By: Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, Global Voices, October 13, 2009
Puerto Rico is getting ready for the national strike on Thursday, October 15. Since Governor Luis Fortuño layed-off about 17,000 government employees the first week of October, there has been tremendous mobilization from different sectors of the civil society: workers and members of trade unions, women, environmentalists, students, and professors, among others. There have been multiple demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience to protest the economic policies that the government has assured are necessary due to the financial crisis.
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SOUTH AMERICA
Student leader insists on IACHR visit to Venezuela
By: El Universal, October 13, 2009 Julio Rivas, a student who was released a few weeks ago from jail, once again, on behalf of the dissenting student movement, urged the government of President Hugo Chávez to allow the visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to Venezuela. “The government has the responsibility to enforce the people’s will. Their only choice is to do what people say. We will ask the government to allow the visit of the Inter-American Commission to Venezuela and we will achieve our goal.” Read full article… Mapuche women step up
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EUROPE
Russian lawmakers protest rigged local elections
By: Maria Rybakova,AP, October 14, 2009 Dozens of Russian lawmakers staged a rare walkout from parliament Wednesday to protest what they and independent monitors describe as rigged local elections across Russia. It was the first time in nine years that all factions except the main Kremlin-favored United Russia party had walked out in protest. Read full article… French President takes heat from civil society activists over Astana visit
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MIDDLE EAST/NORTH AFRICA
Saudi university faces down religious establishment, promotes serious science
By: Huffington Post, October 15, 2009 In just 1,000 days from a seaside stretch of desert, the new university has already staked out one of the most ambitious research agendas in academia, and it has drawn its inaugural cohort of 71 professors from some of the world’s great universities. At a time when other research institutions are watching their finances dwindle, Kaust’s founding endowment of at least $10 billion – supplied by King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud himself . Read full article… Egypt opposition launches anti-succession campaign Egyptian women protest ban on austere veil
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SOUTH ASIA
Rogue elements in Maldives police impede freedom
By: Dhivehi Observer, October 14, 2009 Freedom of assembly was a basic right granted to the people even in the ‘Golhaa’ constitution but the dictator never had the balls to tolerate dissent and always used force to crush them. In his regime, the police had one duty, which is to protect him and his government. Until the riots of September 2003, the outburst of public anger over the brutal murder of Evan Naseem and other inmates in Maafushi Jail, Maldivian people had been afraid to take to the streets and express their feelings. Read full article…
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SOUTHEAST ASIA
Cambodia: Draft law covering protests blasted
By: The Phnom Penh Post, October 15, 2009 Government and opposition parliamentarians engaged in heated exchanges Wednesday as the National Assembly opened its debate into a proposed Law on Nonviolent Demonstrations, which critics said could severely curtail freedom of expression throughout the country. Although Article 2 of the draft law guarantees the people’s freedom of expression through peaceful demonstrations, the same article states that demonstrators must not use these rights to abuse other people’s freedom and reputations, negatively affect the traditions of the nation, or affect public order and national security. Read full article… Vietnam: Lawyer plans appeal
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EAST ASIA
China: Blocking Twitter’s third party applications
By: Oiwan Lam, Global Voices, October 14, 2009 In the past few days, Chinese twitterers reported that the Chinese censor has blocked a number of popular Twitter’s third party applications. Since Fanfou, the Chinese micro-blogging website, has been ordered to shut down earlier this year, many bloggers moved to Twitter to spread their ideas. Net activists believe that it is impossible to block Twitter as there are many third party applications that allow users to read and post information without accessing the site. Read full article… Stop power – China’s transnational censorship efforts China: Death sentences for rioters China’s export of censorship China: Calls grow for web freedoms
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OCEANIA
Australia: Thirteen arrested at Climate Camp protests
By: Brett Cox, Ilawarra Mercuary, October 12, 2009 Environmentalists broke into the Illawarra Coal Dendrobium mine and stalled operations for several hours as part of a Climate Camp protest held in the Illawarra over the weekend. Five protesters were arrested and charged with trespass after scaling and fastening themselves to a conveyer belt used to load coal in the Kemira Valley, near the Mt Kembla mine, at dawn yesterday. Another eight scaled a fence at the Metropolitan Colliery in Helensburgh later in the day and also faced trespass charges. Read full article…
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Voila! Stop tar sands en Français
By: Greenpeace, October 9, 2009 Our tar sands campaign just spread from Canada to France when 30 Greenpeace activists entered Total’s refinery site, in Normandy, to highlight the involvement of the French oil company with the climate-changing tar sands in Alberta. Climate change is a global problem — and this action is part of a global response to one of the worst climate offenders. The world doesn’t want Canada’s dirty oil. Read full article…
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DR Congo: Arc of war, map of responsibility
By: Martin Shaw, Open Democracy, October 14, 2009 The political dynamics of conflict in Africa’s most complex region must be understood if enduring solutions are to be found. Martin Shaw reads fellow openDemocracy contributor Gerard Prunier’s book “From Genocide to Continental War”. Read full article…
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Support Narco News and its School of Authentic Journalism
By: Authentic Journalism, October 15, 2009 With the generous matching support of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict for up to $20,000 of smaller contributions to The Fund for Authentic Journalism, Narco News will be able to offer 24 scholarships to a ten-day session of The School of Authentic Journalism, February 3 to 13 on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Read full article…
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By: Global Witness, September 25, 2009
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should intervene and ensure that the frivolous charges against Congolese human rights activist Golden Misabiko are dropped immediately, said campaign group Global Witness today. Misabiko, president of the Association africaine de défense des droits de l’homme (ASADHO) in Katanga province, was sentenced to four months in detention and eight months’ suspended prison sentence on 23 September.
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Youth Activism
By: J. Denari and T. Verderame, Y Press, July 30, 2009
Genocide in Darfur, AIDS in Africa, child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Uganda- these issues are publicized on teenagers’ T-shirts across the country. With the help of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, youth around the globe can find hundreds of ways to organize and get involved with issues that transcend national borders. Compared to their counterparts of the last few decades, today’s youth activists would seemingly have come a long way.
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