“All of us must be Bryan Simpsons” (Defend the Right to Protest, UK)

defendtherighttoprotest.org

Bryan Simpson – a university student facing charges for occupying Millbank against education cuts

SHOW SUPPPORT FOR PROTESTERS AT THEIR HEARINGS
City of Westminster Magistrates Court, 70 Horseferry Road, London SW1P 2

THURS 9th JUNE, 9AM
Hearings of students including Alfie Meadows

FRIDAY 10th JUNE 10AM
Hearings of students including Bryan Simpson
(www.defendbryansimpson.org)

MONDAY 4 July, 9AM
Hearing of Fortnum & Masons occupiers
(www.fortnum145.org)

LEAFLET TO DOWNLOAD

The right to protest is under serious threat in Britain today.

The police are increasingly resorting to extreme tactics including kettling, mounted horse charges and battering protesters with extreme force.

The results have been horrific. For Alfie Meadows, a student on the anti-fees protests last year, this led to severe wounds to his head and emergency brain surgery to save his life. For Ian Tomlinson, an encounter with police on a demonstration proved to be fatal.

Peaceful activists have been targeted for arrest and arbitrary detention. 145 members of UK Uncut were arrested and charged for a sit-in at Fortnum and Mason during the mass TUC anti-cuts protest on 26 March. The extent of damage caused by them appears to have been one smashed chocolate rabbit. For this they have been charged with ‘aggravated trespass’ for which they could be sent to jail.

On the day of royal wedding, protesters and others celebrating an alternative party in Soho were arrested and detained on suspicion that they might be about to commit a ‘breach of the peace’. Here we are in an Orwellian world of ‘pre-crime’, arrested for something that you may do in the future.

We stand with all those who have been targeted by the police in recent months and those who are now facing jail terms simply for exercising their right to protest. The attack on Alfie Meadows, the Fortnum and Mason 145 and all the rest, is an attack on all of us and our democratic rights.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
Encourage people to sign up to the Defend the Right to Protest petition and the petitions for Alfie Meadows and Bryan Simpson.

Build support for the campaign. Invite a Defend the Right to Protest speaker to your trade union or student union, campaign group or organisation. Pass a motion to affiliate to the campaign.

Contact us with ideas for future actions, or to let us know about any support you can give whether its web and press skills or just hours to dedicate to the campaign.

If you have been arrested or witnessed arrests or violent behaviour by the police please get in touch confidentially.

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Editor’s Note. Thanks to the infinitely valuable Infinite Thought for the heads-up.

The Russian Economic Miracle

Deloitte, one of the largest financial consulting companies in the world, has predicted that more than 1.2 million people in Russia will become dollar millionaires by 2020. Russia currently ranks 16th on Deloitte’s World Wealth List, with 375,000 dollar millionaires currently living in the country, and will climb to 13th place in the next decade, Deloitte forecasted. Deloitte’s survey includes the 25 countries with the world’s strongest economies.

This year, the top-ten list of countries with the largest number of millionaires includes the United States, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Canada, China, Spain and Taiwan. The list is not likely to change much by 2020, Deloitte predicted, except Spain and Taiwan are likely to be replaced by South Korea and Australia.

In Deloitte’s research, millionaires were split into three groups: those worth up to $5 million, $5 to $30 million and more than $30 million. Russia already ranks in seventh place on the list of countries with the largest number of the “richest millionaires,” whose assets are worth $30 millions or more, behind the United States, China, Germany, the UK, India and France. Moreover, Russia’s millionaires beat out their foreign competitors by the wealth that is concentrated in their households: an average rich family here has $2.1 million, putting Russia in fifth place behind Switzerland ($4.2 million), Singapore ($4 million), the United States ($3.7 million) and Hong Kong ($2.9 million). Additionally, following the hardship of the economic crisis, Russia ranks third in the world in its number of billionaires, behind the United States and China. Moscow has become the world capital of billionaires (79 billionaires) ahead of New York City (58 billionaires).

[…]

Meanwhile, a survey conducted by the Moscow Higher School of Economics (HSE) found that 60 percent of the population in Russia has the same real income it had 20 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed, and some even became poorer. HSE’s research found that income inequality between the late 1980s and the late 2000s in Russia has grown eight times faster than in Hungary, and is five times greater than in the Czech Republic. At present, the Gini coefficient, a statistic that determines income and wealth inequality worldwide, is twice more in Russia than in Sweden, and equivalent to those in Iran, Turkmenistan, Laos, Mali and Nigeria.

