World

Harry Huijsmans, Amsterdam A resounding 62% of Dutch voters rejected the European Constitution in the May 31 referendum, with a turnout of 63% of those eligible to vote. This margin — even greater than the May 29 vote in France, where 55% voted

Karol Florek & Steph Mawson, Warsaw On June 11, 5000 protesters took part in an act of civil disobedience in support of gay and lesbian rights. The march's successful execution was a decisive victory in defence of civil rights and democracy; given

Matthew Dimmock A group of Burmese villagers have finally gained justice for the suffering inflicted upon them by the Burmese military regime. On March 21, oil giant Unocal announced that a settlement had been reached in an eight-year-long legal

Up to 20,000 people took part in Tonga's largest ever demonstration in the capital Nuku'alofa on May 26. The protest was fuelled by anger at high electricity costs while the executives of power company Shoreline, owned by the Crown Prince Tupouto'a

James Lehrer, La Paz After three weeks of mobilisations in defence of Bolivia's gas reserves, the country's political crisis continues to deepen. A June 2 attempt to quash the crisis by President Carlos Mesa, by calling elections for a new

Ten years after he first applied, Kassab Al-Rashid, a prominent member of Committee for Defence of Legitimate Rights, a pro-democracy body suppressed by the Saudi monarchy, is still waiting for a decision on his initial application for asylum in

Norm Dixon Zimbabwe's authoritarian capitalist government, headed by President Robert Mugabe, has unleashed a massive wave of police brutality and destruction in an attempt to terrorise the country's fiercely anti-government urban working class and

According to the Palestine National Information Centre's May 30 report on the Al Asqa Intifada, 4032 Palestinians, 750 of them children have died since September 2000. Of the total deaths, 732 were caused by Israeli shelling of Palestinian homes.

Marce Cameron In recent months Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has not missed an opportunity to urge his supporters to contribute to a historic debate on the future of the country's Bolivarian revolution. In the multitude of popular

On May 27, hundreds of garment workers protested on the site of their collapsed workplace, demanding compensation for the injured, and families of workers killed or missing. The nine-storey Spectrum garments factory caved in the dead of night on

@PARAFLTR = VENEZUELA: Mass mobilisation defends oil industry Roberto Jorquera, Caracas On May 28, at least one million people marched 11 kilometres from the city of Petare to Avenida Bolivar in central Caracas in defence of the state-owned

On June 1, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported that a high-level South Africa defence ministry delegation was due to visit soon. The newspaper explained that the delegation, which would include arms manufacturers, would meet with the director-general