MUNDO
Vídeo: Avião suga contêiner de malas em aeroporto dos EUA – 22/10/2024 – Você viu?
Inês Moreira Santos – Repórter da RTP*
Pelo menos 11 pessoas morreram, incluindo quatro crianças, em ataques israelenses realizados contra Gaza na madrugada de hoje (24), informou a Defesa Civil do enclave palestino. Na manhã deste domingo, os militares israelenses emitiram novas ordens de saída para a população de um subúrbio oriental da Cidade de Gaza, o que provoca nova onda de deslocamentos.
A Defesa Civil anunciou a morte de 11 palestinos, “incluindo crianças”, em dois ataques aéreos contra campos de refugiados, em Al-Bureij e Al-Maghazi, no centro do enclave, e disparos de artilharia em Beit Lahia. Testemunhas relataram ainda à agência de notícias AFP um intenso fogo de artilharia na zona de Al-Mawasi (sul).
De acordo com a agência de notícias EFE, quatro crianças morreram nesses ataques. Hossam Abou Safiyeh, diretor do Hospital Kamel Adwan, no norte da Faixa Safiyeh de Gaza, ficou gravemente ferido durante a noite, após ataque com drones à unidade de saúde.
Safiyeh foi ferido nas costas e na coxa por fragmentos de metal após o ataque ao complexo hospitalar, disse à AFP o porta-voz da Defesa Civil de Gaza, Mahmmud Bassal, acrescentando que o médico agora encontra-se “estável”.
“Isso não nos impedirá de concluir a nossa missão humanitária e continuaremos a fazer esse trabalho a qualquer custo”, disse AbuSafiya, em declaração em vídeo divulgada pelo Ministério da Saúde.
“Somos alvos diariamente. Eles me atacaram há um tempo, mas isso não nos impedirá”, afirmou.
O Hospital Kamel Adwan é um dos últimos que ainda funciona parcialmente no território palestino, que enfrenta grave crise humanitária. As equipes do hospital registraram várias greves no estabelecimento nos últimos dias, e a Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS) disse que está profundamente preocupada com a situação de 80 doentes, incluindo oito em cuidados intensivos, e funcionários.
Os hospitais da Faixa de Gaza foram atingidos várias vezes desde o início da guerra entre Israel e o Hamas, desencadeada pelo ataque sem precedentes do grupo islâmico palestino a Israel, em 7 de outubro de 2023.
O Exército israelense afirma que o Hamas utiliza essas instituições como bases, escondendo as atividades entre os civis, o que o grupo e o pessoal médico negam.
Evacuação na cidade de Gaza
O Exército de Israel deu novas ordens de saída aos moradores do subúrbio de Shejaia, divulgadas pelo porta-voz do Exército na rede social X.
“Para sua segurança, devem retirar-se imediatamente para o sul”, disse o militar.
O norte do território palestino é palco de grande ofensiva, lançada em 6 de outubro pelo Exército israelense, que diz querer impedir que o Hamas reconstitua suas forças.
Mais de 44 mil pessoas já morreram em Gaza desde o início da guerra, segundo as autoridades do enclave, controladas pelo Hamas.
*É proibida a reprodução deste conteúdo.
MUNDO
Universidades dos EUA se preparam para revisão das políticas educacionais sob Trump | Notícias sobre educação
AFPForty years on from the original recording, the cream of British and Irish pop music past and present are once again asking whether Ethiopians know it is Christmas.
In 1984, responding to horrific images of the famine in northern Ethiopia broadcast on the BBC, musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure corralled some of the biggest stars of the era to record a charity song.
The release of the Band Aid single, and the Live Aid concert that followed eight months later, became seminal moments in celebrity fundraising and set a template that many others followed.
Do They Know It’s Christmas? is back on Monday with a fresh mix of the four versions of the song that have been issued over the years.
But the chorus of disapproval about the track, its stereotypical representation of an entire continent – describing it as a place “where nothing ever grows; no rain nor rivers flow” – and the way that recipients of the aid have been viewed as emaciated, helpless figures, has become louder over time.
“To say: ‘Do they know it’s Christmas?’ is funny, it is insulting,” says Dawit Giorgis, who in 1984 was the Ethiopian official responsible for getting the message out about what was happening in his country.
His incredulity decades on is obvious in his voice and he remembers how he and his colleagues responded to the song.
“It was so untrue and so distorted. Ethiopia was a Christian country before England… we knew Christmas before your ancestors,” he tells the BBC.
But Mr Dawit has no doubt that the philanthropic response to the BBC film, by British journalist Michael Buerk and Kenyan cameraman Mohamed Amin, saved lives.
Getty ImagesAs the head of Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission he had managed to smuggle the TV crew into the country. This was despite the government at that time, which was marking 10 years of Marxist rule and fighting a civil war, not wanting news of the famine to get out.
“The way the British people responded so generously strengthened my faith in humanity,” he says, speaking from Namibia where he now works.
He praises the “young and passionate people” behind Band Aid – describing them as “amazing”.
His questioning of the song, whilst also recognising its impact, sums up the debate for many who might feel that when lives need to be saved the ends justify the means.
Geldof was typically robust in defending it responding to a recent article in The Conversation about the “problematic Christmas hit”.
“It’s a pop song [expletive]… The same argument has been made many times over the years and elicits the same wearisome response,” he is quoted as saying.
“This little pop song has kept hundreds of thousands if not millions of people alive.”
He also recognises that Ethiopians celebrate Christmas but says that in 1984 “ceremonies were abandoned”.
In an email to the BBC, Joe Cannon, the chief financial officer of the Band Aid Trust, said that in the past seven months the charity has given more than £3m ($3.8m) helping as many as 350,000 people through a host of projects in Ethiopia, as well as Sudan, Somaliland and Chad.
