Category Archives: Formats

IEEE Spectrum, News

Europe Struggles to Quit Chinese Telecom

This month Huawei filed a complaint against Spain’s rural 5G contracting process, because the tender made it too risky for bidders to include the Shenzhen, China telecom giant’s hardware. The filing is the company’s latest move in its long, involuntary departure from Europe and other global telecom network markets.

Huawei holds a strong, global market-leading position in telecom network hardware, says Stéphane Téral, founder and chief analyst of Téral Research in San Francisco. However, he adds Ericsson and Nokia have in recent years made “competitive hardware in a timely manner” such that they should be up to the challenge of replacing Huawei networks wherever there’s demand. 

Huawei and ZTE, the other major Chinese-headquartered telecom supplier, are stuck between a law and a hard place. Two, actually: the equipment manufacturers are subject to a pair of laws that, if enforced, could require them to comply with security-related instructions from the Chinese government. On the other hand, other countries are writing more and more restrictive language into their telecom and security regulations that restrict suppliers subject to such explicit pressure from third countries—which effectively means China.

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Civio, Data visualization, Features

Investigation: People of no nation: how being stateless means living without rights

This is the third of a three-part investigation I co-reported and co-wrote with María Álvarez del Vayo, Ter Garcia, Carmen Torrecillas, and Adrián Maqueda of Civio with help from some EDJNet partners. Part 1, “Investigation: One small step for a few, one giant leap for the rest: how to become a European citizen” is here. Part 2, “Stranger in a native land” is here. The data visualizations are only visible at the Civio website. También hay una versión en español.

Imagine not being able to sign a work contract or not being able to access social or even health services. Forget travelling, enrolling in university or getting married. That is the reality for thousands of people not recognised as nationals by any state. “They have no rights,” says Nina Murray, head of policy and research at the European Statelessness Network (ENS) a London, United Kingdom-based network of civil society organisations.

Many stateless people, Murray explains, come from states that have disappeared. Or they have been displaced from their homes by war or for other reasons. Others have no nationality, because of gaps in the laws of their country of birth: they may be the children of stateless persons or of people whose countries do not recognise as citizens the children born to their citizens abroad. Some people are stateless because the country where they live does not recognise their country of origin as a state, as in much of the European Union (EU) for people from Palestine or Western Sahara.

Continue reading Investigation: People of no nation: how being stateless means living without rights →
Civio, Features, Madrid

Investigation: Stranger in a native land

This is the second of a three-part investigation I co-reported and co-wrote with María Álvarez del Vayo, Ter Garcia, Carmen Torrecillas, and Adrián Maqueda of Civio with help from some EDJNet partners. Part 1, “Investigation: One small step for a few, one giant leap for the rest: how to become a European citizen” is here. Part 3 “People of no nation: how being stateless means living without rights” is here. The data visualizations are only visible at the Civio website. También hay una versión en español.

Faussan was born in 2016 at Moncloa University Hospital in Madrid, Spain. By then, nine years had passed since his parents left Bangladesh to live in Spain. “When he was born, we registered him and gave him a Bangladeshi passport, because he was not Spanish, he was Bangladeshi,” explains his father, Hassan. When Faussan was one year old, his parents applied for Spanish nationality on his behalf. Despite being born in Spain in 2016, it was not until 2020, four years later, that Faussan finally became a Spanish citizen.

If Faussan had been born in another European Union (EU) country, his early life might have been different. In Germany, Portugal and Ireland he would have acquired citizenship automatically at birth. That is because, though citizenship isn’t granted automatically to everyone born in these countries, it is available to children of people legally residing there for specified periods. As with any other baby born in the country to citizens, Faussan’s parents would have gone to the registry to register his birth as a citizen, they would not have had to apply for a residence permit for him, and the child would never have appeared on Spain’s list of naturalisations because he would have been a citizen from birth.

Continue reading Investigation: Stranger in a native land →
Civio, Data visualization, Features, Madrid

Investigation: One small step for a few, one giant leap for the rest: how to become a European citizen

This is the first of a three-part investigation I co-reported and co-wrote with María Álvarez del Vayo, Ter Garcia, Carmen Torrecillas, and Adrián Maqueda of Civio with help from some EDJNet partners. Part 2, “Stranger in a native land” is here. Part 3, “People of no nation: how being stateless means living without rights” is here. The data visualizations are only visible at the Civio website. También hay una versión en español.

Magali Varela de Torres, who moved from Venezuela to Madrid, Spain, in 2017, is the only member of her nuclear family who is not yet Spanish. Her husband was Spanish and now her daughter, son and granddaughter are Spanish, too. Varela de Torres, a retired social worker who has official recognition of disability due to her Alzheimer’s, has lived in Spain long enough to apply for citizenship, too. But Spain’s Ministry of Justice has not processed her requests for a health exemption from the culture test required for naturalisation. Her daughter Adriana Torres has submitted three requests over the last three years and keeps getting the same robotic reply from the ministry asking for information she has already submitted. After listening to her daughter tell the story, Varela de Torres says, “It’s as if I don’t exist.”

Continue reading Investigation: One small step for a few, one giant leap for the rest: how to become a European citizen →