title: Superior orders

text: Captain (res.) Itai Haviv, a signatory of the 'courage to refuse' letter of 2002 tells of his unhappiness about his service for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and says "For 35 years a black flag was proudly hanging over our heads, but we have refused to see it". A translation note explains the "Black Flag" principle but adds "In the 45 years that passed since [the ruling], not even a single soldier was protected by a military court for refusing to obey a command because it was a 'black flag' command."


title: Superior orders

text: Following the Mỹ Lai massacre in 1968, the defense was employed during the court martial of William Calley. Some have argued that the outcome of the Mỹ Lai trial was a reversal of the laws of war that were set forth in the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals. Secretary of the Army Howard Callaway was quoted in the "New York Times" as stating that Calley's sentence was reduced because Calley believed that what he did was a part of his orders. Calley used the exact phrase "just following orders" when another American soldier, Hugh Thompson, confronted him about the ongoing massacre.


title: Superior orders

text: In "United States v. Keenan", the accused was found guilty of murder after he obeyed an order to shoot and kill an elderly Vietnamese citizen. The Court of Military Appeals held that "the justification for acts done pursuant to orders does not exist if the order was of such a nature that a man of ordinary sense and understanding would know it to be illegal". The soldier who gave the order, Corporal Luczko, was acquitted by reason of insanity.


title: Superior orders

text: The Rome Statute was agreed in 1998 as the foundation document of the International Criminal Court, established to try those accused of serious international crimes. Article 33, titled "Superior orders and prescription of law", states:


title: Superior orders

text: Nuremberg Principle IV, and its reference to an individual's responsibility, was at issue in Canada in the case of "Hinzman v. Canada." Jeremy Hinzman was a U.S. Army deserter who claimed refugee status in Canada as a conscientious objector, one of many Iraq War resisters. Hinzman's lawyer, (at that time Jeffry House), had previously raised the issue of the legality of the Iraq War as having a bearing on their case. The Federal Court ruling was released on March 31, 2006, and denied the refugee status claim. In the decision, Justice Anne L. Mactavish addressed the issue of personal responsibility:


title: Superior orders

text: An individual must be involved at the policy-making level to be culpable for a crime against peace ... the ordinary foot soldier is not expected to make his or her own personal assessment as to the legality of a conflict. Similarly, such an individual cannot be held criminally responsible for fighting in support of an illegal war, assuming that his or her personal war-time conduct is otherwise proper.


title: Superior orders

text: On November 15, 2007, a quorum of the Supreme Court of Canada made of Justices Michel Bastarache, Rosalie Abella, and Louise Charron refused an application to have the Court hear the case on appeal, without giving reasons.


title: Superior orders

text: In June 2006, during the Iraq War, Ehren Watada refused to go to Iraq on account of his belief that the war was a crime against peace (waging a war of aggression for territorial aggrandizement), which he believed could make him liable for prosecution under the command responsibility doctrine. In this case, the judge ruled that soldiers, in general, are not responsible for determining whether the order to go to war is itself a lawful order – but are only responsible for those orders resulting in a specific application of military force, such as shooting civilians or treating POWs inconsistently with the Geneva Conventions. This is consistent with the Nuremberg defense, as only the civilian and military principals of the Axis were charged with crimes against peace, while subordinate military officials were not. It is often the case in modern warfare that while subordinate military officials are not held liable for their actions, neither are their superiors, as was the case with Calley's immediate superior Captain Ernest Medina.


title: Superior orders

text: Based on this principle, international law developed the concept of individual criminal liability for war crimes, which resulted in the current doctrine of command responsibility.


title: Superior orders

text: On February 28, 2022, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin shot and killed unarmed civilian Oleksandr Shelipov, a 62 year old Ukrainian man. His trial started on 13 May 2022, and on Wednesday 18 May, Shishimarin pleaded guilty to the killing. On Friday 20 May, Shishimarin's defense lawyer asked for his client to be acquitted of war crimes. He argued that Shishimarin had intended not to kill but only to carry out the order formally, which Shishimarin had refused twice before succumbing to pressure from other soldiers. He further argued that the shots were unaimed, fired from a moving vehicle with a faulty tire, and only one bullet out of the burst hit. Ukrainian officials say that they have registered upwards of 10,000 warcrimes across the country, and this trial is only the first of many to soon follow.


title: Superior orders

text: Note: Yellow rows indicate the use of the "precise" plea of Superior Orders in a war crimes trial - as opposed to events regarding the "general" concept of Superior Orders.


title: Superior orders

text: The superior orders defense is still used with the following rationale in the following scenario: An "order" may come from one's superior at the level of "national" law. But according to Nuremberg Principle IV, such an order is sometimes "unlawful" according to "international" law. Such an "unlawful order" presents a legal dilemma from which there is no legal escape: On one hand, a person who "refuses" such an unlawful order faces the possibility of legal punishment "at the national level". On the other hand, a person who "accepts" such an unlawful order faces the possibility of legal punishment "at the international level".


title: Superior orders

text: Nuremberg Principle II responds to that dilemma by stating: "The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law."


title: Superior orders

text: This might present a "legal" dilemma, but Nuremberg Principle IV speaks of "a "moral" choice" as being just as important as legal decisions: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a "moral" choice was in fact possible to him".


title: Superior orders

text: In moral choices or ethical dilemmas a decision is often made by appealing to a "higher ethic". One found in many religions and in secular ethics is the "ethic of reciprocity", or "Golden Rule". It states that one has a right to just treatment, and therefore has a reciprocal responsibility to ensure justice for others.


title: Superior orders

text: Although messengers are not usually responsible for the content of messages, the Babylonian Talmud (3rd to 5th century corpus of Jewish law) states, "There is no messenger in a case of sin." Joseph Telushkin interprets the precept to mean that "if a person is sent to perform an evil act, he cannot defend his behavior by saying he was only acting as another's messenger. ... [T]he person who carries out the evil act bears responsibility for the evil he or she does." This is because God's law (i.e. morality) supersedes human law.


title: Superior orders

text: Another argument against the use of the superior orders defense is that it does not follow the traditional legal definitions and categories established under criminal law, where a principal is any actor who is primarily responsible for a criminal offense. Such an actor is distinguished from others who may also be subject to criminal liability as accomplices, accessories or conspirators. (See also the various degrees of liability: absolute liability, strict liability, and mens rea.)


title: Superior orders

text: The common argument is that every individual under orders should be bound by law to immediately relieve of command an officer who gives an obviously unlawful order to their troops. This represents a rational check against organizational command hierarchies.


title: Superior orders

text: Nuremberg Principle IV, the international law that counters the superior orders defense, is legally supported by the jurisprudence found in certain articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that deal indirectly with conscientious objection. It is also supported by the principles found in paragraph 171 of the Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status, which was issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Those principles deal with the conditions under which conscientious objectors can apply for refugee status in another country if they face persecution in their own for refusing to participate in an illegal war.


title: Tommy Dewey

text: Thomas R. Dewey (born August 3, 1978) is an American actor, producer, and writer. He co-starred with Michaela Watkins in the Hulu original series "Casual."


title: Tommy Dewey

text: Dewey was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He went to Mountain Brook High School, and graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.


title: Tommy Dewey

text: Dewey's first television role was in the Amanda Bynes sitcom "What I Like About You". One of his breakout roles was playing opposite Mindy Kaling in the first season of the show "The Mindy Project", where he played Josh Daniels, a lawyer who was one of the title character's love interests. As of 2015, Dewey co-stars in the Hulu original series "Casual".


title: Black Hippy

text: Black Hippy is an American hip hop supergroup from South Los Angeles, California, formed in 2008. The group is composed of West Coast rappers Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar and ScHoolboy Q. Black Hippy was constructed after all of its members had signed to Carson-based indie record label, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE).


title: Black Hippy

text: Although the collective currently has no albums together, the members are frequent collaborators, regularly appearing and contributing to each other's respective solo projects, oftentimes not even crediting one another as a guest vocalist or featured artist. Lamar has stated that the group would never face demise due to the solidification of each member's career.


title: Black Hippy

text: The group was formed in 2008, when all of its members were signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, a Carson-based independent record label. The idea of forming a group came from Schoolboy Q, who said he was "slacking in [his] music": "I figured if I could be in a group I could just write one verse and I could be good", he added. Schoolboy Q, the last of the four to join the label, admitted to initially being intimidated when he first started going to the studio, but eventually the tenacity of his collaborators rubbed off on him. In 2011, Black Hippy received co-signs from West Coast hip hop legends Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, as well as Tech N9ne who called them "the new N.W.A", and had hopes of signing the group to his Strange Music imprint.


title: Black Hippy

text: In March 2012, MTV announced that Kendrick Lamar closed a joint venture deal with Interscope Records and Aftermath Entertainment. Under the new deal, it was announced Lamar's debut album, "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City" (2012), would be jointly released via Aftermath, Top Dawg and Interscope. On August 9, 2012 the music video for Ab-Soul's "Black Lip Bastard (Remix)", which features the rest of Black Hippy, was released. In the summer of 2012, the group performed at the annual hip hop festival Rock the Bells. In late 2012, the group collaborated once again to remix Lamar's singles "The Recipe" and "Swimming Pools", which were included on his debut "Good Kid, M.A.A.D City". On December 20, 2012, the lineup for the 2013 Paid Dues hip hop festival was revealed, announcing Black Hippy as the headliners.


