Category Archives: Protest

Jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi wins Nobel peace prize

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Mohammadi wins prize for her fight against oppression of women in Iran and to promote human rights for all

Narges Mohammadi, the most prominent of Iran’s jailed women’s rights advocates, has vowed to stay in the country and continue her activism after winning the 2023 Nobel peace prize.

“I will never stop striving for the realisation of democracy, freedom and equality,” she said in a prewritten statement released after the announcement. “Surely, the Nobel peace prize will make me more resilient, determined, hopeful and enthusiastic on this path, and it will accelerate my pace.”

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Gaza Strip protesters received bullet wounds to ankles, medics report

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Influx of injuries may suggest deliberate targeting by Israel’s army, which human rights groups say is unlawful

Medics in the Gaza Strip have reported treating an influx of protesters who appear to have been deliberately targeted in the ankle in recent unrest at the volatile boundary of the blockaded Palestinian enclave.

At least one person has been killed and dozens more wounded since demonstrations by groups of young men, some of them throwing stones and molotov cocktails, began in mid-September.

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Youth climate activists protest potential shutdown in Kevin McCarthy’s office

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Members of Sunrise Movement say House Speaker is ‘playing political games with our futures’ and must avert shutdown

Scores of young activists with the youth-led climate organization Sunrise Movement are protesting in the office of the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, on Thursday morning, demanding he avert a complete government shutdown.

“As storms rage stronger, fires grow hotter, and heatwaves grow more deadly, Kevin McCarthy is playing political games with our futures,” said Adah Crandall, a 17-year-old Sunrise Movement organizer, in an emailed statement.

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Ramblers unite at Scots Dyke to protest against England’s draconian right to roam laws

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English and Scottish walkers meet in mass trespass to call for greater public access to land in England and Wales, like the more generous laws of Scotland

Flag-waving activists for land reform have expressed their demands for greater freedom to roam in England and Wales by staging a symbolic trespass through farmland on the Scottish border.

In a bid to highlight Scotland’s far more generous rights of access to the countryside, around 40 campaigners tramped through boggy, dense woodland to arrive at an earth dyke north of Carlisle which once marked the medieval border.

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Chinese dissident who held Tiananmen Square vigils flees to Taiwan

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Chen Siming posts video from Taoyuan airport saying he is seeking asylum from political persecution

A Chinese dissident known for regularly commemorating the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square has fled to Taiwan where he pleaded for help in seeking asylum in the US or Canada.

In a video posted online on Friday, Chen Siming said he was in the transit area at Taoyuan international airport to escape Chinese political persecution.

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US Jews and Israelis denounce judicial overhaul as Netanyahu addresses UN

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Thousands demonstrate against what they see as attack on Israel’s institutions but New York protest lacks Palestinian presence

Thousands of Israelis and American Jews have protested outside the United Nations in New York, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke before the UN general assembly in an address railing against Iran and making a case for Israeli-Saudi peace.

About 3,000 people attended the protest against the Netanyahu government’s efforts to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, a plan that critics say will decimate Israel’s democratic institutions. Organizers say it was the largest anti-government action held outside Israel since the start of the wave of protests that have rocked the country since Netanyahu’s government took office at the start of this year.

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Eastern Libya orders journalists out of flood-hit Derna after protests

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Media crackdown follows reports that police officers had detained and questioned Libyan reporters

Libya’s eastern government has ordered journalists to leave Derna after angry protests against the authorities a week after a flood killed thousands of residents.

Hundreds of people gathered on Monday outside Sahaba mosque in the city, chanting slogans. Some sat on its gold-domed roof. Later in the evening, a crowd set fire to the house of the man who was Derna’s mayor at the time of the disaster, Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi.

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‘We never stopped protesting’: Iran’s youth take freedom fight underground

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Students tell of secret acts of defiance ahead of the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody

Young Iranians have taken their protests against the authoritarian regime underground one year on from the death in custody of a 22-year-old woman detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly.

The death of Mahsa Amini on 16 September last year led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran and a brutal crackdown by security services in response, with hundreds of men, women and children killed and thousands more injured, according to human rights groups.

At the beginning of the uprising, one of these two women, both 25, was arrested at a protest gathering and spent 16 days in prison. One of her fellow inmates was Yalda Aghafazli, a 19-year-old protester who died under suspicious circumstances after her release

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells climate marchers to be ‘too big and too radical to ignore’ – live

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Demonstration falls days before the United Nations climate ambition summit, at which Joe Biden is expected to be a no-show

Actor and climate activist Susan Sarandon opened her speech by congratulating the students of New York University on the news of their university divesting from fossil fuels after years of pressure, as the Guardian first reported last week.

Addressing the crowd, she said, “You guys give me hope,” adding: “What we have to do is take responsibility and press those that are at the top to finally step up.”

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Mahsa Amini’s father detained on anniversary of death, rights group says

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Iranian security forces briefly hold Amjad Amini amid crackdown on commemorative protests

The father of Mahsa Amini was temporarily detained by Iranian security forces on the anniversary of her death in an attempt to stop people gathering at her grave amid strikes and protests across the country.

The Kurdistan Human Rights Network said the security forces released Amjad Amini after briefly detaining him and warning him against marking the anniversary of his daughter’s death.

