Loading...

(Just one moment)

Tag: protests

Martinique: Two Nights of Riots After the Arrest of an Anti-Colonial Militant

Posted on by ellipsism

The pre-trial detention of Hervé Pinto, president of the Kollectif Jistiss Matinik, has provoked two nights of riots in Martinique. Sunday, several fires had already been started in the city center of Fort-de-France to the cries of “Free Pinto”, an activist who says he is the rightful inheritor of land which has been plundered from him in the commune of Trois-Ilets. The residents of the residence built on the land claimed by Hervé Pinto, say they were intimidated, and had taken legal action and the man was forbidden from approaching the neighborhood. The anti-colonial militant was arrested in an area where he was forbidden to go.

As early as 9 p.m. local time on Monday, masked demonstrators set up burning barricades at the entrance to the Sainte-Thérèse neighborhood in Fort-de-France. They threw Molotov cocktails at a mobile gendarmerie vehicle and fired live ammunition three times at the security forces. Rioters looted a gas station and set fire to a business and at least five cars. Four people were arrested.

 

 

Found on: Abolition Media

Source: Secours Rouge

Haitian State Declares State of Emergency as Popular Rebellion Spreads

Posted on by ellipsism

Haiti’s government declared a state of emergency and nighttime curfew late Sunday in an effort to regain control of the streets after a huge popular uprising over the weekend saw armed fighters storm the country’s two biggest prisons.

The 72-hour state of emergency took effect immediately. The government said it would set out to find the escapees from prison. “The police were ordered to use all legal means at their disposal to enforce the curfew and apprehend all offenders,” said a statement from Finance Minister Patrick Boivert, acting prime minister.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry traveled abroad last week to try to salvage international bourgeois support for bringing in a US-backed security force to pacify the country in its conflict with increasingly militant organizations countrywide.

Thousands of prisoners fled during jailbreak

The decree capped a deadly weekend that marked a new point in the corrupt, Western dominated Haitian states collapse. At least nine people had been killed since Thursday − four of them police officers − as coordinated attacks on state institutions in Port-au-Prince escalated. Targets included police stations, the country’s international airport, and the national soccer stadium.

But the siege Saturday night of the National Penitentiary came as a shock even to Haitians accustomed to living under the constant pressure due to colonial misrule. Almost all of the estimated 4,000 inmates fled in the jailbreak, leaving the usually criminally overcrowded facility empty Sunday with no prison guards in sight and plastic sandals, clothing and furniture strewn across the concrete patio. Three bodies with gunshot wounds lay at the prison entrance.

Colombian soldiers remain in Haiti prison

Among the few dozen who chose to stay in the prison are 18 former Colombian soldiers accused of working as mercenaries in the July 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. Amid the clashes Saturday night, several of the Colombians shared a video pleading for their lives.

“Please, please help us,” one of the men, Francisco Uribe, said in the message widely shared on social media. “They are massacring people indiscriminately inside the cells.”

Colombia’s foreign ministry called on Haiti to provide “special protection” for the men.

The violence Saturday night appeared to be widespread, with several neighborhoods reporting gunfire.

Second Port-au-Prince prison overtaken by gangs

A second Port-au-Prince prison containing about 1,400 inmates was also overrun. Gunmen also occupied the nation’s top soccer stadium in a highly symbolic display of defiance Internet service for many residents was down as Haiti’s top mobile network said a fiber-optic cable connection was slashed during the rebellion.

In the space of less than two weeks, several state institutions have been attacked in increasingly coordinated actions, while choosing once unthinkable targets like the Central Bank. As part of coordinated attacks, four police officers were killed Thursday.

The rebellion is significant since the president, who is US-backed and unelected, has been organizing an international occupation force to impose its will on the country. There has been no notable progress on social issues, economic issues, or reparations for US and French destruction of the country.

The violence must be understood in this context.

Found on: Abolition Media

Ayotzinapa Militants Knock Down Door of Presidential Palace in Mexico

Posted on by ellipsism

On March 6, several dozen people, who were demonstrating Wednesday against the kidnapping and disappearance in 2014 of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, broke down one of the doors of the presidential palace in Mexico City with a van before entering in the palace with masked faces. Demonstrators had already tried to attack the doors of the National Palace, seat of the presidency since 2018. This is the first time in years that they have achieved their goal.