title: Black Hippy

text: In March 2013, Black Hippy became the first hip hop group to have all members make "XXL"'s annual Top 10 Freshmen list; with Jay Rock appearing on the 2010 issue, Kendrick Lamar on the 2011 issue and Ab-Soul, alongside Schoolboy Q, on the 2013 issue. In April 2013, Black Hippy covered "RESPECT." magazine, which hit newsstands on the 30th. Also in April 2013, it was reported that Kendrick Lamar added dates to his "good kid m.A.A.d city" concert tour, revealing his upcoming US dates will feature all four members of the Black Hippy crew. On May 23, 2013, in anticipation of their tour together, Black Hippy released a remix to Atlanta-based rapper Rocko's 2013 single "U.O.E.N.O.".


title: Black Hippy

text: Following the highly acclaimed TDE cypher at the 2013 BET Hip Hop Awards, which featured Black Hippy rapping alongside their TDE label-mate Isaiah Rashad, the group appeared on the cover of the October/November issue of "XXL". In December 2013, Black Hippy performed at Power 106 and Footaction's 2013 Cali Christmas event. During a February 2014 interview with Lamar, Schoolboy Q, Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith and Dave Free, there was talk of a debut effort from the Black Hippy collective, to possibly have been released during 2014.


title: Black Hippy

text: On March 16, 2015, Lamar released his second major-label album, "To Pimp a Butterfly", which received rave reviews from music critics. In June 2015, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q, appeared alongside Lamar, in the beginning of his music video for "Alright", "To Pimp a Butterfly"s fourth single. On September 11, 2015, Jay Rock released his long-awaited second album, "90059". The album features the first Black Hippy posse cut since 2013, titled "Vice City". Separate from Schoolboy Q’s 2016 release entitled "Blank Face LP", Schoolboy Q’s single featuring Kanye West, "That Part" was remixed by Black Hippy, released July 6, 2016.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Elections in the Philippines are of several types. The president, vice-president, and the senators are elected for a six-year term, while the members of the House of Representatives, governors, vice-governors, members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (provincial board members), mayors, vice-mayors, members of the Sangguniang Panlungsod/members of the Sangguniang Bayan (city/municipal councilors), barangay officials, and the members of the Sangguniang Kabataan (youth councilors) are elected to serve for a three-year term.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Congress has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 316 seats since 2022, of which 80% are contested in single seat electoral districts and 20% are allotted to party-lists according to a modified Hare quota with remainders disregarded and a three-seat cap. These party list seats are only accessible to marginalized and under-represented groups and parties, local parties, and sectoral wings of major parties that represent the marginalized. The Constitution of the Philippines allows the House of Representatives to have more than 250 members by statute without a need for a constitutional amendment. The Senate has 24 members who are elected on a nationwide at-large basis; they do not represent any geographical district. Half of the Senate is renewed every three years.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The Philippines has a multi-party system, with numerous parties in which no one party normally has a chance of gaining power alone, and parties must work with each other to form a coalition government. The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) is responsible for running the elections.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Under the Constitution, elections for the members of Congress and local positions (except barangay officials) occur every second Monday of every third year after May 1992, and presidential and vice presidential elections occur every second Monday of May every sixth year after May 1992. All elected officials, except those at the barangay level, start (and end) their terms of office on June 30 of the election year.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: There were a few attempts to nationally elect local officials during the Spanish colonial period. Following the defeat of Spain in the Spanish–American War and the Philippines later in the Philippine–American War, the Captaincy General of the Philippines and the First Philippine Republic were replaced by the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands (which was established by the United States), multiple had been elections held throughout peaceful areas of the country for provincial and local officials.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: During the First Philippine Republic, an attempt was made to elect a national legislature but the former did not control the whole Philippine archipelago so no nationwide election could be held. The first fully national election for a fully elected legislative body was in 1907 for the Philippine Assembly, the elected chamber of the bicameral Philippine Legislature during the American colonial period. Starting in 1909, periodic local and Philippine Assembly elections were done concurrently until 1916, until the Jones Law reorganized the Philippine Legislature to the Senate and the House of Representatives, both now popularly elected. This setup continued until the Tydings–McDuffie Act authorized the then U.S. territory to draft a constitution. The ensuing 1935 constitution instituted the Commonwealth of the Philippines, and with it the presidency, vice presidency, and the unicameral National Assembly, then elections were done for these offices later that year.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The National Assembly amended the constitution, reconstituting a bicameral Congress, in 1941. The first elections under this setup was done later that year. World War II intervened, and the Japanese occupation of the Philippines led to the creation of the Second Philippine Republic, with elections done in 1943 for its own National Assembly. In 1945, the Americans defeated the Japanese, President Jose P. Laurel declared the dissolution of the Second Republic, and the Commonwealth was reestablished. Commonwealth elections meant for 1945 were done in April 1946, and independence was granted on July 4, 1946.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: From 1947 to 1971, there were biennial elections: every two years, eight out of 24 senators were elected (this setup started in 1951, with 16, then 8 senators elected in 1946 and 1947, respectively), and for every four years starting in 1949, the presidency, vice presidency and the entire House of Representatives were at stake, while for every four years starting 1947, local offices were at stake.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: On September 23, 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. The constitutional convention, which had earlier been elected in 1970, submitted its draft constitution. A plebiscite approved this constitution in 1973. A series of referendums consolidated Marcos's rule, and the first local elections were done in 1975. The first parliamentary election to the unicameral Batasang Pambansa, the national parliament, was done in 1978. The first presidential election under the 1973 constitution was done in 1981. A special "snap" presidential election was held in 1986, with Marcos being declared as the winner. There were allegations of massive fraud, and the People Power Revolution drove Marcos from power.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Corazon Aquino succeeded Marcos as president. A new constitution was approved in a plebiscite in 1987. Legislative elections were done later that year, then for every three years thereafter in 1992. Unlike in the 1941 amendments to the 1935 constitution, 12 senators, all members of the House of Representatives, and local officials are to be elected every three years; 24 senators were elected in 1987 and 1992, and 12 were subsequently elected starting in 1995. The president and vice president now have six-year terms, and were first elected in 1992. Party-list representatives were first elected in 1998. This is the current setup.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Every citizen 18 years old or above on election day who has been a resident of the Philippines for at least a year and for at least six months in the place where she or he is registered, and who is not otherwise disqualified by law, may vote. To actually vote, a citizen has to register. The COMELEC has a registration period of several months prior to the election. Those who are not registered do not appear on the voters' list and are ineligible to vote despite being otherwise qualified to do so.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: People aged 18 to 24 may vote in Sangguniang Kabataan elections. As with their adult counterparts, the COMELEC has a registration period a few months prior to the election.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Absentee voters are divided into two types: the local absentee voters and the overseas absentee voters. Local absentee voters include people who are working during election day. These include soldiers, policemen, government employees and the like. Overseas absentee voters are Filipinos residing abroad. They are eligible to vote for national positions only (president, vice-president, senators and party-list representatives). Overseas absentee voters may vote in Philippine embassies and consulates, and voting begins as early as 4 months prior to the election. The voting can be as long as 6 months in very few situations.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Once a registered voter finds their name in the voters' list and locates the correct precinct, they may queue in line for the distribution of the ballot.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Prior to the general election in Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) on August 11, 2008, voters have to write the names of the candidates next to the positions in which they are running. COMELEC-approved nicknames may be used by the voters in writing the names. After the polling period ends, the Board of Election Inspectors (or the teachers manning the polling precinct) counts the ballots by hand. Once all the ballots are counted, the election returns will now be sent to the city or municipal Board of Canvassers, political parties and other groups.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The city or municipal Board of Canvassers canvasses the votes from all polling precincts within their jurisdiction and prepares two documents: a Statement of Votes (SOV) in which all votes from all candidates in all positions per precinct is listed; and a Certificate of Canvass (COC), a document showing the vote totals of all candidates within the Board of Canvassers' jurisdiction.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: If the city or municipal Board of Canvassers' jurisdiction is an independent city with its own congressional district, they will send their SOV and COC to the national Board of Canvassers (the COMELEC for senate and party-list elections, Congress for presidential and vice presidential elections). If it is otherwise, they will send their SOV and COC to the provincial Board of Canvassers where the votes as stated from the city or municipal COC will be canvassed. The provincial Board of Canvassers sends their SOV and COC to the national Board of Canvassers once canvassing is done. The national Board of Canvassers then canvasses all COCs and declares the winners for national positions.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Since the 2008 Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao general election, the voters have to shade the oval that was indicated before the candidate's name, and a voting machine manufactured by Smartmatic automatically counts each ballot as it is fed into it. The results are then printed as the election return and sent electronically to the city or municipal Board of Canvassers.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: In 2016, for the third time in a row, the Philippines automated their elections using electronic vote counting machines. The deployment of 92,500 of these machines was the largest in the world. Brazil and India, countries which also use technology to process their votes, employ e-voting instead of an automated count.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: For the 2019 elections, the COMELEC presented its source code for review by accredited U.S. software testing company Pro V&V in an effort to make the automated elections transparent.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: National and local elections are held on the second Monday of May every third year starting 1992. The presidential and vice-presidential elections are held every six years. Election days in which the president and vice president and barangay officials are not elected are called "midterm elections"; Election days in which the president and vice president are elected are called "presidential elections". Barangay-level officials, although are no longer elected in the same year as the other officials since 2022, are elected separately the succeeding months (see below).


