About 300 women gathered in Moscow holding a white ribbon in -13C temperatures
Several hundred women formed human chains in Moscow and St Petersburg on Sunday, using Valentine’s Day to express support for the wife of the jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and other political prisoners.
About 300 women gathered on Arbat Street in Moscow’s city centre holding a long white ribbon in temperatures of -13C (8F).
Continue reading...Paint thrown and bangs heard after Bangkok’s Democracy Monument draped in red cloth
Youth activists protesting against laws forbidding insult to Thailand’s powerful king briefly clashed with police on Saturday after draping Bangkok’s Democracy Monument in red cloth.
Protesters threw paint at police and several small bangs were heard during a standoff near a city shrine after the demonstration had moved from Democracy Monument and the main leaders had called for it to disperse.
Continue reading...In tomorrow’s election, public services are a huge concern for the people as politicians debate independence
Much has changed in Poblenou over the past four years – not least the arrival of a pandemic that has devastated tourism and employment – but the people of the traditional working-class barrio in the north of Barcelona are struggling with a nagging sense of deja vu over Sunday’s regional election.
“All the talk is about independence but what most of us want from politicians is to solve social problems,” says Nuria Vallejo, a doctor working in the public sector who has lived in the neighbourhood for 20 years. “Number one is the health crisis, and then there’s the education system and questions of sustainability.”
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of people have been protesting across Myanmar since the army overthrew the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and detained most senior leaders on 1 February.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s rise to power prompted hope she could end years of ethnic strife in Myanmar, but she has been accused of standing by while genocide was committed against the Rohingya people. The Guardian's south Asia correspondent, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, explains why – despite her fall from grace internationally – Aung San Suu Kyi is seen by so many protesters as the only person who can still save them from military rule
Police in Myanmar have clashed with protesters and fired rubber bullets at crowds in the south-eastern city of Mawlamyine on the largest day of demonstrations so far against the military coup. The use of force left at least three people wounded and came hours before the UN human rights council was due to hold a special session to discuss the crisis
As rhetoric rises on both sides, Indian farmers at the Singhu camp say they are going nowhere
Puffing out his chest, his lime green turban luminescent in the morning sun, Surinder Singh made it clear he was a man who would not easily be moved. “We will stay here five years, 10 years if we have to,” the farmer said with a steely smile. “As long as it takes.”
A roar of approval greeted his words from fellow farmers who had gathered for breakfast at Singh’s chai stand at the Singhu camp, one of three main protest camps on the outskirts of Delhi. Singh, a small-scale farmer from India’s northern state of Punjab, is just one of hundreds of thousands to have made Singhu his home since November, living out of the back of his now fully furnished tractor trailer.
Continue reading...UK home secretary says she disagreed with last year’s protests as well as taking the knee
The home secretary, Priti Patel, has described the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the UK last year as “dreadful” and said she did not agree with the gesture of taking the knee.
The protests, in which demonstrations took place in more than 260 towns and cities in June and July, were the largest anti-racism protests in Britain for decades.
Continue reading...Two-thirds of those killed worked to protect environmental, land and indigenous peoples’ rights, while those providing Covid relief also faced reprisals
At least 331 human rights defenders promoting social, environmental, racial and gender justice in 25 countries were murdered in 2020, with scores more beaten, detained and criminalised because of their work, analysis has found.
Latin America, the most dangerous continent in the world in which to protect environmental, land and human rights, accounted for more than three-quarters of all the murders of human rights defenders in 2020. In Colombia, where activists are routinely targeted by armed groups despite a 2016 peace deal, 177 such deaths were recorded, more than half of the global total. The Philippines was the second deadliest country with 25 murders, followed by Honduras, Mexico, Afghanistan, Brazil and Guatemala.
Continue reading...The three men are said to be recovering from assaults after security forces are accused of targeting activists during unrest
Three lawyers are said to be recovering after being assaulted by police in the wake of protests in the Tunisian capital on Saturday.
According to the Tunisian Bar Association, Yassine Azaza and Rahhal Jallali were attacked by officers while they were making their way home after the demonstrations in Tunis. A third lawyer, Abdennaceur Aouini, was photographed surrounded by police officers in the city’s main street.
Continue reading...Swedish environmental groups warn test flight could be first step towards the adoption of a potentially “dangerous, unpredictable, and unmanageable” technology
A proposed scientific balloon flight in northern Sweden has attracted opposition from environmental groups over fears it could lead to the use of solar geoengineering to cool the Earth and combat the climate crisis by mimicking the effect of a large volcanic eruption.
