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People in Hanio, Vietnam gathered to protest the taking of a Catholic church by the communist government after the Vietnam War. The church was turned into a disco house, and it's gardens were made into a parking lot.
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=11179
http://www.asianews.it/files/img/VIETNAM-RELIGION-CATHOLIC-PROTEST.jpg
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Greenpeace, a enviromental group which has historically used an unorthadox approach to civil resistance sent its flag ship to the coast of manilla to protest the highly unregulated and dirty emission policies of coal plants in and around the area. I found it interesting that greenpeace members aboard the ship did not follow their usual course of action when protesting, which is to lung themselves on things, or destroy things.
http://www.climateimc.org/en/climate-actions/2008/05/28/rainbow-warrior-ends-peaceful-protest-pagbilao
Rising costs of postage have put strain on media outlets in Russia showing that government restriction or censorship is not the only threat to freedom of press.
Russia’s major print media have called off a May 21st day of protest, which was prepared in response to skyrocketing postal delivery rates. As the Interfax news agency reports, the newspapers and magazines have cancelled their demonstration after the presidential administration stepped in.
It was earlier reported that a row of Russia’s most prominent publishers were planning to print a blank front-page on May 21st, with only five lines of text. The protest was meant to signify what would happen if the price for delivering newspapers continued to rise, and if consumers could no longer afford subscriptions. “Freedom of the press can be strangled in different ways,� a group of editors said in a statement. “For instance, by a sharp jump in subscription rates.� Participating publications included the Argumenty i Fakty, Izvestia, and Komsomolskaya Pravda newspapers.
By the late afternoon, the event was dropped.
“White lines won’t be issued tomorrow,� Pavel Gusev, the editor-in-chief of the Moskovsky Komsomolets, told Interfax. “The fact of the matter is that the presidential administration and the Ministry of Telecommunications and Print got involved in the affair, and most likely, all of our demands will be satisfied.� Gusev, who heads a federal advisory committee on matters of freedom of speech in the media, said that special negotiations will take place Thursday.
According to the publishers, the Russian Post has broken promises to keep price hikes tied to inflation.
Vladimir Sungorkin, the editor in chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that “prices have recently grown by 100%, 200%, and even 400% in some regions.� He added that corruption and mismanagement at the postal service was partly responsible.
Vladimir Mamontov, the editor-in-chief of Izvestia, said that “the action [was] directed to sparing the print media, for now.�
“Commercially successful newspapers are taking part in the action, but they are also worrying,� Mamontov continued. “And what of those publications, that don’t have the capacity to use the resources of the advertising market to such an extent?!�
Around 10,000 workers at the Dacia works in Pitesti, Romania, have been on strike for two weeks. Employees at the subsidiary of the French automaker Renault are demanding wage increases of 42 percent, additional Christmas benefits and a share in the company profits.
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe
Romanian autoworkers strike against rock-bottom wages
By Markus Salzmann
7 April 2008
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
Around 10,000 workers at the Dacia works in Pitesti, Romania, have been on strike for two weeks. Employees at the subsidiary of the French automaker Renault are demanding wage increases of 42 percent, additional Christmas benefits and a share in the company profits.
The strike has paralysed production at the plant—situated 120 kilometres from Bucharest—since the end of March, leading to substantial production delays and losses for Dacia. The strike is estimated to be costing the company several million euros per day.
Romanian management is currently trying to obtain a court order to ban the job action on the basis that less than half the workforce voted for the strike. According to Romanian law, there has to be a clear majority for industrial action. In fact, only a minority of the total 13,000-strong workforce have failed to support the strike. The court decision has been postponed on two occasions, and the court reconvenes this coming Wednesday.
Company management has tried everything to induce the strikers to resume work. After several unsuccessful rounds of negotiations, management refused to negotiate any further until the strikers were back on the job. In addition, Dacia announced it would be withholding the wages of the strikers. A speaker for the company cynically declared that employees should decide “for themselves and their families� whether they wanted to continue the strike.
For most workers, the loss of a week’s wages and the free meal, which for many is the only decent meal of the day, means they are reduced to mere subsistence. Nevertheless, despite the intense pressure from management, the strikers have so far refused to back down.
Dacia’s last offer amounted to around 12 percent—nothing less than a provocation for the workers. The average wages at the factory are around €280 per month, and 3,000 workers earn the legal minimum wage of €160. The workforce has been increased in recent years following increased levels of production. Most new starters, however, receive a monthly salary of just €209.
Even with a wage increase of 50 percent, a Romanian Dacia worker would still only earn about a sixth of the wage of a French Renault worker. At the same time, the cost of living in Romania is almost at the same level as in western Europe. A third of the legal minimum wage is taken up by heating costs alone, and prices for food and services have exploded since the country joined the European Union last year. Inflation currently stands at 7.3 percent.
The conditions in Pitesti are typical of those at European companies active in eastern Europe, which have been able to rake in exorbitant profits at the expense of their workforces. Dacia has been producing Romanian-type “Volkswagen� cars at the location since 1969 under a French licence. In 1999, Renault took over the factory. Many other large industrial concerns in Romania and eastern Europe have suffered a similar fate. They were sold off at rock-bottom prices to Western companies, which imposed mass redundancies and could then establish highly profitable works based on cheap wages.
In 2007, Dacia notched up profits of €150 million. Turnover increased by 68 percent, while the parent company Renault saw sales drop by 1.8 percent and by 3.4 percent at Renault Samsung. For its part, Dacia is continuing to expand. In 2006, the company produced 121,000 cars, 215,000 units in 2007, and in this year, this total is expected to exceed 300,000.
While the Renault operation in France has been largely modernised with manufacturing based on less personnel-intensive methods, the Romanian company relies on original production methods—i.e., largely without automation and the use of robots, relying instead on manpower. Dacia manager Christian Esteve recently praised the cheap-wage labour in the Balkans state: “Romania is now the most competitive country regarding manufacturing costs, even if we use assembly lines instead of robots.�
In addition to the traditionally high level of demand for Dacia cars in eastern Europe, the company is also increasing sales in western Europe. In Germany alone, Dacia’s sales doubled in January 2008 compared with the previous year. The success of the budget-priced vehicles in Germany and other western European countries is due in particular to the declining income levels of broad social classes.
The burgeoning balance sheets of Dacia no doubt played a role in the decision by the mobile phone producer Nokia to switch production from its German factory in Bochum to Romania. In the meantime, other auto concerns plan to follow Renault’s lead. According to the Financial Times, at the end of January, Daimler is considering establishing a factory in either Poland or Romania, which will produce a “new generation of compact cars.�
Since the beginning of the strike, the media has increasingly expressed the fear that the demand for higher wages at Pitesti could spread to other factories in eastern Europe. Economists have expressed their anxiety that the labour dispute could deter investors.
At the end of March, the Süddeutsche Zeitung published an article headlined “East Europeans up in arms� and commented that “this unlimited strike by thousands of workers amounted to an awakening in the post-communist cheap wage country of Romania...where until now people have worked for multinational enterprises as tailors for €100 or as auto workers for €400 without saying a peep.�
The Romanian finance magazine Ziarul Financiar posed the question: “How will the Dacia strike affect Romania’s attractiveness for automobile investors?� Recently, Ford bought up a factory in Craiova, 200 kilometres to the west, which in the 1990s was owned by the South Korean company Daewoo. Following differences by the Romanian affiliate with its parent concern, Daewoo pulled out and the state bought up the company’s shares. Now, the state has been able to sell off the factory again, with Ford the only bidder. There are already reports of protests in Craiova against management plans to pay production workers wages of only €200.
In Ziarul Financiar, representatives of the Romanian Foreign Investment Association (ARIS) also articulated their fears that strike at Dacia could deter potential foreign investors. Planned foreign investment for Romania this year is expected to total €7 billion.
Such fears are not unfounded. Renault has been producing at other “attractive� locations such as Russia, Morocco, Brazil and India for some time. In February, the head of Renault, Carlo Ghosn, signed a cooperation contract with AvtoVAZ, a Russian car producer.
Renault management has already warned it could easily transfer production away from Romania. According to Dacia’s general manager, Francois Fourmont, speaking to Le Figaro, the wage demands made by the trade unions “can endanger the future of the factory.�
International companies are carefully observing the increasing number of labour disputes in eastern Europe. Already this year, power supply workers, transport workers, teachers and other personnel in the education system have taken strike action in Romania. They are all hit by intolerably low wages and rising prices. At the same time, the last remnants of the social system are being systematically dismantled.
The same process can be observed in other new European Union member states. In recent months, protest actions and strikes against intolerable social conditions have been carried out by doctors and nurses in Poland, teachers in Bulgaria and railway employees in Hungary.
In the course of these struggles, the limited perspective of the trade unions, which are incapable of representing the interests of the workers, has been very apparent. The unions have invariably wound up the strikes on the basis of accepting minimal gains for the workers involved. In Pitesti, the trade unions are also thoroughly reliant on the readiness of Dacia management to negotiate.
So far, the Romanian government has played its cards close to the chest and has refrained from interfering openly in the labour dispute at Pitesti. But this situation will not remain for long should the strike persist. The strikes carried out by Romanian miners at the end of the 1990s should serve as a warning. At that time, the state used extremely harsh measures to break up the protests by miners opposing pit closures and low wages.
Thousands of doctors in the Gaza Strip have gone on strike in protest at what they say was the politically motivated firing of at least 50 doctors and administrators by the Hamas-run health ministry.
Thousands of doctors in the Gaza Strip have gone on strike in protest at what they say was the politically motivated firing of at least 50 doctors and administrators by the Hamas-run health ministry.
Government employees, medical workers and teachers affiliated with Fatah are also participating in the strike, which began on Saturday.
"Today we have begun a total strike in the government-run health sector in the Gaza Strip and there is good participation, with 70 per cent taking part," an official in the health workers' union was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
A pro-Fatah workers union said the strike could continue until Tuesday.
Hamas downplayed the strike, saying the number participating was "very limited" but has threatened strip doctors of their private practices if they did not show up at public hospitals.
Basim Naeem, Hamas's health minister, said: "No one, no institution and no union will be allowed to sabotage the security of Gaza's citizens. We will not let anyone mock the health security of our citizens."
He threatened "the worst form of punishment" for those who do.
'Poisonous calls'
Hamas has also claimed the strikes are politically motivated and blamed the rival Fatah movement, which controls the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Sami Abu Zuhru, a Hamas spokesman, said the strikes "follow calls issued by Fatah-run unions in Ramallah", in the West Bank.
"It is aimed at strengthening the blockade on Hamas, the Palestinian government, and the Palestinian people," he said, referring to the harsh restrictions imposed by Israel after Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip.
The health ministry also criticised the strike, saying that "these poisonous calls [to strike] come when there are more than 1,600 patients in desperate need of treatment and care".
But the Palestinian Authority's health ministry in Ramallah, said it was not involved in the strike but that it "understood the motivations for it, which come from the oppressive actions taken against our workers in the Gaza Strip".
The Palestinian Authority still pays the salaries of all civil servants in Gaza, including most doctors and health workers.
A similar strike in Gaza was held this time last year, when the Hamas-run government fired Jumaa al-Saqaa, a veteran surgeon and Fatah supporter, from his post as the spokesman for Gaza City's main Al-Shifa hospital.
South African troops have been deployed outside schools and hospitals, as a strike enters its second week.
Some 2,500 soldiers in bullet-proof vests, with automatic weapons are trying to help stop clashes between strikers and those trying to work.
Police have again fired rubber bullets at strikers, wounding three people.
The unions say they will call a general strike next week, unless the government agrees a 10% pay rise for all public workers. It has offered 6.5%.
Inflation has risen to 7%, so unions say anything less is an effective pay cut.
Most schools and hospitals have been closed, as some 500,000 public workers have been on strike.
"Cosatu [Congress of South African Trade Unions] will not allow a defeat of the public sector strike. The implications of such a defeat to workers as a whole would be devastating," the union federation said.
It said all workers, such as those in the crucial mining and manufacturing sectors, will go on a "solidarity strike" starting on Monday, building up to a "complete strike" next Wednesday.
Mining, especially gold, is one of South Africa's major export earners.
Violence and intimidation
Army medical staff have already been brought in to provide care in some hospitals to try and cover what analysts say is one of the biggest strikes in the country's history.
Military personnel working in a Durban hospital
The military has been helping out in South African hospitals
The BBC's Mpho Lakaje in Johannesburg says the strike has been marked by violence and intimidation with more than 20 arrests in Durban.
Some school principals have received death threats, while the government is threatening to deploy the army.
The government has increased its offer from 6%, while the unions had originally wanted 12%.
But the government offer looks set to be formally rejected later on Friday, our correspondent says.
Striking nurses had been warned they would be fired unless they return to work by Monday.
South Africa has seen many qualified health professionals leaving the country for greener pastures abroad in recent years.
Cosatu is officially a partner in government but it has criticised the ruling African National Congress (ANC) for not doing enough to raise living standards of the poor.
The ANC is due to choose a new leader later in the year to succeed President Thabo Mbeki.
I was horrified to discover that the United States (Bush) is attempting to set up a nuclear missile defense base in Czechoslovakia to protect us from the clear 'threat' Russia poses. I am however glad to hear that the Czech people are protesting this. One protest that got caught my attention was two people staging a hunger strike until the issue is opened to public discussion.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2008/05/27/in-prague-protest-against-a-us-missile-defense-deal.html
BERLIN—Petitions, mass protests, and widespread public opposition so far have failed to kill plans for a U.S. missile defense shield in eastern Europe. So it is safe to say that Jan Tamas faces some long odds with his hunger strike.
Greenpeace protesters under a target banner at a proposed U.S. radar base in Czech Republic.
(Michal Cizek/AFP/Getty Images)
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On Tuesday in central Prague, Tamas, spokesman for the No Bases Initiative in the Czech Republic, began his third week of a water-and-tea diet alongside activist Jan Bednar. Their aim is to pressure the Czech government to halt negotiations over the controversial radar facility to be built in Brdy, 55 miles southwest of the capital, Prague.
After two years of talks—and three failed attempts to sign a treaty since February—Washington still faces a challenge in pushing through the plan that President Bush says will bolster NATO defenses against potential future attacks from Iran and other rogue states. The plan envisions installing 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic.
The Czech government last week gave its approval to the draft of the bilateral missile defense treaty, and officials said it could be signed in the next month or so. However, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's sagging popularity and his conservative coalition's wafer-thin hold on power make it uncertain whether he can gain the necessary approval from parliament.
That political picture is giving hope to opponents, who are campaigning against what they call the start of a new arms race and a return to Cold War-style politics. "This is not only about the radar base anymore or about international security. It is about democracy. We are afraid for democracy in our country," says Tamas, an IT consultant whose hunger strike since May 13 has been documented on his website and has gained support from antiwar activists and luminaries of the left, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, linguist Noam Chomsky, and playwright/human rights advocate Ariel Dorfman.
Tamas's colleague, Bednar, was briefly hospitalized with liver problems over the weekend but vowed to continue the strike until the Czech government opened up a public dialogue on the issue.
It was the Velvet Revolution in Prague nearly two decades ago that helped topple communism in eastern Europe and symbolized the power of peaceful protest in the modern era. Now, a new type of grass-roots movement is developing that the Czech Republic has never seen before, with local antiwar chapters and civic groups springing up in towns and cities and more than 60 organizations powering the No Bases Initiative. "We have tried almost everything, but our government has failed to listen; it continues to ignore the fact that more than two thirds of Czechs oppose this plan," Tamas adds in a telephone interview. "These methods remind us of times before 1989—times we don't want to be repeated."
Bush and Topolanek have sought to wrap up a deal but missed three target dates—Topolanek's February visit to Bush at his Crawford ranch, the NATO summit in Bucharest in April, and this month's canceled visit to Prague by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Further complicating matters are the steep demands from Poland, reportedly too steep as far as some U.S. officials are concerned. Prime Minister Donald Tusk is seeking several billion dollars from the United States to modernize Poland's own military as part of the deal for accepting the missile interceptors.
The Czechs themselves are skeptical about what benefits they will gain apart from a few jobs building the roads and infrastructure around the radar base. The biggest question for Czechs, however, isn't whether or not security should be increased against threats from abroad, argues Tamas Weiss, a researcher at the Institute of International Relations in Prague. It's the way they choose to go about it. "If you ask people, 'Do you think the threat of ballistic missiles is real?' the majority [of Czechs] say yes. 'Do you think the Czech Republic should be protected?' they say yes. But ask them, Weiss says, 'Do you support an American missile defense base on your soil?' and they say no."
i have chosen this article to create some diversity within the blog, since we are supposed to use a diverse range of topics. This article focuses on women's rights in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. It just shows that being an activist for something you believe needs to change can make a difference.
Economic decline and unmonitored borders following the collapse of the Soviet Union have combined to encourage a rise in human trafficking across the new countries of the CIS. For women, trafficking often means finding themselves in slave-like conditions in the sex industry or other parts of the informal economy.
Since many of both the demand and supply factors of trafficking are the same or similar across the CIS countries, and given the cross-border nature of the phenomenon, the Russian NGO Syostri realized it made sense for activists in different states to share information and experiences. Syostri used a UN Trust Fund grant to create information and training resources for regional use, with a special focus on working with partner NGOs in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
The project created a website that has become a central source for information on trafficking. A database includes the national laws of different countries and international anti-trafficking agreements. The site lists organizations involved in combating the problem, and includes basic facts and figures along with policy recommendations. Registered with the main Russian-language search engines, the site was designed to be useful for activists but also accessible to the general public, especially women at risk.
A second component of the project focused on preparing analytical reports for each country, uncovering the fact that many women are vulnerable to trafficking within the CIS, and not just in the more conventional pattern from the CIS to other areas. This new knowledge was used in the preparation of educational materials, including brochures for adolescents explaining how trafficking can happen and what to do. The project also prepared a training curriculum to better equip NGO hotline consultants responding to questions. Fifteen training sessions were held in four countries and a number of regions of Russia.
In each of the five countries, Syostri conducted a seminar for people working on trafficking, including representatives from NGOs, governments, international organizations and the media. They compared trends and practices in the different countries, and identified national priorities for future work, such as the emerging trend in Russia of trafficking for exploitative labour. Participants from Ukraine, which has taken strong anti-trafficking actions, shared tips on Internet strategies. Information and policy recommendations from the seminars were later sent to both central and local government officials.
Working with activists from different countries has convinced Syostri to continue strengthening these ties. The group intends to continue updating its website and databases, and advocating for a regional CIS alliance against trafficking.
This report examines the specifics of the political and social landscape in Georgia before the Rose Revolution, dynamics of the protests sparked by rigged elections, and the actors who contributed to laying the groundwork for change and supporting the revolution itself. A clear picture of the Rose Revolution helps explain the most intriguing aspect of the events: that neither protesters nor the government used force despite the orders given. As an active member of Kmara, I consider all these questions and issues from a participant's perspective, providing insights not readily available from most outside observers.
July 2006 by: Giorgi Kandelaki
Summary
Efforts to resist calling the 2003 events in Georgia a "revolution" were misplaced. Although the turmoil was marked by a lack of violence, a critical mass of people did come out to move the country away from the rampant corruption of the Shevardnadze regimes of 1972 to 1985 (when he was Communist Party first secretary) and 1992 to 2003 (when he was president).
As president, Shevardnadze supported independent civil society groups and media outlets such as the television station Rustavi-2. His support of these groups ended in 2001, when he tried to shut down Rustavi-2. This action prompted reform-minded members of his government to form opposition parties.
Before the 2003 parliamentary elections, opposition groups hoped only to gain momentum for the 2005 presidential elections. However, blatant electoral fraud, Shevardnadze's refusal to compromise, and the discipline of nonviolent opposition groups precipitated his exit.
The youth group Kmara (Enough) played an important role in combating widespread political apathy among the Georgian public and youth in particular. The successful mobilization of so many young people continues to reverberate as former Kmara members maintain their interest in politics.
Saakashvili's National Movement party believed that its success depended on radicalizing the political sphere and thereby broadening political participation. It was particularly effective at increasing political participation among provincial populations.
Georgia's independent media, particularly Rustavi-2, supported the Rose Revolution by providing a forum for opposition parties and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) critical of the government. The channel also co-funded and broadcast exit polls that contradicted the official election results.
Although a few civil society organizations did play significant roles in the revolution, most were constrained by foreign funding priorities and their own elitism. Similarly, foreign actors played a limited role because they lacked information or were overly cautious about fostering significant political change.
There was no violence because the various security forces chose not to respond to public demonstrations with force. Three main factors drove their decision: 1) The security forces were accustomed to responding to democratic pressures and not defending autocratic rule; 2) a divided ruling party could not speak with one voice; 3) opposition groups, including Kmara, made strong efforts to build sympathy for their cause while downplaying the threat posed by political change.
International actors can best support democratic transitions by targeting assistance to nationwide election watchdogs, such as the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), that can carry out parallel vote tabulations (PVT). Ideally, large numbers of observers from similar organizations outside Georgia should be deployed, since they can be more outspoken about electoral fraud.
This article is based on protests occurring in Poland over a pristine valley that houses many endangered species. There are two sides that are protesting in this article over the valley, one which advocates allowing a major highway and one which wants to protect the wilderness, along with the wildlife it shelters. Both groups have been using nonviolent means to advance their wishes, such as petitions, but things have gotten dicey. The article discusses a recent confrontation which required police intervention between the two groups, one representing economic progress and the other representing conservation, which nearly turned violent.
Eco-protest in eastern Europe: Trouble in paradise valley
It's one of Europe's last great wildernesses. But now economic progress threatens the primeval forest of Poland's Rospuda valley. Local opinion is bitterly divided
By Michael McCarthy
Thursday, 15 March 2007
On one side of the argument there are eagles, wolves and orchids; on the other side there are endless heavy lorries and burgeoning economic growth. Welcome to Europe's new environmental battleground.
The conflict is coming to a head for the first time in a pristine valley in north-east Poland, crammed with spectacular wildlife, which has been earmarked as the route for a badly-needed motorway to the Baltic states. The clash of priorities has bitterly divided public opinion in Poland itself and has now set the country on collision course with the European Union.
Yet the struggle to save the Rospuda valley is only the first of many conflicts likely to arise between economic development in the new EU member nations of central and eastern Europe, and their wildlife heritage.
Species which have long been rare or extinct in western European countries, such as lynx, elk, wolf and beaver, along with scores of uncommon bird species, from eagles to corncrakes, still have substantial populations in the 10 central and eastern European nations which have recently joined the EU.
In Poland and the other member states which joined in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), as well as in Bulgaria and Romania, which joined this year, two remarkable habitats in particular act as giant wildlife reservoirs for Europe as a whole.
One is the vast extent of ancient forests, some of which are still primeval - meaning they have never been cut down and replanted - and the other is the great range of wetlands in river valleys, flood plains and deltas.
The Rospuda valley combines both. The Rospuda river flows through the ancient Augustow Forest near Poland's border with Lithuania, one of the most pristine forest regions in all of Europe; and the river's course is bracketed by a peat bog which is astonishingly rich in mammals, rare birds, plants and insects.
In environmental terms, the valley is a jewel. Yet it sits squarely astride the route for one of Europe's most ambitious road schemes, the so-called Via Baltica expressway from Warsaw to Helsinki, which will pass through the Baltic states. The section of the new road which is intended to be the bypass for the small town of Augustow, where two routes from Warsaw join, is planned to go right through the valley's heart.
Environmentalists contend that the road will irreparably damage the valley, and insist an alternative route, further to the west, must be used; the Polish government, riding a wave of new prosperity with annual economic growth running at 6 per cent, and desperate to upgrade its transport links with its neighbours as quickly as possible, insists that the Rospuda route is the right one, wildlife or no wildlife. The people of Augustow, who are sick of the unending procession of heavy lorries through their town, heartily agree.
The issue has sparked a clash reminiscent of the British road-building protests which began in 1989 with the dispute over the route of the M3 motorway through Twyford Down in Hampshire - although in wildlife terms, the stakes are far, far higher.
A survey carried out by the Polish Bird Protection Society, Otop, has found that within 750 metres each side of the centreline of the proposed expressway as it passes through the valley, no fewer than 20 species of birds are breeding which are specifically protected, as rare or threatened, under European law.
They represent a British birdwatcher's dream, ranging from the white-tailed, short-toed and lesser-spotted eagles, through the black grouse and the capercaillie, to the corncrake, the crane and the great snipe. But there is much more. Among a profusion of rare wildflowers, there are 20 orchid species in the valley, including the last colony in Poland of the musk orchid Herminium monorchis, and mammals which are resident or pass through the forest and the marsh include lynx, wolf, elk, wild boar, otter and beaver.
The Polish centre-left national daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, has taken up the cause of saving Rospuda, and has given away green lapel ribbons for supporters to wear. An electronic petition on its website, to shift the road to an alternative route, has attracted 150,000 signatures, and last month, when it was thought the first tree-cutters were about to move in, a group of green activists from all over Poland set up a camp in the snowy forest and climbed into the trees to stop them.
But not everyone agrees with them. Two weeks ago last Sunday, several hundred people from Augustow, encouraged by local politicians, came out to confront the greens, shouting: "Ecologists, murderers!". They distributed wooden crosses which they said represented the children knocked down and killed by the heavy lorries passing through the town. A heavy police presence was necessary to stop an ugly clash turning violent.
Now the conflict has intensified still further, and moved on to an international level. The European Commission in Brussels is taking up the case, and the Polish government is finding that EU membership carries duties as well as benefits.
Poland's membership of the European Union is giving the country an economic boost - it has already received $14bn in EU funding - but it is its EU membership which means the government may have to think again about Rospuda. For when the country acceded in 2004, it was obliged under EU law to declare some of its best wildlife sites as protected areas in the EU's Europe-wide Natura 2000 network.
Rospuda is one of these, part of the Augustow primeval forest special protection area (SPA), declared under the EU's 1979 wild birds directive. This lays down that if a development is likely to harm a protected site, alternatives have to be explored. Polish environmentalists have complained to Brussels that this has not been properly done with Rospuda, nor has it been done in four more SPAs that the Via Baltica is likely to damage.
The EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, has accepted their argument, and asked the Polish government to refrain from pushing the road through the valley - or face prosecution in the European Court of Justice. Last week, Poland delivered its answer to Brussels, which, although it has not yet been published, is credibly rumoured to have contained a message along the lines of "go and take a running jump".
It is hard not to feel some sympathy for the Poles, who have been pushed around by stronger nations throughout their history; many Polish politicians feel this is happening with the EU now, and resent it strongly. And it is hard not to sympathise with the citizens of Augustow who have to live with an ever-increasing procession of heavy lorries.
But it is harder still not to feel aghast at the scale of the environmental wreckage that putting a modern expressway through the Ropsuda valley will cause. When The Independent visited the valley last week, the forest was resounding to the calls of the black woodpecker, a spectacular red-crested bird the size of a crow, and when we walked out into the peat bog a large wild boar moved off into the forest on the valley's other side. The valley itself was filled with the haunting, trumpeting calls of cranes which had just returned from their wintering grounds in Spain.
Someone who knows it and appreciates its value more than most is Gosia Znaniecka, the Otop caseworker for Rospuda. "I have such a feeling for it," she said. "When I came here, it was amazing to see so many treasures in such a small area. It is unique. If we allow a road to be constructed through here, it will be OK to repeat such things elsewhere. If we fail here, we will fail in many other places."
But it is not just Polish eyes that are turned on the valley. "To put a road through Rospuda would be the wilful destruction of some of Europe's most wonderful wildlife sites, for no good reason," Graham Wynne, the chief executive of Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said. "We sympathise with the need for economic development, but there is a perfectly good alternative route. The Polish government seems so hell-bent on disregarding international law that it makes one wonder about their motivation."
Whatever happens, the government will not have it all its own way. Although the main road protesters' camp has broken up for the moment, a core of activists remains on the site to watch for the approach of bulldozers or men wielding chainsaws.
"If anybody comes, we will telephone Greenpeace," said one of the protesters, Kalina Sczawinska, 33, from Warsaw. "There will be 200 people here within a few hours."
It's the spirit of Twyford Down, the spirit of the Newbury bypass, the spirit of Swampy - remember him? - and it's alive and kicking in the forests of Poland, and now the stakes are higher than ever.
Post your entry on Russia by 5pm on Weds, Oct 1st.
I found this article extremely intriguing. the line "intends to eleminate the 'regime of oligarchic capitalism'" caught my eye at first, and the article doesn't disappoint.
18 April 2005 10:22
New Russian youth movement sets out manifesto
The new democratic and anti-fascist youth movement, Nashi, intends to eliminate the "regime of oligarchic capitalism".
Speaking at a congress of initiative groups to set up the movement, Marching Together leader Vasiliy Yakemenko who was today elected one of the new commissars or leaders of the new Nashi movement, read out its manifesto, which states: "The elimination of the regime of oligarchic capitalism is a necessary consideration of further modernization."
The text of the manifesto says that the "regime of oligarchic capitalism was created by the previous generation of political, administrative, economic and cultural leaders".
"Our generation does not intend to preserve it. On the contrary, we must eliminate it since this regime is in essence not fair or free and lacks solidarity. It maintains a weak and ineffectual state that is incapable of protecting the country's national sovereignty and the safety and rights of its citizens. It destroys social solidarity and enshrines inequality of opportunity for specific social groups," the manifesto says.
At the same time, the document says, "the first person to issue a genuine challenge to the regime of oligarchic capitalism by strengthening the state was Vladimir Putin". "Putin was first to state Russia's claims to world leadership in the 21st century. However, the impulse engendered by Putin encounters rabid resistance from opponents at home and abroad. At home it is supporters of the regime of oligarchic capitalism and political feudalism who are stopping the modernization of the country and abroad it is impeded by opponents of the country's gaining economic and politic strength in the global arena," Yakemenko said, quoting the manifesto.
"In this situation the Nashi movement will support Putin. This will not be support for Putin as a person but support for his political line which aims to preserve the country's sovereignty, implement its economic and political modernization, ensure its stable and non-violent development and its achievement of future global leadership," the manifesto stresses.
The movement's activists believe preserving the country's sovereignty and integrity is another important condition of modernizing Russia.
"We see Russia as a society where people are able to unite to solve common problems independently but without coercion or quotas. Freedom, justice, cooperation - these are our ideas about a future Russia," says the manifesto read out by Yakemenko.
Among the Nashi movement's tasks is the formation of a functioning civil society as well as the prevention "of the expansion in the country of the ideas of fascism, aggressive nationalism, religious intolerance and separatism that pose a threat to Russia's unity and territorial integrity".
Yakemenko also said that the movement intends to be one of Russia's main political forces in the 2008 presidential election. "We will take part in the presidential election as one of the main political forces and as for the parliamentary election, we'll just wait and see," he told a news conference during a break in the constituent congress.
In addition, he said that Marching Together would hold an election of a new leader in the next two weeks. At the same time Yakemenko let it be known that Nashi and Marching Together will not merge into a single structure and Marching Together will continue with its existing programme.
Speaking of the possibility of turning the movement into a party, Yakemenko said: "If it's necessary, then yes."
Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow
BBC Monitoring
Ah, Russian capitalism... the only place where you can pay someone to take your nuclear waste off your hands.
The importation of depleted uranium hexaflouride wastes ("uranium tails") from fuel enrichment plants in France and Germany has become a lucrative business for some Russian industrialists. It is estimated that 100,000 tons of additional nuclear waste has been generated in Russia in the last decade as a result of this traffic, and that the practice has held down the cost of nuclear fuel to a fraction of what it would be if the enrichment companies had to dispose of the waste in the country where it was generated.
A meeting of the G8 nations in mid-July in St. Petersburg was expected to produce agreement on a scheme to import U.S. nuclear waste, as well. Environmentalists from the Norwegian group Bellona and the Russian group Ecodefense! demonstrated July 11 in Senatskala Square. They attempted to unfurl a banner against the imports in front of the square's massive monument to Peter the Great. Police were waiting and roughly rounded up 13 people who took part. The activists were held and interrogated for several hours, photographed and fingerprinted, but not charged.
On July 3, compressed depleted uranium shavings had caught fire at a factory in Lesnoy, and officials had refused to allow Ecodefense! to take environmental samples in the closed town.
The campaign against nuclear waste imports continued with the 7th national anti-nuclear camp, established July 26-August 3 by Ecodefense! and Tomsk Ecological Student Inspection. Activists from ten Russian cities gathered near the Siberian Chemical Combine and the closed city of Seversk in the Tomsk region.
Some staged a demonstration in the center of Tomsk on August 1, raising 40-foot banners reading "Must Russia Grow Tails?" and "Stop Nuclear Waste Import!" in front of the regional administration building, an area off-limits to such activity. Some passers-by joined the demonstration for half an hour before Tomsk police began tearing down the banners, arresting 12 people. When police tried to arrest an anti-nuclear activist who was only observing the protest with her 5-year old son, reporters and passers-by intervened to prevent them.
Russian Ecologists Protest N-Waste Imports in Closed City
Anonymous. Nuclear Resister. Tuscon: Sep 20, 2006. , Iss. 143; pg. 6, 1 pgs
Alt-Press Watch
I heard about the outcome of this trial earlier and it has now set a precedence in the British court system. Vandalism is legal as long as you are doing it in pursuit of preventing a greater harm, such as in the name of the environment.
A British jury has cleared six Greenpeace activists of causing criminal damage when they vandalized a power plant last year in a protest over global warming, based on the defense attorneys’ argument that the protesters were trying to prevent even worse damage from climate change. Yesterday’s verdict is expected to embarrass the government and lead to more direct action protests against energy companies [The Guardian].
Last October, the Greenpeace protesters scaled the smokestacks of a coal-fired power plant as a publicity stunt to protest the United Kingdom’s continued reliance on coal-fired power plants, which emit large amounts of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. The protesters were halfway through painting a slogan on the side of one smokestack (�Gordon, bin it,� a British way of asking Prime Minister Gordon Brown to chuck coal), when the police served the activists an injunction by helicopter and forced them to stop. They were charged with causing more than $50,000 in damages based on the cost of removing the paint. E.ON, which owns the power plant, said that the company was in a state of shock over the verdict [The Times].
Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse� to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse� under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire [The Independent]. The trial was a remarkable affair featuring testimony by an Inuit leader from Greenland and NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who argued that the world needs an immediate moratorium on new coal-fired power plants.
The reprieved activists greeted the verdict with delight. “This verdict marks a tipping point for the climate change movement,� said Ben Stewart, one of the six. “If jurors from the heart of Middle England say it’s legitimate for a direct action group to shut down a coal-fired power station because of the harm it does to our planet, then where does that leave government energy policy? We have the clean technologies at hand to power our economy, it’s time we turned to them instead of coal� [Reuters].
DISCOVER: Science, Technology, and The Future
Blogs/80beats
British Jury Says Greenpeace Protesters Were Right to Vandalize Coal Plant
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/09/11/british-jury-says-greenpeace-protesters-were-right-to-vandalize-coal-plant/
This was an issue that I don't think we heard much of. For the past few years South Korea has refrained from importing U.S. beef due to fear of it containing mad cow disease. This is the beef you eat every week... unless you're a vegetarian. Recently the South Korean government had reinstituted imports of U.S. beef, sparking mass protests. There was such a public belief in this that their President's approval rating is 21, he promised to fire several aids who helped negotiate the last deal, and has publically apologized to his nation twice. Is the public overreacting to baseless fears or has our beef industry downplayed the risks?
Over beef-importing deal with U.S., South Korea's Lee takes a grilling
It's a meaty subject, one that has turned the heat up so much on the government of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak that, to judge by the latest opinion-poll data, the politician might be permanently seared. After just a few months in office, his approval rating among voters has plummeted to around 21 percent. The reason is what has been seen as the Lee administration's awkward handling of negotiations of an agreement with Washington concerning the importation into South Korea of American beef. News of the deal dates back to April; since then it has provoked a big controversy in South Korea, where numerous protests against it have taken place. It has prompted Lee to publicly apologize for his government's handling of its discussions of the problematic subject with U.S. trade representatives.
In Washington, American and South Korean negotiators have been trying to hammer out "a framework that would put some type of government stamp on a commercial agreement between U.S. meat packers and South Korean buyers not to ship older beef to Korea. The original deal reached in April would have had no restrictions on the age or cut[s] of meat" that American producers could have sent to South Korea. Since April, the U.S. "has resisted reopening" that original accord, "and instead [has been] trying to formulate a private-sector solution. South Korea was the third-biggest buyer of [American] beef before it banned imports from the U.S. in 2003" (after a case of mad cow disease was reported in the United States). An organization of South Korean beef importers said [it would] voluntarily ban U.S. beef imports from older cattle." (Bloomberg)
This week, Lee apologized to South Koreans for the second time in a month, insisting that he would make sure "that U.S. beef older than 30 months won't be put on our dinner tables." Xinhua reports that the U.S. "once accounted for more than two-thirds of South Korea's beef imports, exporting [$850 million worth of meat] to South Korea a year" before the 2003 import ban.