Relatives of the 43 disappeared, accompanied by their lawyers, activists and students, demonstrate regularly in the center of Mexico City, especially as the anniversary of the tragedy approaches. A camp in their memory is set up on the main artery in the center of the capital, opposite the national palace. The Ayotzinapa students disappeared on the night of September 27, 2014 after traveling to Iguala, Guerrero state, where they were preparing to board several buses to travel to the capital Mexico City and participate to a demonstration.

The students — known as the Ayotzinapa 43 — hailed from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, a school with a history of left-wing organizing, in the southern state of Guerrero.

They went missing in September 2014 after they commandeered buses as part of an annual tradition to drive to Mexico City to mark the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre.

But they were intercepted by police turned over to local cartels associated with the police and military, and subsequently murdered.

Some charred bone fragments have been recovered and matched through DNA to three of the missing students. The rest of the bodies, however, have never been found.

In 2022, a government truth commission concluded the disappearance was a “state crime”, given the involvement of local, state and federal authorities in the students’ abduction and subsequent cover-up.

Graffiti displayed on the vehicle used to ram the door of the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, on March 6

Police Vehicles Set on Fire After Ayotzinapa Student Killed by Police in Guerrero, Mexico

Posted on by ellipsism

Two police patrol vehicles were set on fire after a student from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Guerrero was murdered by state police in Chilpancingo on Thursday.

On Wednesday morning, Ayotzinapa students used a pickup truck to break open wooden doors at the National Palace during a protest related to the kidnapping and murder in 2014 of 43 student-teachers at the Ayotzinapa school.

On Thursday night, Yanqui Rothan Gómez Peralta, 23, was shot and killed by police.

Family members of the 43 students who disappeared in 2014 held a press conference on Thursday in Tixtla.

Ayotzinapa students responded to the death of their fellow future teacher by seizing and setting on fire two state police vehicles in Chilpancingo, local media reported. The Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College is located around 15 kilometers east of the state capital in the municipality of Tixtla.

The death of the young man raises tension at a time when the families of the 43 abducted students, current Ayotzinapa students and others are already angry about the state’s role in setting up the kidnapping and disappearance of the Ayotziapa 43.

Well over 100 people — including military personnel and police officers — have been arrested in connection with the students’ disappearance, but no one has faced trial or been convicted of the crime. The remains of just three students have been found.

The current government initiated a new investigation soon after taking office and pledged to definitively determine what happened to the student-teachers. But just seven months before the end of López Obrador’s six-year term, it still hasn’t delivered on its promise.

 

Found on: Abolition Media

MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE ACTIVISTS VISIT CJ HUGHES EQUIPMENT RENTALS IN HUNTINGTON, WV.

Posted on by ellipsism

Huntington, WV, January 2024

In January, a group of pipeline protestors showed up at CJ Hughes Equipment
Rentals complex, located in Huntington WV

Activists disrupted the workday for their largest office administration
building with spray foam, glitter, barbecue sauce and more. The protestors
made their message clear, “Anyone partnering with MVP is a target, and
will not be allowed to continue with business as usual.

CJ Hughes is a WV based equipment rental company that specializes in
pipeline projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline. They also provide
services like directional drilling and hydrostatic testing for fracked gas
pipelines across the region.

 

 

Found on: Unoffensive Animal

Three Dead in Anti-Government Protests: Haiti

Posted on by ellipsism

Monday, January 22 was marked by demonstrations and clashes in several towns across Haiti. In Jérémie, at least three people were shot dead near the sub-commissariat, as they tried to mobilize a crowd against the current government.

The attackers, armed individuals wearing balaclavas, were travelling in a car at the time of the attack. The presence of armed civilians seeking to dissuade the opponents of the government had been noted the previous day.

In Ouanaminthe, demonstrators once again took to the streets to demand the government’s resignation. Stones and bottles were thrown at banks and local businesses. Barricades of burning tires blocked Route Nationale 6.

In Miragoâne, activities came to a virtual standstill. Stone-throwing clashes took place and barricades were erected. In the town of Les Cayes, barricades of burning tires and wrecked cars closed off several streets and Route Nationale 7.

 

 

Found on: Abolition Media

The State Murder of the 17 Year Old Roma Xristos Michalopoulos Will Not Be Forgotten

Posted on by ellipsism

 Greece: Testimony of the brother of a dead teenager
12/11/2023

“We were with my brother, his girlfriend and her sister. He didn’t have a driving licence yet and now that he was nearly 18 he was about to get one. We had taken the car for a drive. We were going from Aliarto to Leontari Thebes. My brother signaled to him to stop but because there were bends in the road there, he didn’t want to as he was afraid someone might come in the opposite direction and there would be a crash. My brother was scared because we had the girls in the car. A little further on, at about 800 metres, he put on the hazard lights and stopped the car.”

