World

PAKISTAN: Military capitulates on blasphemy law On May 17, Pakistan's military ruler General Pervaiz Musharraf announced that he was withdrawing his plan to amend the controversial blasphemy law. His announcement came after conservative clerics

EAST TIMOR: Fretilin conference plans for the future From May 15 to 20, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin) held a conference in Dili, East Timor. It was the first Fretilin conference in East Timor since the end of the

ZIMBABWE: Can the MDC solve the crisis? The popular trade union-backed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) poses the greatest threat that President Robert Mugabe's corrupt and authoritarian Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF)

Behind the coup in Fiji is a retreat by sections of the Melanesian Fijian elite to the tried and tested divide-and-rule tactic of chauvinist scaremongering. Late on May 25, the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) announced the result of three days of

JAKARTA — A group of fifty pro-integration East Timorese carried out a vicious attack on the office of East Timor solidarity group Solidamor on May 24 here. The gang, which according to an eyewitness was accompanied by a group of Indonesian

SOUTH AFRICA: Students killed at uni protest Police killed one student and injured scores during a protest at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) in Durban on May 14. Witnesses believe that another student was also killed. Students were

CZECH REPUBLIC: Communist Party's velvet return A spectre haunted last November's celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the "velvet revolution". After years on the margins, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM) had suddenly doubled

SOUTH AFRICA: Land reform blocked JOHANNESBURG — The Zimbabwean land crisis presents South African activists with an opportunity to honestly review their country's land reform program to date. South Africa's post-apartheid land reform program was

Texmaco black-lists strike leaders JAKARTA — Textile company Texmaco has black-listed 15 workers who led a strike at a factory here for better wages. It is refusing to allow the 15 to join the workers' negotiating team or to re-register for

DUBLIN — It took a year and a half of wrangling between the two protagonists, David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and Gerry Adams' Sinn Fein, to form the new cross-party Northern Ireland government in Belfast in November. Two months later,

UNITED STATES: Pressure grows to lift blockade against Cuba The US Senate's Appropriations Committee voted on May 9 to lift the embargo on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. Supported by both houses of Congress, the move now has an excellent

Less than a month ago, Peter Boyle walked the sad and dusty one-kilometre stretch of the only open land border crossing between Pakistan and India, at Wagha.