Nine refugees held in the Northern Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin staged a protest on top of a building in the centre’s compound on March 15 after they witnessed Serco guards assault another detainee.
The refugees — who are Rohingya people, an ethnic minority in western Burma — told refugee advocate Carl O’Connor on March 16 that the protest was sparked by a physical assault on another Rohingya detainee.
“One man was refused rice in the mess room,” the refugees said. “Out of frustration he broke a glass. He was then chased down and tried to escape from two Serco guards.
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As the United States and Britain look for an excuse to invade another oil-rich Arab country, the hypocrisy is familiar.
Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is “delusional” and “blood-drenched”, while the authors of an invasion that killed a million Iraqis, who have kidnapped and tortured in our name, are entirely sane, never blood-drenched and once again the arbiters of “stability”.
But something has changed. Reality is no longer what the powerful say it is.
Of all the spectacular revolts across the world, the most exciting is the insurrection of knowledge sparked by WikiLeaks.
Emboldened by the successes of Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, a number of Arab regimes have escalated crackdowns on pro-democracy protests while the world’s media was focused on the earthquake disaster in Japan.
With the exceptions of Libya and Iran, the governments brutally cracking down on their citizens have received minimal criticism from the West.
Calls for “restraint on both sides” obscure the fact that it is governments armed with weapons made in the West ruthlessly attacking mostly unarmed people.
This video is from a protest by homeless people on 14-4-11 in response to plans by the state government to sweep homeless people off the street during the October CHOGM summit.
On March 17, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) “effectively authorized the use of force in Libya”, the UN News Center said that day.
“Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which provides for the use of force if needed,” the report said, “the Council adopted a resolution by 10 votes to zero, with five abstentions, authorizing Member States ‘to take all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamhariya, including Benghazi, while excluding an occupation force.’”
Western Sahara is the last country in Africa awaiting decolonisation.
Invaded by Spain in the late 19th century, mass mobilisations in the early 1970s heralded the birth of the modern independence movement.
In 1973, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario Front) was established to wage an armed independence struggle.
By 1975, Polisario had fought Spain to a standstill. Rather than grant independence, Spain made an agreement with neighbouring countries Morocco and Mauritania to occupy Western Sahara.
More than 100 people attended a March 15 public forum in Hobart Town Hall about Tasmania’s logging moratorium. The forum was organised by The Wilderness Society (TWS) and the Huon Valley Environment Centre.
TWS, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Environment Tasmania signed the forests “Statement of Principles” agreement with the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania, the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union and Timber Communities Australia on October 14 last year.
The groups have proclaimed the agreement as the beginning of the end of forest conflict in Tasmania.
The government of Bahrain unleashed a brutal crackdown and invited in foreign troops on March 14 in an attempt to end pro-democracy protests that have lasted for more than a month.
Late on March 12, a group of drunken men yelling abuse and threats of physical violence entered the site of the Aboriginal occupation of the planned Brighton Bypass in Tasmania.
Trudy Maluga from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre described it as a “Ku Klux Klan-type” incident, the Hobart Mercury reported on March 17.
“A group of Aborigines has been harassed and racially abused by a large group of drunken men and youths at the Kutalayna camp at Brighton,” Maluga said.
I am sure we all shared similar reactions to last week’s earthquake-tsunami tragedy in Japan.
First, we blinked at reports of a big earthquake. Perhaps for a moment our response was dulled —worn down by the string of recent disasters: the Christchurch earthquake, the Queensland floods and cyclones.
Anyway, this was Japan, a rich country and probably the most earthquake-prepared nation in the world.
Opinion polls are predicting that the likely winner of the April 10 Peruvian presidential election will be Alejandro Toledo. The candidate of Possible Peru, Toledo was the neoliberal president from 2001-06.
After the narrow victory of the moderate left candidate Susana Villaran from Social Force in the Lima mayoral elections last year, it was predicted that the left’s prospects might improve nationally.
So far this has failed to materialise, owing partly to a redoubled effort by the elite and its foreign backers to promote Toledo.
"We all knew that this was going to happen, but now many people are going to be saddled with this gigantic debt," David White, president of Community Action for Sustainable Transport (CART) told Green Left Weekly on March 11.
He was commenting on the move to place the Clem7, Brisbane’s first and only cross-river road tunnel, into financial administration the previous week.
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