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HAVANA — Activists from 32 little-known organizations opposed to Cuba's communist government issued a call for an end to social repression on the island at a Thursday gathering in the home of a prominent human rights activist.The event took place in the western Havana home of internationally known activist Francisco Chaviano, a veteran Cuban dissident who was released in 2007 after 13 years in prison.Participants crowded into a small room where Chaviano read a statement on behalf of the grass-roots political groups from 10 Cuban provinces.They demanded free elections, the release of all prisoners held for political motives and full state respect for human rights. The statement also said the only way for Cuba to survive the global economic crisis was for the government to ease bans on private business ownership and free enterprise.

India is marking the 25th anniversary of the leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal. The victims have generally been left in a legal haze since the ill-fated night (Dec. 2, 1984) when a toxic-gas cloud spread across the central Indian city. Children put candles on the ground during a candle light vigil on eve of 25th anniversary disaster, in Bhopal, 2 Dec 2009"We are cautiously hopeful that the American courts will see that Union Carbide is playing a game here," New York-based lawyer Rajan Sharma said.

The go-ahead to build the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, planned for the Xingu river in the Brazilian Amazon, has been delayed following protests by Indians and objections by local and international organisations.If constructed, the dam will be the third largest in the world, costing over US$10 billion, bringing more than 200,000 workers into the area and forcing an estimated 20,000 people from their homes.A large proportion of those displaced will be indigenous peoples who have been living in the area for centuries. Nine million hectares of rainforest will be affected.

Within hours of the polls closing the celebrations began. Cavalcades of honking cars raced up and down Boulevard Morazan. The Hotel Maya filled with cheering people in blue T-shirts. The media fell into paroxysms of delight.A wealthy rancher named Porfirio Lobo had just won Honduras's presidential election, heralding a "democratic fiesta". By dawn today the revellers were heading home, perhaps stopping for breakfast at one of Tegucigalpa's myriad Pizza Huts, Burger Kings and Wendy's."This is a wonderful day. The country has regained its equilibrium," beamed Ana Gomez, 29. After days of grey skies even the tropical sunshine returned.

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.

Population experts are moving ahead with strategy and projects that go beyond treating men simply as perpetrators or, at best, uncaring and passive onlookers. Recently, more and more men are looked upon to become allies in combating violence against women."The current approach is that without men’s involvement, the problem cannot be solved," Karen Daduryan, a senior officer of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS as the U.N. body presented a study at a meeting in Istanbul Nov. 11-13 on women’s health in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. "Otherwise, the risk is that women returning home after assistance and shelter will be going back to violence by the same men. We need to try to change the attitude of men."

THE dissident playwright who led Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution has used its 20-year anniversary to warn his country that Russia is still a threat despite the demise of the Soviet Union.Vaclav Havel, 73, who played a pivotal role in overcoming communist rule in 1989, said the Russian Government had mastered the art of manipulating its population while maintaining a facade of democracy.''The era of dictatorships and totalitarian systems has not ended at all,'' he said. ''It requires [from us] alertness, carefulness, caution, study and a detached view.''Mr Havel's warning came as Czechs took to the streets of Prague in their thousands. They retraced the path taken by a student demonstration in 1989 that was a turning point in the country's history.

As the debate in Congress continues over health care reform, activists are continuing to put the pressure on. In a new article at The Nation, Peter Dreier writes that momentum for reform is growing, with groups like Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and MoveOn having organized hundreds of protests in front of insurance company offices around the country, at the homes of insurance company CEOs, and at the annual conference for America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) in Washington, D.C. over the last month, calling for a robust public option.Rather than simply providing an alternative to the private insurance, other organizations – like the California Nurses Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, and Mobilization for Health Care for All – have continued to fight for a universal single-payer health care system that would get rid of insurance companies altogether. Over the last month, more than 100 people have risked arrest at sit-ins at the offices of  insurance companies in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Minneapolis.

MADISON, W.Va. - A Climate Ground Zero activist has been sentenced to 20 days in jail for blocking a road to a Massey Energy office during a mountaintop removal mining protest. The group has been committing acts of civil disobedience all year, many targeting Virginia-based Massey. Twenty-two-year-old Joseph Hamsher is the first to get jail time instead of fines. Hamsher pleaded guilty to conspiracy and trespassing in Boone County Magistrate Court on Tuesday, and will serve 10 days on each charge. A court official said Wednesday he could have been fined more than $1,800.

A global human rights group is urging Kenya to stop Somali military recruiters from enlisting displaced men and boys in Kenya's sprawling Dadaab refugee camps to fight in their war against Islamic militants."Recruitment of fighters in refugee camps undermines their very purpose, which is to be a place of refuge from conflict," said Letta Tayler, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, who spent a week interviewing refugees for the group's Thursday report about the practice. "The boys and men who are in these camps risked their lives to flee. Now they're being asked to return to that."

After years of protecting human rights abusers from prosecution, Uruguay is finally confronting its brutal pastWhen Uruguay goes to the polls tomorrow to choose a new president, this tiny South American country will teach itself, and the world, an important lesson: that burdens of injustice cannot be hidden for long. Or, to the more pragmatic, it will show that it is easier to deliver justice for past atrocities when the culprits are closer to the cemetery than they are to the courts.Uruguay may look to foreign eyes like an icon for reconciliation and justice. If the polls are right, José "Pepe" Mujica, a former Tupamaro guerrilla leader who was under arrest for 14 years, will be elected president – be it in the first round or a run-off on 29 November. And, at the same time, Uruguayans will vote in a binding referendum to repeal amnesty legislation passed in 1986 to shield human rights abusers during the 1973-85 military dictatorship from prosecution.

