‘Our dear Masha, we all hope that you will be alright!’ said Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, leader of trio of women who led 2020 protests
The jailed Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova has been admitted to intensive care and undergone surgery, her allies have said.
“Maria is in the emergency hospital in Gomel, in the intensive care unit,” said the press service of Viktor Babaryko, another opposition politician.
Continue reading...Authorities flood streets with police as top security body urges action against ‘hostile forces’
China has sent university students home and flooded streets with police in an attempt to disperse the most widespread anti-government protests in decades, as the country’s top security body called for a crackdown on “hostile forces”.
In an apparent effort to tackle anger at the zero-Covid policies that originally sparked the protests, authorities also announced plans to step up vaccination of older people.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: A timeline of increasing dissent as Chinese citizens demand ‘food, not PCR tests’ and blame Xi Jinping’s government for restrictions they say have cost lives
Good morning. After days of escalating protests across China unprecedented since Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, the state hit back on Monday night. “There was a massive police presence [at the expected protest sites] in Shanghai and Beijing questioning passers-by,” the Guardian’s Helen Davidson, covering the story from Taipei, told me this morning. “They scared people off, which was obviously the intention.” And yet the unrest that has grown over recent days and weeks remains a sign of an extraordinary rupture in China’s political system.
“This isn’t going to lead to a revolution,” Helen said. “But I do think it is a point of no return in the relationship between the general population and the CCP [Chinese Communist party], at least as far as Covid goes. There are frequent protests in China. But people who have been living in China for decades say they haven’t seen anything like this since Tiananmen Square in 1989.”
Foreign policy | Rishi Sunak has signalled the end of the “golden era” of relations between Britain and China, using his first major foreign policy speech to warn of the creeping authoritarianism of Xi Jinping’s regime. Sunak called China a “systemic challenge to our values and interests”.
Internet safety | Social media platforms that breach pledges to block sexist and racist content could face substantial fines under new changes to the online safety bill. Ofcom will have the power to fine companies up to 10% of global turnover for breaches.
Ukraine | Fighting around the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut has descended into a bloody morass with hundreds of dead and injured reported daily, as neither Russian or Ukrainian forces were able to make a significant breakthrough after months of fighting.
Environment | A report by Unesco and IUCN has concluded that the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s biggest coral reef system, should be placed on a list of world heritage sites that are in danger.
Media | More than 70 media figures, including the editors of the Guardian and the Daily Mail, are calling on the government to back a proposed law to tackle “abusive legal tactics to shut down investigations”. A letter calls for urgent action against the global super-rich’s use of ‘“strategic lawsuits against public participation” (Slapps).
Continue reading...National Highways has obtained an injunction to ‘prevent unlawful protests’ until November 2023
A high court injunction has been granted that would impose fresh penalties on Just Stop Oil activists for demonstrating on the country’s busiest motorway until November next year.
National Highways said it had secured the civil order to “prevent unlawful protests” on the M25, after a series of actions by the environmental group caused significant traffic disruption.
Continue reading...Barriers erected on street where demonstrations have been held against rigid coronavirus policies
Chinese police have launched a show of force across the country in an effort to head off further protests against the government’s rigid zero-Covid policies and tackle what have become the most extraordinary acts of civil disobedience in the country for decades.
Dozens of police cars lined the streets around a central Beijing subway station and patrolled surrounding blocks on Monday evening, while uniformed and plain-clothed officers stood guard at station exits and stopped passersby for questioning. Hours after the scheduled start of a protest organised via encrypted messaging apps there were few apparent participants.
Continue reading...Activity indicates ‘first major failure’ to stop government interference under ownership of Elon Musk
Twitter has been flooded with nuisance posts designed to obscure news of the coronavirus lockdown protests in China, in an apparent state-directed attempt to suppress footage of the demonstrations.
Chinese bot accounts – not operated by humans – are being used to flood the social networking service with adverts for sex workers, pornography and gambling when users search for a major city in the country, such as Shanghai or Beijing, using Chinese script.
Continue reading...Rights activist Farideh Moradkhani releases video describing government as ‘murderous and child-killing’ after her arrest
A niece of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on foreign governments to cut all links with Tehran’s “murderous and child-killing” regime in a video posted online two days after she was arrested.
The video of a statement by Farideh Moradkhani, a well-known rights activist, has been circulating online after it was shared by her France-based brother Mahmoud Moradkhani on Friday. Mahmoud Moradkhani said his sister had been arrested on Wednesday after going to a prosecutor’s office following a summons.
Continue reading...Beijing students shout ‘freedom will prevail’, as Urumqi fire prompts levels of disobedience unprecedented in Xi era
People opposed to China’s stringent Covid restrictions have protested in cities across the country in the biggest wave of civil disobedience on the mainland since Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago.
Protests triggered by a deadly apartment fire in the far west of the country last week took place on Sunday in cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan and Guangzhou, according to footage shared on social media, in defiance of a series of heavy-handed arrests of demonstrators on Saturday night.
Continue reading...Conservationist says if world leaders do not go to the summit a strong deal to halt and reverse nature loss is at risk
Chris Packham is urging the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, to attend a key nature summit to protect the planet for the sake of his great-grandchildren because we are “very close to the point of no return”.
The Cop15 biodiversity summit being held in Montreal from 7-19 December is the nature equivalent of the recent Cop27 climate summit in Egypt, with governments from all over the world expected to agree targets to halt the destruction of the natural world. But world leaders are not expected to attend the once-in-a-decade meeting where the next 10 years of targets will be agreed.