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US and UK issue sanctions on Iran one year on from Mahsa Amini’s death

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Multiple rounds of sanctions mark anniversary of 22-year-old’s death in custody of Iran’s ‘morality police’

The US and Britain on Friday imposed sanctions on Iran on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the death of a Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police”, which sparked months of anti-government protests that faced often violent crackdown.

Amini, 22, died on 16 September last year after being arrested for allegedly flouting the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code. Her death sparked months of anti-government protests that marked the biggest show of opposition to Iranian authorities in years. Iranian security forces have been deployed in her home town in anticipation of unrest this weekend.

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Met police agree six-figure payout to man hit by baton at protest

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Exclusive: Alfie Meadows underwent brain surgery after being struck by officer at tuition fees demonstration

The Metropolitan police have apologised and agreed to pay a six-figure settlement to a man who needed emergency brain surgery after being hit by an officer’s baton during the 2010 university tuition fees protests.

Alfie Meadows, then a 20-year-old philosophy student at Middlesex University, sustained a brain injury after he was struck on the head during demonstrations against the tripling of tuition fees. He needed more than 100 staples in his head and was left with a large scar.

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Bahraini human rights defender denied travel to kingdom to visit jailed father

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Maryam al-Khawaja fears her father, the political prisoner Abdulhadi al-Khawajar, will die soon after being denied medical treatment

A leading Bahraini human rights defender and the heads of two global rights groups have been prevented from boarding a flight to Manama, where they intended to try to get access to her father, one of Bahrain’s most prominent political prisoners.

“We were told they were not allowed to board us. Despite my being a Bahraini citizen, I was told I have to speak to Bahraini immigration … effectively we’re being denied boarding by British Airways on behalf of the Bahraini government,” said Maryam al-Khawaja, flanked by the head of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, and the acting head of Front Line Defenders, Olive Moore, in the departure area of Heathrow airport.

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Arrested at Sarah Everard’s vigil: how Patsy Stevenson’s life changed for ever

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The 30-year-old, now awarded damages by the Met police, talks about how a photo made her a target for hate and how she hopes to move on

There is one thing that Patsy Stevenson can’t stand when people see the image of her being pinned down on the ground by police on the night of the Sarah Everard vigil: them saying that she looked good.

“Some people were like, ‘Oh, you look so great’, or ‘Your hair looks amazing in that picture’,” she says, after learning that the Metropolitan police have settled the claim that she and Dania al-Obeid, who was also at the vigil, brought against them. “But that was a really traumatic event for me and I don’t think people always take into consideration that I’m not a picture, I’m a person.”

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Iran’s ‘gender apartheid’ bill could jail women for 10 years for not wearing hijab

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Shops that serve unveiled women could be shut under draft law UN human rights body says suppresses women into ‘total submission’

Women in Iran face up to 10 years in prison if they continue to defy the country’s mandatory hijab law, under harsher laws awaiting approval by authorities. Even businesses that serve women without a hijab face being shut down.

The stricter dress code, which amounts to “gender apartheid”, UN experts said, comes one year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. Her death, after allegedly being beaten by police, led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran.

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Cop City protesters charged with racketeering as Georgia takes hard line

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Some of 61 defendants charged also face money laundering and domestic terrorism charges for environmental protests

Dozens of activists who oppose a controversial police and fire training facility in Georgia known as Cop City have been charged with racketeering, appearing to confirm fears from civil rights groups that prosecutors are stepping up an aggressive pursuit of environmental protesters.

A total of 61 people – most not from Georgia – were indicted for violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act last week, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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Berlin clubbers and green protesters unite to fight motorway plans

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Proposed extension would threaten city’s cultural life, say protesters, as 20 nightclubs would be demolished

Berlin clubbers have united with environmental campaigners to fight plans to extend a city autobahn that threatens the future of about 20 nightclubs in the east of the city.

Thousands of techno fans and a broader clutch of protesters standing up for the city’s cultural life took to Berlin’s streets at the weekend in the latest in a string of demonstrations which have caused parts of the German capital to grind to a halt.

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Pakistan in uproar as protests over soaring energy prices turn violent

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Traders close shops, electricity bills are set alight and utility firm staff are attacked as anger rises over living costs and political strife

Protests against rising electricity and petrol prices have rocked Pakistan over the past week, with thousands taking to city streets and setting their electricity bills alight.

The cost of electricity has doubled in the last three months to about 50 rupees (12p) a kilowatt. Petrol prices have shot up from 262 rupees a litre in June to 305 rupees this month.

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US pipeline protester has ‘no regrets’ after conviction for felony obstruction

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Mylene Vialard, 54, found guilty after Minnesota trial beset by legal irregularities after effort to block fossil fuel pumping station

A non-violent environmental activist has been found guilty of felony obstruction for her role in trying to halt construction of a fossil fuel pipeline through Indigenous territory in Minnesota, in a trial beset by legal irregularities which ended with the prosecutor demanding jail time.

Mylene Vialard, 54, was arrested in August 2021 after attaching herself to a 25ft bamboo tower erected to block a pumping station in Aitkin county, northern Minnesota.

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Anti-government protests shake Syrian provinces amid anger over economy

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Demonstrations against the Assad regime have taken hold in two southern provinces after the government ended fuel subsidies

Rare protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government continued on Friday, with demonstrations reported in a string of towns in Daraa and Sweida provinces.

The protests began late last week after the government ended fuel subsidies, dealing a heavy blow to Syrians reeling from years of war and economic crisis.

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