Hundreds of protesters led by Indigenous activists have demonstrated in front of the White House to demand that Joe Biden stop approving fossil fuel projects and declare the climate crisis a national emergency. The rally was held for Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Police moved in to break up the protest near the White House and made several arrests
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Indigenous protesters urge Biden to stop approving fossil fuel projects
Demonstrators at Washington event want the president to declare the climate crisis a national emergency
Hundreds of protesters led by Indigenous activists from across the country demonstrated in front of the White House on Monday to demand that Joe Biden stop approving fossil fuel projects and declare the climate crisis a national emergency.
The rally marks the start of five days of demonstrations calling for greater attention to climate injustices as Native American leaders and tribal members head to the capital to publicize their demands.
Continue reading...Turnout at Iraqi national election as low as 25% as many boycott polls
Disillusioned youth and middle classes stay home rather than vote for system they believe has failed
Iraqis have turned out in low numbers in a national election, with many boycotting a poll that people feared could reinforce a political system that had failed them.
Nationwide turnout at the sixth ballot since the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was thought to be as low as 25%, with the country’s disillusioned youth and middle classes largely staying home.
Continue reading...Cop26 activists fear influx of English police will mar ‘friendly’ approach
Climate groups concerned about presence in Glasgow of officers from forces known for heavy-handed tactics
Climate campaigners are worried an influx of officers from elsewhere in the UK will undermine Police Scotland’s commitment to rights-based policing of protests at Cop26.
Groups planning protests around the critical November conference have told the Guardian they are concerned about the presence of officers from forces known for their use of heavy-handed tactics and are unclear how they will be held to account for their behaviour.
Continue reading...Hong Kong plans megacourt to deal with protest arrests backlog
City’s leader announces initiative as thousands still await trial, and also reveals project for new metropolis
Hong Kong will build a new megacourt to address a shortage of space as it works through a backlog of the thousands arrested during the 2019 mass protests, and the more than 150 arrested under the national security law.
The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced the initiative on Wednesday in a policy address, which also included plans for a new metropolis on the border with mainland China and further tightening of national security laws.
Continue reading...Euston tunnel HS2 protesters walk free from court
Charges against six protesters dropped as HS2 was not carrying out work on the site at the time
Six environmental protesters who occupied a tunnel close to Euston station in protest against the HS2 high-speed link earlier this year walked free from court after charges in connection with the occupation were dismissed by a judge.
Daniel Hooper, 48, also known as “Swampy”; Dr Larch Maxey, 49; Isla Sandford, 18; Lachlan Sandford, 20; Juliett Stevenson-Clarke, 22; and Scott Breen, 47, faced charges of aggravated trespass at Highbury Corner magistrates court in central London for their 31 days underground in January and February of this year. A separate charge against Maxey of damage to a mobile phone was also dismissed.
Continue reading...‘Renting the Taj Mahal’: the fight to save Darjeeling’s toy train
India’s tiny train has puffed up the Himalayas since 1881 but now the world heritage site is under threat
“Darjeeling ko sano rail, hirna lai abo tyari cha / Guard le shuna bhai siti bajayo” (Darjeeling’s dainty train is all set to chug off / Oh, listen to the guard blowing the whistle): generations of children in Darjeeling have grown up hearing these lines from a Nepali nursery rhyme. Serenading the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), it depicts the close relationship between the “Queen of the Hills” and local people.
However, that relationship has become strained after the Indian government decided to hand over the running of the railway – listed by Unesco as a world heritage site – and oversight of the land adjoining the stations to a private company, threatening jobs and livelihoods.
Continue reading...Nayib Bukele calls himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’ – but is he joking?
El Salvador’s president is consolidating power and seems intent on rewriting the country’s constitution
Among the colourful houses of Comunidad Iberia, an impoverished neighbourhood of San Salvador, the dark glass cube of the Urban Centre for Welfare and Opportunities (or Cubo in its Spanish acronym) is an eye-catching piece of urban architecture. Inside local children take art classes, read in the library and play online games. Outside, a mural depicting Armando Bukele, the father of El Salvador’s president, extols Salvadorans to “live with love and responsibility”.
Futuristic and faintly ominous, the Cubo is a fitting tribute to Nayib Bukele’s presidency. Since coming to power in June 2019, the 40-year-old former publicist has adopted bitcoin as legal tender, used his social-media accounts to generate an approval rating that is the envy of presidents worldwide, and introduced authoritarian measures to undermine the country’s political opposition and civil society.
Continue reading...Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil group disbands amid crackdown on dissent
Prominent pro-democracy group Hong Kong Alliance voted to disband after many of its leaders were arrested
The Hong Kong pro-democracy group that organised three decades of vigils commemorating the victims of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square massacre has voted to disband in the face of China’s sweeping clampdown on dissent.
The Hong Kong Alliance was one of the most prominent symbols of the city’s former political plurality, and its dissolution on Saturday is the latest illustration of how quickly China is remoulding the business hub in its own authoritarian image.
Continue reading...Global climate strike: thousands join coordinated action across world
Rally to demand government action on climate crisis is first worldwide since start of pandemic
Hundreds of thousands of people in 99 countries have taken part in a coordinated global climate strike demanding urgent action to tackle the ecological crisis.
The strike on Friday, the first worldwide climate action since the coronavirus pandemic hit, is taking place weeks before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK.
