all the existing files its customers have created.

If you created a Photoshop file with some Pantone colors 20 years ago, they are broken now, and forever, unless you start paying Pantone $21/month, because Adobe has altered its cloud software so that all Pantone-colored pixels are rendered in black.

I've been corresponding with an Adobe PR flack doing damage control after the Pantone scandal broke, and as far as I can tell, she wants me to "correct" my article to blame Pantone for this mess, because it has Adobe over a barrel.

But Adobe built that barrel. This hostage situation was a completely forseeable consequence of redesigning its products to treat its users like hostages. Pantone are greedy scum, but so are Adobe - and it was Adobe's greed that exposed its customers to Pantone's greed.

The point isn't that having your Photoshop files corrupted is the same as being kidnapped and tortured by Chinese police. But both Adobe and Apple - and every other tech giant - has decided that the rise of networked computing is an opportunity to exercise ongoing control over their customers. All of these companies knew that this ongoing control could be hijacked by hostile governments or corporations at any time, and they did it anyway.

They have no business acting surprised now. Apple isn't responsible for Chinese state oppression, but it is knowingly, explicitly complicit in it.

[Image ID: A Chinese revolutionary poster depicting a marching army of peasant soldiers. It has been altered so that a man at the front of the column is carrying an Ipad. The image is surmounted by Apple's 'Think Different' wordmark.]

[possiblyunhinged]

The real instigators of this violence don’t fit the stereotypes people are pushing, and claiming this rage was arbitrarily birthed is insane. It’s been fuelled by journalists, ‘politicians,’ unemployed men turned social media rage-baiters and ‘good’ people who have done nothing.

Laurence Fox has pissed off out of the country after tweeting about starting a war. Tommy Robinson was catching a tan at a resort in Cyprus whilst his minions were burning down libraries and attacking mosques. The Daily Mail is now writing classist articles after YEARS of rage-baiting working-class people, similar to how they used to write about the impending ‘invasion,’ the language their journalists used whilst spouting their support for Hitler.

So many of these chodes claim to be great inspectors of history yet FAIL to see the patterns that liken this to the rise of fascism that led to Nazi Germany.

Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, Katie Hopkins, Nigel Farage, and their ilk should be in fucking prison. Rupert Murdoch should be in a fucking courtroom, being sued until his final breath. And we should make critical thinking and fascist ideology mandatory teaching the moment kids start secondary school.

If you want to talk about 'two tier policing'... why isn't Murdoch and Musk being held accountable? Twitter is now a glorified 4Chan. Murdoch's media has laid the foundations for fascism and are now acting surprised to see the effects of that.

Applauding the arrests of protestors is understandable because a fascist being arrested and crying in court will always be delicious. However, without holding those responsible for this mess accountable, we are doomed.

Pls can someone let the chodes know that there's a difference between protecting freedom of speech and inciting violence because it's doing my fucking head in xoxo

[good-old-gossip]

Israeli authorities released dozens of Palestinians back to Gaza today, having arbitrarily arrested them at different points throughout the war. One of them, Sofian Abu Saleh, had his leg amputated by Israeli forces during custody. "My leg got infected [in custody], and [the Israelis] refused to take me to a hospital," he said. "After seven days, the infection spread quickly, like gangrene, they then took me to the hospital on did an operation." Abu Saleh says he never suffered of any diseases that could have led to this infection. "I went into [detention] with my two legs, and have returned like this," he said, alluding to this one remaining leg.

📸 by Hassan Salih

[humanbyweight]

My close friend Mabel needs help to escape the escalating political prosecution of transgender people in her home state of Florida. 

Mabel is one of the kindest and sweetest people I have ever met. She doesn’t deserve to have to risk harassment and arrest just for existing in public spaces, nor does she deserve to be arbitrarily ripped from her lifesaving medication. No one deserves that.

Please donate and share to support her, and then donate to and share as many other funds for trans refugees as you can. This is a humanitarian crisis. The lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of innocent people hang in the balance. They deserve a chance to live in peace. 😢

[beardedmrbean]

The video begins with loud bangs on a door that leads to a dimly lit stairwell.

“They are entering my home arbitrarily. They are destroying the door,” a woman can be heard crying.

It is the voice of María Oropeza, a campaign co-ordinator for opposition coalition Vente Venezuela, who is live streaming her detention on Instagram.

The bangs increase in intensity as she tells her followers that she has done nothing wrong: “I am not a criminal.”

Officials from Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency then burst through her door and the video cuts to black.

Ms Oropeza is the latest opposition figure who has been detained following the announcement in the early hours of 29 July of Venezuela’s disputed presidential election result.

In the days since, members of the security forces have seized Freddy Superlano and Roland Carreño – both of whom worked for the opposition party Popular Will – and Ricardo Estévez, a technical adviser for the same opposition movement as Ms Oropeza.

Targeted arrests

Amnesty International told the BBC they had “well-founded reasons to believe [the detained people's] lives and integrity are at risk”.

The pressure group says that they have been seeing a new pattern of more targeted arrests by the Venezuelan authorities since the election.

Many of those detained have reportedly not been told why they were being arrested.

