Rachel Evans

To background chants of “The pope is wrong, put a condom on!”, protesters crept past the police lines and handed out condoms to the young Catholics streaming into Sydney’s Randwick Racecourse for World Youth Day (WYD).

Pope Benedict XVI is coming to town. Sydney is once again to be subject to a special police regime as this saintly, celibate white man bravely preaches the joys of sexual abstinence in the very Circus Maximus of Sin City (Randwick race course).

A Chinese man, Pang Pang, was deported back to Tian Jing province last week from Sydney’s Villawood detention centre. After he had been placed into State 1 at Villawood — the immigration prison’s maximum security area — he had asked to see his case officer. No-one came to see him for two weeks, and he was subsequently deported.

The Rudd government has been rejecting asylum seeker claims at an extraordinary rate. A report by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), released on May 4, revealed that out of 42 ministerial decisions over five weeks, 41 appeals had been rejected — a 97.6% rejection rate.

On April 28, Labor PM Kevin Rudd’s government began to deport asylum seekers, beginning with a Chinese woman. The next day, two Indian men were placed in stage 1 of the Villawood immigration detention centre for preparation for deportation. One of the men has been held in detention for six years. He was also among the 61 long-term detainees whose cases Labor immigration minister Chris Evans had promised to review by the end of April.

On April 28, Labor PM Kevin Rudd’s government began to deport asylum seekers, beginning with a Chinese woman. The next day, two Indian men were placed in stage 1 of the Villawood immigration detention centre for preparation for deportation.

On February 1 the Bolivian government introduced its “dignity pension” — a pension payment for those over 60 years-old that is a first of its kind in Bolivia.

Celebrations of the two year anniversary of the coming to power of left-wing President Evo Morales — Bolivia’s first ever indigenous president, elected on the back of mass movements to overturn neocolonialism — occurred in La Paz on January 22.

In December, after 16 months of wrangling, the elected delegates to the constituent assembly finally passed a draft constitution that will be put to a national referendum sometime before September.

Bolivia’s indigenous, left-wing President Evo Morales has announced plans to hold a referendum on whether or not he will continue in office, according to a December 5 New York Times article. The aim is to overcome the stalemate the country has faced between the right-wing elite — opposed to the process of change pushed by Morales — and the poor and indigenous majority that put Morales in power. The vice president and nine state governors will also a vote on continuing in office.

On the night of March 25, 1971 the Pakistani army began a campaign to murder and rape thousands of Bengalis in an attempt to curb the rise of the Bengali national independence movement in what was then East Pakistan — Bangladesh today.

Sucre, the home of Bolivia’s constituent assembly, has been subjected to right-wing attacks campesinos (peasants) were violently attacked when they arrived to defend the besieged assembly.