Honduran president 'cannot return without fight' By: Will Weissert. The Independent, July 2, 2009
The interim leader of Honduras said the only way his predecessor would return to office was through a foreign invasion. A potential showdown was postponed yesterday when the ousted President delayed plans to return. Roberto Micheletti told the Associated Press on Tuesday that "no one can make me resign", defying the United Nations, the Organisation of American States (OAS), the Obama administration and other leaders that have condemned the military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya. Read full article...
Honduras targets protestors with emergency decree By: William Booth and Mary Beth Sheridan, Washington Post, July 2, 2009
The new Honduran government clamped down on street protests and news organizations Wednesday as lawmakers passed an emergency decree that limits public gatherings following the military-led coup that removed President Manuel Zelaya from office. The decree also allows for suspects to be detained for 24 hours and continues a nighttime curfew. Read full article...
IAPA Vice President covers for press censorship in Honduras By: Al Giordano, The Field, July 2, 2009
Edgardo Dumas, publisher of the pro-coup daily La Tribuna in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and the country's former Defense Minister, is saying that he speaks for the Inter American Press Association (IAPA where he sits on one of 13 committees) to claim there is no media censorship under the coup regime in Honduras. Well, of course his newspaper isn't being censored: It spouts only the authorized propaganda of the coup regime. Read full article...
Honduras: Behind the crisis By: Ismael Moreno, openDemocracy, July 1, 2009
Honduras is in tumult following the forced removal of its president, Manuel Zelaya, on 28 June 2009. The coup has provoked a wave of protest and near-unanimous condemnation by the country's neighbours, other regional powers, the United States and the United Nations. What is going on in Honduras, and what lies behind this political and constitutional eruption? Read full article...
Two military battalions turn against Honduras coup regime By: Al Giordano, The Narcosphere, June 29, 2009
Community Radio "Es Lo de Menos" was the first to report that the Fourth Infantry Battalion has rebelled from the military coup regime in Honduras. The radio station adds that "it seems" ("al parecer," in the original Spanish) that the Tenth Infantry Battalion has also broken from the coup. Read full article...
Hondurasa: Zelaya calls for the military to correct its actions By: Americas MexicoBlog, June 28, 2009
Pres. Zelaya notes that he was taken into military custody by armed soldiers. He was not told where he was being taken. "I was kidnapped, by force, with violence, with brutality. This kidnapping is a blow to the country, to the whole world. It's a regression of 30-40 years to the age of the dictators." He notes that the coup was planned by a small group of elites and "ambitious military officers." Read full article...
Honduras: Political crisis over controversial referendum By: Leonidas Mejia, Global Voices, June 27, 2009
Honduras is going through one of its most difficult moments of its political history. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya removed General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez as Chief of the Armed Forces and accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Edmundo Orellana Mercado. The announcement was made after meeting with military leaders of the armed forces to seek protection of the polls for the referendum that has been promoted by the executive branch to be held on Sunday, June 28, 2009. Read full article...
RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION IN IRAN
Iran's dead and detained By: The Guardian, July 3, 2009
Hundreds, probably thousands, have been arrested in Iran since the presidential election on 12 June. Human rights and campaign groups have been collecting and publishing the names of those dead or detained. We have brought those lists, and reports from trusted media sources, into a database that we are asking readers and those elsewhere on the internet to contribute too. Read full article...
Iran: Defiant opposition leaders refuse to accept Ahmadinejad government By: Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post, July 2, 2009
Three opposition leaders, including a former president, openly defied Iran's top political and religious authorities Wednesday, vowing to resist a government they have deemed illegitimate after official certification of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection. Their defiance in the face of harsh official denunciations and threats of arrest and prosecution appeared to dash the government's hopes of pressuring the opposition into accepting the disputed June 12 election. Read full article...