In the live stream of Ms Oropeza’s detention, she can be heard asking those banging on her door if they have a search warrant. She receives no answer.

Tension has been high since Venezuela’s National Electoral Council declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the election - a declaration that was immediately dismissed by the opposition, which said it had proof that it, not the government had won. Mass anti-government protests quickly followed.

President Maduro accused the opposition of instigating a “coup” and announced plans to build two new maximum-security prisons to house protesters it accuses of being “criminal fascists”.

The government says more than 2,000 people have been detained, some of which it accuses of “terrorism”.

Clara del Campo, Amnesty International’s Americas senior campaigner, said the arbitrary detentions had followed a “two-pronged trend”.

“On the one hand, they have been massive and indiscriminate when it comes to protesters who took to the streets to support the opposition’s claim to election victory and, on the other, targeted and selected towards human rights defenders and opposition members,” she explained.

According to Ms del Campo, the mass detention of protesters is aimed at punishing and dissuading people from publicly expressing dissent.It is an observation echoed by Venezuelan human rights NGO Foro Penal, which told BBC Mundo that it had witnessed an unprecedented “escalation of repression”.

Foro Penal has received reports of people who had their phones checked arbitrarily while they were walking down the street, with the security officials stopping them citing social media posts or messages as the reason for their subsequent arrest.

The NGO told the BBC that people arrested in this manner have typically been held in detention centres without access to independent lawyers.

These detentions have led to a culture of fear, with some people now worried about sharing information on social media, attending protests, or even raising the alarm about people who have been seized for fear of punishment.

President Maduro himself has spoken of a strategy he called “Operation Tun Tun” (Operation Knock Knock).

Rights groups say it consists of the authorities going door-to-door to detain those with links to the protests or the opposition.

More than 2,000 have been detained since the election, according to government figures. Amnesty International says that among them are more than 100 children aged between 13 and 17 and at least six people with disabilities.

Ms Del Campo said those detained were “largely accused of ‘terrorism’ and related crimes, denied legal defence, remain disappeared and incommunicado, and are at high risk of ill treatment”.

She also said that human rights defenders and members of the opposition had been specifically targeted so as to “curtail political participation and the protection of rights”.

One of them is Kennedy Tejeda - a young pro-bono human rights lawyer with Foro Penal - who was arrested as he was trying to assist other people detained for protesting.

As well as implementing its “Operation Knock Knock”, the authorities have also targeted activists and opposition members in other ways.

The BBC has been told about dozens of people, including journalists and activists, whose passports have been revoked.

Edni López, a university professor and humanitarian worker who assisted many NGOs in Venezuela, was detained on the morning of 4 August at the international airport in the capital, Caracas.

She was planning to board a flight to Colombia from where she was going to fly to Argentina for a holiday with friends.

She last contacted her friends and boyfriend from the airport. In Whatsapp messages seen by the BBC, she told them that the migration authorities claimed her passport was “expired”, despite it being in date. They then lost contact with Ms López.

The airport later informed them she did not board her Avianca airlines flight.

A close friend of hers told the BBC that Ms López’s case was not unique: “Many people with no ties to any political cause have stated that their passports have been cancelled as well.”

The friend, who asked to remain unnamed, said that there were apparently “no clear criteria” for deciding whose passports were void and called the detentions “unconstitutional”.

'Give me back my daughter'

The BBC has approached the Venezuelan government and Avianca for comment. Avianca said it could not comment on specific passenger cases unless ordered to by an authority, but added the airline only allowed passengers who in addition to meeting travel requirements had been approved by the country’s authorities beforehand.

We have not yet received a reply from the government.

Talking to reporters, Edni López’s mother made a plea to the country’s authorities: “Give me back my daughter, it’s not fair that a Venezuelan mother has to go through this.”

She also said that her daughter had a health condition that required daily medication.

After two days in which they visited several detention centres, her family finally learned that she was being held at one of them and told she would be taken to court in the city of La Guaira.

They have so far received no information about the charges being brought against her.

Her friend described the situation as “overwhelming”. “We don’t know the conditions of her captivity.”

Another person close to Ms López told the BBC: “The only reason we think this measure was taken is because she works in the humanitarian sector and because she is a university professor.”

The friend added that they had heard that the charges against Ms López were of a political nature.

“I can attest and testify that Edni has not participated in any political event, much less that she has issued or made a political publication on any [social] network or platform,” the friend insisted.

Ms López is not the only person to be detained at the airport.

A day earlier, prominent LGBT activist Yendri Omar Velásquez was also seized at the same airport as he was trying to leave Venezuela to report human rights violations to the United Nations.

He was told his passport was cancelled and was held for six hours before being released.

The impact of these detentions is immense, not only on those who are seized by the authorities but also on those close to them.

Ms López’s friends and relatives asked not to be named, fearing they could face repercussions for simply highlighting her plight.

Human rights groups say that this fear is exactly what the authorities are trying to achieve.

They argue that by targeting rights activists and lawyers - the very people that those swept up in the mass arrests may turn to for help - those already in detention are further isolated, and those who may think of speaking out will be deterred.