Friday, May 1, 2026

A brief history of anti-black violence in China – The Mail & Guardian

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A brief history of anti-black violence in China – The Mail & Guardian

The recent wave of evictions and forced detentions of Africans living in China, especially in the southern city of Guangzhou, has shocked most people, especially Africans. While the reporting and analysis of the ongoing situation have been quite widespread, and have even forced a response from the Chinese government, most observers have generally not connected this episode to previous, and even uglier, episodes of anti-black African action in China. In fact, there is a long history of these kinds of violence and discrimination against Africans in China, which are linked to how Africans are viewed there. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak in three West African countries, Africans in China were subjected to forced quarantine episodes too, but they did not capture the popular imagination the way similar episodes of mistreatment do now.

Chinese perceptions of Africans draw from two separate threads: that Africans are dangerous, disease-carrying individuals, and also a tolerated minority subject to the whims of state violence.

It is worth revisiting this long history.

Scholarly tensions

African students have been coming to China since 1960, and violent tensions between those students and the Chinese have been occurring since 1962, when a Zanzibari was beaten by hotel attendants. Still, it would not be until 1979 in the Shanghai Textile Engineering Institute when a pattern of anti-African violence was established by Chinese students, which “culminated in the [Nanjing] 1988-89 racial turmoil.” The Shanghai violence began on July 3, when Chinese students complained about the African students’ loud music and confronted them. A brawl ensued, and eventually a mob of Chinese students attacked the African students with makeshift weapons, following rumors Africans had raped Chinese women. The police response was insufficient to protect the Africans. According to scholar Barry Sautman, “Sixteen foreign students were hospitalised, but as many as 50 foreigners and 24 Chinese may have been injured.” A similar clash took place in Tianjin in 1986, this time over the mostly male African students’ relations with Chinese women. They were also reproached for playing loud music. The African students, after being detained by the police, needed protection from Chinese student groups raiding the foreign students’ dormitories. It should be noted that African diplomats had no success in trying to work with the Chinese authorities to better protect their citizens in China; some ambassadors suggested their governments send fewer students to China.

Nanjing universities in particular seemed to have problems dealing with African students, and their branch of the African Students Union sent a letter to the authorities protesting their treatment a year before the 1979 Shanghai violence, with no apparent change in policy. In 1980, according to Michael J. Sullivan and Philip Snow, Chinese students put up posters denouncing their government for welcoming African visitors.

The incident

There were multiple racially motivated attacks against African students between 1985 and 1986, and the Chinese police would arrive but not protect the students. In 1988, officials in Hehai University built a wall around the foreign students hall, ostensibly to protect against theft, but actually to ensure that African students did not bring Chinese women to their rooms. When the African students knocked down the wall, the university officials informed them that funds from their stipend would be docked in order to pay for the damages, and the students staged demonstrations. It was during this tumult that the university decided on December 24, the day of the Christmas Eve dance, that all foreign students must register their guests at the university gate. Two African students, from Benin and Liberia, wanted to bring two Chinese girls with them to the dance, and went to the main gate at Hehai. After that, what actually happened is bitterly disputed, as illustrated by two passages in Michael Sullivan’s article:

[T]he entrance guard asked the two girls to register, the two African students and refused to let them do so. At that point, several other African students came over and started a quarrel with the entrance guard. In the ensuing brawl, eleven staff members were injured, one of them seriously, including a university vice-president who had one of his ribs broken when he tried to persuade the combatants to stop fighting.

The African students … claim that the security guard permitted them and their guests to enter the campus after he saw the women’s Hong Kong passports. When the Benin student later returned to the front gate to wait for another Chinese friend, a group of heckling Chinese students attacked him, chanting “Black Devil, you must respect the laws of China!” and “What do you want, Black Devil?” The African students then ran to the foreign students’ hall to inform their friends of this attack after which several African students “began to arm themselves with wooden sticks, empty Jinling beer bottles and stones.”

Official accounts stress that the African students were difficult to manage. African student accounts stress the racist provocation of the Chinese students. Regardless of whose “fault” it was (I personally believe the African students’ interpretation of events), there was a fundamental hardening of Chinese student attitudes after the incident. Within hours, a rumor of a Chinese woman being kidnapped by the African students mobilised 300 Chinese students to lay siege against the African students’ dormitories, and both group of students fought until 4 a.m. on December 25.

Black devils! Kill the black devils!


– from “The 1988–89 Nanjing Anti-African Protests: Racial Nationalism or National Racism?” by Michael Sullivan

On December 25, Christmas Day, another group of 300 Chinese students attacked the foreign students’ hall because they believed a rumor that a Chinese man had been killed by an African student the night before, but the authorities had failed to arrest him. Shouting that they wanted to “kill the black devils,” they began another melee with the African students, which lasted for over two hours until it was broken up by the police. The General Union of African Students in China (GUASC) requested from the university a police escort to the train station so they could go to Beijing to contact their respective embassies, which was swiftly refused. The African students, after suffering multiple attacks from mobs and being offered minimal protection by the university administrators, decided to go to the rail station on foot. To the Chinese students, it looked like they were fleeing after one of their own had murdered a Chinese man and that the government was letting them go free.

In the evening, 600 students from Hehai University went off to gather support for their cause. They marched to Nanjing University, but as Sullivan recounts, “only a handful of students… responded. The vast majority had been bribed with five RMB and a special meal by the school authorities not to participate.” Though Nanjing University did not offer much in the way of student support, other universities had students march in unison with the Hehai contingent, where they eventually made their way to the Jinling Hotel, the largest hotel in Nanjing and where the protesters believed the local officials were hiding the African students. Those African students, in the meantime, made their way to the Nanjing rail station but had no tickets to board any trains, and the security bureau would not allow them to leave because they needed to get to the bottom of what happened during the Christmas Eve fight. The bureau stationed forces to both prevent the African students from leaving and the Chinese students from attacking the African students.

