Ireland: “Political” arrests used to intimidate water charge protesters

Jobstown protest against water charges

A series of coordinated early morning police raids in south-west Dublin have seen at least seventeen people – including several left-wing politicians – arrested for attending a peaceful rally against water charges last November, amid claims of “political policing” and intimidation.

Shortly before 7am on Monday February 9, six police arrested Anti-Austerity Alliance (AAA) TD and Socialist Party member Paul Murphy at his home while he was still in his pyjamas, having breakfast with his children.

Two AAA councillors on South Dublin Council – Mick Murphy and Kieran Mahon – were also arrested in separate raids the same morning, as was Scott Masterson from socialist republican group Éirigí. They were held for several hours, questioned, and then released without charge.

The following morning, ten police burst into the home of a 16 year old boy, arresting him as he got dressed for school. Another three people were arrested by the same morning, and then later released, amid ominous warnings that another 40 people were going to be arrested.

The pattern was repeated again on February 11 and 12, with four arrests on Wednesday morning, and five on Thursday, including boys aged only 14 and 15. All were released without charge, but their files have been sent to the Department of Public Prosecution, and charges are expected at a later date.

Sinn Féin leader calls for an Irish left coalition to end austerity

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams with SYRIZA's Alexis Tsipras

Writing in the wake of SYRIZA’s historic win in the Greek elections on January 25, Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney has called for formal discussions to begin on building an Irish Left coalition to cohere an anti-austerity government in the South.

Writing in the February edition of republican newspaper An Phoblacht, Kearney called on the progressive and republican left to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the upheaval in Irish politics in recent years, and build a credible political alternative to challenge the dominance of conservative politics in Ireland.

“As new international political forces move towards governmental power, formal political discussion should commence in Ireland on how to forge consensus between Sinn Féin, progressive independents, the trade union movement, grassroots communities, and the non-sectarian Left,” Kearney argued.

“That process should concentrate on building durable, strategic, cross-sectoral, cross-community and political alliances North and South.”

“This is the time for serious political discussion among progressive Irish political, community and trade union activists on the ideas and strategies which will ensure the future election of a Left coalition in the South dedicated to establishing a new national Republic.”

“It is the only way forward.“

İspanyol Baskısına Karşı Devasa Bask Gösterileri

İsyandan, 31 Ocak 2015 Cumartesi 

Duroyan Fertl

İspanya devletinin Bask tutsaklara karşı işlediği insan hakları ihlâllerini protesto için 10 Ocak’ta Bilbao’da bir yürüyüş gerçekleşti.

 

Bask Ülkesi’ndeki yurttaşlık hakları savunucuları ve avukatlar da İspanya devletinin sürdürdüğü baskılara karşı 17 Ocak’ta, bir Bask şehri olan Donostia’da, yaklaşık 33,000 kişinin katıldığı bir protesto yürüyüşü gerçekleştirdi.

Üzerinde “İnsan Hakları, Çözüm, Barış” yazılı büyük bir pankartın altında yürüyen eylem kitlesi, bağımsızlık yanlısı Bask sol koalisyon EH Bildu ile sendika üyeleri ve Bask siyasi tutsakları destekleyenleri de barındırıyordu.

Kitlesel gösteri, 12 Ocak tarihinde Bask Ülkesi ile Nafaroa ve Madrid’de Guardia Civil (İspanya’nın oldukça siyasileşmiş jandarması) tarafından gerçekleştirilen tutuklamalara bir tepkiydi.

12 Bask avukatın yanı sıra yasaklanan tutsak dayanışma örgütü Herrira’yla bağlantılı olduğu iddia edilen dört kişi daha tutuklandı. Polis, Bilbao’daki sol-milliyetçi Bask sendikası Milliyetçi İşçiler Komitesi’nin (LAB) ofisleri de dahil olmak üzere, İspanya genelinde bina aramaları yaptı. Tutsak hakları kampanyalarından toplanan 90,000 Avro üzerindeki yasal bağışa el konuldu.

Euskal Herria: Huge rallies protest Spanish state repression

33,000 march for peace and civil liberties in Donostia

On January 17, 33,000 people marched through the Basque city of Donostia (San Sebastián) to protest ongoing Spanish state repression against independence and civil rights activists and lawyers in the Basque Country.

Marching under a large banner that read "Human Rights, Resolution, Peace," the demonstration was made up of members of the Basque pro-independence left coalition EH Bildu, various trade unions and supporters of Basque political prisoners.

The mass protest was a response to a series of arrests carried out by the Guardia Civil (Spain’s heavily politicised military police) on Monday January 12 throughout the Basque Country, in Nafarroa and in Madrid.

Early in the morning, twelve Basque lawyers were arrested, as were four people allegedly linked to the banned prisoners’ support organisation Herrira. Police searched a number of premises across Spain, including those of the left-nationalist Basque trade union LAB in Bilbao, and over 90,000 euros in legal donations was confiscated.

Those detained were charged with tax fraud, money laundering and membership of a terrorist organisation. Thirteen of those arrested were soon released on bail, but have been forbidden from leaving the country, or communicating with prisoners.

The Interior Ministry has also accused them of passing instructions from the armed separatist group ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna – “Basque Homeland and Freedom”) to imprisoned members of the organisation.

Germany: anti-Islamic PEGIDA rally draws 25,000 but is outnumbered by counter-protests

PEGIDA protesters in Dresden

Since October last year, Germany has become increasingly polarised, as weekly marches by a new right-wing movement opposed to a perceived “Islamisation” of Europe continue to grow by their thousands – a growth now matched by counter-protests nationwide.

The organisation – PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes or “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”) – was founded in October after an anti-Islam march in Dresden organised by 41-year-old Lutz Bachmann through Facebook.