In a nationally televised speech in South Korea, Lee again has expressed regret for his administration's handling of the beef-importing deal it had made with the U.S. back in April. The president's office has made it known that Lee intends to "replace his chief of staff and seven senior secretaries, seeking to make a fresh start for his administration, which took office only four months ago." (Associated Press)
In his speech, Lee said of the original beef deal that was agreed to in April: "I and my government are keenly reflecting on this issue....Despite the fact that it was an urgent national matter, I should have paid attention to how people would accept it and what people wanted." South Korea's JoongAng Daily reports that some South Koreans "are still angry and [have] said they can no longer trust a government that made blunders such as misinterpreting the beef deal with the United States. Some said the president's apology was not enough, but that they still wanted to halt protests and see what the government will do next." JoongAng Daily quotes a 29-year-old student, who remarked that Lee's speech "was full of flowery words without any content....He did not mention what this country would do if a case of mad cow disease arises, and how the government will ask the U.S. to take responsibility."
SFGate.com World Views: South Korea
Posted By: Edward M. Gomez (Email) | June 20 2008 at 06:42 AM
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/category?blogid=15&cat=1358
Post your entries from Eastern Europe by 5pm on Mon, Sept 29th.
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The Polish 1970 protests were anti-communist protests that occurred in northern Poland in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase of prices of food and articles of daily use. In the result of the riots, brutally pacified by the Polish People's Army and the Citizen's Militia, at least 42 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded.
The Polish 1970 protests were anti-communist protests that occurred in northern Poland in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase of prices of food and articles of daily use. In the result of the riots, brutally pacified by the Polish People's Army and the Citizen's Militia, at least 42 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded.
Władysław Gomułka's temporary political success could not mask the economic crisis into which the People's Republic of Poland was drifting. Although the system of fixed, artificially low food prices kept urban discontent under control, it caused stagnation in agriculture and made more expensive food imports necessary. This was unsustainable, and in December 1970 the regime suddenly announced massive increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs. It is possible that the price rises were imposed on Gomułka by his enemies in the Party leadership who planned to manoeuvre him out of power. The rises were a fatal miscalculation, for they proved to be a major shock to the society and turned the urban workers against the regime.[1] Gomułka believed that the agreement with West Germany had made him more popular, but in fact most Poles appear to have felt that since the Germans were no longer a threat to Poland, they no longer needed to tolerate the Communist regime as a guarantee of Soviet support for the defence of the Oder-Neisse line.
Riots in Szczecin.Demonstrations against the price rises broke out in the northern Baltic coastal cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Elbląg and Szczecin. Gomułka's right-hand man, Zenon Kliszko, made matters worse by ordering the army to fire on the workers as they tried to return to their factories. The regime was afraid of a wave of sabotage that was being started.[2][3] Another leader, Stanisław Kociołek, appealed to the workers to return to work. But in Gdynia the soldiers had orders to stop workers returning to work, and they fired into the crowd of workers emerging from their trains on December 17: hundreds of workers were killed or wounded. The protest movement then spread to other cities, leading to strikes and occupations. The government set in motion 5,000 members of special squads of police and 27,000 soldiers, equipped with heavy tanks and machine guns. Over 1,000 people were wounded, and at least 40 killed (other numbers often cited are 39[4] and 44[5] though the exact death toll remains unknown), 3,000 arrested, by modern accounts. However, only six people were reported dead by the government at the time. All those who perished were buried overnight, with only the closest relatives present, in order to avoid spreading the riots.
Monument to fallen Shipyard Workers in Gdańsk, a shot from the bottom upwards.The Party leadership met in Warsaw and decided that a full-scale working-class revolt was inevitable unless drastic steps were taken. With the consent of Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, Gomułka, Kliszko and other leaders were forced to resign: if the price rises had been a plot against Gomułka, it succeeded. Since Moscow would not accept Mieczysław Moczar, Edward Gierek was drafted as the new leader. The price rises were reversed, wage rises announced, and sweeping economic and political changes were promised. Gierek went to Gdańsk and met the workers, apologised for the mistakes of the past, promised a political renewal and said that as a worker himself he would now govern for the people.
Despite the fact that the aims of the protesters were mostly social and economical rather than political, the crushed riots had reinvigorated the dormant political activity of Polish society.
The Polish 1970 protests were anti-communist protests that occurred in northern Poland in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase of prices of food and articles of daily use. In the result of the riots, brutally pacified by the Polish People's Army and the Citizen's Militia, at least 42 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded.
The Polish 1970 protests were anti-communist protests that occurred in northern Poland in December 1970. The protests were sparked by a sudden increase of prices of food and articles of daily use. In the result of the riots, brutally pacified by the Polish People's Army and the Citizen's Militia, at least 42 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded.
Władysław Gomułka's temporary political success could not mask the economic crisis into which the People's Republic of Poland was drifting. Although the system of fixed, artificially low food prices kept urban discontent under control, it caused stagnation in agriculture and made more expensive food imports necessary. This was unsustainable, and in December 1970 the regime suddenly announced massive increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs. It is possible that the price rises were imposed on Gomułka by his enemies in the Party leadership who planned to manoeuvre him out of power. The rises were a fatal miscalculation, for they proved to be a major shock to the society and turned the urban workers against the regime.[1] Gomułka believed that the agreement with West Germany had made him more popular, but in fact most Poles appear to have felt that since the Germans were no longer a threat to Poland, they no longer needed to tolerate the Communist regime as a guarantee of Soviet support for the defence of the Oder-Neisse line.
Riots in Szczecin.Demonstrations against the price rises broke out in the northern Baltic coastal cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Elbląg and Szczecin. Gomułka's right-hand man, Zenon Kliszko, made matters worse by ordering the army to fire on the workers as they tried to return to their factories. The regime was afraid of a wave of sabotage that was being started.[2][3] Another leader, Stanisław Kociołek, appealed to the workers to return to work. But in Gdynia the soldiers had orders to stop workers returning to work, and they fired into the crowd of workers emerging from their trains on December 17: hundreds of workers were killed or wounded. The protest movement then spread to other cities, leading to strikes and occupations. The government set in motion 5,000 members of special squads of police and 27,000 soldiers, equipped with heavy tanks and machine guns. Over 1,000 people were wounded, and at least 40 killed (other numbers often cited are 39[4] and 44[5] though the exact death toll remains unknown), 3,000 arrested, by modern accounts. However, only six people were reported dead by the government at the time. All those who perished were buried overnight, with only the closest relatives present, in order to avoid spreading the riots.
Monument to fallen Shipyard Workers in Gdańsk, a shot from the bottom upwards.The Party leadership met in Warsaw and decided that a full-scale working-class revolt was inevitable unless drastic steps were taken. With the consent of Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, Gomułka, Kliszko and other leaders were forced to resign: if the price rises had been a plot against Gomułka, it succeeded. Since Moscow would not accept Mieczysław Moczar, Edward Gierek was drafted as the new leader. The price rises were reversed, wage rises announced, and sweeping economic and political changes were promised. Gierek went to Gdańsk and met the workers, apologised for the mistakes of the past, promised a political renewal and said that as a worker himself he would now govern for the people.
Despite the fact that the aims of the protesters were mostly social and economical rather than political, the crushed riots had reinvigorated the dormant political activity of Polish society.
Polish people protested their government's policies on economics. Their unemployment had skyrocketed which was the major concern.
World Briefing | Europe: Poland: Protest Over Economy
Published: April 26, 2003
About 20,000 trade unionists marched in Warsaw to protest against government policies they blame for economic stagnation and record unemployment. The protest, organized by the Solidarity union, highlighted the declining popularity of the left-wing minority government just weeks before a referendum on whether Poland should join the European Union in 2004. The protesters demanded urgent measures to cut unemployment, which at nearly 19 percent is at its highest level since the 1989 fall of Communism.
Environmentalists, birdwatchers, and wildlife activists are putting thier bodies in between viirgin forest and construction crews to attempt to halt the construction of a major motorway through a valley of forest that has never been logged or replanted.
Independent.co.uk
Eco-protest in eastern Europe: Trouble in paradise valley
It's one of Europe's last great wildernesses. But now economic progress threatens the primeval forest of Poland's Rospuda valley. Local opinion is bitterly divided
By Michael McCarthy
Thursday, 15 March 2007
On one side of the argument there are eagles, wolves and orchids; on the other side there are endless heavy lorries and burgeoning economic growth. Welcome to Europe's new environmental battleground.
The conflict is coming to a head for the first time in a pristine valley in north-east Poland, crammed with spectacular wildlife, which has been earmarked as the route for a badly-needed motorway to the Baltic states. The clash of priorities has bitterly divided public opinion in Poland itself and has now set the country on collision course with the European Union.
Yet the struggle to save the Rospuda valley is only the first of many conflicts likely to arise between economic development in the new EU member nations of central and eastern Europe, and their wildlife heritage.
Species which have long been rare or extinct in western European countries, such as lynx, elk, wolf and beaver, along with scores of uncommon bird species, from eagles to corncrakes, still have substantial populations in the 10 central and eastern European nations which have recently joined the EU.
In Poland and the other member states which joined in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), as well as in Bulgaria and Romania, which joined this year, two remarkable habitats in particular act as giant wildlife reservoirs for Europe as a whole.
One is the vast extent of ancient forests, some of which are still primeval - meaning they have never been cut down and replanted - and the other is the great range of wetlands in river valleys, flood plains and deltas.
The Rospuda valley combines both. The Rospuda river flows through the ancient Augustow Forest near Poland's border with Lithuania, one of the most pristine forest regions in all of Europe; and the river's course is bracketed by a peat bog which is astonishingly rich in mammals, rare birds, plants and insects.
In environmental terms, the valley is a jewel. Yet it sits squarely astride the route for one of Europe's most ambitious road schemes, the so-called Via Baltica expressway from Warsaw to Helsinki, which will pass through the Baltic states. The section of the new road which is intended to be the bypass for the small town of Augustow, where two routes from Warsaw join, is planned to go right through the valley's heart.
Environmentalists contend that the road will irreparably damage the valley, and insist an alternative route, further to the west, must be used; the Polish government, riding a wave of new prosperity with annual economic growth running at 6 per cent, and desperate to upgrade its transport links with its neighbours as quickly as possible, insists that the Rospuda route is the right one, wildlife or no wildlife. The people of Augustow, who are sick of the unending procession of heavy lorries through their town, heartily agree.
The issue has sparked a clash reminiscent of the British road-building protests which began in 1989 with the dispute over the route of the M3 motorway through Twyford Down in Hampshire - although in wildlife terms, the stakes are far, far higher.
A survey carried out by the Polish Bird Protection Society, Otop, has found that within 750 metres each side of the centreline of the proposed expressway as it passes through the valley, no fewer than 20 species of birds are breeding which are specifically protected, as rare or threatened, under European law.
They represent a British birdwatcher's dream, ranging from the white-tailed, short-toed and lesser-spotted eagles, through the black grouse and the capercaillie, to the corncrake, the crane and the great snipe. But there is much more. Among a profusion of rare wildflowers, there are 20 orchid species in the valley, including the last colony in Poland of the musk orchid Herminium monorchis, and mammals which are resident or pass through the forest and the marsh include lynx, wolf, elk, wild boar, otter and beaver.
The Polish centre-left national daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, has taken up the cause of saving Rospuda, and has given away green lapel ribbons for supporters to wear. An electronic petition on its website, to shift the road to an alternative route, has attracted 150,000 signatures, and last month, when it was thought the first tree-cutters were about to move in, a group of green activists from all over Poland set up a camp in the snowy forest and climbed into the trees to stop them.
But not everyone agrees with them. Two weeks ago last Sunday, several hundred people from Augustow, encouraged by local politicians, came out to confront the greens, shouting: "Ecologists, murderers!". They distributed wooden crosses which they said represented the children knocked down and killed by the heavy lorries passing through the town. A heavy police presence was necessary to stop an ugly clash turning violent.
Now the conflict has intensified still further, and moved on to an international level. The European Commission in Brussels is taking up the case, and the Polish government is finding that EU membership carries duties as well as benefits.
Poland's membership of the European Union is giving the country an economic boost - it has already received $14bn in EU funding - but it is its EU membership which means the government may have to think again about Rospuda. For when the country acceded in 2004, it was obliged under EU law to declare some of its best wildlife sites as protected areas in the EU's Europe-wide Natura 2000 network.
Rospuda is one of these, part of the Augustow primeval forest special protection area (SPA), declared under the EU's 1979 wild birds directive. This lays down that if a development is likely to harm a protected site, alternatives have to be explored. Polish environmentalists have complained to Brussels that this has not been properly done with Rospuda, nor has it been done in four more SPAs that the Via Baltica is likely to damage.
The EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, has accepted their argument, and asked the Polish government to refrain from pushing the road through the valley - or face prosecution in the European Court of Justice. Last week, Poland delivered its answer to Brussels, which, although it has not yet been published, is credibly rumoured to have contained a message along the lines of "go and take a running jump".
It is hard not to feel some sympathy for the Poles, who have been pushed around by stronger nations throughout their history; many Polish politicians feel this is happening with the EU now, and resent it strongly. And it is hard not to sympathise with the citizens of Augustow who have to live with an ever-increasing procession of heavy lorries.
But it is harder still not to feel aghast at the scale of the environmental wreckage that putting a modern expressway through the Ropsuda valley will cause. When The Independent visited the valley last week, the forest was resounding to the calls of the black woodpecker, a spectacular red-crested bird the size of a crow, and when we walked out into the peat bog a large wild boar moved off into the forest on the valley's other side. The valley itself was filled with the haunting, trumpeting calls of cranes which had just returned from their wintering grounds in Spain.
Someone who knows it and appreciates its value more than most is Gosia Znaniecka, the Otop caseworker for Rospuda. "I have such a feeling for it," she said. "When I came here, it was amazing to see so many treasures in such a small area. It is unique. If we allow a road to be constructed through here, it will be OK to repeat such things elsewhere. If we fail here, we will fail in many other places."
But it is not just Polish eyes that are turned on the valley. "To put a road through Rospuda would be the wilful destruction of some of Europe's most wonderful wildlife sites, for no good reason," Graham Wynne, the chief executive of Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said. "We sympathise with the need for economic development, but there is a perfectly good alternative route. The Polish government seems so hell-bent on disregarding international law that it makes one wonder about their motivation."
Whatever happens, the government will not have it all its own way. Although the main road protesters' camp has broken up for the moment, a core of activists remains on the site to watch for the approach of bulldozers or men wielding chainsaws.
"If anybody comes, we will telephone Greenpeace," said one of the protesters, Kalina Sczawinska, 33, from Warsaw. "There will be 200 people here within a few hours."
It's the spirit of Twyford Down, the spirit of the Newbury bypass, the spirit of Swampy - remember him? - and it's alive and kicking in the forests of Poland, and now the stakes are higher than ever.
This article grabbed my attention as soon as I saw the title. 12 years for a nonviolent protest seems like a very harsh sentence. Hopefully nothing like that would ever be allowed in the United States. The article goes on to state that he was conferring with officials from other governments to take action against Syria, but it seems that they are just trying to limit his freedom of speech.
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/11/syria15898.htm
Syria: Peaceful Activist Gets 12 Years With Hard Labor
Labwani’s Sentence Discredits Syrian Claims of Political Reform
(New York, May 11, 2007) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should immediately exonerate prominent human rights activist Dr. Kamal al-Labwani, who was sentenced yesterday to 12 years in prison including hard labor on politically motivated charges, Human Rights Watch said.
The Syrian government has accelerated its crackdown on free speech and peaceful activism. Peaceful activists like Labwani are paying a heavy price for expressing their views.
A Damascus criminal court convicted Labwani of “communicating with a foreign country and inciting it to initiate aggression against Syria.� Labwani had visited the United States and Europe in the fall of 2005 where he had met with government officials, journalists and human rights organizations.
Labwani’s sentence was handed down two weeks after another prominent Syrian human rights activists, Anwar al-Bunni, was sentenced to five years in prison on politically motivated charges.
“The Syrian government has accelerated its crackdown on free speech and peaceful activism,� said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Peaceful activists like Labwani are paying a heavy price for expressing their views.�
Syrian security forces arrested Labwani, a physician and founder of the Democratic Liberal Gathering, on November 8, 2005 upon his return from a two-month trip to Europe and the United States. During his trip, he appeared on the pan-Arab Al-Mustaqilla and Al-Hurra television networks where he called on the Syrian government to respect fundamental freedoms and human rights.
The Democratic Liberal Gathering is a group of Syrian intellectuals and activists who advocate for peaceful change in Syria based on democratic reforms, liberalism, secularism and respect for human rights.
From the onset, Labwani’s trial was marred by the interference of the state security agencies. The prosecution added the charge of “communicating with a foreign country and inciting it to initiate aggression against Syria� after the head of National Security sent a letter on November 17, 2005 to the Minister of Justice asking him to add this accusation to the lesser charges that the General Prosecutor’s office had initially filed against Labwani. In his defense pleadings, Labwani’s attorney referred to the letter and argued that the new charge would not have been included if National Security had not intervened because the investigation had not revealed any evidence that Labwani had called on any country to initiate aggression against Syria.
On April 28, following al-Bunni’s conviction, Labwani and other imprisoned political and human rights activists smuggled out a joint letter which said that detainees in Syria “should feel that they are not alone... and that there is hope for a peaceful resolution of the crisis of freedoms and human rights in Syria.�
“Syrian officials repeatedly claim that their country wants to play a constructive role in the region,� Whitson said. “But this is hard to believe as they continue to imprison peaceful dissidents at home.�
Background
Syria has a long record of prosecuting political activists who peacefully express their opinions. In 2002, the State Security Court sentenced Labwani to three years in prison on charges of “inciting rebellion, spreading false information and weakening national unity� after he had participated in political reform discussions. Labwani was released after serving his sentence in full.
Article 38 of Syria’s Constitution guarantees the right of every citizen to “freely and openly express his views in words, in writing, and through all other means of expression� and to “participate in supervision and constructive criticism in a manner that safeguards the soundness of the domestic and nationalist structure and strengthens the socialist system.� As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Syria has an international obligation to uphold the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly.
This article outlines protests in Iran by students at a college campus of President Ahmadinejad. I found it interesting because the students were protesting non-violently, in favor of more western ideas, while being able to gain access to a so-called restricted event. How they were able to organize and infiltrate an event that is closely monitored was interesting to me, as well as their lack of fear of a backlash. It has been shown that a movement as small as this can be a catalyst for widespread change and reform.
Iranian students clash with police during protest against Ahmadinejad
By Ali Akbar Dereini
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
About 100 students staged a rare protest yesterday against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling him a "dictator" as he gave a speech marking the beginning of the academic year at Tehran University.
The protest prompted scuffles between the demonstrators and hardline university students loyal to Ahmadinejad, who ignored chants of "Death to dictator" and continued his speech on the merits of science and pitfalls of Western-style democracy, witnesses said.
The hardline students chanted back "Thank you president" as police looked on from the outside the university's gates. No physical altercations took place, and the protesters dispersed after the car carrying Ahmadinejad left the campus.
Students were once the main power base of Iran's reform movement but have faced intense pressure in recent years from Ahmadinejad's hard-line government, making anti-government protests rare.
The president faced a similar outburst during a speech in December when students at Amir Kabir Technical University called him a dictator and set fire to his picture.
Hoping to avoid a similar disturbance Monday, organizers imposed tight security measures, checking the identity papers of all students entering the university and allowing only selected students into the hall. But the protesters were somehow able to gain entrance.
Iran's reform movement peaked in the late 1990s after former reformist President Mohammad Khatami was elected and his supporters swept parliament. But during that time, hard-liners who control the judiciary, security forces and powerful unelected bodies in the government, stymied attempts to ease social and political restrictions.
Reformists — who want to loosen Iran's social and political restrictions and favor better relations with the US — were further demoralized and divided after the 2005 election that brought Ahmadinejad to power.
In recent months, dissenters have witnessed an increasing crackdown in Iran, and hundreds have been rounded up on accusations of threatening the Iranian system. Numerous pro-reform newspapers have been shut down and those that remain have been muted in their criticism fearing closure.
At universities, pro-reform students have been marginalized and now only hold low-level meetings and occasional demonstrations, usually to demand better school facilities or the release of detained colleagues. At the same time, pro-government student groups have grown more powerful.
Some dissenters blame the crackdown on the regime's fear of a U.S. effort to undermine it as tensions over Iran's nuclear program intensify. Others say the intent is simply to contain discontent fueled by a faltering economy.
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I find this fascinating to read. It is a letter to all those opposed to war to peacefully resist it. It was published in a paper. For such a violent region of the world I find it amazing that such action was taken.
http://beirutupdate.blogspot.com/2006/08/call-for-action.html
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This article makes me cringe. IT is about renowned Tunisian human rights leader, Dr. Moncef Marzouki, returned to his country from exile on October 21, but his return was met by the opening of a criminal investigation against him for “inciting the population to break the law,� and with a summons to appear before a judge. He is a peaceful man who only advocates peaceful civil disobedience.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/middle_east/tunisia/alert102606_marzouki.htm
This article explores the "Gandhian" view of non-violence and the history within the Middle East.
Nonviolence in the Middle East
by Arun Gandhi
The universal ignorance and misunderstanding that surrounds the philosophy of nonviolence – at least the Gandhian interpretation of it – is due to the inadequacy of the English language. Taken literally, nonviolence means not using physical violence while ignoring the non-physical violence that we, individually and collectively, commit every day. This non-physical or passive violence is more insidious because it generates anger, which leads to physical violence. Therefore, unless we recognize and deal with our “passive� violence, we cannot end “physical� violence.
Gandhi’s nonviolence emphasizes the need to build interpersonal and international relationships on positive principles of respect, understanding, acceptance, and appreciation rather than on negative principles of selfishness and self-interest, as we presently do. This requires respect for different religions, cultures, nationalities, and other physical and social characteristics. If respect becomes the basis of our relationships, violence becomes difficult to practice. Gandhi’s nonviolence is also firmly based in love and compassion for all of creation. Thus, when people question the relevance of nonviolence, they are questioning the relevance of respect, love, and compassion.
Gandhi’s nonviolence is not a strategy for conflict resolution, nor is it a weapon to be used when convenient and discarded when not. It is a way of life, an attitude, and an outlook. One has to live it, practice it, and think it. Nonviolence emphasizes the need to recognize the good in every individual and to let that good flourish so that the “evil� (anger and violence) can be suppressed. Gandhi taught me at age 12 that anger is as useful and powerful as electricity, but only if we use it intelligently. We must learn to respect anger as we do electricity.
Violence in the Middle East, like violence elsewhere, is manifested in the hate, prejudice, and selfishness found in us all. Our spirituality is defined by the same negative attitudes that define our relationships. The competitiveness we have injected into our religion contains the seeds of the violence destroying our social fabric today. Can it be changed? Gandhi said nothing in this world is impossible to achieve if we have the will to do so.
Historically, we have made many mistakes of which the most devastating is the religious division of nations such as Ireland, India, and Palestine/Israel. These partitions have generated hate, prejudice, and violence on a vast scale with repercussions so extensive as to almost defy logical conclusions.
Shortly before his assassination on January 30, 1948, Gandhi was asked: “What is the solution to the Palestine problem?� He replied: “It has become a problem which seems almost insoluble. If I were a Jew, I would tell them: ‘Do not be so silly as to resort to terrorism….’ The Jews should meet the Arabs, make friends with them, and not depend on British aid or American aid save what descends from Jehovah.�
If a solution was difficult in 1948, it is even more so now, although not impossible. The question in the Middle East, as in India and Ireland, is: What is the goal for each side? Palestinians and Israelis have tried to suppress, if not annihilate, each other through violence, which is impractical and inhuman.
An ideal solution would be for the parties involved to take a more human approach and, as Gandhi says, befriend each other, work out a mutually satisfactory solution, and then live in friendship. Since nations have been divided for so long, putting them back together is virtually impossible. German unification has often been used as an example, but its division into East and West was ideological not religious. When the ideological differences of the two sides were resolved, bonding became easy.
Religious differences cannot be merged so easily; they can only be respected. As a result, bonding into one nation two disparate religious groups that have been torn asunder becomes even more difficult. An equitable solution will be possible only when the people in the countries in crisis resolve not to become pawns in international power politics.
As long as western powers, particularly the US, manipulate smaller nations for their own purposes, and as long as the people in the conflicting countries allow themselves to be manipulated, a solution will be impossible. The US wants Israel to be a strong, dependable partner to safeguard the supply of oil and, as illustrated by the recent action against Afghanistan, it (the US) is willing to buy the allegiance of Pakistan to contain the terrorists.
Politics without principles, Gandhi said, is a deadly sin that contributes to violence. Unless we allow ourselves to be governed by ethics and values, respect, and compassion, violence will continue to deplete our lives.
I recently read a bumper sticker that expresses the truth succinctly: “When the people will lead, the leaders will follow.�
# # #
Arun Gandhi is the Founder and Director of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
Written exclusively for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Distributed by Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
This is a good article. It describes non violent direct action, and applies it to South Africa. It talks about the roots of non violence within Africa and how it got started in South Africa. Historical background of non-violence in Africa.
Nonviolent Direct Action in South Africa
by Susan Collin Marks
Only a dozen years ago, South Africa seemed headed for a blood bath. No “reasonable� person saw any prospects for a negotiated settlement. The ANC and other forces in the African community were escalating the internal struggle against apartheid, the international community was applying economic sanctions with increasing vigor, and South Africa had become a pariah nation. Cornered, the white security apparatus was hitting out savagely, imprisoning children and killing activists.
Few people who look back at those dark days recall that militant nonviolence was the key tool in the struggle against apartheid and, in the end, precipitated a negotiated revolution instead of the widely anticipated carnage. The scope and creativity of methods employed by anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s amounted to what the theologian Walter Wink describes as “probably the largest grassroots eruption of diverse nonviolent strategies in a single struggle in human history.�
Hunger strikes ended the mass use of the detention without trial, and protests against beach apartheid showed up the injustice of segregation and the unacceptability of police action. Gandhi’s legacy loomed large as economic boycotts of white businesses, court actions that challenged apartheid laws, rent boycotts, demonstrations, and marches proliferated.
From the government perspective, as the 1980s advanced, the options were increasingly bleak: maintain the system with escalating brutality or be overrun by the swart gevaar, the black danger. The dilemma was at its starkest in the psyches of the Afrikaners. They had built the apartheid system on humiliating memories of their 1902 defeat by the British in the Anglo-Boer War, and their subsequent poverty, deprivation, and lack of recognition as second-class citizens under British rule. The purpose of apartheid was to achieve socio-political and economic dominance for the Afrikaners as a group, whatever the cost to British South Africans – or blacks, who they considered inferior to whites.
When their Nationalist Party was elected to power in 1948, the Afrikaners lost no time in implementing grand apartheid with its brutal, inhumane, and crushing agenda. In 1961, they finally turned their backs on the British and declared South Africa an independent republic. The dream of Afrikanerdom as a white, independent nation had been secured.
It lasted less than 30 years. Built on oppression and maintained by force, apartheid was unsustainable. As the 1980s wore on, the collision course between the nonviolent actions of the anti-apartheid movement and the violent reactions of the government reached cataclysmic proportions.
And then, something extraordinary happened. In February 1990, President F.W. de Klerk astounded the world by unbanning the ANC, releasing Nelson Mandela, and opening the way for negotiations about the future of South Africa. Roelf Meyer, then minister of the constitution and chief negotiator for the apartheid government, says that it was a pragmatic decision, and that “de Klerk's pragmatism also enabled him to see that international sanctions were beginning to exact a heavy toll and that black protests would not go away, rather they would grow stronger and more strident.�
Many years earlier, in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King had explained this dynamic exactly: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path? … Indeed this is the very purpose of direct action (which) seeks to create a crisis and foster such tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront this issue.� De Klerk’s decision generated four years of negotiations, during which his government grew to understand that majority rule was inevitable and, in Meyer’s words, made a shift to a paradigm of “trust instead of paranoia, of ownership and risk, of a different kind of leadership.� (See Roelf Meyer, Leadership in South Africa: From Dogma to Transformation, an Account of Paradigm Shift, UN University, Amman, 2001.)
So why did the opponents of apartheid choose a nonviolent approach? Certainly, the ANC was born as a mass movement through nonviolent action - yet Mandela served 27 years in prison for espousing armed struggle. These two strands lived in a tension that was somewhat relieved by the practicality that as there was no possibility of winning the war against apartheid by force, violence was not a viable option anyway.
But nonviolence was also a moral choice, with deep roots in Ubuntu, the African humanism that Desmond Tutu says is about “the essence of being human … We believe a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up inextricably in yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself.� Ubuntu acknowledges the dignity of every human being, and the primacy of respectful relationship. Within this framework, black South Africans were committed to ending the injustices and indignities of apartheid, and their “weapon� of choice was nonviolence.
This spiritual dimension is perhaps the X factor in the South African equation. “Any social scientist would expect 98% of blacks to hate whites and wish retribution, and yet the reality is the reverse,� said University of Cape Town political scientist Robert Schrire after the peaceful 1994 election. “And since we cannot explain it rationally, we will have to regard it as one of the great miracles of the South African dilemma.�
People often refer to “the miracle� of South Africa. If courageous leadership, committed citizens, a willingness to embrace forgiveness and reconciliation, to find solutions even when it seems impossible, and to take a leap of faith into the unknown make a miracle, then, surely, that’s what it was.
# # #
Susan Collin Marks is the Executive Vice President of Search for Common Ground, an international conflict resolution and management organization based in Washington, DC. She is a South African who participated in the South African peace process and the author of Watching the Wind (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000), which chronicles the grassroots conflict resolution movement in South Africa that helped foster a peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy.
Written exclusively for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Distributed by Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
************************************************
The Common Ground News Service (CGNews) provides news, op-eds, cartoons, features, and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of Middle East issues. CGNews syndicates articles that are accurate, balanced, and solution-oriented to news outlets throughout the Middle East and worldwide. With support of the European Community, the Dutch Foreign Ministry, and UNESCO, the service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground and the European Centre for Common Ground, international NGOs working as partners in the fields of conflict resolution and media production.
The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews or its affiliates.
First the invasion, then the agitation. A month ago, it was a scenario embraced by only a handful of neoconservatives and liberal hawks. In the wake of the Lebanese rebellion, it's becoming the new conventional wisdom:In fact, several countries have seen nonviolent Arab movements for liberty and self-government recently, I thought this was a great article because it provides insight, to a possible changing of ways in some countries in the middle east. its kind of lengthy but it is a good read.
First the invasion, then the agitation. A month ago, it was a scenario embraced by only a handful of neoconservatives and liberal hawks. In the wake of the Lebanese rebellion, it's becoming the new conventional wisdom: The U.S. sweeps into Iraq, topples Saddam, hangs on tenaciously when the occupation gets ugly; the payoff will be ten of thousands of Arabs in the streets demanding democracy.
In fact, several countries have seen nonviolent Arab movements for liberty and self-government recently, but there's only one where there's no doubt the protests are a consequence of the American invasion of Iraq. That revolt happened under circumstances that should give pause to hawks and doves alike: It's the movement in Iraq, led by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, that culminated in January's elections.
In 2003, after the American occupiers cancelled local votes and announced that there'd be no national balloting until a constitution was drafted, Sistani demanded elections in a fatwa. He stepped up his protests after the U.S. proposed an indirect vote that would be easier for the Americans to control. As many as 100,000 of his Shi'ite followers marched in the streets of Baghdad in early 2004, and 30,000 held a similar demonstration in Basra. Among their chants: "Yes, yes to elections! No, no to occupation!" The U.S. eventually gave in to most of Sistani's demands, and the cleric then urged his followers to go to the polls.
Since that vote, American pundits have debated how democratic the process was, how liberal Sistani's long-term intentions are, how stable the new government will be in the face of the insurgency. But most have passed over the extent to which the vote itself was a product of ferment from the bottom up rather than orders from the top down. When they have raised the issue, it's usually been in the context of debating how much "credit" Bush deserves for the elections, an issue of interest to no one but partisan obsessives. Few have paused to ponder the paradox that the most successful recent grassroots campaign in the Middle East was both a product of the American occupation and aimed at the American occupiers.
The region's other people power movements are a heady mix, and a judgment about one won't always apply to the others. Here's an incomplete rundown:
*
Most famous, of course, are the festive protests that followed the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri, which soon became a strikingly successful drive to end Syria's two-decade occupation. (Syria's responsibility for Hariri's death has not been proven, but it was widely blamed for the murder.) The movement had a substantial victory when Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister resigned, and another when Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to a gradual pullout—though the protesters are calling for something much faster.
Supporters of the Iraq war are calling this uprising a consequence of the U.S. invasion, frequently citing the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's comment to The Washington Post: "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world....The Berlin Wall has fallen." I have no window into Jumblatt's soul, and I have no idea how sincere the notoriously opportunistic politician is being. But in practice, America's current face-off with Assad is more important to Jumblatt than its earlier face-off with Hussein, and it gives him a strong incentive to do an about-face on the Iraq war.
On the streets, there's anecdotal evidence that the elections in Iraq have been on the marchers' minds. But there are two bigger influences, represented by the two labels the Lebanese revolt has attracted. Sometimes it calls itself the Independence Intifada, indicating an eye trained on Israel's partial withdrawal from its occupied territories. And sometimes it's called the Cedar Revolution, suggesting that the other eye is pointed at two recent recent events in Central Asia: the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia.
The Lebanese protesters have borrowed many tactics directly from the Ukrainians and Georgians, from tent cities to street theater. "Interestingly, one of the Lebanese and Egyptian slogans is 'enough,' which was also used by the Ukrainians, and was the name of the Georgian student resistance movement," notes Shaazka Beyerle, the Greece-based vice president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, who has closely followed events in Lebanon. "Protesters handed out roses to soldiers—another echo of Georgia's tactics which earned its Rose Revolution name."
*
Just south of Lebanon, another nonviolent campaign has been underway since 2002. Mustafa Barghouti's Palestinian National Initiative has been in the forefront of protesting the wall Israel is erecting in the West Bank. The barrier is supposed to keep suicide bombers out of Israel, but it's had dire effects for many ordinary Palestinians who now find their property confiscated and their movements curtailed. As Amnesty International put it in 2003, "more and more Palestinians find themselves trapped into enclaves and cantons, unable to have any semblance of a normal life."
The movement against the fence is notable not just for its aims, but for its methods: Barghouti, who comes from a secular leftist background, is making a conscious attempt to move Palestinian dissent away from terrorism and toward nonviolent resistance. He's also a longstanding critic of the corruption within the Palestinian National Authority, and he finished second in the recent election to succeed Yasser Arafat, gathering 19.8% of the vote.
*
Syria now faces both nonviolent and violent upheaval from its Kurdish minority. (This received some western attention a year ago, after a soccer riot in Qamishli set off protests and crackdowns in several Syrian cities.) The country has also seen occasional displays of displeasure from its Arab citizens, and there are hopes that the crisis in Lebanon will fell the regime in Damascus as well. For the moment, though, few expect a full-fledged people-power revolt. "The City's air is rife with all sorts of untoward rumors," the Damascus-based blogger Ammar Abdulhamid wrote last week; "everything is now possible: there is talk of arrests, purges, coup d'états, assassinations, sanctions, invasions, anything and everything, except, of course, freedom. Everything is possible except freedom."
*
Saudi Arabia's municipal elections, which began in February and went through their second phase last week, are hardly models of modern democracy—among other problems, only men could vote—but there's some hope that they'll be a first step towards more serious change. Though some have rushed to attribute the Saudi shift to Iraq's example, there are some closer models, including Bahrain's parliamentary elections in 2002 and Jordan's vote in 2003.
Even closer to home is the small but brave domestic movement for democracy, which received a little press attention last year when three of its leaders went on trial for their anti-authoritarian activism, attracting a crowd of 200 spectators. It's hard to say how big a role it played in the kingdom's cautious reforms, but The Washington Post's Steve Coll has some bad news: "In the same week that the Saudi government posted and celebrated the results of the Riyadh area's municipal voting," he writes, "it barred lawyers and supporters from the accused activists' courtroom and threatened to convict them without a formal trial because the men refused to present a defense."
*
And then there's Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak announced what he called a "new era of reform" late last month with the news that his country would hold its first multiparty elections in over 50 years. Hardly anyone thinks he has a genuinely competitive contest in mind, let alone the sort of liberalization that would entail releasing all his political prisoners and embracing open political debate. But opponents of his rule are now agitating for more substantial changes. A week after Mubarak's announcement, demonstrators in Cairo were declaring the elections a "masquerade" and demanding more substantial reforms.
*
Just as this story was going to press, Reuters reported that about 500 Kuwaitis, most of them women, marched on Parliament to demand women's suffrage. My colleague Charles Paul Freund notes that Kuwait has seen bills to enfranchise women in the past, but that this was the first time such a measure has been boosted by street protests.
Simon Jenkins wrote yesterday that "tossing a miasma of events into a journalistic cocktail seldom yields clarity," and I realize I'm in danger of mixing a hallucinatory potion myself. The above list mixes strong movements and weak ones, movements aligned with the U.S. and distant from it, movements for free elections and movements for deeper liberal reforms. It's useless to argue about whether the war "caused" these revolts. Syria's Kurds wouldn't be so rambunctious without the Iraqi Kurds to inspire them, but otherwise it's hard to claim that any particular uprising couldn't have occurred without Iraq looming in the background.
