The World Today for June 28, 2023

Listen to Today's Edition

NEED TO KNOW

A Voice, a Divide

AUSTRALIA

After a recent historic parliamentary vote, Australians will vote on a constitutional amendment to dramatically expand the protections of their Indigenous communities.

As a government website showed, the question will ask voters whether to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice as a constitutional body. The Voice to Parliament would be an independent and permanent advisor to governments on issues related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the former British colony, a parliamentary democracy where King Charles III is the head of state.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of the center-left Labor Party is supporting the measure, which voters must consider in the next two to six months.

“I say to my fellow Australians: parliaments pass laws, but it is people that make history,” Albanese told the Guardian and other outlets at a recent press conference. “This is your time, your chance, your opportunity to be a part of making history. It will be a moment of national unity, a chance to make our nation even greater.”

Indigenous Australians account for 3.2 percent of the country’s population, the Associated Press wrote. They are the country’s most disadvantaged ethnic community. Around a quarter of the country’s prison population, for example, is Aboriginal, Al Jazeera added. A third live below the poverty line.

Critics of the measure said that focusing public policies on race would exacerbate ethnic tensions and further divide the country. “It will have an Orwellian effect where all Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others,” said opposition leader Peter Dutton of the Liberal Party.

Dutton and his allies wondered if the Voice – if created – could argue that it had a say over national matters like Australia Day, siting military bases, and Reserve Bank decisions, noted the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The architects of the referendum don’t agree, of course. Now, as the campaign for votes to support their cause begins, the Voice’s advocates feel as if the world is watching, Reuters reported. Other countries, like Canada, have enshrined Indigenous rights and prerogatives in their constitutions. The Australian Constitution, in contrast, never explicitly mentions Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, who could not vote, incidentally, until the 1960s.

Meanwhile, the last referendum in Australia took place in 1999, when Australians rejected ditching their monarch in London and the governor-general who represents the monarch in Australia, and converting their government to a republic.

Some things change. Some things stay the same.

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

The Scourge

HONDURAS

The Honduran government launched a major crackdown on organized crime within the country’s penal system following an attack last week that was labeled as one of Honduras’ deadliest prison riots in recent memory, Al Jazeera reported.

On Monday, Honduran armed forces began raids at the Tamara Penal Center, as part of an initiative dubbed “Operation Faith and Hope.” Authorities found high-caliber weapons, explosives and cell phones within the prison walls.

Although these searches took place at a men’s prison, they were not too far from the site where 46 female prisoners were killed last week.

On June 20, violence broke out at a female detention center in Tamara between women from the Barrio 18 street gang and their rivals in the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) group. Authorities said Barrio 18 members were able to infiltrate a rival cell block with guns, machetes and flammable liquids.

Days after the riot, gunmen killed at least 11 people at a pool hall in Choloma, a manufacturing hub linked to Barrio 18 gang. Officials speculate that the shooting was connected to the prison deaths.

The recent events shocked the Central American country, with President Xiomara Castro condemning the violence as “monstrous.”

Castro promised to take “drastic action” in the wake of the prison clash: Last week, she announced that the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP) will take control of most of the country’s 26 prisons to suppress organized crime.

Observers described the announcement as an about-face for Castro, who sought to demilitarize certain aspects of public security after she came to power last year.

Even so, Castro’s administration has faced scrutiny for not doing enough to end gang-related violence in Honduras.

In December, she declared a state of emergency to address the issue, but critics noted that it has failed to dampen the violence.

The Right to Toys

ZIMBABWE

Zimbabwean women are challenging a law that bans sex toys in the southern African country, a legal dispute that underscores the issue of women’s rights and the nation’s patriarchal outlook regarding female sexuality, the Associated Press reported.

In March, women’s rights advocate Sitabile Dewa sued the government in court and demanded the repealing of some parts of Zimbabwe’s “censorship and entertainments control” law.

Under the legislation, sex toys are deemed “obscene” and harmful to public morals. Importing or possessing them is illegal and punishable by prison time.

Last year, authorities arrested two women under the law. One of them was running an online business selling sex toys to women. She was sentenced to six years in jail.

While the court is still considering Dewa’s case, she told the news agency the law is “archaic” and infringes on her freedom.

Other activists commended Dewa’s advocacy, adding that her campaign sheds light on the broader challenges women face in the country.

Zimbabwean women face scrutiny and limited options on issues related to them and their bodies, including contraception, marriage and their choice of attire, the AP wrote.

The Conundrum of Riches

FRANCE

France unveiled a series of strategies this month to tackle “overtourism” as the world’s biggest tourist destination is grappling with a surge of visitors following the lull caused by pandemic closures, Agence France-Presse reported.

Tourism Minister Olivia Gregoire said France needed to better handle peak-season influxes that threatened “the environment, the quality of life for locals, and the experiences for its visitors.”

Many of France’s famous historical sites and natural treasures report being overwhelmed by the number of visitors: This includes the famed Channel beach of Etretat, which saw a big rise in tourists thanks to the plot of the Netflix detective series “Lupin.”

Meanwhile, Paris – currently facing a housing shortage – is expecting 37 million tourists this year, just short of the pre-pandemic level of 38.5 million in 2019.

To mitigate some of the issues, local officials have already opted to cap visits to certain sites to limit the number of people.

Even so, the government admitted that there is a “serious lack of data” regarding the impact of overtourism in France. Gregoire told local media that authorities are planning to set up an industry monitoring group to identify the most at-risk sites and develop strategies for encouraging off-season visits.

Some of the suggested methods would include higher lodging taxes and access fees to help communities deal with the costs of welcoming throngs of visitors.

Authorities also propose to recruit social media “influencers” to raise awareness about the dangers of overtourism. This can be achieved by motivating individuals to explore lesser-known destinations or plan vacations during non-peak seasons, among other strategies.

France is the latest country to consider measures to mitigate overtourism. Recently, the Netherlands, Italy and others have considered imposing quotas, fees and other strategies to reduce the number of visitors to certain cities or districts.

DISCOVERIES

Early Undertakers

Humans and Neanderthals weren’t the only hominids to bury their dead, according to new archaeological findings.

It’s likely another human relative did, too.

Since their discovery at a South African cave in 2013, researchers remain perplexed by some of the capabilities of the Homo naledi, an extinct human relative who lived between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago.

The prehistoric hominid walked upright on two legs, was about five feet tall, and had curved fingers and toes. Their brains were smaller than ours – about one-third in size – but that didn’t stop them from demonstrating complex actions.

For example, researchers found evidence last year that H. naledi could use fire to cook and provide light in dark tunnels in South Africa’s Rising Star cave system – where their remains were first found.

Now, three new papers suggest that they could also bury their dead, Smithsonian Magazine reported.

A research team discovered evidence of funerary practices in the cave: They noticed that the sediment layers were disrupted in a way that suggested early hominids dug and filled them. The researchers found oval-shaped depressions in the bones, surrounded by a layer of mud, indicating that they did not simply sink into the sediment by their own weight.

Researchers also spotted some engravings on cave walls, which suggests that the extinct inhabitants made them.

The team wrote separately that all these hints indicate that being big-brained is not necessary for complex thinking.

However, many scholars remain cautious about the findings, noting a number of discrepancies. The engravings have yet to be dated and the buried H. naledi bones could have ended up in that part of the cave through various means, such as rain or mudflow.

The papers are still being peer-reviewed, but if the findings are confirmed, it could mean that H. naledi burials predated that of the earliest humans by more than 160,000 years.

Thank you for reading or listening to DailyChatter. If you’re not already a subscriber, you can become one by going to dailychatter.com/subscribe.