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Occupation

Water Is Life

THE SKIFFS ARRIVED a few hours after sundown on September 18, a dark and moonless night in the Peruvian Amazon. They landed at several points along the broad Corrientes River, which flows south over the country’s densely forested border with Ecuador. Hundreds of indigenous Achuar men, women, and children, many carrying ceremonial spears, organized into units by clan and village. They then followed their apus, or chiefs, toward seven targets: the area’s lone paved road, a power plant, and five facilities for the pumping and processing of petroleum. The sites were occupied, their night staff escorted peacefully outside. By morning, the Achuar of the Corrientes controlled the local infrastructure of Lot 192, the country’s largest and most notorious oil block.

Israel Indicts Palestinian Teen Activist Ahed Tamimi

Bethlehem, occupied West Bank - Israeli authorities are seeking 12 charges against Ahed Tamimi, a prominent 16-year-old Palestinian activist filmed slapping and kicking two Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank. The teenager was detained on December 19, four days after the video showing her confronting the soldiers outside her family's home in the village of Nabi Saleh went viral. The incident occurred moments after Israeli forces had shot Ahed's 15-year-old cousin point-blank in the face with a rubber bullet. The wounded minor experienced severe internal bleeding and was put in a medically-induced coma for 72 hours. Ahed's 20-year-old cousin Nour, who also appeared in the video, as well as her mother Nariman, were arrested soon afterwards.

Free Ahed Tamimi!

Ahed Tamimi, 16 years old and a prominent activist in the occupied Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, whose courage along with that of her family in standing up to armed Israeli soldiers, land confiscation and settlement construction stealing the resources and even the well of their village has become world-renowned, was seized by occupation soldiers who invaded the Tamimi family home on the morning of 19 December 2017. Ahed’s father, Bassem, posted on Facebook that Ahed was targeted for arrest after she was attacked by Israeli media after she protested occupation soldiers in Nabi Saleh who shot a 14-year-old boy in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet; the boy, Mohammed Tamimi, is in a medically-induced coma.

Protesters Build Permanent Structure, Plan To Overwinter At Alton Gas Site

With second-floor sleeping bunks, shelves stocked with food and a crackling fire in the woodstove, Dale Andrew Poulette’s newly constructed straw bale home is the perfect place to spend the winter. Except for one thing — he’s trespassing. The new structure, at 625 Riverside Rd., just outside of Stewiacke, N.S., on the banks of the Shubenacadie River, sits on land owned by AltaGas, the company behind the Alton Natural Gas Storage project. The building, which was constructed over a one-month period this fall, “is on Alton property,” said company spokesperson Lori MacLean, “and it was built without the company’s permission.” That doesn’t discourage Poulette.

First Nations Occupy Fish Farms In British Columbia To Force Action

By Brandon Jordan for Waging Nonviolence - The sign outside the protest encampment on Midsummer Island in British Columbia, Canada, is a blunt summation of what its inhabitants — indigenous people from various First Nations tribes — have been trying to accomplish for the past two months: “Get Fish Farms Out.” Yet, due to a Supreme Court ruling issued last week, it is not the fish farms that must leave the island, but rather the demonstrators and their camp, which consists of two small houses with beds, solar panels and a replenishing supply of food. The court made its decision after receiving an injunction, or demand for removal request, by Marine Harvest, the Norwegian seafood company that operates the facility. Demonstrators were given three days to dismantle the camp and 30 days to leave the island — or risk arrest. As the decision was being handed down, more demonstrators gathered outside the court in Vancouver to tell reporters and supporters that they are still committed to their demand of removing fish farms on indigenous territory. “That doesn’t mean the occupation is over,” said Ernest Alfred, hereditary chief of a few First Nations tribes in British Columbia. “We just have to strategize and come up with a plan of relocation.” The plan that unfolded saw a handful of First Nations people remove and transport all their Midsummer Island supplies, including the homes, to another encampment at nearby Swanson Island, which is also the site of another Marine Harvest facility.

Idle No More In Solidarity With Indigenous Taiwanese

By Staff of Idle No More - Idle No More stands in solidarity with Indigenous Taiwanese who are currently occupying the 228 Peace Memorial Park/台北市二二八和平紀念公園. This current occupation has been for more than 260 days. INM calls for the Canadian government to impose immediate trade restrictions on Taiwan. Indigenous people have lived in Taiwan for at least 6,000 years. The languages they speak belong to the Austronesian language family. From Taiwan, people speaking Austronesian languages moved into the Pacific, settling islands from the Philippines to Indonesia, all the way from Hawaii and Easter Island to New Zealand and even Madagascar. Since the arrival of the first colonial settlers in Taiwan 400 years ago, tribal land has been shrinking with colonial regimes that include Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Han Chinese. Most tribal land is now government-owned, and some become privately-owned, by descendants of Han settlers. President Tsai Ing-wen apologized to the Indigenous peoples (August 1, 2016) and promised to designate indigenous traditional territory. According to a survey completed in 2007 by the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) under the Executive Yuan, indigenous traditional territory was around 1.8 million hectares of land.

