Tag: student protests

Planet Watch

Global revolt against automotive terror

Bangladesh has seen huge demonstrations over the past week, as tens of thousands of university students and schoolchildren protest lax traffic enforcement after two young students were killed by a speeding bus. The protests have for days paralyzed Dhaka, with roadblocks erected on major thoroughfares. Meanwhile, in southern Italy's Puglia region, hundreds of African farmworkers downed tools and marched from the fields after 16 migrant workers were killed when their vans were hit by trucks hauling produce. Authorities pledge a crackdown on the "mafia" that controls agribusiness in Puglia, but the farmworkers have continued to press their protests. (Photo:  Dinamopress via El Salto)

East Asia

Free speech threatened in Taiwan: martyr’s kin

Pressure from China, restrictive legislation and self-censorship among Taiwanese youth have emerged as threats to freedom of speech in Taiwan, according to Nylon Cheng Liberty Foundation director Cheng Tsing-hua. He made his comments on Taiwan's Free Speech Day, April 7, which commemorates the day in 1989 that his brother Cheng Nan-jung, a young democracy advocate under the one-party dictatorship of the Kuomintang, self-immolated as a protest against government restrictions on freedom of expression. Cheng's observations are sobering, as Taiwan has emerged as a last bastion of free speech in the Chinese-speaking world with the closing of political space in Hong Kong. (Image montage from Nylon Cheng Liberty Foundation via FathomTaiwan)

East Asia

Tiananmen dissident: Trump threat to freedom

Wuer Kaixi, veteran of the Tiananmen Square protests, called Donald Trump a threat to values of freedom after the candidate called the 1989 pro-democracy movement a "riot."

East Asia

Taiwan: protesters occupy Education Ministry

Student protesters are occupying the Education Ministry grounds in Taipei to demand an end to planned textbook revisions that emphasize the "One China" view of history.

The Andes

Caracazo recalled in polarized Venezuela

Official commemorations of the 1989 popular anti-austerity rebellion come amid new protests over economic agony in Venezuela—and regime accusations of a coup conspiracy.

Mexico

Mexico: official Ayotzinapa claims disputed

The Mexican government claims the case of the missing 43 students is solved, but outside forensic experts say problems with the inquiry make it impossible to be sure.