Iran police invent Interpol probe in Neda death By: Tucker Reals, CBS News, July 2, 2009
The International Police force, or Interpol, has denied a claim by Iran's police chief that it is seeking a doctor who witnessed the shooting death of 26-year-old "Neda." "We've not received any request for information or for assistance on the death of that lady," Interpol spokesperson Rachel Billington said. "We've received nothing from Iran," she emphasized. Read full article...
Iran's do-it-yourself revolution By: Stephen Zunes, Common Dreams, June 1, 2009
Facing an unprecedented popular uprising against his autocratic rule and his apparently fraudulent re-election, Iran's right-wing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has attempted to blame the United States. A surprising number of bloggers on the left have rushed to the defense of the right-wing fundamentalist leader. Citing presidential directives under the Bush administration, they argue that the uprising isn't as much about a stolen election, the oppression of women, censorship, severe restrictions on political liberties, growing economic inequality, and other grievances, as it is about the result of U.S. interference. Read full article...
Iran: Let the usurpers writhe By: Roger Cohen, NY Times, July 1, 2009
Think of normalized relations with the United States as the big prize. Who gets to deliver it? One thing is certain: Iran's ruthless usurpers are determined to ensure reformists are never in a position to claim the breakthrough. That at least is the view of Mohsen Mahmoudi, a 34-year-old conservative cleric I ran into at a post-electoral rally for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Read full article...
Keeping hope alive in Iran By: Baqer Moin, The Guardian, July 1, 2009
No election since the inception of the Islamic Republic has left the Iranian nation so divided in all its components as the one that took place on 12 June. It has divided the clergy in Qom, the leading political conservative or principalist actors in Tehran and the state institutions. It forced the supreme leader to side with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a great cost to his own position and the ruling clergy, undermining the very agreed consensus among the top officials. Read full article...
Mousavi pledges new rights group in Iran By: AFP, July 1, 2009
Iranian presidential election runner up Mir Hossein Mousavi on Wednesday renewed a demand for a complete re-run of the vote and pledged to help set up a new group to defend citizen's rights. Another defeated candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, saw his reformist newspaper Etemad Melli shut down after he denounced the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as invalid and the new government as not legitimate. Read full article...
Iran's Karroubi rejects Ahmadinejad vote By: Iran Focus, July 1, 2009
Iran halted the publication of a reformist party newspaper after its defeated presidential candidate said he would refuse to recognise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, its website said. Former parliament speaker Medhi Karroubi said on Tuesday that the government emerging from the disputed June 12 election was not "legitimate" after Ahmadinejad's victory was certified by the nation's top electoral body. Read full article...
Iran hangs six in Tehran prison By: Iran Focus, July 1, 2009
Iranian authorities hanged six people in Tehran on Wednesday, state media reported. All six were hanged in the morning, according to Esmatollah Jaberi, a judiciary official. The state-run news agency ISNA, which did not identify the six, said they were hanged in Tehran's Evin Prison. All six were accused of murder. Iranian authorities routinely execute dissidents on bogus charges such as armed robbery and drug trafficking. Read full article...
Khatami denounces Iran election, arrests By: Truthout, July 1, 2009
Moderate former president Mohammad Khatami criticized the outcome of Iran's disputed election and called for the release of people arrested since the June 12 vote in a hard-hitting statement on Wednesday. Khatami was the third leading pro-reformer to publicly denounce the vote and its turbulent aftermath since Iran's top legislative body on Monday confirmed the victory of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Read full article...
After Iran crackdown: Reform movement shows resilience By: Scott Macleod, Truthout, July 1, 2009
Tehran's streets, in which hundreds of thousands of demonstrators thronged two weeks ago, have largely gone quiet. Small-scale demonstrations are still staged every couple of days, but the regime has effectively reasserted control. But the absence of protesters from the streets doesn't signal an end to the political crisis that has roiled the regime since Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his supporters accused the backers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of stealing the June 12 election. Read full article...