On December 26, as the Chinese students were returning to their universities, a group of 200 went to Nanjing University again to try and muster more support for their cause. A group of white foreigners engaged with the protesters, and when asked why they wanted to kill the African students, a Chinese protester explained that they wanted justice for the Africans’ supposed killing of one of his classmates, and that he had no quarrel with white foreigners. Undercover policemen grabbed that student and a few others and hauled them away. Student demonstrators went to the Nanjing Provincial Government Building complex and demanded that the legal system be changed so as not to privilege foreigners, and that the murderers be arrested. The Chinese police dispersed the crowd after an hour. More dark-skinned foreigners went to the Nanjing rail station as they came under attack by racist Chinese mobs, and several non-dark-skinned foreign students from the US, Japan and Europe also joined in solidarity. This group of 140 foreign students was eventually discovered by the Chinese student demonstrators, and they gathered 3,000 supporters to insure that “justice” was meted to the murderers. In the end, the situation was resolved when armed guards forced the African students onto buses and transported them to a military guest house in Yizheng, roughly an hour outside of Nanjing. This protected the African students, removed their presence from the student demonstrators, and allowed the police to hold the instigators of the Christmas Eve incident, whoever it might be.

Beginning on December 27, the police took steps to quash any further demonstrations in Nanjing, and, perhaps most importantly, had a spokesperson at the Jiangsu Ministry of Education inform that public that nobody had died during the Christmas Eve incident. While there were limited pockets of further demonstrations, they had all ended by December 30 in Nanjing. PRC authorities also moved quickly to make sure stories about the incident did not leak to the US or European press, as non-African students came under increased surveillance and the African students were indirectly told that they would face expulsion if they communicated their experiences to foreign reporters.

Also, on December 27, Sullivan writes:

A diplomatic delegation representing the African nations of Zambia, Ghana, Congo, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Senegal, Equatorial Guinea and Niger were allowed to travel to Yizheng to meet the African students. The diplomats were not successful in winning the release of their students, reflecting the African nations’ lack of influence with the Chinese government.

In contrast, the American students that were brought to Yizheng were immediately returned to Nanjing after the US consulate threatened Chinese authorities. While in Yizheng, on December 31 the police forcefully held six African students they believed to be responsible for the Christmas Eve incident, and the Hehai students were taken to a military base while the others were sent back to Nanjing. The remaining Hehai students returned to their university on January 5, though not after new regulations were created to ensure that they could not have Chinese girlfriends sleep with them in the university. Of the six detained students, three were released, and three were expelled.

Historical memory

This marks the end of the incident proper, though there were still flare ups in other cities, including mob attacks on African students in Wuhan—the same Wuhan where African students faced difficult choices some 30 years later. Kaiser Kuo had been in Beijing during that winter and had heard about the protests, and he graciously took to the time to share his recollections in a personal email correspondence, from Washington DC, on December 20th, 2012:

I was actually in Beijing in the winter of 1988-1989, not in Nanjing, but there were some anti-African protests that spread to Beijing as well, and there was (back in those days, without the Internet or any more reliable means of transmission) all sorts of confusion as to where the actual events took place to spark anti-African demonstrations …

… We kept hearing stories, filtered of course through a very unsympathetic international student crowd, that they started simply because some African students in Nanjing (other versions said Hangzhou, and sometimes these stories were repeated with Beijing as the setting) had taken some Chinese girls to a dance and weren’t allowed in, or had trouble with the security or with male Chinese students at the door. These stories escalated into tales about fistfights, about sexual assaults, even about a woman who was supposed to have been (in the exact words I was told) “fucked to death” by African men whose penises were too large for her, so she bled out. I was very skeptical, and was horrified when there were actual marches in Beijing protesting against African students.

Incidentally, there appeared to be a connection between the Nanjing Anti-African Protests and Tiananmen in 1989, as it fused nationalism, racism, gender and youth movement into a powerful force. This confluence is further explored in the important scholarship on Chinese conceptions of race, though Sautman and Sullivan’s articles provide excellent backgrounds on the genesis of the Nanjing protests as they related to Chinese racism, nationalism, and perhaps most importantly, the protection of Chinese women. To wit, as noted in Sautman, a 25-year-old Chinese man quoted by John Pomfret in January 1989 said:

When I look at their black faces, I feel uncomfortable. When I see them with our women, my heart boils.

Then and now

Note that one of the most telling aspects of this incident is that African countries could not pressure the Chinese government to release their students from Yizheng, while the US could. Considering that there were only two students from two countries, Benin and Liberia, who were actually involved in the Christmas Eve gate incident, at minimum the Chinese government could have figured out which countries’ citizens were not involved and released them, but that did not happen.

One might argue that African governments exerted similarly weak pressure regarding the crisis in Guangzhou. However, African governments exerted strong public and private pressure on behalf of their citizens in response to the incident, and that did generate statements from various organs of official China. Did this pressure have a material effect of Africans on the ground? That is a more difficult question, and answering it would require an entirely new investigation, but getting official China to make any statement is an achievement. Moreover, African governments indicate that these sort of repeated bouts of discrimination against Africans may no longer be acceptable. As Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, HE Mr. Kwesi Quartey said earlier this month: “Africa values its relationship with China but not at any price. Further act of brutality meted out to Africans will not be countenanced by the African Union and indeed all Africans.”

In conclusion, the Nanjing Anti-African Protests were a defining moment of Sino-African relations because they revealed how people on the ground interacted, rather than what leaders expressed to each other in meetings and in documents. To be clear, Chinese people are not uniquely or irredeemably racist. Americans have their own history of rioting against black students, for example. We must collectively ensure that these narratives are part of the current discourse. To that end, part of maintaining these stories is connecting them to the present when necessary. Africans suffer because of the color of their skin, because of false rumors, because of short-sighted Chinese officials, because of a prickly national government. These underlying issues have not significantly improved in the intervening decades.

Adapted from On This Day: The 1988-1989 Nanjing Anti-African Protests. (Cowries and Rice)

This article was first published on Africa is a country



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ShowBiz Minute: Black Out Tuesday, Jay-Z, ‘Tiger King’

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ShowBiz Minute: Black Out Tuesday, Jay-Z, ‘Tiger King’

Celebrities take part in Black Out Tuesday on social media; Jay-Z takes out full-page ads in newspapers across the U.S. in honor of George Floyd; Judge gives control of Joe Exotic’s zoo to Carole Baskin. (June 3)

       

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France’s virus-tracing app ‘off to a good start’

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France’s virus-tracing app ‘off to a good start’

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Digital Minister Cedric O said the app had got off to a “very good start”

France’s digital minister has said its coronavirus contact-tracing app has been downloaded 600,000 times since it became available on Tuesday afternoon.

