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The committal hearing for three Tamil activists charged under the “anti-terror” laws began on October 1. Aruran Vinayagamoorthy, Sivarajah Yathavan and Arumugam Rajeevan are accused of raising money for and giving other assistance to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a group fighting for self-determination for the Tamil people of north-east Sri Lanka, who are oppressed by the racist Sri Lankan government.

On October 3, immigration minister Kevin Andrews justified cutting the number of African refugees accepted into Australia using racism, alleging that African refugees were “not adjusting too well” to Australian society.

In the wake of mass protests for democracy spearheaded by Buddhist monks, triggered by five-fold increases to fuel and public transport costs, Burma’s major cities of Rangoon and Mandalay have become the scene of an intense crackdown by the military, which has ruled the country since 1962.

Further protests in solidarity with the struggle for democracy in Burma have been held around Australia. On October 3, some 150 people gathered on the steps of Parliament House in Adelaide and the same day, 120 people marched in Cairns. The Burmese community in Sydney are holding protests every Thursday and on October 4, some 175 people rallied, calling on the Australian government to stop doing business with the ruling military regime. The Australian Coalition for Democracy in Burma (ACDB) also wants the Howard government to extend the visa ban on the military regime to include their relatives and business partners; to downgrade the full embassy status of the Burmese regime in Canberra; and to withdraw Australian Federal Police training of Burmese police. To contact the ACDB, phone Maung Maung Than on 0411 337 816.

More than six months have passed since the inauguration of the new “21st Century Sandinista” government of Nicaragua after Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) assumed the presidency in January. Jubilant celebrations of that event expressed the excitement of hundreds of thousands of Sandinista supporters. New hopes for an escape from the hell of neoliberal catastrophes breezed across our country’s mountains, volcanoes, valleys and lakes, from the large cities to the remote hinterlands and coasts.