— Svetlana Kononova, “A Country of Beggars and Choosers: The Number of Millionaires in Russia Will Grow in the Next Decade, While Income Inequality Will Remain on the Level of African Countries,” Russia Profile, May 16, 2011

Bitter Winter in Belarus

Bitter Winter in Belarus

http://www.fidh.org/Bitter-Winter-in-Belarus

The FIDH 7-minute video Bitter Winter in Belarus denounces the violent repression exercised by the Belarus authorities against all the dissident voices that have protested against the rigging of the December 19, 2010 presidential elections.

Following the announcement of the election results, about 700 persons demonstrating peacefully in the centre of Minsk to denounce electoral fraud were arrested and sent to prison; many of them were severely beaten. Among them were seven opposition candidates, along with political activists, independent journalists and human rights defenders. Some of the activists received arbitrary prison sentences, while others had their offices raided and ravaged repeatedly by the security forces, without access to fair means of defence; all were subjected to threats on the part of the regime. President Lukashenko himself declared, the day after the election results were announced: “Let’s finish the job! There shall be no more senseless democracy in the country! […] They shall all go to prison, in accordance with the law.”

Today the repression continues. Two former presidential candidates, Andrei Sannikov and Vladzimir Niaklayev are still in detention and under house arrest, respectively. Several lawyers of the detained activists have had their licences withdrawn. The two independent newspapers “Nasha Niva” and “Narodnaya Volia” risk being banned shortly. Six journalists have been accused of having participated in “massive disturbances of the peace,” and one of their colleagues has been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. And the human rights defenders are more than ever targeted by the regime, and are interrogated, searched and subjected to smear campaigns broadcast all day long on the public channels.(1)

The FIDH web documentary shows damning testimonies of a society stifled by a regime that is trying at all costs to suppress all independent voices.

The web documentary is available at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHWvuXFvdyE

FIDH will shortly issue a detailed report on the repression.

Press contacts:
Karine Appy: +33 1 43 55 14 12 / +33 6 48 05 91 57
Arthur Manet: +33 1 43 55 90 19 / +33 6 72 28 42 94

(1)  See the urgent appeals of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (a joint programme of FIDH and OMCT), May 15, 2011 http://www.fidh.org/Expulsion-of-Ms-Victoria-Gromova-and-Mr-Alexander and April 20, 2011: http://www.fidh.org/Human-rights-defender-from-Ukraine-was-denied and the press release of May 4, 2011 : http://www.fidh.org/Belarusian-President-and-national-TV-journalists

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Belarus ‘Accepts’ $3Bln Loan

The Moscow Times

18 May 2011

By Anatoly Medetsky

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Tuesday that Belarus appeared to have accepted the terms of a $3 billion loan offered by a Russia-led group of former Soviet republics to save the teetering Belarussian economy from a disastrous collapse.

He was reacting to news reports that quoted Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko as saying, after a telephone conversation with President Dmitry Medvedev, that the loan was a done deal.

“We believe it means the terms of the loan have been accepted,” Kudrin told reporters at an unplanned briefing after a regular Presidium session.

Russia, the biggest donor of the Eurasian Economic Community’s anti-crisis fund, has insisted that Belarus privatize $3 billion worth of its enterprises this year and draw foreign direct investment as conditions for the fund’s loan, Kudrin said Tuesday. He didn’t specify the required amount of investment.

Lukashenko is widely believed to seek divisions in Russia’s ruling tandem of Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in order to gain concessions — a tactic that has borne little fruit so far. Putin is expected to raise the loan issue during his visit to Minsk on Thursday.

“I hope we will be able to clarify the details there,” Kudrin said.

Divided into $1 billion tranches over three years, the planned loan is to help Belarus strengthen state finances after its national currency suffered a sharp devaluation in recent weeks.

Russia has long sought a way for its companies to buy stakes of Belarussian companies, such as its refineries.

Belarus is servicing its debt to Russia, which amounts to another $3 billion over the past four years, Kudrin said.