StopCovid France is designed to prevent a second wave of infections by using smartphone logs to warn users if they have been near someone who later tested positive for the virus.

But a last-minute launch delay led some citizens to download the wrong product.

England has yet to confirm when its own app will roll out nationwide.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock had originally said it would be by 1 June, and then later suggested it would be around the middle of next week.

But the BBC has learned that it is now unlikely to be before 15 June and could be as late as July.

That is in part because of delays in releasing a second version of the software to the Isle of Wight, where it is being trialled.

The update will add symptoms including the loss of taste and smell to a self-diagnosis questionnaire next week, or soon after.

It will also start giving at-risk users a code to enter into a separate website when they book a medical test. This will allow the result, saying whether they tested positive or negative, to be delivered back to them via the app.

Rival models

Both the UK and France have created apps of their own based on a “centralised” design.

By contrast, Latvia, Italy and Switzerland have released apps based on a “decentralised” technology developed by Apple and Google.

Advocates of the centralised approach says it gives epidemiologists more data to analyse, helping them better target the contagion alerts. They are also not limited by rules imposed by the two tech companies, such as a ban on being able to gather location data.

Supporters of the decentralised model say it better protects users’ anonymity and privacy.

StopCovid France’s rollout has caused controversy.

Hundreds of academics signed a letter in April raising concerns that gathered data could be repurposed for mass surveillance purposes.

There was then a row over the government’s refusal to give MPs a vote on the matter, which was only resolved after ministers gave the Senate and National Assembly non-binding votes.

They both ultimately gave the app the green light. And the country’s data privacy watchdog also approved the rollout after carrying out its own review, although it did ask for some changes to the app’s wording.

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Media captionWATCH: What is contact tracing and how does it work?

But questions remain about how many people will voluntarily install it – the more that do so, the better it should work.

Digital Minister Cedric O indicated that he was pleased with the initial uptake.

“As of this morning, 600,000 people managed to download the app, so it’s a very very good start,” he told the TV channel France 2.

“We are very happy with his start, but obviously several million French people need to have it.”

He declined to give an exact target. But he had previously said a publicity campaign would initially focus on city-dwellers – particularly those using public transport, restaurants and supermarkets at peak times – as they were among those most likely to spread Covid-19.

Hours late

The French government had said the app would be released at midday on Tuesday.

But StopCovid France did not appear on Google Play until late on Tuesday afternoon, and then a few hours later on Apple’s App Store.

One consequence of this was that a Catalan health information app with a similar name – Stop Covid19 CAT – was mistakenly downloaded by many in the interim, causing it to briefly top France’s download charts.

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Google

Image caption

A Catalan Covid-19 app was mistakenly downloaded by many after a last-minute delay

The only explanation given for the delay was that last-minute “technical adjustments” had to be made.

Contact tracing apps are supposed to complement work done by humans quizzing those diagnosed with the disease. It remains unclear whether the limitations of relying on Bluetooth can be overcome to avoid capturing too many false flags.

Baroness Dido Harding, who heads up the government’s Test and Trace programme, said little new about the app when she appeared before the House of Commons’ Health and Social Care Committee, beyond saying it was a “high priority” to link it to medical test results.

But Prof Christophe Fraser, who advises the NHS on the project, told MPs there was a “need for speed”. An app, he explained, could still be used to serve users amber warnings – perhaps advising them not to visit an elderly relative or a friend in a vulnerable group – while their contact awaited a result.

“The app provides the best early warning system by enabling us to record close physical contact with people we know, but also those we don’t know or can’t remember,” the Oxford Big Data Institute academic told the BBC.

“Our latest analyses suggest that even at low levels of uptake, the app will have a protective effect across a localised network of contacts – if you, your friends, colleagues and family download the app, you’re creating a local alert network within your community.”

But it is still not clear whether other parts of the UK will adopt it.

Earlier, Northern Ireland’s chief scientific advisor told the Stormont Health Committee that he planned to focus on manual contact tracing, saying he thought the app’s usefulness had been overstated.

“At best, it is an adjunct,” Prof Ian Young said.

The Health Minister Robin Swann added that he had concerns that the app would be unattractive to users because of concerns about it draining battery life, and that people at the end of a phone were already proving effective.

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New coronavirus clusters in Lebanon’s marginalized communities

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New coronavirus clusters in Lebanon’s marginalized communities

Jun 3, 2020

BEIRUT — Nearly four months since the novel coronavirus first arrived in Lebanon, the country’s testing capacity has grown steadily according to medical experts, who express confidence that Lebanon’s health sector will be able to bear the weight of the pandemic. But although the virus remains largely confined to several isolated clusters across the country, a lack of contact-tracing staff, inadequate compliance with quarantine guidelines in certain areas and a low level of concern about the virus among certain impoverished communities have hampered efforts to contain it.

As of May 31, the country had 1,220 confirmed cases and 27 deaths, numbers significantly lower than those of many of its neighbors in the Middle East and Europe. On May 4, the country began a phased reopening of its economy, with a subsequent rise in new cases this month.

For many Lebanese and refugee populations alike, however, mounting concerns about unemployment, low standards of living and social marginalization have continued to present more immediate challenges to daily life than the virus.

Over the last several weeks, most of the new cases among the local population in Lebanon have arisen in clusters in the towns of Majdal Anjar, Mazboud and Jdeidet el-Qaytaa, all of which have been placed under localized quarantines and lockdowns. Another hotspot appeared in a population of foreign workers in Ras el-Nabaa near Beirut. In Majdal Anjar, 15 Syrian refugees, none of whom live in Lebanon’s dense refugee camps, had tested positive as of May 29. Jdeidet el-Qaytaa is located in Akkar, one of Lebanon’s poorest districts.

“I think that these are our weakest links — the housing of foreign workers, the refugee camps and the prisons,” Firass Abiad, the CEO of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, which is the main hospital treating coronavirus cases in Lebanon, told Al-Monitor. “If COVID-19 find its way in there, then you’re going to see a large surge in cases.”

