Protest at property near Newcastle follows video of former England football captain urging people to get Covid booster
Anti-vaccination protesters who attempted to serve spurious legal papers to the former England football captain Alan Shearer delivered the documents to the wrong house, it has emerged.
The former Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers striker had encouraged people to get a Covid booster jab in a video promoted by the Premier League last week.
Continue reading...Site of the Pillar of Shame at city’s oldest university under guard after workmen cut up statue
Hong Kong’s oldest university and the territory’s authorities have been accused of rewriting history after cutting up and removing a statue mourning those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
The erasure of the memorial from where it had stood for nearly 25 years came as Beijing has intensified its targeting of political dissent in Hong Kong since the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...Alaa Abd El-Fattah gets five years for ‘spreading false news’ and lawyer and blogger get four-year terms
A leading figure in Egypt’s 2011 uprising, his lawyer and a blogger have been served lengthy prison sentences in a Cairo court, in a move that observers have branded a further blow to human rights.
An emergency court on Monday sentenced activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to five years in prison on charges of “spreading false news”. Human rights lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer, formerly Abd El-Fattah’s counsel, and blogger Mohamed “Oxygen” Ibrahim were both sentenced to four years in detention on the same charges.
Continue reading...Eleven years after the start of the Arab spring, those trying to survive rising prices, unemployment and a pandemic feel little has changed
For a decade, Tunisia’s revolution has been remembered on 14 January, the day autocratic ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia and the political elite declared the revolution complete.
From today, by President Kais Saied’s decree, the event will be marked on 17 December, the day street trader Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest at state corruption and the faltering economy. The self-immolation became a catalyst for Tunisia’s uprising and the wider Arab spring.
Continue reading...Protesters against police brutality were met with more police brutality
Colombian police were responsible for the deaths of 11 protesters during anti-police protests that swept the capital in September 2020, according to a report published on Monday after an independent investigation backed by the mayor of Bogotá’s office and the United Nations.
“It was a police massacre,” wrote Carlos Negret, a former ombudsman of the South American country who led the investigation, in the scathing and lengthy report published on Monday. “A decisive political and operational leadership, based on rights, was needed at national and local levels to avoid this happening.”
Continue reading...Crowds in Vienna demonstrate against mandatory vaccines and confinement orders for unvaccinated
Tens of thousands of people have gathered in Austria’s capital Vienna to protest against mandatory Covid vaccines and home confinement orders for those who have not yet received the jabs.
Police said an estimated 44,000 people attended the demonstration on Saturday, the latest in a string of huge weekend protests since Austria last month became the first EU country to say it would make Covid vaccinations mandatory.
Continue reading...Anonymous artist says sales proceeds will go to the four people accused of Edward Colston statue damage ‘so they can go for a pint’
Banksy says he has made T-shirts that he will be selling to support four people facing trial accused of criminal damage over the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston.
The anonymous artist posted on Instagram pictures of limited-edition grey souvenir T-shirts, which will go on sale on Saturday in Bristol.
Continue reading...After 30 years in exile, it’s easy to doubt that it will ever be safe to live and work in Sudan. But the action being taken by young people shows democracy will rise again
“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,” John Steinbeck wrote to a friend in 1941, just before the US entered the second world war. “It isn’t that the evil thing wins – it never will – but that it doesn’t die.”
Growing up, I was always interested in politics, politics was the reason I had to leave Sudan at the age of 11. At school, we weren’t allowed to study or discuss it, and it was the same at home.For years, I lay in bed and listened to my father and his friends as they argued about politics and sang traditional songs during their weekend whisky rituals. They watched a new Arabic news channel, Al Jazeera, which aired from Qatar. All the journalism my father consumed about Sudan was from the London-based weekly opposition newspaper, Al Khartoum. The only time he turned on our dial-up internet was to visit Sudanese Online.
Continue reading...Almost a year on from the coup, resistance to the military is growing stronger and more organised
On Sunday morning, a small group of protesters walked together in Kyimyindaing township, Yangon, waving bunches of eugenia and roses. They carried a banner reading: “The only real prison is fear and the real freedom is freedom from fear”.
The words are famously those of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose sentencing by the junta to two years in detention was announced on Monday.
Continue reading...The recent coup dashed hopes raised by the end of the military regime but newly liberated artists refuse to submit quietly
In the new dawn of a heady post-revolutionary era, Suzannah Mirghani returned in 2019 to the country of her birth for the first time in years. Her mission was to shoot a short film on Sudanese soil. It proved unexpectedly straightforward.