Iraq does loom in the background, though, and if nothing else it's created a general quickening effect. Within Iraq, it sparked Sistani's peaceful protests—and it also sparked a violent insurgency. Outside Iraq, preexisting patterns of all kinds are intensified. There's a wave of nonviolent movements against injustice; there's also a wave of terrorism. (The State Department's most recent report on global terror shows the number of attacks increasing from 198 in 2002 to 208 in 2003.) The circuits of communication, from Bahraini bloggers to Al Jazeera, pulsate with unexpected ideas and insurrections. Most of this is invisible to Americans until suddenly it flares into view. All of a sudden, mutually suspicious Lebanese factions unite to throw out their Syrian overlords. All of a sudden, a car bomb kills 125 in Baghdad.
And then the event is ripped from its context and reduced to fit one of the competing narratives of America's domestic disputes. I can't stop that, and I'm not sure I'd want to, but let me make a plea. If you're a hawk, try to read the voices of caution without reflexively declaring that the pessimists just don't want to give Bush credit for anything. And if you're a dove, try to read the voices of elation without worrying that a happy event in the Middle East might somehow justify the war. (Last I checked, the national-security case for the invasion was still in tatters, and that's the only one that mattered to me. Besides, if nonviolent conflict can be a consequence of war, it can also be an alternative to it.)
Breathe deeply. For a moment, forget our stateside struggles, and try to take the Middle East on its own terms.
A slightly older entry, however, this article seemed especially interesting to me becasue it was an eyewitness account of the happenings in Cape Town from non-believer. Also included is a transcript of different interviews he had with people around the town.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA--The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) organised the march on 9 February 2006, and drew supporters from major cities like Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, and even... Boland, a small farming community in the Western Cape. It was the first mass South African response to worldwide Islamic condemnation of a series of 12 Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.
For some people who are not Muslim, this protest march seems nonsensical. People ask: Why do religious people get so upset about something as trivial as a cartoon?
Like other interested observers, I made my way to Cape Town's City Hall carefully on the day of the announced march. I kept moving from the official Cape Town City Hall to Thibault Square, the site of other international embassies and high commissions. When I spoke to a police officer at City Hall at about 10:30am, he said, "We believe the march might end at Thibault Square, but we have to keep our eyes focused on both this site and Thibault Square." Understandably, in the building just next door, the Cape Town City Library was shut tight for the day.
I dutifully made my way over to Thibault Square, expecting to see Muslims and South African Police (SAP) members gathered for possible confrontation. I was intrigued to discover no visible Muslims or police officers. I walked around the square for a while and finally discovered at least seven police vehicles, securely locked and empty. There had to be police somewhere close. As I looked around Thibault Square, and after questioning two officers on foot patrol, my eyes found a very cool-looking police officer, wearing a pair of wrap-around sunglasses and a tactical holster and pistol strapped to his thigh.
If the South African Police have a SWAT or Special Forces Unit, then this guy is an honorary life member. He listened to my questions then said simply: "This is a keypoint area. We are keeping it secure". Knowing there are a number of high commissions in that area, I didn't ask any more questions but tried to get back to City Hall as fast as possible. On my way back I discovered another plainclothes man looking up anxiously at the rooftops facing towards Thibault Square. He may have been looking for highrise window cleaners, but I have to admit, it makes me wonder if there weren't snipers or police lookouts up there.
Back at the City Hall, the crowds were gathering. Some intrigued onlookers, two SAP Nyala personnel carriers, and hundreds of Muslims, of all ages, shapes and sizes. I struck up a conversation with one man, in his forties. Mr MZ Booley, from Cape Town spoke from his heart: "What are you writing about? This is war. For any Muslim the world over, when someone scratches with our religion, we will kill them straight. And if that cartoonist Grogan, or Zapiro, makes fun of this situation, then I personally will kill them. I'm not afraid, they're nothing."
Pointing to a nearby group of harmless-looking Muslim ladies, he said vehemently: "Any one of these mummies, these ladies, they will kill anyone who insults our beloved prophet. Just let someone try to cause trouble today. Together we will kill them."
For most people however, the anger (over 12 cartoons originally published in a Danish newspaper the Jyllands-Posten), was tangible but restrained. I spoke with groups of elderly Muslims waiting while the younger, louder men were gathering forces at Cape Town's Good Hope Centre. The marchers were supposed to be presenting a memorandum to the Danish ambassador, Mr Tolben Brylle, at City Hall.
According to its official memorandum, the MJC demands an immediate and unwavering apology from the Danish prime minister and the Danish government to the global Muslim community, as well as "immediate reproach of the editor of the Jyllands Posten newspaper", which first published the offensive cartoons.
Furthermore, as a third demand, the MJC also insists that: "immediate measures be put in place that restore and defend the religious dignity and sensitivities of all faith-based communities in Denmark" and demands "that the above stipulations be implemented before the embargo against Danish products is lifted".
Before the memorandum was presented by Sheikh Ebrahim Gabriels, the president of the MJC, I joined a small group of Muslim women who were trying to follow the direction of the marchers. The march was supposed to begin at 11:30am but only started moving a about 12:30pm. I walked with the women across the Grand Parade and over the train station roof, through the Civic Centre.
Most of the group of six women work at a major bank on Cape Town's foreshore and used their lunchbreak to show their support. They believe strongly in the march's stated purpose. Our quick conversations went as follows.
Me: What is this march about? Lady One: "They have insulted our beloved prophet Muhammad with these disgusting cartoons. We are speaking out against these terrible things."
Me: I don't think people realised how outraged Muslims would feel about these Danish cartoons. Lady Two: "That's the thing! These cartoons and our anger have actually united Muslims the world over. We are joined together with millions who feel exactly the same way."
Me: What's that loud noise? Lady Three: "They are praising the beloved prophet Muhammad. Those are the Arabic words of praise and honour for our prophet."
When we emerged onto Adderly Street and hurried through the shaded taxi ranks, we could see them. A huge approaching mass of white robes and angry placards. A flatbed truck packed with men and bristling with loudspeakers was alternately praising the prophet Muhammad (reminding us constantly that peace and blessings are upon him) and urging the marchers to be restrained.
The man with the microphone shouted: "Brothers, listen to me! Do not give the media what they want! Do not destroy property! All these shops here, they belong to our Muslim brothers, please do not destroy them." I kept my distance, walking with the SABC cameramen, the freelance photographers, and the police Nyala anti-riot trucks leading the way.
We finally arrived at City Hall at about 1:15pm and waited till half-past before the memorandum was presented. A line of riot police with helmets, shields, shotguns, and full protective gear waited patiently in the sun. Loudspeakers and placards all around me shouted: "Boycott Denmark Boycott!"; "We support our brothers in Iran and the initiatives they have taken"; "Down Denmark down!" and "We will sacrifice our lives for you - Peace be upon him".
In delivering the memorandum, the MJC insisted: "The fact that the Jyllands-Posten allowed the cartoons to be published and the lack of appropriate restorative action by the Danish government shows their blatant disregard for the religious beliefs and sensitivities of the global Muslim community. The paper has taken 'freedom of speech' to a very dangerous, irresponsible and unacceptable level by showing complete disregard for the sensitivities and fundamental tenets of Islam, whilst ironically claiming to uphold the highest ethical standards based upon freedom and respect. As stated... by Justice Jajbhay and supported by the South African Cabinet: 'The right to human dignity outweighs the right to freedom of expression'."
Close to the police barricades, I spoke briefly with a an elderly couple who had tellingly fair skin, blue eyes, and blond hair. I whispered beneath the shouting crowd: Why are you here and where are you from? The old man looked at the Muslims and said: "Why are they doing this? Why are they so angry at Denmark? And I will give you three guesses where I am from..." In my head, he might as well have said: Take care! The barbarians are coming.
You may well wonder: All this noise and brouhaha about 12 cartoons? You better believe it. If you have never understood the term "righteous indignation" before, then the MJC's march in Cape Town against a Danish newspaper's belief in press freedom is a pretty accurate working definition.
Note: Press gag update. On Friday 3 February 2006, South African newspapers were banned from publishing any of the controversial cartoons depicting prophet Muhammad after a Muslim pressure group was granted an urgent court interdict at 10.30pm, just in time to halt Sunday papers running the images. The SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) chairman Joe Thloloe described the interdict as alarming. He said Sanef believed the interdict amounted to pre-publication censorship. The interdict, he says: "limits freedom of expression in that the decision on whether to publish or not to publish has been taken away from the editors and placed on the shoulders of the court".
Several youths were arrested after a protest in June demanding jobs by blocking deliveries from exiting a port city. Later, in August, a protest was staged to free these arrested youths.
Moroccan youths protest, demand jobs
Rabat - Moroccan security forces on Tuesday broke up a two-day blockade of a southwestern port by some 300 people demanding the freeing of unemployed youths arrested after a similar protest in June, the MAP news agency said.
Nobody was hurt in the police action. Police however said they had arrested one "instigator" and were seeking five other key organisers of the demonstration at the port of Sidi Ifni, which began on Monday.
Dozens of trucks filled with fish had been blocked at the port, the news agency said.
The protesters wanted authorities to free several unemployed youths who were arrested at the port on June 7 after staging a similar blockade to demand jobs. A total of 182 had been arrested but all but ten were freed later.
The area is one of the poorest in Morocco
At least 6 people were killed by Pakistani police while protesting military operations in the northern parts of the country.
Pakistani police say they have shot dead at least six people during protests against military operations in the north-western area of Swat.
More than a dozen others were injured when police opened fire on hundreds of protesters in the city of Mingora.
Police say they fired to prevent banks being looted. Locals are angry at army shelling which they say killed five people in the area earlier this week.
Troops have been fighting a rising tide of militancy in Swat since last year.
Police opened fire at the crowd to prevent them looting banks
Swat police official Bahadur Khan
Elsewhere in the north-west the military says it has killed dozens of militants near the Afghan border.
US military officials say militants use safe havens in Pakistan to mount attacks in Afghanistan. Anger has been growing in Pakistan at US forces in Afghanistan violating Pakistani sovereignty.
On Tuesday, US President George Bush met his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari for the first time, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
President Bush made no public reference to the controversial issue of unauthorised US strikes at insurgent targets in north-west Pakistan.
'Looting banks'
At least two government-owned banks are reported to have been damaged in the violence in Mingora, Swat's main city.
Police say a police station was also ransacked and other property attacked. Protesters burned tyres in the streets.
"Police opened fire at the crowd to prevent them looting banks," local police officer Bahadur Khan told the AFP news agency.
A curfew was imposed in the city to prevent a recurrence of demonstrations which broke out on Monday.
Locals took to the streets after the army shelled a house in the Chahar Bagh area of Swat earlier in the day. At least five people are reported to have died.
Correspondents say the security situation in Swat has been steadily deteriorating since the breakdown in the summer of a peace agreement between the government and pro-Taleban cleric Maulana Fazlullah.
The Swat valley, Pakistan's most famous tourist destination, has been the scene of an insurgency by his followers since 2007. They want to enforce his version of Islamic Sharia law in the region.
Fighting
In tribal areas in the north-west, the military says it has used helicopter gunships and heavy artillery guns to bomb suspected militant positions.
Military spokesman Maj Murad Khan said 50 militants had been killed in clashes since Monday in Dara Adam Khel, close to the city of Peshawar.
He said troops had retaken control of the Kohat tunnel, a key road leading out of Peshawar. One Pakistani soldier was also killed in the clashes.
The army says another 10 militants have been killed in clashes in Bajaur region near the Afghan border.
There is no independent confirmation of any of the army claims.
The Pakistani army is engaged in a fierce campaign against militants in Bajaur which has forced some 300,000 people to flee their homes.
Attempts by the government to negotiate with militants in areas along the border with Afghanistan appear to have failed for now, and there have been a spate of recent suicide bombings.
They include a devastating militant attack on the Islamabad Marriott hotel on Saturday which killed more than 50 people, most of them Pakistanis.
Aid appeal
The United Nations refugee agency says it has asked donors for more than $17m in aid to help about 250,000 people displaced by fighting and floods in north-western Pakistan.
"The numbers are fluid as people come and go from their villages, but we expect them to increase as the conflict intensifies," William Spindler, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in Geneva.
He said the money was needed to provide relief items like tents, blankets and plastic sheets.
This article is about a Saudi Arabian woman who drives despite the laws that do not let women drives because it is against Islamic law to let the sexes mingle. Her type of protest is against an injust law and she willingly breaks that law to prove that the law is bogus.
Saudi women's rights activists have posted on the web a video of a woman at the wheel of her car, in protest at the ban on female drivers in the kingdom.
Wajeha Huwaider talks of the injustice of the ban and calls for its abolition as she drives calmly along a highway.
She says the film was posted to mark International Women's Day. Thousands have viewed it on the YouTube website.
The last such public show of dissent was in 1990 when dozens of women were arrested for circling Riyadh in cars.
Last year, Ms Huwaider and other activists circulated a petition which was sent to King Abdullah urging him to lift the ban.
In the three-minute clip, she at first drives around a residential compound where she notes that women are allowed to drive because it is not a public road.
But about halfway through, without comment, she executes a left turn onto the main highway and proceeds to drive along it in defiance of Saudi law.
"Many women in this society are able to drive cars, and many of our male relatives don't mind us driving," she says in Arabic.
"I hope that by next year's International Woman's Day, this ban on us will be lifted," she concludes.
In February, two leading Islamic scholars said there was no reason to continue the ban.
However, many conservatives continue to resist reform, arguing it would lead to mingling of the sexes which is banned under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic Law.
The 1990 protest, coming at the height of the Gulf crisis when US forces had come to defend Saudi Arabia, was followed by a crackdown on the women drivers and their passengers.
The women were jailed for one day, their passports confiscated, and many lost their jobs.
King Abdullah has in the past said that he thought a day would eventually come when Saudi women were allowed to drive.
One person was killed and 63 were wounded in the Mozambican capital Maputo on Tuesday when police opened fire in a bid to break up violent protests against increases in bus fares, officials said.
These protests were not non violent protests. Protestors were burning cars, blocking roads, and vandalizing stores. It is easy to see why the police had to take action, but it is obviously got very out of control. The motivation for the protests was a raise in bus fares and transportation by 25%.
Feb 5, 2008
MAPUTO (AFP) — One person was killed and 63 were wounded in the Mozambican capital Maputo on Tuesday when police opened fire in a bid to break up violent protests against increases in bus fares, officials said.
Police and witnesses said protestors had trashed shops in the centre of the normally tranquil capital after cutting off access roads and that a number of cars had been set on fire.
"The latest toll shows that we have one dead and 63 wounded, including 25 who have been hit by police bullets," the health ministry said in a statement.
The violence had broken out after demonstrators blocked the main highway leading into the capital at around dawn, setting fire to tyres and then attacking property.
As the protests spread through slum areas of the capital and a number of shops were attacked, police fired bullets into the air in a bid to disperse the crowds.
However the police action failed to bring a halt to the protests which appeared instead to gather pace.
Jacinto Una, the head of police operations in the capital, said that there had been widespread damage to property through the course of the day.
"Shops, schools and businesses have been ransacked by hundreds of demonstrators," Una told AFP.
Helder Ossemane, a spokesman for the Maputo municipality, said that the protestors had effectively managed to seal off large parts of the capital.
"All roads into the centre of Maputo have been cut off, no vehicle can either come in or out, the shops, the banks, businesses are all closed," said Ossemane.
The protests against the new bus fares come after government and transport operators agreed to raise prices on certain routes by 25 percent.
This article concentrates on people protesting Israel's prime minister in South Africa. They are targeting the apartheid in Israel. It was interesting to me that a country who has gone through apartheid is protesting apartheid in another nation. I was drawn to it because i am interested in how apartheid ended in South Africa and the situation between Israel and Palestine.
https://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/project-x/2004-October/007803.html
The streets of Johanesburg, Cape Town and Durban reveberated this weekend
with cries of “Free Free Palestine�, “Isolate Apartheid Israel�, "Boycott
Israel" and “No to Bantustans�, to mark the forthcoming visit of Israeli
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to South Africa. Thousands of people took
to the streets. On Saturday’s evening news, scenes from the vibrant protests
interspersed with footage from the latest deadly Israeli raids into Gaza
left viewers questioning why the ANC government, supposedly a staunch
supporter of the Palestinian cause, could be entertaining such a key
representative of Israel.
While a stone faced Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad attempted to
downplay the visit, claiming it to be part of a strategy to encourage the
Israelis into negotiating with the Palestinian Authority (PA), the real
intentions behind the visit had begun to surface. Incidentally, the
'constructive engagement' policy of the South African state with Israel is
in essence the same policy of Thatcher and Reagan towards Apartheid Israel,
correctly maligned yesterday by today's South African government officials.
Olmert, also the Trade Minister, is the highest ranking serving Israeli to
ever visit democratic South Africa. He is due to arrive on Tuesday the 19th
of October with a delegation of 23 elite business figures. Israeli
high-tech, security and industrial exporters will visit South Africa in
order to increase Israel’s exports which already top $130 million worth of
goods (not including diamonds) every year. Olmert and his South African
counterpart Mandisi Mpahlwa are expected to cement a protection of
investment treaty during the course of the week.
In Israel, Likud spokespersons boasted openly about the visit, while in
South Africa, the government attempted to down-play the trip, embarrassed at
how bluntly they have put profit before principle. While the Israeli trade
department expects trade with South Africa to increase by 5% at the end of
the year, more important for the Israeli Apartheid state is the use of South
Africa as a launching pad for trade with the rest of the continent.
Neo-liberal politics overrides any moral considerations for trade with a
rogue state. Israel depends on trade and international acceptance just like
the Apartheid regime in South Africa did.
At the recent United Nations Conference on the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinians, held in Cape Town, John Dugard the UN Special Rapporteur on
Palestine and Jody Kollapen the Chairperson of the South African Human
Rights Commission, supported the views of the Palestine Solidarity Committee
of South Africa. This was a call for sanctions and boycotts against
Apartheid Israel. This view was vociferously challenged not only by South
African Cabinet Ministers present but also representatives of the PA
including Saeeb Erakat(sp?). Ironically, the kind of concrete support
offered by the South African state at the conclusion of the UN conference
came in the form of an agreement between the Mayor of Nablus and a
representative of the Cape Town municipality to supply pre-paid water
technology to Palestinians! This technology is condemned by South African
social movements as a form water privatisation burdening poor communities
even further.
Last month, at a gathering of anti-war and anti-corporate globalisation
movements in Beirut, close to 260 organisations from 41 countries
unanimously endorsed a boycott campaign against Apartheid Israel. Recently,
the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN) agreed to support the many
churches, universities and trade unions in the West that are increasingly
calling for a divestment campaign modelled on the popular boycott of
apartheid South Africa. APJN said it would press leaders of the 75 million
Anglicans and Episcopalians worldwide to impose sanctions on Israel after an
eight-day visit to the occupied territories. In July, the general assembly
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States which has 3 million members,
voted overwhelmingly for a boycott of Israel.
Following the South African government’s very laudable submission to the
International Court of Justice on the Apartheid Wall, the government should
follow through by leading an international sanctions campaign against
Apartheid Israel, the kind of campaign that the ANC promoted during the
darkest days of Apartheid in South Africa. Further trade and relations with
Israel marks an important turning point in the strategy of the ANC, which
smacks of hypocrisy and double talk given its previous strong support for
the Palestinian cause. It is squandering the moral high ground earned by the
people through great sacrifice. Yet, most dangerously, it gives legitimacy
to the so called “peace� plans of Sharon. These “peace� plans – the
disengagement and creation of a prison state in the Gaza Strip while
carrying out further extermination of the Palestinian people and the
annexation of their remaining lands in the West Bank, is a declaration of
war and imperialism that makes Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s appear
moderate.
Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s legal advisor, stated in Haaretz last week that “the
significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process
… in a legitimate manner.� Keeping the status quo enables further
colonialism. It enables the Apartheid Wall to be completed, stealing just
under half of the land left in the West Bank. It serves to further the
number of assassinations and murders which already total 3600 since the
start of the second Intifada. It seeks to give credence and acceptance to a
state which has destroyed over 7000 Palestinian homes in the last four
years.
For those of us in solidarity movements with Palestinians our task becomes
easier to define, albeit, more challenging than ever to implement. It is up
to us to initiate from the grassroots level an international campaign to
isolate and boycott Israel. We have received numerous messages of support
from grassroots Palestinian organisations to oppose Olmert's visit. It is in
line with these calls from organisations in Palestine that we must begin the
task to isolate Apartheid Israel – economically, culturally, academically
and morally.
In South Africa, the most ardent supporters of Palestinian liberation are
the new social movements such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum, the Landless
Peoples' Movement, Anti-Eviction groups and Jubilee. The leadership of the
South African Communist Party (SACP) and COSATU in alliance with the ANC
while rhetorically supporting the Palestinian struggle, stop short of active
involvement in solidarity. This does not reflect the rank-and-file of these
organisations who relate extremely warmly to the Palestinian solidarity
movement. Fundamentally, when our own governments gives into the logic of
neo-liberalism and the market over a peoples struggle for freedom and
justice, it is up to us to speak out and find spaces in the quest for
democracy, peace and social justice. A meeting with the Deputy Foreign
Affairs Ministry obtained this afternoon. It is highly unlikely that the
state will rescind the invitation to Olmert. An invitation we are now told
that was issued three years ago by the then Trade and Industry Minister,
Alec Erwin, also an executive member of the SACP. The protests continue and
in an encouraging sign the Campaigns Co-ordinator of COSATU’s strongest
region has indicated that they might join the protests.
Post your entries on the Middle East by Weds, Sept 24th.
This article outlines the struggle so-called shack dwellers are going through in Durban. Here, they have been promised housing by the government, only to have that promise broken. They have now resorted to protesting in attempts to gain what they feel has been unjustly withheld from them. As with many non-violent protests, the group is seeking what was initially negotiated for, but ultimately withheld through empty promises.
Copyright Taylor & Francis Ltd. Nov 2007
Talk to us ... not about us.
- Abahlali T-shirt
If as a theoretician, one's ears are attuned to new impulses from the workers, new "categories" will be created, a new way of thinking, a step forward in philosophic cognition.
-Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom
"We are on our own": the birth of a new movement
The struggle that started in Kennedy Road was the beginning of a new era.
- S'bu Zikode
On 19 March 2005,1 in a scene reminiscent of the anti-apartheid struggle, 750 Black shackdwellers barricaded a major ring road in Durban, fighting the police for four hours. The shackdwellers had been waiting patiently for Nelson Mandela's historic 1994 election promise of housing to be realized. The houses were to be built on a nearby piece of land, but under the pressure of real estate and commercial development, the promise was broken. Instead of housing, people found themselves facing bulldozers as well as removal 12 miles outside the city (a ten-dollar cab ride), far from work opportunities, schools, and hospitals. Not unlike the apartheid practice of treating people as "surplus population," the politics of market forces had put into relief the human reality of post-apartheid South Africa and all its broken promises.
Most of the Kennedy Road informal settlement is not "on" Kennedy Road, but is accessible through numerous paths that crisscross the hills. The people there are desperately poor. Forgotten in "booming" post-apartheid South Africa, they live without basic services like sanitation, water or electricity in shacks dug into the side of the hills and built with advertising boards, corrugated iron, and mud, their temporary shelter having become more or less permanent. For a long time, there wasn't even garbage pickup,2 even though the perimeter wall of the Bisasar Road dump (the largest in Africa) abuts the settlement where many make a living sifting through the detritus, collecting cardboard, plastic or metal to sell to recyclers in the "informal economy."
Kennedy Road itself is on the Clare Estate, a mainly Indian middleand upper-middle class residential area that is experiencing, like much of urban South Africa, sky-rocketing real estate prices. In the interstices of the estate - in the valleys and along riverbanks and against the municipal dump - there are eight different settlements, each with different histories and organization. Whereas the Kennedy Road settlement has a radically democratic political culture that took years to develop, other settlements have different forms of government, some based on political patronage.3 Each settlement is configured by different material realities, often limited by physical space, size, and geography, which limit the possibility of constructing such things as common meeting spaces necessary to popular democracy. But, despite these constraints, looking down from the hilltops, there is something special about the area. The real estate developers understand it,4 and it is not lost on the shackdwellers either.5
On 19 March 2005, despite Mandela's promise, the developers moved in. Seeing their Promised Land being leveled, the shackdwellers acted, blockading Umgeni Road with burning tires and mattresses and bringing traffic and businesses to a halt.6 The police, taken by surprise, called for support. They attacked with dogs and punched protestors. Four hours later, 14 of the 750 people from Kennedy Road informal settlement in the Clare Estate, Durban, were arrested, including two school-going teenagers. Two days later, on 21 March - "Human Rights Day" (in 1960, this was the day when apartheid police in Sharpeville fired on a crowd of demonstrators, killing 61) - 1,200 people demonstrated, demanding that the local police release the 14 or arrest the whole community. The people themselves had finally begun to press the state to be accountable; they had begun to self-consciously mobilize for their own rights.
For more than a decade, the people's anger had been steadily rising. Many had given up hope of formal employment to follow their "entrepreneurial" aspirations (collecting cardboard, plastic or metal from the stinking dump, gardening or cleaning for residents on the Clare estate), as the World Bank suggests, in the "informal economy." They accepted that "delivery" would be slow and that they had to take responsibility for their own welfare. But, as one shackdweller aptly put it, they had finally grown "tired of living and walking in shit."7
So, on that March day, the people from the Kennedy Road settlement organized quickly and staged their protest. They revolted because they felt betrayed. And although they might not have seen it in these terms, their action took the form of a social movement. They saw themselves on their own against the local government, the police, business, the rich, the media, and the courts.8 Characteristically, they did not wait for the media or for professional activists to arrive. They already had a democratic decision-making body, the Kennedy Road Development Committee, whose participatory meetings and social demands quickly caught the imagination of adjacent communities. Indeed, at the welcome-home party for the arrested, the chair of the Kennedy Road Development Committee, S'bu Zikode, who would become the chair of the shackdwellers' movement, affirmed the actions of the crowd in a memorable speech: "The first Nelson Mandela was Jesus Christ. The second was Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. The third Nelson Mandela is the poor people of the world."9 The resonance was clear. The poor weren't Christs, but Christ was the first Mandela, the first liberator, who articulated a new heaven on earth. Mandela is Christ reborn, grounding liberation firmly on South African soil, his long imprisonment during apartheid a metaphor for the nation, just as his release is identified with the birth of a new South Africa. Yet the failure of the historical Mandela, the leader, to liberate South Africa was now demanding the birth of a new Mandela: the poor themselves. After many promises, all of them broken, they saw through the empty rhetoric of the local authorities. Enough was enough - sekwanele, sekwanele! - truth emanated from their own experiences: "the poors"10 had become the "reality of the nation,"11 declaring the shackdwellers' movement a university where they "think their own struggles" and "are not poor in mind."12 Subtly critiquing Mandela's leadership, the poor were taking issues into their own hands, seeing themselves as the force and reason of their own liberation; they had become their own Mandelas.
Unfreedom in the dawn of freedom
Our brothers say we born free because we born after Freedom... As teenagers we are saying there is no freedom in our life.
- Pinky Zulu
Thus, even if they had not heard the term "social movement," the shackdwellers had become a "social movement" by virtue of their selforganization and by developing their own linkages with other shackdwellers. For it was the universality of the Kennedy Road shackdwellers' experience and demands that was immediately understood by neighboring settlements. The development of such horizontal links among shack settlements suggested a new kind of movement in the making. By May 2005, the people from Kennedy Road and five other shack settlements (as well as residents from local municipal flats) organized a march of over 3,000 people. With banners expressing their collective will ("We Want our Land") and homegrown political education ("The University of Kennedy Road"13), the marchers presented a memorandum of ten demands that had been drawn up through a series of meetings and community discussions. Written by the shackdwellers and flatdwellers after careful discussion, this memorandum, which included the need for housing, jobs, sanitation, medical care, education, and safety from police brutality and environmental toxins, became a people's charter1 - one that referred not only to the 900,000 shackdwellers in Durban, but to the poor across South Africa, where an estimated 2.4 million households live in shacks:15
We, the people of Ward 25, loyal citizens of the Republic of South Africa, unite behind the following demands:
** For too long have our communities survived in substandard and informal housing, and for too long have we been promised land, only to be betrayed. Therefore, we demand adequate land and housing to live in dignity.
** Our communities are ravaged by poverty, and we demand that the government create the jobs that we so desperately need. Therefore, we demand the creation of well-paying and dignified jobs.
** In addition to providing substandard housing, the council charges rents way in excess of our communities' ability to pay. Therefore, we demand the writing-off of all rental arrears.
** The government treats us with contempt, believing that because we are not rich, we have not earned their respect. Therefore, we demand participation in genuinely democratic processes of consultation and citizenship.
** Our communities are affected by crime, police racism, and environmental hazards. Therefore, we demand safe and secure environments in which we can work, play and live without intimidation from the authorities.
** Many in our communities suffer from illness, and the scourge of HIV/AIDS affects us all. Therefore, we demand well-resourced and staffed health facilities.
** Our young people are the future of our community, yet they have very few choices. Therefore, we demand attention to the needs of our communities' youth.
** The council charges unaffordable rates in our flats. Therefore, we demand lower rates in flat buildings.
** We are entitled to decent social services in our communities. Therefore we demand these services, including proper sanitation, a community garden for our poor, and free education to our communities' orphans. Finally, for his failure to deliver these needs to his constituents, and for putting local business interests ahead of those of the poor, we therefore demand that Councilor Yacoob Baig, a career-politician since apartheid, submit his resignation.
The march ended at the offices of the local ANC councilor, and here, the marchers declared that if Baig did not resign, they, his constituents, would declare Ward 25 councilor-less. They brought along a coffin to act out Baig's political death.16 The point obviously is clear, but what is also worth noting is the marchers' self-consciousness as both a class pitted against the interest of property and a collective pressing the government to not only deliver on its promises, but to include them in its deliberations. The marchers, in other words, were selfconsciously challenging the elite character of the local government and by implication the class character of the "elite transition."17
Some months later the shackdwellers' movement, Abahlali base-Mjondolo (AbM),18 was launched following a meeting of 12 settlements at Kennedy Road.19 Consistently ignored by the local council and often treated as criminal and lied to, shackdwellers across Durban began to join the movement. "The only language they understand is getting us into the street" proclaimed Zikode, and throughout the following year, mass marches and demonstrations brought the plight of the shackdwellers to local, national and even international attention with stories being featured in The Economist and other international and local media, including a full-page story in the New York Times. With few resources and on a quick learning curve, the movement has been able to not only represent itself but also to respond to misrepresentations in the media.
It soon became clear that the shackdwellers weren't going away, and daily demonstrations and actions in all of South Africa's major cities began occurring alongside Abahlali's growing reputation and media presence.20 President Mbeki's response was to call for them to stop. "These are the things the youth used to do in the struggle against apartheid" and were no longer applicable, he declared, reminding the country that "we must stop this business of people going into the street to demonstrate about lack of delivery."21
But there is continuity between this current struggle and the struggles against apartheid. Acknowledged even by Mandela and the ANC in 1993, it was widely believed that the end of apartheid would see the development of the shantytown.22 The shackdwellers' conditions were viewed as a consequence of apartheid.23
In fact, South Africa has always been a country of extremes, of rich and poor, and developments in the South African economy have always been articulated in the context of global capitalism. According to the "Washington Consensus" of the early 1990s, for example, the end of apartheid, which was helped along by a goodly kick from multinational corporations (and the World Bank), was reduced to an elite political transition. Co-opting some of the best brains of the struggle, while transforming the formal movements into structures of governance, the ANC promised that the legacies of apartheid would be addressed.24 Yet the ANC's policies and practices never matched the rhetorical promises. At first this was put down to the politics of transition especially at the local government level. But a real shift came in 1996 when, trading on its credibility as "the" liberation movement (not to mention Mandela's own charisma), the ANC tightened its hold over its internal opposition and, without discussion, shifted its economic discourse from the neo-Keynesian Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) to the trickle-down market liberalization of Growth and Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) and a range of neoliberal economic policies including budget cuts, privatization and trade liberalization.25 The privatization and commercialization of municipal services that it encouraged have deprived millions of people of housing, electricity and water. Though subject to international pressures, the direct authors of this "homegrown" structural adjustment were the new Black and old white elites. 6
The main beneficiaries of GEAR have been South Africa's banks and multinationals, now taxed less than they were under apartheid. This includes the white elite as well as, most famously, thousands of Black dollar millionaires.27 Today the South African economy is more integrated into the global economy than at any time in its history, and post-apartheid South Africa quickly moved to a neoliberal economic model to encourage capitalist global investment and the further privatization and liberalization of the economy including the corporatization of basic services such as water.
The Black working class, especially the poor, have been the losers. Ten years of GEAR have seen the rise, not decline, of inequality, with the number of people living in shacks increased by one million and more than 40% of the economically active population unemployed. Despite promises of basic rights, 10 million have been disconnected from water and electricity and 2 million have been evicted from their homes.
After 1994, the ANC attempted to rein in demands from below through a discourse of "sacrifice" and moderation. Deep cuts in budgets for social services and healthcare have been exacerbated by denial about the magnitude of HIV/AIDS on the part of senior government officials and President Mbeki himself. Couched in the rhetoric of anti-imperialism, the denialism28 in fact recapitulates apartheid notions of public health. With GEAR, serious discussion of the social and economic consequences of years of colonialism and apartheid has given way to a neoliberal discourse about the poor, who are represented as "undifferentiated, unwilling carriers of social diseases" in other words, as morally corrupt and behaviorally undisciplined.29
The new South African constitution declares that "everyone has the right to adequate housing" and that the state must take measures to progressively realize this right. The post-apartheid government embarked on a massive new housing program, but the houses became smaller, cheaper, and shoddier - "rush job houses" as many residents call them, much worse than some of the older apartheid township housing - and they were beginning to fall apart. Moreover most of these one-room toilet-sized houses had been built far from the urban centers and were thus economically non-viable for many people for whom living close to economic opportunities, as well as to educational opportunities for their children, are vital. In this context, a shack in the city was a much better option. Thus when the eThekwini Municipality's plan (which includes metro Durban) for a "city without slums" is described as moving shackdwellers "to the periphery,"30 it is correctly understood by the shackdwellers as the return of the apartheid policy of removing "black spots."31 Once again Black people were being "pushed out of the city and dumped in the rural ghettoes."32
Shantytowns have continued to grow. They have become recognized settlements, and the local government plans for housing cannot keep up. Even the practice of providing electricity connections to shackdwellers who could afford a fairly steep deposit was stopped in 2001, and other promises of toilets and taps have remained unrealized. The realities of daily life - the lack of water, the problems of sewage, the lack of electricity, and the danger of fires - create dismal situations. Shantel Vachani, arguing in the Sunday Tribune that deaths from shack fires are a direct result of the municipality's non-electrification policy, declares, "One would have to ask what those living in informal settlements during Apartheid, supporting the ANC government throughout, have gained from years of struggle ... How many Mhlengi Khumalo and Zithulele [Dhlomo] cases [a 1-year-old and a 70-year-old killed by shack fires at Kennedy Road] must occur before justice is served?"33
The class character of the situation is plain. Access to "sufficient water" is guaranteed in the South African constitution, but the increasing price of water has seen water consumption drop. In the shacks, the situation is worse because lack of access results in deplorable conditions: a few taps and toilets serving thousands of people. It is not simply that those in the shacks can't afford sufficient water and electricity - some can - but shacks burn because there is insufficient water and no electricity, and yet fire engines are not dispatched when fires do start. As S'bu Zikode puts it, "We have seen that when the wild forests and plantations of the rich are on fire there are often large helicopters with hundreds of tons of water to extinguish the fires. But when our shacks are on fire the helicopters and ambulances are nowhere to be found ... Helicopters only come for us when we march. The state comes for us when we try to say what we think."34
The booming economy has magnified the threat to shackdwellers. What was marginal land is now becoming prime real estate. Local housing officials are simply the paid hacks of the developers (schooled in the bootstrap discourse of World Bank seminars) insisting that the shackdwellers have just got to understand that it is far too expensive to build in the city and that new developments would create economic "opportunities" on the city's margins. As each of South Africa's big cities - Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town - vies to become "world class," namely, a city without shantytowns, the government discourse about "informal settlements" has becoming increasingly reactionary: as the Africana philosopher-activist, Frantz Fanon, had described in The Wretched of the Earth 45 years ago, the existence and growth of shantytowns is seen as a sign of a constitutional depravity that must be eradicated. Sounding much like the colonial public health official of the early twentieth century, who had spoken of "the odors of the native quarters ... the hordes, the stink, the swarming, the seething,"35 the post-apartheid government views the growth of shantytowns as "unacceptable," using terms typically applied to lifethreatening epidemics, such as "eradication."3
"Eradication" refers, at one at the same time, to the necessity of psychosocial segregation from the threat of contagion, and to economic segregation as a protection of property value. Eradication, as Marie Huchzermeyer points out, aligns with the government's "continued fixation with orderly and segregated development in South African cities" (my emphasis). Fanon famously described the division of the colonial city between the European quarter (full of light and space) and the "native town" (hungry and airless). The post-apartheid city, similarly divided between the well-lit gated communities, with their gardens and paved roads, and the crowded settlements, with no amenities, expresses with brutal clarity the exploitative character of post-apartheid society.37
Twelve years after the birth of a new South Africa generated by the first full and free election on 21 April 1994,5000 South African shackdwellers from the 14 informal settlements that had joined Abahlali the preceding year came out not to celebrate freedom, but mourn "urtfreedom day." How can "we celebrate freedom when we only hear tales of freedom or see people's lives changed for the better in other parts of the country, but never in our communities?" S'bu Zikode asked, questioning, in effect, the state of freedom in the whole of the country. "How can a community of 5,000 people celebrate when it is expected to make do with six taps?"38 Indeed, how could the country celebrate? And what can be done so the country can celebrate?