There are an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). No cases have been confirmed in Lebanon’s prisons or Syrian refugee camps so far, but steps are being taken in Roumieh Prison, the country’s largest, to prepare for a local outbreak. Four positive cases were reported by health officials in the Wavel Palestinian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley in April.

Abiad noted on Twitter that recently repatriated individuals from abroad had been identified as the source of some clusters, and told Al-Monitor that overall, compliance with coronavirus prevention measures had been lower in peripheral, marginalized areas than in Beirut.

“The major problem is the cultural and social problem that we have here, the social differences that we have,” Ziad Rahal, CEO of Rahal Akkar Hospital in Halba, Akkar, told Al-Monitor. “Because people there are not still aware of the severity of this virus, they are neglecting it, they are ignoring it, they are not taking it as seriously as they must to protect themselves and to protect others from it.”

A lack of adherence to preventive measures was also reported in Majdal Anjar, where even as the city was under quarantine from the outside, business was apparently taking place as usual inside the quarantine zone.

“Not many of them were complying with the quarantine,” Osama Alaa Aldiin, a Syrian refugee living in the town, told Al-Monitor. “Many mosques closed and then opened. “They did not comply with the rules,” he said, adding people wore masks but went about normal life without worrying about the virus, which they feel “is a lie.”

In response, town leaders, including Mayor Said Hussein Yassine, announced a five-day lockdown starting on May 30 during which all shops would be closed and all street movement forbidden. Photographs sent to Al-Monitor suggested that locals were complying with these latest measures.

Lisa Abou Khaled, spokesperson for UNHCR in Lebanon, told Al-Monitor that the agency has been in contact with refugees who had tested positive for the virus to ensure that they are following safety guidelines and practicing self-isolation.

Access to testing has been increasing in Lebanon as the outbreak has advanced. According to Abou Khaled, testing efforts among Syrian refugees have focused on both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals living in informal camps and shelters. Yet overall, the number of tests administered per day nationwide has still fallen short of medical professionals’ recommendations.

Some social difficulties have hampered testing as well. On the weekend of May 16, a medical team traveled to Akkar prepared to conduct up to 700 polymerase chain reaction tests in the area, but only conducted 124. Out of these tests, 17 positive cases were found, and one doctor on the team later tested positive as well.

“When the Ministry of Public Health does the screening tests and sends out medical staff to a region or a village in peripheral areas that includes between 5,000 to 7,000 inhabitants and only comes out with a hundred tests, there is a big problem,” Rahal said.

Despite many locals in Akkar’s refusal to be tested, Walid Ammar, the outgoing director general of the Ministry of Public Health and lecturer at several Beirut universities, stated he is not concerned.

“The most important indicator that this situation is under control is that we don’t really have severe cases we were not aware of that come suddenly to hospitals and then we discover they are COVID positive,” Ammar told Al-Monitor. “We don’t have surprises.”

Other doctors and officials at the Ministry of Public Health could not be reached by Al-Monitor for comment.

According to Abiad, contact tracing can be more difficult among urban populations in the Beirut area than in rural communities. The foreign worker cluster in Ras el-Nabaa is one example.

“If you see the living conditions that those workers live under, they tend to be very densely packed,” Abiad said. “This is to an extent something that we need to be very careful [about], whether we might at one point see some kind of a domino effect where we see these infections moving from certain housing quarters to others,” he added.

Undocumented foreign workers in Lebanon have often encountered difficulties in accessing health care services, according to Amnesty International, and many such workers have also reportedly been unable to get tested.

Palestinian refugee camps are another potential hotbed for infection due to their population density and poor living conditions, Abdelnasser el-Ayi, the office director for Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee, told Al-Monitor.

“The infection rate is almost double or triple inside the Palestinian camps than in any [area outside of refugee camps], which brings up more risks of infection and makes it much more difficult to trace cases,” Ayi said.

According to Abiad and other medical experts who spoke to Al-Monitor, awareness about prevention measures is growing among populations living in peripheral areas of Lebanon. Yet for many who have been dealing with the effects of Lebanon’s ongoing economic crisis or have been marginalized further due to their refugee status, the coronavirus has not been a priority.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Syrian refugees have been subjected a special set of curfew rules and treatment by municipalities and authorities, according to a Human Rights Watch report in April.

Abiad stated that new clusters will likely continue to show up in Lebanon, but that he remains optimistic about Lebanon’s ability to respond. According to Rahal, the best way to improve the current efforts is to craft a strategy that is catered to Lebanon’s specific needs.



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Corporate Hashtag Activism

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Corporate Hashtag Activism

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Instagram was filled yesterday with users’ posts featuring black squares, meant to convey solidarity with the protests that have erupted after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Companies joined, too, reflecting the challenge of trying to embrace their customers’ strongly held values without giving offense.

Blackout Tuesday started in the music industry, the brainchild of two insiders who wanted a pause to business as usual by staying quiet and letting conversations about racial injustice come to the fore. And companies like Apple, Spotify and music labels took the day to cease many operations in deference to the protests.

• Warner Music took a different route, delaying its I.P.O. pricing from yesterday to today.

Other businesses joined in, from retailers like Nordstrom and J. Crew to beauty brands like Ulta and sports teams like the San Francisco 49ers.

It prompted criticism that companies were using the black squares as a superficial — or even cynical — way of demonstrating support for the protesters’ cause. Messages from brands like Adidas, which has many young black customers, are scrutinized particularly closely.

• One brand that has won praise is Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream maker with a history of social activism. The company recently called on President Trump to denounce white supremacists and urged lawmakers to pass a bill studying options for reparations for slavery.

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Our DealBook Debrief call tomorrow will feature special guest Kara Swisher, one of the most plugged-in reporters in the technology industry, discussing how the tech giants are dealing with the turmoil over free speech, the pandemic, antitrust regulation and more. R.S.V.P. here for the call on Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern, and send your questions for Kara to dealbook@nytimes.com.

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The Facebook co-founder defended his company’s hands-off approach to inflammatory posts by President Trump on a contentious call with employees yesterday. The Times’s Mike Isaac, Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel listened in.

A “tough decision” that was “was pretty thorough” is how Mr. Zuckerberg described his decision to leave the posts alone. Employees’ unease with the policy, and in some cases public revolt, has been described as the biggest challenge in the Facebook founder’s career, as we detailed in DealBook yesterday.

