left he didn't say a word. knife crime is no longer confined to criminal gangs in deprived areas it's everywhere. judy chesney charlotte huggins chu just siminoff the names of some of those killed were read out in parliament this week and this opposition labor m.p. stella creasy wants arm says from the government this is an emergency that requires an emergency response here. in recent years police are experienced deep funding cuts leading to the lowest police numbers since the one nine hundred eighty s. the british prime minister denies the resource problem is to blame there's no direct correlation between certain crimes and peace numbers what matters is how we ensure that the police are responding to these criminal acts when they take place that people are brought to justice but what also matters is as a government that we know the issues that underpin that underlie this use of knives and britain's most senior police officer disagrees in the last few years police

officers numbers have gone down a lot of there's been a lot of cuts in other public services i agree that there is some link between violent crime on the streets obviously and the police and police numbers of course there is and i think everybody would would see that mohammed has she is a youth worker on the front line in communities most affected by violent crime he's also a victim i was stopped an attempted robbery and i was in a watch on a break up a fight with some young people but for me again i was someone that was well qualified i was never involved in gangs of violence etc however that kind of reinforcing the dice is not really a choice for a young person to be a victim or or necessarily a perpetrator if the environment kind of pushes you in a certain direction. for us as i don't have really let down our young people and you actually bear the scars yeah so i've. got shot in the show six stitches in my chest and i had another ten rifle. steel warriors is

a charity that wants to take all the lives off the streets and turn them into something positive a ton of weapons is confiscated in london every month. this is the result an outdoor gym in an east london park made entirely from recycled weapons allowing young people to refocus their bodies and their minds as police politicians and charities agree and disagree on new ways to tackle the symptoms and causes of knife crime children are killing children of britain streets the barca al-jazeera london . hello i'm a star in doha with the headlines on al-jazeera north korea's reportedly restoring facilities at a long range rocket launch site that it dismantled last year the reports in south korean media follow last week's failed summit between donald trump and kim jong un

in vietnam from mcbride has more from seoul it's a site that is normally used for satellite launches but it has been used for the testing of engines for ballistic missiles so it is potentially significant to north korea's missile development weapons program if the the satellite images seem to show that some restoration work has taken place drawers replaced in the section of roofing replaced on one of the buildings at the site there flights have been canceled from kenya's main airport following a strike by aviation workers riot police have been deployed to disperse protesters outside nairobi's tremor canal to airports the strike follows a labor dispute between a workers union and kenya airways flights have not been able to land for the past few hours at least sixteen people have been killed in a suicide attack on construction workers in eastern afghanistan it happened near

the airport in jalalabad the four attackers were also killed and no group has yet claimed responsibility. venezuelan president nicolas maduro is calling for anti imperialist demonstrations on saturday to coincide with a march led by his opponents the opposition leader who has been holding talks with labor unions in a bid to organize strikes. germany is expected to decide soon if it will extend a five month ban on arms exports including planes to saudi arabia it's under pressure from its european allies france and britain to lift the ban imposed after the murder of saudi journalist jamal khashoggi. police trying to find out who mailed explosive devices to two airports and a major train station in the u.k. they were discovered at london's heathrow and city airports and waterloo rate railway station the devices didn't hurt anyone though one caused a small fire in

a heathrow office building well those are the headlines and i'll be back with more news here after the stream. embroiled in a battle. is this radical transformation. unconventional. people. ok you win the strain today our ugandans mean forced off social media i'm really could be glad we explore the fallout of the ugandan government's levy on dozens of online platforms and speak with activists who are demanding the government change

course have you been affected by the tax tell us about it in the chat on twitter and we will do our best to get you into this conversation. my name is. john from nigeria and you are. more than two and a half million ugandans have reportedly abandoned social media to protest the government imposed tax on sixty online services including twitter and whatsapp long time present in the seventies says the tax which came into effect in july is meant to boost government coffers and cope the spread of it critics say the law not only chill's free speech but mobile banking systems which many people in the country rely on the uganda communications commission reports that internet subscriptions and mobile money transactions have both declined heavily but u.c.c. spokesman ibrahim both says users are simply adjusting their behavior still many

