The Washington Post National Weekly - June 16, 2019

SUNDAY, JUNE 16, 2019

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IN COLLABORATION WITH

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Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago to stop using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still has the same origins. PAGE 12

Cocoa’s child laborers

Politics Detecting ‘deepfakes’ 4

World Brazil’s C-section parties 10

Television Summer shows 17

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THE FIX

Conway’s Hatch Act violations A MBER P HILLIPS

James B. Comey might have violated it.

Ultimately, your boss is the one who metes out the punishment. There have been some ere’s the Hatch Act in a sentence: If federal employees who have recently lost their you work for a federal agency, you jobs for this, but as Conway demonstrates, the can’t use your taxpayer-funded office higher up you are, the more wiggle room you to advocate for your political beliefs. have to avoid punishment.

Americans deserve a federal government Cabinet officials are frequent targets of that works for all of them, not just the people Hatch Act investigations. They often come they agree with. That’s the philosophy behind from political backgrounds, and the line the Hatch Act, which prevents federal between their day job and future politiemployees from engaging in political cal ambitions can get blurry quickly, activity while on the job. The law has especially in the social media era. cost local, state and federal employees Trump’s former United Nations ambastheir jobs for decades. sador, Nikki Haley, was found to have And President Trump adviser Kellyviolated the law when she retweeted anne Conway is one of the most egreTrump’s endorsement of a candidate. gious violators of it in modern memory “Blah, blah, blah,” Conway said in May by constantly bashing Democrats as an about the issue. “If you’re trying to official for the White House, according silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s to the watchdog office that prosecutes not going to work. Let me know when such claims. On Thursday, that office the jail sentence starts.” released a report recommending that The White House told The WashingConway be removed from her office. ton Post that Trump is more likely to “Since at least February 1, 2019, Ms. defend Conway than punish her. AlConway has repeatedly violated the JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST ready, the White House has accused the Hatch Act during her official media Office of Special Counsel of playing appearances by making statements di- White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, seen at a politics itself or trying to limit Conway’s rected at the success of your reelection working lunch Thursday, dismissed potential Hatch Act free speech. That kind of disregard for campaign,” the report, addressed to repercussions during an exchange with reporters May 29. the law defangs it in a big way, said Trump, read.

Delaney Marsco, the legal counsel for ethics at Special Counsel, to investigate and subseHere’s how the Hatch Act works and what the Campaign Legal Center. No White House quently determine violations of the Hatch Act. Conway did wrong, according to the law: official has been recommended to be removed (That is not the same as the special counsel’s It was set up in the Great Depression-era from office under the Hatch Act before. The office that put together the Mueller report into after Democratic officials were found to be head of the counsel that prosecutes these Russian election interference.) using federal workers of the Works Progress cases, a Trump appointee, told The Post that Violating the law can be a career-ending Administration to help them campaign in it’s “unprecedented” to find someone so higherror. But you can’t go to jail for it. “It’s not a swing states. One intention of the 1939 law profile in such violation of it. criminal offense; it’s a firing offense,” Kathleen was to protect federal works from such presIf Conway goes unpunished, this could set a Clark, an expert on legal ethics at Washington sure — do x political activity or lose your job, precedent for future administrations, experts University in St. Louis, told me when we were explains the Congressional Research Agency. warned. n examining allegations that then-FBI director But it also serves to separate the lines

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between public office and politics.

Local government officials have gotten in trouble via the legislation for running for an elected, partisan office. Federal government workers can get in trouble for sending partisan tweets. Some Obama administration Cabinet secretaries who talked politics on the job were found to have violated it.

The law set up a special body, the Office of

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CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY TELEVISION BOOKS OPINION WORLD VIEW

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ON THE COVER Karim Bakary, 16, came from Burkina Faso to work on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast. Photo

by SALWAN GEORGES of The Washington Post

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POLITICS

Race is on to detect ‘deepfake’ videos

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Researchers fear seamless fabrications will become devastating political tools BY

D REW H ARWELL

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op artificial-intelligence researchers across the country are racing to defuse an extraordinary political weapon: computer-generated fake videos that could undermine candidates and mislead voters during the 2020 presidential campaign.

And they have a message: We’re not ready.

The researchers have designed

automatic systems that can analyze videos for the telltale indicators of a fake, assessing light, shadows, blinking patterns — and, in one potentially groundbreaking method, even how a candidate’s real-world facial movements relate to each other, like the angle they tilt their head when they smile.

But for all that progress, the researchers say they remain vastly overwhelmed by a technology they fear could herald a damaging

new wave of disinformation campaigns, much in the same way fake news stories and deceptive Facebook groups were deployed to influence public opinion during the 2016 race.

Powerful new AI software has effectively democratized the creation of convincing “deepfake” videos, making it easier than ever to fabricate someone appearing to say or do something they didn’t really do, from harmless satires and film tweaks to targeted ha-

An image created from a fake video of former president Barack Obama displays elements of facial mapping used in new technology that allows users to create convincing fabricated footage of real people, known as “deepfakes.”

rassment and deepfake porn.

And researchers fear it’s only a matter of time before the videos are deployed for maximum damage — to sow confusion, fuel doubt or undermine an opponent, potentially on the eve of a White House vote.

“We are outgunned,” said Hany Farid, a computer-science professor and digital-forensics expert at the University of California at Berkeley. “The number of people working on the video-synthesis

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Trump shatters an election norm

BY R OSALIND S . H ELDERMAN, T OM H AMBURGER AND J OSH D AWSEY

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ith his declared willingness to accept help from a foreign government in an election, President Trump upended longheld views that such outside assistance is anathema in American campaigns, both because of laws prohibiting foreign contributions and widely embraced norms of fair play.

Trump blew through those notions this past week, telling ABC News that if a foreign government offered him information on a political opponent, “I think I’d want to hear it.”

“It’s not an interference; they have information — I think I’d take it,” he continued. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI, if I thought there was something wrong.”

He added that his own FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, was “wrong” when he said during congressional testimony that campaign aides should always report offers of assistance from foreign entities to the bureau.

Trump’s comments came less than two weeks after his son-inlaw, Jared Kushner, said he wasn’t sure if he would report a future offer of foreign assistance to the FBI, calling questions regarding it “hypotheticals.” And Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has been openly gathering information in recent weeks from Ukrainian officials that he says he hopes could be used in a 2020 race against former vice president Joe Biden, whose son Hunter sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” said Giuliani, who canceled an information-gathering trip to Kiev after public criticism. “Somebody could say it’s improper.”

It is illegal to accept a campaign contribution from a foreign national, though there is debate over the extent to which information, rather than money, can be counted as such a contribution. It is also illegal to conspire with a foreign

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

President says he would be open to help from foreign governments, despite long-held practices government to affect a U.S. election by breaking other laws, such as stealing documents or acting as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the U.S. government.

Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub released a statement Thursday that said: “Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office. It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.

This is not a novel concept.”

Legal experts said the attitude of Trump and his allies toward foreign election assistance could hurt national security by depriving law enforcement of tips about foreign interference in U.S. affairs — such as Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign.

The president’s comments — an echo of his 2016 “Russia, are you listening?” request for help finding Hillary Clinton’s emails — could also serve as a message to

foreign governments that their assistance would be welcomed, not punished, by the commander in chief, they said.

“It’s critical when any candidate receives offers of assistance from foreign powers, that they should report. If they don’t, our law enforcement and intelligence community is deprived of key leads that would help them address potential election interference,” said Jennifer Daskal, a former senior Justice Department official who now teaches law at American University.

On Capitol Hill, Trump’s comments drew outrage from Democrats, who called for the passage of legislation requiring candidates to report offers of foreign help in elections.

While some Republicans emphasized that they would notify the FBI if approached by foreign entities offering opposition research, they also sought to highlight the fact that Democrats financed the work of former British intelligence officer Christopher

President Trump this past week told ABC News: “It’s not an interference; they have information — I think I’d take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI, if I thought there was something wrong.”

Steele, who compiled a dossier about Trump and his alleged ties to Russia.

However, it is not illegal for a campaign to pay foreigners market rate for campaign assistance, as in the Steele case. The Trump and Ted Cruz presidential campaigns had contracts with Cambridge Analytica, which has roots in the United Kingdom.

Kayleigh McEnany, a spokeswoman for Trump’s reelection campaign, told CBSN’s “Red & Blue” Thursday night that the campaign viewed the president’s words as a “directive” to deal with offers of foreign assistance on a “case-by-case basis.”

“He said he would likely do both: Listen to what they have to say, but also report it to the FBI,” she said.

While the Russian government interfered in the election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” including by breaking U.S. laws, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found, he could not establish that anyone associated with Trump criminally conspired in those efforts.

He also analyzed whether prosecutors could argue that Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer, who he was told had damaging information about Clinton, amounted to acceptance of an illegal in-kind campaign contribution.

Mueller wrote that no judicial decision had ever treated the “voluntary provision of uncompensated opposition research” as a thing of value akin to a campaign contribution. He said it was “uncertain” how a judge would view that contention and worried it could have free-speech implications, particularly if the information amounted to the recitation of accurate facts.

That view has been rejected by some campaign finance lawyers, who argued courts have ruled in other settings that a contribution can be a thing of intangible value rather than just money.

“A contribution is anything of value. Opposition research is clearly something of value,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the FEC. n

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WORLD

Brazil’s luxurious C-section parties B Y M ARINA L OPES in Sao Paulo, Brazil

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he white-gloved women laid chocolates and cakes on silver trays. They filled the crystal vases with roses. Now the guests were arriving. Mariana Casmalla had been buffed, primped and polished in preparation for this moment.

She was ready for her C-section.

“It’s a special occasion,” explained Casmalla, a 28-year-old dental surgeon, batting professionally made-up eyes.

“Don’t we get dressed up for parties and special dates? It’s the same thing.”

Elective Caesarean sections have long been a status symbol among Brazil’s elite, a way for some of the country’s wealthier women to avoid the unpredictability of natural childbirth. The country has one of the highest rates of Caesarean births in the world — they account for 55.5 percent of all deliveries in Brazil, spiking to 84 percent in private hospitals, according to the Public Health Ministry. The rate in the United States for all hospitals is 32.9 percent.

Now the phenomenon is inspiring a new industry of party planners, makeup artists and caterers, focused on turning these highly orchestrated operations into wedding-like spectacles, produced for an audience.

The main event: The birth itself, viewed by family and friends from a gallery built for the purpose.

At the Sao Luiz private hospital in Sao Paulo, a mother-to-be can get her hair and makeup done in her hospital room. For 2,000 reais per day — about $500 — her family can rent out the presidential suite, with a living room and bathroom for guests, a balcony and minibar.

Mothers can request their favorite flowers and magazines, and even change the furniture if it clashes with their planned decorations. A 22-story maternity ward now under construction will include a wine cellar and ballroom.

“It’s cultural,” said Marcia da

PÉTALA LOPES/THE WASHINGTON POST

Elite are scheduling their births, hiring event planners and inviting guests to watch the surgery Costa, the hospital’s director.

“Brazilians want to plan for everything. They don’t want to hit traffic on the way to the hospital. They want to get their nails done, get a wax, to plan it like an event.”

Still, Da Costa and other health professionals are ambivalent. The World Health Organization has long campaigned to reduce elective C-sections, which are nearly twice as deadly for mothers than natural births and require longer recovery times for mothers and babies.

In Brazil, public health officials and some of the country’s top doctors have worked to cure the upper class of its penchant for the procedure.

Costs vary, but C-sections are generally more expensive than natural childbirths. While the risk of maternal death in wellequipped private hospitals is low, hemorrhage and infection are more likely in an elective Caesarean than in a natural birth. For

babies, C-sections have been linked to higher rates of respiratory distress, diabetes and high blood pressure.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 10 percent of births require a C-section.

“Here we had the opposite statistics,” said Rodrigo Aguiar, a director at Brazil’s National Supplementary Health Agency, which regulates private hospitals.

Brazil’s Health Ministry has taken steps to reduce what it calls the Caesarean “epidemic.” In 2016, the government banned medically unnecessary C-sections before 39 weeks.

Olímpio de Moraes Filho, president of the Brazilian Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, says Caesarean sections fit some lifestyles.

“C-sections today are much safer than they were 30 years ago,” he said. “Things are changing. Women are in the job market. Couples are trying to schedule a moment

Family members take the first pictures of Mariana Casmalla’s baby, Lorena, delivered by Caesarean section at Albert Einstein Maternity Hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

when the family can get together.”

At the Albert Einstein Maternity Hospital in Sao Paulo, the party starts before the baby is born. A frosted window looking into the operating room turns transparent for the surgery, allowing guests to see the moment of the birth.

When the doctor pulled Lorena from the incision in Casmalla’s abdomen, the window turned transparent.

Casmalla gave the audience a thumbs-up.

Paula Ascar Baracat is cofounder of Estudio Matre, a partyplanning service that specializes in maternity wards. She says new mothers increasingly prefer receiving guests at the hospital, rather than at home.

Baracat’s clients spend upward of $10,000 for services that include floral arrangements, guest books, monogrammed sheets, personalized water bottles and silver-plated favors for guests.

In 2015, Linus Pauling Fascina, director of the maternity ward at Einstein, called together doctors, doulas, midwives, feminist activists and government officials to discuss ways to increase natural birthrates in Brazil’s private hospitals.