“In trying to placate everyone, Mr. Zuckerberg has failed to appease almost anyone,” Mike, Cecilia and Sheera write. “One persistent feeling shared among Facebook’s rank-and-file came out in a direct moment between Mr. Zuckerberg and another employee during the call,” they note. “ ‘Why are the smartest people in the world focused on contorting and twisting our policies to avoid antagonizing Trump?’ the employee asked.”

“Promoting free speech shouldn’t be used as a get out of tough choices card,” Barry Schnitt, a former Facebook director of corporate communications and public policy who left the company in 2012, wrote in an open letter to the social network’s employees.

Michelle Leder is the founder of the S.E.C. filing site footnoted*. Here, she looks for trends in the votes at big technology companies’ latest shareholder meetings. You can follow her on Twitter at @footnoted.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, will hold its annual shareholder meeting today. Like most meetings these days, it will be virtual to avoid packing people into a crowded auditorium during the pandemic. Still, judging by other tech giants’ gatherings, shareholders aren’t likely to let current events dampen their appetite for voting.

Take Facebook, which on Friday disclosed its voting results for its annual meeting held earlier in the week. This year, there were far fewer “broker nonvotes” — investors who didn’t vote on resolutions — than in 2019.

Shareholders at Facebook and other big tech companies largely followed management’s recommendations, though in many cases, founders personally control so much of the vote that opposition is largely symbolic. Still, shifts in the strength of opposition can reveal what other investors think about a company:

• Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s C.O.O., received far fewer “votes withheld” — effectively, votes against her re-election to the board — than she did last year; 10 percent of votes were withheld last year, versus only 1 percent this year. Last year, advisory and advocacy groups urged shareholders to withhold votes for Ms. Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, in an effort to push for an independent board chairman. In March, the company appointed Robert Kimmitt, a former top Treasury Department official, as lead independent director, making the issue moot.

• Amazon also disclosed far fewer broker nonvotes than in 2019 as well. Surprisingly, Jeff Bezos received nearly twice as many votes against his re-election to the board this year than he did last year — though we are talking about 2 percent of votes against or abstaining this year, versus 1 percent last year.

• Apple held its annual meeting in-person at its office in Cupertino, Calif., in late February, a few weeks before the pandemic shut the world down. Broker nonvotes were down by nearly a quarter at the meeting versus last year.

It’s hard to draw firm conclusions from this year’s crop of annual meetings, given how different this spring has been. But with many companies having held virtual meetings without any meaningful drop in participation — if anything, it’s been the opposite — holding in-person events may become the exception, not the norm.

• Harvard economists found that major government relief programs exclude many companies with big debt loads, The Times’s Jeanna Smialek reports.

• The Fed’s Main Street lending initiative to help midsize companies is “too late and not enough,” some of the intended recipients told Politico.

• ProPublica published an investigation into Justin Muzinich, the Treasury Department official managing the department’s economic aid measures who still retains ties to his family’s investment firm, which has benefited from the bailout.

• A group of bipartisan lawmakers are taking a look at the role that BlackRock, the asset management giant, is playing in overseeing Fed bailout efforts, Politico reports.

• Private equity titans like KKR and Apollo used a little-known loan program run by the Department of Health and Human Services to help some of their health care portfolio companies, according to Bloomberg.

The Trump administration warned that it may investigate proposals by other countries to impose special taxes on American internet giants. That risks igniting another trade war, The Times’s Jim Tankersley and Ana Swanson write.

At issue are levies on the revenue of companies like Facebook and Google that generate significant sales but don’t report large taxable profits in many countries where they operate. France, Britain and India have been imposing these taxes for months.

• There’s a clear incentive for countries to do this, writes Paul Donovan of UBS: “With rising borrowing, governments have a politically easy target in technology companies with global operations and limited tax payments — regardless of where they happen to be headquartered.”

The U.S. inquiry could imperil international talks to create a global framework for such taxes, Jim and Ana write. But the administration’s pushback is supported by several American business concerns, including a major Silicon Valley trade group and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Zoom, the videoconferencing service that has become a staple for many homebound workers, reported its latest quarterly results yesterday. The numbers were, in a word, astounding.

The company blew away expectations, with quarterly revenue up 169 percent, to $328 million. It earned $27 million, versus only about $200,000 in the same quarter last year. It doubled its previous guidance for sales this fiscal year, and tripled its profit forecast. Zoom’s market cap is now nearly $60 billion, after tripling in value since the start of the year.

• The few downsides in the report were related to its explosive growth, with the cost of extra bandwidth — which it buys from Amazon and Oracle — eating into margins. A peak of 300 million average daily users in April also came down “a little bit” in May.

It was the most upbeat earnings calls you’ll hear in a while. Executives acknowledged the solemnity of the pandemic and “shocking” social unrest, but the mood brightened considerably when the discussion shifted to the company’s finances.

• Analysts often give a perfunctory “great quarter, guys” to executives before asking questions. But Aleksandr Zukin of RBC uncorked this at the start of the call’s Q.&A. section: “You just delivered one of, if not the greatest, all-time quarters in enterprise software history.”

• It was the birthday of Zoom’s C.F.O., Kelly Steckelberg, and she said that presenting the results was “the best birthday present I could ever have.”

• The call, held on Zoom (naturally), had over 3,000 participants, said Eric Yuan, the C.E.O. His opening remarks were delayed slightly when — like millions of other Zoom users every day — he forgot to unmute his mic.

Deals

• SoftBank plans to create a $100 million fund to invest exclusively in start-ups founded by entrepreneurs of color. (Axios)

• Facebook and PayPal were among the investors in the latest funding round for Gojek, the Indonesian ride-hailing company. (CNBC)

Politics and policy

• The Times reconstructed how President Trump’s desire for a photo op at a Washington church led to armed officers, agents and troops aggressively clearing out a park near the White House. (NYT)

Tech

• An organization backed by Silicon Valley giants sued President Trump over his move to curb social networks’ legal immunity over user-generated content. (WaPo)

Best of the rest

• New York financial regulators may punish Deutsche Bank over its dealings with the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein. (NYT)

• The pandemic has opened the door to a resurgence of the Italian mafia, experts warn. (The Crime Report)

• Meet the biggest players in the tear gas industry. (Axios)

Correction: Yesterday’s newsletter misstated the name of the health care company that bought back control from the investment firm Cerberus. It is Steward Health Care, not Stewart Health Care. You can read more about the deal here.

