Sarah Ausburn

In an act of peaceful civil disobedience, more than 500 Tamils occupied George Street in Sydney’s CBD for more than an hour. The May 1 action protested the genocide being carried out by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil people in the north and east of the country.
Two hundred workers and supporters protested outside the Pacific Brands factory in Wentworthville, Western Sydney on March 6 in response to the clothing company’s plans to slash 1850 jobs around the country.
Three trade unionists Richard Gallardo, Luis Hernandez and Carlos Requena, leaders of the pro-revolution National Union of Workers (UNT) and also members of the United Socialist Left were shot dead late Thursday night in Aragua state, Venezuela.
One month on from a corruption scandal that forced the resignation of Peru’s entire cabinet, the political crisis for President Alan Garcia continues unabated.
Thousands of indigenous Colombians are marching along the Pan American Highway — which connects the south-west of the country to the centre — to protest militarisation of their lands by government and paramilitary forces, as well as the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Peru’s entire cabinet tendered their resignations to President Alan Garcia on October 9 in the wake of a corruption scandal involving kickbacks in return for oil contracts.
Barely two weeks after being sworn in on August 15, a coup plot to oust newly elected Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo was exposed on September 2.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the US ambassador in Caracas, Patrick Duddy, to leave the country within 72 hours on September 11.
Peruvian President Alan Garcia suffered a major political setback on August 22 after Congress voted 66-29 in favour of repealing controversial presidential decrees that would have facilitated the privatisation of communal indigenous lands.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has intervened in a land dispute in the Sierra de Perija region, near the country’s north-western border with Colombia, where the Yukpa indigenous people have occupied 14 large estates to demand legal title to their ancestral lands.
The owner of Fundimeca, an air conditioning factory in Valencia, Carabobo, is waging an intense campaign of terror and intimidation against the factory’s work force.
Taking advantage of the political capital it gained with the Colombian military rescue of high-profile Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) prisoner Ingrid Betancourt on July 2, the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has launched a major crackdown on political opponents and social movement leaders.