Democracy RIP

Several protesters were arrested at Parliament Square, London, on Saturday during a peaceful demonstration organised by the activist group Occupy Democracy.

Being An Antiwar Activist In Israel Is Dangerous

Being an antiwar activist in Israel is dangerous. Israelis who protested against the 2014 Gaza offensive were threatened, harassed and attacked. Some even lost their jobs.

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Jailed Greek student Nikos Romanos’s family fear son will be ‘martyr’

From behind the bars around his bed, on the third floor of Athens’s Gennimatas hospital, Nikos Romanos could hear the thousands who took to the streets last week screaming his name, as heavily armed police looked on. Monitored by machine-gun-wielding riot police himself, the 21-year-old anarchist, imprisoned for participating in an armed bank robbery two years ago, has no desire to become a “martyr”.

“He is a fanatical lover of life. He wants to live,” his father, Giorgos Romanos, said in an exclusive interview with the Observer. “But this is his 27th day without food and his condition is deteriorating. He is getting weaker.” Death is not a word that crosses the dentist’s lips as he describes the descent of his son – his only child – from being a ski-loving model student to mascot for a seething segment of Greeks baying for a fight with officialdom at large.

But “martyrdom” is a distinct possibility. As protesters marked the sixth anniversary of the police killing of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos – an event that would trigger weeks of violence widely seen as the prelude to Greece’s great economic crisis – the 58-year-old acknowledged that the desire for a martyr is real among the country’s growing contingent of angry, unemployed youth.

Clashes between 6,000 protesters and riot police erupted in central Athens on Saturday as teargas and water cannon were used to beat back protesters in the bohemian Exarchia neighbourhood, where about 200 black-clad youths hurled stones and molotov cocktails. A cloud of smoke billowed into the sky from the clashes. Dozens of shops were damaged and nearly 100 demonstrators were detained.

More at The Observer - Reverse Countdown by Nikos Romanos at The Anarchist Library

Hong Kong Activists Defy Police Tear Gas As Protests Spread

Riot police advanced on Hong Kong democracy protesters in the early hours of Monday, firing volleys of tear gas that sent some fleeing as others erected barricades to block the security forces in the heart of the former British colony.

Earlier, police baton-charged a crowd blocking a key road in the government district in defiance of official warnings that the demonstrations were illegal. Several scuffles broke out between police in helmets, gas masks and riot gear, and demonstrators angered by the tear gas, last used in Hong Kong in 2005.

The unrest is the worst since China took back control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997. It poses a serious challenge to Communist Party leaders in Beijing, concerned that calls for democracy could spread to cities on the mainland and threaten their grip on power.

Thousands of protesters were still milling around the main Hong Kong government building, ignoring messages from student and pro-democracy leaders to retreat for fear that the police might fire rubber bullets. Police, in lines five deep in places, earlier used pepper spray against activists and shot tear gas into the air. The crowds fled several hundred yards (meters), scattering their umbrellas and hurling abuse at police they called "cowards."

More at The World Post

Police Arrest 511 After Big Democracy Rally In Hong Kong

Hong Kong police have arrested more than 500 people holding a sit-in a day after tens of thousands in the former British colony joined a massive march to push for democracy. Anger at mainland China has never been greater after Beijing warned recently it holds the ultimate authority over the freewheeling capitalist enclave. That's despite a mini-constitution that gives the city a high degree of autonomy until 2047.

Police said 511 people were arrested Wednesday for unlawful assembly and preventing police from carrying out their duties. They were holding an overnight sit-in after the rally. Police said 98,600 people joined Tuesday's rally at its peak, while organizers said 510,000 turned out, the highest estimates in a decade. Hong Kong University researchers put the number at between 154,000 and 172,000.

The World Post

Image of Police Attack Against Lone Woman Goes Viral

A more widely-cropped version of the now viral photograph shows just how isolated the woman was she was attacked by officers in Rio de Janiero, Brazil Monday evening. (Photo: Victor Caivano)

A captured instance of brazen police brutality against a civilian has, once again, captured the attention of the global community. The shocking photograph of a lone woman being pepper sprayed at close range by Brazilian police has gone viral, drawing criticism and attention to the ongoing mass demonstrations in Brazil—at which the attack took place—and the chronic undercurrent of police violence that so often follows peaceful citizen uprisings.

New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer spoke with the photographer behind the image, Victor Caivano, who said that the attack happened at around 11:20 PM Monday evening, long after “the protest was over, riots included.” The woman appeared to be a “normal, middle-class university student,” he said, adding that she was standing alone on a “deserted corner” after the police had cleared the area.

He continued:
Three riot officers approached the woman and told her to leave. When she objected — the woman either questioned the order or insisted that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, Caivano recalls — she was pepper-sprayed. “This policeman just didn’t think twice,” Caivano says. The woman stumbled backward, “screaming and cursing.” She was detained and taken to a police van. Caivano says local reporters are now trying to track her down.

rinf.com

Turkish Workers Join Mass Protests

Confederation of unions, stage two day strike in solidarity with protestors, against police brutality and for a more democratic Turkey.