ugandans have turned her virtual private networks to get around the tax while promoting the hashtags no to social media tax and the. tax must go to demand change from the government and joining us now from uganda to discuss rosa day is the editor of african feminism a pan african feminist digital platform daniel bill o.p.o. is a lawyer and the executive director of cyber line a nonprofit group that takes a look at tech issues through a legal lens days the founder and managing additive by month magazine dependent and in the u.k. . is an associate professor at university essential. the stream also contact with representatives of the government and we try to invite them to take part in this conversation but they didn't give us a representative but we have excellent guests and we can't wait to get the conversation started so social media talk i mean one place to start i was concerned and i had a tory meeting who is going to be added join us from there is

a social media tax and you said we were also concerned just because two of the platforms of course that we use are going to be taxed for ugandan users and that is twitter and you tube and yet they came out in droves ugandans have answered the call so take a look at just a couple of these personal stories that people are sharing this is joe nam on twitter who says he's using a virtual private network but it's a total inconvenience for example my village facebook page has close to ten thousand subscribers debate has drastically reduce but over the top services before the over the top service tax you would post an article and at least you would get five hundred comments now you're lucky to get just ten another story here from be a leo who says it's absolutely ridiculous it's millions of people from their loved ones it's killed thousands of startup businesses and it hasn't shown any benefit and just one more i'll share because we've got so many this is day and he says our president may not know that it is through social media that we obtained links to

educational websites and job opportunities our colleagues from other countries will access this information faster as we ugandans continue to lag behind andrew you heard the take of three people there what would you say to them. well i think for governments to make any decision that has to be a trade off i should tell you this country has been depending on foreign aid for fifty percent of her budget will very many as when you have a government depending on foreigners for her fiscal survival it means it will listen what foreigners than citizens the ugandan citizen needs to contribute significantly to the states or was in order for the state to be able to provide a large basket of public goods and services that we so often demand and they give an example this country has forty million people whom twenty million adults over eighteen years above the about fifteen years only six hundred to stow them out of close to twenty million people who are of adult age pay income tax called pay as

you earn or pay six hundred seven only. so because most of what ugandans are employed in the informal sector it is so difficult that the income the best way to tax ugandans is to use consumption taxes and the social media is the most used to pull out form by most ugandans so if you place a tax on social media you and you are able to spread the tax and it covers so many people and if the government has to raise money to sub the people of uganda then it must it is it is innovative for it to have a tax bill and then it did with us out there last tuesday where the largest number of our citizens so is it is also around you belka head yes our love to dispute some of the things that are being brought forth by andrew because if you look at the genesis of the tax the president wrote a letter stating that ugandans are idle talk us on social media and therefore there

is a need for tax so there is no correlation between i don't talk on social media and raising revenue besides there are various other ways in which this country and reserve in civil society organizations that deal with budget and revenue taxation for him very brilliant ideas but the government has shown them this social media tax is just a move to cut the lawn such a visual and i was shocked steve also said that one other note about running the government said the subjective motivations of the president on this tax irrelevant what is most important is object of outcome and reality of the stocks but why is that i that isn't a luxury taxes yes well i don't think i don't think we have an objective outcome when you have a home minister telling you they made a mistake they were misled and bigger trying to defend undefendable because the government itself has already some extent accepted it through their report the tax revenue they got in the first month the third month it was already going down it shows that people are going to if they send in find other ways over rosaries only

and it's true and that already yes it is a should be a have one hour delay. visible that was well known this is from below gander communications commission report and they are showing that the revenue has gone down in the men the stays on record saying they are trying to look through this and i see to many a commitment to build a bond with me still is a lot of money used to see uganda communications commission does not collect taxes collected by the gun revenue source i have just ten minutes ago been talking to the commissioner general you're going to review your story. and she has told me just sent me figures that show media has brought in an extra twenty seven billion in revenue by month twenty seven billion and about i'm going to not all of us probably the public figures we have of from the government the same government syndrome then i'll go over some indication rossmiller and i don't know who they are you we have joining statistics here but let me take us back to july when the social media tax

