World

What began on August 15 as protests against escalating fuel and transport prices and deteriorating economic conditions has developed into a mass uprising in Burma. From September 17, mobilisations by Buddhist monks and nuns emboldened thousands of Burmese to take to the streets in the largest protests since the pro-democracy uprising in 1988 that was brutally crushed, with over 3000 people killed, by the military regime that has ruled Burma since 1962.

If lawyers are coming to the street, then something is very wrong, Ambiga Sreenevasan, the Malaysian Bar Council’s president, said on September 26 when she addressed bar members gathered at the Palace of Justice.

Eleven Palestinians were killed and 20 others were wounded on September 27 when Israel resumed bombing the Gaza Strip. The bombings are widely seen as a precursor to a wide-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip promised by Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak earlier in September and came in the wake of Israel declaring the Gaza Strip an “enemy entity” on September 19.

By a vote of 53-2, the 51st general conference of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, held in Vienna on September 17-21, approved a non-binding resolution sponsored by Egypt calling on all Middle East countries to abide by IAEA safeguards against the development of nuclear weapons.

On September 21, the UN General Assembly supported by consensus a decision by the 22-member General Committee not to put Taiwan’s bid for UN membership on the assembly’s agenda. It was the island’s 15th application for UN membership in as many years. This year was the first time that the application was made in the name of Taiwan rather than the “Republic of China” (ROC), signalling a more aggressive independence push by President Chen Shui-bian’s government.

The US-backed Iraqi government of PM Nuri al Maliki has dropped its demand for the expulsion of US security firm Blackwater, under investigation over the killing of 11 Iraqis on September 16, a government security official told reporters in Baghdad five days later.

The international campaign to free five Cubans wrongfully imprisoned in the US has intensified, with 115 participating in a coordinated month of solidarity between September 12 and October 8.

On August 15, the cities of Ica and Pisco located in the southern region of Peru were hit by a massive earthquake registering 7.9 on the Richter scale. This was the first quake recorded in living history in this area. It resulted in the loss of 540 lives, and immense physical destruction; 80% of buildings within the heart of Pisco collapsed, and more than 16000 people were left without housing and basic services.

As fears of violence and talk of secession and civil war fade, and a fragile calm descends over this Andean country, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, celebrated an important milestone. Completing 19 months and three weeks in office, Morales has surpassed the length of time in power of his four predecessors — not including the two who were forced to step down even before being sworn in.

A massive drop in Arctic sea ice during this year’s northern summer has opened up the Northwest Passage — a sea route that passes between the frozen Arctic region and northern Canada that could provide a quicker shipping route between Europe and Asia than previously allowed by either the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal — for the first time since satellite recordings began in 1978.

On September 12, Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a US-backed former crime boss in Iraq’s Anbar province, was killed by a roadside bomb that struck his convoy in the western province’s capital of Ramadi. Sattar died 10 days after he was feted by US President George Bush at a giant US air base in Anbar.

The following statement was issued on September 17 by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, a Marxist tendency in Australia’s Socialist Alliance.