BOGOTA -- Human rights defenders in Colombia are under constant attack for their work, facing murder, death threats, illegal surveillance, arbitrary detentions and prosecutions, activists told a congressional panel in Washington on Tuesday.Speaking before the House Human Rights Commission, Colombian activist Gabriel Gonzalez recounted how he spent more than a year in jail on charges of being a member of the country's leftist guerrillas. A judge threw out the charges as baseless, but the ruling was overturned and he could face another seven years in prison on the same accusation.His is one of dozens of cases, U.S. and Colombian rights groups say, where human rights defenders are prosecuted based on flimsy charges as part of an effort to intimidate them.

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TEHRAN (Reuters) -- An Iranian human rights lawyer has launched an appeal for money to help avert the executions of juvenile offenders in the Islamic republic, saying $200,000 could spare the lives of four young people now on death row.Under Iran's Islamic law, Shari'a, the family of a murder victim can pardon the convicted killer in exchange for financial compensation, so-called blood money, although they can also refuse it and demand the death penalty. For most people in Iran it would be difficult to raise the amount needed on their own.

The de-facto Honduran government has lifted a three-week-old ban on opposition radio and television stations.Radio Globo and Channel 36 were back on air on Tuesday hours after Roberto Micheletti's administration removed a decree that limited constitutional guarantees including freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.Micheletti's representatives also met with Manuel Zelaya, the ousted president, on Tuesday in an attempt to kick-start talks on the nation's political crisis that had stalled.

The crisis in Honduras highlights the need to pay more attention to fragile and weak democracies before they present more serious challenges, says the European Partnership for Democracy. The international community’s strategy “entails clear risks both for democracy in Honduras and more generally for the regional political and institutional equilibrium,” writes the EPD’s Carlos Hernandez Ferreiro in a new report.A manifestation of deeper political trends in the region, the crisis illustrates how the failure to adequately consolidate or at least enhance the quality of Latin American democracy, particularly by addressing issues of social inequality, has facilitated the rise of the neo-populist Left, organized regionally in the shape of the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.

Radio Globo and Canal 36 television, two stations that have been the main media opponents of the 28 June coup d’état, were allowed to resume broadcasting on 19 October, three and a half weeks after the de facto government used a decree suspending civil liberties to close them down and confiscate their equipment.Sources at Radio Globo, which had managed to keep operating as a clandestine web radio, nonetheless said the station has had to censor itself since it resumed broadcasting. At the same time, Radio Cadena Voces (RCV), a station owned by a coup supporter, has dropped three programmes hosted by women’s groups that allowed government opponents to speak on the air.

About 200 citizens, including health care providers and patients, supported Medicare for All, a single payer plan, by marching to the Aetna office in New York City on Tuesday, September 29, 2009. This video shows some of the marchers on their way from the downtown office of Bristol-Meyers Squidb to the office of Aetna, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies.The marchers were in solidarity with 17 who were arrested at the Aetna office earlier in the day, staging a sit-in in the lobby of the building to call for an end to insurance abuse and support real health care reform, Medicare for All.

On September 27th, the Mobilization for Health Care for All launched a national campaign of "Patients Not Profit" sit-ins at insurance company offices to demand an end to a system that profits by denying people care. We want the real "public option": Medicare for All, a single payer plan that cuts out the profit and puts patients first.Together, through this campaign, we can turn the tide and win the fight for health care for all. To succeed, we need to organize sit-ins in as many cities as possible in the month of October. The campaign began with the local leadership of Private Health Insurance Must Go (PHIMG) in New York City on September 29th and continued in Chicago on October 8th and in 9 cities across the country on October 15th. The next wave starts on October 28th and we will continue to organize actions in as many cities as possible until we win health care reform that ensures that the insurance companies no longer stand between the American people and the health care that we need. It's time to cut out the profit and put patients first with Medicare for All.

Sam Pullen, 31, was arrested on Thursday, October 15, in Los Angeles at a sit-in at the Blue Cross health insurance office. He is refusing to give information to police, vowing to stay in jail until Blue Cross stops denying care to those who need it most. He is being supported by the group Mobilization for Health Care for All, which coordinated sit-ins and rallies in nine cities across the country yesterday in which 54 people were arrested to end insurance abuse and win health care for all.Pullen was inspired to action by his mother, who was denied coverage for a lifesaving bone marrow transplant by Blue Cross when he was a teenager. Weakened by her cancer treatments, Pullen’s mother staged a one-woman sit-in at the insurance company office, resulting in the approval of the transplant that extended her life for years. Thanks to the transplant, she lived long enough to see Pullen reach 18 years of age.Here is Sam’s story.

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - The de facto Honduran government relaxed curbs on protests and opposition media on Monday as crisis talks dragged into a third week with no deal on toppled President Manuel Zelaya's return to power.Zelaya, forced out of the country by soldiers in a June 28 coup, slipped back into Honduras last month and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy. De facto leader Roberto Micheletti responded by deploying soldiers around the embassy, imposing restrictions on press freedoms and banning large marches.Micheletti promised to lift the emergency measures on October 5 after strong international criticism, but the decree was only finally reversed in the official gazette on Monday.