Senegal protesters clash with security forces over presidential election delay

A 23-year-old man died Saturday after being shot during clashes in the capital Dakar, two of his relatives told AFP, while a 22-year-old student died Friday in the northern town of Saint-Louis in still uncertain circumstances. 

“The international and regional community must bear witness to the excesses of this dying regime,” said presidential candidate Khalifa Sall (no relation). 

Modou Gueye, a market vendor, took “a live round to the stomach” on Friday in the Colobane neighbourhood of the capital Dakar, said his brother Dame Gueye, 29, who was with him at the time. 

His brother-in-law Mbagnick Ndiaye said he succumbed to his injuries Saturday morning. 

Authorities have yet to confirm Gueye’s death, but videos posted to social media suggest there were others injured as well. 

In Saint-Louis, Alpha Yoro Tounkara died on the campus of Gaston Berger University where he was studying geography, and a hundred of his classmates held an all-night vigil for him. 

The Interior Ministry issued a statement denying that security forces had operated within the university campus. 

Reputation in question 

Anger has mounted since President Sall last week postponed until December a presidential election scheduled February 25. The postponement came hours before official campaigning was due to begin.

Protests were held across the country Friday and police made wide use of tear gas to keep crowds away from a main central square in Dakar, also closing main roads, rail lines and major markets. 

Reporters Without Borders said at least five journalists were targeted by police in Dakar

A new round of protests are planned for Tuesday. 

Sall said he postponed the election because of a dispute between parliament and the Constitutional Council over potential candidates who were not allowed to stand, and has said he wants to begin a process of “appeasement and reconciliation.”

The postponement has been criticised by the United States and European Union. Senegal’s parliament backed the move after security forces stormed the chamber and removed some opposition deputies.

Parliament also voted to keep Sall in office until his successor takes office, which is unlikely to be before early 2025. His second term was due to end April 2. 

The crisis has called into question the West African country’s reputation for democratic stability in a region beset by military coups.

France 24

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French farmers block roads, urge help to safeguard livelihoods

Protesting farmers blocked roads across France to press the government to ease its drive for lower consumer prices and loosen environmental regulations.

Many farmers struggle financially and say their livelihoods are threatened as food retailers are increasing pressure to bring down prices after a period of high inflation.

“There are too many regulations,” Thomas Bonnet, the head of a youth farmers’ union in southwestern France’s Castelnaudary area, told Reuters at a blockade.

“We’d like to be able to work like in some of the neighbouring countries, to produce, cultivate, do our job.”

Arnaud Rousseau, head of the powerful FNSEA farming union, told France 2 TV he could not rule out that protests could disrupt the Paris region. The group will publish dozens of specific demands by the end of the day, he said.

Farming policy has long been a sensitive issue in France, the European Union’s biggest agricultural producer, with thousands of independent producers of wine, meat and dairy. Farmers have a track record of disruptive protests.

Fearing a spillover from farmer unrest in Germany, Poland and Romania, President Emmanuel Macron’s government has already withdrawn a contested draft farming law that would have helped more people become farmers.

Macron is also wary of farmers’ growing support for the far-right ahead of the European Parliament elections in June.

The unrest is the first major challenge for new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and also resonates across Europe.

A small group of French farmers also protested near the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels.

“The message is that we should stop being caught in the middle,” said Philippe Thomas, 57, a cereals farmer from a Meuse in eastern France. “They impose more and more draconian standards on us, but on the other hand our produce isn’t protected.”

In France, farmer discontent over prices is particularly acute in the dairy sector, where producers say the government’s anti-inflation push has undermined legislation known as EGALIM designed to safeguard farmgate prices.

Dairy producers are currently in dispute with Lactalis, the world’s largest dairy group, over prices, and talks with an arbitrator are due on Thursday.

“If the EGALIM law is respected there will be much [far?] fewer protests, that’s the case in the dairy sector, I can tell you,” Thierry Roquefeuil, head of dairy farmer union FNPL, told reporters on Tuesday

Reuters

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Thousands of tractors block Berlin as farmers protest over fuel subsidy cuts

Tractors line the streets of Berlin, in Germany.

