22 Established 1961 Monday, December 2, 2019 Lifestyle Features hilean singer Ana Tijoux says she is constitution, which dates from the 17-year with her two children before the protests insisted that “political consciousness is Tijoux is reluctant to claim her song as scared of cameras. Yet it is hard to dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. erupted, wrote the song after bumping the most beautiful thing that can happen an anthem of revolt, saying its real hymns Cthink of anything as fearless as her “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years,” she raps into a Chilean neighbor and film-maker to each and every one of us”. “They are are the protest songs of legendary artists latest hit “Cacerolazo”, which has become in the song, referring to the fare rise. “The who had returned from shooting the not contaminated with the fear we had of like Victor Jara, who was tortured and an anthem of the street revolt in her constitution and the tax breaks for the protests. the dictatorship,” she said, adding that the killed by Pinochet’s henchmen in 1973. homeland against its billionaire president rich / With our fists and spoons we are “We said to each other that we had to impunity enjoyed by the military for Jara later became an icon for protest Sebastian Pinera. Latin America’s richest bashing the establishment / and the state, do something,” she said, and the rap crimes committed under Pinochet helps movements across Latin America. “We are country has been rocked by more than six cacerolazo!” Tijoux said she had long poured out. Her music has since featured keep this fear alive. the grandchildren of this wave of people weeks of protests sparked by a 30 peso expected an explosion of anger from the in the US television series “Breaking Bad” “There is an open wound in Chile. we have heard all our lives, and who are (four US cents) rise in metro fares. poor and middle classes. and even the Fifa 11 video game. Tijoux There is a pending debt with respect to part of our political and cultural history,” Demonstrations often start with people said she was in awe of the students leading justice,” Tijoux said. But she also said the she said. Latin Americans, she said, “have banging pots and pans, an action known ‘Union of rage’ the protests, which have also focused on unrest is a part of “global discontent always lived under the yoke of colonial- as a “cacerolazo”, after the Spanish word “There was always a lot of popular dis- the paucity of education and healthcare about inequality”, many people living in ism”, adding: “It is a continent but it is like for a casserole. Tijoux-who Rolling Stone content but before they weren’t aligned- provided by the state in Chile, a longtime societies where “the rich are getting rich- one great homeland that has always had a magazine has hailed as the “best rapper in there was not this union of rage which is laboratory for neoliberal economics. er, and the poor are getting poorer”. very strong political response.”— AFP Spanish”-is just as angry as the protesters real and totally valid,” she said in Paris, Mounting anger across the world was a at the inequalities in her country. where she was born after her parents fled ‘Open wound of justice’ “response to a political and economic And she says she is totally behind their Chile during the dictatorship. The 42- The students are “much more politi- system that does not respond to people’s calls to end privatization and rewrite its year-old, who had moved back to France cized” than their parents, she said, and needs”, she added. n expensive holiday tree installed in direct the money toward children with can- the centre of an industrial Siberian cer or subsidized housing instead. Acity has been ridiculed online and on Kemerovo’s mayor defended the pur- national media as a symbol of corruption, chase, saying it was a “mid-range” techno- though authorities defended the high-tech logical tree that would replace an old tree purchase. The 25-metre (80-foot) artificial which became too expensive to repair. The tree in Kemerovo, a city surrounded by coal new tree is made of steel and has 239,000 mines, cost 18 million rubles ($280,000), LED lights, he boasted. The company that three times more than the country’s main supplied the tree, Sibevrostroy, denied the tree installed in the Kremlin. price was inflated. “This product cannot be Russian comedian Ivan Urgant, who called a tree,” director Andrei Zorin told hosts a show on popular Channel One, news agency Interfax. “It’s a high-tech mul- ridiculed the Kemerovo tree as having “very timedia complex which happens to look like expensive ornaments - real rabbits, bears, a tree.” cars