Nonviolent Action around the World – 25 September 2009 (Part 1)

Iranians protest Ahmadinejad’s N.Y. visit, with spirit and songs
By: Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post, September 24, 2009
The streets of Midtown Manhattan were filled with other Iranians who had traveled to New York to protest Ahmadinejad’s presence. Some had demonstrated there against the shah three decades ago. Some said they, too, hoped to get the president’s attention. They staged a sound-and-light show Tuesday night in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, projecting images of Iranian unrest on the white T-shirts of volunteers and declaring, “Ahmadinejad is not my president.”
Read full article…

President of Iran defends his legitimacy
By: Mark Landler and Nazila Fathi, NY Times, September 23, 2009
With thousands of demonstrators protesting outside that he had stolen Iran’s election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stoutly defended his legitimacy here on Wednesday, declaring in a speech that the Iranian “people entrusted me once more with a large majority” in a ballot he described as “glorious and fully democratic.” Protesters rallied outside the United Nations while President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran delivered his address inside.
Read full article…

We can’t decide Iran’s struggle – but we can avoid backing the wrong side
By: Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, September 23, 2009
Let’s get this straight: the people who will change Iran for the better are the Iranians. The words of an American president at the UN general assembly in New York can’t do that. European talks and sanctions can’t do that. Israeli bombs on Iran’s nuclear installations certainly won’t do that. But the Iranian people: yes, they can. This is what millions of Iranians set out to do, in mass demonstrations this summer; and that is what some of them are still trying to do, despite beatings, killings, torture, rape, the continued arrest of thousands of activists, and a grotesque show trial of leading reformists…
Read full article…

Iran’s campuses on edge as university doors open
By: Golnaz Esfandiari, RFERL, September 23, 2009
Iranian universities have reopened against a backdrop of simmering postelection dispute that has authorities fearing new protests and many students expecting the worst. Officials are concerned that the new academic year will allow disgruntled youths to stoke public anger over the fiercely contested reelection of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Student leaders are meanwhile nervous as a result of arrests, bans, and efforts that appeared aimed at intimidating potential malcontents whose sympathies are thought to lie with the political opposition that’s been shut out since the June 12 election.
Read full article…

Cracks in Iran’s clique
By: Thomas Friedman, NY Times, September 22, 2009
The reason we now have a slight chance for a negotiated deal is because Iran’s nuclear program has always been a survival strategy for Tehran’s ruling clique: what Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment, calls “the small cartel of hard-line clerics and nouveau riche Revolutionary Guardsmen who run Iran today.”  After stealing June’s elections, this ruling cartel is now more unpopular and illegitimate than ever. As a result, his government can ill afford real biting sanctions that would make life in Iran not only politically miserable but even more economically miserable – and his dictatorial clique even more unpopular.
Read full article…

Conversation with Ebrahim Sharifi, victim of rape in prison
By: IHRV, September 22, 2009
Ebrahim Sharifi, who has also been identified by his initials in the case related to the victims of rape in the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has recently left Iran. Mr. Sharifi appealed to Mr. Mehdi Karoubi, one of the presidential candidates contesting the voting count of the 10th presidential election, and told Mr. Karoubi that he had been assaulted and raped inside the prison. Mr. Sharifi is a student studying Computer Science and Italian, and in Mr. Karoubi’s campaign he was responsible for surveying voting centers.
Read full article…

In Honduras, curfew eased so residents can buy essentials
By: A. Renderos and K. Ellingwood, LA Times, September 24, 2009
For a few hours Wednesday, Honduras’ political drama gave way to more important matters — like buying groceries and filling gas tanks. Streets in the capital, Tegucigalpa, were clogged with frantic shoppers after the country’s interim rulers briefly lifted a nationwide curfew to let residents restock shelves. Meanwhile, the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya, remained hunkered in a foreign embassy. It was the first chance for residents to get out since Monday, when Zelaya sneaked back into Honduras and the de facto government abruptly imposed the shutdown.
Read full article…

