Teaching Comparative

Security or repression?

Thousands of people in Russia have protested against plans to introduce tighter restrictions on the internet.

Moscow protest

A mass rally in Moscow and similar demonstrations in two other cities were called after parliament backed the controversial bill last month.

The government says the bill, which allows it to isolate Russia's internet service from the rest of the world, will improve cyber-security.

But campaigners say it is an attempt to increase censorship and stifle dissent.

Activists say more than 15,000 people gathered in Moscow on Sunday, which is double the estimate given by the police…

"If we do nothing it will get worse," one protester told Reuters news agency. "The authorities will keep following their own way and the point of no return will be passed."

Another campaigner, Sergei Boiko, told AFP news agency that "the government is battling freedom"…

The government says the so-called digital sovereignty bill will reduce Russia's reliance on internet servers in the United States.

It seeks to stop the country's internet traffic being routed through foreign servers.

A second vote is expected later this month.

If it is passed it will eventually need to be signed by President Vladimir Putin.

Russia has introduced a swathe of tougher internet laws in recent years. On Thursday, its parliament passed two bills outlawing "disrespect" of authorities and the spreading of what the government deems to be "fake news"…

Labels: Internet, politics, protest, Russia

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Seize the power

The Mace

As the lawmaker approached the large ornamental club in the middle of Britain’s House of Commons on Monday night, his fellows chattered in the benches. When he hoisted it up, a clamor erupted: “Disgrace,” “Expel him,” “No!”

But when he turned and tried to walk out with the ceremonial mace, John Bercow, the speaker of the House, said, “Order. Put it back. No, no.”

At the exit, a white-haired woman emerged to grab the scepter from the offending member of Parliament, Lloyd Russell-Moyle. He gave it up without a fight, and she ended the brief rebellion in Parliament, an abortive heist that reflected the current chaos in Britain’s government, where confusion — about policy, authority and a mace — has in recent days reigned.

The mace, decorated with roses, thistles and pearls, represents the royal authority of the crown, from which the Houses of Parliament derive their own authority…

Has this happened before?

On several occasions, Britons angry with their government have brandished the mace and dismayed their peers…

In each instance, [Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics] said, grabbing the mace was “considered grave disorder,” because “anybody who picks up or touches the mace is kind of rebelling against the underlying function of the House of Commons.”…

Labels: political culture, politics, protest, UK

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Demographics of politics

Thousands of people have taken part in protests in cities across Russia to express their anger at government proposals to raise the pension age.

Demonstrators in the capital, Moscow, carried banners reading: "We want to live on our pensions, not die at work."

The government says it wants to raise the pension age from 60 to 65 for men, and from 55 to 63 for women, to help cope with a shrinking workforce.

Communist Party protesters

But unions warn many people will not live long enough to claim a pension.

Russian men have a life expectancy of just 66, while for women it is 77, the World Health Organization says…

The national protests were organised by the Russian Communist Party (CPRF), but trade unionists and nationalists also participated in the demonstrations.

There were red flags and other left-wing symbols…

Protesters carried slogans like: "We won't live that long" and "the government must go".

Several activists dressed up in death costumes, with one bringing a skeleton and a scythe. They argue the reforms are a death sentence for Russian people…

Protesters say the government should be taking the money from the rich and not "stealing" it from ordinary working people.

Some three million people have signed a petition against the pension reform proposals, which have been backed by President Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party…

Mr Putin, who did not mention the pension reform plan ahead of his re-election in March, has seen public trust in his presidency fall from 80% in May to 64% this month, according to the state pollster VTsIOM.

Labels: demographics, parties, political culture, population, protest, Russia

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Ancient history

Ahead of Monday’s anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters, the Post spoke to two of the few Hongkongers who witnessed the chaotic clearance operation. The pair shared how they narrowly escaped death amid the gunfire and tanks that ran across the city on the night of June 3 and early morning of June 4.