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.



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Milind Soman goes running with wife Ankita Konwar after 75 days, shares pic

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Milind Soman goes running with wife Ankita Konwar after 75 days, shares pic

Image Source : INSTAGRAM/@MILINDRUNNING

Milind Soman goes running with wife Ankita Konwar after 75 days, shares pic

Milind Soman Soman is a fitness inspiration and there is no denying that. The former supermodel is not only known for his impeccable looks but also his health conscious routine even at the age of 54. The actor-model had his first run after 75 days recently and shared an inspiring picture along with wife Amkita Konwar.

Taking to Instagram, Milind Soman shared the picture and wrote, “First run on first day of Unlock one!!! When you haven’t run for 75 days, you have to take it slow its unlock one for the body as well, so no matter the level of excitement, control is key ! Just a slow 5k enjoying the cool weather, mild drizzle and the lack of traffic and people, feeling F.I.N.E !!!!!!! And yes, I pulled the mask down while running and nobody was around!”.

Ankita Konwar got married to Milind Soman in April, 2018 in Alibaug. The couple had a barefoot wedding in Spain in the same year.

On the work front, Milind Soman was last seen in the Amazon Prime web-series Four More Shots Please where he shared screen space with Sayani Gupta, Bani J, Kirti Kulhari and Maanvi Gagroo.

Fight against Coronavirus: Full coverage



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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Maintaining Tourist Sites During COVID-19

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Maintaining Tourist Sites During COVID-19

Under normal circumstances, spring is the time when the country’s many zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens come alive with activity after a long, cold winter. However, this year has been anything but ordinary. Over the course of the last couple of months, the nation has watched as these popular travel destinations as well as museums and historical sites have closed to visitors in an attempt to help curb the spread of COVID-19. But while these attractions may have been (or in many states, still are) off limits to the general public, essential workers have been showing up daily to take care of animals, plants and artifacts amidst their closures.

However, it’s not just the workers who are feeling the affects of the pandemic, but the animals, too. Zoos worldwide report that there have been noticeable shifts in the animals’ behavior. In some cases, the animals are craving more human interaction, which they normally receive when these facilities are bustling with visitors. Giraffes at the Houston Zoo, for instance, are used to visitors feeding them lettuce, and the chimpanzees at the Maryland Zoo are normally hand fed but due to social distancing procedures are receiving scatter feedings instead.

Zookeepers, animal trainers, horticulturalist and other essential employees across the United States have had to maintain a sense of normalcy to keep things running smoothly behind-the-scenes. Whether that means working longer, more sporadic hours or taking on new duties, these caretakers’ roles have shifted in the wake of COVID-19, sometimes in interesting and creative ways.

These staff members have had the unique opportunity to witness changes at their places of work that are the immediate result of closures. Colleen Kinzley has been living onsite at the Oakland Zoo in California for nearly 25 years, but it’s only been in the past few weeks that she’s witnessed a shift in animal activity at what has been her home for much of her career. As vice president of animal care conservation and research, she’s responsible for leading a team of zookeepers in caring for the animals, particularly the zoo’s resident herd of three African elephants, whose quarters are within close proximity to her own. If one of the animals should need immediate assistance at night, either she or the other onsite manager springs to action. But because there haven’t been large crowds of people visiting the zoo, she’s noticed animals from the adjacent Joseph Knowland State Arboretum and Park, a nearly 500-acre green space, starting to roam the zoo.

Colleen Kinzley (left), vice president of animal care conservation and research at the Oakland Zoo, works with a mountain lion rescued from the wild.

(Courtesy Oakland Zoo)

“I walk to and from work each day, and lately I’ve been seeing more deer and turkey during that time,” Kinzley says. “I’ve seen a couple of deer strolling through the elephant exhibit. We also have some frogs living in the [Wayne and Gladys Valley Children’s Zoo] that are usually silent, but now they’re deafening. It’s been interesting seeing wildlife take over where people have left off.”

While Kinzley’s animal encounters are something that the public will not likely get to experience once the zoo reopens and the crowds return, at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, animal care staff have lifted the veil of what goes on behind-the-scenes by putting some of their resident animals in the limelight. In March, trainers filmed the aquarium’s colony of Rockhopper penguins as they went on a “field trip” through the building’s beluga whale exhibit. The video quickly went viral. However, one thing a lot of people may not realize is that these roughly 30-minute jaunts are a regular occurrence for the penguins once the crowds have left the building.

“Sometimes we’ll walk them into the offices upstairs, or during slower times we’ll take them through the exhibits when the building is less crowded,” says Steven Aibel, senior director of animal behavior and training. “We want our animals to be flexible and used to closed and open buildings. In the wild, animals are meant to be flexible and adaptive, so we’re parlaying that into their current environment by making things variable and each day new.”

Aibel says that the viral video’s international acclaim was a fluke and the result of one of the trainers who wanted to capture the moment to share with family, friends and colleagues.

“Little did we know that the world would be interested,” he says. “We thought it was cool and fun, and the experience shows the positive affect animals can have, especially right now when people are looking for hope these days.”

This hope is proving especially important as these essential employees are not only trying to keep operations running smoothly, but also striving to educate the public, which during normal times is a crucial part of their day-to-day work.

“The biggest change for us while we’re closed is that we’re not doing any public-facing programs,” Aibel says. “Normally, each morning we come in and prepare for ways to engage with guests by doing presentations, meet and greets, and animal encounters. These things are very purposeful to the welfare of the animals, since it gives them activities and stretches their brains. Because these exercises are no longer supplied through daily programming, we’ve had to figure out ways to still do these elements, such as taking them on walks through the aquarium.”

