Democracy

Colombian daily El Espectador reported on May 18 that the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice ruled the infamous “FARC files” as inadmissible evidence in court, as they were obtained illegally. The ruling refers to supposed documents acquired from the laptops of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) leader Raul Reyes who was killed in the March 2008 Colombian military bombing raid of a guerrilla camp in Ecuador.

Palestinians have upped the stakes in their struggle for freedom and justice on the anniversary of al-Nakba (“The Castrophe”), as Palestinains refer to the ethnic cleansing that accompnied the founding of Israel in 1948). Israel responded with lethal repression.

Hundreds of Australian Tamils and supporters gathered for an evening vigil in Sydney’s Martin Place on May 18 to commemorate two years since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE had fought a 30-year-long battle for an independent Tamil homeland in the north-east of Sri Lanka. In April, a leaked United Nations report said the Sri Lankan government had committed serious war crimes as the war came to a close, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.

Spanish people have taken to the streets in huge numbers, with public squares occupied by protesters opposed to anti-worker austerity measures and calling for real democracy.

“There are many Joses here, I’m not sure if its my turn or another Jose,” saidJose, a middle-aged man standing on the outer rim of a grupo de trabajo (work group) called at midnight on an adjacent street to Sol, the plaza known as point zero, in the heart of Madrid.

Al Jazeera journalist Dorothy Parvaz, who had been missing for nineteen days was released by the Iranian government on May 18. Parvaz left Doha on April 29 to cover the escalating anti-government protests in Syria. Upon arrival in Damascus, she was immediately detained by an unidentified security service. Until May 4, the Syrian government did not acknowledge that she was in their custody. But on May 10, it released a statement stating that it had deported Parvaz to the Iranian consule in Tehran.

This article is reposted from http://gazatvnews.com . Protesters fired on by Israeli forces were commemorating al Nakba ("the catastrophe"), as Palestinians refer to the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the founding of Israel.

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.

“I don’t have any blood on my hands,” Puerto Rican political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera wrote in February. “I haven’t victimized anyone. And I’ve devoted most of my life serving a just and noble cause and struggling to help make this world a better and more just one.” For 30 years, Lopez Rivera has been imprisoned in the United States for his activities in support of freedom and independence for Puerto Rico, which is still claimed by the US.

The Socialist Alliance calls on the Colombian government to immediately release independent media activist Joaquin Perez Becerra, who is now facing charges of “terrorism”.

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.