Tiananmen Square, 1989

Kenneth Lam, then a student leader at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has since become a local human rights lawyer, fighting for the rights of grass-roots workers.

He considers his work an extension of the spirit that drove the Tiananmen protest movement almost three decades ago.

Taking a different path, Gloria Fung Yuk-lang left China in 1989 for Canada, from where she keeps a close eye on her hometown and works to raise awareness of the crackdown in the face of Beijing’s continued attempts to muzzle any mention of the incident inside the country’s borders.

Both Lam and Fung see it as their responsibility to tell the world what happened, and keep up the struggle against fading memories. Their stories are often harrowing…

Beijing 1989

Labels: China, history, protest, Tiananmen

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Unrest in Iran

Teachers went on strike in central Iran’s city of Yazd. Steelworkers and hospital staff walked off the job in the southwest city of Ahvaz. Railway employees protested near Tabriz. And a bus drivers union in Tehran battled the private companies that control many city routes.

These were among the hundreds of recent outbreaks of labor unrest in Iran, an indication of deepening discord over the nation’s economic troubles. Workers are turning not only against their employers but also Iran’s government, piling pressure on leaders who promised but failed to deliver better times in the two years since economic sanctions were lifted in the nuclear deal…

Prices of eggs, meat and bread are rising more than 10% a year, compounding consumer woes. Unemployment is about 12%, and the Iranian rial has fallen sharply against the dollar,..

Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the nuclear agreement have gone to Iran’s military involvement in Syria and support of Lebanon’s Hezbollah rather than the national economy, critics of the deal say…

Iran’s labor disputes are extending a panoply of protests in the Islamic Republic that stem from social, economic and political strains…

Leaders of the new Islamic Republic hobbled the rise of independent labor unions, which were viewed as a potential threat. While Iran has state-sanctioned Islamic labor councils, international labor groups don’t view them as independent of the state. Some leaders of independent unions face arrest…

Labels: economics, Iran, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Protest messages on money

"Banknotes are our un-censorable messengers," one user wrote, referring to a rumoured plan to permanently block the popular messaging app Telegram, which is by far the most popular digital communication tool in Iran.

Slogans included "I am an overthrower".

Some of the sayings were originally chanted during mass anti-establishment protests at the turn of the year.

In late December, demonstrators took to the streets then to express their dissatisfaction with the social and economic situation in the country.

Telegram was believed to have been the main platform people used to obtain and share information about the protests, which took place across Iran from late December 2017 to January 2018.

Nearly 8,000 tweets have been posted since 28 April under the hashtag #Onehundredthousand_talking_banknotes in Persian, according to BBC Monitoring. Most posts are aimed at raising awareness about the new online movement…

Most tweets were posted anonymously, making them hard to independently verify…

One account… published a photograph of a note featuring a drawing of a protester in a hijab - a tribute to the recent "Girls of Enqelab (Revolution) Street" movement against the compulsory Islamic dress code in the country…

Labels: Iran, politics, protest, social media

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Trivia to me - vital ethnic identity to some Iranian Arabs

Iranian security forces, backed by units of anti-riot police and the Revolutionary Guard, suppressed night demonstrations on the fourth day of protests by Arab citizens in the center of the city on Saturday…

Videos and images shared on social media and local Ahwaz TV channels showed protesters holding up signs in Arabic, English and Ahwazi calling on the UN to stop the discrimination against Arabs by Iranian authorities…

According to the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, protesters called for the release of political prisoners and an end to demographic changes that are in favor of migrants, not Arabs.

Other demands included an end to the marginalization of the Arab Ahwaz, efforts to combat poverty, unemployment and pollution.

See also: The Phantom Emirate of Ahwaz.

Labels: cleavages, Iran, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Referendum or revolution

A group of prominent Iranian intellectuals have said they have lost hope that the Islamic Republic can reform, and have called for a referendum to establish whether the ruling establishment is still backed by a majority.