Iran: What's the tipping point for revolution? By: Elizabeth Pond, CS Monitor, July 1, 2009
How can it be that 70,000 protesters in Leipzig in 1989 tore down the Berlin Wall, while up to a million protesters in Tehran in 2009 managed only - so far - to trigger repression? Or, to phrase it differently, what's the tipping point for revolution? Just when does civil society trump entrenched political power? Different observers would, of course, give different answers along the spectrum, running from a historian's retrospective determinism to a journalist's fixation on daily blips... Read full article...
Comment by Jack DuVall, President of the ICNC:
"Elizabeth Pond compares the protests in Iran to those in East Germany in 1989 and notes that both represented a massive quickening of public disgust with the existing regime. But she is wrong to say that "a million Iranian demonstrators failed even to pry open the factional fault lines in the ayatollahs' hierarchy." In fact the most revered clerical figure in Iran, the Ayatollah Montazeri, said that no one in his right mind could believe the election results and that "a government not respecting people's vote has no religious or political legitimacy." Haddi Ghaffari, a former minister under Ayatollah Khomeini, told the present Supreme Leader on June 30, "You are wrong, your actions are wrong." The unprecedented scale of nonviolent resistance in Iran has exposed severe divisions within the clerical and military ruling elite and given a political opportunity to the realists and moderates. Ahmadinejad's widespread arrests of oppositionists are only exacerbating these divisions. The story in Iran is far from over."
Iran: Protestor arrested, beaten and raped By: Esfandiar Poorgiv, The Guardian, July 1, 2009
He came to my shop around 10.30am. You could tell straight away that he had just been released. His face was bruised all over. His teeth were broken and he could hardly open his eyes. He was not even into politics. He was just an ordinary 18-year-old in the last year of school. Read full article...
Thousands demonstrate silently in Tehran By: CNN, via Truthout, June 29, 2009
Watched closely by police, several thousand protesters moved slowly down a major Tehran thoroughfare Sunday in the first demonstration over the country's disputed presidential election that authorities have allowed in days. About 5,000 people shuffled in silence down Tehran's Shariati Street to the Ghoba mosque, where two of the opposition candidates in the June 12 election were to appear to honor a slain hero of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Read full article...
Iran dissident remembers the torture his comrades are now going through in Tehran By: Angus McDowall, Telegraph, June 28, 2009
Kianoosh Sanjari, 26, knows from painful experience what they are going through. Now a human rights activist and blogger in Washington DC, in 2005 he was on the streets of his native Tehran protesting after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first election victory. He was picked up by security forces, and what followed was an ordeal of fear and pain - which Mr Sanjari knows many of his friends are now suffering. Read full article...
Role of women in Iran protest kindles hope By: Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, June 28, 2009
Over the past two weeks, Marcelle George has watched with amazement as legions of Iranian women, most wearing black, full-length Islamic garments, defiantly protested Iran's leadership. Even in her native Egypt, where some opposition to the government is permitted, most women would never dare cross that line. Read full article...
Understanding Iran: Repression 101 By: David E. Sanger, NY Times, June 27, 2009
When the rallying cry on the streets of Tehran turned from "Death to America!" to the stranger-sounding "Death to the Dictator!" there was a great temptation to conclude that the days of the mullahs were numbered. Maybe they are and maybe not; as President Obama said on Tuesday, "we don't know yet how this thing is going to play out." Read full article...
Iran protest effort has moved online By: Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, San Jose Mercury News, June 27, 2009
A sharp clampdown by Iranian authorities may have quelled street protests, but the fight goes on in cyberspace. Groups of "hacktivists" - Web hackers demanding Internet freedom - say they are targeting Web pages of Iran's leadership in response to the government's muzzling of blogs, news outlets and other sites. Read full article...