Berlin has nearly been brought to a standstill as thousands of farmers rally against tax rises and subsidy cuts, the culmination of a week of protests that have piled misery on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition.

Streets leading to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate were clogged with trucks and tractors on Monday, as more than 10,000 farmers descended on the capital in conjunction with the German freight industry, police said.

Multiple other protests are planned across the country, which come as Scholz’s coalition struggles to fix a budget crisis and official data showed Germany’s economy shrank last year for the first time since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Now, many are warning that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is capitalizing on the chaos for its own political gain

Major road blockages have stretched across cities from east to west including Hamburg, Cologne, Bremen, Nuremberg and Munich – with up to 2,000 tractors registered for each protest. Images showed convoys of tractors and trucks, some with protest banners, blocking German roads from the early-morning hours.

Outside cities, Germany’s fast-moving motorways have also been targeted by protesters, severely disrupting the flow of traffic.

Farmers are enraged about government austerity plans, which would cut tax breaks for agriculture.

Some of the tractors have been adorned with AfD posters, reading “Our farmers first” and “Germany needs new elections.” Far-right supporters wearing AfD vests could also be seen standing next to the vehicles.

On social media, the AfD’s official Facebook page has been reposting images from the protests and writing messages of solidarity with the demonstrators.

“Supporting democratic protests like this against traffic light madness will continue to be a concern of our hearts,” one post reads.

“We will stay with you on the road, so that a policy for tax breaks, for supporting our agriculture and for the interests of our own citizens is finally made. The traffic light will soon be standing all alone.”

For Johannes Kiess, a sociologist specializing in right-wing extremism at the University of Leipzig in eastern Germany, the AfD’s involvement in the unrest doesn’t come as a surprise.

He points out that although the AfD’s own manifesto does not support the interests of Germany’s farmers, the far-right party has a history of exploiting division.

“The AfD is trying to fuel the debate further in order to damage the image of democratic institutions and processes, and most importantly the current government,” Kiess told CNN.

“To this end, it tries to increase the polarization using existing cleavages like rural versus urban.”

He continues: “The AfD used the Eurozone crisis as a window of opportunity to get started in the first place. Activists from the far-right were literally waiting for such an opportunity and with the so-called refugee crisis in 2015 they got a second crisis that helped them grow considerably.

“Migration is known as the bread-and-butter-issue for the far-right. Since then, the AfD has indeed used every crisis to fuel polarization, for example the pandemic, the war against Ukraine. Sometimes it works well, sometimes not.”

CNN

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Protests and strikes in Europe

Germany ‘mega strike’: Public transport network halted over pay.

Travellers hoping to visit the Louvre Museum in Paris were in for a surprise : instead of the Mona Lisa, they saw a crowd of protestors blocking museum entrances amid ongoing protests by union workers sweeping the city. The protests are the latest disruptions for those traveling to Europe this spring, as aviation, railway, and bus workers continue to strike over poor pay, working conditions, and other government policies.

Industrial action is expected to ripple across Europe on multiple days and in many countries.

In Germany, two of the country’s largest unions went on strike earlier to demand higher pay at airports, ports, railways, underground services, and buses, leading Lufthansa Airlines to ground its flights through March 28

The UK faces a fresh wave of strikes this year after unions launched a series of actions in December, including the largest NHS strike in history and the biggest walkout of ambulance staff in three decades.

A series of civil unrest began in France on 19 January 2023, organised by people opposed to the 2023 French pension reform bill proposed by the Borne government, which would increase the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old. The strikes have led to widespread disruption, including garbage piling up in the streets and public transport cancellations. In March, the government used Article 49.3 of the constitution to force the bill through the French Parliament, sparking more protests and two failed no confidence votes, contributing to an increase in violence in protests alongside the union-organised strike action.