A day after Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, touted the idea of holding a referendum as a means to heal Iran’s deepening political divisions, 15 figures – including some based in Iran – said leaders had failed to deliver on republican ideals…

Rouhani did not elaborate on what he was proposing to put to a vote, but he has sounded increasingly frustrated about the political stalemate…

Meanwhile, the Iranian currency has taken another dive against the dollar in recent days, adding to fears about the state of the economy.

Speaking last week, Rouhani expressed concern about what he said was the unwillingness of his hardline opponents to listen to the voices of ordinary people, particularly after a wave of unrest that began in late December.

“The previous regime, which thought that its rule would be lifelong and its monarchy eternal, lost everything because it did not listen to the voices of criticism, advice, reformers, the clergy, elders and intellectuals,” he said, referring to the late shah’s rule. “The previous regime did not listen to the voice of people’s protests and only listened to one voice, and that was the people’s revolution. For a government that only wants to hear the sound of revolution, it will be too late.”

The activists’ letter… criticises the conservative-dominated judiciary, which acts independently of Rouhani’s government. “The judiciary is reduced to the executor of the political wishes of those who hold the reins of power…

Saeed Barzin, a London-based Iranian analyst, said Rouhani’s call for a referendum was a threat to push back the economic and political meddling of an unelected faction dominated by hardliners, in particular the Revolutionary Guards.

“The undercurrent issue is how the power will be distributed after Khamenei, and in a way the power struggle has already begun,” Barzin said. “Reformists feel under threat that the current situation might lead to people losing hope in reform or becoming radical or becoming apolitical. Hardliners, on the other side, might see an opportunity here to scapegoat Rouhani and even conduct a soft coup d’état, but it’s a gamble.”…

Labels: Iran, leadership, politics, protest, regime

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

They protest too little

Protesters across Russia braved icy temperatures on Sunday to demonstrate against the lack of choice in a March presidential election that is virtually certain to see President Vladimir V. Putin chosen for a fourth term…

The protests, expected in almost 100 cities, were called by Aleksei A. Navalny, a charismatic, anti-corruption opposition leader, after he was barred from running for the presidency because of legal problems widely seen as manufactured to prevent his candidacy…

Mr. Navalny was detained before he reached the several thousand demonstrators gathered in Pushkin Square in central Moscow and other main avenues closer to the Kremlin…

The boisterous crowd in Pushkin Square chanted slogans including “These are not elections!” and “Down with the czar!” At one point, they urged more people to join them, chanting, “There is still time to come, the weather is not bad.”

Mr. Navalny organized anti-corruption protests across Russia in March and June, mobilizing, in particular, middle-class youths, and his campaign has vowed to organize repeated protests before the March 18 election to underscore that the elections are a fraud, with the Kremlin manipulating the entire process…

The demonstrations on Sunday had a moderate turnout, drawing hundreds in many places, and were generally peaceful… In the far eastern part of the country and in Siberia, they were held despite frigid temperatures, with Yakutsk approaching minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 45 degrees Celsius)…

Mr. Putin has been the most powerful man in Russia since 2000, governing as president for all but a four-year stretch when term limits forced him to serve as prime minister for one term. Another presidential term, which would run six years, until 2024, would make him the longest-serving leader since Stalin…

---

Today’s anti-Putin protests weren’t huge. But they showed the breadth of simmering Russian discontent.

Labels: elections, politics, protest, Russia

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

More analysis on Iran

Antigovernment protests roiled Iran on Tuesday, as the death toll rose to 21 and the nation’s supreme leader blamed foreign enemies for the unrest. But the protests that have spread to dozens of Iranian cities in the past six days were set off by miscalculations in a long-simmering power struggle between hard-liners and reformers…

But the anger behind the protests was directed against the entire political establishment.