Who is S'bu Zikode?
I started to see S'bu Zikode and I thought, "this is man who knows what he is talking about, I can fight [together] with this guy" ... S'bu opened our eyes.
- AntonZamisa
Government officials, politicians and intellectuals ... have no idea what they are talking about. They are too high to really feel what we feel.
-S'bu Zikode
The president of the shackdwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, is a 30-year-old former gas station worker, S'bu Zikode.39 A father of four who has lived in the shacks for over 10 years, he is a former boy scout from a small rural town who gained distinction at school but had no money for university. In 1993 he came to Durban and rented a shack in Kennedy Road. He got a job at a gas station and was able to attend the University at Durban-Westville for a semester during the very short period of reduced student fees after the end of apartheid.40 In 2001 he was elected chair of the Kennedy Road Development Committee and before that the chair of the Clare Estate Slum Clearance Project. He speaks of having tried "so-called diplomacy" and recounts how he approached high-profile members of the ruling party and tried to make deals about access to basic human necessities. Now he says it was "all in vain."41
Since 2005, Zikode has gained national prominence, appearing on TV shows, on radio, and in the national and local print media, with his words being reprinted in pop-culture magazines with a combined circulation of 5 million.42 S'bu Zikode might be the Abahlali philosopher - indeed, he articulates the struggle as "thought on the ground, running" - but he has rigorously resisted calls to run for local government or be the single spokesperson of the movement. He maintains that the problems are more systemic43 and sees himself only as the people's servant, elected on their behalf and subject to recall. Inviting Zikode to speak at one or another workshop, NGOs are often shocked to be told that the movement will first discuss whether or not to attend the workshop and then, if they decide to attend, will send an elected representative or representatives. This is no one-man show.
Nevertheless, Zikode has developed a knack of talking over the head of the government to the whole country, and his message is a challenge to the nation. He reminds people what the struggle has been about in the most profound and basic terms.
In response to the shackdwellers' threat not to vote in the 2005 local election, ANC politicians accused Abahlali of being a "Third Force." The charge was picked up in the popular press and gained a life of its own. The accusation is as outrageous as it is threatening since it associates the shackdwellers' movement with the murderous apartheid-sponsored violence of the early 1990s. But Zikode didn't deny it. Instead, he cleverly turned it around, linking the struggle against apartheid not only to the struggle for basic necessities, but also to the post-apartheid government's indifference to life in the shacks: "Government officials, politicians and intellectuals who speak about the Third Force have no idea what they are talking about. They are too high to really feel what we feel." Quite literally, high up in their offices, they couldn't see the people "down here" - physically, conceptually, experientially - and quite possibly the reality was that the Third Force was something the politicians could not understand: "We are driven by the Third Force, the suffering of the poor. Our betrayers are the second Force. The First Force was our struggle against apartheid. The Third Force will stop when the Fourth Force comes. The Fourth Force is land, housing, water, electricity, health care, education, and work."44 The "second force," the ANC, had betrayed the struggle and produced not liberation but a "third force," namely, the suffering of the poor. In this logic, the as-yet unrealized fourth force was, of course, none other than a vision of the future.
In a tradition of liberation theology,45 Zikode was quoted in an article in the Mail & Guardian on Christmas Day 2005, reminding people that there was no holiday in the shacks: "When the evening comes, it is always a challenge. The night is supposed to be for relaxing and getting rest. But not in the jondolos. People stay awake worrying about their lives. You must see how big the rats are that run across the babies." The point is that something had to be done. Abahlali has made its voice heard, but apart from a small grant to help clean portable toilets, little had in fact been won. Giving notice to the ANC that their vote could not be taken for granted, the shackdwellers decided to boycott the municipal elections.
Based on the equation "No land, no house, no vote," the shackdwellers' decision was not simply a critique of local government policy. It also spoke to the form and content of democracy in postapartheid South Africa, which had - following the script of the elite pact "transition to democracy" program47 - successfully become a polyarchy based on the exclusion of the voices of the masses of poor and working people and legitimized by periodic elections. Abahlali therefore declared that it was no longer going to government offices to sit on "comfortable chairs" and listen to "crooks and liars." In the future, "they must come and sit with us where we live."48
In Clare Estate, the ANC, unsure of the Indian middle-class vote, has traditionally relied on the African shackdwellers at election time. Now, though, in response to Abahlali, it had decided to substitute class for ethnic solidarity, shifting its focus to the Indian middle-class homeowners, arguing that only the ANC could save their property values from the shackdwellers who were claiming land and housing in the area.
Moreover the city officials' technicist response to the concrete problems articulated by Abahlali was almost Kafkaesque. They simply stated that they were going to develop a "business plan" to "improve delivery in an integrated manner."49 After years of being ignored, the shackdwellers weren't going to be fobbed off with such verbiage. Boycotting the vote was not taken lightly, but for the shackdwellers democracy meant much more than a periodic vote. The decision to boycott represented a real shift in thinking about the core values of post-apartheid society. For them, democracy was a moral concept that included reciprocity, caring, and inclusion. "Politics," associated with the city administration and elite-decision making, was "too high." The shackdwellers were speaking a different language that emanated from below and was grounded in the struggle of the everyday. They were concerned not with political negotiations but with principles that would emanate from an open and egalitarian moral discourse and democratic practice: "Our struggle is for moral questions, as compared to the political questions as such. It is more about justice," declares Zikode. "Is it good for shackdwellers to live in mud like pigs, as they are living? Why do I live in a cardboard house if there are people who are able to live in a decent house? So it is a moral question."
Just as the struggle against apartheid brought the vote, the shackdwellers' struggle has challenged the meaning of the vote and given a voice to the poorest of the poor: "Now the tide has turned," says Zikode, "you are hearing from the horse's mouth . . . We have come out to say this is who we are, this is where we are and this is what they want" (original emphasis).51
Thinking in the communities
It is true that if care is taken to use only a language that is understood by graduates in law and economics, you can easily prove that the masses have to be managed from above. But if you speak the language of the everyday ... then you will realize that the masses are quick to seize every shade of meaning . . . . Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you really want them to understand ... The more people understand, the more watchful they become and the more they come to realize that everything depends on them.
-Fanon
Fazel Khan [an academic at the University involved with Abahlali] has already indicated that he has seven taps and a number of toilets. He also has a vehicle to move around. Therefore he cannot be compared to a person who has nothing . . . We from Abahlali are living at the grass root level. There is no one below us . . . Some of our people are doing cleaning at this university. They also have important things to say.
-Zikode
In a paper presented at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in March 2005,52 Zikode explained that the shackdweller's conception of politics is not about political office; it is a politics of the poor in the language of the people. And participation is based on a shared experience and political practice is dependent on democratic meetings in the settlements: "Our politics is a traditional home politics which is understood very well by all the old mamas and gogos [grannies] because it affects their lives and gives them a home." It is a language which all can speak and understand and thus creates a situation which is consciously collective. In Zikode's words, "we look after each other and think about the situation and plan our fight together." Zikode's notion is a challenge to the elite politics that has characterized the post-apartheid transition and its technicist aftermath. It is not a question of empowerment, or inclusion in terms of having a seat at the policy table, but a challenge to alienation inherent in the attitudes and proposals of the housing policy experts. And it is an alienation that is a result of the elite attitude toward the poor, as well as the poor's systemic exclusion from any policy decisions made about them.53
Thus, at first, the Kennedy Road movement saw itself as a movement unto itself. It was utterly divorced from the discourses of social movements or left NGOs. A year later, in his presentation at the Centre for Civil Society, Zikode directly linked the self-activity of the shackdwellers not only to housing politics, but also to national politics:
We believe that the housing policy does not only require housing specialists, rich consultants and government. We believe that housing policy requires most importantly, the people who need the houses. But [my emphasis] we also know, as poor communities and as Shackdwellers that the broader poor have no choice but to play a role in shaping and reshaping this country into an anti-capitalist system.
And this alternative, he added, comes out of the "thinking that we do in communities."
The challenge to the academics and intellectuals in the setting of the university was quite clear; it required listening to and taking seriously the thinking done in the communities. In other words, it was about challenging the preconceived idea of who does the thinking and where it is done. This is not simply about entitlement or asserting ownership over a meeting; it is to appreciate that the people who know a situation should do the thinking so they can demand a "more reality based, and a more scientific and effective mode of operation."54 Rather than an application of dialectics to a situation, the demand for concreteness in the Marxian sense involves tracing the dialectic that arises out of the struggle, and is thus a challenge to theory and theoreticians.55
Historical antecedents
Thinking about "alternatives" in a radically open way is not an attribute of the ANC, which has always been an elite and often dogmatic organization, but it was certainly part of the anti-apartheid "civic" struggle and incipient trade union organizations of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Today, people come to Abahlali with different political histories and traditions. There are those who consider themselves ANC, and there are those who were part of the United Democratic Front and other anti-apartheid organizations during the late apartheid period, and there are those with no political identification. Yet these traditions had little resonance at the birth of the Kennedy Road movement. Even though they supported the ANC,56 the language of struggle still used by the ANC to legitimate its policies had no resonance with life in the settlements. What was important instead was the autonomous democratic culture that had developed there, and it is indeed this that remains central as the movement has grown and incorporated and re-appropriated other struggle languages, even anti-capitalist discourses. And as Abahlali has developed, its discontinuity with the earlier struggle has morphed into a sense of continuity with the earlier struggle's unfinished character. As Sibusiso Mzimela put it, "The struggle against apartheid has been a little achieved . . . That's why we're still in the struggle, to make sure things are done right. We're still on the road; we're still . . . struggling."58
Ashwin Desai caught one expression of this new post-apartheid identity in his book, We are the Poors,59 about the housing struggle at Chatsworth, Durban that took place in the late 1990s. The title of the book came from a response by an "elderly aunty," Girlie Amod, to an ethnic slur by a local ANC councilor. Amod's declaration, "we are not Indians, we are the poors," which was immediately echoed "we are not Africans, we are the poors," was not simply a announcement that class trumped ethnicity but a critique of elite multiculturalism, as well as post-apartheid ethnic politics, and a new statement of consciousness where the very localized and marginalized struggles for survival of poor people were beginning to have national reverberations. It was not the poor as the object of sociological study, but the poors as a self-identification - perhaps also with new biblical undertones: the poors shall inherit the world.
Though the Chatsworth movement petered out, it was a turning point that was caught by Desai. The shackdwellers had no knowledge of the Chatsworth struggles when they began their own struggle, but the rapid growth of the shackdwellers' movement indicates that Girlie Amod's pronouncement was no mere local phrase lost in the day-to-day struggle for survival. Indeed, the concreteness of this new self-consciousness is also expressed by Abahlali's expansion beyond the shack settlements to include formal housing estates and street traders among its members.60 Abahlali now also has a good number of Indian members.
The laziness of the intellectuals?
It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness ... will give rise to tragic mishaps.
-Fanon
Labor produces marvels for the rich ... it produces palaces, but hovels for the worker ... The worker feels himself to be freely active only in his animal functions - eating drinking and procreating, or at most also in his dwelling and personal adornment - while in his human functions he is reduced to an animal.
-Marx
The shantytown sanctions the native's biological decision to invade the enemy fortress.
- Fanon
Shackdwellers' revolts are often considered as necessarily spontaneous, fragmented, and disorganized. According to some Marxists, shackdwellers are individualistic and reactionary, living in a world of scarcity, a Hobbesian "natural" world of all against all, and their revolts are highly combustive, energetic, violent and short.61
Because shackdwellers are poor, they spend an inordinate amount of time taking care of "animal" needs, which many, who don't count the number of taps in their house, take for granted. Consequently, it is argued that there is no time for building organizations. The point is not to primitivize or romanticize shack life: certainly, in the settlements, there are thieves and charlatans, alcoholism and rape;62 there are those who struggle and those who are tired; there are those who stay and those who leave. In other words, the "informal communities" of the shacks often take on a formal life of their own; they have become formal structures that stay up for years, and life and life's struggles are much like those in any other poor working-class community. But from these generalizations, it is difficult to see how a common clarity can emerge and how a shackdwellers' organization has developed in and around Durban.
Mike Davis's popular Planet of Slums is one of many narratives that paint a depressing account of the exponential growth of informal settlements supposedly devoid of human subjectivity. Those who live in the slums are uniformly defined as either a "lumpen" or reactionary, massproduced by an economics of survival. What lies behind Davis's position is his theoretical claim that the slum is the solution, "warehousing the twenty-first century's surplus humanity,"63 where life is a social Darwinian struggle of the survival of the fittest and a "self-consuming violence." While we might debate whether this warehousing allows for the development of a social community or only produces a violent struggle of all against all for the scraps, there should be no doubt that the "surplus population" - many of those who live in the "informal" settlements, whether they work in the formal economy or not is very much part of the working class.64 But Davis doubts that such a diverse dispossessed population has access to "the culture of collective labor or large scale class struggle." Indeed in Davis's "apocalyptic anti-urbanism" there are no progressive forces capable of challenging the social order. As Tom Angotti argues, Davis's fixation on a small group of conservative NGOs blinds him "to the large grassroots networks of active, militant, community-based organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America."65
If Davis's theoretical pessimism is built on a narrow conception of class struggle,66 Slavoj Zizek's theoretical, perhaps romantic, optimism is based on another series of generalizations.67 Zizek argues that the slum dwellers like Marx's proletariat are free in a double sense; they have nothing and they have a degree of autonomy outside the state. Yet he celebrates, rather than investigates, the contradictory conditions of this "autonomy." For Marx, the proletariat's freedom is ironic and negative. They are free to starve, or sell their labor power "freely." The slumdwellers are autonomous in this sense too, since they are also products of the absolute law of capitalist accumulation, the increasing concentration of wealth at one pole and of misery, agony, and brutality at another. The burgeoning migration to urban areas is part of the same process, the production of an industrial reserve army forced to rely on its wits for day-to-day survival in the "informal economy." Thus the growing number of shackdwellers and urban slumdwellers can be considered a product of the double processes of primitive accumulation and concentration and centralization of capital - inclusion and exclusion.68
Davis's idea of warehousing and Zizek's notion of autonomy are rooted in privileging this exclusionary moment. The logical end of Marx's "absolute law" is that the unemployed army wrecks capitalism. For Marx, the conscious, subjective side of the equation is produced by the increasing socialization of labor and the cooperative form of the labor process. Zizek's argument gestures to Marx's absolute law, but in place of Marx's cooperative form, he contends that being thrown into this situation "they [the slumdwellers] have to invent some mode of being together." Framed this way, perhaps we can schematically think about autonomy in two ways: a negative autonomy with the need to set up settlements outside the gaze of the state, and a positive autonomy, which, in defiance of the state, can blossom within these interstitial spaces and include the development of systems of governance based on collective democratic practices. Either way, the life-affirming69 actions find a resonance with the democratic character of contemporary autonomous social movements around the world,70 which are in principle open to all, encouraging the participation of marginalized people and the articulation of needs from below.71
To be sure, many squatter settlements develop under the radar in marginal spaces and thus beyond the gaze of the authorities. These settlements develop by necessity and over time become permanent, with established working rules. And one cannot be cavalier about necessity. Indeed, the existence of a settlement does not guarantee the development of democratic self-governing structures. Yet, at the same time, autonomy from the state is not necessarily a threat to the state's legitimacy, as Zizek might think. Since the shack settlements are illegal occupations, their continued existence depends on remaining subterranean and effectively outside the state. Thus, while it is important to stress that such autonomous practices develop out of necessity, in dire situations, it is also precisely in these autonomous spaces that both potentially radical and reactionary social and cultural practices, as well as various systems of governance, can develop and are contested.73
Still, insofar as autonomy is contingent on a settlement's marginalization, Zizek's conception of the settlement's freedom from the state may seem like freedom only from a distance, from on "high," where shackdwellers remain an abstraction, willfully ignored by the state. Indeed the shackdwellers' movement is neither a struggle to remain marginalized nor a struggle for wholesale inclusion. Their struggle is potentially risky because it endangers an element of their vital autonomy, that of being beyond the gaze of the state.74 Once shackdwellers make demands on the state, they become subject not only to the state's administration, but also to its increasing scrutiny. Since services have not been delivered, nor promises honored, the shackdwellers' movement has experienced the state's force, but only negatively. Once the movement used extra-parliamentary means to pressure the state - mass mobilizations, the courts, the media, etc - the movement became subject to the state's scrutiny and violence. And now, carrying out its threat to boycott the local election has resulted in the further political banishment and criminalization of Abahlali. At the same time, however, such actions/self-actions have allowed the shackdwellers to move from being "on their own" to becoming a political movement, challenging political "business as usual". In short, they have developed political autonomy; they have become a grassroots poor people's organization based on transparent democratic principles that demand such principles from the state as well.
As a consciously organized democratic material struggle for toilets, taps, and running water, the movement is an attempt to extend control over day-to-day life in the shacks. But the content of the demands is inseparable from their form. They don't simply want things to be administered from above, nor do they want political power, which would subject them to such administrative power from above. They are struggling not merely for "delivery" but for a vision of a different kind of politics.75
One theoretical problem is navigating the culture of the day-to-day and the development of politically conscious individuals in democratic organization over time. Post-apartheid social movements are often considered "popcorn" movements, spontaneous eruptions that quickly organize and tap into resources from NGOs and other organizations. But as they erupt quickly, they also the off quickly. So while they are celebrated by the far-left for having qualities of autonomy, they are criticized by the orthodox left for not being explicitly socialist and for being led by lumpenproletarian elements, rather than by what they consider the working class.76
Abahlali has suffered from this critique, as well as from the ANC's charges that it represents a counter-revolutionary "third force." But Abahlali has proved to be more than a popcorn movement. Where other movements die off after the first wave of collective euphoria wanes and difficulties emerge, Abahlali has created a democratic organization and weathered a storm of attacks. It has vigilantly insisted not only that the voices of the poor be heard but that the poor be respected as thinking and actional human beings. This has helped engender a profoundly democratic spirit in the Abahali branches and settlements. Despite all the maneuverings against it, the attempts at division, the criminalization and smearing of the movement as a third force, a counter-revolutionary force, and so on, Abahlali has now existed for more than two years and has grown in stature and in numbers. It is clearly a movement whose time has come. And my argument here is that the importance of shackdwellers as a challenge to the post-apartheid elite, local government functionaries, NGO paternalism, as well as the authoritarians in the shantytowns, is based on their self-organization.
So, what is the meaning of the shackdwellers' movement?
As mentioned, the movement began with an understanding that the shackdwellers were on their own. Fragmented, alienated, and cut off, they have discovered a tremendous solidarity among themselves, across Durban and beyond. They have discovered a larger struggle, seen footage of shantytown struggles in Haiti, Turkey, and Latin America, and spoken with activists and slumdwellers across the country, the African continent, and in Europe. They are still on their own, but it is also understood as positively constructive; their "autonomy" is grounded in a belief in the idea that change will come from their own actions, that they are their own agent of liberation. The shackdwellers' struggle is not simply a fight for inclusion, but a struggle to change the terms of inclusion.77 And Abahlali has developed a culture of democracy that has spread among the settlements; it has made democratic governance a condition of settlement affiliation, thus proving the shackdwellers' ability to decide policies over their future and to govern themselves.
Yet, as I have also been suggesting, the situation is ambiguous. Abahlali demands services and insists on being subject to no one. It wants taps and police protection, but it also understands that the police will continue to harass it. In short, it wants to democratize the state itself and change the meaning of politics on its own terms.
For the shackdwellers' movement is built on the reason of the poor who, as Fanon puts it, "cannot conceive of life otherwise than in the form of a battle against exploitation, misery, and hunger"; it is through this struggle that a fighting culture and principle emerge. The shackdwellers' idea of politics is thus not focused on the state, which, with its bureaucratic and technicist language and administrative mentality, acts to depoliticize politics.78 By encouraging their own and other poor people's voices - voices currently silenced in the official politics of South Africa - to speak, to be heard, to be part of the discussion, they have not only opened up new spaces for alternative political thinking,79 but have also affirmed their raison-d'etre.
The declaration that "we are human beings" is echoed in the Abahlali shackdwellers' outrage at the politicians who ignore their plight. This is not simply a technical issue about the redistribution of resources (though it includes that); it is a most concrete reflection on being human, about the fact that human beings should live in homes fit for human beings. The shackdwellers don't only demand things they don't only want redistribution - they also demand recognition.80 They stand for a different kind of politics, one in which all the excluded and poor in South Africa will be included. Their demand for recognition goes beyond the liberal tradition of "inclusion" in a political or legal system; it is based on a simple premise: the people who live in the shacks are the most knowledgeable about them. They take seriously the freedom won in the struggles against apartheid, and they want this freedom to be truly equal. While fighting for what is guaranteed by the South African constitution is an important strategy,81 what is at stake is the need to address deep-rooted structures of economic inequality that are legacies of apartheid and colonialism. In that sense the demand for "redistribution" is a real and urgent one, but it is moreover a critique of elite-driven politics, be that right-wing, top down technocracy or "left wing technocraticism,"82 NGO paternalism or vanguardism.83 The shackdwellers are stakeholders in housing policy and seek to be an essential part of decision-making.
No longer on their own: a movement whose time has come
The people stagnate deplorably in unbearable poverty; slowly they awaken to the unutterable treason of their leaders.
- Fanon
Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs.
- Marx
The emergence of the shackdwellers' movement has not been simply a product of mechanical forces. The movement appears spontaneous, local, and specific, but in fact has been long thought about and expresses something much more universal. What allowed the Kennedy Road actions to develop from a demonstration into a mass movement was the democratic organization that had already existed. In contrast to other shackdweller revolts occurring at the same time, the revolt at Kennedy Road was a product of an organized community that was able, for example, to support those who were arrested and thus to articulate the beginnings of a new movement. The shackdwellers' movement is also unlike the movements against eviction (such as in Chatsworth and in the Western Cape) because they were not fighting to defend what they had, but for what they should have - indeed what had been promised to them (which goes to explain the moral dimension of their argument). Indeed the Kennedy Road settlement's initial demand that the council not renege on its promises did not even threaten the interests of commercial banks. What made them effective was the settlement's degree of autonomy, which allowed them the space to develop a culture of democracy.
Of course, the movement is defined by more than its "founding'' event, but the founding event has now become a story oft retold. 4 Indeed, that event is the nodal point, but here I am interested in how it has become a moment, philosophically speaking - how the movement has transcended the particular event. The movement cannot be explained by issues of resource mobilization or the aid of outside forces or even the event's material success. What was expressed through the settlement's self-mobilization was its insistence on open meetings where all could speak and hash out issues, coupled with the straightforwardness and moral suasion of their demands. The rest was word-of-mouth and personal communication, which, by the end of the year, had engendered a new organization, Abahlali base-Mjondolo. And if Abahlali's will to growth (it now represents 30,000 people and has members in almost 40 settlements) is tempered, it is only because it stresses the importance of its principle. Each shack settlement that joins, each new branch that forms, has to follow the democratic principles of Abahlali. This means that each political action requires a number of meetings (and meeting of subcommittees) as well as communication between settlements. Press releases are written, discussed, and distributed. Each settlement and branch has its own autonomous committees that then send delegates to Abahlali meetings.85 The Abahlali meetings rotate between all the affiliated settlements and are usually attended by about 30-40 elected representatives from the various committees and are open to all residents from the local settlements.86 It is worth noting that though the democratic culture of the organization has spread across the settlements, it doesn't always overcome authoritarianism. Even where settlements have strong Abahlali activists it has often been difficult to get beyond the armed authoritarianism of "leaders" who trade votes for private deals with the state.
Governed on such a grassroots democratic basis, with meetings open to all adults (regardless of age, gender,87 ethnicity, origin, and length of time in residence), each settlement has at least one weekly meeting, and representatives from each of the settlements elected each week meet as Abahlali baseMjondolo every Saturday. Every day there are a number of meetings of various subcommittees. The meetings are very formal, with decisions arrived at by consensus and with an emphasis on the inclusive process of "listening to others' ideas" and "being together."88
Thus the movement has remained very suspicious of outsiders who try to speak for it or take over. It has come to understand who are its real friends and enemies. At its birth, three activist academics at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, who believed that the poor should speak for themselves, helped put the shackdwellers in touch with lawyers and typed-up press releases. These people became trusted through their acts of support and connectivity.
When Fanon wrote in the Wretched that intellectuals needed to put themselves in the school of the people, he had in mind a grounding of new concepts in what Zikode calls "thinking that is done in the communities." This thinking, which emerges from experience, is at once pragmatic and critical. Ideas and formulas repeated at meeting help generate new ways of knowing in the communities. In the case of Abahlali, the movement's intellectuals and its leaders are truly organic to it. They live in the settlements, and this goes a long way to overcome the separation of intellectuals from the masses that preoccupied Fanon. The shackdwellers' movement has recognized this and demands that university and NGO activists work with them rather than speak about or for them. Yet it is when activist academics make such a commitment, they run up against university administrations and state security forces. This is exactly what has happened at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. All three of the academics who worked closely with Abahlali in the first year of the struggle came under enormous pressure from the university, resulting in two of them leaving and the third fighting to keep his job.89 This should not come as a surprise since the university's mission is grounded in the idea of becoming an exclusive world-class public institution, which means, of course, looking to Northern donors for legitimation. The thinking and action of the shackdwellers is most definitely excluded from such lofty plans. Hence the praxis of academics who work with Abahlali is seen as a threat to its worldclass, elite, goals.90
Richard Pithouse, a philosopher by training who taught at the University of Durban Westville in the late 1990s before becoming a research fellow at the Centre for Civil Society, has played an important part in the development of Abahlali. Since there have been absurd accusations that he is the white man behind the movement,91 one needs to be careful that in reaction to such provocations the actual role of this committed middle-class activist is not understated. It is crucial to avoid the pitfalls of social movement "resource mobilization" literature that overstates the role of "outsiders." Such a position is exemplified by the vanguardist left but also among paternalistic liberals and leads (especially in the South African situation) to racist and classist thinking that poor and marginalized people can't organize and think for themselves. The situation is complex and complicated and I am not going to be able to do it justice here, but since the issue is important it must be addressed.
For Fanon, the intellectual who enrolls in the "school of the people" - marvelously articulated on the banners at marches, as the "University Of Kennedy Road" or the "University of Abahlali" does not come empty-handed. Fanon's point is that to appreciate the creativity of the wretched of the earth does not mean transferring the responsibility for the working out of principles and concepts onto the backs of the people. Indeed, intellectuals from outside must come to the school having cleared their heads of conceptions of the "backwardness" of the masses. But this does not mean that they must come with an empty head. Indeed, this would be an expression of their bad faith. Conscious of their own thinking, they bring ideas, concepts, and learning that can aid the people's own self-understanding and thereby in a sense work to make themselves redundant. This is exactly where the problematic begins. The danger is underestimating the role of outside activists who can put their expertise to the service of the people. Pithouse himself insisted on this Fanonian position: that the militant's task is to overcome the spirit of discouragement marginal people feel92 and to help them build confidence through discussions that explore viable modes of resistance. Having worked with and written about social movements in post-apartheid South Africa,93 Pithouse brought a practical knowledge of the kind of movements that had been successful and those which had not. Turning the anthropological gaze on its head, he became an informant on how to engage with the state, how to express opposition, and how to navigate the donor/ NGO terrain.94 But he stresses that while he was an active participant in the discussions that shaped Abahlali baseMjondolo, he was one of many, each of whom bought particular experiences and skills to the table. Thus, following Fanon, he, together with Raj Patel and Fazel Khan, put himself in the school of the people. His actions exemplify those of Fanon's committed intellectual, who uses knowledge snatched from the elite university to help the "wretched's" selfgovernment. From the perspective of the institutional elite university, this is truly incendiary, since universities (accredited through technical language and designed in Fanon's terms to "cheat the people"95) consider this knowledge part of their intellectual property and are not particularly happy when researchers share their knowledge with poor people who will use it to challenge the establishment, which includes the university itself. For these universities, knowledge, and therefore power, flow the other way: rather than sharing knowledge with the subalterns to empower them, the researchers' role is to bring back the knowledge snatched from the subalterns to the university to reinforce its walls, building them ever higher.
The point, in other words, is not to praise Abahlali but to engage with it. Fanon argues that one of the most important challenges facing the nation after independence is to overcome the "spirit of discouragement" and promote confidence in the masses of their own self-understanding. The challenge, as Zikode has insistently pointed out, is to take the thinking of the poor seriously. This is the starting point to working out the "new concepts" that Fanon calls for in his conclusion to The Wretched of the Earth.
Zikode's challenge to radical academics to bring "our university" (of Abahlali baseMjondolo) to "your university" (e.g., UKZN) reflects the importance the movement puts on the power of thought and on theory that elucidates the "objective situation." As Marx put it, "minds are always connected by invisible threads with the body of the people,"96 and the role of practice-based theory is not just to develop solidarity but to bring about a meeting of the minds. This idea, articulated also by Fanon, was taken seriously by the three activists who initially started working with the Kennedy Road movement.
Abahlali's deputy president, Philani Zungu, understands the class politics and simple materiality of the university's actions against sympathetic academics in a series of rhetorical questions: "Why are we not allowed to work with academics at the university? Why are academics at the university not allowed to work with the poor? The answer is clear. This democracy is not for us. We must stay silent so that this truth can be kept hidden. This democracy is for the rich who will build and then enjoy themselves at uShaka, King Senzagakhona Stadium, and King Shaka Airport. We will only go to these places to protect and clean up for the rich." Zungu understands that the University's actions against academics who work with the poor is not a conspiracy, but the result of what Marx called the hallmark of class society, the division between mental and manual labor. Indeed Zungu adds, "Fazel Khan, a sociologist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), is facing charges for speaking to the media ... With other academics, academics who are already gone from the University, he has spoken to the poor instead of for the poor. He has worked with the poor instead of with the rich in the name of the poor."97
The birth of the movement resulted in a nuancing of attitudes. Voices are being heard that were once silent, and voices of the poor are being heard in spaces where they do not usually speak, such as newspapers, radio, and television, on the internet98 and in academic journals. The feelings of isolation and struggling alone have been offset by concrete experiences and new connections. Abahlali developed because other shack settlements saw an affinity with the Kennedy Road struggle, and through this development, the Kennedy Road movement made connections that allowed them access to people across the city and country. A struggle that began locally, with people seeing the councilor as the major problem, is now seeing a more systematic problem. And there has been a radical mutation of ideas. In May 2005, the shackdwellers' experiences of working in and living next to a middle- and upper-class Indian community on the Clare Estate could have easily led to the belief that the source of suffering was directly linked to Indian anti-African racism. Yet, by September 2005, shackdwellers were collecting hard-earned cash to pay for a taxi to support people in the predominantly Indian working class suburb of Bayview.99 Over time some NGOs and other individuals have given practical support, but Abahlali is not dependent on any external funds. In fact, from the first day, the wealth of the movement has been measured by the energy, commitment, and enthusiasm of its members and its self-organization. Still, Abahlali remains particularly concerned about its ability to maintain political autonomy within the democratic structure of the organization. "It's quite interesting because sometimes we are aware that these organisations have got money but they don't have constituents, you know, people," says Zikode, "Abahlali is the poor struggle - struggle of the poor - therefore money will not tempt us ... we cannot therefore be bought."100 In other words, Abahlali is aware of the potentially disastrous effects of external funding on a poor people's movement, that it may not only broker a movement but also potentially destroy it.
Again, Zikode reminds us that human beings do not live on bread alone. They are poor, he says, they know that, and they might be poor in life, but they are not poor in mind.101 One cannot but appreciate the dignity and "the nobility which burst forth from these toil-worn" people, for it is among these "wretched" shackdwellers that the practical and ethical challenge to post-apartheid South Africa has most profoundly emerged.102
Another interesting example of government restricting freedom of speech, Egypt outlaws demonstrating/protesting near religious buildings and centers.
By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO, Apr 23 (IPS) - Egypt's parliament ratified legislation earlier this month outlawing public demonstrations in or near religious establishments. While government officials say the move is meant to preserve the inviolability of Egypt's mosques and churches, critics say the new law aims to further stifle freedom of expression.
"The goal of the new law is obvious: to stop people from holding political protests," Mohammed Abdel Qaddous, prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement and head of the Freedoms Committee at the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate told IPS. "The move is entirely in keeping with the behaviour of a police state."
In the first week of April, parliament -- which is dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party -- approved a bill banning public demonstrations in or near formal places of worship. Initially tabled by the Ministry of Religious Endowments, the law was approved by the (upper) Shura Council in February, after which it was referred to the national assembly for ratification.
Under the terms of the law, expected to come into effect next month, those found guilty of organising demonstrations in or near religious establishments -- mosques or churches -- will be liable to jail terms of up to one year. Anyone found participating in such demonstrations can face up to six months in prison.
According to Religious Endowments Minister Hamdi Zaqzouq, the law aims to preserve the sanctity of religious establishments, which have often been used as venues for political protest. "Freedom of expression should not be exploited to justify the violation of the sanctity of places of worship," Zaqzouq was quoted as saying in the state press.
But while supporters of the law say it will be applied to all religious buildings in Egypt, some critics say the new legislation specifically targets Cairo's high-profile al-Azhar mosque and university.
"The law specifically aims to pre-empt public demonstrations at al-Azhar," said Abdel Qaddous. "It represents a continuation of the government's longstanding policy of police domination over Egypt's mosques."
First established in the 10th century, al-Azhar University is today considered the foremost institution for Islamic jurisprudence in the Sunni Muslim world. Along with its reputation for religious scholarship, however, the university has frequently served as a venue for political protest.
Within the last several years, numerous demonstrations have been held at al-Azhar -- usually after Friday prayers -- by the Muslim Brotherhood, secular opposition parties and pro-democracy activists. It has been the scene of protest over a range of issues, including unpopular government policies, U.S. and Israeli violence in the region, police torture and soaring food prices.
Abdel Qaddous emphasised the significant role played by al-Azhar in the development of Egyptian political life over the course of the last century.
"From the 1919 revolution to recent protests against the Israeli siege of Gaza, al-Azhar has been the source of numerous political demonstrations throughout Egypt's modern history up to the present," said Abdel Qaddous.
As recently as Apr. 16, thousands of demonstrators gathered at al-Azhar to protest stiff jail sentences recently handed down to Muslim Brotherhood leaders by a military court.
Naguib Gabriel, head of the Cairo-based Egyptian Union for Human Rights, and former judge, agreed that the law's overriding purpose was to stifle popular dissent.
"This legislation aims to diminish our freedoms and silence the political opposition," Gabriel told IPS. He went on to note that the law lacked constitutional legitimacy "because the right to peaceful protest is guaranteed by both Egyptian law and the national charter."
According to Gabriel, however, the new legislation is not intended to foil public protests at al-Azhar, but rather at Egypt's churches and cathedrals.
"The law is meant to thwart demonstrations at churches by Coptic Christians," he said. "The Muslim Brotherhood can hold demonstrations in the streets or at universities -- the Christians only have the churches to rally to."
Although less frequent than the protests seen at al-Azhar, churches, too, have occasionally served as rallying points for popular protest.
In late 2004, massive demonstrations by Coptic Christians were held at Cairo's Orthodox Cathedral after rumours of forced conversion of Christians to Islam. After four days of angry protests, the confrontation only ended after Coptic authorities received government assurances that their grievances would be addressed.
"When the Copts want to express their anger over particular issues of concern, they resort to using churches," explained Gabriel.
Coptic Christians -- Egypt's oldest and largest Christian denomination -- are estimated at roughly 10 percent of the population, although the figure is widely disputed. The rest of the population is almost exclusively Sunni Muslim.
Gabriel said he intends to appeal against the new law before Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court, the country's highest judicial authority. "I am planning to challenge the law once it comes into effect next month," he said. "Discussions are ongoing among several local human rights groups that are also planning to endorse the legal appeal."
Abdel Qaddous, for his part, says political protests at al-Azhar will persist, regardless of the new legislation.
"If we feel the need to express ourselves by way of popular protest, we will demonstrate at the al-Azhar -- law or no law," he said. "The popular will, in the end, will prove stronger than any legislation." (END/2008)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42094
I came across this article and thought it was interesting enough to share with everyone. I really want to watch a rally squad in action.
Somewhere around here, a box of books contains an old text titled "Overcoming Opposition."
The books came from a retiring friend, a long-time corporate public relations practition-er, who never had the privilege of facing down dissent with assistance from the U.S. Secret Service plus state and local police.
It must be quite helpful to utilize law enforcement to keep dissenting people out of sight and their discouraging words out of hearing range. The methods for this approach to issues management are found in a document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in pursuit of a federal suit alleging that the Bush White House staff, as a matter of policy, excluded potential dissenters from public events and kept them out of the sight of media attending events.
The ACLU charges that a former White House staff member "enact(ed) a policy that unlawfully excluded individuals perceived to be critical of the administration from public events where President Bush was present."
The ACLU obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice a copy of the "Presidential Advance Manual" prepared by the Office of Presidential Advance in October 2002. The document is marked "Sensitive--Do Not Copy." Much of the document was redacted, leaving the ACLU with sections covering attendance issues and potential protests. ACLU posted this version of the manual on its Web site.