Transport strikes are expected in Italy during spring.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/strikes-protests-europe-over-cost-living-pay-welfare-2023-03-27/

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‘Anger is growing’: protests and strikes spread across France over pensions reform

The growing unrest and strikes have left President Emmanuel Macron facing the gravest challenge to his authority since the so-called “Gilets Jaunes” (Yellow Vests) protests four years ago.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne used a special procedure to push an unpopular pensions bill through the National Assembly without a vote, triggering boos and shouts of “Resign!” in rare chaotic scenes in the French parliament.

Opinion polls show that a vast majority of voters oppose the pension reform, as do trade unions, who say there are other ways to balance the accounts, including taxing the wealthy more.

Over several nights of sporadic demonstrations there have been more than 1,500 protests in cities including Marseille, Lyon, Lille and Paris – where bins were set alight – as well as ring-road blockades, docker protests, barricaded university buildings, train-track invasions at stations, refinery protests and electricity blackouts by strikers.

The French president is facing his biggest ever domestic political crisis, less than a year after his re-election to a second term. A protest movement and on-off strikes against his unpopular pensions changes – at one point getting 1.28 million people out to protest in the street have persisted for two months but, last week, unable to garner enough support in parliament, the government used controversial executive powers to push the reforms through. The government survived a no-confidence vote, but only by nine votes – sparking more demonstrators to take to the streets amid hundreds of arrests and clashes with police.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/21/protests-and-strikes-france–pensions-reform-emmanuel-macron?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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France : Macron uses special powers to force through plan to raise pension age

Chaotic scenes in parliament and Paris streets as thousands gather in spontaneous protest

The French government has used controversial special constitutional powers to force through a rise in the pension age amid chaotic scenes in parliament in which radical left MPs sang La Marseillaise at the top of their voices to stop the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, from speaking.

The president, Emmanuel Macron, took a last-minute decision to avoid a parliamentary vote and instead push through his unpopular plan to raise the pension age from 62 to 64.

Minutes before MPs in the lower house were to vote, Macron was still holding a series of frantic meetings with senior political figures, and suddenly chose to use special powers instead of risking a vote, which he appeared poised to lose.

He opted to invoke article 49.3 of the constitution, which gives the government power to bypass parliament.

Shortly afterwards, thousands of people gathered in a spontaneous protest at Place de la Concorde in the centre of the city, as trade unions promised to intensify the strikes and street demonstrations that have taken place since January.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/16/emmanuel-macron-uses-special-powers-to-force-pension-reform-france?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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Housing, lockdowns, and repression back rising dissent in China

 In an increasingly authoritarian set-up of the Chinese Community Party (CCP), scores of people in China are speaking up against the repressive rule, shows a recent report by Freedom House, a Washington-based thinktank. The fault lines are perceived to be deepening amid the rising number of demonstrations and consecutively robust resistance from the government.

Recent protest videos on Twitter depict increasing widespread anger among the residents of Guangzhou, one of the country’s largest cities in the Haizhu district of China having a population of nearly 19 million. Hundreds of protesters were seen rallying on the streets and pushing over police barricades, in a show of public resentment over Covid-19 restrictions. Protesters can be seen attempting to break free from the confines of barriers meant to impose compulsory lockdown due to the rising number of coronavirus cases

The China Dissent Monitor has documented 735 events of protests and other dissent activities in mainland China since May 18, 2022. The top factors behind these were reported to be delayed housing projects, pay and benefits, state violence, fraud, building and school disputes, and Covid-19 policies. Around 70% of these protests were group demonstrations but other modes of dissent also include banner protest, collective petitioning, road obstruction, and online dissent via large-scale hashtag movements and viral posts.

The former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth stated that Xi Jinping’s ‘zero-covid’ policies are widely known but he has “zero tolerance for dissent”.

He also finds it “remarkable that so many people in China dare to take to the streets in protest against lengthy Covid lockdowns and other arbitrary and repressive aspects of government policy despite the real possibility of arrest and imprisonment. Many people in China want a government that answers to their concerns, but Xi Jinping, afraid of allowing people any voice, has imposed the tightest Communist Party dictatorship in years.”

