World

I recently spent a week talking to people in Rolpa, an especially underdeveloped hilly district in Nepal’s mid-western region.

“This is a historic day for Bolivia and Paraguay, a time of peace and friendship, of solidarity among peoples”, Bolivian president Evo Morales said on April 28. He had just received the Final Memory report, bringing to an official end a 74-year border dispute between the respective republics.

The 2009 South African general election turned out to be a landmark event for the African National Congress (ANC). The party faced some of its stiffest competition and still came out tops, despite a dismal 15-year delivery record.

Arturo Villanueva Arteaga, a 32-year-old Basque activist who has lived in west Belfast for four years, was arrested in a raid on April 21.

The article below is abridged from Tamilnet.

The nightmarish prospect of a scarred Amazonian jungle reeking of diesel fumes from end to end, as heavy-laden trucks thunder by in round-the-clock convoys, is fast becoming a reality.

Streets that bustled only two weeks ago are eerily quiet.

Ecuador’s left-wing President Rafael Correa was re-elected on April 27 in the small Andean nation.

On April 29, Prime Minster Kevin Rudd’s government announced the deployment of 450 extra soldiers to Afghanistan, bringing the Australian contingent to 1550. This is part of an overall increase in foreign troops taking part in the US-led occupation.

Seven activists associated with Israeli anti-military recruitment groups New Profile and Target 21 have been arrested in the latest attack on internal dissent in Israel, Ha’aretz said on April 27.

“Since April 9, an uprising has been occurring in the Peruvian countryside involving the Amazonian indigenous peoples from 1350 communities and a diversity of ethnicities”, said legendary peasant leader, Hugo Blanco in an important message. A translation of Blanco’s appeal for solidarity with this so-far mostly unreported struggle is printed below.

The same day that Venezuela announced the withdrawal of its ambassador from Peru, a Palestinian Authority (PA) embassy was inaugurated in Caracas as the two governments officially opened diplomatic relations.