Like all conscientious communications managers, the manual's authors addressed the importance of making a good appearance and controlling the message.
The manual called for issuing two categories of tickets. One type of ticket would be given to local dignitaries and "used to highlight a group involved in the theme of event." These people would sit close to the stage, maybe even behind the president's podium, so they must come from "groups extremely supportive of the Administration."
Not just supportive, extremely supportive.
As for the general seating area, ticket distribution should exceed available seating by 15 to 20 percent "in order to ensure that the event is full and there are no empty seats or areas."
The manual recommended extreme care be used to weed out protesters and their tools of dissent. It suggested that volunteers man the doors to the meeting room "to form the crowd into lines, check for signs or protesters and to remove the stubs on official tickets."
Volunteers also were to be responsible for keeping "homemade signs" out of the event. An ACLU press release said people attending one Bush appearance in LaCrosse, Wisc., "had to unbutton their shirts before they could get inside" to prove they were not wearing protest t-shirts.
"Always be prepared for demonstrators, even if the local organization tells you that there will not be any," page 33 of the manual advised. "It is the responsibility of the Lead Advance to have in place an effective plan for dealing with demonstrators.
"People who are obviously going to try to disrupt the event can be denied entrance at least to the VIP area between the stage and the main camera platform ... it is important to have your volunteers at a checkpoint before the Magnetometers in order to stop a demonstrator from getting into the event. Look for signs that they may be carrying, and, if need be, have volunteers check for folded cloth signs that demonstrators may be bringing to the event."
The organizer of the presidential event was directed to, "Always check with local police to inquire of any demonstration permits issued prior to a visit."
If there may be protesters planning to visit the president, the organizer should, "First, as always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route."
The advance organizer is charged with determining whether to tolerate or stifle protesters.
"If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and that they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the President, or has potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrator's effect.... If the demonstrators appear to be a security threat, notify the Secret Service immediately. If demonstrators appear likely to cause only a political disruption, it is the advance person's responsibility to take appropriate action."
What is the appropriate action? Asymmetrical speech.
Remember those efforts to make sure no one enters the presidential event with a protest sign or shirt? Well, the manual's response to dissent is to unleash "rally squads" equipped with signs and banners to shield protesters from the media.
"The formation of 'rally squads' is a common way to prepare for demonstrators by countering their message. This tactic involves utilizing small groups of volunteers to spread favorable messages using large hand-held signs, placards or perhaps a long sheet banner, and placing them in strategic areas around the site.
"The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protesters (USA! USA! USA!). As a last resort, security should remove demonstrators from the event site. The rally squads can include, but are not limited to, college/young Republican organizations, local athletic teams and fraternities/sororities."
Larger events called for numerous rally squads staged around the auditorium, "and at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems.... Rally squads should be dispatched to surround and drown out demonstrators immediately."
Do not, however, touch a demonstrator, the manual directed users.
"Most often, the demonstrators want a physical confrontation. Do not fall into their trap! Also, do not do anything or say anything that might result in physical harm to the demonstrators."
The ACLU alleges, however, that the presidential advance teams did arrest and remove people suspected of potential for dissent.
The ACLU has filed federal lawsuits on behalf of people who were arrested at a presidential appearance in West Virginia and removed from an appearance in Denver.
Jeff and Nicole Rank were arrested in 2004 after entering the West Virginia state capitol and removing outer garments to display t-shirts that had the "no" slash symbol written over the word "Bush." The ACLU alleges that White House staff members ordered them removed from the room when they refused to cover the shirts. The two were removed in handcuffs, taken to jail and charged with trespassing. The ACLU stated that, "City officials later apologized for their part in the arrest when they realized they'd been used as political operatives by the White House."
In 2005, Alex Young and Leslie Weise were removed from a Denver town hall meeting after someone told event staff members that they had arrived in a car bearing a "No More Blood for Off" bumper sticker.
The ACLU is suing Gregory Jenkins, identified as the former director of the White House Office of Presidential Advance, for enacting the policies which limited attendance at taxpayer-funded events. An official of the ACLU charged that Jenkins' policies were applied to "cleanse" events of dissent "to make the president look popular on television."
According to the manual's index, pages not provided to the ACLU included sections about motorcade procedures, flag etiquette, "Press Advance," "Backstage and 'The Announce.'"
In 2003, the ACLU of Eastern Missouri filed a federal lawsuit after protesters at two Bush visits to St. Louis had been herded into "designated protest zones." U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Limbaugh declined to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the practice at an upcoming Bush visit after representatives of the U.S. Attorney and St. Louis city counselor agreed the practice would not be followed at that visit.
Stoff, Rick. "Overwhelming the opposition--with executive privilege.(Ad/PR). ." St. Louis Journalism Review. 37.298 (August 2007): 12(2).
Post your entry on Southern Africa by 5pm on Mon Sept 22nd.
In this article members of the majority party in Poland, including the deputy education minister, have been advocating for the teaching of creationism and calling evolution a lie. Members of the party have been protested against for various reasons since it came into office, but with this recent act it has pushed more intellectuals into protesting against parts of their government's opinion. This is an issue that could still reemerge here.
Almut Graebsch
Deputy education minister calls evolution a 'lie'.
Fifty leading scientists in Poland have signed an open letter in protest against an aggressive anti-evolution campaign launched by the League of Polish Families (LPR), the ultra-right-wing coalition partner in the conservative Polish government.
"The theory of evolution is a lie," Miros aw Orzechowski, Poland's deputy education minister, told the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza on 14 October. "It is an error we have legalized as a common truth."
The LPR entered the ruling coalition in May 2006. Its leader, Roman Giertych, is also known to favour creationist views. These, as well as his openly homophobic, anti-Semitic and nationalistic opinions, have sparked student demonstrations in Warsaw since he took the minister of education job in May.
Giertych's father, Maciej Giertych, is an LPR member in the European Parliament and is lobbying for obligatory inclusion of creationism in Polish biology curricula. Maciej, who holds a PhD in tree physiology from the University of Toronto, Canada, claims darwinian evolution is refuted by scientific evidence.
Orzechowski's comments have rattled Poland's science community. Researchers are concerned that the LPR campaign could infiltrate biology teaching in schools.
Maciej ylicz, a senior researcher at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw, says he was "shocked" by the remarks. "We really did not expect a creationist movement to emerge in Poland."
"It is a catastrophe," adds Bartosz Borczyk, who is completing a PhD in zoology at the University of Wroclaw and wrote to Nature about the issue. "People could easily get the impression that there is a controversy about evolution among scientists."
Micha Sewery ski, Poland's minister of science, has criticized the LPR's position. "There is no need for a discussion," he told Nature. "Scientific evidence is clear and the opinion of a minority will not change teaching in schools."
Members of the Polish Academy of Sciences protested against the LPR campaign in an open letter that was published in several Polish newspapers on 17 and 18 October. ylicz, who signed the letter, says he hopes the quick response will avert damage to Polish science and education. "However, the point that really requires further discussion is not evolution, but how a minister can say such stupid things."
Neither Roman nor Maciej Giertych, nor Orzechowski, responded to Nature's request for comment.
This article address protests in mid-2007 to Israeli Priminster Ehud Olmert's handling of the Lebanonese War the year before. Although the article discusses the protests very little, it does discuss the reasons behind it. Showing that political inquires can spark mass protest and mass protest can focus further political scrutiny.
The Arab American News: Tens of thousands urge Olmert to quit over Lebanon war report
Dearborn, Mich.: May 5-May 11, 2007. Vol. 23, Iss. 1108; pg. 9, 1 pgs
TEL AVIV - Tens of thousands of Israelis called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign late Thursday in the first mass street protest since a government inquiry blasted his leadership of last year's Lebanon war.
Organizers said about 100,000 people, left-wing activists and rightwing settlers among them, tilled Tel Aviv's Rabin Square calling for Olmert to resign in the wake of the report that accused him of serious failure during the 34-day war.
"You serve the people, the people don't serve you." a father of a soldier killed in the conflict said from a stage in the square, a huge banner reading "Bunglers Go Home" behind him.
"Olmert quit! Olmert quit!" the. festive crowd chanted in reply, waving signs and banners calling for early elections.
"The people have lost their trust in the government and everyone in Israel should take to the streets in protest," said Viktor TaI, 46, who came from the northern town of Haifa to attend the rally.
"I hope that the tens of thousands of the people who came here will at last make them understand that they must quit," said Eliad Shraga, who heads a group advocating gcxxl governance in Israel.
The demonstration was being closely watched for an indication of whether Israelis, two-thirds of whom want Olmert to resign according to polls, are willing to take their discontent to the streets.
Earlier an Olmert aide warned that a high turnout would not push the prime minister to leave his post less than a year after officially assuming it.
"The prime minister cannot react to polls and demonstrations," TaI Silberstein, a senior advisor, told army radio.
Olmert has admitted to grave failures in the handling of the war, but has said that resigning would be irresponsible and vowed his government would work to correct the mistakes uncovered by the inquiry.
Earlier Thursday, Olmert survived his second major test since the publication of the report three days before, emerging unscathed after a special session of parliament called in the wake of the inquiry.
Despite several impassioned speeches calling on him to resign, the session closed with no attempt to push through a no-confidence vote. And so far. his 78-member coalition has stood by the premier in the 120-seat Knesset.
Benjamin Netanyahu. leader of the right-wing opposition Likud party which leads in opinion polls, said: "Our country needs new leadership. Those who failed at war cannot be those who correct the failures."
Olmert attended the session, hut did not speak, leaving Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres to defend the government.
"This government did err," Peres said. "This government was instructed by the inquiry to immediately fix what needs fixing and it is doing so ... If you made a mistake it means you acted."
On Wednesday the premier doused a rebellion within Kadima despite a call to quit by top aide Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the resignation of the chief of the party's parliamentary bloc.
Following a late-night meeting of Kadima's 29 deputies in the Knesset, Peres emerged saying Olmert had received "unprecedented support" from the MPs after only two backed Livni's call for Olmert to step down.
"He may be a failed prime minister, but he is a fairly good politician," wrote the tabloid "Maariv."
"The prospect of a putsch within Kadima's ranks has burst like a soap bubble, along with the fear of a ministerial mass desertion that could topple Olmert's government," wrote the liberal "Ha'aretz" newspaper.
The summer war killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, according to government figures.
It is widely regarded as a failure in Israel because it did not achieve its two main objectives freeing the two captured servicemen and stopping Hizbullah rocket fire.
Israeli protesters attend a rally at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv May 3, 2007. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a major challenge to his pledge to stay in power on Thursday with tens of thousands rallying in Tel Aviv to try to force him to quit over failures in last year's war in Lebanon.
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This is an alternative source of news. Chinese weapons where being shipped to Zimbabwe after a contested Presidential election via a port in South Africa. Reportedly, the South African dock workers refused to unload and transport the contents of the ship. The following is a press release from an organization that was reprinted in a newspaper. They advocate people to support the dock workers and prevent the arms from reaching Zimbabwe through use of peaceful or necessary force, including some suggestions for action.
A shipment of Chinese-manufactured weapons en route to the Zimbabwean military has been turned bach after South African dock workers defied their government and refused to unload it. South African anarchists issued the following statement (which we have edited for length) during the stand-off:
We welcome and support the decision by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union for their workers neither to unload nor transport the shipment of Chinese-made armaments destined for Zimbabwe. This is a very encouraging sign of working class solidarity and internationalism, and we hope that such actions will indeed prevent this weapons consignment from reaching its destination - the Zimbabwean Defence Force.
If the transport workers should fail, if President Robert Mugabe's friends should find a way to bypass their resistance, all who stand with the Zimbabwean people should be ready to take a stand. Should the action taken by Satawu fail to prevent the armaments from being transported across South African territory to Zimbabwe, we call on all progressive elements across the country to intervene.
On 29 March 2008, parliamentary, presidential and local elections were held in Zimbabwe. This represented the last-gasp attempt of the Movement for Democratic Change to oust the 28-year-old regime of incumbent President Robert Mugabe, after a series of contestations since 2000 had resulted in an impasse. The results of the parliamentary election show that the MDC has a narrow majority, but the results of the presidential election were unaccountably delayed - presumably to allow Mugabe's regime to reassert its authority over the masses of the people who have been brutalized and impoverished.
These facts are well known to ... those who struggle for economic, social and political justice and equality. Now, in the hour of Mugabe's ultimate betrayal, a new threat has arisen in the form of a shipment of Chinese armaments - including rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifle rounds and mortars - which, we fear with justification, will be used to forcibly suppress the democratic forces in Zimbabwe, and could lead directly to the murder of thousands of Zimbabwean people.
We are fully aware of the heroic resistance of the Zimbabwean people to racist domination and their successful defeat of the regime of Ian Smith in 1980. This resistance was both pluralistic via the guerrillas of both Zanla and Zipra, and multiracial - even if the majority of white 'Rhodesians' chose to abandon their country after independence.
But we are equally aware of the grievous injury done to the cause of the people by Mugabe's paranoia over the years - even if this paranoia was well-founded on apartheid attempts on his own life - and the dead of Matabeleland and the displaced of Operation Murambatsvina cry out for social justice. Now, with the whole world watching - and the Southern African Development Community vacillating as predicted in its usual ineffective 'engagements' - Mugabe has again stolen not only a march on the opposition, but the future of his people.
Journalists are being expelled and election observers have already fled the roost, allowing blood to flow in the streets unseen and unchecked: scanty reports now emerge of torture, murder, evictions, dispossessions and beating.
And now we have caught, red-handed, a Chinese shipment of arms to this regime, a regime that by all accounts is in terminal decline, with the highest inflation rate in the world and an elite that is already displaying the most grotesque elements of social decay imaginable.
We call on all progressive groups, organizations and individuals to physically prevent, whether peacefully or with necessary force, the shipment of arms to one of the world's most despised pariah dictatorships. This call extends to the progressive world community to do whatever they can to bring this to public attention and to prevent possible massacre. This could include: Putting pressure on South African Port Authorities not to allow the consignment to come onto land. Targeting South African, Chinese and Zimbabwean embassies and diplomatic missions with pickets, protests and other non-violent direct actions... Gathering intelligence about the whereabouts, planned route and mode of transport for the armaments, and publicizing these. Blockading these routes with an eye to preventing the armaments from reaching their destination. Blockading the South African border with Zimbabwe should the armaments reach it. Supporting and sustaining the transport workers in their refusal to unload and transport the weapons. Defending the transport workers and anyone else who faces repression as a result of their efforts to stop the weapons reaching their destination. ...
What we know: A Chinese ship owned by the parastatal Chinese Ocean Shipping Company and carrying armaments destined for Zimbabwe has anchored at Durban harbor. The shipment contains almost three million rounds of ammunitions for small arms and AK-47s, about 3,500 mortars and mortar launchers, as well as 1,500 rockets for rocket-propelled grenades, and is valued at R9.88million. The ship's cargo documentation was allegedly finalized just three days after the Zimbabwean elections.
BY ZABALAZA ANARCHIST COMMUNIST FRONT
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Recent weeks have seen a continuation of the workers' unrest in Egypt, with over 2,000 agricultural workers going on all-out strike at the end of February and 100 railway workers protesting their pay and conditions at the start of March.
Railway, agricultural workers protest and walk out
tags:
* agriculture
* Egypt
* rail
* strikes
* wildcat strikes
March 13th, 2008 by Joseph K.
Protesting Egyptian Railway Authority workers, 1/3/2008
Recent weeks have seen a continuation of the workers' unrest in Egypt, with over 2,000 agricultural workers going on all-out strike at the end of February and 100 railway workers protesting their pay and conditions at the start of March.
Agricultural workers strike & sit-in
2,200 workers and employees at the Ramsis Company for Agricultural Projects and the South Valley Company for agricultural development in Toshka went on open strike Feb 27 and staged a sit-in at the companies' management. They protested against the decision by the Construction and Development Holding Company to reduce variable wages by 20% after the Investment Minister's decision to shut down the Trade Holding Company (THC) and make the two previous companies affiliated to the Construction and Development Holding Company.
The strikers affirmed they would not go back to work even if this led to the loss of crops, unless the management backed down on its new decision and improved their situation. According to them, the current management had already decreased their wages by 20% last year. The workers mentioned that the management had sent a note to Cairo calling for the dismissal of some of the workers' leaders who were only demanding their rights.
On top of their requests was to ensure the workers (80% of the total manpower is not ensured), give them annual raises like public sector workers, and provide medical insurance for them and their families or adequate health care. They pointed out that the government had reduced the wages for highly qualified workers from LE 700 to LE 550 and paid extra-labour effort (LE 150) only to workers who had made 100% efforts.
This percentage, though, is subject to the department chief's mood, as they said, and the chief often runs the company based on the workers' clan of origin. There is an ongoing conflict between workers from the north, who take on leading posts at the company, and workers from the south, who work in agriculture. Yet, most of these workers are highly qualified or are average. Moreover, 100% effort is recognized only to those having a 100% attendance rate, with no exception for ordinary leaves and absence due to illness. A year ago basic wages were reduced by 20%.
Railway workers protest
One hundred employees of the Egyptian Railway Authority from El-Wosta, Beni Suef, protested against pay and conditions March 1. The five-hour protest, which began at 10 am in El-Wosta, was intended to draw attention to a number of demands. Railway drivers are calling for the payment of withheld housing allowances and other benefits, increased pay and health insurance, which they say are received by employees based in other areas of Egypt, but not by them.
They are also calling for better maintenance of rolling stock whose neglect poses a safety risk, according to train drivers, and demand that they be based in central Cairo, rather than the Upper Egypt governorate of Assiut. “El-Wosta is 90 km from Cairo and yet we report to Assiut, which is 300 km away – it’s illogical,� train driver Ahmed Ramadan explained.
Ramadan told Daily News Egypt that further action is planned.
“We will hold another protest on March 10 if management does not respond to our demands,� he said.
It is good to read about people fighting the income disparity in developing countries. It shows that they are working for a change amongst themselves, and proves how wrong so many people are who believe that they can't make it work on a local level.
The article can't be copied so here is the website.
Happy Reading.
www.tuniscarthage.com/index.php/200806081224/world/maghreb/unemployment-to-blame-for-north-africa-protests.html
I personally didn't have a clue about the situation in Sri Lanka. I found the governments treatment of media members to be horrible. It is a really interesting read with two articles in it.
FOCUS ON MEMBER ADVOCACY
Sri Lanka: Joint Action by IFEX Members Incites Government Action
By Sam Burton, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression/IFEX Clearing House Intern
Sri Lanka has long been considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for
practising journalists. In early 2008 this already perilous situation escalated, with the media
suffering increasing cases of intimidation – by the government itself. Commentaries published on
5 June on the Defence Ministry website called journalists critical of government action "enemies
of the state" and specifically criticised IFEX member Free Media Movement (FMM). This climate
was further pronounced by almost weekly violent incidents against the media.
In May, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and more than 45 international
organisations responded to the situation by launching the campaign, "Stop the War on Journalists
in Sri Lanka". The campaign calls for the government of Sri Lanka to honour the constitutionally
guaranteed right to freedom of expression by protecting and supporting its journalists. It
culminated in a joint letter written by IFJ and the International News Safety Institute, which was
signed by 29 IFEX members and sent to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon on 20
June.
The letter said that the Sri Lankan authorities "risk encouraging those who have used extreme
violence against journalists and other news professionals." The signatories condemned recent
violence against the media within the country, and urged Ban to "persuad[e] the government of
Sri Lanka to...immediately stop all actions which undermine the independence and safety of the
news community."
The Sri Lankan government responded directly to the joint action almost immediately. On 25
June, a presidential sub-committee of cabinet ministers was appointed to look into media
grievances, namely allegations that local journalists trying to cover the country's civil war have
been threatened and harassed. IFJ views this development as "a positive step in opening a
dialogue to resolving the dangers journalists face in Sri Lanka," but "this view is expressed with
caution."
Caution seems apt in this case: shortly after the committee was formed, a state-controlled
Sinhala newspaper published allegations that the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) sent Tamil
tigers masquerading as journalists for training in Denmark and Norway. In the wake of this
accusation, the deputy head of SLPI Namal Perera and British diplomatic employee Mahendra
Amaraweera were brutally assaulted in a kidnapping attempt on 30 June. FMM expressed
skepticism about the effectiveness of the committee given the attack, stating that members need
"to prove their commitment by resolving killings and assaults."
Since then, there have been no public statements issued by the sub-committee to indicate that it
has taken any action. FMM reports that although "all committee members except one visited the
hospital within three hours of the attack…threats against SLPI [are] continuing."
Despite this, ensuring the success of the sub-governmental committee remains the primary
objective for both local and international organisations. With this goal in mind, IFJ and several
other press freedom and human rights organisations are currently planning a series of advocacy
actions and a return international mission to Sri Lanka in the second half of 2008.
Article 2
Stop the War on Journalists in Sri Lanka says World Press Freedom Community
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More than 45 journalists' associations, press freedom and human rights organisations have voiced their concerns in the IFJ-led joint letter to the President of Sri Lanka calling for the safety of journalists from the island nation.
Addressed to Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa, President of the Socialist Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka, the letter demands an immediate change in the escalating culture of violence against journalists by government officials and members of the public.
This letter is the first of a series of actions for the ‘Stop the War on Journalists’ campaign for Sri Lanka which will culminate with world Press Freedom Day on May 3 and the release of the IFJ’s annual South Asia Press Freedom Report for 2007-2008.
A global day of action has been called for April 10, 2008. This day, which falls two days before Sri Lanka’s Sinhala and Tamil New Year celebrations, will send a message of hope and strength to the band of journalists’ organisations in Sri Lanka who have continued their fight for press freedom despite dangerous circumstances involving high risks to the personal safety of themselves and their families.
Friends and colleagues are asked to participate in the Global Day of Action on APRIL 10 by:
Sending your own letters of protest to President Rajapaksa through local Sri Lankan embassies
Sending your own letters to your government calling on their support
Displaying the "Stop the War on Journalists in Sri Lanka" image on your website, during rallies, on public display and in the press at any opportunity
“Sri Lanka has long been considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, but the situation is becoming ever more serious,� said IFJ Asia Pacific Director Jacqueline Park.
“Our colleagues in Sri Lanka need to know that the international press freedom and human rights communities stand in solidarity with them and support their tireless work.�
All journalists’ associations, media organisations and press freedom and human rights groups are invited to add their name to the joint letter as well as send their own letters to the Sri Lankan embassies in their countries on April 10 and display the campaign poster on their websites, at rallies and in the press at any opportunity.
I chose this article because I found it interesting how people in Algeria are protesting terrorist attacks in mass groups. One thing interesting about this is how they are opening themselves up as easy prey for attacks during these protests, where government officials also attend. Another interesting aspect of these protests is that they are targeting militant people who seemingly don't know what nonviolence is. They are responding to horrible acts of terrorism by being peaceful.
Algerians protest against terrorism after suicide attacks
By Reuters
Tens of thousands of Algerians took part in protests against terrorism on Sunday after two suicide bomb attacks in recent days claimed by an Al-Qaeda offshoot killed at least 52 people.
Demonstrations were held in Algeria's major cities, including the capital Algiers, where participants gathered in a sports arena, displaying banners saying "no to violence and crime".
Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem was among politicians attending the rally, where speakers denounced suicide attacks as "contrary to the values of Islam".
The latest attack occurred Saturday when a blast ripped through a naval barracks in the port town of Dellys, 70 kilometres (45 miles) east of Algiers.
Most of those killed were members of the coastguard, but the interior ministry said three civilians also died and many of the 47 wounded were also civilians.
On Thursday, 22 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when a man exploded a device in a crowd waiting to meet President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in the eastern city of Batna.
It was an apparent assassination attempt against the president, but the attacker was reportedly discovered by the crowd and set off the bomb before Bouteflika arrived.
Political parties, unions and civil society groups called for Sunday's protests with the theme: "No to terrorism. Stop instability. Don't touch my Algeria".
Islamic militants from Al-Qaeda's self-styled offshoot in north Africa have claimed credit for other recent bombings.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed itself the Al-Qaeda Movement in the Maghreb, sparking Western fears of Islamist militants gaining a toehold in north Africa from which to launch attacks in Europe and beyond.
Bouteflika went on television after Thursday's attacks to denounce the "criminals" responsible but vowed to pursue his national reconciliation policy.
That initiative aims to integrate Islamic activists who renounce violence that rocked the country after the army intervened in 1992 to cancel elections a fundamentalist party was poised to win.
About 2,000 militants have been freed from prison and the authorities say about 300 have given themselves up, earning a presidential pardon.
But in April, car bomb attacks on the government headquarters and a police station in Algiers killed 33 people and injured more than 220.
I chose this article because it involves a very interesting way of protesting peacefully. In threatening to remove their clothes, the women protesting in Nigeria exercised a common shaming gesture to stop the western oil terminal from exporting up to half a million barrels of oil a day. Instead of participating in the common violent method of taking over oil terminals, they did so in a peaceful manner and achieved more than doing so violently.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0722-03.htm
"OUR WEAPON IS our nakedness," Helen Odeworitse, a leader of 600 women who peacefully seized control of an oil terminal in Escravos, Nigeria, told the Associated Press. Odeworitse and other women held 700 western oil workers hostage and shut down a facility that exports half a million barrels of oil a day.
The unarmed women villagers, who ranged in age from 30 to 90, threatened to remove their clothes -- a traditional shaming gesture that would have humiliated and damned ChevronTexaco throughout the region.
Takeovers of oil sites are common in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Armed with machetes and guns, men routinely threaten corporate executives with kidnapping and sabotage. But the all-women protest stunned the corporation and, in the end, the women's threat worked. Rather than removing or harming the protesters, the oil company engaged in a 10-day marathon negotiation with them.
Desperation, the women later explained, is what led to their protest. Escravos is the Portuguese word for slaves and that's how these women view themselves. Despite its great oil wealth, the Niger Delta is among the poorest places in West Africa. While oil workers enjoy comfortable homes, a modern hospital and satellite television, villagers live in rusty tin-roofed shacks, without running water or electricity.
The women's demands reflected their determination to escape such grinding poverty. ChevronTexaco, they insisted, should help fund the development of the region. So, they demanded that the oil company employ 25 of their sons; install electricity and water systems in their communities; build schools, clinics and town halls; and help them build fish and chicken farms so that they can sell food to the corporation's cafeteria.
To their surprise and delight, ChevronTexaco agreed to their demands. As soon as the agreement was announced, the women -- many with babies bound to their backs -- celebrated by singing and dancing on the docks. Without harming a soul, they had forced a multinational corporation to help them transform impoverished villages into modern towns.
Dick Fligate, a ChevronTexaco executive, reportedly conceded that the protest was a wake-up call and that the corporation would have to pay greater attention to the needs of local communities. But he may change his mind. As soon as these protesters left the Escravos oil terminal, women from other villages seized four more ChevronTexaco oil facilities in southeastern Nigeria.
What is taking place in Nigeria is nothing like the anti-globalization protests westerners have watched on television. These women are local villagers who, by engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, are demanding that the wealth that lies beneath their land be shared with them.
Whether their peaceful protests will succeed is hardly assured. Nigeria, let us not forget, is what the American government calls a "strategic interest": It is the fifth-largest oil supplier to the United States.
Still, their peaceful protest proved successful and has already inspired copycat occupations. As she left the Escravos oil terminal, Anunu Uwawah, a leader of the 10-day action, reportedly exulted, "I give one piece of advice to all women in all countries: They shouldn't let any company cheat them." Clearly, some women were listening.
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No matter how you put it rape is the worst of worst things to do. This article highlights the actions that parents are taking to stop the violence in this historically war torn country.
http://news.sl/drwebsite/publish/article_20059645.shtml
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I found this to be interesting for the fact that it reminded me of the mass protests by Latin Americans in the United States who were protesting for the same reasons very recently. Refusing to work will always show the rest of the population the importance the issue for your culture or group.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2962961.stm
This article is a little different from others that i have chosen because, in this article a declaration of war was the first strategy used they didn't even consider using nonviolence. They just use threats of war. It is clear in a situation like this that there are other ways of solving a problem of destruction with more destruction.
Nigeria: Stay Off Oil Facilities, JTF Warns Militants
Vanguard (Lagos)
17 September 2008
Posted to the web 17 September 2008
Emma Arubi
The Joint Task Force (JTF) code-named Operation Restore Hope, Tuesday, warned militants to steer clear of all oil facilities or be ready to face the wrath of security outfit.
Commander of the JTF, Brig.Gen. Wuyep Rimtip warned that any further attack on oil facilities or his men would be taken to mean a declaration of war and would be so treated henceforth.
Brig. Gen Rimtip gave these warning while reacting to the spate of clashes between the militants and soldiers as well as attack on oil facilities.
According to a statement titled "Re-MEND's declaration of Oil War" and signed by the Co-ordinator, Joint Media Campaign Centre (JMCC), JTF, Effurun, Lt. Col. Rabe Abubakar, the special security outfit warned the militants on the consequences of their planned action.
"Recently, MEND purportedly declared war on oil facilities and staff of oil companies working in the Niger Delta. They should know that any, attack against any oil facilities or JTF personnel will be tantamount to declaration of war on JTF and will be matched with all ferociousness", it added.
Brig. Gen. Rimtip warned that JTF would not fold its hands and watch the senseless destruction of national economic assets adding "any attempt will be met with grave consequences"
He noted that the declaration of war on oil was capable of generating tension within the Niger Delta region but that the security outfit was closely monitoring the plans of "these unpatriotic elements", he revealed.
This article is about (WOZA) or Women of Zimbabwe Arise. It is a group of women who are joining together to take nonviolent action against the falling government and economy of Zimbabwe.This article states some of the repercussions that have been brought towards the women of the WOZA. It is a good indicator of how non violent action can make a difference and empower people to use other ways to settle situations.
Counting the cost of courage: Trauma experiences of women human rights defenders in Zimbabwe
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)
August 19, 2008
Zimbabwe is a nation in crisis, a crisis that has been on going since at least the year 2000, but probably dating from 1997, with the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar, and the exacerbation of the socio-economic crisis. The crisis began in the political sphere and has spread to the economy and all aspects of social interaction, as ill-conceived government policies have turned peoples’ lives upside down. The ability to earn a living is drastically curtailed,
basic shelter is compromised by overcrowding or deliberate destruction of housing units by government, and schooling is no longer available to many children. Bare physical survival is at risk through lack of food supplies coupled with the collapse of services, including water, sanitation and health services. Families are divided through the migration of breadwinners, and the whole of life has become a constant, debilitating struggle for the vast majority of Zimbabweans.
Any attempt by political or civic groups to press for alternative policies has been met with repression, effectively cutting off the possibility of working towards improvements in peoples’ lives. The ruling party has subverted all electoral processes since 2000, the legislative process, the law enforcement, and judicial processes in favour of its own perpetual rule, with any resistance met by force, both overt and clandestine, actual and threatened. Despite
electoral reform brokered as part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) mediation process, before the peaceful March 2008 election, a wave of violence and retribution was unleashed on citizens even before the results were announced and continued up to, and beyond, the one-candidate run-off on June 27.
In the context of the desperate situation since 2000, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) has emerged as a leading rights group calling for change. It is a social justice movement engaged in nonviolent civic action to promote renewal in a politically repressive environment. They claim that their right to freedom of expression has been stifled by unconstitutional legislation, but they aim nevertheless to keep the voice of protest alive. The members demonstrate in the streets and distribute fliers and newsletters calling for government policies which honour the civil and political rights protected in the national constitution, and the economic and social rights guaranteed under international law. They have embraced a programme of peaceful civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws. As is the fate of any other group mounting protests, the women have encountered harassment, brutality and imprisonment at the hands of state agents, who act in breach of their professional and legal obligations.
A recent example of such treatment occurred on 28 May 2008 when 14 members were arrested in Harare during a peaceful procession. After 48 hours in police custody they were taken to court where the magistrate granted bail.
The state appealed against that decision to the High Court and the group was remanded in custody for the appeal period. On 10 June, Judge Hlatshwayo allowed 12 of the accused to be released, but refused bail for two leaders, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, saying it would be ‘childish’ to grant them bail prior to the presidential run-off. The state argued that these nonviolent human rights defenders would mobilize a Kenyan-style revolt
before the 27 June election. They were eventually granted bail after 37 days in custody. This development shows a clear increase in repression of peace activists, which is a patent echo of the brutality that has been meted out to members of the political opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since March 2008.
Research on rights violations experienced by WOZA
In 2007 research was carried out to determine the nature and extent of violations perpetrated on WOZA members by state actors. It used a questionnaire administered verbally to more than 2,000 WOZA members by interviewers from among the WOZA membership. The major results have been detailed in a report released recently.1 They showed a high level of arrests, assaults, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, primarily by members of various sections of the Zimbabwe Republic Police.
One section of the questionnaire sought to document traumatic experiences of WOZA women in order to understand the basis of possible psychological and emotional disorders arising from their civic activism – ‘counting the cost of their courage’. The results of this part of the research were not included in the main report, and are rather being presented separately here.
Unrest threatens to engulf Algeria after hundreds of thousands march through the capital, Algiers, calling for an end to government repression. Algiers yesterday finally had a taste of the popular anger that has been seething in the Berger region in eastern Algeria when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital demanding social justice and an end to repression. • Friday June 15 2001 by Mark Tran
Algiers yesterday finally had a taste of the popular anger that has been seething in the Berger region in eastern Algeria when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital demanding social justice and an end to repression.
The demonstrations turned violent, when police fired live rounds at protesters. Two journalists covering the protests died when they were hit by a bus in the confusion and hundreds of people were injured.
Informal estimates put the numbers of demonstrators as high as 500,000. Many had trekked from the Berber homeland in Kabylia in trucks, cars or buses. They assembled in Algiers in the early hours of the morning before marching under a blazing sun. Most were youths, carrying slogans such as "Murderous government", "Enough of this government" and "No Forgiveness in Kabylia".
Kabylia, home to the Berbers, the original inhabitants of North Africa, is where the unrest started. On April 18, a young shepherd was killed in police custody. The incident triggered protests that have grown in scale and intensity during the past weeks. Over 80 people have died in a vicious cycle of protests and police brutality. The Berbers, who have historically resented the central government, initially took to the streets in protest at the shepherd's death, but their demands have escalated in the face of the authorities' heavy-handed tactics.
Traditional Berber discontent on the neglect of local customs and language has mushroomed into far broader resentment about economic deprivation, abuse of power, and corruption and their complaints are beginning to resonate elsewhere in the country. The government must have hoped that a quick and firm response would stamp out the protests. But it has badly miscalculated.
The protests have now spread beyond the Berber homeland, reaching this week towns to the north and south. And now Algiers has felt the fury of the protesters. Their demands will take on an international dimension next week, with protests been planned in Paris by various anti-racist movements in support of the Berbers.
So what started as Berber outrage over a death in police custody has grown into a show of people power that threatens to topple President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Elected two years ago, he came to power promising to end a dirty war between the government and Islamic militants that has left 100,000 people dead since 1992.
He succeeded to a certain extent in easing that conflict by bringing Islamists into the government, while cracking down militarily on the extremists. As long as the government had to deal with the Islamist threat, all other demands - social and political - were put on the backburner. Now that threat has receded, pent-up frustrations in this country of 30.8m, a former French colony, are erupting with a forcefulness that has rocked the regime.
Berber discontent, combined with wider economic and political dissatisfaction, has formed a volatile cocktail that could topple the current leadership. The army is composed of young officers who will be reluctant to shoot on their own kind. The regime will have to rely on its special services and police. But if they are given free rein, the ensuing violence could engulf the regime.
This is more of a scholarly article, but it talks about Algeria and the Nonviolent Muslim movement within this country. It is a good one, pretty lengthy, but worthwhile.
Recognizing the Power of Nonviolent Action
by Stephen Zunes
You probably didn’t notice, but February 20 was Nonviolent Resistance Day. One might think this would be cause for celebration by an administration committed to expanding freedom and democracy. But there weren’t any special ceremonies at the White House or resolutions in Congress. For despite all the rhetoric lauding freedom and democracy, the U.S. government has rarely supported, and has often opposed, nonviolent movements working for democratic change.
Nonviolent action campaigns have been a part of political life for millennia, challenging abuses by authorities, spearheading social reforms, and protesting militarism and discrimination. In recent years, however, there has been an increase in movements that have not only led to significant political and social reforms advancing the cause of human rights but have even toppled repressive regimes from power and forced leaders to change the very nature of their governance. In more recent decades, nonviolence has become a more deliberate tool for social change, evolving from an ad hoc strategy associated with religious or ethical principles into a reflective, even institutionalized, method of struggle.
Indeed, the past 20 years have witnessed a remarkable upsurge in nonviolent insurrections against autocratic rulers. Primarily nonviolent “people power� movements have overthrown authoritarian regimes in nearly two dozen countries over the past two and a half decades, have forced substantial reforms in even more countries, and have seriously challenged other despots.
In contrast to armed struggles, these nonviolent insurrections are movements of organized popular resistance to government authority, and they—either consciously or by necessity—eschew the use of weapons of modern warfare. Unlike conventional political movements, nonviolent campaigns usually employ tactics outside the mainstream political processes of electioneering and lobbying. Tactics may include strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, the popular contestation of public space, tax refusal, destruction of symbols of government authority (such as official identification cards), refusal to obey official orders (such as curfew restrictions), and the creation of alternative institutions for political legitimacy and social organization.