was announced it was implemented and people went out on the streets i'm interested in the response and how people are managing right now this is politician bobby wine he was in that protest this is how mad people were havoc with this to their face i make that because it is a personal attack on me on people of uganda for some you know if it was the cause of this i think i was attempting to correct the spelling factor to get the president was right because they think we're putting such an undertaking stake in this in such a media. bill as a young person who got to. the volume of stupid it's got kind of i can't help what the. yeah yeah and i want to go to young as we're going to first of all three . hundred. you know you four but i want to go to a young person in uganda because i want to understand what it is that brought you

out of this trial and. i say here you feel that i'm very very very respectful of. me yes yes frostily what what the president of uganda is doing is hiding away from about one going internationally bit on how to tax these. u.s. janet companies that had dealing in this erosion on purpose shifting so there is a discussion on how to tax those entities but what you've done that is doing is going for the use of that platform which is not going to yield any results given that the economy's accelerating towards. we need to have lasting solutions not have taxes that is really be very big and can easily be of we did one of the good principles of taxation as in as you did by the o.e.c.d. in twenty fourteen was about what type system is a tax that is based on one that had not used to be very bit off we did so if a tax cut is the video and we did then it is up but all over fifty percent or

already that at one point three percent user uses of the internet in a band i'm now able to avoid the social media tax through use of why if i am using virtual private networks it's already that tax is not based on any good principles or taxation but as young people there are so many i put out i've been in the thirty one social media platforms there was a young man who was called but still more tough one of the leaders our wives because of opening markets from farmers in rural areas to to the market in the about areas using facebook and he has been transforming a lot of lives of many farmers but now this tax has prevented such kinds of innovations by young people who are more you. are you saying that. you know that the income for some of the people should not be taxed i thought. there was a vehicle we're told. in order to. belittle

you i hear that you know this bill and enter i want to bring in a much more i'm just a coffee a voice this is danielle just two opposing sides of this and i hear you george trying to get in there so i will go to you daniel first on twitter says i support the tax because many youth have been spending too much time on social media criticizing the ruling party and yet the president is just urging them to get involved in the informal sector so there is one person who took that original comment from president with seventy who says. quote unquote gossip and rumors are being spread another person on the other side of this debate though says we wouldn't have issues with paying the tax if we were certain that it would contribute to better infrastructural developments like roads hospitals schools in the country and many people online are saying that that is not happening george. i think beyond as position pretty my summarizes you know my. video you know in this regard. social media has been sort of integrated at the very basic level you know

in africa today and i think before imposing this social media tax you know the government should have at least concede that the impact that this was going to have on a range of issues you know not just sort of for business entities but you know issues to do with health you know education. source so many other things that people are now not able to do precisely because of this dux you know quite apart from the fact that you know for me in my in my view i think the motivations why you know primarily political but i suppose are that's that's an issue that you know we discuss later i think this is also a very convenient route you know these economic case that has been made by norms seventy was almost made to sort of normalize what is what is frankly speaking you know and an anomaly you know it's not happened you know elsewhere. why he thought that this was the best way to. get revenue or i actually don't

understand you know i think you know people still need to be convinced if this was in fact not the case whereas what i want i want to share with our audience and let me just shout out instance from present seventy because as i said we didn't have a government representative who agreed to be on the show but i do want to show people some of his thought process is when he was addressing the social media attacks he is concerned about foreign interests involved in social media and then he also goes on to say that the social media tax is really a minimum but is george assange there's a role on impact to the social media tatts particularly from people who are very wealthy who use the internet and use social media in order to stay connected can you talk to us about those people the people that you know who are really struggling to actually stay online. i had i think it's very important to realize that we still have

a very big. toll defied when it comes to the marginal users of the internet this starts added ten percent more to those who do not have a low income earners and we also have a very huge gender. divide but there are a few women online because they cannot actually access this sort of funds to be online and when we look at how many how much figures we have come from forty five around forty five percent of ugandans on the internet it intil to thirty five percent this has been a very big fall in the last few months and we cannot neglect the fact that many people are going offline or many people are going behind using v.p.n. but at the end of the day a government in this age which cannot be able to collect big data to plan for the for the population when the population will force in the population under it's not sustainable we need the data in the people are not using the very platforms in the