The group launched the Adequate Birth Project, a partnership with 35 hospitals to prioritize natural deliveries among the country’s elite.

One of their first steps was to bring the luxury and family experience associated with Caesareans to natural childbirth.

Einstein hospital opened five new natural birth centers with private showers and tubs. At Sao Luiz, women giving birth naturally can choose the color of the lighting of their in-room whirlpool bathtubs. Fairy lights on the ceiling can turn blue or red, depending on the mood of the patient. All rooms are equipped with MP3 players that patients can load with personalized playlists.

Results came quickly. In four years, natural birthrates at Einstein rose from 18 percent to nearly 50 percent. The program has expanded to over 200 hospitals. n

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In Canada, a fierce start to fire season B Y A MANDA C OLETTA

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rystal McAteer has watched ferocious wildfires chew through her home province of Alberta through the years, so she wasn’t surprised when flames arrived on her doorstep.

Still, McAteer, the mayor of High Level, Alberta, a town of roughly 3,200 some 460 miles north of Edmonton, had never seen anything like the Chuckegg Creek Fire.

An out-of-control blaze nearly the size of Rhode Island — 50 percent larger than last year’s record-breaking Mendocino Complex Fire in California — it has jumped rivers with ease, blackened the rain with soot and colored sunsets as far away as Britain.

“When it took off, it had such a force,” McAteer said, the fire having bypassed her town last month but still raging. “It was like a beast.”

Wildfire season in Canada — at least as destructive as in the United States — is off to a ferocious start. Eighty-seven fires were burning in seven provinces and two territories Monday, forcing 4,415 people from their homes.

As the Canadian north grows warmer and drier for longer periods, the destruction is expected to get worse. Wildfires are now scorching more than 6 million acres of land here per year. That’s twice what they burned in the 1970s — and it’s projected to double again by the end of the century.

“It’s become our new reality,” said Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland science at the University of Alberta. “I don’t like to say ‘normal,’ because that sounds like a plateau, and we’re on a trajectory where we’ll get more and more fire.”

Massive wildfires have become common in Alberta during spring, said Mike Wotton, a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada. There’s a window — after the snow melts but before vegetation grows — when there can be plenty of dry material to fuel fire.

More broadly, analysts say, in-

CHRIS SCHWARZ/GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA/REUTERS

As a blaze burns Alberta, scientists say warmer, drier conditions has made the destruction worse tense wildfire activity is increasing, and fire seasons are getting longer. They say climate change is at least partly to blame.

Environment and Climate Change Canada, a government agency, reported this year that Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, and much of it is “effectively irreversible.”

Climate change will make some parts of Canada hotter, drier and more prone to lightning, scientists say. It will melt snow pack faster and dry out fuels such as nettles, grasses and leaves.

It also acts as a threat multiplier for other drivers of shifting wildfire activity. Climate change has helped spread a mountain pine beetle epidemic, which has weakened trees across nearly 47 million acres of forest in Canada, making them more susceptible to blazes. (The beetle cannot survive cold winters.)

More people are being affected by wildfires than in the past be-

cause more and more of them are living and working in the wildland-urban interface — areas where human development meets or is interspersed with fire-prone forests.

Humans, too, affect ecosystems. In Canada, slightly more than half of all wildfires each year are started by people.

“People are choosing to move into those places because they’re beautiful and the weather is great, but people are naive about the conditions in which they’re choosing to live,” said Lori Daniels, a professor of forestry at the University of British Columbia.

“Californians are asking us to learn from their mistakes, and I’m not sure that we’re doing that very well.”

In some parts of Canada, fire management policies that once called for all naturally occurring fires to be quickly extinguished are also playing a role. Forest ecosystems rely on periodic fire for

The Chuckegg Creek wildfire burns out of control last month near High Level, Alberta. As of Monday, 87 fires were burning in seven provinces and two territories across Canada.

overall health and regeneration.

Fires have “a protective effect,” said Jen Beverly, a professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta.

“If you have a fire in an area, and then 20 years later you have a fire nearby, we’re seeing lots of examples where the new fire will not spread into the area that burned previously,” she said. “It’s fuel-limited by the previous fire.”

Those fire suppression policies were not particularly prevalent in Canada’s vast boreal forest, which makes up roughly three-quarters of all forested area in the country.

But they were implemented in some parts of southern British Columbia, especially where commitments were made to manage for timber. That has had unintended consequences, Daniels said, leaving behind tons of combustible material that can fuel blazes.

Devastating wildfires loom large in the Canadian psyche.

In 2016, a massive wildfire raged through Fort McMurray, Alberta, forcing the entire population — close to 90,000 people — to evacuate. Cars jammed the sole road out of the city as embers rained down, in Canada’s costliest insured disaster.

Five years earlier, a wildfire in Slave Lake, Alberta, incinerated whole neighborhoods, destroying 400 homes and businesses.

In 2003, wind and dry conditions fueled wildfires in Kelowna, British Columbia, driving some 20,000 people from their homes.

Even people who don’t live in the immediate vicinity of major fires are waking up to their massive impact.

Smoke from the Chuckegg Creek and other fires in Alberta has drifted into U.S. states and even traveled across the Atlantic Ocean. In Edmonton, it has turned the sky dark sepia and prompted air quality warnings.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made combating climate change a key priority for his government. But his efforts, including a carbon tax that went into effect this year, have drawn political opposition. n

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Abou Ouedrago, 15, from Burkina Faso, uses a machete to chop down a tree on a cocoa farm.

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Nearly 20 years ago, the cocoa industry’s biggest companies pledged to eradicate the “worst forms” of child labor in their supply chains.

Why haven’t they kept their promises?

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BY PETER WHORISKEY AND RACHEL SIEGEL in Guiglo, Ivory Coast

ive boys are swinging machetes on a cocoa farm, slowly advancing against a wall of brush. Their expressions are deadpan, almost vacant, and they rarely talk. The only sounds in the still air are the whoosh of blades slicing through tall grass and metallic pings when they hit something harder.

Each of the boys crossed the border months or years ago from the impoverished West African nation of Burkina Faso, taking a bus away from home and parents to Ivory Coast, where hundreds of thousands of small farms have been carved out of the forest.

These farms form the world’s most important source of cocoa and are the setting for an epidemic of child labor that the world’s largest chocolate companies promised to eradicate nearly 20 years ago.

“How old are you?” a Washington Post reporter asks one of the older-looking boys.

“Nineteen,” Abou Traore says in a hushed voice. Under Ivory Coast’s labor laws, that would make him legal. But as he talks, he casts nervous glances at the farmer who is overseeing his work from several steps away. When the farmer is distracted, Abou crouches and with his finger, writes a different answer in the gray sand: 15.