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: From 1949 to 1971, election days are held every second Tuesday of November of every odd-numbered year with the presidential and vice presidential election held the every fourth year starting from 1951.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Barangay-level elections, starting from 2007, are usually held every three years during the last Monday of October, although these elections are frequently postponed (and incumbents' terms are extended) as a cost-saving measure. Elections for the positions in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), starting from 2011, are held every three years during the second Monday of May.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: In a presidential election year, a voter may vote for as much as 34 names and a party-list organization. In Bangsamoro elections, a voter may vote for a member of the Bangsamoro Parliament from one's district, and a party-list. In barangay elections, a voter may vote for eight names. A voter for the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK, youth council) may vote for eight names; an SK voter may also vote for barangay officials.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Elections for positions in the Executive Department of the Philippine government (i.e. Presidents and Vice Presidents) is regulated by Article VII, Section 4 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution. Terms for positions with the Executive Department run for 6 years; with Presidents only allowed to serve 1 term of service, and Vice Presidents with 2 terms of service. This same Section (4) in the Article (VII) indicates when elections are done: during the "second Monday of May" and their public service begins at noontime of the "thirtieth day of June... and shall end on the same date, six years thereafter."


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Each voter is entitled to one vote "each" for the duration of the election. The voter may split his or her ticket. The candidate with the most votes wins the position; there is no run-off election, and the president and vice president may come from different parties. If two or more candidates emerge with an equal and highest number of votes, one of them will be elected by the Senate and the House of Representatives, voting separately.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The first presidential and vice-presidential election in the Philippines was the Tejeros Convention of 1897; this was for the leadership of the Katipunan, where Emilio Aguinaldo was elected as leader. The first presidential election in which the presidency of the Philippines was at stake was on January 1, 1899, when the Malolos Congress elected Aguinaldo as president.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The first presidential election via a direct election was on September 16, 1935 where Aguinaldo was defeated by Manuel L. Quezon. The first presidential election in the current constitution was on June 30, 1992 where Fidel Ramos defeated six other candidates.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Previous President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the only president to serve more than 6 years under the 1987 Constitution. She served as president for almost 10 years due to political instability in 2001, rising to Presidency from her Vice President position on January 20, 2001. A clause within the Section 4, Article VII allowed her to run for presidency in 2004.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The Senate has 24 members, and 12 members are elected every election; hence, each voter is entitled to twelve votes for the Senate in every election. The voter may not complete the twelve votes for the Senate, but s/he must not surpass the twelve votes or else his/her ballot for that position will be nullified. With the entire country as one at-large district, the twelve candidates with the most votes are elected. This is often not proportional to the results.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: From 1951 to 1971, instead of 12 senators elected every three years, the electorate voted for eight senators every two years in the same format. From 1941 to 1949, all elections to the senate were by block voting: the voters may write a name for every seat contested, or they can write the name of the party, which would then give all of the voters' votes to that party's ticket. Compounded with the Nacionalista Party's dominance, this caused a sweep of 24 seats for them in 1941. From 1916 to 1934, voting was via senatorial districts; voters vote for one candidate every three years, except for the first election in 1916 where they'd vote for two candidates; the second-placed candidate would only serve for three years.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The first Senate election was in 1916. The first election under the current constitution was in 1987, while the first election where 12 seats are contested was in 1995.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Each voter has two votes in the House of Representatives, via parallel vote: 80% of seats are from single-member districts, and 20% are from the party-list system. The vote totals in either election do not influence the number of seats a party wins. A party usually is barred from joining both elections unless granted permission by the Commission on Elections.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: A voter may vote a representative from the congressional district of residence. Each district has one seat. The candidate with the highest number of votes in a district wins that district's seat.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: A voter may also vote a party-list organization. The voter votes for the party, not for the candidate, and the voter is restricted to one vote. All votes are tallied in an at-large basis, and parties with at least 2% of the vote wins at least one seat in the House. At least two more seats may be granted if the party's proportion of the vote compared to the remaining seats compensates it to get those seats. If there are still spare seats (the party-list representatives comprise 20% of the House), the parties with less than 2% of the vote will get one seat each in descending order until all seats are filled. A party-list organization is limited to representing marginalized sectors of society such as youth, laborers, women, and the like. Each organization submits a list, in ranked order, to the Commission on Elections. This list determines who among the nominees are elected.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Previously, the calculation for the winners in the party-list election was different: the winning parties should have 2% of the national vote and are awarded one seat; any additional 2% is given an additional seat until the maximum of three seats per party is filled up. Since only a few parties surpassed the 2% election threshold, the number of party-list representatives was always less than 20% of the House's membership.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The party-list system was first used in 1998; from 1987 to 1995, the president with the concurrence of the Commission on Appointments, appointed the sectoral representatives. Sectoral representatives were first elected during 1978.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The first legislative election was for the Malolos Congress on June 23–September 10, 1898. The first election for an entirely elected body was on July 30, 1907; this was also the first general election in the Philippines.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Synchronized with the national elections are the local elections. The voter may vote for any of the following:


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: If the city the voter is residing in a highly urbanized city, or independent component city. or in Pateros, the voter can not vote for any of the provincial-level positions.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The Sangguniang Panlalawigan (provincial board), Sangguniang Panlungsod (city council) and Sangguniang Bayan (municipal council)'s manner of election is identical with that of the Senate. In some cities and provinces, they are split into districts (not necessarily the same as the congressional district) in which separate board members/council members are elected.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Barangay elections are held every three years, although usually not in the same time as elections for other positions. Terms of incumbent barangay officials are often extended when Congress suspend the barangay elections as a cost-saving measure. The barangay-level positions are:


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The manner of election of the Sangguniang Kabataan in the barangay is identical to the one used in the Senate. Each barangay is entitled to one SK. The SK chairperson is also an ex officio member of the Sangguniang Barangay.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: During the Spanish era, there was no elected or appointed national legislature representing the Philippines. The natives were allowed to elect the cabeza de barangay or the barangay (village) chief, but the electorate was almost always from the principalia or the ruling class. Originally hereditary, the position of cabeza de barangay become elective by 1768. In each town, a gobernadorcillo serves as the representative of the Spanish government. It is elected by the 12 most senior cabezas, and the outgoing gobernadorcillo. The position of gobernardocillo was made elective in 1786. Elections are scheduled independently per town. This system of governance persisted until the enactment of the Maura Law in 1893. The first (and only) election under this new system was on January 1, 1895.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: When the Americans defeated the Spanish in the Spanish–American War, and the Filipinos in the Philippine–American War, the Americans began holding elections in pacified areas. The first such elections, which are open to all males above 21 years of age, was held on May 7, 1899.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The first general election for the Bangsamoro was scheduled to be in 2022, but was postponed to 2025 to give the Bangsamoro Transition Authority more time to finish its task in restructuring the Bangsamoro government. Elections to the 80-member Bangsamoro Parliament shall be similar to how the members of the House of Representatives are elected, and are expected to be synchronized with the congressional and local elections.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: One-half of the membership (40) will be elected via the party-list system, and not more than 40% of the seats (32) are via single-member parliamentary districts. Not more than 10% of the seats are reserved seats, 2 seats for non-Moro indigenous peoples and settler communities, and one seat each for women, youth, traditional leaders and the Ulama, with these seats should be not less than 8 seats.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The Bangsamoro Parliament shall elect the chief minister, the regional head of government, and the wali (governor), the ceremonial head of the region.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: In the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao which was replaced by the Bangsamoro, voters elected the regional governor and regional vice governor via the plurality system, and members of the Regional Legislative Assembly via plurality-at-large voting.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Elected local government officials may be recalled. A recall election may be called if there is a petition of at least 25% of the registered voters in that LGU. An amendment to the law where a majority of all members of a preparatory recall assembly, composed of all elected local officials within a local government unit (LGU), endorse a recall, was repealed. The recalled official is not allowed to resign when facing a recall election, but may participate in it; the candidate with the highest number of votes wins the recall election.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The president, vice president, members of Congress and cannot be removed via recall. The president and vice president can be removed by impeachment, while members of Congress can be removed via expulsion within their ranks.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The last recall election above the barangay level was the 2015 Puerto Princesa mayoral recall election.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Members of the House of Representatives and of unaffiliated members of the upcoming Bangsamoro Parliament can be elected under the second type of special election whenever the predecessor leaves office, except when the next regularly scheduled election is less than a year away. A special election for president and vice president can only be called if both offices are vacant at the same time, and is outside the 18 months prior to the next regularly scheduled presidential election. Replacement of vacancies in legislatures governed by the Local Government Code is done via appointment, and not by special elections.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The most recent special election to elect a vacancy to the House of Representatives will be held on February 2023 for Cavite's 7th congressional district. The last special election for the presidency was in 1986.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The barangay and SK chairmen, and the city and municipal councilors have a series of indirect elections among themselves to determine their representatives of the local legislature immediately above their level.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The barangay SK chairpersons in a city or municipality elect among themselves a president that will sit as an "ex officio" member of the city or municipal council. The city (if applicable) and municipal SK presidents then elect among themselves a president that will sit in the provincial board as an "ex officio" member. Finally, provincial and city (which are not under the jurisdiction of a province) chairpersons elect among themselves the SK national federation president that will sit as an "ex officio" member of the National Youth Commission.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The manner of representation of the different barangay chairmen in the municipal, city and provincial legislatures as "ex officio" members is identical with the way how the SK chairpersons are represented; the provincial and city (which are not under the jurisdiction of a province) chairpersons elect amongst themselves the president of the National League of the Barangays (Liga ng mga Barangay).