in the very way the government think they would so we are losing that actually in fact planning for those who are on the margins of society and row so i want to share their ideas just so they know how expensive this is one moment is i want to bring this into explain to our audience what this looks like in terms of price so this is has and he gives us a breakdown he says gone are the days when i used to spend only twenty five hundred uganda shillings about sixty cents for one gig weekly he says now i need to pay fourteen hundred ugandan shillings about thirty eight cents weekly and then purchase data for around two thousand shillings that's fourteen thousand ugandan shillings or three seventy nine u.s. dollars per week our data alone and the reason for this is because of what joe here tweets joe a size that africa already has the most expensive internet in the world the un says one gig of online data should be no more than two percent of average. monthly income and in africa it is eight point seven six percent he's research this you go

to his twitter feed to see more so we want to give you a taste of what it's like for some people we heard from a journalist who's actually in kenya but she recently traveled to uganda and talked to us about what it was like to pay the tax for her uganda has traditionally always had very expensive internet. in kenya you can buy a gig of data for about three dollars and fifty cents while the same amount of data in uganda is about seven dollars and ten cents and so you're already adding additional tax onto for him a cost for data in uganda and this has affected media and access to information in many ways but in my experience it has really limited the amount of information that's coming out of uganda by journalists and photographers because frankly when you have to pay per gig to get an image out or a video footage out of the country you limit the amount of information that you're sending to your editors and you limit the amount of visual content that you're getting out to the world so bill you heard what she had to say when everyone else

was relating in those tweets what do you make about. what i would people should be. bill ok andrew out of class bill you first enter your follow up go ahead yes this is early on. the prison had proposed a tax of one hundred shillings per use of access by day but the parliament and them in a sort of a city types or two hundred shillings by use of i'd be the smallest amount of data initially before the introduction of the taps two hundred and fifty shillings that shows you how much. how low it was for people to be able to access a bit of an example you can buy for one hundred shillings or two hundred get an idea how expensive it is for two hundred shillings you can buy a kilo group or. a bubble maize gram of corn sorry. about that but then let me give perspective to the government of uganda invests six thousand

you got i'm chilling that's about one of a half dollars every academic year out for you give us your primary education students and then look at the stats it doesn't it's supposed to pay about six thousand shillings if the government of uganda deems that stuff that gives six thousand shillings to students that are bringing us all primary education all year then how much more is it difficult for an individual that is not being employed by a government to raise six thousand shillings every month to be able to pay all this pain or even tax more to that excise duty tax is a tax that is supposed to be against something that is evil in this society all deemed to be bad for example. therefore you list of tax called the excise duty which is supposed to limit such. items and discourage that consumption so i don't understand how the president diem social media to be something that is it

will introduce it even as well as let me say well i think it's a little disingenuous i think you know when they get it describes something as gossip then you can understand perhaps why it might not be quite so. in line with the way that his thinking because other people talk about me i get that it's a good issue is if something is important should it be taxed for example do you think in the house is the right he said but these property tax you can get an income for survival is important these income tax bracket you cannot say that because something must be something that people can see then as to what we have got under that and. if we have redundant one of the least i should say i'm going to play for is you can say you want to be free but you don't let me in the. realm of the gold standard no one going to grace a space for jewish prison to me that is a dysfunctional mentality among african elites african whatever demanding that the

state provide them a large basket i don't think that anyone but i can tell you i thought i'd like to add that no one in your country has you had. your sense of a budget give me a second shall we get off the dependence on foreign aid us to fund our budget yes when i hear all of you all at the same time. yeah under a thing i think you arguments are a bit conflicted you know the fact that you know you need something does not necessarily mean it has to be talks you know there's a reason why you know bread or mail is not tossed. not tax rather you know and yet you know we consume them like you know every day. in uganda story look if you're going to we don't really know when you know that that's an exception but you know it's not it's not i sort of a universal concept that you can then use to to you know legitimize you know and i commend that you know falls flat on you know which ever reason you raise as being legitimate you know i think you know you're looking for an escape here.