Why Nonviolence Works
Not all nonviolent pro-democracy movements have been successful, of course; several have been suppressed, as in Burma and China. What is surprising is not that some of them have failed—as have many violent insurgencies around the world—but that so many of them have succeeded.
The world is certainly no less conflictual than in past years. Yet, there have been dramatic improvements in civil and political rights over the past two decades, and nonviolent action has played a crucial role in this transition, including the downfall of dictatorships in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. There are several reasons why insurgents have turned away from armed struggle to embrace nonviolent action.
One reason is a growing awareness of the increasing costs of insurgency warfare. In a mirror image of Western national security managers, who insisted during the 1960s and 1970s that guerrilla warfare could easily be defeated (even in such cases as Algeria and Vietnam), many on the left and in the Third World created a counter-myth of the invincibility of such movements. However, technology has given status quo powers an increasing advantage in recent years. Even when an armed insurgency is victorious, large segments of the population are displaced, farms and villages are destroyed, cities and much of the nation’s infrastructure are severely damaged, the economy is wrecked, and there is widespread environmental devastation. The net result is an increasing realization that the benefits of waging an armed insurrection may not be worth the costs.
Another factor endorsing nonviolence is the tendency, once in power, for victorious armed movements against dictatorships to fail in establishing pluralistic, democratic, and independent political systems capable of supporting social and economic development and promoting human rights. Often these shortcomings result in part from counter-revolution, natural disasters, foreign intervention, trade embargoes, and other circumstances beyond a victorious popular movement’s control. However, the choice of armed struggle as a means of securing power tends to exacerbate these problems and creates troubles of its own. For one, armed struggle often promotes the ethos of a secret elite vanguard, downplaying democracy and showing less tolerance for pluralism. Often disagreements that could be resolved peaceably in nonmilitarized institutions lead to bloody factional fighting. Some countries, like Algeria and Guinea-Bissau, experienced military coups not long after armed revolutionary movements ousted colonialists. Others, like Angola and Mozambique, endured bloody civil wars.
Still another drawback of armed revolt is that maintaining a strong military generally requires greater dependence on outside benefactors for weapons. In the past this led several revolutionary governments to become reliant on the Soviet Union, which—like any major power—traditionally tied strings to its aid. Even a relatively low level of assistance during the course of an armed struggle starts a dependent relationship that is hard to break. This association can, in turn, induce elements of the old dictatorship to ally with rival major powers in an effort to overthrow the new government.
For example, having ousted the Somoza dictatorship through armed force, the popular but heavily militarized Sandinista Front—despite largely avoiding the Cuban revolution’s pitfall of sliding into a communist dictatorship—was still faced with U.S.-organized attacks by armed mercenaries. U.S. support for the Contras was justified by American policymakers on the (largely fabricated) grounds that the Sandinista military had aggressive designs on neighboring countries. In turn, the national security threat from the United States reinforced the military wing of the Sandinistas, robbing precious funds from desperately needed domestic programs and leading eventually to military conscription and counterinsurgency efforts that alienated some important segments of the population. The result of the Contra War was widespread destruction, the collapse of the Nicaraguan economy, and the Sandinistas’ eventual electoral defeat.
The poverty and injustices afflicting many Third World countries are so extensive that a successful armed movement against an authoritarian regime—even if it has strong organization, proven mobilization skills, and a coherent ideology—is not sufficient to address the pressing concerns facing a country in transition after the devastation of the revolution. As a result, there has been a growing interest in tactics that minimize the degree of dislocation in a country and maximize the chances that segments of the population can become contributing members of a post-authoritarian political order to help build a new society respectful of human rights.
The growing awareness of the power of nonviolent action stems from several phenomena. First, insurgents are increasingly convinced that armed resistance tends to upset undecided elements of the population, who then seek security in the government. When facing a violent insurgency, a government can easily justify its repression. But force used against unarmed resistance movements usually creates greater sympathy for the government’s opponents, a phenomenon that former Harvard sociologist Gene Sharp has referred to as “political jiu jitsu,� whereby an opposition movement leverages state repression to advance the movement’s ends. Second, unarmed campaigns involve far more participants, taking advantage of a popular movement’s majority support. Unarmed resistance also encourages the creation of alternative institutions, which further undermine the repressive status quo and form the basis for a new independent and democratic order.
Armed resistance often backfires by legitimizing the use of repressive tactics. Violence from the opposition is often welcomed by authoritarian governments and even encouraged through the use of agents provocateurs, because it then justifies state repression. But state violence unleashed on unarmed dissidents often triggers a turning point in nonviolent struggles. A government attack against peaceful demonstrators can be the spark that transforms periodic protests into a full-scale insurrection.
Unarmed resistance movements also tend to sow divisions within pro-government circles for a number of reasons. First, disagreements surface internally regarding how to effectively deal with the resistance, since few governments are as prepared to deal with unarmed revolts as they are to quash armed ones. Violent repression of a peaceful movement can often alter popular and elite perceptions of the legitimacy of power, which is why state officials usually use less repression against nonviolent movements. Second, some pro-government elements become less concerned about the consequences of a compromise with insurgents if their resistance is nonviolent. Unarmed movements increase the likelihood of defections and noncooperation by unmotivated police and military personnel, whereas armed revolts legitimize the role of the government’s coercive apparatus, enhancing its self-perception as the protector of civil society. The moral power of nonviolence is crucial in the ability of an opposition movement to reframe the perceptions of key parties: the public, political elites, and the military, most of whom have no difficulty supporting the use of violence against violent insurrections.
The efficacy of nonviolent resistance in dividing supporters of the status quo is apparent not just in rendering government troops less effective but also in challenging the attitudes of an entire nation and even foreign actors, as in the South African struggle against apartheid. Pictures of peaceful protesters—including whites, members of the clergy, and other “upstanding citizens�—broadcast on television worldwide lent legitimacy to anti-apartheid forces and undermined the South African government in a way that the armed rebellion was unable to do. As nonviolent resistance within the country escalated, external pressure in the form of economic sanctions and other solidarity tactics by the international community raised the costs of maintaining the apartheid system.
Due to increased global interdependence, the non-local audience for a conflict may be just as important as the immediate community. Just as Gandhi played to British citizens in Manchester and London, organizers of the civil rights movement in the U.S. South were communicating to the entire nation and especially to the Kennedy administration. Insurgency against the Soviet bloc was disseminated by television broadcasts that spread the news from country to country, legitimating local protests that no longer seemed like isolated events organized by unstable dissidents. The prominent role of the global media during the anti-Marcos “people power� movement in 1986 was instrumental in forcing the U.S. government to scale back its support of the Philippine dictator. Israeli repression of nonviolent protests by Palestinians during the 1980s had a similar effect on Americans, whose perception is significant given the role of both private citizens and the U.S. government in sustaining Israel’s military and economic infrastructure. As Rashid Khalidi observed, the Palestinians had “succeeded at last in conveying the reality of their victimization to world public opinion.�
As the pro-active ingredient in nonviolent resistance, the creation of alternative structures provides both a moral and a practical underpinning for efforts aimed at bringing about fundamental social change. Parallel structures in civil society may render state control increasingly impotent, as they did throughout Eastern Europe leading up to the events of 1989. In the Philippines, Marcos lost power not through the defeat of his troops and the storming of the Malacañang Palace but from the withdrawal of sufficient support for his authority, so the palace became the only part of the country that his troops could effectively control. On the same day that Marcos was officially sworn in for another term as president in a state ceremony, Corazon Aquino was symbolically sworn in as the people’s president. Given that most Filipinos saw Marcos’ election as fraudulent, the vast majority offered its allegiance to President Aquino rather than President Marcos. The transfer of allegiance from one source of authority and legitimacy to another is a key element of a successful nonviolent uprising.
In the course of a successful nonviolent revolution, and with adequate popular participation, political authority may be wrested from the state and invested in institutions of civil society, as these parallel institutions grow in effectiveness and legitimacy. The state may become increasingly impotent and irrelevant, as parallel nongovernmental institutions take over an increasing portion of the tasks of governing a society, providing services to the populace, and creating functional equivalents to the institutions of the state.
Nonviolent Movements Against U.S.-backed Governments
The United States has often supported repressive leaders— such as Numeiry in Sudan, Duvalier in Haiti, Marcos in the Philippines, Chun in South Korea, and Pinochet in Chile—who have attempted to crush nonviolent pro-democracy movements. Each of these U.S.-backed dictators was overthrown through nonviolent movements, though, thanks in part to a lack of U.S. support for the new democratic governments, both Sudan and Haiti slid back into authoritarian rule. And despite 33 years of U.S. support through both Republican and Democratic administrations, Suharto of Indonesia—with even more blood on his hands than Saddam Hussein—was toppled in an unarmed insurrection in 1998.
In 1980-81 during both the Carter and Reagan administrations, the Salvadoran government was able to withstand a series of general strikes thanks to a commitment from the United States to finance 80% of San Salvador’s budget. Bolstered with outside economic support, unpopular governments can often survive the near total collapse of domestic economic activity brought about through such massive noncooperation. As a result, many in the nonviolent Salvadoran struggle joined the armed insurrection.
A particularly problematic version of this stonewalling phenomenon is manifested by governments—particularly those relying on foreign support—that effectively suppress nonviolent movements without undermining their legitimacy by privatizing their repressive apparatus. This occurs when military officers and top political officials allow or encourage private vigilantes—often with the direct support of elements of the police and military—to violently suppress nonviolent movements as a means of terrorizing the general population into submission. Despite approval by key sectors of the governing apparatus, these death squads are distinct enough from the official chain of command that the government can plausibly deny responsibility. Although most nonviolent activists still blame the government, foreign supporters and some neutral sectors of the population—critical players in the success of pro-democracy movements—may accept the portrayal of the government’s leaders as moderates doing their best to curb violence and extremism on all sides.
By privatizing its repressive apparatus, an unpopular government can avoid full-scale warfare and retain some measure of legitimacy by opting instead for “low-intensity conflict (LIC),� a counterinsurgency strategy advocated by U.S. military advisers over the past few decades. This concept evolved in the late 1970s and early 1980s in El Salvador and has been utilized in counterinsurgency situations in Guatemala, Colombia, and the Philippines.
LIC advisers contend that shooting into crowds doesn’t work; it merely strengthens the opposition. Overkill can win battles but lose the war. Acknowledging that overt government repression of nonviolent, popular civilian movements is counterproductive, LIC strategy advocates other forms of neutralizing opposition forces, such as economic development programs, propaganda, and focused anti-guerrilla military campaigns. An authoritarian government is encouraged to combine repression with nominal civilian control of its administration to help convert the population to its cause. Sanitizing and training local armed forces is an integral part of restoring respectability to the autocratic government. Eschewing a shotgun approach, LIC strategy uses a scalpel to neutralize the opposition: wipe out trade union, academic, and religious leaders; identify and annihilate grassroots supporters of the opposition; limit and repress independent human rights groups. This pinpoint focus is where death squads have played an important role.
For example, while American military trainers teach responsible crowd control methods, they also encourage focused forms of violence. The now-famous secret CIA report to the Nicaraguan Contra forces advocates “the selective use of violence� by paramilitary units instead of “indiscriminate� repression as a means of “decapitating� opposition leadership.
The privatization of the repressive apparatus of an unpopular government often has a chilling effect on the prospects of successful nonviolent insurrections. One creative counter-measure involves “nonviolent intervention� by teams of international volunteers organized by Peace Brigades International (PBI) and similar groups. Growing out of the Gandhian tradition, PBI and its sister organizations have sent teams to Guatemala, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to accompany prominent nonviolent activists as unarmed bodyguards, to stand between soldiers and peaceful demonstrators, to form blockades to protect homes from destruction, and to engage in other tactics. Political leaders are eager to avoid the diplomatic fallout from international observers—particularly North Americans or Europeans—witnessing or becoming casualties of attacks by their soldiers or death squads. Leveraging this concern, these nonviolent intervention teams, despite their small numbers, have become remarkably successful deterrents to state repression.
The successes of such efforts are limited, however. For example, despite the murder by Israeli occupation forces of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American nonviolent activist protecting the home of a Palestinian physician from destruction by Israeli bulldozers in 2003, the Bush administration has continued its unconditional support for Israel’s repression in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. Indeed, within a month of her killing, Congress voted to increase U.S. aid to Israel by $1 billion. Adding insult to injury, the Democratic senators in Corrie’s home state of Washington—Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell—persist as outspoken defenders of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, have consistently defended human rights abuses by Israeli occupation forces, and have even denounced the International Court of Justice for its ruling last summer stating that Israel, like other nations, was required to abide by international humanitarian law.
Perhaps the greatest single challenge to the effectiveness of nonviolent action in the cause of human rights is the power of U.S.-backed transnational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, which can essentially determine the economic policies of newly democratic countries and hold them responsible for debts accumulated by previous dictatorships. Although nonviolent movements may be victorious in enhancing civil and political rights in a country, such movements may be unable to improve people’s social and economic rights.
For example, in the spring of 1997, when tens of thousands of Nicaraguans engaged in a general strike to protest President Arnoldo Aleman’s austerity programs, former Sandinista soldiers and former Contras left their guns at home and collaborated to set up roadblocks and engage in street protests adhering strictly to disciplined nonviolence. Faced with massive nonviolent resistance, the government relented, and the austerity measures were withdrawn. However, the United States, through the International Monetary Fund, forced the Nicaraguan government to implement the austerity plan anyway. As Alejandro Bendaña, a leading Sandinista intellectual, asked an American audience a few months later, “Will the United States allow the people of Latin America to succeed with nonviolence?�
For nonviolent action to be truly effective in the cause of democracy and human rights, it must be transnational, opposing not just the worst manifestations of institutional violence and human rights abuses but also their source, often lodged within advanced industrialized countries like the United States.
Nonviolent Movements Against Governments Opposed by the United States
During the Cold War, U.S. support for right-wing dictatorships was justified by claiming they were an important bulwark against communism, which—as a “totalitarian� system—was deemed impossible to reform from within. It was felt that military means, such as marshaling strategic alliances like NATO and armed insurgencies like the Afghan mujahedeen, were the only way left-wing dictatorships could be challenged. And yet, nonviolent movements eventually brought down entrenched communist rulers in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Mongolia. During that same period, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia broke free from the Soviet Union, also largely through the use of nonviolent resistance. With the partial exception of the Solidarity movement in Poland, however, there was little direct support from the United States.
During the 1990s, the oppressed ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo waged a massive nonviolent campaign against its Serbian oppressors using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and alternative institutions in one of the most widespread, comprehensive, and sustained nonviolent campaigns since Gandhi’s struggle for Indian independence. Tragically, the U.S. government and much of the rest of the world chose to ignore the Kosovars’ nonviolent movement. Only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged in 1998 did the world media, the Clinton administration, and other Western governments finally take notice. By waiting for the emergence of guerrilla warfare before seeking a solution, the West gave the Milosevic regime the opportunity to crack down with an iron fist. Western diplomatic efforts were too late and culminated in a NATO bombing campaign that not only killed over 500 civilians but led to a dramatic increase in Serbian repression. State violence inflamed the Kosovar movement, which became dominated by armed ultranationalists who have proven far less ready to compromise or to guarantee the rights of the Serbian minority in an autonomous Kosovo.
Less than a year later, however, the people of Serbia were able to achieve nonviolently what 11 weeks of NATO bombing could not accomplish: the ouster of their dictatorial leader, Slobodan Milosevic. This was the third major nonviolent uprising against Milosevic: the previous two failed in large part due to the refusal of the United States and other Western powers to support the democratic forces. Indeed, during the 1996 uprising, U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke successfully argued that the Clinton administration should back Milosevic—in recognition of his role in the successful peace deal in Bosnia—and not risk the instability that might result from a victory by Serbian democrats. Through first appeasement and then warfare, Washington allowed Milosevic to remain in power far longer than necessary. As the democratically elected Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica put it: “The Americans assisted Milosevic, not only when they supported him but also when they attacked him. In a way, Milosevic is an American creation.�
The success of nonviolent movements may be forcing Washington to recognize the power of peaceful resistance. Though less than European support, last fall’s U.S. economic assistance to pro-democracy groups in the Ukraine helped rectify an attempt to steal the country’s presidential election. U.S. support had a similar impact in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2003.
In most other countries, however, the United States continues to downplay internal pro-democracy movements while threatening military intervention in the name of democracy’s defense. For example, in Iran, there has been a dramatic growth in civil society institutions challenging the Iranian government’s human rights abuses. Leading Iranian pro-democracy activists have recognized that any foreign military attack on their country would have disastrous consequences to their struggle. In the February 19 issue of the British newspaper The Independent, leading Iranian human rights activist and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi observed: “Respect for human rights in any country must spring forth through the will of the people and as part of a genuine democratic process. Such respect can never be imposed by foreign military might and coercion—an approach that abounds in contradictions.� Instead, Ebadi insists that “the most effective way to promote human rights in Iran is to provide moral support and international recognition to independent human rights defenders.�
It is important, therefore, to recognize that because nonviolent movements for human rights and democracy are by their nature indigenous, home-grown phenomena, they cannot be controlled by the U.S. government. Political repression and the need for democracy in countries like Iran and Syria are quite real, but it would be naïve—particularly in light of active U.S. support for other dictatorships in the region—to believe that the Bush administration really cares about promoting freedom in the Middle East or anywhere else. As Ebadi noted, “It is hard not to see America’s focus on human rights in Iran as a cloak for its larger strategic interests.� Behind their platitudes and public pronouncements, U.S. officials recognize that the power of nonviolent action must be downplayed in order to justify massive U.S. military spending to build “an arsenal for democracy� and for U.S. military intervention overseas.
It is relatively easy to criticize U.S. military intervention as well as the hypocrisy and double standards of the Bush administration’s rhetoric championing democracy. However, to effectively support alternatives to U.S. policy, progressives should first concede that there are repressive rulers that indeed need to be challenged and should then insist that the way to lasting regime change is not by bombing and invasions but through the power of nonviolent action.
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco as well as the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at http://www.fpif.org). He is the principal editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (Blackwell, 1999) and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage, 2003) online at http://www.irc-online.org/content/books/zunes.tinderbox.php
Students took to the streets in Egypt to protest the way the nation's political system was being shaped by the leading party. The previous popular methods of protest were petitioning for the establishment of a new political party to rival that of the leading party and non-confrontation. Showing that when two methods of non-violent action fail to work, another might have better results.
As the number of street demonstrations in Egypt increases, 2005 may well turn into a year of major political upheavals, reports Gamal Essam El-Din
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Anti-government street protests, including demonstrations against the prospect of President Hosni Mubarak running for a fifth term, have in recent months become a defining feature of Egypt's political landscape. The remarkable rise in street demonstrations in the last two weeks -- which now involve university students in several cities -- is quickly becoming a thorn in the regime's side. On Tuesday some 4,000 Islamist students demonstrated at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, while thousands others demonstrated in Cairo's Helwan and Ain Shams universities, and in Kafr Al-Sheikh and Mansoura.
Abdel-Halim Qandil, editor of the Nasserist Al-Arabi newspaper, believes the demonstrations herald the coming of age of a new generation of political activists fed up with traditional opposition. "Traditionally you have to spend years petitioning for a license to form a political party only to face rejection -- possibly even detention -- in the end. And obtaining permission to hold a demonstration, well that's just pie in the sky."
This week's demonstrations followed the announcement, by Safwat El-Sherif, the ruling party's secretary-general, of a number of guidelines for reform, the latest being that there will never be a religious-based party in Egypt, a clear reference to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last Saturday the Parties' Court postponed its final verdict on the appeal filed by the Islamist-oriented Labour party until the Supreme Constitutional Court decides whether the political party law is constitutional in the first place. The Labour Party had asked the Parties' Court to revoke the Political Party Committee's 2000 decision to freeze its activities.
Magdi Hussein, Labour Party secretary-general, insisted the Parties' Court decision would have no impact on the group. "The Labour Party," he said, "is a party that derives its legitimacy more from holding street protests and serving prison terms for fighting the corruption of high-profile officials. This is more effective than joining a national dialogue in which cardboard parties sit with the ruling party and appeal to El-Sherif for political reforms."
What Hussein disparages as the cardboard opposition has recently been engaged in a series of national dialogue meetings -- 14 official opposition parties have held meetings with the NDP over the last three months. Tellingly, instead of forcing the NDP to accept an agenda of broad constitutional reforms ahead of next autumn's presidential and parliamentary elections the official opposition was invited by the NDP to join its battle against US pressure on Egypt "to lead the way" in regional democratisation.
Hassan Abu Taleb, a senior researcher with Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, believes the regime's "embarrassing" response to both domestic and foreign pressure has fuelled street opposition. Unlike official opposition parties, unofficial dissent has opted for a more confrontational strategy that has garnered a great deal of attention and support, both locally and internationally. The examples of the Ukraine and Lebanon are increasingly cited.
The broad coalition of Kifaya (Enough), or the Popular Movement for Change, has spearheaded the strategy, staging seven public protests opposing the re-nomination of President Hosni Mubarak for a fifth term. Their success has led some Western commentators to speak of a "spring for Arab democracy".
Kifaya's anti-Mubarak rallies, which raised the once unthinkable slogan "Enough to Mubarak", have encouraged other unofficial political forces to follow suit, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood. Abandoning a three-decade-old strategy of non-confrontation with the regime the Brotherhood opted to join the fray of street protests.
Some commentators cite US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's recent announcement that Islamist militancy is not as dangerous as maintaining the status quo in the Arab world as indirect US support for the Brotherhood to abandon passivity in favour of street demonstrations. This week, in an interview carried by the London-based Al-Hayat daily, El- Sherif responded to a question about "flirtation between the US [administration] and the Islamists," by describing the affair as an illicit one.
Kifaya and the Brotherhood's increasingly vociferous street opposition does not, however, come without a price. Security forces, which had been relatively lenient in recent months over unlicensed protests, blocked demonstrations on 27 and 30 March by members of Kifaya and the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and three other cities. A crack-down was also launched on the Muslim Brotherhood, with 200 of their members arrested. And this week Cairo airport officials prevented two leading Brotherhood members, Essam El-Erian and Gamal Heshmat, from leaving Egypt.
Several commentators suggest that the delay in officially naming Mubarak as the NDP's presidential candidate reflects the difficulty in which the regime finds itself faced with foreign and domestic pressure. This week El-Sherif announced that the NDP's decision regarding its presidential candidate will be announced only after May's referendum on Mubarak's proposed amendment to the constitution, leading to speculation that President Mubarak may well announce his intention not to run, only to be persuaded after the NDP stages a campaign to mobilise popular support for his candidacy.
Al-Ahram
7 - 13 April 2005
Issue No. 737
Angry protesters took to the streets today as a US airstrike early this morning near Miramshah reinforced anti-US sentiment in Pakistan. The strike, which Pakistan’s military confirmed occurred at 5:30 AM this morning, hit a residence and a former government school in a village in North Waziristan, not far from the Afghanistan border. The strike killed at least 14 people and injured 12 others.
Residents said the shuttered school had been used by militants, but the home belonged to a local tribesman with seemingly no connection to any militant groups. The owner of the home was among those killed, along with at least six women and children. This was the second US drone strike around Miramshah this week. On Monday, US drones attacked a religious school in the same area founded by a veteran mujahideen commander, killing at least 23.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Raza Gilani condemned the latest attack, and promised to raise the issue with the United States. He hoped he could convince the US “to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan,� just days after Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Kayani declared that the military would no longer allow foreign forces to operate inside the country. Gilani, however, conceded that there were limits to what the government could do. “We can take up the matter of unilateral strikes in Pakistan at diplomatic level, but cannot wage war,� he told reporters.
Tensions between the United States and Pakistan have risen in recent days over the increase in American attacks, and a reported secret directive signed by President Bush in July, which came entirely without approval from either Pakistan’s military or civilian government. The directive came to light after US ground troops attacked a village in South Waziristan last week, killing 20 civilians.
Pakistan’s coalition government is struggling to balance its commitment to “stand with the United States� in its terror war with its increasing dependence on the support of tribal area legislators. It must also contend with rising militancy in the tribal areas and the very real possibility that Wazir tribesmen will abandon a long standing peace deal, which they threatened to do yesterday if the government doesn’t put a stop to American attacks.
An MP from Pakistan’s opposition PML-N called for a special meeting of parliament to debate a response. He suggested that “Pakistan can consider pulling out completely from this war on terror�. Meanwhile, retired Pakistani General Hamid Gul cautioned “instead of solving the problem it has only exacerbated it. If those people in those areas were not part of the Taliban forces before these strikes they will be now�.
At a meeting in Sacramento, California about genetically modified crops several hundred protesters showed up to voice their disagreement about the controversial issue.
Hundreds protest at agriculture meeting
Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 23, 2003 by Kim Baca Associated Press
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Hundreds of protesters descended on city streets Sunday as agriculture officials from around the world prepared for a meeting where U.S. officials will pitch advances in genetically engineered agriculture.
Chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read "We Don't Want to Eat Their Corporate Creations," protesters swarmed the streets around the state Capitol and nearby conference center.
Demonstrators blocked traffic and overturned a trash bin near a hotel where agriculture ministers were staying, but police had made only eight arrests by late afternoon, authorities said. The reason for the arrests was not immediately clear.
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Agriculture officials from more than 100 nations are expected to attend the three-day Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, which starts Monday and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The conference convenes at a time when the debate over genetically modified foods has reached a fever pitch. The United States is demanding that the World Trade Organization force the European Union to end its ban on genetically modified food. In the process, opposition to biotechnology is galvanizing outside the United States, and the protesters say inside the country as well.
Department officials say the conference is designed to help developing countries reduce hunger and improve nutrition using advanced technology. They say biotechnology in particular can help reduce pesticide use and yield better harvests than conventional crops, helping preserve the environment and improving health.
But activists argue that biotechnology is not the antidote to the complex food problems facing developing nations. Instead, they fear the conference is an attempt by corporate farming and biotech interests to push into new markets.
"The policies they are talking about do not benefit poor people in the world, they benefit large agriculture companies," said protester Eddy Jara, a 30-year-old nutritionist from Berkeley.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman said the conference will also highlight farming methods and pest management to help developing countries cut world hunger by 2015, a goal set by agriculture secretaries at the World Food Summit last year.
More than 800 million people face chronic hunger or malnutrition, she said.
"What we're talking about is increasing food productivity in areas of the world where people are both hungry and poor," she said. "Many developing countries get 90 percent of their food from local production and there isn't any infrastructure."
The Agriculture Department has closed the conference to the public and certain events to the media. The press did not receive an agenda until the day before the conference. Department officials cited security reasons.
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I liked this article because it was not about India or Gandhi. When most people think of non-violence, they think of Gandhi and the movements in India. This one happened in Bangladesh, and it happened very recently, near the end of August! I think it is important to recognize the non-violent movements in Southern Asia outside of India.
2nd Bangladesh Humanist Forum
Date: 24th August, 2008
Venue: Bangladesh National Press Club, Dhaka.
Dhaka Declaration
2nd Bangladesh Humanist Forum urges all concerned people to act together to build an socio-economic situation in and around Bangladesh using the tools of active non-violence and non-discrimination to develop and maintain a peaceful state and genuine human coherence - in the 'Dhaka Declaration', on Sunday, 24th August 2008, Dhaka,Bangladesh.
The Bangladesh humanists and their friends announced this at the end of the day-long program, held at the National Press Club auditorium.
Image
This declaration that was expressed at the joyous crescendo following the discussions is based on the knowledge that the whole world is now standing at the threshold of anarchy and chaos. To save all of humanity, it was indicated that the ruling classes along with the political and community leaders everywhere in the world need to come forward and adopt their respective polices inhering the principles of non-violence and non-discrimination.
Eminent intellectuals, lawyers, journalists, representative of different NGOs and cultural organizations participated in the Forum; while nearly 400 members of 12 councils of the Humanist Movement in Bangladesh also took part, demonstrating a variety of different activities according to their respective Council projects.
The 'Society of Volunteers, Human Support' arranged this Forum, on behalf of the Bangladesh chapter of the International Humanist Movement.
The '2nd Bangladesh Humanist Forum' in the afternoon session organized nine discussion tables to determine the primary national conflicts. As a start, the Tables were titled as: Present Situation & Active Non-violence, Women Empowerment & Equal Rights, the Challenge of a Changing Climate & Ecology, Democracy & Good Governance, Food Security, How to have a Drug Free Youth, Health for All, Education for all, and, Enjoying Cultural Diversity.
After the Table discussions, the general opinion at the Humanist Forum was that if we want to guide our country in the right direction, we need democracy and good governance with accountability in all sectors - these minimally need to be ensured.
In addition, the Forum urged all the democratic institutions, especially the government, to work actively to handle the challenges of climate-change and a deteriorating ecology by bringing on board the ordinary citizen by disseminating practical information thus motivating the common people to think and act coherently.
Further notifications were made regarding stopping violence towards women; ensuring the health services reach out to all the needy; and guaranteeing a basic but world class standard of education for the majority.
The Forum also urged the government, NGOs and civil society to take concerted efforts in these regards.
The Forum observed that the right direction is an employment oriented education policy that can reach out to save young people from succumbing to drug addiction owing to a lack of choice and frustration.
The Forum pointed out that International Humanism supports all cultures, all communities, and gives special emphasis to indigenous ethnic groups that are discriminated against. People must be allowed to nurture and cultivate their own culture and enjoy equal rights - for indeed these people have a legitimate right to co-exist.
The Humanist Movement desires to raise all people up, of each and all cultures, on the same basis of equality, to attain the norm of a quality human life.
Peace, Force & Joy.
My main reason for choosing this article is that there is a religious aspect to it. I found it very interesting that Catholics in India have been employing non violent means to fight oppression. It is also interesting that this oppression isn't from the state, but rather the group is fighting for more protection from the state. They are also fighting violence through non violent means, the epitome of non violence.
Catholic schools in India protest
Thousands of Catholic schools are shut across India in protest against continuing anti-Christian violence in the eastern state of Orissa.
Eleven people have died after a Hindu leader was killed in the state's Kandhamal district last Saturday.
Authorities said Maoist rebels were behind the killing, but some Hindu groups have accused Christians.
Over 3000 police have been deployed but attacks on churches continue. Hundreds of Christians have fled their homes.
The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the violence as a "national disgrace".
The Pope too has condemned the violence and the Italian government has also expressed its concerns.
'More help needed'
The Catholic Bishops Conference of India - the highest body of Catholic Bishops - has announced that all Catholic schools and colleges across India would remain closed on Friday.
The organisation runs almost 25,000 schools and colleges in India.
Christian organisations also planned to hold peaceful protest rallies in various cities.
Some non-Catholic Christian schools have also closed for the day.
The Orissa state government say the situation in Kandhamal district is now under control.
But the Archbishop of Bhubaneswar, the Orissa capital, Rapheal Cheenath, says the state government must do more to help out those affected by the violence.
"They are refugees now because they have left their homes. They are living in the forests and they should be brought back," he says.
"It is the responsibility of the government that these refugees should be brought back. And also to send for force if necessary to stop this killing, to stop this burning, to stop this looting."
The BBC's Rahul Tandon in Bhubaneswar says this is a complex issue - Hindu groups have long accused Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to change their faith.
Christians say lower-caste Hindus convert willingly to escape the Hindu caste system.
As the authorities struggle to deal with the present situation, the divide between the two communities grows wider and wider, our correspondent says.
Trouble began on Saturday after Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was shot along with four others in an attack in the Kandhamal district.
Condemned
The attack has led to days of rioting between Hindu and Christian communities.
Hindu mobs have burnt down monasteries, churches and an orphanage run by Christians.
Among those killed was a Hindu woman who was working at the orphanage, in the village of Barakhama.
The violence was condemned by Pope Benedict XVI who said he was "profoundly saddened" and called for communities to try to restore "peaceful coexistence
"I firmly condemn any attack on human life," Pope Benedict told a crowd of pilgrims on Wednesday.
"I express spiritual closeness and solidarity to the brothers and sisters in faith who are being so harshly tested."
He labelled the death of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati as "deplorable".
Have you been affected by the religious violence in Orissa? Send us your comments and experiences.
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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7587319.stm
Published: 2008/08/29 08:21:21 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
This was an event that happened this time last year in Myanmar (Burma). It started out as an economic protest by students against the sudden rise of gas prices, but eventually came to involve large numbers of young Buddhist monks protesting the government’s actions. The involvement of the monks completely revitalized the protest movement. I found some of the monks’ protest methods interest, such as not accepting offerings or performing rituals for members of the military and government.
Hundreds of Buddhist monks marched through rain-washed streets for the third day in Myanmar's main city yesterday, taking the lead in monthlong protests that the military junta has so far been powerless to contain.
They prayed at the gold-spired Shwedagon Pagoda, the nation's holiest shrine, then wound through the streets of the city, Yangon, before disbanding in late afternoon and announcing that they would march again, wire services reported.
The involvement of large numbers of monks has increased the challenge to the government in a nation where the Buddhist clergy is highly revered and is the most organized group apart from the military.
The current protests began after the government raised fuel prices on Aug. 15 without warning or explanation by as much as 500 percent.
At first, former student leaders and democracy advocates took the lead. But most have been arrested or are in hiding, and the protests appeared to be waning before the monks and monasteries became involved.
''The involvement of the monks is a significant escalation,'' said David Steinberg, an expert on Myanmar at Georgetown University. ''It shows that the frustration has increased, a political frustration as well as an economic frustration.''
Protests by monks have been reported in a number of other cities over the past three days. If the monks' demonstrations continue, analysts said, the military junta will face a difficult decision over whether to crush them by force and risk a still greater public backlash.
According to reports from the scene, nearly 1,000 monks in their rust-red robes were joined yesterday by thousands of people who walked alongside them in the greatest sign of public participation since the protests began on Aug. 19.
Some onlookers offered snacks and drinks to the marchers and some bowed their heads and raised their clasped palms in a gesture of prayer, The Associated Press reported.
At least some monks were reportedly refusing to accept alms from members of the military, a refusal, known as ''turning over the rice bowl,'' that amounts to an ad-hoc gesture of excommunication. The A.P. reported that one monk at the head of the procession held a begging bowl upside down as he marched.
The Asian Human Rights Commission, an independent group based in Hong Kong, released what it said was a transcript of a public statement by monks in Yangon yesterday.
After condemning abuses of monks by the junta, the statement declares: ''The clergy boycotts the violent, mean, cruel, ruthless, pitiless kings, the great thieves who live by stealing from the national treasury. The clergy hereby also refuses donations and preaching.''
Mr. Steinberg said the demonstrations appeared to involve younger monks rather than the hierarchy of the country's religious establishment.
Monks have been at the forefront of protests in Myanmar since colonial times, before the country, then known as Burma, won independence from Britain in 1948. They were prominent, along with students, in the nationwide uprising of 1988 that was crushed by the military with the loss of thousands of lives.
In 1990, in a smaller failed uprising, thousands of monks joined demonstrations and refused to perform religious rites for soldiers or their families. Many hundreds were reportedly detained.
This time the junta has appeared reluctant to use force. The protests come at a time when Myanmar is trying to present itself to the world as a democratizing nation, with the adoption early this month of new constitutional guidelines.
The technology of rapid communication is spreading film and photographs of the demonstrations both within and outside the country, and the junta can no longer operate in the shadows as it did in the past. Two weeks ago, however, soldiers reportedly manhandled a group of protesting monks in Pakokku, near central Mandalay, and fired several shots into the air.
In response, some monks briefly kidnapped a group of officials at a monastery and vandalized buildings belonging to members of the government. The confrontation in Pakokku has apparently helped fuel the larger demonstrations that have taken place this week. They began after the government failed to offer an apology demanded by the Buddhist clergy.
Officials have mostly stood back as columns of barefoot monks paraded quickly through the streets this week. Plainclothes police officers and members of a government-backed vigilante force known as the Union Solidarity and Development Association have monitored the monks, filming and photographing them.
On Wednesday, the monks in Yangon were barred from entering the Shwedagon Pagoda and marched instead to the Sule Pagoda in the heart of the city, which they occupied briefly. On Tuesday, when 1,000 monks demonstrated in several cities, security officials reportedly used tear gas and fired warning shots to disperse monks in Sittwe, west of Yangon. According to reports received by exile groups in Thailand, some monks were beaten and arrested.
A struggle between cultures, demonstrators where preforming a sit-in and officers beat some participants leaving 2 dead in the name of independence from India.I chose this article because it was a simple nonviolent sit9n/protest and it was handled by the opposing party poorly. It was interesting to me how much force was used against the protestors. They where unarmed and in a position where they could not defend themselves from police with batons, guns and teer gas. i just think it could of been handled in a different manner.
Police in Indian-administered Kashmir say two people people have died during clashes with demonstrators calling for independence from India.
They say that protests have been held across the Kashmir valley. A curfew is in force in Shopian town where one person was shot and killed by police.
They say another man died when hit by a stray bullet in the town of Baramullah.
A separatist leader was injured in Srinagar as police used batons and tear gas to disperse the crowds.
Doctors at the district hospital in Shopian say 17 injured have been brought in for treatment.
An earlier report that one person died from their wounds in a hospital in Srinagar turned out to be untrue.