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The city (if applicable) and municipal councilors will vote among themselves which will be their representative to the provincial board. Councilors will also elect among themselves the officers of the Philippine Councilors League.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Primary elections do not currently exist in the Philippines. The leaders of the various political parties select the candidates themselves, and party membership is liquid. In some cases, if a politician is not chosen to be a candidate, he can join another party (such as Ferdinand Marcos, a Liberal, jumped ship to the Nacionalistas in 1965 when the Liberals picked incumbent Diosdado Macapagal as their presidential candidate), or create their own party (such as Fidel Ramos, when he created Lakas ng Tao (now Lakas Kampi CMD) after the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino chose Ramon Mitra as their presidential candidate in 1992).


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Calling a Constitutional Convention is one of the ways to amend or revise the constitution of the Philippines. While voting is expected to be via the existing legislative districts, Congress decides on how many delegates would be elected, thus how many delegates would be distributed per district. The election is nonpartisan.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: During the 1970 Constitutional Convention election, each district had 2 to 16 delegates, elected via plurality-at-large voting. During the 1934 Constitutional Convention election, each district had 2 to 14 delegates, also elected via plurality-at-large-voting.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The body that proposed the current constitution, the Philippine Constitutional Commission of 1986, was appointed by the President, Corazon Aquino. The Malolos Congress was partly elected.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Referendums and plebiscites are conducted to pass certain laws. Any amendments or revision to the constitution, merging, creation and abolition of local government units and autonomous regions and the like are validated via plebiscites. For a referendum and plebiscite to pass, the votes in favor must be greater in number than those which are opposed; there is no requirement for how high the voter turnout should be in such referendums or plebiscites.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The terms "referendum" and "plebiscite" mean different things in the context of Philippine political discourse:


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: A referendum is passed if it is approved by a majority of the votes cast; a defeat means the law sought to be rejected or amended remains to be in full effect.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: There had been two "waves" of national referendums in the Philippines: the first was during the Commonwealth period, and the latter was during the martial law period. Locally, the most common plebiscites are on creating new provinces and the upgrading of a municipality into a city.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The last provincial-level plebiscite was in 2022 for the division of the province of Maguindanao into two provinces; the last national plebiscite was in 1987 for the approval of the constitution endorsed by the 1986 Constitutional Commission.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: Initiatives (locally known as "people's initiative") are governed by the Initiative and Referendum Act of 1989, allowing the people to propose amendments or revisions to the constitution, or propose new laws.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the law was "fatally defective" as far as amending the constitution is concerned.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: People's Initiative can also be used to propose new laws are allowed if there is a petition of at least 10% of all registered voters in the country, with at least 3% in every legislative district. A plebiscite will be called it meets such requirements. A people's initiative in the national level has never made it past the stage verification of signatures. This is also possible locally, with varying requirements for each level of local government.


title: Elections in the Philippines

text: The first and only People's Initiative was in Barangay Milagrosa in Quezon City, which sought to stop the influx of informal settlers and the sale of illegal drugs in that barangay in 2011.


title: German diaspora

text: The German diaspora consists of German people and their descendants who live outside of Germany. The term is used in particular to refer to the aspects of migration of German speakers from central Europe to different countries around the world. This definition describes the "German" term as a sociolinguistic group as opposed to the national one since the emigrant groups came from different regions with diverse cultural practices and different varieties of German. For instance, the Alsatians and Hessians were simply called Germans once they set foot in their new homelands.


title: German diaspora

text: "Volksdeutsche" ("ethnic Germans") is a historical term which arose in the early 20th century and was used by the Nazis to describe ethnic Germans, without German citizenship, living outside of Nazi Germany, although many had been in other areas for centuries. During World War II, Hitler forbade the use of the term because it was being used in a derogatory way against the many ethnic Germans in the SS. It is used by many historians who either deliberately or innocently are unaware of its Nazi history.


title: German diaspora

text: "Auslandsdeutsche" (adj. "auslandsdeutsch") is a concept that connotes German citizens, regardless of which ethnicity, living abroad, or alternatively ethnic Germans entering Germany from abroad. Today, this means a citizen of Germany living more or less permanently in another country (including expatriates such as long-term academic exchange lecturers and the like), who are allowed to vote in the Republic's elections, but who usually do not pay taxes to Germany but in their resident states. In a looser but still valid sense, and in general discourse, the word is frequently used in lieu of the ideologically tainted term "Volksdeutsche", denoting persons living abroad without German citizenship but defining themselves as Germans (culturally or ethnically speaking).


title: German diaspora

text: Ethnic Germans are a minority group in many countries. (See Germans, German language, and German as a minority language for more extensive numbers and a better sense of where Germans maintain German culture and have official recognition.) The following sections briefly detail the historical and present distribution of ethnic Germans by region, but generally exclude modern expatriates, who have a presence in the United States, Scandinavia and major urban areas worldwide. "See "Groups" at bottom for a list of all ethnic German groups, or continue for a summary by region."


title: German diaspora

text: In the United States census of 1990, 57 million people identified as being fully or partly of German ancestry, forming the largest single ethnic group in the country as well as the largest population of Germans outside of Germany. According to the United States Ancestry Census of 2009, there were 50,764,352 people of German descent in the U.S. People of German ancestry form an important minority group in several countries, including Canada (roughly 10% of the population), Argentina (roughly 8% of the population), Brazil (roughly 3% of the population), Australia (roughly 4.5% of the population), Chile (roughly 3% of the population), Namibia, and in central and eastern Europe—(Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Russia).


title: German diaspora

text: Distribution of German citizens and people claiming German ancestry (figures are only estimates and actual population could be higher, because of wrongly formulated questions in censuses in various countries (for example in Poland) and other different factors, f.e. related to participant in a census):


title: German diaspora

text: Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein each have a German-speaking majority, though the vast majority of the population do not identify themselves as German anymore. Austrians historically were identified as and considered themselves Germans until after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II. Post-1945 a broader Austrian national identity began to emerge, and over 90% of the Austrians now see themselves as an independent nation.


title: German diaspora

text: Aside from the Germans who migrated to other parts of Europe, the German diaspora also covered the Eastern and Central European states such as Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, along with several post-Soviet states. There has been a continued historical presence of Germans in these regions due to the interrelated processes of conquest and colonization as well as migration and border changes. During the periods of colonization, for instance, there was an influx of Germans who came to Bohemia and parts of Romania as colonizers. Settlements due to border changes were largely 20th century developments caused by the new political order after the two world wars.


title: German diaspora

text: In Belgium, there is an ethnic German minority. It is the majority in its region of 71,000 inhabitants. Ethnologue puts the national total of German speakers at 150,000, not including Limburgish and Luxembourgish.


title: German diaspora

text: Before World War II, some 30% of the population in Czechia (historically known as Bohemia) were ethnic Germans, and in the border regions and certain other areas they were in the majority. There are about 40,000 Germans in the Czech Republic (number of Czechs who have at least partly German ancestry probably runs into the hundreds of thousands). Their number has been consistently decreasing since World War II. According to the 2001 census, there remain 13 municipalities and settlements in Czech Republic with more than 10% Germans.


title: German diaspora

text: The situation in Slovakia was different from that in Czech Republic, in that the number of Germans was considerably lower and that the Germans from Slovakia were almost completely evacuated to German states as the Soviet army was moving west through Slovakia, and only a fraction of those who returned to Slovakia after the end of the war were deported with the Germans from the Czech lands.


title: German diaspora

text: Many representatives of expellee organizations support the erection of bilingual signs in all formerly German-speaking territory as a visible sign of the bilingual linguistic and cultural heritage of the region. The erection of bilingual signs is permitted if a minority constitutes 10% of the population.


title: German diaspora

text: In Denmark, the part of Schleswig that is now South Jutland County (or Northern Schleswig) is inhabited by about 12,000–20,000 ethnic Germans They speak mainly Standard German and South Jutlandic. A few speak Schleswigsch, a Northern Low Saxon dialect.


title: German diaspora

text: Prior to World War II, approximately 1.5 million Danube Swabians lived in Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. Today the German minority in Hungary have minority rights, organisations, schools and local councils, but spontaneous assimilation is well under way. Many of the deportees visited their old homes after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. Around 178,000 Germans live in Hungary.


title: German diaspora

text: There are smaller, unique populations of Germans who arrived so long ago that their dialect retains many archaic features heard nowhere else: the Cimbrians are concentrated in various communities in the Carnic Alps, north of Verona, and especially in the Sugana Valley on the high plateau northwest of Vicenza in the Veneto region; the Walsers, who originated in the Swiss Wallis, live in the provinces of Aostatal, Vercelli, and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola; the Mòchenos live in the Fersina Valley. Smaller German-speaking communities also exist in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region: the Carinthians in the Canale Valley (municipalities of Tarvisio, Malborghetto Valbruna and Pontebba) and the Zahren and Timau Germans in Carnia.