Night raids terrorize Iran residents By: Reuters, June 27, 2009
Iranian paramilitary Basij forces stage nightly raids in Tehran, invading private homes and beating residents in an attempt to stop protests against Iran's disputed election, Human Rights Watch reported. "Witnesses are telling us that the Basijis are trashing entire streets and even neighborhoods as well as individual homes trying to stop the nightly rooftop protest chants," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a June 26 report. Read full article...
Global politics of "pretty" women bends coverage of Iran's election protestors? By: Latoya Peterson, Truthout, June 26, 2009
Images are driving the Western response to the Iranian elections. The media, hampered in their ability to report from the ground, has elected to go with citizen videos and photographs of the rising civil unrest. One early narrative that emerged, before the demonstrations against the results of the election, was of a beautiful Iranian woman, in modern clothes, wearing a loose headscarf and casting her vote. Read full article...
For US intelligence, few clues to Iran turmoil By: Mary Louise Kelly, Truthout, June 25, 2009
Generations of Western spies have tried, and mostly failed, to decipher events in Iran. Martin Indyk was among them. Working for Australian intelligence 30 years ago, Indyk, who has since served as a U.S. diplomat, regaled a recent gathering at the Brookings Institution with his efforts to crack Iran in 1979. Read full article...
Obama denounces Iran crackdown on protesters By: Paul Richter, LA Times, June 24, 2009
Under pressure to speak out more forcefully, President Obama on Tuesday condemned the Iranian government's violent suppression of dissent and declared the world "appalled and outraged" by its crackdown on protesters. Despite employing his toughest language yet to criticize Iranian authorities, Obama refused to threaten any consequences and stopped short of freezing a major foreign policy goal: wooing Iran into diplomatic contacts over its nuclear program, its support of Islamic militant organizations and other contentious issues. Read full article...
AFRICA
Sudan elections delayed once again By: Laura Heaton, Enough, July 2, 2009
Sudan's National Electoral Commission, or NEC, this week made official what many analysts on the ground already considered a forgone conclusion: Sudan's elections will not take place next February as scheduled, and instead have been pushed back to April 2010. Sudan's first democratic election in 24 years -- a central component of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the war between the North and the South -- was originally scheduled to take place no later than July 2009. Read full article...
Ethiopia: Human rights defenders call for end to legislative attack on civil society By: Front Line, July 2, 2009
In a statement issued by the the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, human rights defenders in the region demanded that "the Ethiopian parliament should reject Draft Anti-Terrorism Proclamation and end legislative affront on independent civil society." The Draft Proclamation, currently in front of the Ethiopian parliament contains several provisions of particular concern. If not amended, these provisions risk to give further legitimacy to recent government abuses on basic civil and political freedoms. Read full article...
Zimbabwe: Group accused of terror wins appeal to Supreme Court By: Peta Thornycroft, VOA News, July 1, 2009
Zimbabwe's high court Wednesday handed down a crushing blow to the government's case against a group of Movement for Democratic Change supporters and officials. Seven people who were accused of terrorism will have their complaints referred to the Supreme Court to decide whether their constitutional rights were violated when they were allegedly abducted and tortured last year. Read full article...
Zimbabwe: Prime Minister, Mugabe clash By: Kholwanti Nyathi and Nqobani Ndlovu, allAfrica, June 27, 2009
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has warned that using the so-called Kariba Draft as the sole reference material for the country's new supreme law will undermine the ongoing consultations in another sign of major differences in strategy with President Robert Mugabe on how to implement the long-awaited reforms. Mugabe last week told the Zanu PF National Consultative Assembly that the new constitution must be anchored on the Kariba Draft that was agreed on by Zanu PF and the two MDC formations in September 2007. Read full article...
Envoys boycott Madagascar's independence celebrations By: Richard Lough, Reuters, June 26, 2009
Madagascar's new army-backed government celebrated Independence Day with military pomp on Friday but foreign envoys snubbed the ceremony. The Indian Ocean island, which gained independence from France in 1960, has been diplomatically isolated since Andry Rajoelina, 35, ousted his predecessor from office in March. Witnesses saw none of Madagascar's accredited ambassadors at the ceremony. Read full article...
