Argentina marked the 32nd anniversary of the nation's 1976 military coup on March 24. An estimated 30,000 were disappeared during the so called dirty war. Thirty two years later, the bodies of the disappeared still remain to be found and identified. Since 1984, a team of anthropologists, The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, has investigated human rights violations committed by bloody military junta.
"The technology of journalism has advanced more in the last decade than in the 100 years before," notes former Toward Freedom Editor Greg Guma in a recent post on his new blog, Maverick Media. A witness to and participant in many of the radical changes in mass media since the late 1960s, he became Pacifica Radio's executive director in 2006. Now, after 40 years as a journalist, organizer and manager, he looks back - and forward - at media politics and the alternative press.
On March 10th, a group of about 500 Buddhist monks marched from the Drepung monastery to demand the release of monks arrested last October for celebrating the award of a US congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama. Between fifty and sixty monks were arrested as police and paramilitary units blocked roads and surrounded other monasteries in the Lhasa area to prevent protests from growing. Despite the heavy crackdown, over the next days the protests rapidly spread and unrest has been reported throughout Tibet and in provinces close to Tibet with large ethnic Tibetan populations. Tanks in Lhasa
Recent protests of Tibetans in Lhasa and in Tibetan-majority areas in Chinese provinces have drawn attention to the ever-growing frustration and anger of Tibetans as Chinese settlers take over the economy of Tibet. For the first time, there has been violence used by angry Tibetans against Chinese and Muslim merchants in Lhasa.
In 2006, Filipino trade unionist Diasdado Fortuna died under suspicious circumstances. Nobody was arrested or charged. Later in the year, International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) member Brian Campbell arrived in the Philippines to investigate his death. After discovering the local police unconcerned and unwilling to investigate, Campbell's efforts to uncover the truth were met with opposition.
On the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, media coverage of the occupation continues to decline. According to a survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the percentage of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined since last year, dropping from an average of 15% last July to just 3% in February, 2008. Public interest has also dropped.
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