Then, to make sure he is understood, he also flashes 15 with his hands. He says, eventually, that he’s been working the cocoa farms in Ivory Coast since he was 10. The other four boys say they are young, too — one says he is 15, two are 14 and another, 13.

Abou says his back hurts, and he’s hungry.

“I came here to go to school,” Abou says. “I haven’t been to school for five years now.”

PHOTOS BY SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY

‘Too little, too late’ The world’s chocolate companies have missed deadlines to uproot child labor from their cocoa supply chains in 2005, 2008 and 2010.

Next year, they face another target date and, industry officials indicate, they probably will miss that, too.

As a result, the odds are substantial that a chocolate bar bought in the United States is the product of child labor.

About two-thirds of the world’s cocoa supply comes from West Africa where, according to a 2015 U.S. Labor Department report, more than 2 million children were engaged in dangerous labor in cocoa-growing regions.

When asked this spring, representatives of some of the biggest and best-known brands — Hershey, Mars and Nestlé — could not guarantee that any of their chocolates were produced without child labor.

“I’m not going to make those claims,” an executive at one of the large chocolate companies said.

With the growth of the global economy, Americans have become accustomed to reports of worker and environmental exploitation in faraway places. But in few industries, experts say, is the evidence of objectionable practices so clear, the industry’s pledges to reform so ambitious and the breaching of those promises so obvious.

Industry promises began in 2001 when, under pressure from the U.S. Congress, chiefs of some of the biggest chocolate companies signed a pledge to eradicate “the worst forms of child labor” from their West African cocoa suppliers. It was a project companies agreed to complete in four years.

To succeed, the companies would have to overcome the powerful economic forces that draw children into hard labor in one of the world’s poorest places. And they would have to develop a certification system to assure consumers that a bag of M&M’s or a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup did not originate with the swinging of a machete by a boy like Abou.

Since then, however, the chocolate industry also has scaled back its ambitions. While the original promise called for the eradication of child labor in West African cocoa fields and set a deadline for 2005, next year’s goal calls only for its reduction by 70 percent.

Timothy S. McCoy, a vice president of the World Cocoa Foundation, a Washingtonbased trade group, said that when the industry signed onto the 2001 agreement, “the real magnitude of child labor in the cocoa supply chain and how to address the phenomenon were poorly understood.”

Industry officials emphasized that, according to the pledge made to lawmakers, West African governments and labor organizations also bear some responsibility for the eradication of child labor.

Today, McCoy said, the companies “have made major strides,” including building schools, supporting agricultural cooperatives and advising farmers on better production methods.

In statements, some of the world’s biggest chocolate companies that signed the agreement — Hershey, Mars and Nestlé — said they had taken steps to reduce their reliance on child labor.

Other companies that were not signatories, such as Mondelez and Godiva, also have taken such steps, but likewise would not guarantee that any of their products were free of child labor.

In all, the industry, which collects an estimated $103 billion in sales annually, has spent more than $150 million over 18 years to address the issue.

But when the businesses initially made the promise to eradicate child labor, according to industry insiders and documents, the companies had little idea of how to do so. Their subsequent efforts have been stalled by indecision and insufficient financial commitment, according to industry critics.

Their most prominent effort — buying cocoa that has been “certified” for ethical business practices by third-party groups such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance, has been weakened by a lack of rigorous enforcement of child labor rules. Typically, the third-party inspectors are required to visit fewer than 10 percent of cocoa farms.

According to the U.S. Labor Department, a majority of the 2 million child laborers in the cocoa industry are living on their parents’ farms, doing the type of dangerous work — swinging machetes, carrying heavy loads, spraying pesticides — that international authorities consider the “worst forms of child labor.”

Top: A bus from Burkina Faso carrying passengers and trafficked children as young as 12 arrives at night in Ivory Coast.

Above: Children at a cocoa farm share water that was scooped into a bucket from a nearby pond.

A smaller number, those trafficked from nearby countries, find themselves in the most dire situations.

During a March trip through Ivory Coast’s cocoa-growing areas, journalists from The Washington Post spoke with 12 children who said they had come, unaccompanied by parents, from Burkina Faso to work on cocoa farms.

While the ages they gave were consistent with their appearance, The Post could not verify their birth dates. In much of Burkina Faso, as many as 40 percent of births go unrecorded in official records, and many children lack identification documents.

The farms were easily visited because they typically lack fences, but people were often reluctant to talk about child labor, which is known to be illegal and is officially discouraged.

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ing areas, child migrants are used to meet the demand on cocoa farms for arduous manual labor and stay year-round. There is land to be cleared, typically with machetes; sprayings of pesticide; and more machete work to gather and split open the cocoa pods. Finally, the work involves carrying sacks of cocoa that may weigh 100 pounds or more.

“Côte d’Ivoire has long been seen as a land of better opportunity in this part of the world,” McCoy, the industry spokesman, said. “That particular sort of form of trafficking speaks to a broader phenomenon that is not specific to cocoa, is not specific to Côte d’Ivoire but speaks of people seeking opportunity and that happens all over the world.”

‘We are hungry’

Asked about the extent of child migrants working on Ivorian cocoa farms, the farmer overseeing Abou and the other boys noted the steady stream of buses carrying people from Burkina Faso into the area. The Post’s reporters also observed those buses during the March visit.

There’s “a lot of them coming,” said the farmer, who asked that his name not be used because he didn’t want to attract attention from the authorities. “It’s them who do the work.”

‘It happens on a large scale’ What makes the eradication of child labor such a daunting task is that, by most accounts, its roots lie in poverty.

The typical Ivorian cocoa farm is small — less than 10 acres — and the farmer’s annual

Top: Abou Traore, 15, from Burkina Faso, sits against a tree and dries the sweat from his face with his T-shirt while on a break at a cocoa farm.

Above: Workers gather dried cocoa beans outside an Ivory Coast cooperative facility.

household income stands at about $1,900, according to research for Fairtrade, one of the groups that issues a label that is supposed to ensure ethical business methods. That amount is well below levels the World Bank defines as poverty for a typical family. About 60 percent of the country’s rural population lacks access to electricity, and, according to UNESCO, the literacy rate of the Ivory Coast reaches about 44 percent.

With such low wages, Ivorian parents often can’t afford the costs of sending their children to school — and they use them on the farm instead.

Other laborers come from the steady stream of child migrants who are brought to Ivory Coast by people other than their parents.

At least 16,000 children, and perhaps many more, are forced to work on West African cocoa farms by people other than their parents, according to estimates from a 2018 survey led by a Tulane University researcher.

“There is evidence that it happens, and it happens on a large scale,” said Elke de Buhr, an assistant professor and principal investigator on the study, done in collaboration with the Walk Free Foundation, a group working to end forced labor, and funded by the Stichting de Chocolonely Foundation.