Eritrea: A nation's tragedy By: Selam Kidane, openDemocracy, June 24, 2009
It is rare that a country's entire condition can be summarised in a single word. That is true of Eritrea today, however; and the word is tragic. There are many indices of this tragedy, among them Eritrea's appalling record in hunger, poverty, human rights and freedom of the press. But the most painful is that of stolen promise. Read full article...
US Senators urge Vietnam to free imprisoned priest By: NY Times, July 1, 2009
A group of United States senators urged Vietnam's president on Wednesday to free a Roman Catholic priest as human rights groups said that his imprisonment justified putting Vietnam on a religious freedom blacklist. The priest, the Rev. Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, was sentenced to eight years in prison in March 2007 after being charged with spreading propaganda against Vietnam's Communist government. Read full article...
US: Refusing to comply - The tactics of resistance in an all-volunteer military By: Dahr Jamail, Truthout, June 30, 2009
On May 1st at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive U.S. Army memo: "There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect." Ten days later, he refused to obey a direct order from his company commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second counseling statement. Read full article...
US slaps sanctions on Iran firm By: BBC News, June 30, 2009
The US has imposed sanctions on an Iranian firm accused of helping North Korea with its nuclear programme. The US Treasury says Hong Kong Electronics moved millions of dollars to two North Korean companies linked to Pyongyang's nuclear programme. The action means that bank accounts or any other financial assets found in the US belonging to the Iran-based company will be frozen. Read full article...
US: Growing factory occupations threaten to break the banks By: Mike Elk, Truthout, June 25, 2009
Last December, members of the United Electrical Workers (UE) employed by Republic Windows and Doors were initially denied severance pay when management announced the closing of their Chicago factory. Bank of America and JPMorganChase refused to continue the company's credit line and to provide severance pay, required under the workers' union contract. Workers responded by occupying the plant, protesting the refusal of banks to extend credit under the slogan "You got bailed out, We got sold out". Read full article...
Tibet: Students expelled for protesting By: Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, July 2, 2009
Chinese authorities on June 19 expelled two Tibetan students of a middle school in Labrang, Sangchu (Ch: Xiahe) County, in Gansu Province, for their alleged involvement in a peaceful protest earlier on April 24 this year, sources said. The two Tibetan students, identified as Dolma Tashi aka Dolta, 21, and Dolma Bum aka Dolbum, 22, are both from Sangkhok Township, Sangchu County, Kanlho "Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP) in Gansu Province. Read full article...
China: Hong Kong's pro-democracy march draws thousands By: Keith Bradsher, NY Times, July 1, 2009
Thousands of people joined a pro-democracy march here on Wednesday, although the turnout fell short of a candlelight vigil held nearly four weeks ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing. An enormous crowd for the annual June 4 candlelight vigil, the largest since 1990, had raised the hopes of Hong Kong democracy advocates that the same enthusiasm might carry over to their movement. Read full article...
China: Shishou official speaks out about riot By: Sam Verran, China Elections and Governance, July 1, 2009
A blog entry posted by an official in Shishou has shed more light on the recent events in Shishou city, Hubei province. The blog is maintained by an official named Liu Guolin and details his perspective on the government's containment efforts in Shishou and lessons that can be learned from the handling of the incident. The blog entry marks a surprising break from usual government silence concerning such incidents and tight control usually asserted over official reports. Read full article...
China: "Green Dam" as a case of online activism By: Guobin Yang, Columbia University Press, July 1, 2009
According to a directive first issued by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on May 19, 2009, July 1 was to be the first day that computers in China would be required to be sold with a pre-installed filtering software called Green Dam-Youth Escort. However, the announcement of the policy drew such opposition both at home and abroad that in a welcome move, the Ministry announced yesterday its decision to hold off this policy indefinitely. This decision appears to be a positive response to the popular opposition that Chinese netizens have expressed. Read full article...
