Politics

Tens of thousands of protesters staged a spontaneous mass rally in New Delhi on Wednesday in support of a hunger strike by anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare. Organisers estimated the size of the crowd marching from the India Gate monument in central Delhi at between 60,000 and 70,000.

Police tightened security in main cities on Wednesday in case of anti-government protests even though organisers had a day earlier postponed the vigils after deadly riots last month. Several shops and banks did not open for business in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu – the 3 main towns affected by last month’s security crackdown on protesters which killed 19 people, police said.

Late Wednesday night (17 August, 2011) Anna Hazare’s team accepted Delhi police’s latest proposal for holding their protest against the government’s version of the Lokpal Bill, from August 16, at Jai Prakash Narayan Memorial Park, next to Feroze Shah Kotla grounds, New Delhi. The Humanist Party supported this campaign.

Three Chilean students on hunger strike were admitted today in a delicate state after 31 days of fasting which, from this week included the rejection of liquids, as a deepening of the protest demanding free and better quality education. They were admitted with heart and kidney problems.

Police detained veteran anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare as he prepared to start a banned hunger strike against the government, provoking widespread outrage. Hazare, 74, was taken into custody by plain-clothes officers at an apartment in New Delhi early Tuesday morning, an hour before he was due to lead a parade to a public park where he was to begin a “fast unto death”.

On Sunday the ‘Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity’ carried out ​​a silent march against Mexico’s militarization movement to fight organized crime. The demonstration was led by poet Javier Sicilia. Around 3000 people joined the demonstration. The protest took place in downtown Mexico City and ended in the federal district in front of the Mexican Senate.

Five Filipinos, two of them domestic helpers and two former helpers, are fighting in Hong Kong’s High Court for right of abode, which other immigrants can get after seven years in Hong Kong. The plaintiffs in three judicial reviews want the court to declare that the rule denying helpers residency contravenes the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution.

India’s embattled prime minister said his government was taking the “strictest possible action” to stamp out corruption after a string of recent scandals. “We are taking the strictest possible action in cases of corruption that have surfaced,” Manmohan Singh said from the ramparts of New Delhi’s 16th-century Red Fort in an Independence Day speech on Monday.

Tunisian police fired teargas on Monday at a rally by hundreds of people protesting at the lack of political reforms since the overthrow of President Ben Ali in January. Columns of smoke could be seen rising above an area in front of Tunis cathedral where protesters gathered for a demonstration at the same time as an authorised one called by the General Workers’ Union.

When Mahatma Gandhi resorted to the use of hunger strikes as a tool of non-violent struggle, denying himself any form of food in order to demand freedom for his people in front of the British Empire which was colonising India, he was massively supported by the clamour of his people who knew – in the India of that day – what it was to suffer hunger.