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Cairo: As protesters in Tahrir Square faced off against pro-government forces, they drew a lesson from their counterparts in Tunisia: "Advice to the youth of Egypt: Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas."The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world -- a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.
Patience is a virtue – maybe even the supreme one in Egypt's popular hierarchy of values, but patience also has its limits and, now, at last, it seems as if we've arrived at ours. And fittingly, it's the young of the country who are leading us. They've had enough of unemployment, deteriorating education, corruption, police brutality and political impotence.As is now well known, they organised Tuesday's protests over Facebook and in closed virtual and actual meetings. Talk about grassroots! "They" is some 20 groups that have sprung up over the last five years. The question has always been how and when will they coalesce? They did on Tuesday; they fused, and with them multitudes of Egyptians young and old – inspired by what happened in Tunis.
Anonymous flyers provide practical and tactical advice for confronting riot police, and besieging government offices Egyptians have been urged to come out after Friday prayers tomorrow and demand the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's government, along with freedom, justice and a democratic regime.Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices. Signed "long live Egypt", the slickly produced 26-page document calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks.
Athens, Greece (CNN) -- Greek workers were holding a one-day strike Wednesday to protest government efforts to stave off a financial crisis.Thousands of public-sector workers and their supporters began the 24-hour walkout at 9 a.m. (2 a.m. ET), though local media said workers at Athens' main international airport began their strike at midnight.Government offices, courts and schools were closed, though public transportation largely continued to operate.The umbrella civil servants trade union ADEDY, which called the strike, said most of its 500,000 workers were on strike, though that number could not be confirmed. When strikes are called in Greece, non-union members often will join those on the picket lines.
Security forces fire tear gas and plastic bullets at thousands of protesters in Caracas and elsewhere after RCTV is banned for violating a law that requires stations to air the president's speeches.Reporting from Caracas, Venezuela, and Quito, Ecuador -- Protests broke out in Venezuela on Monday after cable companies dropped transmission of a popular channel that the government declared had broken telecommunications laws by not broadcasting President Hugo Chavez's speeches.Government critics and supporters of Radio Caracas Television took to the streets of Caracas, the capital, and several other cities after companies dropped RCTV's programming under threat of losing their licenses.
Ahead of a planned opposition rally on Monday, Iran tightened security and arrested over 20 mothers who were mourning children killed in the unrest that has broken out since the disputed June 12 elections.The mothers took part in an antigovernment protest in Leleh Park in central Tehran every Saturday since the death in June of Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, whose shooting became a symbol of the government’s violent repression. The rally had been attacked by the police before, but Saturday was the first time the mothers were arrested. An opposition Web site reported that the protest was broken up by the police and many demonstrators were taken away. The BBC Persian service quoted a witness who said 29 women were arrested, some of whom were later released. But at least 21 remained in jail, the BBC said.
TEHRAN -- Iranian security forces and paramilitary groups broke up anti-government demonstrations in central Tehran on Monday, using clubs, tear gas and electric batons to disperse crowds outside the University of Tehran, witnesses said. Authorities blocked main roads into the city center and arrested dozens of demonstrators who sought to turn Iran's annual "Student Day" rallies into the latest in a series of protests against the government that began about six months ago. Officials had declared such demonstrations illegal and threatened to meet them with force. Despite the warnings, thousands of demonstrators tried to join students at sealed-off campuses of Tehran's main universities. Deployed to head them off were hundreds of riot police, Revolutionary Guard Corps troops and members of the Basij, a pro-government militia.
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian security forces fired warning shots in Tehran on Monday and beat opposition protesters among thousands seeking to renew their challenge to the government six months after a disputed election, witnesses said.The security forces fired shots into the air as they clashed with supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi at a state rally marking the killing of three students under the former Shah, the reformist website Mowjcamp said."Security forces are beating demonstrators, men and women. Some of them are injured and bleeding," said one witness in Tehran's central Haft-e Tir square.The June 12 presidential election, which secured President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election, sparked Iran's worst unrest since the Islamic revolution three decades ago and exposed deep divisions in the establishment. Authorities deny allegations of vote-rigging.
Iranians are marking University Student Day, traditionally an anti-US event that commemorates the killing of three students in 1953. Opposition supporters are expected to try to hijack official protests by chanting their own anti-government slogans.Olivia Cornes navigates some of the opposition chants heard in Iran since June's disputed presidential elections, with the help of BBCPersian.com and protesters themselves.The waves of street chanting among anti-regime protesters are spontaneous but many are not new. Slogans that Iranians used 30 years ago to call for an end to the Shah's regime are now thrown back at the Islamic regime which replaced it.
Tens of thousands of people, government protesters and supporters alike, demonstrated Saturday in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua."The only way for the government to change, as it has been shown in all these years, is for the people to go to the streets," said Dora Maria Tellez, who was a main figure in President Daniel Ortega's government during the 1980s but who now leads an opposition party."There is no other way," she said at the protests, which appeared to be peaceful. It was not immediately clear how many of the masses were demonstrating against the government and how many had gathered to support it.