China: Hong Kong march calls for more democracy By: BBC News, July 1, 2009
Tens of thousands of people have marched in Hong Kong to push for more democracy on the 12th anniversary of the city's transfer to Chinese rule. Hong Kong residents cannot directly elect the territory's chief executive or half of the legislative members. Police estimated the crowd at about 26,000 people as the march began, although organisers said the crowd had swelled later to 76,000. Read full article...
Do not forget Burma By: Laura Bush, Washington Post, June 28, 2009
For two weeks, the world has been transfixed by images of Iranians taking to the streets to demand the most basic human freedoms and rights. Watching these courageous men and women, I am reminded of a similar scene nearly two years ago in Burma, when tens of thousands of Buddhist monks peacefully marched through their nation's streets. They, too, sought to reclaim basic human dignity for all Burmese citizens, but they were beaten back by that nation's harsh regime. Read full article...
Thailand's "red shirts" rally again in Bangkok By: Kittipong Soonprasert, Reuters, June 27, 2009
Thousands of "red shirt" supporters of ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra rallied in Bangkok on Saturday in their biggest protest since violent street clashes two months ago. The United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), better known as the "red shirts," gathered in the capital to demand that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve parliament and call an election. Read full article...
Indonesia: Journalists protest alleged assault by ruling party official By: Brian Padden, VOA News, June 27, 2009
About 30 journalists rallied in front of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party office in Jakarta Saturday to protest a reported assault against a journalist by a Democratic Party official. The protesting journalists say the attack against one of their colleagues is also an assault on press freedom. Read full article...
Video: Subversive tech and Burma's struggle for democracy By: Digital Democracy, June 22, 2009
In April we collaborated with Not An Alternative and Eyebeam to host an event for their Upgrade! series highlighting the role that technology plays in the Burmese democracy movement. Hosted at the Change You Want To See gallery space, the event was live-streamed, and the video has just gone up. We are pleased to share it. Watch video...
Global lawyers' group brands Vietnam arrest 'arbitrary' By: Ian Timberlake, Mail and Guardian, June 19, 2009
A global association of lawyers says Vietnam's "arbitrary" arrest of a human rights lawyer contravenes international legal standards and the country's own Constitution. The International Bar Association's (IBA's) Human Rights Institute made the comments in a letter to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, dated Wednesday and received by Agence France-Presse late on Thursday. Read full article...
Kazakhstan: State-ordered blogging By: Yelena Jetpyspayeva, Global Voices, July 1, 2009
rOOse, a blogger on the YVision.kz blog platform in Kazakhstan, has posted [ru] a letter from the government to the principals of schools and colleges across the country containing recommendations to upload videos to the KazTube.Kz video portal, which was created in February 2009 at the expense of the state budget. In particular, the principals are urged to post videos about "significant events taking place in their institutions on a regular basis." Read full article...
UK: A real, live protest song By: Billy Bragg, The Guardian, July 2, 2009
I had to smile when I read Henry Porter's liberty central blog about protest music on Wednesday. Disappointed by the absence of any songs questioning the state of the world in the BBC's Glastonbury coverage, he called upon readers to create a virtual protest concert by providing links to clips of their favourite political songs. The irony is that I was filmed singing a brand new protest song called Constitution Hill at Glastonbury by a Guardian film crew. Read full article...
Belarus leader pardons American lawyer at center of dispute By: Ellen Barry, NY Times, June 30, 2009
The Belarussian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, on Tuesday pardoned an American lawyer at the center of a 16-month dispute between Belarus and the United States, in a push to fully restore relations between the two countries. During a meeting with members of the United States Congress, Mr. Lukashenko agreed to free Emanuel E. Zeltser, who was serving a three-year sentence for industrial espionage and forgery. Read full article...
