Democracy

Thousands of people took to the streets in cities and towns throughout Syria on May 13, despite a week of intensified repression by the Baath Party regime of President Bashar al-Assad. On May 11, tanks shelled the city of Homs, one of the centres of protest, and mass arrests took place throughout the country.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the hunger strikes by republican prisoners in the H-Blocks of the British-run Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland. These hunger strikes, in which ten men died demanding "political" status, were preceded by hunger strikes in the last part of 1980 that ended with the British authorities promising a compromise, only to then betray the prisoners.

The "Take the power back" conference of the socialist youth organisation Resistance was held at the Redfern Community Centre in Sydney on May 7-9. Below are videos of sections of talks given by some of the speakers.

On the 30th anniversary of the May 5, 1981 death on hunger strike of Irish republican prisoner Bobby Sands MP, Green Left Weekly spoke to Sands close friend, former prisoner in the Long Kesh H-Blocks along with Sands and leading Belfast Sinn Fein activist Séanna Walsh about the man who has become a revolutionary icon around the world

On May 5, 1981, Bobby Sands, Honourable Member of the British Parliament for Fermanagh-South Tyrone in Ireland’s north, died.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the hunger strikes by Irish republican prisoners n the British-run Long Kesh concentration camp — an event that shook the world. The British government of Margaret Thatcher let ten men starve themselves to death rather than negotiate with them over their demand to be recognised as political prisoners. The first prisoner to begin the hunger strike was 27-year old Bobby Sands. He died on May 5, 1981 after 66 days of starvation.

Forty refugee rights activists travelled by bus from Perth to Curtin Detention Centre in the remote Kimberley region of WA over the Easter long weekend. Several others joined the convergence at nearby Derby. This was the latest convergence on a refugee detention centre organised by the Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN). Most refugee detention centres are located in remote locations to create a physical divide between refugees and the broader population. The convergence aimed to bridge this divide.

A request by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, to visit alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, United States soldier Bradley Manning, was denied in April. At the time, Manning was being held in solitary confinement at Marine Corps Brig, Quantico in Virginia. Speaking through his lawyer, Manning accused the guards at Quantico of treating him differently to other prisoners and reported he had been forced to strip naked by guards every night. Mendez said US authorities had “not been receptive to a confidential meeting” with Manning.

The US-led military operation in Libya has morphed from the initial imposition of a “no-fly zone” — ostensibly to prevent Muammar Gaddafi’s regime from carrying out a massacre — into an ongoing bombing campaign with no end in sight. And now there’s increasing talk of the use of ground forces until Gaddafi is overthrown and a new government, no doubt Western-approved, takes his place. Libya discussion Left wrong to oppose military intervention Two wars in Libya

A number of left groups in Venezuela and solidarity groups internationally have expressed concern over the April 23 decision by Venezuelan authorities to arrest well-known Colombian journalist and supporter of the Venezuelan revolution, Joaquin Perez Becerra. Perez Becerra was arrested when he tried to enter the country through Caracas Airport. He was deported two days later to neighbouring Colombia to face trial for supposed “terrorism” charges in Colombia.

Sixty-two protesters had been killed by Syrian security forces on April 29, Al Jazeera reported that day. This was the second Friday in a row that Syrian authorities had used lethal forces against protesters — 100 protesters were killed in Deraa on April 22. The United States responded by imposing sanctions on three leading figures in the regime — including President Bashar al-Assad’s brother, but not the president — and the Syrian intelligence agency.

The release of secret US Department of Defense files on prisoners held by the US as part of the “war on terror” confirms, in the US government’s own words, the shoddy and unreliable nature of the “evidence” used to condemn prisoners at its Guantanamo Bay torture camp. The files released by WikiLeaks also show the mentality of the US government in its attempts to prosecute and gather information about “terrorists” to justify its wars of aggression. Apart from those known to be innocent by their US captors, many others were condemned on the flimsiest of pretexts.