and planes” and hinted at corruption in Communist Party spokesman Alexander the city hall. The city made national head- Yushchenko said the tree was “just an ele- Photo shows a bronze statue of a cockerel - one of what are known as the Benin Bronzes, lines last winter when residents reported ment of the whole system, our national which were looted from the former kingdom of Benin by the British in the 19th century, at seeing black snow due to large amounts of problem, corruption.” Russians put up Jesus College at Cambridge University in Cambridge, north of London. — AFP coal dust, while a town nearby covered a trees to celebrate New Year, which is the snow hill used for sledding with white paint country’s biggest holiday of the year and to hide the coal residue. sees cities spending significant sums on “Here people don’t really live, they sur- decorations and fireworks. Celebration of vive. And they are spending 18 million on a the Russian Orthodox Christmas, which tree!” local resident Roman Khabibulin falls on January 7, was discouraged during wrote angrily on social network VK. “It’s as the Soviet era and remains less popular The portrait of late K-pop star Goo Hara is seen surrounded stupid as buying the latest iPhone when than New Year’s.— AFP by flowers at a memorial altar at a hospital in Seoul. — AFP your children have nothing to eat,” wrote another VK user, Ivan Lebedev. Online Cambridge University college has century British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. commentators suggested that authorities said it will return a bronze cockerel Nigerian royals in Benin City have Astatue looted from Nigeria, which repeatedly called for the return of hun- K-pop star jailed formed the focus of protests over sym- dreds of ancient artefacts, known as the bols of Britain’s colonial past. The statue Benin Bronzes, which were looted by the known as “Okukor” was taken in 1897 British in the 19th century. The highly for gang rape and from the former kingdom of Benin, which decorative pieces, depicting the oba and is now part of southern Nigeria, and giv- his courtiers from centuries earlier, are en to Jesus college in 1905 by the father still housed at leading museums around spycam crimes of a student. the world, including the British Museum In a statement issued on Wednesday, in London. the college said the recommendation to There has been resistance to any outh Korean singer-songwriter Jung Joon-young was return it was made by a working group return from western institutions, primarily convicted Friday of gang rape and distributing videos investigating the legacy of slavery. “This because of concern about how the treas- Sof the assaults and other sexual encounters, and was royal ancestral heirloom belongs with the ures would be maintained. But the young jailed for six years in a scandal that has rocked K-pop. Jung current Oba (king) at the Court of Benin,” brother of the current oba, Prince Edun and Choi Jong-hoon, a former member of boy band FT it said, adding that the details of how and Akenzua, told AFP in 2016: “If a man stole Island, were found guilty of gang-raping two different vic- when it would be returned had yet to be my car and admitted that he stole it and tims on two occasions in 2016. Separately, 30-year-old Jung resolved. The statue was removed from returned it to me, what is his business was also convicted of filming himself having sex with other display in 2016 following protests by stu- whether I have a garage or not to keep women without their knowledge and sharing the footage dents, who said it was looted by British the car? “These artefacts belong to our without their consent. troops during a “punitive expedition” as ancestors. They must be returned to us. It is the highest-profile example of an epidemic of spy- revenge for the killing of officers. It’s nobody’s business how we preserve cam crimes in South Korea, which have prompted wide- Around the same time, Oxford them.”— AFP spread anger and seen women demonstrating in Seoul, University faced an angry but unsuccess- chanting: “My life is not your porn”. Jung distributed his People walk past a New year tree in central Kemerovo. — AFP ful campaign to remove a statue of 19th- videos in mobile chatrooms with recipients including fellow K-pop star Seungri of BIGBANG, who has been accused of illegal gambling in connection with a sex and drugs scandal. Jung was jailed for six years and Choi, 29, for five, the Seoul Central District Court said. “Jung and Choi took part in gang rape of victims who were intoxicated and unable to resist,” Yonhap news agency cited the verdict as saying, rejecting the defendants’ claim the sex was consensual.