They’re torturing me, Honduras’ Manuel Zelaya claims
By: Frances Robles, Miami Herald, September 24, 2009
It’s been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He’s sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and “Israeli mercenaries” are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.  “We are being threatened with death,” he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him. “I prefer to march on my feet than to live on my knees before a military dictatorship,” Zelaya said in a series of back-to-back interviews.
Read full article…

Honduras lifts three-day curfew
By: BBC News, September 24, 2009
The interim government of Honduras has lifted the curfew imposed on Monday when ousted President Manuel Zelaya made a dramatic return home. But hundreds of police still surround the Brazilian embassy in the capital, where Mr Zelaya has taken refuge.  The interim authorities are refusing to reinstate him despite growing calls.  The International Monetary Fund has meanwhile announced it still recognises Mr Zelaya as president, in effect denying the new regime access to funds.
Read full article…

What some US reporters don’t get about Brazil and the Honduras crisis
By: Al Giordano, The Field, September 23, 2009
When Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva addressed this morning’s UN General Assembly in New York, he said: “Without political will, we will see more coups such as the one that toppled Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.” I don’t know what is so hard for some observers to understand about that statement, which comes from the elected president of a country that itself was victimized by a military coup d’etat in 1964. Brazil, like every other democracy on the planet, has a legitimate self interest in making sure that no military coup succeeds, especially in its own hemisphere.
Read full article…

Honduras tense as crisis reignites
By: J. Wyss and F. Robles, Miami Herald, September 23, 2009
“We are asking for a national and international dialogue but there is no indication that the coup leaders will heed that call,” Fajardo said. In New York on Tuesday, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who had tried to negotiate a solution to the impasse, said he was blindsided by Zelaya’s move and asked both parties to resume talks before violence erupted. “If I can help, I will try,” he said, offering to mediate again. “What I don’t want is any more violence.”
Read full article…

Honduran crisis explodes – persecution and panic-buying under coup crackdown
By: The Americas Policy Program, September 23, 2009
The Honduran coup has dropped all pretenses of legality over the past few days as it enters into a phase of desperate repression since the return of President Manuel Zelaya on Sept. 21 and the surge in grassroots mobilization against the coup. The resistance march yesterday reported many detained, beaten and chased. Photos reveal the brutality of the torture that arrested demonstrators have undergone. Neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa report that military tanks have been moved in to break up groups of protesters. The Armed Forces have threatened movement leaders and are targeting teachers and youths.
Read full article…

Honduran women under siege after President’s return
By: Americas Policy Program, September 22, 2009
Hours after Honduras’ ousted president returned to the country and sought refuge in a foreign embassy, the military-backed regime launched a brutal attack against supporters of the former leader. The violence came as thousands gathered outside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa to show support for Manual Zelaya, the democratically elected president who was kidnapped and expelled from the country in June. Zelaya secretly returned to Honduras yesterday and then appeared on national television from within the Brazilian Embassy.
Read full article…

Mugabe denies blame for Zimbabwe woes
By: CNN, September 24, 2009
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, in a rare interview Thursday, depicted himself as an African hero battling imperialism and foreign attempts to oust him rather than the widespread perception of a dictator clinging to power at the expense of the welfare of his people and country. The 85-year-old Mugabe, the only leader of Zimbabwe since it became independent from Britain in 1980, rejected repeated assertions by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that his policies have driven the nation once known as Africa’s breadbasket to virtual economic collapse.
Read full article…

Gambia: Jammeh threatens to kill human rights defenders
By: All Africa, September 24, 2009
Activists have launched a campaign to have the headquarters of a top African human rights body moved from the Gambia after the country’s president reportedly threatened to kill human rights defenders. The online Gambian news service, Freedom Newspaper, reported this week that President Yahya Jammeh had said in a television broadcast that he would kill “anyone who wants to destablise this country.”
Read full article…