In institutions where there are no animals to care for, essential workers have had a little more leeway in how creative they can get while still engaging with audiences. At the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Tim Tiller, the museum’s head of security and resident cowboy, has become the unofficial social media spokesman for the museum. For the past couple of months, Tiller has been working with the marketing team by hijacking the museum’s Twitter feed (@ncwhm) with his viral #HashtagTheCowboy posts. In his tweets, Tiller highlights some of the high jinks he’s gotten into as one of the sole staff members on site, like modeling items sold in the gift shop and interacting with the exhibits, including a stint in the museum’s jail. He’s also been answering fans’ questions like, “How often did cowboys take a bath?” and “What’s the proper way to tie a wild rag or bandana?”

“We were hoping to gain a few new audience members, but had no expectations that they would be from all over the world,” Tiller says. “People are telling us that the posts have helped them through their day, and thank us for the positivity during this tough time.”

Seth Spillman, the museum’s chief marketing officer, and his team are the ones responsible for recruiting Tiller in the first place.

“Tim is an authentic voice for our institution and has been a real sport with all of this,” he says. “We’re getting feedback from people from all over the world who have said that they’ve never been to our state and museum, but now they can’t wait to come and visit us when we reopen.”

Another popular tourist destination that has been finding new ways to engage with the public is the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. When it closed on March 15, the organization was quick to keep the garden’s many fans actively involved by posting photos and videos of its popular Orchid Show, which was already in full bloom and, during normal circumstances, one of the first signs of spring for many New Yorkers. Over the years, the NYBG has served as a beacon of hope and popular respite for city dwellers.

“After 9/11, people enjoyed having access to the garden, since they saw it as a place that’s fundamentally peaceful and where they could bask in the benevolence of peace and beauty,” says Todd Forrest, the Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections at the NYBG. “People need that now more than ever, and it’s frustrating that we’re not able to provide that since we’re closed. We’re anxious for people to come back.”

Todd Forrest New York Botanical Gardens.jpg
Todd Forrest, Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections, spoke during a media preview of an exhibition in June 2019 at the New York Botanical Garden.

(Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)

However, there is some hope that, slowly but surely, things are beginning to go back to (more or less) normal at the gardens. Forrest says that during the first few weeks of its closure, only a small number of horticulturists were onsite, but every week more employees are returning to work to help out by watering and planting flowers, mowing the expansive lawns and transplanting plants in anticipation of summer’s first visitors.

“Right now the cherry trees, gardenias, and daffodils are all in bloom,” he says. “It’s stunningly beautiful, but haunting because the crowds aren’t here to enjoy it.”

Some day, perhaps sooner rather than later, these popular attractions will once again be alive with activity. But until then, at least we can find solace in knowing that these important destinations are right there, waiting for us to return.



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Boris Johnson: George Floyd death ‘inexcusable’

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Boris Johnson: George Floyd death ‘inexcusable’

Boris Johnson said that any protests taking place in the U.K. should be carried out in accordance with social distancing rules. | Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images

UK PM refuses to be drawn on whether he has raised concerns with Donald Trump.

LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the death of George Floyd “appalling” and “inexcusable” but urged protesters in the U.S. and elsewhere to stay within the law and behave in a “reasonable way.”

Giving his first public comments on the unrest in the U.S. at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Johnson said he understood protesters’ anger, but declined to be drawn on whether he had raised his concerns with Donald Trump.

Labour leader Keir Starmer urged Johnson to convey “the U.K.’s abhorrence” at Trump’s response, while the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford said Trump’s “actions and rhetoric”  had been “distressing” and claimed the U.S. was on “a dangerous slide into autocracy.”

Commenting on the death of Floyd in Minneapolis, Johnson said: “What happened in the U.S. was appalling, it was inexcusable, we all saw it on our screens, and I perfectly understand people’s right to protest what took place, though obviously I also believe that protest should take place in a lawful and reasonable way.”

Asked by Blackford to state plainly that “black lives matter,” Johnson said: “Of course black lives matter, and I totally understand the anger, the grief that is felt not just in America but around the world and in our country as well. I totally understand that and I get that.”

He added that any protests taking place in the U.K. should be carried out in accordance with social distancing rules.



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Jair Bolsonaro has trashed Brazil’s image but he hasn’t broken its soul | Eliane Brum

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Jair Bolsonaro has trashed Brazil’s image but he hasn’t broken its soul | Eliane Brum

It is claimed that the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, had a prophetic start to his political career: he was accused (a controversial trial found him not guilty) of devising an aborted plan to press for higher wages by detonating bombs in his army barracks. Decades later, he finally seems to have managed to blow something up: his country’s image overseas.

Given his government’s thoroughly irresponsible handling of the pandemic, Brazilians are now seen as a walking biological threat. Since 27 May, they have been banned from entering the US. It is already one of the nations worst hit by Covid-19 and studies indicate that the number of deaths may surpass 125,000 by August. Bolsonaro has dismissed the disease as a ‘little flu’.

Indigenous peoples in the Amazon have warned that Covid-19 might lead to their extermination, since the government gives them no protection and their lands have been invaded by land grabbers and illegal miners, incited by Bolsonaro’s anti-indigenous rhetoric. Satellite data has shown deforestation of the world’s largest tropical forest is out of control. 

An already weakened economy is heading for a depression, possibly the worst crash in the country’s history. Some days ago, the veteran journalist Elio Gaspari cited a Brazilian businessman who works on international markets: “The way Brazil’s reputation is going, in a while I’ll only get responses from answering machines.”

Brazil used to be seen as a kind of colourful giant, with plenty of sun, good football, great music, friendly people, and favelas where more daring visitors could spend their dollars on “real-life tourism”. While such an image might have been a cliche, it was one that gave the country a degree of soft power on the international stage. Nobody used this image better than the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “Our people’s souls, their eyes, their warmth, their rhythm, their colour and their smiles are unbeatable. The world has finally recognised it: Brazil’s time and turn have come,” he said in 2009. 

In June 2013, with an economic crisis knocking at the door and the uncharismatic Dilma Rousseff in power, the world watched on as protests erupted across Brazil. The period of euphoria over the country’s redemocratisationafter the 1964-1985 military dictatorship had petered out. The Workers’ party, which had symbolised the country’s best hopes, had grown corrupt in power, buying votes in congress mostly paid by construction firms in exchange for building contracts. There was a growing sentiment that democracy was not delivering what it had promised in such areas as public security, education and health.