title: German diaspora

text: Contrarily to the before-mentioned minorities, the German-speaking population of the province of South Tyrol cannot be categorized as "ethnic German" according to the definition of this article, but as Austrian minority. However, as Austrian saw themselves as ethnic Germans until the end of World War II they can technically also be called Germans. The province was part of the Austrian County of Tyrol before the 1919 dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. South Tyrolians were part of the over 3 million German speaking Austrians who in 1918 found themselves living outside of the newborn Austrian Republic as minorities in the newly formed or enlarged respective states of Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Italy. Their dialect is Austro-Bavarian German. Both standard German and dialect are used in schooling and media. German enjoys co-official status with the national language of Italian throughout this region.


title: German diaspora

text: Germans have been present in the Iglesiente mining region in the south west of Sardinia since the 13th century. Successively since 1850 groups of specialised workers from Styria, Austria, followed by German miners from Freiburg settled in the same area. Some Germans influenced building and toponym is still visible in this area.


title: German diaspora

text: In Norway, there are 27,770 Germans making Germans the ninth largest ethnic minority in the country, making up 0.52% of Norway's total population, and 2.94% of all foreign residents in Norway. Immigration from Germany to Norway has been going on since the Middle Ages. There was many Germans that migrated to Bergen during the Middle Ages and during Norway's union with Denmark. During the Union with Denmark, a lot of German miners migrated to the town of Kongsberg. As of 2020 there is 1,446 Germans in the city of Bergen making up 0.51% of the total population, and in the town of Kongsberg there are 114 Germans making up 0.41% of the total population. The city with the biggest population of Germans is Oslo. 3,743 Germans lives in the city making up 0.55% of the total population.


title: German diaspora

text: Germany is also the country that sends the most foreign exchange students to Norway, in 2016, 1,570 exchange students came to Norway from Germany.


title: German diaspora

text: The remaining German minority in Poland (109,000 people were registered in the 2011 census) enjoys minority rights according to Polish minority law. There are German speakers throughout Poland, and most of the Germans live in the Opole Voivodship in Silesia. Bilingual signs are posted in some towns of the region. In addition, there are bilingual schools and German can be used instead of Polish in dealings with officials in several towns.


title: German diaspora

text: Since the High Middle Ages, the territory of present-day Romania has been continuously inhabited by German-speaking groups, firstly by Transylvanian Saxons then, gradually, by other immigrant groups of ethnic German origin. They are all politically represented by the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania.


title: German diaspora

text: During the 11th century, Sweden was visited by missionaries from Germany. During the Middle Ages, Hanseatic merchants had a great influence on Swedish trade and also the Swedish language. According to a survey, the proportion of German loanwords in Swedish is 24–30 percent (slightly depending on how you calculate). During the period of great power, a number of German congregations were formed in Sweden. Including Karlskrona German parish, which then became part of Karlskrona Admiralty parish. Today, there are two more active German congregations in Sweden. They are part of the parishes of the Church of Sweden, the German Christinae parish and the German St. Gertrude's parish consists of German citizens or Swedes of German origin. In connection with the two world wars, several German children of war came to Sweden. Between the late 1940s and early 1990s, many East German refugees also came to Sweden. On 31 December 2014, there were 49,359 people in Sweden who were born in Germany, of whom 23,195 were men (47.0%) and 26,164 women (53.0%). The corresponding figure for 31 December 2000 was 38,155, of which 16,965 men (44.5%) and 21,190 women (55.5%).There were 28,172 people in Sweden with German citizenship. In 2019, according to Statistics Sweden, German immigrants together with the Chinese were the most highly educated who migrate to Sweden, with a proportion of 70 per cent who are highly educated, which is well above the average for Sweden's population which is 30 per cent. Around 29,505 German Citizens living in Sweden in 2020.


title: German diaspora

text: In France over 100,000 German nationals residing in the French country (the exact number is not known, some statistics indicate more than 300,000 Germans in France but are not officially sanctioned.) There, the Germans live mainly in the northeastern area of France, i.e., in regions close to the Franco-German border (i.e. Alsace), and the island of Corsica.


title: German diaspora

text: In the United Kingdom, a German-Briton ethnic group of around 300,000 exists. Some are descended from nineteenth-century immigrants. Others are 20th-century immigrants and their descendants, and World War II prisoners of war held in Great Britain who decided to stay there. Others arrived as spouses of English soldiers from post-war marriages in Germany, when the British were occupying forces. Many of the more recent immigrants have settled in the London and southeast part of England, in particular, Richmond (South West London).


title: German diaspora

text: Due to Brexit, the number of Germans in the UK has declined significantly, in 2021 there were only 135,000 Germans in the UK.


title: German diaspora

text: During the long decline of the Roman Empire and the ensuing great migrations Germanic tribes such as the Vandals (who sacked Rome) migrated into North Africa and settled mainly in the lands corresponding to modern Tunisia and northeastern Algeria. While it is likely that some of the people living there at present are descended from these Germanic peoples, they did not leave visible cultural traces.


title: German diaspora

text: The first German trading post in the Duala area on the Kamerun River delta was established in 1868 by the Hamburg trading company . The firm's agent in Gabon, Johannes Thormählen, expanded activities to the Kamerun River delta. In 1874, together with the Woermann agent in Liberia, Wilhelm Jantzen, the two merchants founded their own company, Jantzen & Thormählen there. At the outbreak of World War I, French, Belgian and British troops invaded the German colony in 1914 and fully occupied it during the Kamerun campaign. The last German fort to surrender was the one at Mora in the north of the colony in 1916. Following Germany's defeat, the Treaty of Versailles divided the territory into two League of Nations mandates (Class B) under the administration of Great Britain and France. French Cameroun and part of British Cameroons reunified in 1961 as Cameroon, though some Germans still remain in Cameroon.


title: German diaspora

text: Germany was not as involved in colonizing Africa as other major European powers of the 20th century, and lost its overseas colonies, including German East Africa and German South West Africa, after World War I. Similarly to those in Latin America, the Germans in Africa tended to isolate themselves and were more self-sufficient than other Europeans. In Namibia there are 30,000 ethnic Germans, though it is estimated that only a third of those retain the language. Most German-speakers live in the capital, Windhoek, and in smaller towns such as Swakopmund and Lüderitz, where German architecture is highly visible.


title: German diaspora

text: In South Africa, a number of Afrikaners and Boers are of partial German ancestry, being the descendants of German immigrants who intermarried with Dutch settlers and adopted Afrikaans as their mother tongue. Professor JA Heese in his book "Die Herkoms van die Afrikaner" ("The Origins of Afrikaners") claims the modern Afrikaners (who total around 3.5 million) have 34.4% German ancestry.


title: German diaspora

text: Germans also emigrated to South Africa during the 1850s and 1860s, and settled in the Eastern Cape area around Stutterheim, and in Kwazulu-Natal in the Wartburg area, where there is still a large German-speaking community. Mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries, an estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa. Germans settled quite extensively in South Africa, with many Calvinists immigrating from Northern Europe. Later on, more Germans settled in the KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere. Here, one of the largest communities are the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German, who are concentrated in and around Wartburg. German is slowly disappearing elsewhere, but a number of communities still have a large number of speakers and some even have German language schools. In South Africa Live in 2020 around 17,000 German Nationals.


title: German diaspora

text: When mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi were under German control they were named German East Africa and received some migration from German communities. After Tanganyika and Ruanda-Urundi became British and Belgian mandates following Germany's defeat in World War I, some of these communities remained.


title: German diaspora

text: Furthermore, a wave of Ashkenazi immigrants came after the rise of Nazism in 1933, followed by as many as 19,000 German Jews. From 1939 until the end of World War II, immigration was put to a halt by anti-immigrant feelings in the country and restrictions on immigration from Germany.


title: German diaspora

text: In the 1980s, thousands of German Colombians emigrated back to West Germany due to the Colombian armed conflict. However, this trend began to decline in the late 2000s (decade) as living standards rose sharply after the Colombian economic boom.


title: German diaspora

text: In Japan, during the Meiji period (1868–1912), many Germans came to work in Japan as advisors to the new government. Despite Japan's isolationism and geographic distance, there have been a few , since Germany's and Japan's fairly parallel modernization made Germans ideal "O-yatoi gaikokujin". (See also Germany–Japan relations)


title: German diaspora

text: In China, the German trading colony of Jiaozhou Bay in what is now Qingdao existed until 1914, and did not leave much more than breweries, including Tsingtao Brewery.


title: German diaspora

text: In Indonesia, some of them became well-known figures in history, such as C.G.C. Reinwardt (founder and first director of Bogor Botanical Garden), Walter Spies (German of Russian origin, who became the artist that made Bali known to the world), and Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (owner of a big plantation in the south of Bandung and dubbed "the Humboldt of the East" because of his ethno-geographical notes).


title: German diaspora

text: Members of the German religious group known as Templers settled in Palestine in the late 19th century and lived there for several generations, but were expelled by the British from Mandatory Palestine during World War II, due to pro-Nazi sympathies expressed by many of them.


title: German diaspora

text: Communist East Germany had relations with Vietnam and Uganda in Africa, but in these cases population movement went mostly to, not from, Germany. After the German reunification, a large percentage of "guest workers" from Communist nations sent to East Germany returned to their home countries.