The child migrants arrive amid a vast wave of people entering from Burkina Faso and Mali. Ivory Coast is home to 1.3 million migrants from Burkina Faso and another 360,000 from Mali, according to the United Nations. Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast share an agreement on open borders.

Upon arriving in Ivory Coast’s cocoa-grow-

From the Ivorian capital of Abidjan, the village of Bonon is a five-hour drive along two-lane roads pocked with pond-sized potholes. From the outskirts of the village, footpaths lead into the surrounding forests, where farmers have created groves of cocoa trees.

In a patch of woods one day in March, another group of boys was at work with machetes. Each said he had come from Burkina Faso to work on Ivory Coast’s cocoa farms.

Like teen boys elsewhere, the boys near Bonon — Abou Ouedrago, 15; Karim Bakary, 16; and Aboudnamune Ouedrago, 13 — wore colorful branded sportswear. But they sleep in huts out in the woods, spend their days doing hard manual labor and don’t attend school or see their families. Karim’s yellow Adidas shirt was smeared with dirt. When one of the boys falls ill, they said they pool their money to go to the pharmacy.

During a break in the typical March day — where the temperature ran into the 90s — the boys shared water scooped into a bucket from a nearby pond. It was milky white.

They said they came in search of a better life and are paid about 85 cents a day.

“There is no money in Burkina,” said Karim, who said he arrived here four years ago when he was 12. “We suffer a lot to get some money there. We came here to be able to have some money to eat.”

One time, he said proudly, he was able to send some money back home: $34. He said he would like to stay in Ivory Coast to make more money.

The most somber of the three was Aboudnamune. He wore a Spider-Man ball cap and rarely smiled. He said he arrived two years ago when he was 11. He answered questions haltingly, sometimes staring into the distance, and said he’d like to see his parents because “it’s been a while.”

“Yes, it’s a little bit hard,” he said of his life on the cocoa farms. “We are hungry, and we make just a small amount of money.”

A 2009 Tulane survey, based on interviews with 600 former migrant cocoa workers, offered a grim look at the economics that lead to child trafficking.

Traffickers typically offer the children, who

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

The most prominent, sustained public attention to the issue arose 18 years ago with reports from news organizations and the U.S. State Department that linked American chocolate to child slavery in West Africa.

“There is a moral responsibility . . . for us not to allow slavery, child slavery, in the 21st century,” Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) said at the time.

Engel introduced legislation that would have created a federal labeling system to indicate whether child slaves had been used in growing and harvesting cocoa. It allotted $250,000 to the Food and Drug Administration to develop the labels.

The measure passed the House, but the industry was adamant that no government regulation was necessary.

Engel, along with then-Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), opted to negotiate an agreement with the chocolate companies.

Now known as the HarkinEngel Protocol, the deal kept federal regulators from policing the chocolate supply.

But the deal committed the chocolate companies to eradicate child labor from their supply chains and to develop and implement “standards of public certification,” which would indicate that cocoa products had been produced “without any of the worst forms of child labor.”

The top officials of Hershey, Mars, Nestlé USA and five other chocolate companies signed onto the deal. The signing companies had “primary responsibility” for eradicating child labor, lawmakers said, but the Ivorian government, labor organizations and a consumer group also pledged support.

The protocol also specified a deadline: July 2005.

Over the next few years, the industry approached the challenge with working groups, pilot programs and attempts to redefine its promise.

The industry created the International Cocoa Initiative, which was supposed to coordinate company efforts. The companies also formed a short-lived panel called the Verification Working Group. In West Africa, the industry supported pilot projects for monitoring child labor.

Even some insiders say the early efforts were destined to fall short.

Peter McAllister, who led the International Cocoa Initiative from 2003 to 2010, said the companies were “desperate” to avoid the legislation and promised more than they could deliver.

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‘A moral responsibility’

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could be as young as 10, money or more specific incentives, such as bicycles, to take the bus to Ivory Coast. About half of those interviewed said they were not free to return home, and more than two-thirds said they experienced physical violence or threats.

Most had been looking for work, and some said the money they were promised was never paid.

Lagos

NIGERIA

CHAD

‘Severely inadequate’ CAMEROON 500 MILES

THE WASHINGTON POST

Why The Washington Post published children’s names and photos in this story A reporter and photographer with The Washington Post spent 11 days in Ivory Coast reporting this story. Reporter Peter Whoriskey and photographer Salwan Georges traveled with an interpreter to three villages in West Africa, interviewing 12 boys who gave their ages ranging from 13 to 18. Georges, through a translator, asked each boy if he agreed to be photographed and whether he consented to photographs that would identify him. Most consented to photographs while several did not, so their photos were not published. All agreed to use of their full names. Some of the boys remarked that they wanted their parents, who live in another country, to see their photos.

“Was there any chance of child labor being eradicated by 2005? No, never,” McAllister said. “They set themselves up for a bit of a disaster because of this magic date.”

“One executive told me at that point, ‘We would have signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty,’ ” McAllister said.

Still, the industry gave the impression it was making progress. In February 2005, Smith, of the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, told an NPR interviewer that the deadline would be met.

“We have met every deadline established in the protocol agreement, and we’ll continue to do so,” she said. “We have large-scale tests of the monitoring system and the independent verification system in place. Those are going on now.”

But as Engel and others pointed out at the time, the companies were not close to meeting the deadline four months away. There were no consumer labels in the works; there was no clear verification system; the worst forms of child labor had not been eradicated.

Shortly after the deadline passed, the industry sought to reconstrue the meaning of a key clause in the agreement.

In 2007, industry officials argued that the promised “standards of public certification” did not mean, as some negotiators had thought, the creation of consumer labels indicating that a chocolate bar was free of child labor.

“Everyone in that room negotiating understood we were there to create a labeling requirement,” J. William Goold, Harkin’s lead negotiator on the deal, said in an interview for this story. “We were talking about consumer labels on chocolate. Anybody who thinks the

language in Harkin-Engel means anything other than labeling for consumers is engaged in cynical self-delusion.”

Instead, the industry said, the agreement meant that the companies would produce statistics on West African “labor conditions” and “the levels” of child labor in West Africa.

Was there any chance of child labor being eradicated by 2005? No, never. They set themselves up for a bit of a disaster because of this magic date.

Peter McAllister, who led the International Cocoa Intiative from 2003 to 2010

One day this March, Amadou Sawadogo, 18, was preparing a patch of forest for a cocoa farm near the village of Blolequin, by the Liberian border.

He said he had been living in Burkina Faso and, when he was 16, came to Ivory Coast after “my father . . . asked [me] to come and look for money here.”