The Strike Committee and the Frente de Defensa de Espinar (Front for Defense of the Interests of Espinar District) did not accept the proposal made by the Prime Minister Javier Velásquez Quesquén, and resumed their strike, announcing they will take more radical actions, breaking the truce they had agreed upon. The Espinar people do not agree with the projected usage of the waters of the Apurimac River in favor of draft-Siguas Majes II, so they are against the construction of the Angostura Dam, which (according to the villagers) would damage their water supply. Apart from halting activities in the city, protesters are taking control of bridges, and currently more than 3,000 people are blocking the road Arequipa-Juliaca, according to La Republica.
Tens of thousands of opposition supporters held a major rally on Friday evening in Tirana, seeking a partial recount of the ballots cast during the 28 June parliamentary elections.The rally, which was organised by the Socialists headed by Tirana's mayor Edi Rama was also supported by smaller opposition parties from the left and right, which accuse the government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha of electoral fraud.The rally. which was extended into a three day marathon by a few hundred opposition supporters and deputies who camped out in front of Berisha's office, closed on Sunday afternoon.Speaking at the closing rally opposition leader Edi Rama described the protest as the birth of a new political movement, while giving the government an ultimatum to accept his party's request for a partial recount.
December 1 is remembered by West Papuans as the day they should have been granted independence over 40 years ago. This year thousands of people across West Papua will be risking their lives by publicly calling for independence from Indonesia. In solidarity …December 1st – West Papuan Independence DayThe 1st December is remembered by West Papuans as the day they should have been granted independence over 40 years ago. This year thousands of people across West Papua will be risking their lives by publicly calling for independence from Indonesia. In solidarity with them we will be holding an important day of action in London, we hope you will be able to join us.
NEW DELHI — Indian survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster on Thursday protested outside the offices of the US company blamed for the toxic leak ahead of the 25th anniversary of the notorious accident.Around 200 protesters gathered in front of the Dow Chemical building in a suburb of New Delhi, shouting slogans and waving placards demanding the firm pay for years of contamination and health problems.Thousands were killed instantly when gas leaked at a plant in Bhopal overnight on December 2-3, 1984 and tens of thousands have been killed since due to contamination, making it the world's worst industrial accident.
The history of Bertha Oliva de Nativi is the history of Honduras. If the storyline of the past one hundred years of this continent has been ‘so few with so much, and so many with so little’, then Bertha has been the fearless protagonist racing to rewrite the chapters that will hence come. In 1982 Berta’s husband, Professor Tomas Nativi disappeared. One of hundreds of Hondurans and tens of thousands of Central Americans to lose their lives to state sanctioned violence, Tomas and all of those who have disappeared remain the most terrifying and silencing bootprint of the military regimes of the 1980’s. The stories are all too common: "they came to our door in the middle of the night" or "he just never came home ever again." Their families must find ways to grieve, to cope, and to say goodbye to their loved ones without the benefit of closure or resolution. Some, however, began to demand answers.
ST ANDREWS, Scotland (Reuters) - Twenty activists donned suits and ties and buried their heads in the sand on a Scottish beach on Saturday to protest against a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 20 powerful nations.The protest on West Sands, where beach scenes in the 1980s Oscar-winning movie "Chariots of Fire" were filmed, began a peaceful march that attracted more than 200 people.Demonstrators will be holding a rival People's G20 in St Andrews, a few miles from the hotel where finance ministers and central bankers of the world's most powerful developed and emerging nations are meeting to discuss the global economy.
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Shouts of "Allahu Akbar," or "God is great," a sign of continuing protest in Iran, could be heard Tuesday night in north and west Tehran, along with shouts of "death to dictator."In addition, pictures and videos were posted online of a reported protest at the University of Kashan, south of the capital city.The shouts were heard and reports came a day after the Islamic republic warned reformists against taking to the streets in protest, as the 30th anniversary of the Iranian hostage crisis approaches.
They are concerned about pollution and toxic emissions. More than a thousand Guangzhou residents held a protest on Monday against local officials building a rubbish incinerator near their homes.There were many middle-class people among the protesters—which is unusual, compared with the hundreds of thousands of demonstrations held by peasants across the Chinese countryside each year.
On the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, two hundred internationals traveled from the US, UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Belgium to join the weekly peaceful demonstration in Bil'in.Each Friday, Palestinians from the village of Bil'in are joined by hundreds of internationals and Israelis protesting the apartheid wall which annexes Palestinian land.Iyad Bornat, Head of the Popular Committee, said "the twelve metre polystyrene wall", which was made and carried by the residents of Bil'in, "was carried from the mosque in the centre of the village and placed on the other side of the fence, with the hope that the Israeli soldiers would remove it."
Reporting from Cairo - He doesn't seem a radical or a troublemaker, but to the Egyptian government, Abdel Fattah Rizk, a surgeon with a graying mustache and hands pink from scrubbing, is a man to be watched.He belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, the most potent opposition group in the country. Hundreds of its members are in prison and many more are lying low. But even as security forces scour the nation for dissent, the Brotherhood is everywhere, from the shacks of handymen to the estates of millionaires and the halls of parliament.The government of President Hosni Mubarak paints the Brotherhood as an extremist organization with terrorist ties determined to impose strict Islamic law across Egypt. The group says it renounced violence decades ago, and its real threat to the ruling party is its appeal to the educated and middle class, who view the regime as corrupt and too beholden to the West. Although there are radicals among its members, the Brotherhood espouses a moderate Islam to reshape Middle East politics.
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