While the first march only attracted three hundred supporters, PEGIDA has held rallies in Dresden every Monday since, with numbers swelling to 18,000 on January 5. On January 12, in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, they reached a record 25,000.

The regularity of the protests is a conscious appropriation of the “Monday demonstrations” of the pro-democracy movement in the former East Germany in 1989, which also grew rapidly and eventually led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the East German government.

As well as attracting a variety of conservative and islamophobic elements of German society, PEGIDA also operates as an umbrella for a number of right-wing groups, including the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), as well as other neo-Nazi groups and right-wing football hooligans.

While PEGIDA claims not to be racist or right wing, Ralf Jäger, SPD interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, has dubbed the protesters “neo-Nazis in pinstripes", and the protests are widely viewed as thinly-concealed expressions of blatant xenophobia.

Outcry at plans to make a comedy about Irish Famine

Irish Famine Memorial in Dublin

On 30 December, the Irish Times set off waves of outrage and disbelief when it reported that British TV station Channel 4 was commissioning a comedy set to the backdrop of the Irish Famine.

The Famine (or An Gorta Mór, as it is known in Irish), lasted from 1845 until 1852, and saw well over one million people in Ireland die from starvation and disease.

Many of them were buried without coffins, in mass pauper graves; others were left where they dropped for fear of contagion, their mouths green from the grass they ate in desperation to stay alive.

For many that died, their names and deaths were not recorded; their memory lost forever. A further one and a half million emigrated during the Famine to places like Boston, New York, Liverpool and Australia.

The Irish population dropped by 30 percent in six short years, and the political and cultural impact of the Famine can still be felt to this day. So too can the demographic impact – the Irish population has never properly recovered from the impact of the Famine, and is still lower than pre-Famine levels.

A Change.org petition calling on Channel 4 to not make the show has already reached close to 40,000 signatures.

Irish water protesters bring Dublin to a standstill

Up to 100,000 protesters shut down Dublin city on December 10 in the latest mass demonstration against the introduction of water charges.

Protesters from across the country braved media hysteria, riot police and police barricades, and the threat of a fierce storm to descend on the centre of Dublin, placing Leinster House – home of the Dáil (Irish parliament) – and other government buildings in “lockdown”.

The protest – organised by the Right2Water campaign – was the third major protest against the charges in two months, following on from a 100,000 strong march in Dublin on 11 October and protests across Ireland on 1 November that attracted around 200,000 in dozens of towns and cities.

The introduction of new charges on water use, levied via new state-owned company Irish Water, has brought years of anger with austerity cuts and government arrogance to a head.

Not only is the cost of water already covered by general taxation, however, but it is also widely believed that water charges are only the first step towards the privatisation of Irish Water and water charges.

Ireland: Government drowning between water revolt and a rising Sinn Féin

Faced with a growing public revolt against the introduction of water charges and a faltering support, the Irish government is in a deepening crisis.

The government — a coalition between the right-wing Fine Gael party and the Irish Labour Party — came to power in 2011 on the back of public outrage over austerity and social spending cuts.

The impact from the global financial crisis hit Ireland particularly hard. According to Eurostat, Ireland has paid 42 percent of the total cost of the European banking crisis, or 41 billion euros — about 9000 euros per person. The average across the European Union is 192 euros per person.

The government of Fine Gael Taoiseach (prime minister) Enda Kenny is presiding over further austerity cuts at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB). The unemployment rate, however, remains well into double figures, and wages are low.

Despite the scale of Ireland’s economic collapse, social unrest has remained minimal. Instead, Ireland — with a population of only 4.5 million — has witnessed a more literal decimation. More than 400,000 people, mostly young people, skilled workers and families, have emigrated in search of work and a better lifestyle.

25 years after the Berlin Wall, socialists set to form government in Thuringia

Nearly twenty-five years to the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialist party Die Linke (“The Left”) looks set to form government in the eastern German state of Thuringia for the first time.

After two months of uncertainty following state elections held on September 14, the way has been cleared for Die Linke to enter government as senior coalition partner in December, alongside the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, after nearly 70 percent of SPD members in Thuringia voted to enter a coalition government on 4 November.

While Die Linke has governed at a regional level before, as a junior partner to the SPD in Berlin and Brandenburg, this marks the first time they will lead a government.

It also marks the first time since German reunification that a socialist party will take charge of a government – a breakthrough for a party that has been treated as a pariah by the political and media establishment.

Hillsborough – a disaster forged in ruling-class hate

Twenty-three years too late, the real truth is finally being told about the Hillsborough disaster of April 15, 1989, which killed 96 football fans and injured hundreds more.

A new 354-page report, released by the Hillsborough Independent Panel after accessing over 400,000 pages of secret documents, has implicated the police, media and British government in what has been described as “the biggest cover-up of British legal history”.

Importantly, it has also cleared Liverpool fans of the vile accusations that the media, police and politicians have thrown at them for over two decades, and has opened the way for justice to finally be won.

On April 15, 1989, Sheffield’s Hillsborough football stadium played host to the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool FC and Nottingham Forest.

At 2:52pm, Chief superintendent David Duckenfield directed South Yorkshire police to herd thousands of Liverpool fans into an already dangerously over-packed part of the stands on the Lepping’s Lane end of the ground.

As they surged forward, those being crushed at the front sought to have the gates opened to the nearly-empty neighbouring stands, and tried to climb over the high fences to safety.

The police refused to open the gates or help fans. Instead they beat them with truncheons back into the deadly crush.

As the bodies of the injured and dying began to pile up on the field, police lined up three rows deep to keep fans off the pitch, calling in dog-handlers, and assaulting and arresting those trying to give first aid to the injured.