title: German diaspora

text: There have been ethnic Germans in Australia since the founding of the New South Wales colony in 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip (the first Governor of New South Wales) had a German father. But, the first significant wave of German immigration was in 1838. These Germans, mostly Prussian immigrants (but also winegrowers from the Hesse-Nassau state and the Rheingau). From there after, thousands of Germans emigrated to Australia until World War I. Also, German Australian was the most identified ethnicity behind English and Irish in Australia until World War I.


title: German diaspora

text: From Celtic times the early Germanic tribes settled from the Baltic all the way to the Black Sea until the great migrations of the 4-6th century AD.


title: German diaspora

text: Medieval Germans migrated eastwards during the medieval period Ostsiedlung until the flight, evacuation and expulsion of Germans after World War II; many areas in Central and Eastern Europe had an ethnic German population. In the Middle Age, Germans were invited to migrate to Poland and the central and eastern regions of the German Holy Roman Empire and also the Kingdom of Hungary following the Mongol invasions of the 12th century, and then once again during the late 17th century after the Austrian-Ottoman wars to set up farms and repopulate the eastern regions of the Austrian Empire and Balkans.


title: German diaspora

text: The Nazi government termed such ethnic Germans "Volksdeutsche", regardless of how long they had been residents of other countries. (Now they would be considered "Auslandsdeutsche"). During World War II, Nazi Germany classified ethnic Germans as Übermenschen, while Jews, Gypsies, Slavic peoples, mainly ethnic Poles and Serbs, along with Black and mixed-race people were called Untermenschen. After the war, central European nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, as well as the Soviet Union in eastern Europe, and Yugoslavia in the Balkan region of southern Europe, expelled most of the ethnic Germans living in their territories.


title: German diaspora

text: There were significant ethnic German populations in such areas as Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine at one time. As recently as 1990, there were one million standard German speakers and 100,000 Plautdietsch speakers in Kazakhstan alone, and 38,000, 40,000 and 101,057 standard German speakers in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively.


title: German diaspora

text: There were reportedly 500,000 ethnic Germans in Poland in 1998. Recent official figures show 147,000 (as of 2002). Of the 745,421 Germans in Romania in 1930, only about 60,000 remain. In Hungary the situation is quite similar, with only about 220,000. There are up to one million Germans in the former Soviet Union, mostly in a band from southwestern Russia and the Volga valley, through Omsk and Altai Krai (597,212 Germans in Russia, 2002 Russian census) to Kazakhstan (353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan, 1999 Kazakhstan census). Germany admitted approximately 1.63 million ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 1999.


title: German diaspora

text: These "Auslandsdeutsche", as they are now generally known, have been streaming out of the former Eastern Bloc since the early 1990s. For example, many ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union have taken advantage of the German "Law of Return", a policy which grants citizenship to all those who can prove to be a refugee or expellee of German ethnic origin or the spouse or descendant of such a person. This exodus has occurred despite the fact that many of the ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union were highly assimilated and spoke little or no German.


title: German diaspora

text: According to the 1921 census, the German community was the largest minority group in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (505,790 inhabitants or 4.22%).


title: German diaspora

text: Note that many of these groups have since migrated elsewhere. This list simply gives the region with which they are associated, and does not include people from countries with German as an official national language, which are:


title: German diaspora

text: In general, it also omits some collective terms in common use defined by political border changes where this is antithetical to the current structure. Such terms include:


title: German diaspora

text: A visible sign of the geographical extension of the German language is the German-language media outside the German-speaking countries.


title: German diaspora

text: German is the second most commonly used scientific language as well as the third most widely used language on websites after English and Russian.


title: German diaspora

text: Deutsche Welle (German pronunciation: [ˈdɔʏtʃə ˈvɛlə]; ""German Wave"" in German), or DW, is Germany's public international broadcaster. The service is available in 30 languages. DW's satellite television service consists of channels in German, English, Spanish, and Arabic.


title: German diaspora

text: German-speaking people living abroad (and people wanting to learn German) can visit the websites of German-language newspapers and TV- and radio stations. The free software MediathekView allows the downloading of videos from the websites of some public German, Austrian, and Swiss TV stations and of the public Franco-German TV network ARTE. With the webpage ""onlinetvrecorder.com,"" it is possible to record programs of many German and some international TV stations.


title: German diaspora

text: Note that some material is region-restricted due to legal reasons and cannot be accessed from everywhere in the world. Some websites have a paywall or limit the access for free/unregistered users.


title: German diaspora

text: German nationality law allows dual citizenship with other EU countries and Switzerland; with other countries, it is possible in some cases:


title: German diaspora

text: A law adopted in June 2019 allows the revocation of the German citizenship of dual citizens who have joined or supported a terror militia such as the Islamic State and are at least 18 years old.


title: German diaspora

text: Naturalized Germans can lose their German citizenship if it is found out that they got it by willful deceit / bribery / menacing / giving intentionally false or incomplete information that had been important for the naturalization process. In June 2019, it was decided to prolong the deadline from 5 to 10 years after naturalization.


title: German diaspora

text: As of April 2021, German citizens can visit 191 countries without a visa or with visa on arrival. The Henley Passport Index ranks the German passport third in the world in terms of travel freedom.


title: German diaspora

text: As EU citizens, Germans can live and work indefinitely in other EU countries and the EFTA countries; however, the right to vote and work in certain sensitive fields (such as government, police, military) might in some cases be restricted to the local citizens only. The EU/EFTA countries can exclude immigrants from getting welfare for a certain time period to avoid "welfare tourism," and they can refuse welfare completely if the immigrants do not have a job after a certain period of time and do not try to get one. Immigrants convicted of welfare fraud can be deported and be refused the re-entry of the country.


title: German diaspora

text: When in a non-EU country where there is no German embassy, Germans as EU citizens have the right to get consular protection from the embassy of any other EU country present in that country. See List of diplomatic missions of Germany and List of diplomatic missions in Germany.


title: German diaspora

text: German citizens can be extradited only to other EU countries or to international courts of justice, and only if a law allows this (German Basic Law, Art. 16). Before the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant, the extradition of German citizens was generally prohibited by the German Basic Law.


title: German diaspora

text: Germany regularly publishes travel warnings on the website of the Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) to its citizens. The Office allows German citizens to register online in a special list, the Krisenvorsorgeliste ("Crisis-Prevention List") before they travel abroad ("Elektronische Erfassung von Deutschen im Ausland [ELEFAND]" Electronic Registration of Germans Being Abroad). With a password, the registered persons can change or update their data. The registration is voluntary and free of charge. It can be used for longer stays (longer than 6 months), but also for a vacation of only two weeks. The earliest date of registration is 10 days before the planned trip.


title: German diaspora

text: Most numbers are from the www.ethnologue.com, apart from a few from German language and Germans, as well as the following:


title: Mageina Tovah

text: Mageina Tovah (born July 26, 1979) is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Glynis Figliola in the television series "Joan of Arcadia" (2003–2005), as Ursula Ditkovich in Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" trilogy and Zelda Schiff, the head librarian in "The Magicians.


title: Mageina Tovah

text: Tovah was born Mageina Tovah Begtrup in Honolulu, Hawaii, where her father was a US Army psychiatrist in the Green Berets, and her mother was an Army physical therapist. Her family later settled for a time in Clarksville, Tennessee, before moving to Nashville. Mageina attended Martin Luther King Junior Magnet High School in Nashville. She skipped a year of high school, taking both her Junior year of honors English and her Senior year of AP English at the same time. She graduated from high school at the age of 16. For college, Mageina started at The California Institute of the Arts, and graduated "magna cum laude" from USC in three and a half years. She later moved to New York City and Los Angeles. She is Jewish. Her brother, Gavi Begtrup is a candidate in the Cincinnati, Ohio mayoral primary election.


title: Mageina Tovah

text: Tovah had a recurring role on "Joan of Arcadia" (2003–2005). Her television work also includes guest roles on a number of TV shows. These include "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "NYPD Blue", "Six Feet Under", "The Shield", "Cold Case", "Shameless", "Crossing Jordan", "American Horror Story", "Private Practice", and "The Magicians". Tovah's feature film work includes roles in "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie", "Dark Heart"," Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas", and a recurring role as Ursula Ditkovich in the films "Spider-Man 2" and "Spider-Man 3".


title: Mageina Tovah

text: Tovah also made an appearance in the Jonas Åkerlund-directed music video for Christina Aguilera's hit song "Beautiful".


title: Peter Handke

text: Peter Handke (; born 6 December 1942) is an Austrian novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience." Handke is considered to be one of the most influential and original German-language writers in the second half of the 20th century.


title: Peter Handke

text: In the late 1960s, he earned his reputation as a member of the avant-garde with such plays as "Offending the Audience" (1966) in which actors analyze the nature of theatre and alternately insult the audience and praise its "performance", and "Kaspar" (1967). His novels, mostly ultraobjective, deadpan accounts of characters in extreme states of mind, include "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" (1970) and "The Left-Handed Woman" (1976). Prompted by his mother's suicide in 1971, he reflected her life in the novella "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams" (1972). A dominant theme of his works is the deadening effects and underlying irrationality of ordinary language, everyday reality, and rational order. Handke was a member of the "Grazer Gruppe" (an association of authors) and the Grazer Autorenversammlung, and co-founded the Verlag der Autoren publishing house in Frankfurt. He collaborated with director Wim Wenders, leading to screenplays such as "The Wrong Move" and "Wings of Desire".


title: Peter Handke

text: In 1973, he won the Georg Büchner Prize, the most important literary prize for German-language literature, but in 1999, as a sign of protest against the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Handke returned the prize money to the German Academy for Language and Literature.