While the protests that swept Iran in 2009 were led by the urban middle class, these protests have been largely driven by disaffected young people in rural areas, towns and small cities who have seized an opening to vent their frustrations with a political elite they say has hijacked the economy to serve its own interests.

Unemployment for young people — half the population — runs at 40 percent, analysts believe. Meanwhile, Iran has spent billions of dollars abroad in recent years to extend its influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The initial catalyst for the anger appears to have been the leak by President Rouhani last month of a proposed government budget. For the first time, secret parts of the budget, including details of the country’s religious institutes, were exposed.

Iranians discovered that billions of dollars were going to hard-line organizations, the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and religious foundations that enrich the clerical elite. At the same time, the budget proposed to end cash subsidies for millions of citizens, increase fuel prices and privatize public schools…

In reaction to the protest in Mashhad, Hesamodin Ashna, a trusted adviser to President Rouhani, sent out a Twitter message on Friday, highlighting “the unbalanced distribution of the budget.”

Iran’s military forces, active in several countries in the Middle East, saw their budget increase to $11 billion, a nearly 20 percent rise, he said. The budget for representatives of the supreme leader in universities was increased. An institute run by the hard-line cleric Mohammad Taghi Meshbah-Yazdi was to receive eight times as much as a decade ago…

As protests took off in about 40 cities across the country, Tehran remained largely quiet. In 2009, over three million people took to the streets disputing the elections.

But this time, many said they feared the raging, leaderless protests.

“They are angry, and have a right to be, but there is just nothing more, no plan for the day after,” said Hamidreza Faraji, a cosmetic and honey salesman…

Labels: cleavages, Iran, politics, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

More protest in Iran

Nationwide protests in Iran saw their most violent night as "armed protesters" tried to overrun military bases and police stations before security forces repelled them, bringing the death toll in the unrest to at least 12, state television reported Monday.

The demonstrations, the largest to strike Iran since its disputed 2009 presidential election, began Thursday in Mashhad…

Iranian state television aired footage of a ransacked private bank, broken windows, overturned cars and a firetruck that appeared to have been set ablaze. It reported that clashes Sunday night killed 10 people…

On Sunday, Iran blocked access to Instagram and the popular messaging app Telegram used by activists to organize. President Hassan Rouhani acknowledged the public's anger over the Islamic Republic's flagging economy…

Unemployment remains high, and official inflation has crept up to 10 percent again. A recent increase in egg and poultry prices by as much as 40 percent, which a government spokesman has blamed on a cull over avian flu fears, appears to have been the spark for the economic protests.

While the protests have sparked clashes, Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and its affiliates have not intervened as they have in other unauthorized demonstrations since the 2009 election…

Labels: economics, Iran, leadership, politics, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:30 AM 0 comments

More on Iranian protests

A striking image, taken by an amateur photographer on a smartphone, shows a young woman in Tehran taking off her hijab, perching on a telecoms box, and holding her headscarf aloft on a stick.

It may look as if she is waving a white flag of truce, but given her geographical location, in a country where wearing hijab is obligatory for women, it is a small – yet audacious – act of resistance, embodying the aspiration of a young nation frustrated with economic grievances, but also lack of social and political freedom…

The geographical scale of the unrest in provinces, and the harshness of the slogans chanted are unprecedented since the 1979 Iranian revolution…

But the new protests, labelled by many on Twitter as “Eteraz-e-omomi” (or “the general strike” in Farsi) are posing more questions than answers, puzzling observers about how it all started, why it spread so quickly, and what it means for the future of the Iran…

Mohammad-Taghi Karroubi, the son of an Iranian opposition leader under house arrest said that after Rouhani won a landslide victory with the support of reformists, his unexpected conservative turn since had disappointed his base. “It’s always been the reformist youth who pumped hope inside the country and they’re silent now – that’s the government’s weakness, people are hopeless and when reformists are not pumping hope, they’re becoming even more disgruntled.”…

While the middle class and the elites were behind the 2009 protests, this new wave appears to be led by the working class, which is most affected by the country’s economic woes.