Like others here, he said it was common for Burkinabe children to come with traffickers to work in Ivory Coast and that the financial arrangements are well known. There are about 30 young Burkinabe working around Blolequin, he said. Payments from the traffickers to parents depended on a child’s age. For a 15-year-old, he said, parents would be paid about $250. Once on the Ivorian farms, the boys make a little bit of money, typically less than a $1 per day, Sawadogo said.

None of this is legal under Ivorian law.

Ivory Coast signed the Harkin-Engel deal, too, and passed laws in 2010 and 2016 that define child labor and set penalties for its use.

The Ivory Coast government committee handling child labor issues also said that it has taken other preventive measures: It built schools in rural areas and cracked down on people involved in child trafficking.

Child labor and child trafficking have flourished nonetheless because of the country’s inability to enforce the laws. As U.S. State Department officials noted in a 2018 report, the primary police anti-trafficking unit is based in the nation’s capital, Abidjan, several hours away from the cocoa-growing areas, and its budget is about $5,000 a year.

That amount, a State Department report says, is “severely inadequate.”

In a statement to The Post, Ivory Coast’s committee against child trafficking and child labor, said the $5,000 per year was not sufficient and that “the Ivorian government has to invest more in this area.” The country also has faced the eruption of on-and-off civil wars in 2002 and 2011.

Making matters more complex, some of the young migrant workers, legally the victims of child labor, say they’d like to stay. Though he had arrived only two years ago, Sawadogo said he was prepared to stay in Ivory Coast and had started clearing his own patch of forest for a cocoa farm. On his plot of land, Sawadogo had built a small shelter out of branches. It was big enough for one person to sleep in. He owned a couple of battered metal bowls and had some oil, which he’d use to fry bananas picked for lunch.

“I haven’t earned much money yet,” he said.

“But here I’ve made a little money.” n

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TELEVISION

KLMNO WEEKLY

9 new shows to watch this summer

BY HANK STUEVER

Salahuddin (“GLOW”) and Diallo Riddle (“Marlon”), seeks to solve: Can’t a notoriously violent neighborhood — so often described in hellish terms — also be funny as hell? Loosely organized around the dreams of recent community college grads Simon James (Sultan Salahuddin) and Kareem “K” Odom (Kareme Young), the series follows them through one hustle after another.

A

fter all those warnings that a chill was coming, there’s still a noticeable void of summer TV offerings, in the wake of “Game of Thrones.” But not to worry — it’s not so desolate that you’ll be forced to, like, read a book or go outside.

I’ve picked nine shows that premiere between now and Labor Day that, I hope, will keep us occupied and enlightened (perhaps even entertained).

PERPETUAL GRACE, LTD (Sundays on Epix) A languid yet artfully envisioned 10-episode drama for viewers who are most at home in remote locations (in this case, rural New Mexico) with neonoir characters who act and speak as if they belong in a never-made Coen brothers film. “Westworld’s” Jimmi Simpson stars as a guilt-ridden drifter who gets conned into a life-insurance scheme that involves kidnapping a church pastor and his wife (Ben Kingsley and Jacki Weaver) and faking their deaths, only to learn the hard way that the pair are master-criminals themselves.

DAS BOOT (Hulu, starts June 17) Wolfgang Petersen’s classic (and classically claustrophobic) 1981 film about a Nazi U-boat gets a sequel of sorts in this stern but satisfying eight-episode, German-made TV series.

THE LAVENDER SCARE (Check local PBS listings) Josh Howard’s one-hour documentary (based on David K. Johnson’s book) examines an outrage from the 1950s, when the U.S. government began purging federal employee ranks of any man or woman suspected of being homosexual.

The policy was rooted in the ugly idea that gay men and lesbians could be easily blackmailed and turned into communist spies — paranoia in full effect. The purge inspired a nascent gay rights movement, spearheaded by an employee of the U.S. Army’s Map Service named Frank Kameny. A ban on security clearances for gay

NIK KONIETZNY

workers remained in effect until (hold onto your hats, kiddies) 1995.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED??!

(Fox, starts June 30) Fox wasn’t quite ready to share episodes yet, but I’m going to at least enthusiastically endorse the concept: A spoof (if a belated one) of those inane, live after-shows such as AMC’s “Talking Dead,” where guests excitedly deconstruct what just happened on the previous episode of their favorite, direly complex drama — in this case, a show called “The Flare.” Fred Savage plays himself as the host of the show (and huge fanboy of “The Flare’s” source material, a nonexistent novel by nonexistent author T.J. Whitford called “The Moon Is the Sun at Night,” which is a postapocalyptic tale about a small town and the aftermath of a solar event).

Comedian Taylor Tomlinson joins Savage as co-host.

I LOVE YOU, NOW DIE: THE COMMONWEALTH V. MICHELLE CARTER (HBO, July 9-10) Filmmaker Erin Lee Carr has become the go-to documentarian of some of the stickiest legal conundrums in the 2010s — such as the case of the cop who fantasized in chat rooms

about cannibalizing his wife. The two-night “I Love You, Now Die” chronicles the trial of Michelle Carter, a young Massachusetts woman accused of urging her boyfriend to kill himself through persistent texts and calls. (They had only met in person a handful of times.)How responsible is she for his death? Carr relies on interviews, testimony and text-message transcripts to create a narrative tension that transcends the case’s sensationalism. Her work once again asks how modern communication can capitalize on some of our darkest personality disorders.

THE LOUDEST VOICE (Showtime, starts June 30) Russell Crowe stars in this seven-part miniseries as the late Roger Ailes, the Fox impresario whom history will record as reshaping American politics and the way conservative voters receive information.

SOUTH SIDE (Comedy Central, starts July 24) When someone says they’re making a show about life on Chicago’s South Side, the words “Comedy Central” may not leap to mind — but that’s just the problem that “South Side,” written by Bashir

Wolfgang Petersen’s classic 1981 film, “Das Boot,” about a Nazi U-boat gets a sequel of sorts in this stern but satisfying eightepisode, Germanmade TV series.

BH 90210 (Fox, starting Aug. 7) Every summer needs its own “Sharknado”-like TV event, where the rules of standard criticism (and viewer discernment) need not apply. Fox’s six-episode “BH90210,” currently in production, more than fills that order, as original cast members (Shannen Doherty, Jennie Garth, Tori Spelling, Gabrielle Carteris, Jason Priestley, Brian Austin Green and Ian Ziering — everyone but Luke Perry, who died earlier this year) return to play “heightened versions” of themselves: actors who have been convinced to come back and resume the roles that made them super-famous nearly 30 years ago.