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke was born in Griffen, then in the German Reich's province Gau Carinthia. His father, Erich Schönemann, was a bank clerk and German soldier whom Handke did not meet until adulthood. His mother Maria, a Carinthian Slovene, married Bruno Handke, a tram conductor and Wehrmacht soldier from Berlin, before Peter was born. The family lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948, where Maria Handke had two more children: Peter's half-sister and half-brother. Then the family moved to his mother's home town of Griffen. Peter experienced his stepfather as more and more violent due to alcoholism.


title: Peter Handke

text: In 1954, Handke was sent to the Catholic "Marianum" boys' boarding school at Tanzenberg Castle in Sankt Veit an der Glan. There, he published his first writing in the school newspaper, "Fackel". In 1959, he moved to Klagenfurt, where he went to high school, and commenced law studies at the University of Graz in 1961.


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke's mother took her own life in 1971, reflected in his novel "Wunschloses Unglück" ("A Sorrow Beyond Dreams").


title: Peter Handke

text: After leaving Graz, Handke lived in Düsseldorf, Berlin, Kronberg, Paris, the U.S. (1978 to 1979) and Salzburg (1979 to 1988). Since 1990, he has resided in Chaville near Paris. He is the subject of the documentary film "" (2016), directed by . Since 2012, Handke has been a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is a member of the Serbian Orthodox church.


title: Peter Handke

text: As of early November 2019, there was an official investigation by the relevant authorities into whether Handke may have automatically lost his Austrian citizenship upon obtaining a Yugoslav passport and nationality in the late 1990s.


title: Peter Handke

text: While studying, Handke established himself as a writer, linking up with the "Grazer Gruppe" (the Graz Authors' Assembly), an association of young writers. The group published a magazine on literature, "", which published Handke's early works. Group members included Wolfgang Bauer and Barbara Frischmuth.


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke abandoned his studies in 1965, after the German publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag accepted his novel " (The Hornets)" for publication. He gained international attention after an appearance at a meeting of avant-garde artists belonging to the Gruppe 47 in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1966. The same year, his play "Publikumsbeschimpfung" ("Offending the Audience") premiered at the in Frankfurt, directed by . Handke became one of the co-founders of the publishing house in 1969 with a new commercial concept, as it belonged to the authors. He co-founded the Grazer Autorenversammlung in 1973 and was a member until 1977.


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke's first play, "Publikumsbeschimpfung" ("Offending the Audience"), which premiered in Frankfurt in 1966 and made him well known, was the first of several experimental plays without a conventional plot. In his second play, "Kaspar", he treated the story of Kaspar Hauser as "an allegory of conformist social pressures".


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke collaborated with director Wim Wenders on a film version of "Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter", wrote the script for "Falsche Bewegung" ("The Wrong Move") and co-wrote the screenplay for "Der Himmel über Berlin" ("Wings of Desire") including the poem at its opening and "Les Beaux Jours d'Aranjuez" ("The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez"). He also directed films, including adaptations from his novels "The Left-Handed Woman" after "Die linkshändige Frau", and "The Absence" after "Die Abwesenheit".


title: Peter Handke

text: "The Left-Handed Woman", was released in 1978 and was nominated for the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978 and won the Gold Award for German Arthouse Cinema in 1980. "Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide's" description of the film is that a woman demands that her husband leave and he complies. "Time passes... and the audience falls asleep." Handke also won the 1975 German Film Award in Gold for his screenplay for "Falsche Bewegung" ("The Wrong Move"). Since 1975, Handke has been a jury member of the European literary award Petrarca-Preis.


title: Peter Handke

text: In 2019, Handke was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience."


title: Peter Handke

text: In 1977, reviewing "A Moment of True Feeling", Stanley Kauffmann wrote that Handke "is the most important new writer on the international scene since Samuel Beckett." John Updike reviewed the same novel in The New Yorker and was equally impressed, noting that "there is no denying his [Handke's] willful intensity and knifelike clarity of evocation. He writes from an area beyond psychology, where feelings acquire the adamancy of randomly encountered, geologically analyzed pebbles." The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" described him as "the darling of the West German critics." Hugo Hamilton stated that, since his debut, Handke "has tested, inspired and shocked audiences." Joshua Cohen noted that Handke "commands one of the great German-language prose styles of the post-war period, a riverine rhetoric deep and swift and contrary of current," while Gabriel Josipovici described him, "despite reservations about some of his recent work," as one of the most significant German-language writers of the post-war era. W. G. Sebald was inspired by Handke's intricate prose. In an essay on "Repetition", he wrote about "a great and, as I have since learned, lasting impression" the book made on him. "I don’t know," he lauded, "if the forced relation between hard drudgery and airy magic, particularly significant for the literary art, has ever been more beautifully documented than in the pages of "Repetition."" Karl Ove Knausgård described "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams" as one of the "most important books written in German in our time." The book and its author were also praised in Knausgård's "My Struggle".


title: Peter Handke

text: In 1996, Handke's travelogue "Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien" (published in English as "A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia") created controversy, as Handke portrayed Serbia as being among the victims of the Yugoslav Wars. In the same essay, Handke also criticised Western media for misrepresenting the causes and consequences of the war.


title: Peter Handke

text: Sebastian Hammelehle wrote that Handke's view of the Yugoslav Wars, which has provoked numerous controversies, was probably romanticized, but that it represented the view of a writer, not a war reporter. The American translator Scott Abbott, who traveled with Handke through Yugoslavia after which numerous essays were published, stated that Handke considered Yugoslavia as the "incredible, rich multicultural state that lacked the kind of nationalisms that he saw in Germany and Austria". Abbott added that Handke viewed the disintegration of country as the disappearance of utopia. Reviewing "The Moravian Night", Joshua Cohen stated that Handke's Yugoslavia was not a country, but a symbol of himself, a symbol of literature or the "European Novel". Volker Hage wrote that "The Moravian Night" is "extremely cosmopolitan" and connected to the present, while also that the book represents the autobiographical summary of Handke's life as a writer. Tanjil Rashid noted that "Handke’s novels, plays and memoirs demonstrate the evil of banality".


title: Peter Handke

text: After his play "Voyage by Dugout" was staged in 1999, Handke was condemned by other writers: Susan Sontag proclaimed Handke to be "finished" in New York. Salman Rushdie declared him as a candidate for "International Moron of the Year" due to his "idiocies", while Alain Finkielkraut said that he was an "ideological monster", and Slavoj Žižek stated that his "glorification of the Serbs is cynicism". When Handke was awarded the International Ibsen Award in 2014, it caused some calls for the jury to resign.


title: Peter Handke

text: However, disputing such interpretations of his work as listed above as misinterpreted by the English press, Handke has described the Srebrenica massacre as an "infernal vengeance, eternal shame for the Bosnian Serbs responsible." This concern about the imprecision and political nature of language, carries through Handke's view. In a 2006 interview, Handke commented on concerns about the stereotyped language of the media that "knew everything", endlessly recycling words like "the butcher of Belgrade".


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke’s literary fame was overshadowed in 2006 by his politics. The writer’s public support of Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Yugoslavia who died that year while on trial for genocide and war crimes, caused controversy after Handke spoke at his funeral. Because of this the administrator of the theater Comédie-Française, Marcel Bozonnet, removed Handke's play "Voyage au pays sonore ou L'art de la question" from the forthcoming 2007 schedule. This event once again drew both supportive and critical voices. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the French minister of culture, implicitly criticized Bozonnet's action in a letter addressed to him, and by deciding to invite Handke to the ministry. A petition against the censorship of his work was signed by Emir Kusturica, Patrick Modiano (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014), Paul Nizon, Bulle Ogier, Luc Bondy and Handke’s compatriot Elfriede Jelinek (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004).


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke was subsequently selected to receive that year’s Heinrich Heine Prize, though he refused it before it was to be revoked from him.


title: Peter Handke

text: In 2013, Tomislav Nikolić, as the then President of Serbia, expressed gratitude saying that some people still remember those who suffered for Christianity, implying that Handke was a victim of scorn for his views, to which Handke replied with explanation, "I was not anyone's victim, the Serbian people is victim." This was said during the ceremony at which Handke received the "Gold Medal of Merit of the Republic of Serbia".


title: Peter Handke

text: In February 2020, Sima Avramović, the president of the commission for decorations of the Republic of Serbia, explained that Handke, for "special merits in representing Serbia and its citizens" as he "wholeheartedly defended the Serbian truth", is being decorated with the "Order of the Star of Karadjordje". The current President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, presented recipients on the occasion of the Serbian Statehood Day.


title: Peter Handke

text: Handke has written novels, plays, screenplays, essays and poems, often published by Suhrkamp. Many works were translated to English. His works are held by the German National Library, including:


title: Singam II

text: Singam II is a 2013 Indian Tamil-language action film written and directed by Hari. A sequel to the 2010 film "Singam" and the second installment in the "Singam" film series, the film stars Suriya, Hansika Motwani, Anushka Shetty, Danny Sapani. This film is the second installment in the "Singam" film series. Produced by S. Lakshman Kumar, its music and score was composed by Devi Sri Prasad. The film was released on 5 July 2013.