“When the revolution happened, there was this exuberance,” she says, from her Qatari home. “When we came to make our film, we were given the green light. We were told: ‘Anything you want’.
Continue reading...After tense campaign, early results show about two-thirds in favour of law giving legal basis for Covid pass
Swiss voters have firmly backed the law behind the country’s Covid pass in a referendum, following a tense campaign that saw unprecedented levels of hostility.
Early results on Sunday showed about two-thirds of voters supported the law, with market researchers GFS Bern projecting 63% backing.
Continue reading...When Cousin Greg was disinherited by his grandfather in favour of the environmental group, inquiries about such legacies soared
In one bewildering and painful scene in the hit TV drama Succession, Cousin Greg sees his future of ease and wealth turn to dust. His grandfather, Ewan, announces he is giving away his entire fortune to Greenpeace, depriving Greg of his inheritance.
Now Greenpeace is hoping to benefit in real life as well as in the fictional world of the media conglomerate Waystar Royco. Thousands of people have looked into leaving money to the environmental group since the darkly comic storyline about Cousin Greg losing his inheritance and then threatening to sue the organisation was broadcast. More than 22,000 people have accessed online advice about making donations in their wills to Greenpeace. The group’s legacy webpage has also seen a tenfold surge in traffic since the episode was first broadcast earlier this month.
Continue reading...NGOs believe raids, officially part of an embezzlement inquiry, are an attempt to ‘criminalise social movements’
Rights activists in El Salvador said they will not be pressured into silence after prosecutors raided the offices of seven charities and groups in the Central American country.
“They’re trying to criminalise social movements,” said Morena Herrera, a prominent women’s rights activist. “They can’t accept that they are in support of a better El Salvador.”
Continue reading...Lawyers say judgment demonstrates increasingly harsh stance taken by authorities over lese-majesty law
It was last December that Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, a Thai student activist, and her friends strolled into a shopping mall in Bangkok wearing crop tops. They ate ice cream and carried dog-shaped balloons. Phrases such as “I have only one father” were written in marker pen on their skin.
Now, four of them are in pre-trial detention over the outing, which royalists say was an insult to the monarchy.
Continue reading...Riot police and protesters clashed in the streets of Brussels on Sunday in demonstrations over government-imposed Covid-19 restrictions, with police firing water cannon and teargas at crowds. Protesters threw smoke bombs, fireworks and rocks at officers. Belgium tightened its coronavirus restrictions on Wednesday, mandating wider use of masks and enforcing working from home, as cases surged in the country
Continue reading...Anger at government restrictions spreads to Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark and Croatia
Violence erupted at demonstrations in Belgium and the Netherlands over the weekend as tougher Covid-19 restrictions to curb the resurgent pandemic led to angry protests in several European countries.
Ten of thousands of people marched through central Brussels on Sunday to protest against reinforced restrictions imposed by the Belgian government to counter the latest rise in coronavirus cases. The march, which police estimated involved 35,000 people, began peacefully but descended into violence as several hundred people started pelting officers, smashing cars and setting rubbish bins on fire. Police responded with teargas and water cannon.
Continue reading...Hopes for end to crisis undermined as protests continue despite deal between military and civilian political parties
Sudan’s military coup leader has announced the release of the detained civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and other political prisoners, as the country’s pro-democracy movement vowed to continue with protests.
After weeks of lethal turmoil following the country’s October coup, the agreement to release Hamdok and set up a new largely technocratic cabinet was mediated by US and UN officials.
Continue reading...WARNING: This video contains strong language
Demonstrators take to the streets after a jury cleared Kyle Rittenhouse on charges related to his shooting dead two people at an anti-racism protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year. Shouting matches flared on the courthouse steps in the town, and protest marches were held in Portland, Chicago and New York
Continue reading...Three people treated in hospital with serious injuries after clashes in Dutch city over reintroduction of Covid restrictions
Three people were being treated in hospital in Rotterdam on Saturday after they were seriously injured when police fired shots during a demonstration against Covid-19 restrictions.
In what the Dutch city’s mayor described as an “orgy of violence”, crowds of several hundred rioters torched cars, set off fireworks and threw rocks at police during the protests on Friday evening. Police responded with warning shots and water cannon.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland
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