Others say it is too soon to fully comprehend the new protests. “It’s a jigsaw puzzle,” said one commentator who did not want to be identified. “There might be other reasons at play too, such as internal rivalries between different factions especially as Khamenei becomes older and the succession race becomes serious.”…

Mohammad Marandi, a Tehran University professor sympathetic to the Islamic Republic, blamed Rouhani government’s economic policy over the protests, which began just weeks after the president unveiled next year’s budget.

“There are obviously economic problems ... I think that perhaps the government policy seems to some as leaning towards the liberalisation of the economy, rising the price of gasoline and removing subsidies, and at the moment because the economy is not doing so well, it has created a sense of concern among a lot of people,” he said…

Labels: economics, Iran, politics, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:00 AM 0 comments

Stop it!

The Iranian government has told people to avoid "illegal gatherings" in the wake of two days of angry anti-establishment protests in the country.

Scores have been arrested in protests over corruption and living standards.

Small groups have continued to gather at Tehran University and elsewhere.

But Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli urged people "not to participate in these illegal gatherings as they will create problems for themselves and other citizens".

The Iranian authorities are blaming anti-revolutionaries and agents of foreign powers for the outbreak of anti-establishment protest.

In the US, the Trump administration warned Iran overnight that the world was watching its response. Iran's foreign ministry called the comments "opportunistic and deceitful".

Meanwhile, thousands of pro-government demonstrators attended rallies on Saturday.

These official rallies were organised in advance of the anti-government protests, to mark the eighth anniversary of the suppression of major street protests.

Labels: Iran, leadership, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:00 AM 0 comments

Protests in Iran

Thousands of residents n a number of Iranian cities including the north-eastern city of Mashhad took to the streets on Thursday demonstrating against unemployment, poverty and the rising cost of living.

Protesters raised the slogans "Death to Rouhani, and Death to the Dictator". Usually the term "dictator" is addressed to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Protesters also waved banners denouncing Iran's interference in the Arab region.

Similar protests were held in cities of Neyshabur, Shahroud, and Yazd.

There were angry chants of “Death to the Dictator” and “Death to Rouhani.”

The demonstrators also chanted “Forget about Syria, think about us”, “Don’t be scared, we are all together.”…

Earlier this week, demonstrations broke out in Isfahan, central Iran, in protest against the unemployment crisis.

Officials in Isfahan warned of the worsening unemployment crisis, with statistics indicating that more than 27,000 people were fired from their jobs because firms went bankrupt over the past nine months…

Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) [said]… “[A]s long as this regime is in power the economy and the welfare of Iranians will deteriorate, and the only solution to the economic and social ills and the crisis is the regime’s overthrow”…

Labels: cleavages, Iran, leadership, politics, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

A truck in the ointment

striking truckers

It stretched from horizon to horizon, like some giant, many-colored, mechanical caterpillar, and it was angry, very angry. It was an apparently endless line of truck cabs, air horns booming, mighty engines revving, clogging the narrow highway that skirts the Caspian Sea…

Their drivers, hundreds of them, were trying to send a message to a federal government that seems to tune out quieter civic protests…

The truckers in this recent rally in Dagestan were part of a nationwide strike by thousands of drivers who say that a road tax, which the Russian government just increased, is making it impossible for them to earn a living…

Like many of the protesters in the nationwide rallies against corruption that brought out tens of thousands on March 26, the truckers say their demands are economic, not political. And although the anti-corruption protest was a one-day event, the truckers are still out there…

The truckers are protesting “Platon,” a toll-collecting system that charges heavy trucks by the kilometer. It was first rolled out in 2015. Truckers protested at the time, despite the government’s insistence that the toll was necessary to improve roads, and the Kremlin’s assertion that nepotism had nothing to do with the fact that the company that manages the system is run by the son of a wealthy businessman who is Putin’s former judo sparring partner…

The protest has spread to more than 60 cities, said Ilya Shablinsky, a member of Russia’s Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights…

Labels: corruption, politics, protest, Russia

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

It's analysis, not news

The weekend anticorruption protests that roiled Moscow and nearly 100 Russian towns clearly rattled the Kremlin, unprepared for their size and seeming spontaneity. But perhaps the biggest surprise, even to protest leaders themselves, was the youthfulness of the crowds.