Palestine: Amnesty details Gaza 'war crimes' By: BBC News, July 2, 2009
Israel committed war crimes and carried out reckless attacks and acts of wanton destruction in its Gaza offensive, an independent human rights report says. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says. Read full article...
Egypt: Arab dissent finds voice in cyberspace By: Heba Saleh, Abeer Allam, and Simeon Kerr, Financial Times, July 1, 2009
When Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger and political activist, was detained by prosecutors in April after an altercation with his neighbour, a police officer, he used Twitter, the social networking website, to keep the world updated on his interrogation. Mr Abbas sent Tweets describing every stage of his questioning and expressing fears that false witnesses were being brought to testify that he had assaulted the officer. Read full article...
Egpyt's Brotherhood will not challenge succession By: Aziz El-Kaissouni, Reuters, July 1, 2009
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood will avoid confrontation over attempts to install President Hosni Mubarak's son as president because it fears a crackdown by the authorities could destroy the Islamic group. But the group, Egypt's most powerful opposition force, will stay within ever-narrowing margins of freedom the state allows it, contesting elections and seeking to widen its influence via an active social agenda, analysts say. Read full article...
Arab activists watch Iran and wonder: "Why not us?" By: Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, June 26, 2009
Mohamed Sharkawy bears the scars of his devotion to Egypt's democracy movement. He has endured beatings in a Cairo police station, he said, and last year spent more than two weeks in an insect-ridden jail for organizing a protest. But watching tens of thousands of Iranians take to the streets of Tehran this month, the 27-year-old pro-democracy activist has grown disillusioned. Read full article...
Fiji bans youth speakers By: Michael Fields, Stuff, July 30, 2009
Fiji's military regime has banned a prominent critic from taking part in an international youth congress. The move against the Pacific Youth Festival comes ahead of a planned announcement on Wednesday by dictator Voreqe Bainimarama on the country's future. Bainimarama has imposed martial law on Fiji and recently banned selected speakers at the Society of Accountant's annual meeting and ordered the cancellation of the Methodist Church annual conference. Read full article...
International court under unusual fire By: Colum Lynch, Washington Post, June 30, 2009
When Luis Moreno-Ocampo charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with war crimes last year, the International Criminal Court prosecutor was hailed by human rights advocates as the man who could help bring justice to Darfur. Today, Moreno-Ocampo appears to be the one on trial, with even some of his early supporters questioning his prosecutorial strategy, his use of facts and his personal conduct. Read full article...
Color revolutions and political branding: A guide for the perplexed By: Helena Cobban, 'Just World News,' June 27, 2009
The 'Green Revolution' in Iran has its paradoxes-- not least among them the anomaly of seeing young people out on the streets of Tehran in outfits that seemed openly defiant of Islamic dress norms while they also sported a color that many Muslims consider represents their religion. But the use of the 'green' branding did seem like a bit of a master-move, regardless how things turn out. Read full article...
Peru: 'Police are throwing bodies in the river,' say native protesters By: Milagros Salazar, IPS, June 8, 2009 There are conflicting reports on a violent incident in Peru's Amazon jungle region in which both police officers and indigenous protesters were killed. The authorities, who describe last Friday's incident as a "clash" between the police and protesters manning a roadblock, say 22 policemen and nine civilians were killed. But leaders of the two-month roadblock say at least 40 indigenous people, including three children, were killed and that the authorities are covering up the massacre by throwing bodies in the river. Read full article...
China: Lawyers face revocation of their licenses for defending human rights By: Chinese Human Rights Defenders, May 26, 2009 CHRD learned today that law firms employing some of the most vocal human rights lawyers in China have been pressed by the local authorities to "fail" the lawyers in the annual evaluation of their performances. If this happens, as the lawyers fear it will, at least twenty lawyers will not have their licenses to practice law renewed by the judicial authorities when the evaluation concludes on May 31. Read full article...
“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.”
News 
Support SDP , buy our 30th Anniversary Magazine here