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/world/story/housing-lockdowns-and-repression-back-rising-dissent-in-china-report-2298889-2022-11-18

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A barrier of fear has been broken in Iran. Is the regime at a point of no return ?

A woman dressed in black raises a framed portrait of her son, Siavash Mahmoudi, in the air as she paces the sidewalk in Iran’s capital, Tehran. “I am not scared of anyone. They told me to be silent. I will not be,” the woman seen in a viral social media video yells, her voice fraught with emotion. 

“I will carry my son’s picture everywhere. They killed him.”

Mahmoudi’s mother is among many Iranians who claim the regime tried to silence them as they mourned loved ones slain in ongoing nationwide demonstrations.

But Iran’s protesters, and their supporters, are defiant. For weeks, a nationwide protest movement has relentlessly gathered momentum and appears to have blunted the government’s decades-old intimidation tactics. Slogans against the clerical leadership echo throughout the city. Videos of schoolgirls waving their headscarves in the air as they sing protest songs in classrooms have gone viral, as have images of protesters fighting back against members of the formidable paramilitary group Basij.

The threat posed by these protests, analysts say, is existential to the regime, and is one of the biggest challenges the Islamic Republic has faced in years. 

“These are primarily very, very young people, a younger generation who have apparently completely lost faith that this Islamic Republic can be reformed,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice-president at the Washington, DC-based Quincy Institute. 

“They’re breaking from their previous generation who was seeking to reform the system from within,” Parsi added. “This new generation seems to not have any faith in that at all.”

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/middleeast/iran-protests-regime-intl/index.html

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Sri Lanka in turmoil as economic crisis spirals into political chaos

The island nation is in the worst economic tailspin of its independent history. Shortages of everything from food to cooking gas have resulted in Asia’s fastest inflation — with prices surging almost 30% — and spilling over into social unrest and political turmoil.

Protests, which had been building from late February in response to Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis in nearly 75 years of independence, have now morphed into a nationwide uprising. Protesters are demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and removal of the Rajapaksa family from politics.

The protest wave gained momentum as the results of the government’s financial and economic mismanagement became increasingly visible amid rapidly disappearing hard currency reserves and widespread shortages.

While successive post-independence governments’ ethnocentric policies undermined liberal democracy and led to Sri Lanka’s civil war, the extraconstitutional and extrajudicial strategies President Mahinda Rajapaksa adopted to defeat the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the tactics he has since pursued to perpetuate his tenure as president, and the malpractices he and his supporters have perpetrated in order to create a Rajapaksa family dynasty have ushered in a soft authoritarian dispensation that could very well lead to a hard authoritarian milieu.

Organised in large part through social media, including under the banner of #GoHomeGota, protesters have shifted from calling on the president to resign to calling for the whole Rajapaksa family – including the prime minister and former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa – to exit politics. They are also demanding thorough investigations into the alleged large-scale corruption and political crimes widely attributed to the ruling family and their associates. Since 9 April, thousands of peaceful protesters have been continuously camped outside the president’s offices in central Colombo. While the Rajapaksas’ reputation for political repression had earlier deterred many protesters, growing anger seems to have overcome fear.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/sri-lanka/sri-lankas-economic-meltdown-triggers-popular-uprising-and-political-turmoil

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Colombian protests

The peace process has opened up a space for other concerns and for other political debates

Demonstrations began on 28 April, pressuring the government and lawmakers into shelving tax and health reforms and leading to the resignation of former finance minister Alberto Carrasquilla

Since withdrawal of the tax reform at the start of the month, protester demands have expanded to include a basic income, opportunities for young people and an end to police violence.

Colombian protest leaders said Tuesday, June 15th, their organizations would suspend anti-government demonstrations which have caused political and economic upheaval during the last six weeks, but warned their fight for solutions to a range of social and economic demands would continue.

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Alexei Navalny protests: Moscow in lockdown as police detain thousands

Russia detains more than 5,000 at protests backing jailed Kremlin critic Navalny

Riot police broke up protests across Russia on Sunday in support of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, detaining more than 5,000 people who had braved the bitter cold and the threat of prosecution to demand he be set free.

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