FIFTY students at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) staged an overnight occupation of their famous library in protest against savage cuts to staffing.
The action came after university managers apparently threatened to slash a quarter of the librarians, including highly trained archivists.Read More »
On Christmas Eve, Abderrazak Zorgui, a thirty-two-year-old television reporter, posted a chilling cell-phone video shot in Kasserine, a city in western Tunisia that dates back to ancient Roman times. “I have decided today to put a revolution in motion,” he said, looking intently into the camera. “In Kasserine, there are people dying of hunger. Why? Are we not humans? We’re people just like you. The unemployed people of Kasserine, the jobless, the ones who have no means of subsistence, the ones who have nothing to eat.” Zorgui, who had short brown hair and wispy hair on his chin, then held up a clear bottle of gasoline. “Here’s the petrol,” he said. “I’m going to set myself on fire in twenty minutes.” His video was live-streamed onto YouTube. In his poignant farewell, Zorgui added, “Whoever wishes to support me will be welcome. I am going to protest alone. I am going to set myself on fire, and, if at least one person gets a job thanks to me, I will be satisfied.”Read More »
COMMUNISTS have condemned the “the cold-blooded murder of democracy” in West Bengal, where at least 12 people have been killed, including opposition party activists burnt to death, during election campaigning.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury accused the police of being “in complete cahoots” with the “barbarity” of the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).Read More »
TORONTO—It was high drama when center-left Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP) Premier Rachel Notley drew out her pistols against British Columbia NDP Premier John Horgan, calling on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal government for back-up. The public was told this western was all about “the national interest,” and that was the reason the PM had to call the two Premiers down to Ottawa for a talking-to. It turns out the talking-to was mostly directed at Horgan, who formed a government after promising to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline from being built to deliver bitumen from the Alberta tarsands to deep-sea tankers on the British Columbia coast.Read More »
Pandariya (Chhattisgarh): Protesting against their likely displacement for developing the Kanha-Achanakmar tiger reserve corridor, more than 300 Baiga adivasis from around 20 villages held a two-day long march in western Chhattisgarh. Covering a distance of around 70 kms, the adivasis walked from Bahpani village in the Daladali hills to Pandariya town in Chhattisgarh’s Kawardha district. The march that began on March 17 was concluded with a Baiga assembly at Gandhi chowk on March 19.
Building on the massive march against the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline that brought 10,000 people to the streets of British Columbia last weekend, Indigenous leaders and their allies staged a sit-in on Saturday at a pipeline construction site on Burnaby Mountain, kicking off a wave of civil disobedience that is set to continue through next week.
What trends can we decipher when it comes to modern protests? Is there a pattern to the grievances that helps to explain the current spike in protest?
Large-scale protests have become more numerous and geographically widespread in recent years. While much debate among international relations experts has focused on the shift in power away from the West to rising economies, equally significant in the nascent era of global politics is the rise of citizen mobilisation.Read More »