A previously apathetic generation of people in their teens and 20s, most of them knowing nothing but 17 years of rule by Vladimir V. Putin, was the most striking face of the demonstrations…

[T]he harshness of the response to the protests on Sunday — hundreds of people were arrested, in many cases simply for showing up — suggested that Mr. Putin’s hierarchy was taking no chances.

Artyom Troitsky, a Russian journalist and concert promoter who for years has tracked Russian youth culture, said the fact that so many young people took part in the protests in Moscow and elsewhere “is exceptionally important.”

The reason, he said, is that “young people have always been a catalyst for change,” and their presence suggests a break from the lack of political interest they had exhibited in recent years…

Aleksei A. Navalny, the anticorruption campaigner and opposition leader who orchestrated the nationwide protests — and who received a 15-day prison sentence on Monday for resisting arrest — said in court that he was surprised at the turnout on Sunday and that he was determined to keep up the pressure by running in next year’s presidential election…

That the Kremlin has been vexed by Mr. Navalny is clear from the authorities’ response to what, in most countries, would be inconsequential protests that merely disrupted traffic. The police arrested protesters in some cases for nothing more than carrying a rubber duck, a symbol of extravagant money reportedly spent on a duck pond at a government residence…

“Russia is really stuck in the past,” said Ilya Amutov, a 25-year-old technology worker who marched in Moscow on Sunday. Young people, he said, “just want to live like normal, modern people in the rest of Europe.”…

In the past, the Kremlin has been highly skillful at channeling the energy of young Russians away from opposition political activism into a pro-Putin youth movement called Nashi…

But Aleksei A. Chesnakov, the director of the Center for Current Policy… said that in recent years the government had largely withdrawn support for pro-Putin youth movements, leaving the authorities without the ability to stage counterprotests and keep young people occupied.

The limits of this approach were on stark display Sunday when the protesters were not retirees or gritty industrial workers of Russian protests past, but iPhone-wielding, takeaway-coffee-carrying urban youths, representing Mr. Putin’s long-term challenge…

Despite the dynamic in the capital, the vast majority of Russians still cling to the leader they know in Mr. Putin. His popularity ratings have slipped, but only marginally…

Labels: cleavages, politics, protest, Russia

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 1 comments

An alternative to dumping tea in a harbor?

Fifty small businesses line the cobbled streets of Crickhowell [in Wales]…

[T]here is Steven Lewis’s coffee shop, Number 18 Cafe & Brasserie, which, like a lot of the other mom-and-pop operations in Crickhowell, houses a grievance that resonates far beyond the town’s borders.

Mr. Lewis, 63, a broad-chested former military man, has helped turn Crickhowell into ground zero for a revolt by small-business owners in Britain against a tax system they see as rigged against them in favor of multinational corporations like Facebook, Google and Starbucks…

Stephen Lewis

Mr. Lewis said he paid the 21 percent corporate tax rate on his profits last year, equivalent to 31,000 pounds, or $45,200. By contrast, Facebook — which is based in the United States but does business in Britain and is therefore subject to British taxes — paid just £4,327, or $6,274, in corporate tax in 2014…

That is just one glaring example, Mr. Lewis and his fellow shopkeepers in Crickhowell said, of what amounts to multinational tax dodging on a gargantuan scale, leaving the little guy to pick up the tab…