Tent City Leader Blasts Pugh As City Is Moving Homeless Group

By Fern Shen for Baltimore Brew - For Samantha Smith, the last straw came at the gala fundraiser for the homeless that she attended Saturday at the invitation of Mayor Catherine Pugh. Seated near city officials and the $225-a-head VIP donors at the Lyric Theatre for the annual “Evening of Unexpected Delights” homeless benefit, Smith was shocked to hear her name called out from the stage. “I want to thank a good friend of mine, Samantha Smith, who’s with us this evening,” the mayor said. “Samantha is a homeless individual, but she’s also a leader in the homeless community.” Smith said she didn’t like Pugh identifying her as homeless (“belittling me”) to score points with the crowd. “She used me this weekend,” Smith fumed. “After all I’ve done to save your ass and cover your ass. . . We kept asking her for help and we got nothing.” Smith, the leader of the group that had staged a 10-day Tent City homeless protest action in front of City Hall in August, had previously defended Pugh. But she turned on the mayor yesterday, saying Pugh broke the promises she made when she persuaded the group to disband. Participants had agreed to move to a former school building in West Baltimore where, after a two-week assessment period, an appropriate housing plan would be developed for each person. Instead, after 65 days sleeping on cots in the dilapidated school gym, the group is going to be moved to separate men’s and women’s facilities run by Helping Up Mission, a “Christ-based” emergency shelter program in Jonestown.

Guatemala’s Indigenous Campesinos Occupy Capital To Protest Land Conflicts

By Jeff Abbott for Towards Freedom - On August 8, one hundred Q’eqchi Maya families from the Department of Alta Verapaz arrived to the historic center of Guatemala City, the nation’s capital, to establish a permanent presence in an encampment near the Presidential Palace. They have announced that they will remain there until the administration fulfills the agreement between the campesino communities and the government established in April 2015 to end agrarian conflicts within the department. “We are here in front of the National Palace because of the failure of the state to comply with the accords that came after many dialogues with state officials on the land conflicts in Alta Verapaz,” said Carlos Choc, a member of a Q’eqchi community within the Municipality of Coban, Alta Verapaz, and a representative from the Comité Campesino de Altiplano(CCDA), the organization that coordinated the occupation. “To this date, we do not have a response that is the benefit of the Q’eqchi communities,” Choc told Toward Freedom. “Because of this, our Q’eqchi communities have risen up to demand that [President Jimmy Morales] comply and give us a favorable response. We do not want any more dialogues on the conflict over land.” Black plastic tarps hang from ropes tied to the Guatemalan National Palace, creating a series of makeshift tents that have become the home for these families.

Resistance Of Al-Araqeeb Village: How Palestinian Bedouins Refused To Surrender 116 Times

By Ramzy Baroud for Toward Freedom - On August 1, the Palestinian Bedouin village of Al-Araqeeb was destroyed for the 116th time. As soon as Israeli bulldozers finished their ugly deed and soldiers began evacuating the premises, the village resident immediately began rebuilding their homes. 22 families, or about 101 residents, are estimated to live here. By now, they are all familiar with the painful routine, considering the first round of destruction took place in July 2010. It means that the village has been destroyed nearly 17 times per year, since then. And every single time, it was rebuilt, only to be destroyed again. If the repeated destruction of the village is an indication of Israel’s stubborn insistence to uproot Palestine’s Bedouins, the rebuilding is indicative of the tenacity of the Bedouin community in Palestine. But Al-Araqeeb is only symbolic of that historic fight. It would be no exaggeration to state that there is a war waged by Israel against Palestinian Bedouins. The aim is to destroy their culture and to force them into townships similar to those of Apartheid South Africa. The geographic space of that war extends from the Negev desert to the Southern Hebron Hills to Jerusalem. The epicenter of the ongoing fight is the village of Al-Araqeeb.

Guatemala’s Indigenous Campesinos Occupy Capitol Over Land Conflicts

By Jeff Abbott for Toward Freedom. On August 8, one hundred Q’eqchi Maya families from the Department of Alta Verapaz arrived to the historic center of Guatemala City, the nation’s capital, to establish a permanent presence in an encampment near the Presidential Palace. They have announced that they will remain there until the administration fulfills the agreement between the campesino communities and the government established in April 2015 to end agrarian conflicts within the department. “We are here in front of the National Palace because of the failure of the state to comply with the accords that came after many dialogues with state officials on the land conflicts in Alta Verapaz,” said Carlos Choc, a member of a Q’eqchi community within the Municipality of Coban, Alta Verapaz, and a representative from the Comité Campesino de Altiplano(CCDA), the organization that coordinated the occupation.