i don't think anyone know if you are our handout what principle of all on hold because that is not usual for us and i guess i hear you all debating tax and what should be tax and what shouldn't be tax and just go back to milly can see what she is wrangling in the community this is the common thread joel here on youtube says that we pay taxes we don't receive the necessary services from the government and so personally i feel robbed by my government rosa i know you are trying to get in there what you want what do you want to say i think it's very important to know about besides just bigger cuts that there are very important issues of inequality the people you're pushing around we can't just a tax cannot affect everybody. especially the people we're trying to get online to be able to perform in this economy where the unemployment rate is very hard for young ugandans these these are very high class i can understand for people like me and until maybe my not feel the same way but the majority of this country's young

does not have an income that you're trying to start so they eat very very. bad way of trying to say that we are trying to build a country why do we have building when we are debasing very many people without opportunity let me just introduce a voice was going to you shall i say minister of finance and he's not doing all the heavy lifting here and let me see what he is thinking about the social media tax have a listen. to the. will of ground zero for an answer on by the one hundred s. and. contribute something more and as we do contribute we're also of course. but if you go to be there by the. so this is a minister of finance what is interesting about this debate you can hear it raging right now in uganda people are very upset about it but there's also

a challenge to the social media tatts i want to show you some of the lawyers who are trying to position against this tax here on my laptop leave your colleagues of bill bill tell me about this petition as we filed the petition last year on the second or july just a day after the tax had come into place but it was on the monday and we've been making all this our reforms of submissions. giving conference with the respondents but until now the court has declined to give us a bid because they know all but what possibly the breadth of their submissions but they're well aware of the tax doesn't really have a grant of all it doesn't all going back had to go your excites duty. then it's a blot on and on on on. human rights the expression association. and many others and then lastly it's a matter of double taxation because we're already paying tax for the data that we

use so paying another additional tax to be able to to use data about it i mean. and if you look at some of the ugandan laws for example they've got their communications commission at around six hundred fifty you find that you know one of them is to really provide it better but you're going to be allowed i believe it's me on it and i think that we really can do you think you can win do you think you can win do you think you can reverse a social media it's a very simple answer very short like a sentence. yes i think we can do when you give us our. possible our right. to the contradiction argument that somehow the courts are. going to get you are the same thing yet is what and then you will write. thank you thank you for pointing out the contradiction to me all the great has been your perspective i just have a long time to revisit the community one last time thank you guess it's

a very rich conversation but we've got both sides of the aisle here on you tube says i'm a ugandan and we have always demanded social services from the government yet a citizens we should contribute to the development and growth i support the tax and the other side is a crushing form of censorship thank you to all of our guests if you want to follow this story even easy to use the hash tags no more social media tax and this tax must go on twitter thank you very much rick and i will see you next time take. my. i. play a. fly because i always can experience the world like never before cats are always

going places together. monch on al-jazeera. maggi haasan did bates' discusses and dissects the big issues of our times and had tad's five years after the revolution focuses in ukraine will have a chance to offer a verdict on what's come since. in a powerful new film residents of occupied east jerusalem share their thoughts on its past present and future. leaders will gather for the thirty s arab league summit in tunis yet join us for coverage and we examine the development of an unusual alliance between radical buddhist monks and the military in min ma ma ch on al-jazeera. june ring sierra leone civil war nigerian forces were deployed to protect civilians instead some turned on the population in plain

sight of a journalist camera is going to be the way to really peacekeeping force the little girl. eighteen years on using his harrowing images international lawyers seek justice for the slaughtered by their guardians the peace killers on. reports emerged that north korea is rebuilding a rocket launch site after the failure of kim jong un summit with donald trump. and this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up venezuela's president says

he'll crush what he calls the crazed minority trying to force him out. the fighter jets at the center of germany's tug of war with european allies over selling arms to saudi arabia. and we'll hear from the parents of a teenage boy who say he was tortured into confessing to committing crimes with eisold in iraq. north korea is reportedly restoring facilities there's a long range rocket launch site that it dismantled as part of disarmament steps last year the reports in south korean media following last week's failed summit between donald trump and kim jong un in vietnam a web site specializing in north korea studies called thirty eight north says it has satellite imagery showing efforts to rebuild some structures at the launch site which started sometime between february sixteenth and march second al-jazeera is robert bright joins us now live from south korea's capital seoul rob talk us

through these alleged restorations and the timeline. that's right the stars of these details are emerging from the basic.