World

On March 4, hundreds of armed right-wing militia, calling themselves the Indonesian Anti-Communist Front (FAKI), attacked the East Java regional conference of the National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas) at Hotel Selekta in Batu City. The same militia group attacked Papernas’s founding national conference in January.

The Israeli military and security forces have killed more than 5000 Palestinians since the beginning of the Al Asqa intifada in September 2000, according to the Palestinian National Information Centre (PNIC).

The first congress by the Preparatory Committee for the Acehnese People’s Party (KP-PRA) was disrupted on February 28 when around 75 participants were rushed to hospital with suspected food poisoning.

During a visit to Venezuela, Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner signed an agreement with Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez that will launch the “Bank of the South” (Bancosur) within four months, reported a February 22 Venezuelanlaysis.com article. Bancosur is part of the push, led by Venezuela, for Latin American integration to challenge US corporate domination. Chavez has promoted the bank as a source of cheap credit for countries in the region and a non-exploitative alternative to the First World-controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

The new constitution of Afghanistan formally grants equal rights to women and men. The government has also endorsed the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which, according to development agencies, is significant progress on gender equality “policy advocacy”. The first time I arrived in Kabul the women I saw on the streets were wearing scarves on their heads and those wearing full chador were a minority. Maybe, at a superficial glance, the situation had improved for the women of Afghanistan?

In Venezuela, after decades of class polarisation, neglect of the needs of the majority, corruption on a massive scale and unbridled bureaucracy, the magnitude of problems that Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution led by socialist president Hugo Chavez is attempting to tackle is enormous.

China’s much increased economic activities in Africa in recent years — investments in energy and natural resources extraction and loans to African governments — have provoked accusations that it is becoming a new neocolonial power in the continent.

The Israeli army continued to terrorise residents of the West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestinian National Authority’s International Press Centre (IRC) reported on February 28. IPC reported that at 2.30am that day, an Israeli occupation contingent of 120 armoured vehicles, jeeps and bulldozers stormed into the city for a second time, and began conducting house-to-house raids, removing dozens of residents for interrogation.

Australian soldiers fired on three youths in Dili on February 23. One youth died at the scene — a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) near Dili Airport. The others were injured; one later died in hospital.

IPS — Nearly two months since UN troops began launching heavy attacks that they say are aimed against gang members in poor neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince, roadblocks and barbed wire remain in place and the atmosphere is grim.

An extraordinary mobilisation of Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five is extending around the world.

On February 26, a US consular official in Hong Kong announced that Washington was ready to “begin taking steps” to lift financial sanctions on North Korea by resolving a dispute over Macau’s Banco Delta Asia. In September 2005, the US Treasury designated BDA a primary money-laundering concern, accusing it of being a “willing pawn” in North Korea’s alleged distribution of counterfeit US dollars and sales of illegal tobacco products.