Britain’s tax authority, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, said in a recent report that the amount of tax lost to Britain because of avoidance schemes was an estimated $4.3 billion in 2014…

the tax offenders are not just American. There is Caffè Nero, the London-based coffee chain that did not pay a penny of corporate tax in Britain for a decade. Cadbury, the British confectioner… has not paid taxes for the past five years, despite making about $144 million in profits each year…

Many shops in Crickhowell already have stickers pasted on their windows that declare themselves part of a “Fair Tax Town”…

Another of his aims is to have the tax authorities enforce a five-star system that would rate which companies have paid the appropriate taxes and make the results public…

Labels: policy, politics, protest, taxation, UK

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Attempted civil society in China

The detentions came right before International Women's Day.

Five women who all worked as activists for various feminist causes and had organised public events to raise awareness of a host of issues…

Few predicted the women would ever become targets of the authorities, since their causes seemed relatively unobjectionable.

That is, until last March, when the women were planning a multi-city protest to call for an end to sexual harassment on public transport.

The size of their networks and their determination to speak out in public appeared to unnerve the authorities. One by one, they were detained by police…

A global campaign to push for their release ensued, and there was an outpouring of relief on Twitter when the #FreetheFive group were released.

Months later, the women remain under police surveillance. The group are pushing for their case to be withdrawn…

Where does the wider women's movement stand after the Feminist Five detentions?

In some ways, this is a very dark time for anyone who wants to shape Chinese government policy, to change the way things work from outside of the Communist Party's machinations…

Chinese civil society has suffered under the rule of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Thousands of activists, dissidents and defence lawyers have been targeted by the authorities. Many non-governmental organisations have been forced to shut their doors, or dramatically scale back their activities…

The detentions and subsequent release of the Feminist Five have also resulted in positive changes for the women's movement in China.

According to Beijing based writer and commentator Zhang Lijia, the movement has become more cohesive since the Spring.

"Before there were different pockets of women activists. For example, those working on LGBT issues, or promoting gender equality.

There were some connections among the associations, of course, but that hadn't worked together. Now they have a common enemy in some sense," she explains…

On 19 November, for example, Li Tingting [one of the Feminst Five]joined activists from ten other cities to demand more women's toilets in China.

Li Tingting

Ms Li appears to be cautiously optimistic for the future.

"Before [the detentions], many outside China didn't know we had women's rights activists in China. It's a good thing in some ways," she says…

Labels: China, civil society, gender, politics, protest, women

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Tentacles of corruption

The governor of Mexico's southern Guerrero state - where 43 students went missing after clashing with police last month - has said he is standing down.

Angel Aguirre said he hoped the move would create "a more favourable political climate to bring about the solution to the crisis"…

Mexico's Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam on Thursday said there appeared to be deep ties across the southern state between politicians, the police and drug gangs.

He said arrest warrants had been issued for Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca, his wife, and the town's police chief. They are suspected of ordering the police to hand over the students to local gangsters.

All three suspects have gone missing…

Labels: corruption, leadership, Mexico, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

When is the government no longer THE government?

Mexico City demonstration

Thousands of people marched in various parts of Mexico on Wednesday to demand justice in the disappearance and possible massacre of 43 college students at the hands of police…

”I am here because I am outraged and it hurts me, what is happening in my country,” said Alejandra Orozco, 22, a sociology student. “We cannot act as if these massacres are normal in this country.”

Another student said she thought the governor of Guerrero, who has been accused of allowing rampant corruption in the state’s local governments, should resign.

“We demand the resignation of the governor, and if the students don’t reappear, [President Enrique] Pena Nieto ought to resign too,” said Maria Flores Solis, 23. “What happened to the students is unpardonable and speaks to a Mexico without law.”…

It remains unclear why the students were kidnapped and possibly killed. Their leftist movement has long clashed with local police and governments, while the penetration of those governments by drug-trafficking criminal organizations has become increasingly evident.

Labels: legitimacy, Mexico, politics, protest, rule of law

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments