Law against use at legal and illegal assemblies was introduced during protests
As health experts in Hong Kong call for masks to be made mandatory to tackle coronavirus, a ban on their use that was introduced in response to protests has been largely upheld by the appeal court.
The court also used its ruling to push back at accusations that its role in assessing the constitutionality of laws was an affront to Beijing.
Continue reading...Singer Helin Bolek, 28, of Grup Yorum, was protesting against government’s treatment of group
A member of a popular folk music group that is banned in Turkey has died on the 288th day of a hunger strike. The singer and a colleague had started the strike while imprisoned to protest at the government’s treatment of their band, according to a post on the group’s Twitter account.
Grup Yorum, known for their protest songs, said Helin Bolek, 28, had died on Friday at a home in Istanbul where she had been staging the hunger strike in an attempt to pressure the government into reversing its position on the band and its members.
Continue reading...Citizens make anger known by hitting pots and pans from their windows and balconies
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is facing an intensifying public backlash after his muddled reaction to the coronavirus crisis sparked five successive nights of protests and predictions that his political authority had sustained a potentially fatal blow.
Brazil has recorded 1,128 coronavirus cases and 18 deaths, with the country’s health minister last week saying the public health system was likely to collapse by the end of April.
Continue reading...Four found guilty of attack that shocked the world were hanged in capital on Friday morning
India has executed the four men who were convicted of the brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on bus in Delhi in 2012, a case which shocked the world and brought India’s problem with sexual violence against women into the spotlight.
Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh had been found guilty in a 2013 trial and sentenced to death by hanging, but their execution had been postponed multiple times due to Supreme Court appeals.
Continue reading...Good to learn about Drake’s Island developments (Mysterious Drake’s Island opens to visitors after 30 years, 14 March), but a little correction is needed about the “bunch of schoolboys” invading in 1957. And some extras about Plymouth history.
We had recently formed Plymouth Young Socialists, upsetting the national Labour party, which had closed down the Labour League of Youth. Plymouth politics was starting to stir a bit. My father, Reg Scott, a local socialist politician and journalist, had just started a speakers’ corner on Saturday mornings at Frankfort Gate, the ordinary end of the splendid new city centre. Our “invasion” of Drake’s Island was to reclaim it from the military for the people of Plymouth. We set out in comrade John Duffin’s small, leaky boat, with its spluttering outboard motor, only to be intercepted by a fast naval launch out of the dockyard. We got halfway, were “arraigned”, lectured about dangerous currents, and then kindly taken to the island, awaiting our fate on the beach.
Continue reading...The notorious case of three teenage sisters inspired a campaign for change – and a backlash from the patriarchy. By Matthew Luxmoore
At about 3pm on 27 July 2018, the day of his death, Mikhail Khachaturyan scolded his three teenage daughters, Krestina, Angelina and Maria. The apartment they shared – in a Soviet-era housing block near the huge ring road that encircles Moscow – was a mess, he told them, and they would pay for having left it that way. A large, irascible man in his late 50s with a firm Orthodox faith, Khachaturyan had run his household despotically since he allegedly forced his wife to leave in 2015.
That afternoon, his daughters would later tell investigators, he punished them in his customary sadistic way. Calling them one by one into his bedroom, he cursed and yelled at them, then pepper sprayed each one in the face. The oldest sister, Krestina, 19, began to choke from the effects of the spray. Retreating to the bedroom she shared with her sisters, Krestina collapsed on the bed and lost consciousness. Her sister Maria, then 17, the youngest of the three, would later describe this moment as “the final straw”.
Continue reading...Women and children part of thousands who took to streets around world, but some protests turned violent
Female asylum seekers have staged a demonstration at the Turkish border demanding to be let into the EU as part of protests around the world on International Women’s Day.
All over the globe, thousands of women took to the streets, including South Americans campaigning for access to abortions and topless demonstrations in London and Paris.
Continue reading...Police detained dozens of protesters on Sunday shortly after journalists witnessed them being attacked. The activists gathered in one of the squares of the capital, Bishkek, when masked men, some of whom wore traditional Kyrgyz white felt hats, attacked the protesters, grabbing and tearing apart their banners. The attackers left as soon as police arrived on the scene. Officers detained about 50 activists, mostly women.
Continue reading...Resolution follows days of intense negotiation but falls short of agreement over controversial natural gas pipeline
Indigenous leaders in Canada have reached a “milestone” agreement with government officials in a land dispute that has sparked widespread protests and railway blockades throughout the country.