Continue reading...Arrest footage and teargas raise concerns about Victoria police’s use of force to quell protests
Video of a man being thrown to the ground by an officer at Melbourne’s Flinders St Station sparks internal investigation
The use of weapons like teargas and stinger grenades and vision of a man being thrown to the ground by a Victorian police officer at Flinders Street Station has raised concerns about police’s use of force during the ongoing protests in Melbourne this week.
On the fourth day of protests in the city, footage emerged online showing an officer approaching a man from behind and throwing him to the ground. The man appeared to be talking calmly to other officers at the time.
Continue reading...Melbourne police break up anti-lockdown protest with non-lethal rounds and teargas
Third day of demonstrations ends in a standoff between officers and protesters at the city’s war memorial
Police in Melbourne have again fired non-lethal rounds and teargas at anti-Covid lockdown protesters to end an almost three-hour standoff at the city’s war memorial during a third straight day of demonstrations.
More than 200 people were arrested. Two officers were injured by bottles thrown at them and one was hospitalised with chest pains, Victoria police said.
Continue reading...Top Thai union leader ‘targeted’ with jail for rail safety campaign
Case is ‘major blow’ in country with weak workers’ rights and puts trade deals in question, says Human Rights Watch
One of Thailand’s most prominent union leaders is facing three years in prison for his role in organising a railway safety campaign, in a case described as the biggest attack on organised labour in the country in decades.
Rights advocates say the case involving Sawit Kaewvarn, president of the State Railway Union of Thailand, will have a chilling effect on unions and threatens to further weaken workers’ rights in the country.
Continue reading...Victoria set to shut down construction for two weeks after anti-vaccine mandate protest
State government held crisis talks Monday night after Victoria police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to move crowd outside CFMEU office
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The Victorian government is set to announce a two-week shutdown of the construction industry after a protest against mandatory vaccines for workers in the sector became violent.
The closure across metropolitan Melbourne, Geelong, the Surf Coast, Ballarat and Mitchell Shire was decided on Monday night after the CFMEU building was damaged and riot police deployed in chaotic scenes in the CBD.
Continue reading...Texas women in New York restaurant vaccine brawl say race a factor
Activist says there will be protest over treatment of Black patrons after confrontation outside Carmine’s
A lawyer for three women from Texas arrested after a brawl outside a popular New York City restaurant over the requirement that guests show proof of vaccination has said race was a factor in the case.
In video shot by an onlooker last Thursday and shared widely on social media, a restaurant hostess, who is white, is seen being attacked.
Continue reading...Jonathan Mirsky: reporter who went from Mao fan to fierce Beijing critic
The career of the Observer’s former China correspondent who died last week, was marked by a willingness to review his convictions
Jonathan Mirsky, the Observer’s former China correspondent who has died aged 88, was acutely aware of the mounting danger from the bullets criss-crossing Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 as units of the People’s Liberation Army were sent in to break up the protests. He was aware too that he desperately needed to get his copy to London.
Writing about the experience 30 years later, Mirsky admitted that few at first had any sense of the scale of the violence that was being unleashed either on the students in the square. All that, however, was to change quickly.
Continue reading...Washington rally in support of 6 January rioters falls short of expectations
Police prepared for trouble at event near Capitol but only a few hundred attended as politicians and pro-Trump groups did not
Any passing American might have been forgiven for thinking they had stumbled on one of the great human rights struggles of our time.
Related: Peril review: Bob Woodward Trump trilogy ends on note of dire warning
Continue reading...‘Don’t pass Catholic churches’: protests as Glasgow braces for Orange walks
Campaigners call for parades to be re-routed as up to 13,000 people expected to converge in city centre
Campaigners against anti-Catholic bigotry and anti-Irish discrimination will gather in protest around vulnerable churches on Saturday, as Glasgow braces itself for the largest gathering of Orange marchers since the pandemic.
More than 30 of the controversial Protestant parades will converge in the city centre to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first Battle of the Boyne parade, with potential turnout estimated from 5,000 to 13,000. Hundreds of police officers are expected to be deployed on the day, with 32 streets closed until mid-afternoon to facilitate the marchers.
Continue reading...It’s not all about populism: grassroots democracy is thriving across Europe | Richard Youngs
Protests, citizens’ assemblies, local referendums and mutual aid groups are pushing back against attacks on civil society
The past decade has been a bruising one for the health of European democracy. The dramatic authoritarian turns in Hungary and Poland have attracted most attention, but nearly all European governments have chipped away at civil liberties, judicial independence and civil society.
With Covid accentuating many of the challenges posed by populism, disinformation and a collapse in public trust, the narrative of democracy labouring in deep crisis is now well established. Yet as the threats have mounted, so have efforts to defend and rethink Europe’s democratic practices.
Continue reading...‘We showed it was possible to create a movement from almost nothing’: Occupy Wall Street 10 years on
Some say it inspired BLM and the growth of the US left. Others see it as an abject failure. A decade after the occupation of New York’s Zuccotti Park, the people who were there look back
“We are the 99%.” Ten years ago that unifying slogan travelled around the world. Some attribute its origin to the economist Joseph Stiglitz, who first popularised the distinction between the 1% of people with great wealth and power and the rest of us. Others say that it was the late anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber who coined the phrase. But everyone agrees that it went global when it was voiced by demonstrators who gathered in lower Manhattan’s financial district on 17 September 2011.
What took place that day, and the two months to follow, would become known as Occupy Wall Street, a protest movement against economic inequality and injustice that spread to 28 other US cities, to European capitals and financial centres, including London, Paris and Berlin, as well as parts of South America and the far east. In total it’s said that there were more than 750 Occupy events around the world, featuring demonstrators ranging from a few tens in some places to many thousands in others.
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