It’s been barely noticed, but last month there was an incursion of politics into sports like no other, writes Dave Zirin.
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With little reason, the Israeli government made the decision to cancel the Palestinian national football (soccer) club championship, otherwise known as the FIFA Palestine Cup.
Losing Santhia: Life & Loss in the Struggle for Tamil Eelam
By Ben Hillier
Interventions, 2019
150 pages
In 2009, the Sri Lankan military launched a genocidal offensive against the island's Tamil population on a stretch of sand in Mullivaikal, in the island's north-east.
Claiming its offensive was to rescue civilians, the Sri Lankan military carried out an indiscriminate bombing offensive against Tamil civilians that killed tens of thousands.
After centuries under the yoke of English rule, Irish nationalists staged failed uprisings against British rule in 1798, 1803 and 1848. By 1858, Irish freedom fighters formed the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Known as the Fenians, they recruited among Irish soldiers in the British army to overthrow the British authorities.
However by 1867, the Fenian rising was crushed and dozens of their members sentenced to up 15 years in the British penal colony of Western Australia. Once there, they sent to Fremantle Gaol. Known as the "Convict Establishment" or the "Living Tomb", and built by convict labour in the 1850s, the men were subjected to a brutal regime of forced labour and floggings.
Activists are tracking a ship bound for New Zealand containing an unknown quantity of what they allege is stolen Sahrawi phosphate which is illegally mined and exported by Morocco, the occupying power in Western Sahara. Morocco is the largest producer and exporter of phosphates in the world.
While the Nakba began with the expulsion of Palestinians from their villages and the destruction of those villages, it continues with sniper attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, encroachment of illegal settlements across the West Bank and extreme limitations placed on Palestinians' movements within and between towns, courtesy of IDF-staffed checkpoints, writes Lisa Gleeson.
The struggle for self determination in New Caledonia (Kanaky) was boosted last November, when more than 43% of the population voted to support independence from France in a referendum. A second independence referendum will be held next year.
The FLNKS (The Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), a pro-independence alliance of political parties met in March to plan for the general elections in May and to prepare for the 2020 referendum. Green Left Weekly’s Susan Price spoke with FLNKS representative in Australia, Charles Wea about the congress and the referendum campaign.
Embattled President Jovenel Moïse used United States' help in a poorly executed, but serious, effort to consolidate power writes Matthew Cole (The Intercept) and Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte).
Four months after her release from an Israeli prison, Palestinian poet and photographer Dareen Tatour received the Oxfam Novib PEN Award for Freedom of Expression in The Hague in January.
More than 60 international NGOs have added their voices in protest against the plan to hold the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv this year. They are now part of what is quickly becoming an international campaign by civil society groups seeking to move the event, which is scheduled for May, from Israel.
Campaigners for gay, lesbian and transgender rights have urged a boycott of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv in May.