A Srinagar resident being frisked by Indian troops
People say they want 'freedom' from Indian forces
The separatist leader injured in Srinagar was Mohammed Yasin Malik. Police say his injuries were only minor.
Members of his Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front party say that he has been injured in the thigh and the police acted violently and without provocation in the protests.
Friday's protest follows two months of demonstrations throughout the summer which left at least 40 people dead.
The BBC's Altaf Hussain in Srinagar says that the anti-India protests have shut down the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley.
Our correspondent says that the protests are in response to a call by the Co-ordination Committee which has been spearheading ongoing public protests against Indian rule.
The committee comprises separatist groups and trades unions.
The demonstrations began after a period of relative quiet in the Kashmir valley.
They were initially triggered by a state government decision - later revoked - to dedicate land in the valley to a trust which administers an important Hindu shrine. They eventually developed into large-scale anti-India demonstrations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7612397.stmtransfer led to counter protests in the Hindu-majority Jammu area of Indian-administered Kashmir.
Post your entry on South Asia by 5pm on Mon, Sept 15th.
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Mar 8 (IPS) - International Women's Day began early for the activists of VÃa Campesina, a global movement of peasants and small farmers, in Brazil.
At 2:30 AM local time, 2,000 campesinas (women peasant farmers) occupied a eucalyptus plantation belonging to the Aracruz Celulosa plant, a large Brazilian paper and pulp mill in Barra do Ribeiro, 56 km from Porto Alegre in southern Brazil.
Seven hours later, the VÃa Campesina activists marched down Ipiranga Avenue in Porto Alegre, to the Catholic University, where the second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) is taking place Tuesday through Friday, organised by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Also taking part in the march were women from organisations like Brazil's movement of urban female workers.
The roughly 3,500 demonstrators found the gate to the university closed and guarded by some 20 police officers. But they made it past this first obstacle, with shouts of triumph and the Cuban song "Guajira Guantanamera" blasting out of loudspeakers mounted on a truck accompanying them.
But they did not make it into the building where government officials from some 80 countries and representatives of international bodies are meeting this week in the ICARRD.
Nevertheless, after half an hour of negotiations, a committee of 50 women was allowed into the main auditorium where the conference is taking place, chanting "Agrarian Reform, Urgent and Necessary" and "Women, United, Will Never Be Defeated".
They read out the Manifesto of Campesina Women "against all forms of violence and exploitation" suffered in Brazil, and in defence of "comprehensive agrarian reform" to secure food sovereignty, and were applauded by the delegations participating in the conference.
They also protested "authoritarian domination" by transnational corporations and the policies of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organisation, while condemning the "green deserts" created by "enormous plantations of eucalyptus, acacia and pine trees," which are grown to produce paper pulp.
The occupation of the Aracruz plantation was aimed at protesting these fast-growing artificial forests of pulpwood trees, which rapidly exhaust the soil and water reserves.
The women, who drove out to the plantation in buses, occupied the company's installations, where only one watchman was standing guard, for around 40 minutes, a campesina who took part in the protest with her two teenage sons told IPS. She preferred not to give her name.
The message presented to the company and distributed during the march in Porto Alegre complains about "the damages caused by agribusiness in Brazil: destruction of campesino agriculture, the increase of the concentration of land, unemployment and the rural exodus, and enormous environmental destruction."
The "green deserts" invade areas that should be targeted by agrarian reform, and are a symbol of agribusiness, which represents "profits for a few and losses for society as a whole," they maintained.
"The government provides billions of reals (the local currency) in soft credits to transnational corporations that produce for export, to the detriment of food crops for the population, and the environment," Adriana Maria dos Santos, a coordinator of the Campesina Women's Movement (MMC), told IPS.
The MMC is one of the Via Campesina member organisations based in Brazil, along with the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), the Small Farmers' Movement and others.
Aracruz is a world leader in the production of bleached eucalyptus pulp, with an annual output of nearly three million tons. The company owns 261,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations in three Brazilian states.
Brazil's state-owned National Economic and Social Development Bank holds a 12.5 percent share in Aracruz, with the remaining shares divided up among two other Brazilian companies and an international bank.
The Brazilian firm Votorantim, whose cellulose and paper division owns 28 percent of the shares in Aracruz, and Finnish-Swedish forestry giant Stora Enso also produce pulp in Rio Grande do Sul and plan to expand their eucalyptus plantations in this southern Brazilian state.
Last year, Stora Enso and Aracruz also opened a pulp plant in the northeastern state of BahÃa, producing 900,000 tons of cellulose a year.
One eucalyptus tree consumes 30 litres of water a day, and Rio Grande do Sul - of which Porto Alegre is the capital û is already home to 200,000 hectares of eucalyptus plantations geared specifically to pulp production.
"For us, this spells death," declared the MMC activist, who added that her organisation is a "feminist and socialist" movement that is fighting for agrarian reform as well as an end to violence against women and respect for women's right to be the legal owners of the land on which they live and work.
In the settlements created as part of the agrarian reform process in Brazil, women hold the deeds to only 12 percent of the land distributed, stressed Marina dos Santos, an MST coordinator. The Brazilian government issued guidelines several years ago for women as well as men to be given legal title to the land they occupy, but the guidelines are not followed in many parts of the country, she added.
Because of this, and in order to guarantee women peasant farmers their right to retirement pensions, a national campaign has been launched to provide women with documents ranging from birth certificates to identification documents to land deeds, explained the MST coordinator.
There are nine million women living in rural Brazil who have no identification documents whatsoever, Adriana Maria dos Santos observed.
Brazilian women also marked International Women's Day with marches and rallies in numerous cities throughout the country, in which rural women accounted for a large number of the participants.
In Recife, capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, women protested against the violence they are forced to endure. So far this year, 72 women have been murdered in that state alone.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, a total of 10,000 participants were expected for a rally staged by 80 social organisations. One of their demands is the legalisation of abortion. Meanwhile, in Brasilia, the capital, women homemakers voiced their demand for the right to retirement pensions, backed by a petition signed by 1.8 million people. (END/2006)
I picked this article because I think it draws attention to a really wide spread problem in Mexico. Also, I think it is great that the people are taking action to fight all the crime that they have and that they are holding the government accountable for not keeping its promises. I really learned a lot from it and found it interesting.
Hey guys i couldn't copy and paste the article but here is the link to it.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=5692777&page=1
Thousands of people rallied against President Bush on his Brazil trip, protesting America and American foriegn policy.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/09/world/fg-bushbrazil9
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I guess if all other form of action fails, protest naked. In this article the reason for protesting was soccer, and these people are crazy. lol, funny though.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1896470.html
"Middle classes stage peaceful but disruptive protest against pollution as restrictions imposed during Games are eased." Everyone knows that the environmental standards in Beijing were very high before the Games started, so it is not surprising that after the Games, all the environmental laws and new standards would go right out window because they were so strict. It is surprising however, that the Chinese people are standing up to the government and shouting for better air quality for their families, because traditionally, the Chinese government has been so strict on what its citizens can do. I did not know that they could even protest.
In a sign that the Olympics feel good factor has already begun to evaporate, protesters took to the streets of Beijing yesterday in an escalating campaign against the city's biggest dump site, which they claimed was polluting the air with a foul stench and dangerous dioxins.
Wearing surgical masks and carrying umbrellas, the mostly young, middle-class campaigners blocked roads, chanted anti-pollution slogans and refused to allow rubbish trucks to pass as dozens of police filmed them and appealed for calm.
Residents of the affluent Changying district of east Beijing have complained for more than three years about the nearby Gaoantun landfill and waste incineration facility.
Every day, 3,700 tonnes of household refuse are buried in the 40-hectare landfill. In addition, the plant burns 40 tonnes of medical waste from hospitals, raising fears among locals that the air is being polluted by odorless carcinogenic dioxins. This is denied by the plant's owners.
Residents have petitioned the authorities and filed a lawsuit in the courts. Dissatisfied with the lack of progress, they are using the internet, text messages, and demonstrations to be heard.
Zhen Qianling, a chemist among the crowd, said the stink from the plant on hot days made him feel sick and sent his heart racing. 'We want to block the traffic so the government will hear our voice. If we just sit back and do nothing, the government will also do nothing.' Like many, this was the first protest he had joined. The demonstrators were young urban professionals - designers, internet workers and translators. Other protestors were from the 'New Sky Universe' and 'Berlin Symphony' tower blocks. Property costs about 14,000 yuan (£1,100) a square metre, well above the Beijing average. The residents thought they were buying into one of the city's most salubrious neighbourhoods, but on hot summer days, when the wind is in the wrong direction, their homes are filled with the stench from the dump.
'If I had known, I would never have bought a home here,' says Helen Liu, a translator who moved into her 500,000 yuan house in April.
In the run-up to the Olympics, police detained several prominent dissidents and put others under close surveillance. Three 'protest parks' were established, but of the 77 people who applied to use them, none have yet succeeded. According to human rights groups, several applicants were sent back to their home provinces or put in 're-education through labour' camps. Foreigners who staged 'Free Tibet' demonstrations have been deported.
The residents of Chanying said they did not fear a police backlash because China was becoming more open and the authorities' concerns about losing face during the Games have diminished.
During the demonstration and after police warned the protesters they were breaking the law, they became almost comically well-mannered. They walked slowly back and forth for more than an hour across a pedestrian crossing - but only on the green man - chanting, 'We don't want stinking air.'
Managers at the site said emissions met environment bureau standards, but officials acknowledged the smell was a problem. 'We pay a lot of attention to the residents' concerns,' said Guo Tuanhui. 'On hot days, the buried rubbish gives off a bad odour. But we are doing what we can.'
The rally appeared to be part of a growing trend in China, as well-educated, middle-class citizens complain about environmental hazards.
In May 2007, thousands took to the streets of Xiamen in Fujian province, forcing the local government to halt plans for a chemical factory.
Last year, the head of China's environmental agency, Zhou Shengxian, blamed the rising number of riots, demonstrations and petitions across the country on public anger at pollution.
The public have good reason to be concerned. According to the World Bank, up to 400,000 people in China die each year from outdoor air pollution, 30,000 from indoor air pollution, and 60,000 from water pollution.
i have chosen this article because the people of the Guerrero State are accepting , well not accepting but not fighting the fight,the rebels moving or passing thorough their state and not reacting in hopes that they will just pass through and are trying not to stir up more drama and create a violent scene.
They called for a ''shortcut to democracy'' in the form of a mass popular movement to oust the current system centered on a powerful President and to usher in a ''republic of the people and for the people.'' It seems as though the people know they are in danger and are trying other nonviolent ways to remove the rebels from their State.
The people of this corn-farming village in the mountains of Guerrero State pride themselves on being hospitable. But they were especially friendly to the masked and uniformed guerrilla fighters toting AK-47 rifles who marched into the central plaza at dusk on Feb. 5 and held an hourlong rally.
The merchant who was selling blue jeans under a plastic canopy, the grandmother who met them as she returned from evening Mass, even the municipal police officer spoke openly and enthusiastically about the Popular Revolutionary Army a day after the rebels made their surprise visit.
Tomasa Leyva, 64, who was on her way to Mass again, wrapped in a black lace shawl, said: ''They were very well behaved, and we had only heard good things about them beforehand. The humble people who farm in the mountains say those boys are there to protect them.''
Ines Prudencio, 32, a peasant-turned-policeman, not knowing what to expect, admitted that he hid when the rebels appeared, but later said there was no need for fear.
''They didn't do anything wrong,'' he said. ''They were just inviting people to join them. They said they want a Government that is not corrupt and the townspeople showed a lot of support.''
The organization, known by its Spanish initials E.P.R., has another face, however. About 250 miles away, at almost the same time as the rally, three leaders of the organization met with reporters in a safe house near Mexico City. In steely tones the commanders, with gray masks concealing their faces and assault rifles slung across their chests, painted a dire portrait of Mexico to justify the campaign they say they have begun to oust the Government.
''As long as Mexican people remain trapped in intolerable misery, it is logical and natural for an armed movement to develop,'' a woman calling herself Commander Victoria told the reporters.
There is no evidence that the E.P.R. has the numbers or following to make good on its pledge to destabilize the federal Government.
Yet it is emerging as something more than the isolated and nearly defeated ''terrorist'' cells the Government has portrayed. Its recent contacts with journalists have disclosed a committed clandestine movement working in both urban and rural fronts to build its strength.
Although their armed tactics have been repudiated by much of Mexican society, the insurgents appear to have attracted some sympathy in Mexico City, where unemployment and discontent are high, and in the hard-bitten, neglected mountain regions like the southwestern state of Guerrero where its rural fighters roam.
''The Government is underestimating the E.P.R. politically and militarily,'' said Carlos Montemayor, a writer who spent years researching guerrilla movements in Mexico. ''By reducing it to a tiny group of terrorists, the Government is missing the serious social warning the E.P.R. represents.''
The group is best known for one day of coordinated violent attacks in six states on Aug. 28 1996. In those attacks and subsequent violence, according to the Interior Ministry, 22 police officers and soldiers, 2 civilians and 5 guerrillas were killed. The E.P.R. said it had killed 96 Government troops. In their meeting with reporters, the three E.P.R. commanders said the organization was an amalgamation of 14 leftist factions, some of which have been underground since the early 1970's. Its rural contingents are descended from guerrilla bands that roamed the sierra of Guerrero as long as two decades ago, they said.
The commanders confirmed that one group in their midst is a notorious faction, known by its Spanish initials as Procup, which waged a campaign of kidnappings and executions against other leftists in the 1980's and planted a bomb in a shopping mall parking lot in the capital in 1994. At least one top leader was a member of the 23d of September League, an urban Communist group broken up in the 1970's.
In contrast to earlier generations of Mexican guerrillas, the E.P.R. leaders are not calling for a Communist revolution or invoking the inspiration of Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. Their ideas are more ambiguous and difficult to categorize in terms of leftist ideology.
They called for a ''shortcut to democracy'' in the form of a mass popular movement to oust the current system centered on a powerful President and to usher in a ''republic of the people and for the people.'' This republic would have a state-dominated, protectionist economy incorporating a large private sector, but banks, roads and telecommunications would be nationalized.
What was not ambiguous was the belief of the commanders that they must carry rifles to protect themselves and achieve their ends.
Even though they wore civilian clothes at their meeting with reporters, the atmosphere was martial. The two-hour meeting began and ended with formal salutes by a small group of rebels. Two stood by at stiff attention with rifles ready.
The rebels used exceptionally careful measures in taking journalists to their safe house. Reporters were ordered to keep their eyes closed and were kept for nearly 24 hours in a room whose features were concealed with cloth.
''In Mexico we can say that the Government and the oligarchy are waging a declared war against the people,'' said a commander with muscular shoulders who called himself Oscar. ''We have not declared war yet. Depending on how the Government escalates its war, we will decide how to escalate to defend ourselves.''
Commander Vicente described the E.P.R. as an army structured in brigades and platoons, with colonels as the top field officers. When questioned about recent events, the commanders demonstrated that they receive a slow but regular flow of ''war reports'' from places as distant as Guerrero, Oaxaca and Tabasco.
Last week the army discovered an E.P.R. safe house in Acapulco, the resort city in Guerrero, containing explosives and half-finished home-made bombs.
The commanders explained their recent military inactivity as a phase of ''revolutionary self-defense'' in which they undertake only propaganda activities. The Interior Ministry has recorded 251 public propaganda actions, like the Tecoanapa rally, which, though not violent, are illegal and expose the rebels to capture.
The E.P.R. leaders rejected, but also seemed perplexed by, the prevailing opinion among Mexican politicians and analysts that that their armed campaign is less appropriate than ever at a time when Mexico is preparing for the most competitive national elections in almost 70 years, scheduled for July.
''The armed struggle is not a fashion that goes in and out of style,'' Commander Victoria said. ''The conditions of suffering in Mexico have not changed, so armed movements like ours will continue to emerge.''
But Mr. Montemayor, the writer, said, ''The isolation they needed to develop their military skills has prevented them from developing their ideas.''
In Tecoanapa, the guerrillas, who wore brown-and-green uniforms and brandished their red and black banner, assailed Government corruption, residents said.
The speeches recalled a former mayor from the Government party who accepted a bribe from a neighboring town and helped it to tap into Tecoanapa's scarce water supply. Several villagers stepped up to press food and money into the rebels' hands.
Redistribution of natural gas wealth in Bolivia has some turning to violent protests and action. Interestingly, it is not the poor people demanding that they recieve a share of the wealth, rather, it is the rich demanding that they keep their share and not have it distributed to the poor.
Anti-Morales protests hit Bolivia
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The opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz saw violent protests
Anti-government protesters have stormed public buildings in eastern Bolivia amid a deepening row between President Evo Morales and his opponents.
The biggest protest was in Santa Cruz, where demonstrators raided several offices and clashed with riot police.
Bolivia's energy-rich eastern provinces oppose Mr Morales's attempts to redirect gas revenues to poorer areas.
Troops have meanwhile been deployed to guard gas pipelines to guarantee exports to Brazil and Argentina.
Since last week, anti-government demonstrators have been blocking roads and occupying buildings in eastern regions, which are home to Bolivia's important natural gas reserves.
But Tuesday saw an escalation of their action and some of the worst violence in the country for several months.
Hundreds of people raided the state-run telecommunications company, the tax agency, the local state TV network and the land reform institute in the city of Santa Cruz.
Clashes broke out between the protesters and riot police, who were forced to take cover.
Trouble also flared in the provinces of Beni, Pando, and Tarija as opposition activists raided public buildings.
"Facsist, violent and racist people attacked institutions...that belong to all Bolivians," said Interior Minister Alfredo Rada.
In the Chaco area, protesters stormed a station controlling a natural gas pipeline and tried unsuccessfully to cut exports to Brazil, officials quoted by Reuters news agency said.
Reform
Bolivia has the second largest natural gas reserves in South America but they are situated in the east of the country, where Mr Morales faces his fiercest opponents.
Brazil, and to a lesser extent Argentina, are Bolivia's major gas customers and any interruption to supply would have a serious effect on both economies as well as damaging Bolivia's reputation as a reliable supplier, says the BBC's Daniel Schweimler in Buenos Aires.
On Monday, the government announced that soldiers were being sent to guard natural gas fields and pipelines.
"The government will not allow the interruption of natural gas exports," said Energy Secretary Carlos Villegas.
Shortly afterwards Mr Villegas was moved to the development planning ministry while Saul Avalos took over at the energy ministry.
The changes were part of a cabinet reshuffle seen as an attempt by President Morales to tackle the growing opposition to his plans to radically reform the way Bolivia is governed.
The president wants to give more power to the country's indigenous and poor communities, by carrying out land reform and redistributing gas revenues.
Mr Morales's attempts to change the constitution are fiercely opposed by opposition governors who run five of Bolivia's nine regions.
They and their supporters want greater autonomy as well as more control over revenues of natural gas in their areas.
Mr Morales is seeking approval in Congress to hold a referendum on 7 December on his proposed constitutional changes.
Are you in eastern Bolivia? Are you protesting against the government? Send us your comments by filling in the form below
I chose this blog entry because it is another current issue. It is also an issue with wide ranging interests from around the globe, as can be seen through these protesters in Mexico. I found it especially interesting that the issue of Tibet and China has reached into countries like Mexico, where I would not have typically thought of as a place where people would demonstrate about such an issue. If nothing else, the protest serves to increase awareness of that issue, as well as similar ones in that country.
A good bit of round-up coverage on Phayul.com on the extensive protests and Pro-Tibet rallys in South America. This demonstrates that the Pro-Tibet movement is not limited to Europe and North America, and isn’t simply anti-Chinese racism from the “west�.
Some highlights and photos below:
On April 2, more than 800 Tibetan supporters, wearing white T-shirts with the names of those Tibetans killed during the recent unrest in Tibet, protested in Mexico City at two different important spots. Protesters demanded Chinese leaders to engage in dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama to grant meaningful autonomy for Tibet. In an emotional rally, the Mexico protesters sang Tibetan National Anthem and displayed various placards reading “no torch in Tibet�, “China lies, people dies�, “in Tibet you are killed if you fight for your basic rights�, “in Tibet you are dead if you ask for the return of the Dalai Lama� etc. The protests were widely covered by the local and national media.http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/2008/04/16/from-phayul/
I picked this article from June 2005 for several reasons. It caught my eye because it was about a group of people who not only participate in nonviolent direct actions, they live by the principle and are active about it. It's kind of long, but very interesting.
A Massacre in Colombia Spurs Activism and Reaction
By Rebekah Waldron
* Photos below are from 15 vigils held in the United States, Colombia, Canada and Puerto Rico, in response to the February massacre in San José de Apartadó. These and more images and information can be found at: www.peaceincolombia.org
Eight years ago, the people of San José de Apartadó embarked on a critical experiment in nonviolent resistance by establishing themselves as a Peace Community. This year on the anniversary of their founding, the community planned to inaugurate several new humanitarian zones in settlements within the San José district, a new development in the community's efforts to organize their neighbors.
Instead, Peace Community members found themselves mourning the loss of one of their leaders, Luis Eduardo Guerra, his companion, his son, and five others, each of their names were painted on a stone for a remembrance ceremony held on March 23.
According to the Peace Community and the Corporation for Judicial Liberty, army soldiers detained Luis Eduardo, his son Deiener and companion Deyanira Arieza, on Feb. 21 near the Mulatos River.
The following day, body parts belonging to Alfonso Bolivar, Sandra Milena Munoz, their two children, 18 months and 6 years old, and Alejandro Pérez were discovered on a nearby farm, where a witness reported seeing army soldiers firing into the house. The bodies of Luis Eduardo, Deyanira and Deiner were found at a second site nearby.
When the community’s leaders received this information, they immediately requested an official investigation and organized a delegation of community members and international accompaniment volunteers to go to the massacre sites for the exhumation of the bodies. It took over two nights for the Attorney General's office to arrive at the second site where the community waited. In their grief and frustration at the government’s perceived lack of responsiveness, the Peace Community issued a statement calling for national and international solidarity, "to demand that the strategy of terror against the San José Peace Community and the civilian population in the district comes to an end."
In a tremendous show of support in the month following the killings, hundreds of friends from the Peace Community's national and international network came forward to express their profound sadness and outrage at the loss of these eight lives and the prevailing atmosphere of impunity. Human-rights advocates, grassroots activists and religious leaders collaborated to support a letter that was signed by 32 U.S. Congressional Representatives and sent to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
In multiple locations people gathered in the streets for actions to commemorate Luis Eduardo's legacy and mobilize others to pressure the Colombian government to conduct a full and transparent investigation respecting the rights and dignity of the Peace Community.
In San Francisco, Colombian-Americans, solidarity groups and family members of one of the FOR Peace Presence volunteers, passed out fliers in front of the Colombian Consulate, educating onlookers and gathering signatures on various petitions. In Bristol, England, university students staged a protest at a lecture given by Vice President Francisco Santos entitled, "A Democratic Response to Terrorism." The protestors created a visual representation of those killed in the massacre and threw paint at the Vice President as a symbol of the politically motivated murders that continue to be ignored by the Colombian government.
In Washington DC, a vigil in front of the U.S. State Department brought attention to demands that certification of a portion of the military aid package to Colombia - $35 million - be suspended, in light of the Peace Community’s allegations that the Colombian military was directly involved in the massacre. On May 6, activists held vigils in a dozen cities calling for an investigation and for an end to US military aid to Colombia. The vigils reinforced ongoing letter-writing campaigns and call-in days to Secretary of State Condolleeza Rice that have been successful so far in delaying certification of the aid. In response to a question about San José, one State Department official said, "Colombia is putting us to the test on certification; they're going to have to work for it."
In contrast to this support for the Peace Community during this crisis, the Colombian government has used the massacre to attempt to dismantle the very idea of a peace community without armed groups. On March 20, President Uribe publicly stated, "In this community of San José de Apartadó there are good people, but some of its leaders, sponsors and defenders are seriously alleged by people who have lived there of supporting the FARC and of wanting to use the community to protect this terrorist organization."
Peace Police?
Soon after, Colombian police forces entered San José without the consent of the Peace Community. They were preceded by a procession of psychologists, sociologists, people with video cameras and clowns announcing the invasion and handing out fliers proclaiming the police were arriving to conduct conflict resolution, educational work with children and social services. Since then, the police have been occupying the town center while heavily armed counter-guerrilla forces have established a presence nearby.
This recent development is in direct conflict with the provisional measures issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2000. These measures state that the Peace Community must be consulted and consent to protective measures provided by the Colombian government. The community and Vice-President’s office had been negotiating conditions for a police post outside the San José town center, when the February massacre occurred.
To maintain their stance of neutrality and to resist the actions of the police, more than 400 people displaced from San José, setting up a refugee settlement on “La Holandita,� a farm belonging to the Peace Community. While community members have worked cooperatively to raise temporary shelters, build ovens and other basic necessities, conditions at the La Holandita have left the community in a vulnerable position.
According to FOR volunteers who accompany the community, there is poor sewage irrigation, limited electricity and up to ten people living together in each house. Children are not able to continue their education and shopkeepers have lost their markets and bakeries. As of April 16, the community reported that police were threatening to allow families from the town of Apartadó to move into the vacant homes of displaced Peace community members if they did not return to San José.
The situation continues to be a precarious one; in addition to wanting to uphold the values of the Peace Community, members also fear returning to San José while the police still maintain a post there would put them at risk of an attack by FARC guerrillas.
It is not yet clear what the strategy of the Peace Community will be as they reinvent their movement in response to current threats to their stability. However, the public outcry that has emerged from the pain over the loss of Luis Eduardo and the seven others who were killed has proven that the Peace Community is not alone in their struggle. The memory Luis Eduardo survives in the actions of those who take a stand against the forces threatening to diminish what they have so bravely built during their lifetimes. Now is the time to affirm the reasons to hope, and help carry his vision forward.
This article describes student protests in Venezuela against President Hugo Chavez’s decision in closing down a television station that criticized his government. The protests were also against his continuous consolidation of economic and social power, including such threats as revolutionizing the university system, where large groups of students have condemned some of his actions. I choose this article because it looks at the university perspective, something we can more easily relate to. Imagine if we, as a university, act near collectively to protest government action only to be threatened with violence and the prospect that the government will forcibly reform the education system, such as administration, faculty, and curriculum, where future students will be taught only in such a way that would advocate the current government and its policies.
The Wall Street Journal.
Politics & Economics: A Bid to Ease Chavez's Power Grip; Students Continue Protests in Venezuela; President Threatens Violence
Jose de Cordoba. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Jun 8, 2007. pg. A.4
Caracas, Venezuela -- A student movement that has swept across Venezuela is posing a strong challenge to President Hugo Chavez's drive to extinguish independent power centers in the universities and media.
Although Mr. Chavez continues to have a firm grip on the government, the student protests have demonstrated a broad uneasiness with his efforts to dominate Venezuelan society.
Mr. Chavez's approval ratings have fallen and suspicion of his intentions has grown among Venezuelans. He also hasn't responded to the protests in a way that resonates with the public, many of whom view the students with sympathy. Instead, he has threatened to use violence to put down the demonstrations. In Venezuela, as in most Latin American countries, students have played an outsized political role, including in the country's transition to democracy in 1958.
Since he was first elected president in 1998, Mr. Chavez has brought to heel a number of once-independent power centers in Venezuela -- notably the oil industry, judiciary, military and legislature. The university system and a quickly diminishing sector of the Venezuelan media are among the few important institutions outside the ambit of his control.
The student protests were sparked by the closure in late May of an opposition television station, Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV. The students seek to convince Mr. Chavez to give up plans to remake Venezuela's educational system. The closure of RCTV appeared to convince the students that Mr. Chavez meant business when he announced a plan to create a "revolution within the university." Students and professors fear that would mean an end to university autonomy and an imposition of Cuban-style socialist ideology.
"Mediocrity is what they want," says Carolina Rondon, who studies physical therapy in Caracas at the Central University of Venezuela, the country's largest university, as she prepared to join tens of thousands of other students on a protest march Wednesday. "We are marching to save our future." On the side of a building, a huge banner had just one word: "Freedom."
Student organizers have been careful to portray their movement not as anti-Chavez, but as pro-freedom of expression, and have kept their distance from the largely discredited leaders of Mr. Chavez's political opposition. Shunning violent confrontation, students have adapted tactics such as handing grim-faced riot police red carnations. One day this week, groups of students with their mouths taped shut rode the city's subways holding signs that said "Peace," and "Tolerance."
To help keep their plans secret from police and the National Guard, which has tried to keep students bottled up at different universities, student organizers use cellphone text messaging to spread the news on future protests.
The number of Venezuelans who have a favorable opinion of the president has fallen 10 percentage points to 39% since November, according to Hinterlaces, a Caracas pollster. Skyrocketing crime, inflation and shortages of basic foods have contributed to Mr. Chavez's fall in popularity since he won re-election by a landslide in December.
In the past, Mr. Chavez, who has spent billions of dollars on social-welfare programs aimed at the poor, has deftly manipulated Venezuela's sharp class divisions to portray his foes as U.S. manipulated "oligarchs."
That tactic hasn't worked this time, as students come from all walks of life and many are poor or working class. "You see all kinds of students here. There are no 'oligarchs,'" says Pamela Lora, a 20-year- old public-health student at UCV. "This has nothing to do with President Bush or with any 'empire,'" she scoffs.
The Chavez government has wavered in its response. After using tear gas and rubber bullets to break up student demonstrations last week, police have moderated their approach. On Wednesday, students were able to deliver their complaints personally to Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez, a Chavez hard-liner.
The state television network, which usually ignores anti-Chavez protests, broadcast the encounter. Mr. Rodriguez listened as student leader Eduardo Torres lectured him: "We are not delinquents, we are democrats and will stay on the streets."
The following day, student representatives delivered a message to Congress, which consists entirely of Chavez supporters because the opposition didn't contest the last legislative election.
Even some Chavez allies in the legislature are expressing dissatisfaction with the president's efforts to consolidate power.
But Mr. Chavez hasn't forsworn threats in dealing with the students, who he has accused of being the dupes of a U.S. plot to destabilize his government. At an hours-long press conference Wednesday, Mr. Chavez threatened to lead "the people" in a bout of "Jacobin revolutionary violence" against students.
Despite his slide in popularity, Mr. Chavez maintains a strong grip on power which the students will have a hard time loosening. Since 1998, Mr. Chavez has survived a short-lived coup and a two-month strike in the state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, known as PDVSA. Along the way, he has purged the army and has used PDVSA as a piggy bank to fund his ambitious social-welfare program.
Mr. Chavez also controls the country's electoral system, judiciary and legislature.
Since he was re-elected in December, Mr. Chavez has moved against private firms, nationalizing Venezuela's main telephone company and power company while wresting control of billion-dollar projects from foreign oil firms.
The student protests began after Mr. Chavez refused to renew the broadcast license of RCTV, arguing that the outlet had tried to destabilize his government, been disrespectful of authority and endangered children's morals by showing spicy programming. A Hinterlaces poll showed about 80% of Venezuelans opposed the closure, which also unleashed a barrage of international and domestic criticism. Since then, Mr. Chavez threatened to cancel the license of Globovision, the sole remaining broadcaster that is critical of his rule.
Now, neither Mr. Chavez nor the students seems certain what to do next. Venezuela is scheduled to host teams from the hemisphere for the Copa America soccer tournament this month and would want to avoid scenes of police clashing with students broadcast across Latin America. He may be hoping that protests will peter out as students face final exams and leave on summer vacation.
The students aren't sure how far to take their protests either. This week, at daily morning planning meetings in every university in Caracas, students debated how to balance academic concerns and political action. "I'm prepared to lose a year of my career and two months of classes in exchange for the future we will build," said one ponytailed student delegate at an assembly at Andres Bello Catholic University this week, to a thunderous round of applause.
---
Peter Millard contributed to this article.
I really liked this article for the fact that it really shows a side of the anti war movement that seems to be repetitively missed by main stream media.
San Francisco Chronical
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/01/21/PROTESTS.TMP
I found this article to be very interesting due to my huge interest in religiosity especially as we find it in the constitution of the United States. Religion in this country and it's dominance over politics is especially troubling for many, for the fact that many are bound by laws that are not serving thier best interest but rather the interests of fundamentalists.
http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2008-03-0314-002.shtml
I was drawn to this article because of Mexico's close proximity to the United States. This huge organized march at the capitol of Mexico, Mexico City, seems to have had direct effect on the Mexican government. The president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon immediately held meetings with top officers and developed a plan to reduce the kidnappings and violence against civilians.
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- Tens of thousands of frustrated Mexicans, many carrying pictures of kidnapped loved ones, marched across the country Saturday to demand authorities act to stop a relentless tide of killings, abductions and shootouts.
A man holds a sign reading "Insecurity" at a demonstration Saturday in Tijuana, Mexico.
A man holds a sign reading "Insecurity" at a demonstration Saturday in Tijuana, Mexico.
The mass protests were a challenge to the government of President Felipe Calderon, who has made fighting crime a priority and deployed more than 25,000 soldiers and federal police to wrest territory from powerful drug cartels.
A sea of white-clad demonstrators carrying candles filled the 4 kilometer- (2 1/2 mile-) route between the Mexico City's Angel of Independence monument and the main Zocalo square.
The government estimated the crowd in the nation's capital at 50,000 shortly after the march began, but thousands continued to pour into the streets.
Thousands more marched in other cities across the country.
Romana Quintera, 72, wore a photograph of her baby grandson who was kidnapped for ransom five years ago when gunmen burst into her home and killed her niece. Two people have been imprisoned for the attack, but they have refused to reveal the boy's fate, and Quintera said investigators have given up on the case.
"We're desperate. We've been fighting for five years. We want an answer," she said, holding back tears. "We ask authorities with all our heart to be more sensitive. Maybe nothing like this has happened to them, or they would be more sensitive."
Despite the arrest of several drug kingpins, little has improved the ground since the Calderon government began its crackdown.
Don't Miss
* Mexico plans to combat kidnappings
Homicides have surged as drug cartels battle each other for control of trafficking routes and stage vicious attacks against police nearly each day. In the gang-plagued border state of Chihuahua alone, there have been more than 800 killings this year, double the number during the same period last year.
This week, a dozen headless bodies were found in the Yucatan Peninsula, home to Mexico's most popular beach resort, Cancun. Video Watch a Mexican kidnapping victim describe his ordeal »
Saturday's protests were inspired by the abduction and murder of the 14-year-old son of a wealthy businessman. The case provoked an outcry when prosecutors said a police detective was a key participant in the abduction for ransom.
The boy's father, Alejandro Marti, called on top government officials to quit if they could not stem the crime wave. His challenge became a rally cry at the march, where many held up signs with his words: "If you can't, resign."
The first to arrive for the protest was the family of 24-year-old Monica Alejandrina Ramirez, who was kidnapped on in 2004 and has not been heard from since. Video Watch marches at more than 70 cities across Mexico »
Hours before the march began, the family stood silently beneath the independence monument, holding up large banners with her picture. Some colleagues of her mother, a circus performer, walked on stilts and wore clown wigs to help draw attention.
"The most frustrating thing has been the indolence of many of the authorities, their insensitivity," said her father, Manuel Ramirez Juarez, a family doctor. "I have often asked myself, why? Why me? Why my daughter?"
Having staked his presidency on improving security, Calderon responded to the rising anger by summoning governors and mayors to a national security meeting, drawing up a a 74-point anti-crime plan.
It included plans for better police recruiting and oversight systems, as well as an anti-kidnapping strategy within six months. The Defense Department promised to equip police with more powerful automatic weapons.
"This a cancer that we are going to eradicate," Calderon promised during a televised address Monday. But he urged patience, warning that rooting out drug gangs and bringing security to the streets would not happen by decree.
Neither will cleaning up and bolstering Mexico's police.
In some northern towns, officers complain of having to share guns, and many have quit in terror after seeing colleagues killed in front of their homes.
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More than half of Mexico's state and municipal police officers have only a primary education, making it difficult for them to aspire to the highest ranks and salaries. Many are tempted to join the payrolls of criminal gangs.
Police are "illiterate, sick, fat, old and corrupt," said Herberto Ortega, public safety secretary in Aguascalientes, a small state north of Mexico City. "That's why their response time during operations is slow." http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/08/30/mexico.march.ap/index.html
I have chosen this article to blog because the polygamist community seems to think a nonviolent action may be the best possible way to handle what has happened to their community, at least, at the time this article was published it was deemed the best way to react. It was a collective action of 60 men who wept openly about the children of their community being taken away. Other means of showing emotion could also be used but the method of non violence was a safer choice for them because they want to have peaceful less dramatic lives.
ELDORADO, Texas (CNN) -- Nearly 60 men surrounding the temple of a polygamist sect in Texas dropped to their knees, prayed and wept openly -- but never violently resisted -- as law enforcement officers raided the building they hold sacred.
Authorities on Thursday wrapped up nearly a week at the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch, where they say a 16-year-old girl had called social workers and timidly recounted being beaten, choked and sexually assaulted by the 49-year-old man who had fathered her child after their "spiritual marriage" last year.
Two people were arrested and 416 children were taken into state custody at the ranch -- which is run by founder Warren Steed Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. At the ranch, authorities say, men routinely took multiple wives, and girls as young as 13 were forced into sexual relationships with adult men.
Authorities say the most tense moment of the raid came Sunday night, when they went to search the group's temple. As in mainstream Mormon worship, the group considers its temple sacrosanct, and custom forbids any nonbeliever from entering.
Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials believed the church may have used that custom to hide children inside the building. Video Watch how children may be coping after being removed from compound »
"We knew that the temple was going to be the most sensitive issue and building on the property," said Texas Rangers Capt. Barry Caver, who over the past four years had made multiple contacts with leaders at the compound. "We opted to do that last -- we felt like if there was going to be any resistance at all, it would occur then."
Caver and Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran said they'd spoken repeatedly with Merrill Jessop, an elder in the church and supervisor of the ranch, in hopes the search would go as smoothly as possible.
But Caver said the elder told him the men of the church would draw a line at giving access to the temple.
"They lined up about 57 people, as we counted them, around the walls of the temple," Caver said. "They told us if they did not do that, then they would basically be in violation of their beliefs by not defending their temple."
While some of the men cried and prayed, none violently opposed the officers, Caver said. One man "decided to attempt to resist our entry" and was quickly arrested without incident, he said.
Another man was arrested during the days-long raid for attempting to destroy evidence. Both men have been released from jail on cash bonds.
Caver said no one was found inside the temple. But a Texas Rangers affidavit released Wednesday cited evidence that included unmade beds in the temple that an informant said were used for grown men to have sex with their young "spiritual wives" after weddings.
Also Thursday, Doran defended not raiding the 4-year-old ranch sooner, despite suspicions that FLDS men took multiple wives and had sex with teen girls.
"We are aware this group is capable of it," Doran said. "But, there again, this is the United States. We are going to respect them -- we are not going to violate their civil rights -- until we have an outcry, a complaint, and I've said that from day one."
On Thursday, a man who came to the gate at the ranch told CNN that "no family, only men" now remain inside the compound.
"We trust in the heavenly father," he said.
He then added: "We always believed America to be a free land."
Meanwhile, authorities did not directly address why the man named in the teen girl's telephone calls has not been apprehended -- even though his parole officer in Arizona says he checked in as recently as Tuesday.
Dale Evans Barlow, now 50, pleaded no contest in 2007 to charges of conspiracy to have sex with a minor. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail and placed on three years' probation.
In an e-mail to CNN, Friend Walker, chief of the Mojave County Probation Department in Arizona said authorities know where Barlow is and haven't been given a warrant for his arrest.
And Barlow himself told a Utah newspaper that he hasn't been to Texas in over 30 years.
"I do not know this girl that they keep asking about," Barlow said, according to an article in Thursday's edition of the Deseret Morning News.
Probation officials told CNN they talked to Barlow on the telephone Thursday and have no knowledge of him leaving his home in Colorado City, Arizona, for Texas. While they said the claims may be true, they said it also could be a case of mistaken identity because so many members of the FLDS have similar names.
Caver suggested authorities want to further interview the teen girl, whom state aid workers call Sarah, before making an arrest.
"Until we find her and sit her down and take a complete statement from her, and gather hopefully more information, we have no way of knowing" if Barlow should be arrested, he said.
Texas child welfare workers believe that they have the girl in protective custody but that she may be too scared to come forward and identify herself.
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The children are being housed at a pair of shelters in nearby San Angelo, Texas.
In addition to the children, 139 adult women have voluntarily gone to the shelters.
I choose this article because, though many exist, people don't usually hear about aboriginal non violent movements. This article in particular deals with an aboriginal group in Canada. A group was arrested for refusing to let there be mining exploration on their native lands. As a result of the arrests, the local tribe decided to make a non violent defense program to protect themselves and their land. I thought it was really interesting that they would collectively agree to use non violent actions as the means in which they would defend their people.
http://www.wawataynews.ca/archive/all/2008/9/4/KI-takes-nonviolent-approach-with-defense-project_13960
The recent incarceration of the KI 6, sentenced to six months in jail for refusing mining exploration on their land, has prompted Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug community leaders to create a non-violent defense program that will protect its people and homeland.
September 4, 2008: Volume 35 #18
“Around the world, there’s conflict between Aboriginal people and government. The only option we have available to us is protesting,� Jacob Ostaman, director of the land and environment unit for KI, said.
“In our case, our people were incarcerated. Our leaders that were incarcerated protested in a nonviolent way. During their time of incarceration, our people also protested in a nonviolent way. We will not budge.�
Ostaman said the community would continue to approach protests with non-violence with the creation of the KI Defense Project.
The idea of the project is to establish KI jurisdiction and self-determination over its homeland to protect its right to lands and waters in KI traditional territory.
“It is our primary goal to train our youth leaders and community citizens to assert self determination, sovereignty and jurisdiction over our homeland through non-violence resistance and informative strategic action,� Chief Donny Morris said in his welcome address during training sessions on the project Aug. 18-27.
The first of three sessions discussed non-violent direct action planning and practice.
Participants were given the opportunity to reflect and learn from historical nonviolent resistance of First Nations and their struggle for sovereignty, to identify current problems and solutions and to prepare for future action.
Building
The second session, presented by Dr. Sharon Venne, focused on a rights-based approach. Venne is an international legal advisor for Indigenous people. She discussed sovereignty and treaty relations with an emphasis on the status of Treaty 9.
She also discussed Supreme Court cases that deal with Aboriginal rights and the legal impact of the KI decision.
Her session also discussed treaty lands entitlement and the overall importance of getting consent from a First Nation in regards to land use.
The third session was called Using the United Nations Systems to Defend Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights and Hold Countries Accountable.
Indigenous members from the International Indian Treaty Council were on hand for the final session on using the United Nation systems to defend Indigenous rights.
The organization has worked to build worldwide Indigenous unity, address human rights violations threatening indigenous peoples’ survival and to achieve the recognition of Indigenous rights internationally.
For several years, Barrick Gold Mining has been trying to begin mining in Chili and Argentina but many protesters of the environmental devastating action have been working hard to not allow the mining to go further. Protesters have made pamphlets and distributed them out while they march to let the public know about the mining. This is interesting because Chili would make a lot of profit from the mining but many protesters care more about the environment. Barrick is a Canadian company so I am curious how they got the control over the land in the first place.
March Organizers: “We Have To Inform The Public Because The Mass Media Will Not�
by Trey Pollard , Santiago Times
October 29th, 2007
Anti-Pascua Lama march in Santiago. Oct 27. 2007
Opponents of the Pascua Lama gold mine took to the streets of Santiago on Saturday to raise public awareness about the US$1.4 billion project that, they claim, will have terrible long-term effects on Chile's environment. Although environmental authorities have already approved the project, protesters said their continued resistance can halt the completion of construction (ST, June 26, 2006).
The noisy and vibrant procession of approximately four hundred protesters weaved its way through the bustling pedestrian streets of central Santiago, led by demonstrators hoisting a banner with a simple message: “No to Pascua Lama.� Puncturing the afternoon calm on one of the sunniest days of the spring season, the march rumbled through the heavy weekend traffic of shoppers and passers-by, accompanied by rumbling drums and chants of “Water, Yes! Gold, No!�
Organizers told the Santiago Times that the purpose of the spectacle was to let the public know that opposition to Pascua Lama remains, even as construction continues on the mine.
“This is a march to inform our neighbors that there are still plenty of obstacles for the completion of the mine,� said Consuelo Infante, head of the anti-mine group Citizen Movement. “We have to inform the public because the mass media will not do it, and it is very important that people know there is organized opposition to the project at this time.�
In addition to banners and songs, marchers distributed thousands of informational pamphlets to nearby Santiaguinos outlining the case against Pascua Lama and its owner – Canadian mining group Barrick Gold. Anti-mine groups said a series of logistical and administrative issues could still derail construction, including non-compliance with permit requirements and the refusal of Barrick to respect all aspects of the agreements that paved the way for the mine's construction.
March organizers claim these shortcomings by Barrick could halt the project, if only the government is willing to pursue existing legal complaints.
“Our case was presented at the beginning of the year and the state has not responded, so the courts are not accessible for us,� read the literature given out by marchers. “All of the complaints we have lodged have been rejected due to problems of form, and not substance.�
Barrick's project at Pascua Lama is no stranger to controversy. Environmental activists have lambasted the construction since it was first proposed, claiming the mine will destroy nearby glaciers and pollute downstream water supplies with waste runoff (VT, June 10). Barrick’s track record for environmental abuse is apparently well-known: U.S. Vice-President Al Gore insisted upon removing Barrick Gold as a sponsor of his May visit to Chile (ST, May 11).
The mine is set to be built in the Andes Mountains, in an area straddling the border between northern Chile's Region III and Argentina. This bi-national location has led to several disputes between the two countries about how to divide tax revenues earned from the project (ST, Sept. 12). An estimated US$7 billion in tax revenues will be paid by Barrick during the mine’s projected lifetime, and last month conflict over the projected revenue split delayed start up construction again. Construction was originally planned to begin in 2005.
Currently, only superficial construction at the mine is completed. Auxiliary projects that do not cross the border into Argentina should be finished in the coming months, while bi-national excavation may not start until 2008.
Meanwhile, Consuelo Infante insisted that resistance to the project will continue, regardless of whether Barrick is functioning with the permission of the state or not.
“We want people to know that it does not matter what authorities are saying, because we are saying we do not want Barrick,� she said during the protest. “We are saying this huge mine is bad for the country and we are going to continue defending the area's life water and agriculture.�
Post your entry on Latin and South America by 5pm on Weds, Sept 10th.
I chose this article, which was from the Associated Press, for various reasons. First of all, it is very current, considering the presidential race and the timing of the RNC. It is a good example of the current political current in the United States, as a result. Secondly, it outlines examples of where government is forced to deal with the nonviolent actions of the people it rules. Here, the police were called into duty to make sure the protesters didn't get out of hand. There was even a concern about violent action by the government, which would signify the use of force in order to attempt to smash the use of non violence. It also shows that different movements can get the attention of the press, and therefore attract more to their cause simply by choosing a venue that is highly publicized and politicized.
Thousands gather for RNC protest
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — About 2,000 protesters waving peace sign flags rallied at the state Capitol on Monday before an anti-war march to the Republican National Convention site. Hundreds of police wearing bulletproof vests and carrying billy clubs stood by.
Preparing for disruptions from a self-described anarchist group, officers in riot gear were stationed along the march route.
The anarchist group, known as the RNC Welcoming Committee, was targeted in police searches over the weekend that resulted in six arrests. The group, which did not organize Monday's march, said in a written statement that it was "moving forward with a national call to crash the convention."
At the rally, a 25-foot-long ice sculpture rose 3 feet in the air and spelled "Democracy." Some protesters flew kites, waved American and peace-sign flags and carried homemade anti-war signs. Police initially estimated the rally crowd at 10,000, but then revised it sharply downward an hour later.
Police said they were prepared for anything during the march, which organizers hoped would attract 50,000 people.
"We will not tolerate lawlessness in the city of St. Paul," St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said.
Peace activist Steve Clemens, 47, from Minneapolis said he was disturbed by the number of police.
"But we can't control that," said Clemens, who had already been arrested once — for crossing into a restricted area during a march Sunday.
For Monday's rally, he was planning to be part of the Minnesota Peace Team, a group that hoped to prevent confrontations between police and protesters.
Cheri Honkala, a national organizer for the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, said she expected violent confrontations between anarchists and police.
"I just hope it doesn't get bloody," she said at a news conference shortly before the march was to begin. Her group was planning a nonviolent march on Tuesday with acts of civil disobedience.
One of the six arrested over the weekend on probable cause of conspiracy to commit a riot was released Sunday, according to attorney Bruce Nestor. No charges were filed against the woman, 23-year-old Monica Bicking. The other five remained jailed, possibly until Wednesday, Nestor said.
Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley and Martiga Lohn contributed to this report.
I chose to read this article because of its title. To me, it is not common to hear of college professors protesting the war in Iraq. As I went on to read the article I discovered that there are many campuses across the country where the professors belong to the liberal minority and students are often more pro war. I assumed a majority of those who protest the war are younger college students. After reading this article I have discovered that perhaps the generation who is going through college right now does not have the same democratic spirit as the Vietnam generation.
It is not easy being an old lefty on campus in this war.
At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, awash in antiwar protests in the Vietnam era, a columnist for a student newspaper took a professor to task for canceling classes to protest the war in Iraq, saying the university should reprimand her and refund tuition for the missed periods.
Irvine Valley College in Southern California sent faculty members a memo that warned them not to discuss the war unless it was specifically related to the course material. When professors cried censorship, the administration explained that the request had come from students.
Here at Amherst College, many students were vocally annoyed this semester when 40 professors paraded into the dining hall with antiwar signs. One student confronted a protesting professor and shoved him.
Some students here accuse professors of behaving inappropriately, of not knowing their place.
''It seems the professors are more vehement than the students,'' Jack Morgan, a sophomore, said. ''There comes a point when you wonder are you fostering a discussion or are you promoting an opinion you want students to embrace or even parrot?''
Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called for ''a million Mogadishus,'' is campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights.
Even in antiwar bastions like Cambridge, Berkeley and Madison, the protests have been more town than gown. At Berkeley, where Vietnam protesters shouted, ''Shut it down!'' under clouds of tear gas, Sproul Plaza these days features mostly solo operators who hand out black armbands. The shutdown was in San Francisco, and the crowd was grayer.
All this dismays many professors.
''We used to like to offend people,'' Martha Saxton, a professor of women's studies at Amherst, said as she discussed the faculty protest with students this week. ''We loved being bad, in the sense that we were making a statement. Why is there no joy now?''
Certainly not all students are pro-war or all faculty anti. But ''there's a much higher percentage of liberal professors than there are liberal students,'' said Ben Falby, the student who organized the protest at Amherst only to find that it had more professors than students.
On campuses like Yale and Berkeley, professors say their colleagues are overwhelmingly against the war. By contrast, students polled by The Yale Daily News are 50-50. Interviews elsewhere find students' attitudes equally fractured. Some are solidly for the war. Some are against it, but not to the point of protest.
''Protesting is a niche activity,'' said Prof. Michael Kazin, co-author of ''America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960's.'' ''There are some people who do drama, some people who do protest, other people who drink too much.''
At Georgetown, where Professor Kazin teaches history, a handful of antiwar students had a sleep-in last weekend on Red Square, named for the color of the bricks, not the political sentiment of those who gather there. Other students expressed disgust, so much that Professor Kazin said to his students that they seemed more upset about the encampment than the war.
He hears similar accounts in academic e-mail chains across the country. One example was a campus protest that drew 40 students, maybe 60.
Amherst's history should make it predictably antiwar. The Vietnam protests were so spirited that in 1972 they swept up the college president, John William Ward, who was arrested in a sit-in at nearby Westover Air Force Base. The protest included 1,000 students, 20 faculty members and the president's wife.
Now, the departing president, Tom Gerety, is firmly antiwar, as are most professors. The students, however, have yet to be swept up. Last month, the Progressive Students Association asked the student government to ask the faculty to take 15 minutes in class to discuss the war. The government refused. Some professors chose to take the time anyway, but many did not, having seen the reaction to the dining hall protest.
''There was a sense this is a different world,'' said Austin Sarat, a professor of political science who was active in antiwar protests in 1970 as a graduate student in Madison, Wis.
Students opposed to the war say they appreciate the professors' sentiments.
''It's a lonely place to be an antiwar protester on the Amherst campus,'' said Beatriz Wallace, a junior. In the dining hall, students have set out baskets of ribbons, some yellow, some red, white and blue.
Prowar students say they feel just as alienated. ''The faculty, and events, has a chilling effect on discussions for the prowar side,'' said David Chen, a sophomore.
In a discussion, Professor Sarat began with the proposition that if you love the United States, you must, as an act of patriotism, oppose the war. Students took exception.
''President Bush has taken an imperial position,'' Professor Sarat insisted.
Michael Valentine, a sophomore, replied: ''I don't think it's the dominance of the United States. It's the security of the United States that's at issue. They're saying the only way we can ensure the security of our citizens is to go in there.''
''And to make the Middle East safe for democracy,'' Professor Sarat interjected.
''Professor, that's only because a regime poses a security risk,'' Mr. Valentine said.
Professor Sarat said the change in tone reflected a larger shift.
''The notion that campuses are awash in political correctness,'' he said, ''is given the lie every day in my classroom.''
Still, he and others expressed wistfulness for days gone by.
''In Madison, teach-ins were as common as bratwurst,'' he said. ''There was a certain nobility in being gassed. Now you don't get gassed. You walk into a dining hall and hand out an informational pamphlet.''
The students' attitudes have many possible explanations. There is no draft this time. Students on small liberal arts campuses like this one are more diverse than those of the 60's and 70's. More receive financial aid, and many are more concerned about their careers than about protesting. But the students have also been pulled toward a more conservative mainstream than their parents.
''The most left president they know is Bill Clinton, running on, 'I'm tough on crime,' '' Professor Sarat said. ''The Great Society is to them what the New Deal was to me.''
John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale, agreed, saying: ''These are the kids of Reagan. When I lecture on Reagan, the kids love him. Their parents are horrified and appalled.''
This generation is also shaped by Sept. 11. When Gary J. Bass, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton, asked his class on ''Causes of War'' how many students were in R.O.T.C., two raised their hands. The rest applauded.
''I had asked the question before Sept. 11 and not gotten that response,'' Professor Bass said. ''I definitely hadn't expected it.''
A nationwide survey of freshmen by the University of California at Los Angeles over the last 37 years reflected other shifts from Sept. 11. This year, more students called themselves conservative than in other recent surveys, and 45 percent supported an increase in military spending, more than double the percentage in 1993.
At a teach-in at Yale, the president, Richard C. Levin, announced that although he was against the war, the speakers were chosen to represent a range of opinions.
At Amherst, Prof. Barry O'Connell, too, tries hard. As he sits in a discussion group with students, he patiently listens to those who argue in favor of the war, even though he remains adamantly against it. Across the hall, a mug shot of Henry A. Kissinger is posted outside his office with the heading ''Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity.''
''My job is not to get my students to agree with me,'' Professor O'Connell insisted.
Still, he conceded, 'There is a second when I hear them, and my heart just falls.''
Correction: April 8, 2003, Tuesday A front-page article on Saturday about students' and professors' positions on the war in Iraq referred incorrectly to the president of Yale, Richard C. Levin. He has not announced that he opposes the war; he has taken no public position on it.
I chose this article because at first it caught my eye, and after I read it, was amazed at how politically active people of all ages can be. When the media talks about protesters, they almost always talk about college aged people wanting change. This proves that it's all ages that care about change or what is going on politically in this country.
AP) Police in riot gear arrested two women in their 70s and seven others taking part in an antiwar march at the Republican National Convention on Sunday after they crossed a security fence into a restricted area near Xcel Energy Center.
The nine were arrested for trespassing, said Doug Holtz, a St. Paul police commander. All but one, who did not have identification, were released by police shortly after their arrest.
Eight of the protesters were handcuffed, and some flashed the peace sign to onlookers and media gathered at the security fence. Betty McKenzie, a 78-year-old nun, was not handcuffed as she was led away. The protesters had planned ahead of time to cross the fence, and organizers had announced it ahead of the march, which drew about 250 people.
"We are going to march into the arms of police. Whatever they are going to do is all right with us," organizer David Harris said to the marchers before they entered the restricted zone. He was one of those arrested.
"I believe it's time to stop this war," said Steve Clemens, 57, of Minneapolis, who also crossed the fence.
The arrests capped an otherwise peaceful march organized by Veterans for Peace and fellow peace group CodePink that began at the Capitol and made its way to the convention hall. It was a quiet warm-up before a planned march Monday that was expected to attract a larger crowd; organizers of Monday's march have said they hope to have as many as 50,000 people.
Jeanne Hynes, 72, of St. Paul was arrested along with her friend McKenzie, a nun from the Sisters of St. Joseph.
"We both planned to do this if we could make it this far," said Hynes as she waited to be arrested at the end of the half-mile route. "We weren't sure if our backs would hold up."
As the march began, Harris read the names of soldiers and civilians killed in Iraq. After each name was read, the marchers near Harris shouted "We will remember you!"
Bringing up the rear of the march, about three dozen people wearing orange jump suits and black hoods over their heads marched in silence with their hands behind their backs. Marchers carried banners that said, "Torture Destroys Us All." Sixty-one combat boots were lined up on the Capitol lawn to represent Minnesota soldiers who died in Iraq.
"We want to make it very clear we are pro-soldier and anti-war," said Madea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink.
Korean War veteran Bill Starr, 73, was carrying an American flag and a tombstone with the name of a soldier killed in Iraq. He said he sees futility in war.
"I can lock up my house and scream about it or I can come here," said Starr, of Minneapolis, who marched with his 37-year-old daughter.
Meanwhile, members of the RNC Welcoming Committee - which is not a sponsor of the Monday march but has been helping other protest groups coordinate - were trying to regroup after a series of raids Friday night and Saturday saw six people arrested and materials seized.
Assistant St. Paul Police Chief Matt Bostrom said those arrested had plans to disrupt transportation in the area, damage property and injure others.
Some of what was seized included knives, axes, bomb-making materials and anti-war literature.
It didn't appear likely that those arrested would be out of jail in time to help organize protesters or participate in Monday's event. They aren't required to be brought before a judge until noon on Wednesday, said their attorney Bruce Nestor.
Even so, Nestor said he was hopeful that a judge would review the cases against the six on Sunday and they could be released sooner. He said none of the six have any convictions other than misdemeanors and none have a history of violence.
The arrested can legally be held for 36 hours, not including the weekend or the Labor Day holiday.
"It's pretty clear that the point is to get organizers out of the picture," said Andy Fahlstrom, spokesman for the RNC Welcoming Committee. He said those arrested were in charge of various things, including finding housing for protesters and arranging food, and the arrests had adversely affected their organization.
Meanwhile, the organizers of Monday's march said they weren't changing their plans despite the GOP's decision to sharply curtail that day's session.
"The main effect of this scaling-back of the convention tomorrow is that our voices will be front and center and it will be the main news that is happening tomorrow," said Jess Sundin, of the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War.
"The world will see people of this country say no to the war in Iraq."
-This article describes an issue in L.A. where the Mayor used city money in a junket to promote LA-Israeli relations as well as security contracts given exclusively to the Israeli firms to provide security for LAX and other ports. I especially liked the cellphone bit, showing that even though people have the right to speak or complain, even our officials don't necessarily have to listen. It sounds as if the activists may also be able to use the law to counter the Mayor and City Council's actions.
Section: Southern California Chronicle
History was made June 25 in Los Angeles City Council chambers when 16 citizens protested the $225,000 purported public relations junket Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made to Israel in mid-June. In tow were three other council members, Dennis Zine, Jack Weiss and Wendy Greuel, as well as a gaggle of children, spouses and other city officials.
While it's nothing new for Mayor Villaraigosa to travel, this time his trip was to launch agreements with the Israeli government on water conservation and security of Los Angeles's port and international airport. This set a precedent for the nation's second largest city to contemplate granting a foreign power control over its sensitive ports of entry.
The expensive junket also hit a sensitive public nerve. Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez criticized the trip as Villaraigosa pandering to win Jewish votes in the next election. Newspaper editorials voiced cynical objections, as did local radio talk show hosts.
The City Council was broadsided June 25 when polite dissidents stood up one at a time during the public comment session to protest the council's negotiating with a foreign power before seeking bids from American security services.
As council members largely ignored the testimonies by talking on cell phones or drifting in and out of the chamber, Greta Berlin of Women In Black admonished the city officials:
"Please put down your phones and listen to what I have to say. I've witnessed what Israel does at its airport in the name of security. My 80-year-old Holocaust survivor friend was subjected to a cavity body search and I was detained and interrogated for eight hours because both of us advocate justice for the Palestinians. Now our mayor wants Israeli security to turn LAX into this apartheid system where Jews, dignitaries and the rich stand in one line and everyone else in the other line?"
Averred Lillian Laskin of Democratic Westside Progressives: "There are plenty of security consultants in the U.S. to secure our ports without seeking advice from Israel, which has a murky reputation on human rights and labor relations."
Marcy Winograd, co-founder of L.A. Jews for Peace, wondered: "Why is it these security agreements you signed are making me increasingly insecure? Is it because these consulting agreements are really just a foot in the door to more extensive security agreements with a foreign power implicated in espionage scandals?"
Jeremy Rothe-Kushel questioned the efficacy of Israeli security firms, pointing out that Israeli firms were in charge of security at Logan Airport in Boston and the Newark airport on Sept. 11, 2001, when the terrorists were allowed to board the doomed passenger planes.
Human rights attorney Patricia Barry dropped a bombshell when she stated that federal regulations and the L.A. City Charter probably will pre-empt any agreements Villaraigosa and other council members signed.
"Section 370 of the City Charter stipulates the principle of competition," she explained, "and that all contracts exceeding $1,000 must have bids from vendors. The mayor excluded this and arbitrarily gave the Security contract for our port and LAX without asking for bids from local vendors."
At the close of the proceedings, Councilman Zine insisted on addressing the dissenters before they left the chambers.
"I paid for some of my trip and it wasn't a junket," said the councilman, who described himself as an ex-cop of Lebanese Christian heritage. "We did go to Bethlehem and we did talk to some Arabs."
However, although in June 2007 Zine led a city council delegation to Lebanon for a Sister City ceremony between Los Angeles and Beirut, he has yet to condemn Israel's 2006 blanket bombing of southern Lebanon.
Peter Thottam, one of the June 25 speakers, plans to research just who Zine's political backers are. Carol Smith of the National Lawyers Guild is researching documents to verify if there was a misuse of L.A. Department of Water and Power, international airport and port funds to finance the costly trip.
…
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By Pat Twair and Samir Twair
Pat and Samir Twair are free-lance journalists based in Los Angeles.
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Activists Challenge L.A. City Council's Expensive June Junket to Israel. By: Twair, Pat, Twair, Samir, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 87554917, Sep/Oct2008, Vol. 27, Issue 7
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101 Days of Agricultural Protest in Argentina
After 101 days, four strikes, countless roadblocks, and many arrests, it seems that the conflict in Argentina over agriculture has finally come to a head. Today, the entire country—from coffee shops to taxis to grocers—tuned in to their radios and televisions with new fervor to hear President Cristina Kirchner address the nation on the issue. Her question, “What kind of country do we want?� rings out, raising serious questions in light of the continuing conflict. Soon, congress will determine the answer to this question while deciding the fate of the tax increase on agricultural exports that is the driving force behind this controversy.
President Kirchner’s question underscores the importance that the resolution to this conflict will have for Argentina and the rest of the world. However, a meaningful solution will have to satisfy all three factions of this fight—the farmers, the government, and the people. As each group holds protests and publishes propaganda, it seems that now is the time serious introspection.
In January 2008, President Kirchner captured the presidency in a landslide victory. She had a 70 percent approval rate upon entering La Casa Rosada (Argentina’s White House) and appeared to have an easy term ahead of her. In spite of this support, Mrs. Kirchner’s response to this conflict has left Argentines questioning not only her policies but also her ability to govern. La Presidenta, as she is called here, had planned to continue the political ideology of her husband, Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as President.
Both Kirchners espouse the idea popularized by Peron in the 1950s: to use the revenue from agricultural taxes to industrialize the country and to alleviate poverty. Mrs. Kirchner championed the creed during her campaign, primarily because the principle had successfully helped Peron to industrialize Argentina in the 1950s and helped her husband to revitalize the country after the 2001 financial crisis.
In early March of 2008 the Argentine government, under the leadership of Mrs. Kirchner, raised taxes on agricultural exports from 35 percent to 45 percent. Her party felt they could use the extra revenue to curb rapidly rising inflation and help the poor. However, hundreds of thousands of farmers across the country quickly responded with anger to what they called an unconstitutional tax. Cristina’s dream of an easy four years was gone, and the tensions with the agricultural interior were just beginning.
The Interior, The Government, and The People
The first strike, targeting Buenos Aires, lasted 21 days. A few dozen ruralistas, men from the rural provinces, armed with chains of large metal spikes, blocked main highways and effectively halted all transport of meat, cheese, eggs, and dairy into the city. After the first week, meat disappeared from grocers’ shelves. The few remaining stores with meat hiked up prices that only the most affluent could afford. Despite the extortion, these products disappeared within days.
The fallout was undeniable: porteños, the residents of Buenos Aires, realized the power of the campo. Argentina strictly limits its imports to products it can’t produce: most notably machinery, motor vehicles, and oil. The country has relied on its own fields to feed the population, a task that had been easily completed for decades. The strike in early March, and the resulting food shortages in Buenos Aires, revealed a flaw in the import policy: to function properly, the agriculture sector must be on board. If they aren’t, the whole system may self-destruct.
After three weeks, the ruralistas ended the strike fearing that the urban population would turn against the movement and hoping to initiate negotiations with the government over the new tax rates. Since March, though, the ruralistas have had three additional strikes, again blocking major trucking routes and refusing to export their goods (after the first strike, they have not blocked food to Buenos Aires). Each of these strikes has been in response to critical government actions, most recently, to speak out against government-sponsored repression at a roadblock last week.
Argentina is the second largest exporter of corn and the third largest exporter of soybeans in the world. Over half of the nation’s export earnings come from agriculture. The strikes are both symbolic and opportunistic. While they demonstrate the dependency of the rest of the country on the campo, the strikes are also the only bargaining power ruralistas have. The Argentine government, however, has refused to negotiate with the ruralistas if they strike. For this reason, none of the strikes has lasted for more than a few weeks. Thus far, the strikes have only been used as threats by the ruralistas, enacted when they are angered or feel threatened by the government. It seems likely that until the ruralistas carry out a protracted, continuous strike, stopping all exports, the government will continue to have the upper hand and resolution will remain elusive.
The government has remained decidedly distant from actually involving itself outright in the conflict. Nestor Kirchner claimed a few weeks ago that the “government governs, not mediates.� Rather, they work through the Justice Department, the courts, the police, and the media. With no one to pin their frustrations on directly, the ruralistas are left somewhat demoralized. Their message has become increasingly inflexible and their actions more visible as they feel more and more disenfranchised.
Underscoring this entire conflict is the campo’s desire for acknowledgment, a simple “thank you� for the work they do for their country. In fact, only a few weeks ago, this call for gratitude was their major demand. Argentines are a naturally proud people, and this situation is complicated by the fact that the reputation of hundreds of thousands of farmers are the on the line. Moreover, the government has manipulated the conflict so that only one party—either the government or the campo—can emerge victorious. Their rhetoric has infiltrated the media and for many weeks the bylines of the newspapers read “El Gobierno vs. El Campo� (The Government vs. The Farmland). In effect, the government has created a battle out of what should be a discussion.
The Argentine government has countered every rural protest with its own pro-government demonstrations. In the city of Buenos Aires, this has played out between the Obelisco and the Plaza de Mayo—two of the city’s focal points. Several times, opposing protestors have marched on the Obelisco, creating extremely tense, often violent, and sometimes bloody encounters. In the rural interior, the Argentine GendarmerÃa is the acting representative of the government.
These men, armored in riot gear with clubs, and shields, were sent last week to one rural area to dislodge a roadblock and the protestors supporting it. They approached the group, shoulder to shoulder, and arrested 20 men. One of them was Alfredo de Angeli, the president of the Entre RÃos chapter of the Argentine Agrarian Federation. The ruralistas view the Gendarmes as an extension of the Casa Rosada. Attacking them is a way to vent their frustrations and growing anger. And the government is naïve in thinking that sending the Gendarmes to break up protestors could either transpire without violence or bring either party any closer to reaching an agreement.
Immediately following the arrest of Angeli, more than 100 roadblocks were enacted and the strikes reinstituted. As violence escalates and the conflict becomes more physical, a quick resolution seems improbable. As Angeli promised upon being released, “This Government is not going to pacify us. Our protest will continue.�
Caught in the opposing forces of the government and the campo, the city dwellers of Buenos Aires have refused to determine the winner. Ricardo Kirschbaum, the editor-in-chief of ClarÃn one of the country’s leading newspapers, explains, “Public opinion, while it is not with the farmers’ protest, is far from the Casa Rosada.â€? To many, the conflict is confusing. Others have a lingering feeling of disinterest with the process; is there really a chance for the campo’s demands to be heard?
For three months now, the people of Buenos Aires have sporadically though forcefully taken to the streets, expressing their feelings either pro or anti government through cacerolazos, or coordinated, energetic banging of pots and pans, supported by car horns, bells, and other noisemakers. Thousands of porteños have protested in this manner but with very few results. It’s impossible for the government not to hear the tens of thousands of banging pots around the city—in the streets, from terraces, balconies, and open windows—but so far they are refusing to listen.
The Implications
The discussion of agricultural production, taxation, and export is becomingly increasingly critical in the rapidly urbanizing world of Latin America. Latin America is urbanizing faster than any other developing region in the world, and the issue of food production and transport from rural areas into cities is of the utmost importance, as Argentina has learned in the past three months. Mrs. Kirchner’s question, “What kind of country do we want?� is less a question of choice and more a testimony to modern realities.
In this country of 40 million people, more than 13 million live in the mammoth urban center of Buenos Aires. Though it is considered the cultural center of Argentina, Buenos Aires is totally dependent on the rural areas for food. While Argentina prides itself on growing the majority of food consumed within her borders, this system, unless it is fully supported by the campo, is risky. Though Argentina has come to be viewed as one of the more “stable� countries in Latin America, its politics, especially concerning the urban-rural divide, are precarious. Continued problems may prompt city dwellers to consider the benefits of urban agriculture, an idea that is gaining traction throughout the world but remains largely unknown in Argentina.
The validity of the export taxes is now in the hands of Argentina’s Congress. However, this body is dominated by Kirchneristas, the Peronist party. Already, ruralistas have expressed doubt at the fairness of such a process, especially when the decision is intended to set a precedent. But, in this case, the disorder of the Argentine political process, will work to the ruralistas advantage: if Congress does not vote in favor of the campo, the international community will be sure to hear from the ruralistas again.
This article was very interesting to me because it shows that people care about all kinds of things. I would not protest something like this, but I still think it is unfair to cancel classic music on the radio simply because it is unpopular, and put people out of jobs, like an entire orchestra. Protesting can be done for any reason and by any one. Hopefully this protest was successful.
Dedicated CBC Radio 2 listeners and other classical music fans assembled outside CBC locations across Canada on Friday to protest recently announced programming changes and the public broadcaster's decision to disband its radio orchestra.
One-hour protests were staged outside a host of CBC branches, including in St. John's, Halifax, Fredericton, Moncton, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Regina.
Across the country, the demonstrations varied in number from small gatherings of about 20 to an estimated 300 in Vancouver.
"It will be one more step towards a homogenized CBC whose musical purpose is undemanding background noise," composer James Rolfe, president of the Canadian League of Composers, told protesters in Toronto.
Lydia Adams, artistic director of the Toronto-based Elmer Iseler Singers and the Amadeus Choir, urged the public broadcaster to "take a step back" and reconsider the decisions.
"We expect the CBC leadership to reflect the Canadian voice, our Canadian voice," she said to loud cheers from the Toronto crowd, huddled under umbrellas in the rain.
Globe and Mail columnist Russell Smith also spoke in Toronto.
Set to musical accompaniment that ranged from blaring trumpets (in Halifax) to blasting boom boxes (in Calgary) to bullhorns (in Montreal) to drum beating (in Toronto), the protesters toted signs bearing slogans like "Save our CBC," "Classical Music Rocks," "My CBC includes the CBC Radio Orchestra," "We are your demographic" and "Are 1,100,000 classical listeners irrelevant?"
In Saskatoon, Anne Frost, who described herself as a loyal CBC listener for the past 30 years, disputed the notion that the programming changes are being made to better reflect Canada's diversity.
Diverse voices are already reflected on CBC Radio 1, which offers news, current affairs, arts and other cultural programming, she said, adding that a bigger mix of musical genres will hurt Radio 2.
"If somebody really likes country and western, do they want to hear an opera aria at the end of it? No. They are not going to listen. They are going to go to" a country and western station, Frost told CBC News.
The cross-country protest originated on a Save Classical Music at the CBC Facebook group that has enlisted approximately 13,000 members.
"What we heard there, at protests in all the locations, was a very passionate commitment to classical music in general, to individual programs, and to Radio 2. We see that as a good thing," CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said.
"There's always some unease when you talk about any kind of change," he added.
"We have a mandate as a national public broadcaster … to represent the musical diversity and creativity in the country, and that's exactly what we're going to do. Classical, yes, but other kinds of music as well."
In an open letter published earlier this month, CBC Radio programming head Jennifer McGuire defended the decision to feature "a broader, richer and diverse spectrum of music: classical, jazz, folk, world, R&B, singer-songwriter and roots.
"Radio 2 does not belong to one genre, one constituency, one taste," she wrote, adding that "current listeners can take comfort in the fact that classical will remain the most represented music genre on Radio 2."
Former presidential cantidate Ron Paul held a rally at the Target Center on the same day as the Republican National Convention. Though Ron Paul considers himself a republican, his views are much different than that of the Republican parties' chosen cantidate, John McCain. The rally provides an alternative way of upholding a specific set of values and expectations that one has for a presidential cantidate without violently protesting an entire political party as seen at the RNC on Monday Sept 1.
Paul, Ventura rally thousands in Minneapolis
Mike Longaecker, Rivertowns Group
Published Wednesday, September 03, 2008
MINNEAPOLIS – Thousands of people filled the Target Center Tuesday, hoping to prove there was another Republican show in the Twin Cities.
As the Republican National Convention got into full swing in