The tentative resolution follows three days and nights of intense negotiations between hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en nation in British Columbia and federal and provincial ministers – but falls short of addressing concerns over a controversial natural gas pipeline project.
Continue reading...Mohammad Zubair, a Muslim, was brutally attacked by a Hindu group as Delhi experienced some of its worst religious riots in decades. ‘My clothes were drenched in blood,’ he said of his ordeal. Muslims and Hindus across the region have been mourning their loved ones after dozens of people were killed in the latest wave of violence
Continue reading...Police inquiry finds credible evidence of Andy Coles deceiving 19-year-old activist into sexual relationship
An internal police investigation has uncovered credible evidence that an undercover officer deceived a 19-year-old woman into a long-term sexual relationship.
Andy Coles has denied that he had an intimate relationship with the woman while he infiltrated political groups in the 90s, dismissing her claims as “lurid”.
Continue reading...Justin Trudeau has called for patience and dialogue as his government seeks a peaceful end to a rail blockade that has shut down freight and passenger traffic. But the Canadian prime minister is under increasing pressure from the Conservative opposition to clear the tracks.
For almost two weeks, protesters across the country have taken up the cause of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous people of British Columbia in their campaign against the C$6.6bn (US$4.98bn) 40-mile Coastal GasLink gas pipeline project.
Continue reading...McGowan tweets that she ‘lost sight of the bigger picture’ after calling fellow actor a ‘fraud’
Rose McGowan has expressed regret for her attack on Natalie Portman over the latter’s Oscar dress “protest”, which took aim at the exclusion of women from the best director Academy Award nominations.
Related: Rose McGowan: Natalie Portman's Oscars dress protest 'deeply offensive'
Continue reading...Pressure on Justin Trudeau’s government grows even as some politicians decry ‘hard-left ideology’
As armed Canadian police officers advanced through snow towards their camp, the group of Indigenous women was absorbed in a drumming ceremony to honour the spirits of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country.
Rows of red dresses hung from a fishing line slung across the road, and from pine and spruce trees in the surrounding forest – each one a memorial to the thousands of Indigenous women killed or disappeared in recent years.
Continue reading...Indigenous activists in Canada have vowed to continue their fight against a multibillion-dollar pipeline project across their traditional territory after three female leaders were arrested by police early on Monday.
Freda Huson, Brenda Michell and Karla Tait were among seven people detained when Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers – backed by helicopters, heavy machinery and dogs – moved in on the remote camp in north-western British Columbia.
Continue reading...Environmental group puts pressure on museum to end its partnership with oil company
Dozens of activists have coated themselves in plaster and are trying to occupy the British Museum overnight in a bid to pressure the institution to cut ties with oil corporation BP.
About 60 protesters were taking part in the defiant act of impromptu sculpture making as the museum in London attempted to close its doors at 5pm on Saturday.
Continue reading...At 73 years old, Mohammad Shoaib had grown used to harassment from police. As one of India’s highest-profile activists, he had made a name fighting for Muslims falsely accused of being terrorists by the police, earning him powerful enemies.
But in late December, as he was brought into the police station in Lucknow, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, in the middle of the night, he felt something had shifted. “Police officers abused me badly while I was in their custody and they threatened me in many ways,” he said. “One [senior officer] said to me at the police station: ‘I will fuck your mother. I am going to throw all your family members in jail where they will rot for life. I will destroy your family’.”
Continue reading...Suspected Hindu nationalist went live on Facebook before firing on march against new law
A suspected Hindu nationalist went live on Facebook to warn he was taking his “final journey”, minutes before opening fire on university students protesting against India’s new citizenship law.
One student was reportedly shot in the hand before police arrested the alleged gunman, who timed his attack on Thursday to coincide with the anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 by a Hindu radical.
Continue reading...Police have used teargas and water cannon on protesting firefighters in Paris. Thousands of firefighters attended the demonstration in the French capital, asking for an increase in their hazard bonus, which has not changed since 1990
Continue reading...Head of powerful CGT tells French president of trouble to come unless he cancels reform
The union leader heading protests against France’s bitterly contested pension reforms has accused Emmanuel Macron of playing with fire and showing contempt for the country’s workers.
Philippe Martinez, head of the powerful CGT, said the president and his government were “disconnected” from the real world, and their advisers needed to “shake the hands of a few who actually work”.
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