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There are still about 12.3 million people worldwide who work in some form of bonded or forced labour, according to a May 12 International Labour Organisation (ILO) report.
SYDNEY — Mohan Rajan, a young Tamil activist, told Green Left Weekly he was concerned that two violent incidents between the Tamil and Sinhalese communities in Sydney on May 18 “overshadowed the human catastrophe” in Sri Lanka.
The victory for Greens candidate Adele Carles in the May 16 by-election for the WA state seat of Fremantle is a breakthrough for the progressive movement and a testament to the Greens’ consistent efforts to raise a left alternative to Labor.
Two protesters abseiled from the front of parliament house on May 13 in a dramatic protest against the federal government’s policies on climate change.
Schools and clinics in many Aboriginal homelands and outstations are likely to close under proposed changes announced by the Northern Territory government on May 20.
SYDNEY — On May 15, the Australia Western Sahara Association (AWSA) organised an event at Leichhardt Town Hall to mark the beginning of the struggle for independence in Western Sahara 36 years ago.
“I believe that we must reject torture without equivocation because it does not make us safe, it results in unreliable intelligence, it puts our troops at risk, and it contradicts core American values”, US President Barack Obama said while campaigning for the White House in March last year.
After rugby league commentator and former player Matthew Johns gave an insincere and misdirected apology on The Footy Show on May 7 — preempting the ABC Four Corners program that named Johns as part of an alleged sexual assault in 2002 — Paul “Fatty” Vautin slapped him on the back and declared: “Well said, now let’s get on with the show.”
“Our motherland has been completely liberated from separatist terrorism”, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a May 19 “victory speech” to parliament. He was referring to the military defeat of the pro-independence Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by the Sri Lankan Army.
MELBOURNE — Locals into Victoria’s Environment organised a 5000-strong protest against the federal government’s climate change policies on May 17.
“We don’t live in the territories, we cannot throw stones and we cannot participate in the legitimate resistance against occupation”, Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) told Green Left Weekly.
Last week’s university staff strikes across Victoria were in response to decades of attacks on higher education.