From the Kalahari to court
By: Survival International, September 2009
The extraordinary story of how the Bushmen of the Kalahari took their government to court and won.
Watch the video…

Helping Zimbabweans to understand and write their own Constitution
By: Kubatana, September 2009
Zimbabwe’s current Constitution was written in 1979 as a cease-fire agreement. In 2000 consultations on a new constitution were carried out across the country but Zimbabweans rejected the draft constitution for two main reasons. 1) People did not have confidence that the words they had spoken in the consultation process had been respected and written into the constitution.(…) 2) The draft did not reduce the president’s powers, the presidential age limit or his term of office. By rejecting the 2000 draft by voting NO, Zimbabweans voted to continue on with the Lancaster House Constitution that has now been amended 19 times and has increased the presidential powers…
Read full article…

Latin America: “Mass media cannot go back to what they were”
By: Roberto Giusti, El Universal, September 23, 2009
Invited by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) to take part in the Emergency Forum on Freedom of Speech, former Bolivian President Carlos Mesa, also a brilliant and internationally acclaimed journalist, brought some controversial issues to the discussion. During his speech, he noted that despite the fact that freedom of expression throughout the continent is “under fire,” the governments of both Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales are backed by the population, as opposed to traditional dictatorships…
Read full article…

US: Protesters descend on UN (photos)
By: Huffington Post, September 23, 2009
It seems as if anyone who has ever had a grievance with a world leader is descending on the United Nations this week to make his or her voice heard loud and clear — and preferably, the loudest and clearest. Check out these photographs of the protests and vote on the most inspiring ones. We will update the slideshow as the day progresses.
View the photopgrahs…

US: Protesters march on G-20 summit in Pittsburgh
By: D. Lovering and V. Smith, Centre Daily, September 23, 2009
Several hundred protesters are marching toward the site of the Group of 20 Summit in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project, an umbrella organization of protest groups, calls the march the “People’s Uprising.” They do not have a city permit for it. The march is beginning in a neighborhood park northeast of downtown. It is headed for the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where world leaders are meeting Friday. Police in riot gear are standing guard near the protesters. A large number of police also are gathering near the convention center, a couple miles away.
Read full article…

US: Police harassment greets G-20 protesters
By: Robert Eshelman, The Nation, September 22, 2009
Pittsburgh plays host this week to the G-20 summit, a gathering of leaders of the world’s largest national economies and the European Union. And, as with many past international summits, protest groups are embroiled in legal battles over their ability to voice opposition to international political and corporate elites. On Tuesday morning, lawyers for the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the Center for Constitutional Rights presented arguments before US District Court Judge Gary Lancaster describing a pattern of unconstitutional searches and seizures on the part of local law enforcement against two protest groups–the Seeds of Peace Collective and the Three Rivers Climate Convergence.
Read full article…

US: Tibetans protest Hu in NY
By: Phayul, September 22, 2009
The Dag Hammerskjold Plaza opposite the United Nations building in New York was filled with angry protesters yesterday as Chinese president Hu Jintao arrived to deliver his first address at the United Nations on climate change. Tibetans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Burmese, and Falun Dafa followers voiced their angst in unison against the Chinese president who they accused of oppressing thousands of innocent peoples. Meanwhile, the Tibetan Youth Congress, the largest pro-independence group of the Tibetan diaspora, condemned the United Nations for kowtowing to China by inviting Hu, who it accused of carrying out “gross violation of human rights in Tibet, East Turkestan and China”.
Read full article…

US: From assistance to engagement, a model for a new era in U.S.-Russian civil society relations
By: Sarah E. Mendelson, CSIC, September, 2009
In Russia, as in the United States, many of the challenges that the population faces cannot be fixed by government action alone. Similarly, much of what the new U.S. administration hopes to accomplish with the Russian authorities cannot be achieved solely through joint government agreements. (…) Given all this, how should we in U.S. and Russian civil society engage one another to best address problems and challenges we face?
Read full article…