In June, a team of Harvard scientists is planning to launch a high-altitude balloon from Kiruna in Lapland to test whether it can carry equipment for a future small-scale experiment on radiation-reflecting particles in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Continue reading...He’s been poisoned and jailed... but not silenced. Now Navalny poses the greatest threat to the president’s 21-year rule
Alexei Navalny was in defiant mood last Tuesday, as he waited for his inevitable sentence. He made a heart gesture for his wife, Yulia, who was sitting at the back of Moscow’s city courtroom. Navalny smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t be sad! Everything is going to be all right,” he yelled at her. She waved back. Meanwhile, a state prosecutor droned on.
Last week’s sham trial was the latest episode in an epic stand-off between two men for a nation’s future. One is the man in the dock, Russia’s foremost opposition leader, and now a global figure, likened by some to Nelson Mandela. The other is the country’s president of two decades, a former KGB colonel who appears determined to stay in power and to smash a popular revolt against him.
Continue reading...Protesters use tractors, lorries and boulders to create blockades and press for repeal of legislation
Thousands of farmers blockaded main roads across India for several hours on Saturday to press their demand for the repeal of new agricultural laws that have led to months of major protests.
The protesters used tractors, lorries and boulders to blockade the roads. They carried banners and flags denouncing the laws, which they say will leave them poorer and at the mercy of corporations.
Continue reading...Thousands of people took to the streets of Yangon on Saturday to denounce this week’s military coup and demand the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's ousted leader. Myanmar’s junta has tried to silence dissent by temporarily blocking Facebook and extended the social media crackdown to Twitter and Instagram on Saturday in the face of the growing protest movement
Continue reading...Protests have spread across country since military coup, as citizens resist return to dictatorship
On Friday evening, after darkness fell, the sound of car horns and the clanging of pots and pans and metal railings echoed around the compact grid of central Yangon. It was the fourth consecutive night that people had gathered on their balconies to loudly voice their fury at the military junta now running Myanmar.
It was Monday morning when the public had awoken to find that Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had won a landslide election in November, had been detained, and that the army had seized all legislative, judicial and executive powers.
Continue reading...At least 30 people have been detained over pot-banging protests against a military coup as demonstrations gather pace
Continue reading...Escalating protests over the appointment of a state-approved rector at a prestigious Istanbul university have become an unexpected catalyst for Turkey’s disillusioned and underemployed youth to vent their frustrations at President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government.
Demonstrations by both staff and students erupted last month after the former political candidate Melih Bulu was appointed. The decision was denounced as undemocratic
Continue reading...When Thalita Rocha's mother-in-law died due to a lack of available oxygen on a Manaus hospital's Covid ward, she vowed to raise money to deliver oxygen tanks and other lifesaving equipment to the Amazonian city's homes. Jair Bolsonaro's coronavirus policies have led to more than 226,000 deaths in Brazil, and as anger rises on the streets and protesters call for his impeachment, Rocha and other volunteers drive around Manaus offering medical kit and hope
President’s appointment of political ally as university rector becomes catalyst for disillusioned youth to vent frustrations
Escalating protests over the appointment of a state-approved rector at a prestigious Istanbul university have become an unexpected catalyst for Turkey’s disillusioned and underemployed youth to vent their frustrations at President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government.
Demonstrations by both staff and students erupted last month over the installation of Melih Bulu, a business figure who stood as a ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) parliamentary candidate in 2015, as rector of Boğaziçi University, arguably the most acclaimed higher education institution in the country.
Continue reading...Yangon’s streets were filled with the din of clashing metal as scores protested the military coup against the country’s elected government. The first public rejection of the coup went on for 10 minutes across the city in a massive show of solidarity. Health workers in 70 hospitals across Myanmar have pledged not to work under the military regime
Singer’s message had made reference to news report about heavy-handed measures against protesters
The pop singer Rihanna has provoked the ire of the Indian government after wading into the debate over protests by farmers in the country, just as heavy police security and “war-like” barricades continue to be built up at demonstration sites around Delhi.
This week authorities began cracking down on the hundreds of thousands of farmers camped out on the Delhi border since November. Police embarked on a heavy fortification of three camps in Ghazipur, Tikri and Singhu, erecting layers of concrete barriers, digging trenches, putting up barbed-wire fences and cementing iron nails in the roads, in effect cutting off entry and exit to the sites.
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