Thai democracy activists say a pervasive culture of impunity exists in Thailand to protect those responsible for enforced disappearances of those who speak out against military rule, reports Peter Boyle.
military coup
The Sudanese Communist Party issued an urgent appeal for international solidarity after a military coup took place in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on October 25, reports Susan Price.
On the 48th anniversary of the military coup against Chilean president Salvador Allende, never-before-seen archive posts by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service show that the CIA requested and received support. Peter Kornbluh reports.
Peter Boyle reports that at the conclusion of a 30,000-strong rally in Bangkok, the young organisers of a new democracy movement called for a general strike on the anniversary of the 1973 student uprising that brought down the Thanom Kittikachorn military dictatorship.
Thailand’s King Pumipon Adulyadej died on October 13 aged 88, after more than 70 years on the throne. Thai socialist Giles Ji Ungpakorn has been in exile since he was charged with lese majeste (insulting the monarch) over a 2006 book criticising the king’s support for a military coup. Below he assesses the monarch’s role as a block to democracy and social justice.
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King Pumipon was a weak and characterless monarch who spent his useless and privileged life in a bubble, surrounded by fawning, grovelling toadies who claimed that he was a “god”.
Suspected leftists held by the military during the mass killings that followed the Western-backed 1965 Indonesian military coup.
East Timor’s decision to take Australia to the Hague over Australia’s refusal to obey international law — and grant East Timor its legitimate share of oil and gas resources — comes just weeks after a tribunal at the Hague found Australia was complicit in the murders in Indonesia in 1965.
[The following opinion piece was written by Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) Executive Committee member and founder Duran Kalkan on July 17. It can be read as the official stance of the PKK regarding the failed coup attempt in Turkey.]
"The AKP's fascism drove the army into Kurdish cities and towns, made them burn cities to the ground and massacre hundreds of civilians." Cizre, Bakur.
The umbrella organisation of the Kurdish movement, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council Co-Presidency, released the following statement on July 16
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Threats from a senior general that the army would take “direct action” against a possible Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government show a jaw-dropping contempt for democracy.
Top brass “wouldn’t stand” for a prime minister committed to international peace, said the September 20 Sunday Times, and would be prepared to use “fair means or foul” to stop a PM who “jeopardise[s] the security of this country”.
The outspoken military chief remains anonymous, of course.
It was obvious from the start that the aims of Thailand's military junta, which seized power last month, were not about a sincere attempt to restore peace between the two opposing sides in Thailand’s political crisis.
How could it be when the military were part of those who wanted to pull down the democratic system from the start?
The military staged an earlier coup in 2006, wrote a new, less democratic constitution, and appointed half the senate and most of the members of so-called independent bodies.
