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(CNN) -- Nestle, one of the world's largest food companies, has shut down a factory in Zimbabwe after a dispute with the government, it announced Wednesday.The company came under pressure from the government to buy milk from suppliers not of its own choosing, it said. The dairy at the center of the dispute is owned by the wife of President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean media reported.Government officials and police paid an "unannounced visit" to the Nestle factory on Saturday, and a tanker of milk was "forced" upon the factory, the company said. Two company managers were questioned and released the same day, the company said. "Since under such circumstances normal operations and the safety of employees are no longer guaranteed, Nestle decided to temporarily shut down the factory," the company said.
In the mid-1990s the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude publicly exposed the use of child domestic help by government officials in order to highlight the widespread problem of child servitude in India. The use of children as laborers continues on a large scale in India, in spite of provisions in the Indian constitution upholding the rights of children and a number of acts that have been passed dealing with child labor. One common type of illegal child labor is as domestic help. Many government officials kept children as domestic help, despite rules forbidding the practice. Citizen Initiative for Constant Light mobilized 30 million people in Turkey to turn off and on their lights to demand that the government act against corruption. The action resulted from public outrage after a car crash openly revealed connections between government, police and the mob. Turkey is a secular nation with a tradition of democracy. But it also has a tradition of human rights abuse. The influence of corruption extends throughout society through local patronage systems undeterred by any investigative reporting from a mass media industry, which is itself complicit in the corruption. As a result, the corruption issue has historically sparked only apathy and hopelessness in Turkish civil society. SEOUL: More than 10,000 South Koreans demanding President Lee Myung-Bak resign held an anti-government rally on Wednesday on the 22nd anniversary of a pro-democracy uprising. The rally was led by opposition parties, who accuse Lee of ordering a politically motivated probe into former president Roh Moo-Hyun, who leapt to his death on May 23 after being investigated in a corruption scandal. The suicide of the liberal leader, who held office from 2003 to 2008, sparked a mass outpouring of grief and fuelled a political row between liberals and conservatives. Police said the rally at a plaza in central Seoul drew about 12,000 people.
In November 2003, a revolution took place in Georgia - a revolution of a kind the turbulent region had never seen before. Not one person was injured, not a drop of blood was spilled. Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest against the flawed results of a parliamentary election. The demonstrators demanded the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze, a man who had ruled Georgia for more than 30 years in total, as its Soviet-era Communist Party boss and its longest-serving post-independence president. Mr Shevardnadze told protesters they risked causing a civil war and he deployed hundreds of soldiers on the streets of Tbilisi. At that point, student demonstrators decided to give red roses to the soldiers. Many soldiers laid down their guns. Parliament stormed "People were kissing the police and military, it was really spectacular," said Giorgi Kandelaki, a 21-year-old student. Constitutional changes have boosted Mr Saakashvili's powers "And the roses of course which people had with them, which Misha carried with him into the parliament hall, that was the moment when people said that it was a rose revolution." Misha is Mikhail Saakashvili, the US-educated 35-year-old firebrand who, on 23 November, led the demonstrators to the parliament building. Along with thousands of his supporters he forced his way through the thick wooden doors of the parliament chamber where Mr Shevardnadze was inside, giving a speech. Mr Saakashvili held a long-stemmed red rose above his head and shouted "Resign!" He waved the rose in the face of Georgia's 75-year-old president. Mr Shevardnadze's bodyguards rushed him out of the parliament building by a back door.
That was the moment that power changed hands in Georgia. In January 2004, Mr Saakashvili was elected president. The following month, the Georgian parliament passed constitutional amendments which strengthened the presidency at the parliament's expense, and gave the country a cabinet and a prime minister for the first time. Then in March 2004, Mr Saakashvili's National Movement-Democratic Front won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.
In the first year after the revolution, dozens of former government officials were jailed on corruption and embezzlement charges. Their assets were confiscated and their savings moved to state coffers. One of Mr Saakashvili's two main allies in the Rose Revolution, Zurab Zhvania, became prime minister. The other, Nino Burjanadze, remained in her position as speaker of the weakened parliament.
Protest and Persuassion
Protest and Persuassion
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