World

Police clashed with protesters in a May Day demonstration in the Chinese territory of Macau. Around 2000 protesters demonstrated against state corruption and lack of jobs for local workers, which they blame on the use of foreign labour. They were

Following the April 23 death of Boris Yeltsin, various polling organisations conducted surveys on how Russians regarded his actions. Asked what they saw as Yeltsin’s main achievement, 33% of respondents answered: “He left office voluntarily in December 1999.” All his other achievements were within the statistical margin of error. The majority of those surveyed did not consider that Russia’s first president had any achievements at all.

The first striking thing about the initial round of the French presidential election, held on April 22, was the extraordinarily high turnout — nearly 85%. You have to go back to the 1965 election to find a slightly higher figure. This was a sign of the increasing politicisation of French society in recent years, as was the fact that more than 3 million new electors registered to vote.

In the latest move against the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalised abortion in the US, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 on April 18 to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The act was signed into law by US President George Bush in November 2003.

Tayad is the Association of Solidarity with the Families of Prisoners and is part of the Front for Rights and Liberties (HOC) in Turkey. Both organisations were instrumental in supporting Turkish “death fasters”, who recently had a significant victory against the abusive regime. Green Left Weekly’s Rachel Evans spoke to Mesut Eroksuz, an Australian representative of Tayad.

The result for Jose Bove in the April 22 first round of France’s presidential election in the “overseas territory” (the polite term for colony) of New Caledonia, known as Kanaky to its indigenous inhabitants, was interesting. Bove came in fourth with 5.88%. But in the predominantly Kanak provinces of the North and the Loyalty Islands, his scores were respectively 10.89% and 14.55%. The main reason was the active support given to Bove, who has frequently visited the territory, by the Union of Kanak and Exploited Workers (USTKE).

More than 1500 activists from the Middle East and around the world met in Cairo from March 29 to April 1 under the banner, “Towards an International Alliance against Imperialism and Zionism”. The conference — the fifth held in Cairo since 2002 by the International Campaign against US and Zionist Occupation — brought together Islamic, nationalist and socialist forces from the region, together with delegates from anti-war coalitions in Canada, Korea, Venezuela and Europe.

Tayad is the Association of Solidarity with the Families of Prisoners and is part of the Front for Rights and Liberties (HOC) in Turkey. Both organisations were instrumental in supporting Turkish “death fasters”, who recently had a significant victory against the abusive regime. Green Left Weekly’s Rachel Evans spoke to Mesut Eroksuz, an Australian representative of Tayad.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, mostly from Latin America, protested for their rights on May Day in cities and towns across the United States. For the second year in a row, the immigrant rights movement chose May 1, International Workers’ Day, to raise their demands.

With 80 million inhabitants, West Bengal is the fourth most populous state in India. It has been ruled by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front (LF) coalition for three decades. This government, however, has regularly used police repression against workers and peasants to defend big-business interests.

The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. “They were sick and some were dying”, she says. “Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable ‘looking from the side’.”

As the regime of President Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt faces a growing crisis of legitimacy, expressed by protests, boycotts and industrial strikes, the government has pushed through a referendum to amend the constitution and enshrine the country’s police-state laws. On March 25, Amnesty International said the amendments will cause “the greatest erosion of rights in 26 years” in Egypt.