Spain police clash with austerity protesters

Spanish police have fired rubber bullets and charged protesters in central Madrid after a huge demonstration against economic crisis measures. Thick smoke hung in the air early on Friday from plastic bins set alight by protestors chased by police, who hit them with batons when some tried to reach the heavily-guarded parliament at the end of a mostly peaceful march.

AFP reporters at the scene said dozens of protesters lingered, some throwing bottles at police, near the Puerta del Sol, the big square at the heart of the city where a march of hundreds of thousands wound up late Thursday. A police official said that officers arrested seven people and six others were injured. Earlier, tens of thousands of public employees, trade union members and other Spaniards have marching in 80 Spanish cities to protest the latest batch of austerity measures approved by the government.

The ruling conservative Popular Party used its majority in parliament to push through the measures on Thursday. They include a rise in sales taxes and a wage cut for civil servants. Workers yelled in anger branding the crisis measures "robbery".

Al Jazeera English

Hundreds detained at anti-Putin rally in Moscow

Vladimir Putin is to be inaugurated as president of Russia in a ceremony in the capital, Moscow. Mr Putin will return to the presidency after an absence of four years in which he served as prime minister. The outgoing President, Dmitry Medvedev, was widely seen as an ally of Mr Putin. He won a third term as president in controversial elections in March.

On Sunday, thousands of protesters opposed to the inauguration clashed with police in Moscow. (BBC)

Protester sues police over surveillance database

An 86-year-old man is launching a landmark lawsuit against police chiefs who labelled him a "domestic extremist" and secretly recorded his political activities in minute detail.

Lawyers for John Catt are due to open the legal action at the high court on Thursday against a clandestine police unit that has been at the centre of controversy over its undercover infiltration of political groups. Catt, who has no criminal record, was "shocked and terrified" when he discovered that police had kept a detailed record of his presence at more than 55 demonstrations over a four-year period.

The police had detailed how the Brighton pensioner took out his sketchpad and made drawings of demonstrations he attended. Also logged were slogans on his clothes and details of his appearance, such as "clean-shaven".

His legal action threatens to deal another blow to the secretive National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which has been covertly monitoring protesters since 1999. The unit has recorded the activities of thousands of campaigners on a nationwide database. Defeat in the court case would put pressure on it to delete details of activists from the database.

Full story on The Guardian

Anti-Putin protests draw up to 100,000 in Moscow

Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators are marching through Moscow and other Russian cities in protest at Vladimir Putin's grip on power.

Thousands of Putin supporters are also staging a rally in the capital a month before the presidential election that the prime minister is expected to win, putting him in power for six more years. The rival demonstrators were undeterred by the freezing temperatures, which have plunged as low as -20C, with opposition leaders saying that up to 100,000 people had joined the protest in Moscow on Saturday.

The Guardian

Budapest protest against new Hungary constitution

Tens of thousands of people have been protesting in Budapest over Hungary's controversial new constitution, a day after it came into force. The country's governing Fidesz party pushed the law through parliament in April after winning a two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections.

Opponents say it threatens democracy by removing checks and balances set up in 1989 when Communism fell. The EU and US had also asked for the law to be withdrawn. The dispute has cast doubt over talks on a new financing agreement with the EU and IMF, seen as vital for market confidence in the central European country.

Several centre-left opposition parties joined in the protests, held near a gala event organised by the government to celebrate the new constitution. The governing Fidesz party controls 68% of seats in parliament, but the streets now belong to the opposition. Nearly every day there are new demonstrations against one aspect or another of government policy - the new constitution, economic policy, the centralisation of the state media, or the closing of an opposition radio station.

Protesters chanted slogans denouncing the centre-right Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, and carried placards denouncing his "dictatorship" as officials arrived for the event. "Viktor Orban and his servants turned Hungary from a promising place to the darkest spot in Europe," said Socialist MP Tibor Szanyi, quoted by AFP news agency.

BBC News

Complaints of Wukan protesters were valid

Residents of a south China village who tested the ruling Communist Party's control with more than a week of protests had "legitimate complaints" over a land grab that sparked the rebellion, state news agency Xinhua has said. Ten days of protests over confiscated farmland and the death of a protest organizer in Wukan in booming Guangdong province earlier this month drew widespread attention as a rebuff to the stability-obsessed government.

The standoff ended after authorities offered concessions in a rare example of the government backing down to mobilised citizens. The residents had "legitimate complaints against officials over wrongdoing concerning land use and financial management," Xinhua said in a report released late on Friday, citing a provincial investigation team. "In terms of land use, the provincial investigators ... found that Lufeng Fengtian livestock company used more land than was officially approved," it cited investigator Yang Junbo, deputy head of Guangdong's Land and Resources Department, as saying.

Reuters - WantChinaTimes.com