A protester in São Paulo on Sunday, whose masks reads ‘Bolsonaro out’. Photograph: Van Campos/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Three years later, Rousseff was impeached ostensibly for window dressing government accounts, although this was a pretext for political reasons. Lula was convicted on charges of personal corruption in 2017 as part of a controversial judicial process. The former president has always maintained his innocence and argued the case against him was also politically motivated.

In the years before Bolsonaro’s ascent, marginalised communities demanded their place at the country’s political centre. The black community and women fought to have power in a country built on racism, and where violence against women and members of the LGBTQ+ community has reached alarming levels. Assassinated in March 2018, Mariele Franco embodied this hard-won power: the leftwing city councillor was female, black, lesbian and from a favela.

No one has better leveraged hatred, fear and frustration than Bolsonaro. He has done so especially among sections of the white middle-class, who have suffered the erosion of their buying power and watched as the black community refused to return to its historical subaltern position. And especially among men challenged by women who decried sexual harassment and misogynistic jokes. Perceiving that its cultural, racial and class privileges were threatened, a slice of Brazilian society has sensed quicksand beneath its feet.

In his election victory speech last year, Bolsonaro promised “liberation from socialism, inverted values … and political correctness”. His own advocacy of violence, including praise for torture and the assassination of opponents, is interpreted by his followers as “authenticity”. He has spoken out against black people, indigenous peoples, women and the LGBTQ+ community along with his adversaries, all labelled “communists”.  Brazilians who had hidden their prejudices deep in the internet’s sewers began displaying them in daylight and on social media like trophies. Bolsonaro, in power, had redeemed such people. 

Now the price is being paid – in human lives, and in Brazil being made into a global pariah – for this investment in hatred. The world watches as Brazil grows more militarised and authoritarian. Nine ministers are from the armed forces and almost 3,000 members of the military hold second-echelon positions.

Signs of an olive-green coup abound. On Sunday, Bolsonaro arrived by military helicopter to join a protest against the supreme court and congress, which have tried to limit the president’s abuses. He then rode through the crowd on a police horse. One of his main groups of supporters, 300 do Brasil, has camped in the capital. They are armed and use Nazi symbols. 

Augusto Heleno, a retired general and national security adviser, drew support from retired military officers when he warned of “unpredictable consequences” for the country if the court pursued its demand for the president to hand over his mobile phones in a case involving fake news. In a public letter, the officers intimated that there was a possibility of “civil war”. The press is also under attack, transformed into an enemy of Brazil by Bolsonaro. 

The real Brazil never corresponded to the cliched image of a gentle giant, projected for export. But not even the most pessimistic Brazilian could have predicted that in 17 months Bolsonaro would hijack all the country’s joy and creative power. A rising number now think it is easier to survive the virus than the president.

Brazil today is masked in hatred. But there are other Brazils, and they resist. This weekend, previously irreconcilable figures from the left and right and from all walks of life released a manifesto in which they declared that two-thirds of Brazilians want a government that respects the constitution and want to feel “joy and pride in being Brazilian once again”. Jurists from across the country published a statement in the country’s leading newspapers demanding the armed forces respect democracy. It is not just the country’s image that is being contested: it is the country’s soul.

• Eliane Brum is a Brazilian journalist, author of The Collector of Leftover Souls – Dispatches from Brazil. This piece was translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty.

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Father of Bulgarian killed by Aussie Jock Palfreeman condemns early release

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Father of Bulgarian killed by Aussie Jock Palfreeman condemns early release

The father of a Bulgarian man killed by Jock Palfreeman has told local media he wants to see the Australian go back to prison for “one more night”.

Hristo Monov condemned the early release of Mr Palfreeman, who served nearly 12 years in jail in Bulgaria for the murder of his son Andrei, at a press conference in Sofia on Wednesday.

“I just want (Palfreeman) to go back to prison for one more night – they’ll be so happy to see him,” Mr Monov told reporters.

Jock Palfreeman when he was released from detention in Bulgaria after being granted parole. (AP)

The former Bulgarian Socialist Party MP said the early release of Mr Palfreeman was illegal and that the three-judge panel who made the decision in September were corrupt.

“It’s on those judges’ conscience that they released him,” Mr Monov said.

“He will kill again, I know that. It’s on them when he does it.”

The former politician called Mr Palfreeman a sociopath and attacked the 33-year-old, as well as the Bulgaria Helsinki Committee, which has assisted him, for supporting the country’s LGBT community.

Palfreeman was convicted of fatally stabbing a Bulgarian student during a 2007 brawl.
Palfreeman was convicted of fatally stabbing a Bulgarian student during a 2007 brawl. (AP)

“Jock and (the BHC) threaten the Bulgarian way of life and our belief system,” Mr Monov said.In response, Mr Palfreeman on Wednesday told AAP he “opposed hate speech towards either Bulgarians, Roma or LGBT families”.

But Mr Palfreeman said he remains unable to leave the country as his movement is restricted by the Bulgarian government over issues relating to an expired travel ban.

Australia’s foreign affairs department has welcomed the Supreme Court of Cassation’s ruling but would not comment further on Mr Palfreeman’s situation. He is receiving consular assistance.

Hristo Monov, the father of the Bulgarian man killed by Jock Palfreeman has condemned his early release. (AAP Image/Supplied by Bulgarian News Agency) (PR IMAGE)

The former Riverview student earlier this week applied in Sofia for a review of video evidence omitted from his first murder trial.

Mr Palfreeman said the new evidence would be more than enough to secure a retrial and that the application was unrelated to the administrative barriers currently preventing him leaving Bulgaria.

“The request was just a long time coming,” he said.

Bulgaria Helsinki Committee president Dr Krassimir Kanev, who wrote a letter in support of Mr Palfreeman’s early release, said the Australian could claim “hundreds of thousands” of euros in compensation for wrongful imprisonment if he is acquitted.

But he doubts the Sofia City Prosecutor will accept Mr Palfreeman’s request.<

“Renewal is an extraordinary procedure, an attack on a final judgment, which was subject to two appeals,” Dr Kanev told AAP.

Mr Palfreeman was released in October after serving nearly 12 years behind bars in the Balkan nation’s capital.

He was found guilty of murder and attempted murder for stabbing two Bulgarian youths during a street melee in 2007.

The 33-year-old has always maintained he acted in self-defence.

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