South Africa's Shackdwellers Under Violent Attack

DURBAN — On Saturday, September 26, about 40 heavily armed men ambushed a meeting of the Kennedy Road Development Committee of Abahlali baseMjondolo, South Africa's shack dwellers’ movement. The men were apparently shouting, “the AmaMpondo are taking over Kennedy. Kennedy is for the amaZulu!” The ensuing violence has resulted in between two and eight deaths, and hundreds of homes burned. As of Sunday night onl　y leaders of Abahlali baseMjondolo have been jailed --- many of whom are members of the movement's security team and some of the youth who were not present at the time of the attack. Many have fled the settlement and people's homes are being destroyed, including the home of Abahlali President, S'bu Zikode.


It is clear that the attacks have been on political and ethnic grounds, and there is growing concern regarding the involvement of local authorities including the police, ANC, and ward council. The violence appears to be a planned attempt to break this peaceful and democratic movement. Please read and sign a petition demanding an end to the violence.

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Massive popular resistance as Micheletti dictatorship revives 1980's death squad

The Micheletti dictatorship in Honduras, which prominently includes 1980's death squad "Battalion 3-16" [1] [2] members Billy Joya [1] [2], Nelson Willy Mejía Mejía [1] [2] and Napoleón Nassar Herrera [1] [2], has suspended human rights since the 28 June 2009 coup d'etat, has "disappeared" at least three people, has extrajudicially executed nearly ten people, and has detained hundreds of people [1] (es) | [2] (en) (es) | [3] (en) (es). Despite this, unprecedented grassroots protests have culminated in the arrival on Tuesday 11 August 2009 in Tegucigalpa of over 70,000 (es) demonstrators and of thousands of others in San Pedro Sula, coordinating through the Front against the coup d'etat. The Front's 19th Communique states that unless the Micheletti regime resigns within the next few days and restores Zelaya to the presidency, then the Front will further extend massive civil disobedience actions (es) that have already paralysed the economy and will file for national and international criminal proceedings against those responsible for the extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations.

The mainstream Western media have with very few exceptions failed to report the participation of the Battalion 3-16 death squad in the Micheletti de facto government, they have not reported on "disappearances", they have severely underreported the number of extrajudicial executions, and they have almost entirely hidden the unresolved context of the 1980's death squads. The Zelaya government also contained death squad members (es), which CODEH and other Honduran local human rights organisations objected to. The Obama-Clinton-Lula so-called "Arias" plan has glaringly omitted any mention of whether or not it proposes to exclude death squad members from any "negotiated" coalition government.

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The Angola Three: Torture in Our Own Backyard

Together, Herman Wallace, Robert King and Albert Woodfox have spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement (pictured, left to right).

They are known as the "Angola Three," a trio of political prisoners whose supporters include Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Congressman John Conyers, and the ACLU. Kgalema Mothlante, the President of South Africa says their case "has the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire U.S. system."

“My soul cries from all that I witnessed and endured. It does more than cry, it mourns continuously,” said Black Panther Robert Hillary King, following his release from the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 2001, after serving his last 29 years in continuous solitary confinement. King argues that slavery persists in Angola and other US prisons, citing the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which legalizes slavery in prisons as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." King says: “You can be legally incarcerated but morally innocent.”

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La Paz 26 Feb. (CMI Sucre).- According to the Annual Report on Human Rights by the US Department of State, presented by Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State of that country, there have been problems with respect to human rights in Bolivia. According to the report indications of human rights violations have "been detected," mentioning "arbitrary" detentions, threats to civil rights, attacks by the executive branch on judicial power, and poor jail conditions, amongst others in the government of President Juan Evo Morales Ayma.

The document mencions that the government of Bolivia has respected human rights in general, but according to the report there existed some problem areas such as:

"abuses on the part of security forces; rough jail conditions; arbitrary arrests and detentions; attacks on judicial power on the part of the executive branch; threats against civil liberties, including legal rights and the freedom of the press; excessive use of force and other abuses during internal conflicts; corruption and lack of transparency in the government; discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation; trade and traffic in humans; child labor; forced labor or labor under coercion; [and] deplorable conditions in the mining sector."

Audio Viceministro de Coordinación con los Movimientos Sociales: Sacha Llorenti -

This report came to light when the president of Bolivia began to denounce the influence of the CIA in the internal affairs of Bolivia specifically in the state petroleum company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales de Bolivia (YPFB), mentioning involvement in acts of corruption by its president Santos Ramírez. He called attencion to the threats of ex-US ambassador Fillip Golbert who was expelled from the country by the president after it was proved that he met with directors of the so-called "media luna" and other opposition groups which had intended to kick off a civil disturbance. Said disturbance came to a head with the massacre of rural peoples one　 Thursday, September 11 of 2008, in the pueblo of El Porvenir in the department of Pando.

For his part the Viceminister of Coordination with Social Movements, Sacha Llorenti, classified this document as inadmissible, rude and biased, "the report is inadmissible for the government of Bolivia, as it is a gross simplification of the national reality that is politically motivated and biased." He also mentioned that the government of the United States can talk about Human Rights when it expels Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada from its country.

He reminded that this ex-president of Bolivia is accused by victims and social organizations in accordance with the Committee to Bring to Justice Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and his collaborators, for the massacres in September and October of 2003, that resulted in around 60 dead and more than 400 wounded in Bolivia. The ex-president is being protected by the US, particularly by the State Department, who supported a proposals by ex North American ambassadors, September 19th of 2008 that allowed Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to evade justice in the US for the October Massacre of 2003.

Moreover, directors of social organizations within the deparment of Chuquisaca have said with respect to this annual report that, "[The} US does not have the moral imperative to discuss human rights and less so justice," bringing up the cases of: Tipton Three, British citizens who went to Pakistan for a wedding the day before a western attack on the Taliban, crossed the border with Afgahnistan with the vague intent of helping other muslims, and were detained at Guantanamo as have potential ties to Al Qaeda , o los 5,000 children in Pennsylvania who were convicted of unproven minor crimes, and the 2,000 of whom were placed in juvenile detention by corrupt judges that were receiving bribes from the builders and owners of these private jails, and tying them to the incredibly deficient administration of justice in their own country.

With regards to the human rights violations of Guantanamo, as a counter point to the, yet fulfilled, promises to close the prison at Guantanamo, that the US government has almost finished the extensions of the jail of Bagram in Afghanistan, where there are around 600 people illegally detained, according to human rights organizations.

Finally he stressed the report of a three year investigation by a panel of eight international judges, pertaining to the anti-terrorism effort led by the United States after the attacks of September 11, that mentioned a series of human rights violations that included: torture; forceful kidnappings; secret and arbitrary dententions without guarantee of justice, pursued with impunity over several years by the US government.

Confronted with these things, human rights organizations question the legitimacy of the US State Department's annual report on Human Rights, particularly with regards to Bolivia, where it has onl　y been two decades since the United States ended the so-called Plan Condor, in alliance with the de facto military governments.

Source: CMI Sucre.

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Pakistan opposition leader Nawaz Sharif has defied an apparent bid to put him under house arrest in Lahore ahead of a "march" on the capital Islamabad.

Thousands of supporters joined him after he broke through a police barricade of his home to reach a rally.

Police fired tear gas as protesters hurled stones.

--Read more,http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7944527.stm