title: Singam II

text: After having killed extortionist Mayil Vaaganam, police officer Durai Singam covertly meets Home Minister Ramanathan on the highways, while returning to Thoothukudi. 2 days before, Durai Singam publicly resigns from police and returns to his hometown. Eight months later, he starts working as an NCC master in a Thoothukudi school, and studies the illegal activities happening, for undercover purpose. The only people who know about this operation are the Chief Minister Kumaravel and Ramanathan. Sathya is a +2 student who has heavy infatuation on Singam, though he is waiting to marry his love interest Kavya.


title: Singam II

text: Singam's father Soundara Pandi is enraged about him leaving the police force. He also forbids the marriage between Singam and Kavya, as he fears that Kavya's billionaire father Mahalingam might take Singam away to manage his business empire and that Singam will lose respect with his relatives. Susai, a local who works as peon at Singam's school, shows Singam parts of Thoothukudi and tells him about the rogue happenings in those places. Singam requests Ramanathan to transfer his colleagues Erimalai and Damodarai to assist him. Singam later learns that Sathya is the niece of an influential don named Thangaraj, who is involved in Financial and Seaway Scams. Thangaraj is partners with Bhai, a criminal who controls the southeast coastline of Tamil Nadu.


title: Singam II

text: Bhai and Thangaraj have connections with the international gangster and drug lord Michael Kong, aka Danny, and they are trafficking cocaine. Singam does not know about their connection and keeps Bhai in his off-duty surveillance. One day, due to a verbal fight in a pub, Bhai's chief drug importer Saghayam kidnaps a girl from another caste after her brother (another don) insults him, and holds her ransom until sunset. This causes riots between both gangs in the city, and Singam's school principal has to close the school for the day. With his info connections, Singam learns of the problem, takes charge as new DSP, rescues the girl, and returns her to her family. He is praised by the public and is also forgiven by his father.


title: Singam II

text: Meanwhile, Sathya learns that Kavya and Singam are strongly in love and distances herself from them. Singam then finds out about Thangaraj and Bhai's partnership. He decides to arrest Saghayam first at the harbour, who has brought Danny with him to attend Thangaraj's new hotel party. Sagayam is arrested, along with Danny for insulting the police. Thangaraj tries to make Singam release the duo, but to no avail. Bhai sends an army of goons to bust Danny and Saghayam out of prison. Singam then finds that Danny has escaped, the police station is in ruins, and his fellow officers are injured. All of Singam's efforts are spoiled, and the next morning, he is suspended for unruly behavior. Singam warns Bhai that he knows about Danny and will return soon.


title: Singam II

text: Singam meets Ramanathan at Chennai, and proposes plans for an operation to arrest all of Danny's associates in India. He then gets re-appointed and gets his superior suspended. He gets authorization to kill drug dealers on sight even without evidence. Since the next load of drugs is ready to be delivered by Danny, Bhai decides that Saghayam will deliver the drugs to him in Kerala, and he will bring it back, but he is arrested by Singam. Later, at Singam's engagement function, Mayil Vaaganam's former ally Harbour Shanmugam informs him that Thangaraj has hired goons to attack his home and family that night. Singam fights the goons himself and kills them all. He then places a drug bag insides Thangaraj's house and jails him.


title: Singam II

text: The next day however, Singam gets a call and immediately goes to Sathya's home only find that Sathya has committed suicide by consuming poison, despite previously being told by Singam about her uncle's criminal activities. He analyzes that Sathya was killed by her father as plotted by Thangaraj, whom Singam confronts in prison and ensures that if he cannot prove it by arresting Danny, he will give Thangaraj a death penalty, or else Singam will kill Thangaraj and go to prison instead. Singam seeks permission from Ramanathan for traveling to South Africa as his marriage will take place in three days. Singam arrives in South Africa and joins Major Kyle Ambrose and the police to confront Danny, who has taken sanctuary with Durban-based don Alex. Singam and the Durban police give chase by car, which kills Alex in the process. Singam defeats Alex's men and confronts Danny and his men on his ship. The two fight furiously and ends with Singam's victory over Danny, arresting him, and dragging him to the same cell from which he escaped. Afterwards, he reunites with Kavya.


title: Singam II

text: Reprising their roles from the original film are Anushka Shetty, Vivek, Vijayakumar, Nassar, and Radha Ravi while Hansika Motwani was signed on as the second female lead. British actor Danny Sapani plays the main antagonist. The actress Anjali is also featured in an item number. Prakash Raj did not return for the sequel, but he can be seen in clips from "Singam" that are intermittently featured during "Singam II". The film was shot mainly in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Tuticorin, Chennai, Tirunelveli and Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu. The director has also filmed some of the key songs, stunts and talkie portions in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa, as well as Malaysia and Kenya. Primary production began in September 2012 and lasted for seven months until filming was wrapped up on 30 April 2013.


title: Singam II

text: Devi Sri Prasad, who had also worked on the score of "Singam", returned for "Singam II". Bollywood singer Baba Sehgal had recorded a song in the film following the success of his "Kadhal Vandhale" number from the original. The soundtrack was released on 2 June 2013, a day after its originally scheduled launch in a grand event attended by several celebrities.


title: Singam II

text: "Times of India" gave the album 3/5 stars and stated that "DSP gets a foot-tapping album in Singam 2, though it sounds uncomfortably very similar to Singam." "BehindWoods" gave the album 2.5 stars out of 5, stating that it is "a straight forward, nothing fancy, DSP album." "IndiaGlitz" also gave it 2.5 stars in a scale of 5, concluding that the album is "strictly for the masses, targeting the masala aspect."


title: Singam II

text: The release date was confirmed to be 5 July 2013. "Singam II" released in about 1500 screens worldwide, one of the largest releases for a Tamil film. The film released in a record 151 screens in Kerala and 63 screens in USA.


title: Singam II

text: "Oneindia" stated, "Singam 2 is a typical Hari style movie, which is routine, loud, long and racy. But he has made it an enjoyable action entertainer." "Indiaglitz" gave 3 of 5 stars and wrote, "Singam 2 is everything you would look for, love, masala, sentiment, raw Action and so on, however adding a slight overdose to every single element mentioned, as a whole it almost topples over.yet watch it for Suriya." "Rediff" also rated it 3 out of 5, stating; "the film has a lot of power-packed action sequences and the story races along with a tremendous pace keeping you engaged throughout. In spite of the number of characters in the film, the screenplay is extremely clear cut, with every role outlined beautifully. The only negative would be the length – the movie runs for almost three hours. A slightly shorter version would have created a greater impact"."Behindwoods" gave a 3.25 out of 5 rating and said; "From the word go, Singam 2 clearly establishes that its fulcrum is only action and the quantity of romance, sentiment and comedy that occupied equal proportion in Singam is less here. Yet, Suriya shoulders the film big time. The sincerity and dedication of this artist is something that needs to be lauded." "Deccan Chronicle" gave it the verdict: "Even if you are not a Suriya fan, "Singam 2" is worth a watch. The film roars rather well." "Zee News" commented, "the movie was directed without a soul. Suriya is the only character that makes you feel satisfied in the entire movie." "Times of India" rated it 3.5 out of 5 and wrote; "If Singam was mass masala, then Singam-2 is doubly so. Hari is clear about what entertainment he wants to dole out to his audiences, and goes about delivering it unapologetically." Baradwaj Rangan of the Hindu wrote "Hari keeps his scenes extremely short, and if this prevents us from forming any sort of lingering attachment with the characters, at least we aren't allowed to dwell on anything long enough to get bored. "News18 rated 2 out of 5 stars stating "'Singam 2' is definitely bigger, but it never gets better in the process of entertaining its viewers."


title: Singam II

text: The Telugu dubbed version simply titled "Singam", also known as "Yamudu II" was also released along with the original version on 5 July 2013. The film's Telugu version was distributed by K. E. Gnanavel Raja's Studio Green. A Hindi dubbed version entitled "Main Hoon Surya: Singham II" was released later on 2 August.


title: Singam II

text: "Singam II" had a sold-out opening with as much as 95–100% occupancy. The film collected on its opening day in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, while the Telugu dubbed version "Yamudu II" collected . The film grossed a record on its first weekend worldwide.


title: Singam II

text: In the UK and USA, it earned and respectively on its opening weekend. The film earned in Chennai by the fourth week. And after seven weeks, the amount totalled at . According to "Sify.com", the film stayed inside the top five positions at Chennai box office continuously for eight weeks after its release and was declared a 'Superhit'. The film completed a 50 days theatrical run on 23 August 2013.


title: Singam II

text: The film's Telugu version "Yamudu II" was an unusual success and earned in ten days from Andhra Pradesh. The film was successful in Karnataka and Kerala as well, collecting about and in its first ten days, respectively.


title: Singam II

text: It performed exceptionally well in the Malaysian market, earning around within four weeks. The film was the third highest Tamil grosser in Malaysia after "Enthiran" and "Sivaji" at that point. The film's total business in UK after a one-month run was pegged at . "Singam II" completed 100 days in several screens across Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh on 12 October 2013. The film was the second highest-grossing Tamil film of the year 2013 after "Vishwaroopam".


title: Singam II

text: The film grossed approximately worldwide from all its versions with a lifetime distributor's share of . However, "Forbes" stated that the film made 1.36 billion in its lifetime.