THE DARK CRYSTAL: AGE OF RESISTANCE (Netflix, starts Aug. 30) Although it landed with a bit of a thud in 1982, Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s serious-toned fantasy quietly found and retained generations of loyal fans in the years since. This prequel series, takes advantage of four decades of technological advancements in movie magic, blending puppetry with CGI to give the planet Thra and its inhabitants a more dazzling look. The plot involves three elflike Gelflings from different clans (voiced by Taron Egerton, Anya Taylor-Joy and Nathalie Emmanuel) who start a revolution against the reptilianlike rulers known as the Skeksis. I know, I know: The what and the hunh? That’s what people said when they first watched “Game of Thrones.” This won’t rival that, but it’s a good reminder that the fantasy genre is about taking a step toward something unfamiliar and then letting it take you away. n

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OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Understanding the cost of combat ROBERT H. SCALES is a retired Army major general and a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

Fifty years ago, I stood over my friend and West Point classmate Mike Snell moments after he died. I wish I could write that it was a dramatic and memorable event, but it wasn’t. He just lay there in a pool of his own blood and stared at me with glassy, empty eyes.

Mike and I shared a fondness for disobedience at West Point. In the 1960s, many of us smuggled an occasional beer into the barracks. But Mike and I too often got caught, so we bonded while walking punishment tours. Mike was an easygoing guy with a Texas accent and a cynical sense of humor. He tolerated West Point discipline because, like me, he wanted to go to war and lead soldiers.

He got his chance — twice. His back-to-back tours of duty in the 101st Airborne Division came as a result of too many beers and driving his Corvette too fast around Fort Campbell, Ky. The division commander gave him a choice: face official punishment or “volunteer” for a second tour.

He chose option two.

When we met again in 1969, I was commanding an artillery battery on Firebase Berchtesgaden, a scorched, redclay scar on top of a mountain in South Vietnam overlooking Hamburger Hill. I had gotten the job after my predecessor, Capt.

Milt Freeman, and 50 of his men were killed or seriously wounded on a neighboring firebase. By June 1969, we were down to 55 men and only four of our original

six guns.

Mike strolled into my position carrying an artillery fuze canister full of ice and Olympia beer. For the record, beer was forbidden on Berchtesgaden. It was like old times. It was an off day for the North Vietnamese. We drank all afternoon. In the early evening, Mike and I shook hands and he wobbled back to his unit, a series of bunkers clustered on the other side of the helipad.

Five hours later, after midnight on June 14, our North Vietnamese friends visited us again. They came in full fury, perhaps 500 fighters, and rampaged through a hail of their own mortar and rocket fire. Nineteen of my men were dead or seriously wounded.

A month earlier, my unit had been 105 strong. On this morning 50

years ago, we were down to 29.

The sun was just beginning to break through the haze of burning after-battle refuse as I watched my driver, Spec. Ruben Urdialez, speak to a friend from Mike’s unit. He crawled over to me and whispered: “Sir, you know that captain you were with last night? Well, I think he’s dead.”

I reached Mike’s bunker within a few seconds. I learned afterward that he had stepped out of the safety of his bunker to have a smoke. A 60mm mortar shell landed at his feet. He died instantly. All I knew to do was cross his hands across his shelltorn chest. I stood for a moment saying nothing. Then I turned back to my unit. It’s hard for those who have not seen war to understand how combat and the occasional terror induced by violent death bond men together.

But that boozy afternoon formed a moment in my life that will live as long as I do. In the moment, I loved that man. I still do.

What do I make of this 50 years on? Several things come to mind. A month after the night of horrors, we listened on Armed Forces Radio as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. I remember the sense of incongruity. Mike was killed by a $20, four-pound piece of cast steel exploding at his feet while the most scientifically

accomplished country on Earth was preparing to rocket a man to the moon. Little has changed.

Today, the president’s budget contains hundreds of billions for missiles, fighter jets, satellites and exotic electronics. But most Americans who die at the hands of the enemy die from cheap things such as mortars, IEDs and AK-47s.

Perhaps we should do more to shield those in harm’s way from death by cheap things.

My father’s generation died by the hundreds of thousands in World War II. We died by the tens of thousands. Today, four soldiers dead in Niger makes national news. I hope we haven’t gotten too used to death in small numbers. I fear that after decades of low-cost wars, our national security gurus speak too loosely about conflict with Russia and China. Wars fought in the shadow of nuclear clouds would make past sacrifices pale into insignificance.

My experience in Vietnam was repeated many times by West Point classmates far braver than me. Today, as old men, we remain a unique band of brothers and occasionally reminisce about our war. We all sincerely hope that those who send soldiers into battle will listen — and comprehend the tragic cost of combat. n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

BY LUCKOVICH FOR THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

The myth of an equal education HELAINE OLEN is a contributor to Post Opinions and the author of “Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry” and co-author of “The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated.”

Is it better to be born rich or born smart? There’s a definitive answer to that question — one, I am guessing, many people in the United States would rather not hear.

According to a study released last month by Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, low-income kindergartners who received high scores on tests of academic talent fared significantly worse when it came to graduating from college and obtaining a desirable entry-level position than 5- and 6-year-old children who performed poorly but came from families in the top income quartile.

How much worse? The richer group of children, it seems, had to try very hard to fail — they had a 7 in 10 chance of meeting the milestones. For the less well off, the numbers were reversed. They had a 3 in 10 chance of meeting the goals.

I thought about that study Monday morning when reading Nick Hanauer’s mea culpa in the Atlantic for his previous position on education. Hanauer, who donated more than $1 million to public education reform efforts in the past, isn’t against improving public education. But, he says, he has come to believe that education is no magic salve for income inequality. American families are in increasing economic pain not because they lack access to a quality education, but because they aren’t getting

paid adequately. “Our education system can’t compensate for the ways our economic system is failing Americans,” he writes.

So why do we still believe otherwise? Well, a quality education is vital for a broadbased middle class. College graduates earn significantly more over the course of their lifetimes than those who don’t receive a degree. And the further down the economic ladder someone is, the more likely his or her children will receive an inadequate education. Poorer children usually are more likely to experience teacher turnover, fewer extracurricular activities and overcrowded classrooms, not to mention older textbooks and schools in need of repairs.

It’s easy to look at this and think fixing U.S. education is the

BY SHENEMAN

solution. But that ignores the other reality. The children of the wealthy and well-to-do benefit not just from better-quality schools but also from an enormous support system. They are cushioned by a safety net of tutors and test prep, summer camps and the opportunity to pursue prestigious, unpaid internships. If they hit a rough patch, they will likely receive help. In this sort of environment, it’s almost impossible to fail. But when poorer children fall down, on the other hand, there is rarely a helping hand to help them get back up.