US Occupation Has Already Begun And Is Being Conducted By ExxonMobil

By Staff of Mission Verdad - According to Gulf Oil & Gas, Dutch oil holding company SBM Offshore NV has been granted a contract awarded by ExxonMobil, a U.S. company that owns 45 percent of the Stabroek Block located on the Atlantic front of the Essequibo through its subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited Atlantic, where the rich deposits of Liza-1 and Liza-2 were found. The CEO of the Dutch holding company Bruno Chabas commented on the contract, "We are proud that ExxonMobil has awarded the Liza contracts to SBM Offshore. Liza, the offshore field in Guyana, is one of the major oil discoveries in the industry over the past decade." However, this contract is not the first by ExxonMobil to accelerate its plans for oil and gas extraction in the territory claimed by Venezuela. In May, a subsidiary of the Italian oil company ENI named Saipem, took over the rights to carry out "the engineering, acquisition, construction, installation of associated bands, structures and bridges" to Liza-1, according to the World Oil website. Recently teleSUR, citing the U.S. Geological Survey, informed that the area concentrated in the "Liza Project" is the second largest untapped oil fields in the world. With this latest contract awarded, ExxonMobil seeks to produce 120,000 barrels of oil and 170 million cubic feet of natural gas, with a storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels of crude oil.

Hundreds Of Jews And Arabs March In Jerusalem Against Israeli Occupation

By Nir Hasson for Haaretz - Earlier Saturday, a Palestinian was shot dead after wounding two civilians and a border policeman with a knife in Jerusalem's Old City. One of the organizers, Itamar Avneri, said the incident "was a painful reminder of the price of the occupation. We convey wishes of swift recovery to the wounded, and hope we don't see any more such incidents or fear on the city's streets. This has to end." The march began at Gan Hasus in the city's center and concluded in the Old City with a rally near Jaffa Gate. Knesset Member Zehava Galon, the chairwoman of the Meretz party, addressed the rally, saying: "We can't keep the conflict with the Palestinians on the back burner, when the flame is on top of a barrel bomb. The stabbing attack in the Old City exposes the illusion that it's possible to deprive an entire people of rights and sovereignty without the desperation turning into horrible hatred and violence."

Never Obey Occupation: Legacy Of Bassel Al-Araj

By Budour Youssef Hassan for The Electronic Intifada - We will hear several accounts of what happened in the Ramallah area on 6 March 2017, when Bassel al-Araj was killed in an Israeli military raid. How long did the confrontation between Bassel and the Israeli soldiers last? Was the video published by Israel purporting to show the incident authentic? Did Bassel manage to injure any of the soldiers? We may never know. But one thing we can be sure of is that Bassel never surrendered. “The biggest insult against a martyr would be to say that he was obedient, submissive and polite in the face of his killer,” Bassel once said.

Free West Papua Political Prisoners Campaign Team

By Amy Frazier. Arlington, VA - The Free West Papua Political Prisoners Campaign Team is a team of nonviolent activists at George Mason University and the surrounding areas led by Herman Wainggai, former political prisoner and leader of Nonviolent Struggle in West Papua. West Papua is the Western half of the 2nd largest island in the world. It is located in the Pacific Ocean and borders the independent nation of Papua New Guinea. In 1962 after the New York Agreement, temporary authority of the formerly Dutch land was given to Indonesia against the wills of the indigenous peoples of West Papua. The United Nations “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 made West Papua the 26th providence of Indonesia. The name of this Act is deceiving however because the Indonesian government used the procedure of ‘musyawarah,’ which is a consensus of ‘elders,’ and the people of the country were not given a choice about the future of their country.

Haitian People’s Court Will Put 100 Years Of U.S. Occupation On Trial

By Staff of AlterPresse - July 28, 2017, is the deadline to deliver denounces to the symbolic People’s Court, which has been called to examine the 100 years of US occupation of Haiti (from 1915 to 2015). This initiative has been created thanks to a joint effort by many social organizations. From January to February 2017, the organizers will visit all of Haiti’s departments to create departmental committees, as reported by the representative of the Committee of Direction and Coordination of the People’s Court, Camille Chalmers, in a conference/debate on January 17, which was attended by online agency AlterPresse. Between February and May 2017, accusations will be made based on testimonies, scientific research and documentation provided by all the regions and sectors, Chalmers announced.

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