The brother of the dead 17-year-old and an eyewitness stated that “the policeman got out of the cop car fuming with nerves, approached, hit the car window on my brother’s side with his gun, with force. My brother opened the door, he didn’t have time to get out before the policeman starting kicking him in the ribs, in the legs, on his shins, grabbed him by the T shirt and shot him. The asphalt was covered in my brother’s blood. For nothing. There are witnesses. No pursuit, nothing. At that moment there was nothing I or the girls could do”.

Some updates: 12/11/23 in Thessaloniki, a march of about 300 people. Strong tension.

In Xanthi city , there was a march and after passing by the police station, the cops made arrests and attacked people.

And  at the bridge of Thebes, in Boeotia, next to the Roma camp, fires were lit, barricades were set up and stones were thrown at the cops.

There were also marches in Heraklion, Crete and Athens on 12/11/23

And in Patras city 14/11 also in Bolos city this morning..

Continue reading “The State Murder of the 17 Year Old Roma Xristos Michalopoulos Will Not Be Forgotten”

NYC: REPORT FROM 11/9 WRITERS BLOC ACTION AGAINST NYT

Posted on by ellipsism
A ringing gong signaled a breakaway from the thousands-strong rally (swelled by student walkouts earlier in the day) on the steps of Manhattan’s iconic public library to the offices of the failing New York Times.

A sizable crowd gathered outside in support of those who had already established themselves in the plate glass lobby, cacophanously reciting from a freshly printed newspaper titled THE NEW YORK WAR CRIMES: listing the names of murdered Palestinian journalists and youth (beginning at age 0 and reaching 17) reappropriating the authoritative papers’ manner of eulogizing mass death, usually reserved for the citizens of empire. The occupiers read their names aloud and also individually called out the members of the editorial board – “Blood on your hands!” The self-published WAR CRIMES, printed by the thousands, covered the floor and, when held up, protected the crowd from surveillance.

For an action of writers, the crowd outside kept the words succinct:

A chant of “NYPD / IDF / Both of them mean fucking death!”

A litany of names of the dead

A banner reading simply: Lies

A strained voice still mustering Allahu Akbar!

Before long, the neighboring Starbucks and an NYPD vehicle became canvases for the scribes. That vehicle lost its back window and the air from its tires in an opportune moment. Pure fucking poetry!

Once the cue was taken, others swiftly followed suit. Another NYPD van was spotted around the corner from the first, also emblazoned with the words “Free Gaza”

An unaffiliated passerby enjoying an evening walk could be seen retrieving a souvenir from the shattered back window (with one hand, and reportedly a bottle of henny in the other.)

Scrawls illuminated the bond between the IDF and NYPD, likening both to the KKK, the American epitome of white supremacist terror. Semi-civilian military forces, which train in tandem, the IDF and the NYPD, kill with impunity, abet mass incarceration, and enforce strategies of ghettoization which the Nazis admired in the US and which Israel now applies to Palestinians through forceful cognitive dissonance.

These actions were sparked and rooted in inexpressible grief and rage. Those lost were entire universes, not to be calculated, measured, or forgotten.

Breaking away from a larger demonstration, with its slow marching in circles, ruptured the expected formula of protest, injecting the crowd with confidence, a slight step ahead of the police. Perhaps in part to avoid the optics of censorship, no arrests were made.

After weeks of desensitized brutality, feelings of futility and complicity here in the belly of the beast, we welcomed this opportunity for another type of action. Armed with imagination, we find possibility.  May it grow!

Find your friends!

Fight where you are!

INTIFADA!

-NYC union of book thieves, plagiarists, and ranters

Factory and Police Van Burned after Worker Killed by Cops in Bangladesh

Posted on by ellipsism

Textile workers in Gazipur cities, Ashulia and Savar have been protesting yesterday since morning for a salary increase in various regions. During these demonstrations, multiple clashes took place between workers and the police, especially when workers blocked the highway.

In the afternoon, the police charged with batons and fired tear gas. The protesters resisted and stoned them, and a worker named Rasel Hawlader from the Energy Pack Group’s garment factory in Maleker Bari was then shot in the chest.

The news of his death intensified the anger of the workers. The workers attacked the police, burning a van, and then forced their way into the Jamuna Fashion factory and several nearby factories to vandalize them. In Konabari, they set fire to the ABM garment factory, which was totally destroyed (photo).

 

 

Found on: Abolition Media