Asia

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India: Major Protest Demands Coca-Cola Shut Down Plant

Nandlal Master, Lok Samiti, Amit Srivastava April 2, 2008 Nandlal Master, Lok Samiti, Amit Srivastava

Over 1,500 villagers marched to the Coca-Cola company's bottling plant in Mehdiganj in Varanasi in India yesterday demanding that the bottling plant shut down immediately. This march and rally against Coca-Cola is the latest in a series of protests against the company in India where communities have accused Coca-Cola bottling plants for exacerbating the water crises through heavy extraction of water from the groundwater resource and polluting the groundwater and soil.

Photo from SaveTibet.org

Tibet: Unrest in the ‘Roof of the World’

Carole Reckinger March 24, 2008 Carole Reckinger

Tanks in Lhasa
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.

Photo from Wikipedia

Tibet: Universal Responsibility

Rene Wadlow March 24, 2008 Rene Wadlow

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.

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Cambodia’s Lawless Leaders and Landless Poor

Will Baxter February 7, 2008 Will Baxter

Resident of Dey Krahorm Community
Phnom Penh, Cambodia-Driven by bald-faced corruption at the highest levels in the Cambodian government, the poor and disenfranchised of the country are systematically being stripped of their land under the guise of development schemes, economic land concessions, and through the exploitation of a continually failing legal system.

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Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Void

Will Baxter January 29, 2008 Will Baxter

Wife with late husband's photo
Outside the Bishop's residence about a hundred Tamil women are crying and wailing, many of them clutching copies of death certificates or missing person's reports to their chests. Crumpled up in their fists are photocopies of ID cards belonging to their husbands, their sons, their fathers-all murdered, abducted, or officially classified in a log somewhere as 'missing.' These women have all come here with the same intention: to try and gain an audience with the visiting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, to tell their story and to plead for justice. In Jaffna, when someone disappears, they unfortunately have a way of never turning up again. Making the atrocities known is often the only solace these women can have.