As Hanauer points out, the narrative that public education is failing, and that fixing it is the key to increasing income mobility, is being driven by some of the most moneyed and privileged members of our society. These are people like our current education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a billionaire who neither sent her own children to public schools nor attended one herself, and Bill Gates, the second-wealthiest man in the world. Pushing the narrative that schools, if run “properly,” can provide equal chances to advance for all despite soaring inequality lets the top 1 percent off the hook for inequality — and leaves them firmly in possession of their

funds, unless they would like to voluntarily donate a portion of them to whatever cause or causes they choose.

Rather than acknowledge this, however, many of us tell ourselves that we live in a meritocracy and that better educational opportunities for all can give everyone a chance at success. But that denies the reality of our American aristocracy. The amount of nepotism and inherited privilege in our society is staggering. It starts at the top. Minus Fred Trump and his millions, it seems unlikely Donald Trump would be anything more than a huckster house-flipper. Minus Charles Kushner’s multimillion-dollar contribution to Harvard University, it’s impossible to believe Jared Kushner would have been admitted to its august campus.

To claim a faulty education is the main reason that many children are not getting ahead is, at best, to confuse cause with effect, and, at worst, out and out disingenuous. The most intelligent child in poverty is going to have a hard time of it.

The children of the rich and wellto-do, be they smart or be they stupid, on the other hand, will likely make good. Brains have little to do with it. n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

WORLD VIEW

China can’t smash Hong Kong spirit BY

I SHAAN T HAROOR

I

t’s always been easy to prophesy Hong Kong’s doom. Ever since Britain handed over the bustling colonial entrepôt to Beijing in 1997, prognosticators and politicos of all stripes warned of its inexorable decline. Hong Kong’s liberal and quasi-democratic traditions, including civil liberties such as freedom of speech, would wane and wither under the new Communist overlords, they said. So, too, would the economic preeminence of this famous port at the heart of global trade, eclipsed by booming cities on the Chinese mainland.

And, ultimately, Hong Kong’s supposedly apathetic local populace would accept its fate and get with the program.

None of these fears are misguided and, in some cases, have proved far too real. But for all the political pressure bearing down on Hong Kong, the city still has a way of defying the naysayers and standing up — even if that means rising against the tide of history itself.

That spirit has been on display this past week. Last Sunday, Hong Kong saw its biggest protests in half a decade, with possibly upward of a million people flooding the streets in opposition to a draft bill that would allow for extraditions to the mainland.

A pocket of protesters who attempted to hold a sit-in at Hong Kong’s Legislative Council clashed with police and were blanketed with pepper spray.

The legislation’s proponents insist that current legal loopholes — Hong Kong does not have extradition treaties with China or Taiwan — need to be closed. But its critics argue that the bill fundamentally threatens the “one country, two systems” model that has enabled Hong Kong to maintain a degree of political autonomy since 1997. Permitting extraditions to the mainland, they contend, would enable China’s authoritarian leadership to further erode the rule of law and civil liberties in Hong Kong. When a senior Communist Party official in the ruling Politburo publicly offered his support for the measure, it only deepened suspicions in Hong Kong.

“This is the last fight for Hong Kong,” Martin Lee, a pioneering democracy activist, told the Wall Street Journal. “The proposal is the most dangerous threat to our freedoms and way of life since the handover.”

By Tuesday night, groups of protesters were encamped near the Legislative Council, where Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing chief executive, Carrie Lam, postponed a reading

ANTHONY WALLACE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

on the extradition bill multiple times during the week. The legislative body is widely viewed to be rigged in Beijing’s favor. The delay in the extradition bill was hailed as a symbolic victory among the demonstrators.

Authorities, meanwhile, stepped up their own crackdowns in response to midweek protests by arresting some activists at hospitals where they were getting treatment from injuries sustained by police tactics.

Tweets from Hong Kong University students described police searches in dorm rooms. A cyberattack on Telegram, a messaging app widely used for organizing the protests, underscored the tech-focused worries of protesters trying to evade and foil some of the world’s most sophisticated surveillance systems.

Hanging over the current tensions is the legacy of the Umbrella Movement, the mass pro-democracy protest in 2014 that occupied Hong Kong’s commercial district for 79 days.

Despite galvanizing a new generation of young activists, it achieved little in the way of political change. Instead, both China and the local government have clamped down on dissidents and the right to dissent in Hong Kong.

“For the past five years, residents of Hong Kong have fought with much difficulty against the erosion of our freedom,” activist Denise Ho wrote in a column for The Washington Post. “Pro-democracy lawmakers

Protesters clash with police during a demonstration outside the Legislative Council Complex in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

Violent clashes broke out in Hong Kong as police tried to stop protesters storming the city's parliament, while tens of thousands of people blocked key arteries in a show of strength against government plans to allow extraditions to China.

have been unjustly disqualified from office, booksellers have been kidnapped, and activists have been sentenced heavily for protesting. It’s obvious that our city’s system is no longer working in the people’s favor.”

In Chinese President Xi Jinping, Hong Kong faces an unmoved, unrelenting overlord. Experts suggest Xi, who has cemented his reputation as one of China’s most ruthless leaders, has little incentive to heed the protests of the Hong Kongers, let alone the complaints of Western governments on their behalf. (In Washington, activists and lawmakers are calling on President Trump to retaliate economically if the measure gets passed.) “[Xi] will do whatever he can to enforce Beijing’s sovereignty and thumb his nose at Western efforts to interfere with Hong Kong or Taiwan,” Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based political scientist, said to the Sydney Morning Herald. “He is a tough opponent of the Western order.”

It doesn’t help Hong Kong’s cause that its economic clout has somewhat dipped in the decades since the handover, with business interests and executive talent drifting either toward greater opportunity within China or further away from the increasingly long hand of Beijing. Out of fear for the future, large numbers of families are choosing to leave the city. Earlier this year, the GDP of the Chinese megacity of Shenzhen — once a tiny fishing village in Hong Kong’s backwaters — surpassed that of the former British colony for the first time. Though still Asia’s financial capital, Hong Kong looks tinier and tinier when set against China’s ever-rising colossus.

But those among its more than 7 million residents who believe in Hong Kong’s freedoms aren’t going down without a fight.

The current standoff has revived the city’s civil society and pro-democracy movement.

“Young people who had checked out from disappointment and frustration are reappearing, and once again actively participating,” Ho wrote.

“Judging by the crowds on Sunday, Hong Kongers’ scorn for the government on the mainland may have reached new heights,” wrote Yi-Zheng Lian, a Japan-based commentator on Hong Kong and Asian affairs. “This cannot be what Beijing wanted.”

On Tuesday, Sunny Leung, 24, was distributing red fliers denouncing the extraditions bill. “Maybe we [Hong Kong] will die, but we will not die in silence,” he told The Post.

“We are protesting until the end.” n

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SUNDAY, June, 16, 2019

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