Recently I had the pleasure of seeing Syed Aamir Raza once again. Aamir used to work for Nestle, the world's largest food company and the target of an international boycott because of its aggressive marketing of baby milk.
Aamir had been a Medical Delegate for Nestle in Pakistan, responsible for a circuit of 200 doctors to whom he presented company products. He was good at his job, congratulated for hitting sales targets and earning his bonuses. Then one day while he was visiting…
When this documentary premiered in Caracas last year, the Venezuelan Ministry of Culture cancelled its second screening at the National Cinema unless the producers removed the ministry's name as funder of the film. Why were they so upset?
The film exposes the contradiction of building socialism through oil wealth. The state oil company PdVSA is revealed as a corrupt, bureaucratic monster destroying communities and the environment in its relentless search for hydrocarbons.
Sure…
The Peace Community of San Jose' de Apartado' consists of around 1,200 people - men, women, youths and above all children. We demand respect from the armed actors in the region of Uraba.
In our founding declaration, made on 23 March 1997, we laid down various important internal rules for the Community, such as: that nobody should bear arms, that nobody should give information to any side of the conflict, and that nobody should supply food to any side of the conflict. This remains our…
In early April the autonomous peace village of Daechuri in South Korea was brutally attacked by thousands of riot police and private contractors.
Protest against the presence of the US military in the region have taken place for many years: the village of Daechuri declared its autonomy in February in response to threats of displacement as the local US base at Anjungri plans a further expansion. In recent months thousands of people have participated in protests against this - and the…
Antimilitarists in Paraguay have expressed concern at recent military operations targeting predominantly poor, civilian populations and campesina organisations in rural areas.
On 25 March the Moviemiento de Objecion de Conciencia (MoC), Paraguay, issued a statement in which they called for the punishment of the soldiers responsible for these abuses, adding “We demand that the government stops wasting resources in these [military] institutions, and instead invest in…
Many Peace News readers will have heard the news of the massacre of eight civilians, including three children, in the Colombian Peace Community of San Jose' de Apartad in February 2005 (see PN2460).
Assassinated with his family and five others was Luis Eduardo Guerra, a founder of the community and a speaker at the November 2002 Vigil to Close the School of the Americas (SOA).
Training murderersSOA Watch has learned that the commander of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian…
A Sombre Journey
On 25 February, a group of around 200 community members, accompanied by members of Peace Brigades International and the Fellowship for Reconciliation, set out to collect and bring home the bodies of those murdered, hoping to bring a sense of closure to the pain caused by this tragedy. The group was to function as a sort of truth commission, documenting the facts surrounding the deaths in hopes that those responsible will eventually be brought to justice.
”The one…
The British literary scene is pretty infatuated with English language writing by Indians and the Asian diaspora. Figures such as Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie are established icons, and newer names like Monica Ali have massive sales. Black British writers of Afro-Caribbean descent are also widely known, despite the discrimination they still face in getting published.
With one or two prominent exceptions, such as Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka, African writers are much less widely…
Most PN readers would, I hope, be at least aware of the issue of the “missing women” of India and China and the growing problem of gender imbalance in the populations of these two huge countries. The increasing use of sex-selective abortion as an apparently more socially acceptable option than female infanticide is the latest twist to this tale, the chilling use of modern medical technologies to eliminate socially and economically undesirable girl children.
As a woman and a feminist…
Despite intense losses in the recently ended war with neighbouring Ethiopia, and a few worrisome signs of incursions on freedom of speech and the press, the hopes amidst the people of the horn of Africa rested on hard-fought victories and advances in areas of education, youth and women's mobilisation, and popular political participation.
Eritrea was poised to be part of the community of nation-states rejecting passive victimisation by the forces of globalisation, a leader amongst…
Colombia's president Alvaro Uribe Velez is, by his own admission, a man of the right. Unlike most recent Colombian Presidents, Uribe is from the land-owning class. He inherited huge swathes of cattle ranching land from his father Alberto Uribe Velez, himself subject to an extradition warrant to face charges of drug trafficking in the USA, until he was killed, allegedly by left-wing FARC guerrillas, in 1983. Uribe Jnr grew up with the children of Fabio Ochoa, three of whom were to become…
Territorial disputes have torn the South China Sea region over recent decades. The region was calm until the 1960s and 1970s when international companies begun prospecting for potential hydrocarbon resources, mainly oil and gas. Since then the region has suffered a string of low-intensity hostilities, with the underlying danger of an escalation to full-blown conflicts in the future.
Territorial claims are made over a number of islands, including the Paracelislands, Macclesfield…
On 1 May 2004 we celebrated the first anniversary of the end to 60 years of US navy bombing and presence here on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. An intense four-year campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience disrupted navy manoeuvres to the point of forcing an end to over half a century of military use of this island municipality, six miles south east of the main island of Puerto Rico.
The death of a civilian Navy employee - David Sanes Rodri'guez - caused by an errant bomb…
It's 15 May, 10.45am: a group of four Chilean activists approaches Alameda and the Altar de la Patria with its eternal flame of Chilean “nationhood”. They position themselves “incognito” in the middle of Alameda, on the green in the middle of this dual carriageway, opposite La Moneda, the presidential palace. They communicate what they see to several small groups of activists from Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, Britain, Uruguay, and Venezuela, waiting at Universidad de…
Angola is one of the countries in the world that has been most affected by war and violence over the past four decades. The country lies devastated, its infrastructure destroyed, its citizens brutalised by four centuries of slavery, colonialism, war, bloody political conflict and corruption. The long guerrila war (since 1961) against Portuguese colonialism under the Salazar dictatorship did not even stop with independence in 1975.
Divided among three rival movements, MPLA, UNITA and…