He adds that Band Aid’s swift action as a “first responder” encourages others to donate where funds are lacking, especially in northern Ethiopia, which is once again emerging from a civil war.
But this is not enough to dampen the disquiet.
In the last week, Ed Sheeran has said he is not happy about his voice from the 2014 recording – made to raise funds for the West African Ebola crisis – being used as his “understanding of the narrative associated with this has changed”.
He was influenced by British-Ghanaian rapper Fuse ODG, who himself had refused to take part a decade ago.
“The world has changed but Band Aid hasn’t,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast this week.
“It’s saying there’s no peace and joy in Africa this Christmas. It’s still saying there’s death in every tear,” he said referring to the lyrics of the 2014 version.
“I go to Ghana every Christmas… every December so we know there’s peace and joy in Africa this Christmas, we know there isn’t death in every tear.”
Fuse ODG does not deny that there are problems to be resolved but “Band Aid takes one issue from one country and paints the whole continent with it”.
The way that Africans were portrayed in this and other fundraising efforts had had a direct effect on him, he said.
When growing up “it was not cool to be African in the UK… [because of] the way that I looked, people were making fun of me”, the singer said.
Research into the impact of charity fundraisers by British-Nigerian King’s College lecturer Edward Ademolu backs this up.
He himself remembers the short films shot in Africa by Comic Relief, which had been influenced by Band Aid, and that his “African peers at [a British] primary school would passionately deny their African roots, calling all Africans – with great certainty – smelly, unintelligent and equated them to wild animals”.
Images of dangerously thin Africans became common currency in efforts to elicit funds.
The cover for the original Band Aid single, designed by pop artist Sir Peter Blake, features colourful Christmas scenes contrasted with two gaunt Ethiopian children, in black and white, each eating what looks like a life-saving biscuit.
For part of the poster for the Live Aid concert the following year, Sir Peter used a photograph of the back of an anonymous, naked, skeletal child.
That image was used again in the art work for the 2004 release and it has appeared once more this year.
For many working in the aid sector, as well as academics who study it, there is shock and surprise that the song and its imagery keep coming back.
The umbrella body Bond, which works with more than 300 charities including Christian Aid, Save the Children and Oxfam, has been very critical of the release of the new mix.
“Initiatives like Band Aid 40 perpetuate outdated narratives, reinforce racism and colonial attitudes that strip people of their dignity and agency,” Lena Bheeroo, Bond’s head of anti-racism and equity, said in a statement.
Geldof had previously dismissed the idea that Band Aid’s work was relying on “colonial tropes”.
The way that charities raise funds has undergone big changes in recent years.
Getty ImagesWhile remaining critical, Kenyan satirist and writer Patrick Gathara, who often mocks Western views of Africa, agrees things have shifted.
“There has been a push within humanitarian agencies to start seeing people in a crisis first as human beings and not as victims, and I think that’s a big, big change,” he tells the BBC.
“In the days of Live Aid, all you really had were these images of starvation and suffering… the idea that these are people were incapable of doing anything for themselves and that was always a misconception.”
The fallout from the Black Lives Matter protests added impetus to the change that was already happening.
A decade ago, a Norwegian organisation Radi-Aid made it its mission to highlight the way that Africa and Africans were presented in fundraising campaigns using humour.
For example, it co-ordinated a mock campaign to get Africans to send radiators to Norwegians who were supposedly suffering in the cold.
In 2017, Sheeran himself won one of their “Rusty Radiator” awards for a film he made for Comic Relief in Liberia in which he offered to pay for some homeless Liberian children to be put up in a hotel room.
The organisers of the awards said “the video should be less about Ed shouldering the burden alone but rather appealing to the wider world to step in”.
University of East Anglia academic David Girling, who once wrote a report for Radi-Aid, argues that its work is one of the reasons that things have shifted.
More and more charities are introducing ethical guidelines for their campaigns, he says.
“People have woken up to the damage that can be caused,” he tells the BBC.
Prof Girling’s own research, carried out in Kibera, a slum area in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, showed that campaigns involving and centred on those who are the targets of the charitable assistance could be more effective than the traditional top down efforts.
Many charities are still under pressure to use celebrities to help raise awareness and money. The professor says that some media outlets will not touch a fundraising story unless a celebrity is involved.
But work by his colleague Martin Scott suggests that big stars can often distract from the central message of a campaign. Whereas the celebrity might benefit, the charity and the understanding of the issue that it is working on lose out.
If a Band Aid-type project were to get off the ground now it would have to be centred on African artists, music journalist Christine Ochefu tells the BBC.
“The landscape for African artists and African music has changed so much that if there was a new release it would need to come from afrobeats artists or amapiano artists or afro-pop artists,” she argues
“I don’t think people could get way without thinking about the sentiment and imagery associated with the project and it couldn’t continue the saviour narrative that Band Aid had.”
As King’s College academic Dr Ademolu argues: “Perhaps it’s time to abandon the broken record and start anew – a fresh tune where Africa isn’t just a subject, but a co-author, harmonising its own story.”
You may also be interested in:
Getty Images/BBC
MUNDO6 dias agoPrazo final para autorregularização no Perse se aproxima
BOM EXEMPLO6 dias agoEx-aluno da USP e da PUC conquista dois doutorados acadêmicos internacionais nos Estados Unidos da América e na França
ACRE6 dias agoEm mais de 10 meses, ACRE paga R$ 5,1 bilhões em impostos e valor já supera 2023
BOA SORTE5 dias agoCNS elogia trabalhos do projeto cinematográfico para jovens entre China e Brasil
You must be logged in to post a comment Login