Saudi activists and dissidents are disputing official accounts alleging that a northern tribesman who refused government orders to surrender his home to make way for a new mega-project was killed in a shoot-out with security forces. Authorities say Abdul Rahim Ahmad al-Hwaiti, from… Read moreTribesman killed for resisting Saudi robot city?
In Episode 51 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants against the dangerous, irresponsible and politically weaponized claims being avidly propagated about COVID-19. In addition to paving the way for Facebook and other platforms being given greater power to censor… Read morePodcast: COVID-19 and conspiracy theory
According to widespread reports in the Nigerian media, aggrieved workers at a Chinese company in the Ogun-Guangdong Free Trade Zone (OGFTZ), located in Ado-Odo/Ota district of Ogun state, staged a brief uprising at the complex after they were locked within the premises, ostensibly under… Read moreWorker uprising at Chinese FTZ in Nigeria
Hong Kong police arrested 15 leading pro-democracy figures on April 18, in connection with allegedly “organizing and participating in unlawful assemblies” last year. Among those arrested were two former chairs of the Democratic Party, Martin Lee and Albert Ho, former Democratic Party… Read moreHong Kong arrests leading pro-democracy figures
Speaking April 14 at COVIDCon, an online Oslo Freedom Forum event presented by the Human Rights Foundation, exiled Chinese dissident Yang Jianli of the DC-based Citizen Power Initiatives for China charged that the death toll for Wuhan, the city where… Read moreWuhan death toll massively under-counted?
It’s certainly an irony that with police-state measures mounting worldwide to enforce lockdowns and contain COVID-19, Trump is now claiming sweeping executive power to lift lockdowns in the US in spite of the pandemic. Asserting his prerogative to override state governors and… Read moreGlobal COVID-19 police state consolidates
Prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, imprisoned for four and a half years for “subversion,” has been released—but immediately placed under “quarantine,” barred from reuniting with his wife and son in Beijing. His wife, Li Wenzu, fears that the… Read moreChina: freed dissident placed in distant ‘quarantine’
In Episode 49 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the grim political implications of the COVID-19 outbreak and resultant hysteria. Even before the outbreak, China had detained perhaps upwards of a million ethnic Uighurs in concentration camps as a… Read morePodcast: COVID-19 and impending bio-fascism
“Citizen journalists” and “netizens” in China who are critical of the government’s handling of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak are apparently being “disappeared.” Winning most attention are two cases from Wuhan, infamously the epicenter of the outbreak. Wuhan businessman Fang Bin was posting… Read moreChina: internal resistance to bio-police state
At least eight people were killed, dozens injured and nearly 50 homes and shops set on fire in ethnic clashes that broke out in a border region of Kazakhstan Feb. 8. The fighting was centered in Masanchi village in Kordai district of southern Zhambyl province (also rendered… Read moreHui Muslims targeted in Kazakhstan ethnic clashes
The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran called on all parties to the conflict to immediately cease hostilities and comply with international humanitarian law following reported US air-strikes that killed and injured civilians in southern Iran. A reported US air-strike hit a home in Kuhestak, Hormozgan province, during a wedding celebration. Iranian media reported that five people died, including two children and one woman, and that dozens of others suffered injuries. Weeks earlier, another reported US strike destroyed a residential home on Qeshm Island, killing a man, a woman and their two-year-old son, and injuring their two other children. Both attacks occurred in areas with historically marginalized minority populations. The Mission identified Kuhestak as predominantly Baloch, and Qeshm as predominantly Sunni. The Mission found that these strikes may have constituted war crimes, and called for thorough investigations. (Map: Wikipedia)
A group of UN experts called on Honduras to halt evictions of campesino, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities taking place under Decree No. 107-2026, also known as the Law for the Strengthening & Protection of the Agro-Industrial Sector. The experts wrote: "We cannot stand by and watch the deliberate closing of every legal door through which a peasant, Indigenous or Afro-descendant family in Honduras can challenge dispossession." They especially condemned evictions at the Garífuna community of San Juan in Tela municipality on the Caribbean coast. Five members of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) were arrested in the operation, and now face charges of "aggravated usurpation" related to their defense of the community’s ancestral territory. (Map: Wikitravel)