Continue reading...Detention of Voria Ghafouri, who is not part of World Cup squad, seen as warning to players in Qatar
Iranian security forces on Thursday arrested one of the country’s most famous footballers, accusing him of spreading propaganda against the Islamic republic and seeking to undermine the national World Cup team.
Voria Ghafouri, a former member of the national football team and once a captain of the Tehran club Esteghlal, has been outspoken in his defence of Iranian Kurds, telling the government on social media to stop killing Kurdish people. He has previously been detained for criticising the former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif.
Continue reading...Regime refuses to provide consular access as it does not recognise dual nationality, Dfat says
An Australian citizen is among at least 40 foreign nationals now held in Iranian jails amid pro-democracy protests across the country – and an escalating violent response by regime forces.
A spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Iranian-Australian dual national had not been arrested for taking part in the anti-regime protests but confirmed that Australian officials had been refused access to assess the person’s welfare.
Continue reading...Prominent Iranians in film and sport have been condemned for expressing solidarity with the protest movement
Iran has arrested two prominent actors who expressed solidarity with the country’s protest movement and removed their headscarves in public, according to state media.
Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi were both detained after being summoned by prosecutors looking into their “provocative” social media posts, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said.
Continue reading...Hebe de Bonafini co-founded Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in 1977 after her two sons were arrested and then disappeared
Hebe de Bonafini, who became a human rights campaigner when her two sons were arrested and then disappeared under Argentina’s military dictatorship has died, her family and authorities have reported. She was 93.
The death on Sunday was confirmed by her only surviving child, Alejandra, who expressed thanks for expressions of support her mother had received while hospitalised in the city of La Plata. Local officials said she had suffered from unspecified chronic illnesses.
Continue reading...#CookForIran uses the country’s rich culinary tradition to highlight the fight for human rights, says organiser Layla Yarjani
When Layla Yarjani thinks of Iran, she thinks of ice-creams by the Caspian Sea and eating beef tongue sandwiches with her dad in a Tehran cafe. She remembers the warmth and community spirit: the bustle of noisy dinner parties with neighbours, everyone reaching across one another for spoonfuls of Persian stew; and afternoons playing football with the boys on her street.
She also remembers the strict rules beyond her happy bubble: the ban on her mother leaving the country without a man’s permission; being ordered to chant “death to America” at school and the day she was scolded by teachers for wearing a Disney princess backpack, because the character’s hair was not covered by a headscarf.
Continue reading...Harassment of climate summit delegates and holding pen for protesters mar country’s attempt to polish international reputation
An empty pen designed to contain protesters in the middle of the desert, harassment and surveillance of Cop27 delegates (including evidence that the official conference app could spy on them), food and water shortages, and widespread problems with accommodation have all served to undermine the Egyptian government’s attempts to use the climate talk to bolster its international image.
Belgian politician Séverine de Laveleye said she was briefly detained by Egyptian security forces while entering the conference centre simply for carrying badges depicting some of Egypt’s 65,000 political prisoners, including British-Egyptian democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah. “It’s clear that human rights aren’t even respected at the heart of the Cop,” she said. “Sisi’s Egypt is one of repression.”
Continue reading...Persian language channel said threats to journalists had escalated in response to coverage of protests
Armed vehicles have been deployed outside the Iran International television studios in London after two of its journalists were threatened by Tehran, the channel said.
There were about seven vehicles outside the studio in Chiswick Park, west London, after “severe and credible” threats were recently made against two of the UK-based channel’s journalists, one of its spokesmen told AFP.
Continue reading...Social media images show what is now a museum commemorating the Islamic Republic founder ablaze as protests continue
Protesters in Iran have set on fire the ancestral home of the Islamic republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as two months of anti-regime demonstrations show no let up.
The house in the city of Khomein in the western Markazi province was shown ablaze late on Thursday with crowds of jubilant protesters marching past, according to images posted on social media, verified by AFP.
Continue reading...EU agrees to loss and damage fund to help poor countries and activists interrupting proceedings lose their passes
The biggest news of the day broke on Friday morning, with the announcement that the EU would agree to a loss and damage fund to help poor countries with climate disasters.
The climate summit will run until Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse. This is not really a surprise to anyone.
Youth activists staged a Friday climate strike to mark the last formal day of negotiations. Meanwhile during the talks, Nakeeyat Dramani, a 10-year-old Ghanaian climate activist, asked delegates to “have a heart”.
Elsewhere the activists who interrupted the US president, Joe Biden, lost their summit passes, as did the Ukrainian protester who spoke out at a Russian press conference.
A surprisingly large number of gas deals were struck at the summit, with more than a dozen set up.
And Desmog crunched the numbers and found that representatives from big agriculture more than doubled at Cop27.
Continue reading...Kian Pirfalak was one of several people killed on Wednesday as anger over Mahsa Amini transforms into wider protest against the regime
The family of a nine-year-old boy killed on Wednesday evening by assailants on motorbikes during some of the worst violence in Iran in two months of protests have accused security forces of carrying out the attack.
Kian Pirfalak was one of seven people, including a woman and a 13-year-old child, killed by gunmen in the western city of Izeh.
Continue reading...Video footage shows people running for exits and police with batons beating women in metro carriages
Iranian security forces have opened fire on people at a metro station in Tehran and beaten women who were not wearing mandatory hair coverings as protests over the death of Mahsa Amini entered a third month.
Footage shared on social media showed passengers running towards exits, with many falling and being trampled, after police opened fire on a crowded platform. Police were also filmed through train windows marching through carriages and beating women with batons.
Continue reading...