By: Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa, May 18, 2009
Over 1 000 members of the pressure group Women of Zimbabwe Arise took to the streets in four separate demonstrations, that merged at the government complex in Bulawayo on Monday. WOZA spokesperson Annie Sibanda said the aim of the protests was to highlight the failures of the first 100 days of the power sharing government and the fact that very little progress had been made in the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans.
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Zimbabwe newsman ready to try again
By: Robyn Dixon, LA Times, May 18, 2009
Barnabas Thondhlana, who worked for the independent Daily News before it was forced to close in 2003, prepares to launch NewsDay, the first major test of media freedom under the new unity government. Boss Barns, as he’s fondly known to his colleagues and drinking pals at the Quill Club, was there on the day in 2003 when armed police shut down the country’s last independent daily paper, the Daily News. They ordered the journalists out and put a padlock as big as his hand on the front door.
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Zimbabwe: 15 MDC youths arrested
By: Lizwe Sebatha, ZimOnline, May 18, 2009
Fifteen youths from the former opposition MDC formations were arrested as an attempt to form a national youth council collapsed in violence at the weekend in Zimbabwe’s second largest city of Bulawayo. According to witnesses elections to choose a new inclusive Zimbabwe Youth Council (ZYC) to mirror the unity government between the MDC and President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party had to be called off after violence broke out between the two groups.
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Shack dwellers fight demolition in S. Africa court
By: OneWorld, May 15, 2009
As South Africa prepares for the 2010 soccer World Cup, the government has made plans to develop ‘World Class Cities’ by eliminating the ‘slums’ which are home to millions,” explains the economic justice group War on Want. On Thursday, Abahlali baseMjondolo (ABM), a Durban-based shack-dweller movement, challenged the so-called Slums Act in South Africa’s Constitutional Court, continuing its campaign for improved living condiditons and against involuntary removal.
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The messiah within: Redeeming the soul of the Kenyan nation
By: Njonjo Mue, Pambazuka News, May 14, 2009
As Kenyans struggle to find meaning in the protracted troubles surrounding their body politic, Njonjo Mue challenges the nation’s youth to join an army of ordinary people to fight the good fight and to defend Kenyans’ freedom, dignity, heritage and their children’s future by engaging in brutal self-appraisal and refusing to permit decay.
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AMERICAS
U.S.: New York Times falsifies Obama-Netanyahu meeting
By: David Bromwich, Huffington Post, May 19, 2009 The Times made this meeting into a story about Iran. They read into Obama’s careful and measured remarks exactly the hostile intention toward Iran and the explicit deadline for results from his negotiations with Iran that Obama had taken great pains to avoid stating. President Obama sounded a more urgent note about the progress Israel ought to make in yielding what it long has promised to the Palestinian people. In the Times story, by contrast, the word Iran occurs three times before the first mention of “Palestinians.” Read full article… Peru army moves into Amazon after tribes blockade rivers and roads Venezuela: Some media hail everything the opposition does
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ASIA/SOUTH ASIA
Sri Lanka: New non-violent group should replace LTTE- Tamil leader
By: Dipankar De Sarkar, World Latest News, May 19, 2009 A new democratically-minded and non-violent group is needed to win the aspirations of Tamils in Sri Lanka following the defeat of the LTTE, a leading member of the Tamil diaspora in Britain said Monday. “At the moment, there is mourning everywhere among the (Tamil) diaspora, but once we have had time to mourn and hold our memorials, we should sit down and chalk out the way forward,” said Thaya Idaikkadar, chairman of the British Tamil Councillors and Associates (BTCA). Read full article… Young Pakistanis take problem into their own hands By: Sabrina Tavernise, NY Times, May 18, 2009 A group of young Pakistani friends, sick of hearing their families complain about the government, decided to spite them by taking matters into their own hands: every Sunday they would grab shovels, go out into their city, and pick up garbage. The students were inspired by the recent success of the lawyers’ movement, which used a national protest to press the government to reinstate the country’s chief justice, and their rush of public consciousness was irrepressible. Read full article… Malaysia: ‘When all else fails, we will turn to people’s power’
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Uzbekistan: Prominent lawyers to lose their licenses for ‘unprofessional performance’
By: A. Volosevich, Ferghana, May 18, 2009
Prominent Tashkent-based lawyers that protected independent journalists, human rights activists, opposition members, religious leaders and sufferers of illegal actions, will lose their licenses for the reason that they failed to pass “merit rating”, conducted by the authorities. They both are lawyers with many years of experience. They have been put on the black list of ruling elite long ago since they were brave enough to show the complex nature of many criminal cases.
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Turkmenistan grants mass prisoner pardon
By: Isabel Gorst, FT, May 17, 2009
The president of Turkmenistan pardoned 1,671 prisoners on Friday, in a move that appeared designed to appease international concern about the country’s abysmal human rights record. The amnesty, granted on the eve of Turkmenistan’s day of National Revival and Unity, was a “tribute to the ancient humanitarian traditions of the nation enshrined in the constitution,” Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, Turkmenistan’s president, told state television.
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Outcry in Azerbaijan after student protest broken up
By: Sabina Vaqifqizi and Shahin Rzayev, IWPR, May 15, 2009
Activists in Azerbaijan have accused police of acting illegally in their heavy-handed break-up of a student protest at the weekend, when 50 protesters were detained. During the protest on May 10, angry students in black shirts disrupted the Holiday of Flowers, a Baku commemoration of the birth of Azerbaijan’s ex-president, Heydar Aliev, prompting the police crackdown.
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