Global south

In October, George W Bush began a round of state visits to Asian and European countries. Peter Burt reports on the impact of the US president's visit to Thailand during the APEC talks.The problem is, the Thai government always obeys the US administration. They should realisethat a free trade agreement with the US would hurt Thai farmers. And Thailand might become a terrorist target if we support the US war on terrorism. Suriyasai Katasila, secretary general of Thailand's Campaign…

Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) is the most recent and widely reported symbol of "hate radio" throughout the world. Its broadcasts, disseminating hate propaganda and inciting the murder of Tutsis and opponents to the regime, began on 8 July 1993, and greatly contributed to the 1994 genocide of hundreds of thousands.

RTLM, aided by the staff and facilitiesof Radio Rwanda, the government-owned station, called on the Hutu majority todestroy the Tutsi minority. The…

Although not forseen by the political pundits of the time, the salt campaign launched by Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party in India became the key nonviolent direct action campaign to achieve freedom from British rule.

At the outset of the campaign, a New York Times correspondent asked Gandhi what he hoped to achieve by the campaign, and what would happen if he were arrested at the beginning of the campaign. Gandhi answered that it wasn't a matter of winning or losing that…

Although Brazil is not officially at war, the country has the one of the highest homicide rates in the world, with more than 35,000 firearm deaths every year. Brazilians are about four times more likely to die by firearms than the general world population.

Armed violence in urban Brazil is an epidemic, and we can think of guns as a vehicle of transmission that multiplies and aggravates violence; we can even identify the main risk group: young males from poor neighbourhoods (favelas…

Since 9/11 the word “terror” has become known the world over-- its impact has become more vivid, glaring on us.

The television pictures of the air strikes on the “mighty” World Trade Centre, or some of the recent powerful explosions in many pockets of the world, turning human beings to disjointed bodies in a fraction of a second, are still very stunning to us. The sheer severity and suddenness of the incidents create a lasting impression in our minds. The magnitude and gravity of…

South Asia remains one of the most volatile regions of the world. Continued arms sales and weapons transfers only exacerbate both ongoing and potential conflicts in the area.

However, significant declines in the overall volume and profits of the global defence industry have increased domestic pressure on national governments to expand their market-share and continue arms sales to regions in conflict. Since1985, the overall total of global purchases of major weapons systems has…

An itinerant exhibition of 27 photographs has been put together in an effort to share the process of dealing with the past alongside the relatives of the disappeared and those executed for political reasons in Chile.

The photos are from my personal archive. Some have been taken by me and some by Clem McCartney, Kenneth Jensen, Jose' Araya and others. On 11 September 2003 it will be exactly 30 years since Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Doctor Salvador…

Over the past three years, one of the most frequently asked questions in Zimbabwe (and often asked of me by my 79-year old mother) has been “why are they not taking to the streets and doing something about the situation?” My reply has generally been “who do you mean by they and why are you not on the streets yourself?” But then I am not either!

Many people explain away their inaction by claiming they are not part of the critical mass (in other…

Despite being one of the world's most dynamic economic and political regions, North-East Asian security remains surprisingly dominated by the past. Half a century after the uneasy conclusions to massive conflicts that ripped apart China,Korea, and Japan, real peace in the region remains elusive.

Nearly 100,000 US soldiers are based in Japan and South Korea, with those in Korea on trigger-ready alert for war with the North. The region contains the world's second-most well funded…

The Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) started in 1990 and rose to international prominence in 1995 when it applied to attend the Zimbabwe International Book Fair which had as its theme that year “Human Rights and Justice”. The government banned the group's appearance and, at the opening of the fair, President Mugabe, uttered the first in a long line of vitriolic attacks on gays and lesbians which include the famous epithet, gays are “worse than dogs and pigs”. GALZ stood its ground and…

The world is in grave danger. The global scenario has completely changed since 11 September, with just one terrorist attack on the United States. In the name of wiping out terrorism from the world the US are now engaged in counter-terrorism with the large-scale killing and torture of innocent people. Those who were earlier considered freedom fighters are now branded terrorists.

Today the United States has assumed the role of a messiah with its disciple-like Great Britain delivering “…

On 15 January 2003, gunmen shot and beat Marcus Veron, a leader of the Guarani-Kaiowatribe in Brazil, after he attempted to reoccupy ancestral land. Veron, 70, was the third BrazilianIndian to be killed in two weeks.

In 2000, Veron toured Europe with tribal advocates' group Survival to publicise the history of his people, who have been forced off their land by ranchers. Now armed…

The value of this book, published through a radical history series, lies in the collection of essays, speeches, photographs and well known quotes of some of the protagonists and victims in Salvador Allende's socialist government which was overthrown by Pinochet's brutal dictatorship (as sponsored by the CIA). It also includes opinions and comments by well-known people who have expressed solidarity with the struggle against impunity.

As a Chilean who feels close to this history, it…

With the classical meaning of a “diplomat is one who listens and reads twice”, I've been diplomatic with this book and diplomacy has paid.

I underestimated the book when I first read it and appreciated it better after going through it twice. Initially I was put off by some inaccuracies of fact and deficiencies of judgement when referring to Colombian history. Soon I came to value the usefulness of the overviews mainly for non-Colombian readers and the ability of the book to fulfil…

The US describes Colombia as harbouring the hemisphere's biggest terrorist threat. Not surprisingly, the plan it supports to solve Colombia's social ills, Plan Colombia, will have a significantly detrimental effect on the region as a whole. Both these books not only provide a coherent critique of Plan Colombia and offer alternative proposals for dealing with the drugs issue, they delve beneath Colombia as merely an exporter of cocaine or a perpetrator of terrorism and explore the political,…