State Violence

Sudan Coup: The Names And Faces Of The Protesters Killed

November 28, 2021 Chloé Benoist And Frank Andrews, Middle East Eye. Educate! coup, State Violence, Sudan, Wars and Militarism

On 25 October, Sudan's top general, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, declared a state of emergency in the country, ousting the government and detaining the country’s civilian leadership, including Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. The military takeover, which upended a two-year transition to civilian rule, was widely denounced by critics as a coup, and sparked a nationwide protest movement that has been violently repressed by armed forces. One month later, the independent Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD) has tallied the names of 42 protesters who have been killed between 21 October - one of the first protests against the army’s already clear ambitions to claim power - and Thursday 25 November.

A World Without Police Is More Possible (And Necessary) Than You Think

November 2, 2021 Stephen Janis, The Real News Network. Create! Police, Police Abolition, Public safety, State Violence

Calls to “defund the police” reverberated throughout communities across the US in the summer of 2020, when millions took to the streets to protest a brutal, unchecked, and racist system of police violence and control. Then came the backlash. Since the initial push by activists and protestors to get the public to consider alternatives to endlessly increasing police spending, a forceful chorus has pushed in the opposite direction, demanding more funding for more police who should be given more power over our lives. “Defund the police” has been criticized for being not only a “bad slogan” but a political pipe dream that fails to reckon with the messy realities of maintaining “public safety.” However, as Geo Maher argues in his latest book, A World without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete, America’s policing system is a demonstrably terrible way to keep people and communities safe.

CIA Conspiring To Murder Julian Assange Jeopardise US Prosecution Case

October 4, 2021 Tom Coburg, The Canary. Educate! CIA, Extradition, Julian Assange, State Violence

The US prosecution of Julian Assange has been dealt another blow following revelations that the CIA plotted the kidnap and rendition or murder of the WikiLeaks founder. The revelations also directly implicate Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and secretary of state, and US president Donald Trump. Separately, there’s evidence of how cyber activists foiled a 2012 attempt by British police to break into and enter the Ecuadorian embassy where Assange had sought asylum. In April 2017, Pompeo publicly declared that “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service”. Arguably, that could be interpreted as an invitation to the CIA and other US agencies to take action against Assange and other WikiLeaks staffers.

New Evidence In Ayotzinapa Disappearance Case

September 30, 2021 Tanya Wadhwa, Peoples Dispatch. Educate! Ayotzinapa 43, Mexico, State Violence

On September 21, five days before the seventh anniversary of the forced disappearance of 43 students of the Rural Teachers’ College in the town of Ayotzinapa, Mexico, the federal authorities revealed new evidence in the case, which contradicted the official version of the truth presented by the previous government. At a press conference, the special prosecutor for the case, Omar Gómez Trejo, and the Undersecretary for Human Rights, Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez, reported that the search for evidence in the La Carnicería ravine located in Cocula town, in the state of Guerrero, had concluded. They reported that in the past two years of investigation in the ravine, located 800 meters from the Cocula garbage dump, around 200 human skeletal remains were discovered in an area of 8,000 square meters.

Denver Refuses To Negotiate, Sweeps Indigenous Encampment

September 18, 2021 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. Educate! Denver, Homelessness, Indigenous Activism, State Violence

Denver, CO – Under the hardline stance of Mayor Michael Hancock, Denver continues to sweep unhoused encampments—more than 80 this year alone—ignoring countless requests from unhoused residents and their advocates to stop, and refusing to negotiate any alternatives. Outside the Four Winds American Indian Council building in the Baker neighborhood, that cycle continued when, despite multiple attempts by Four Winds and other advocates to find some common ground and a different solution, the city swept a predominantly Indigenous encampment on August 31. “It’s kind of unfortunate that the Mayor decided that he’s going to say that [the encampment] is unsafe and unclean without even being here, without even visiting and seeing it first-hand and being willing to sit down with our relatives and hear their stories and even break bread with them or anything like that.”

2020 Sets ‘Stark’ Record For Murders Of Environmental Activists

September 16, 2021 The Energy Mix. Educate! Activism, Environment, Murder, State Violence

A record 227 activists working to protect environmental and land rights were murdered in 2020, says the latest in a series of annual reports from Global Witness. “Almost a third of the murders were reportedly linked to resource exploitation—logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness, hydroelectric dams, and other infrastructure,” writes BBC News in its coverage of the research. Global Witness calculated that, since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, an average of four activists have been murdered every week. And “shocking” as that number is, Global Witness says an accelerating crackdown on journalists means the reporting likely falls short of the reality on the ground.

The Movement To De-Cop The Campus

September 8, 2021 Emily Rich, In These Times. Resist! Education, Police, Police Abolition, State Violence

Police abolition has become a national conversation since the George Floyd uprisings. Many university police chiefs are encouraging the misconception, however, that campus police are somehow different from other police forces — despite their long history of racist violence. To take just one example, a campus police officer at the University of California, Los Angeles shot and wounded a Black man he assumed was unhoused in 2003; in 2009, that same officer repeatedly used a Taser on an Iranian American student studying in the library. But police violence is not confined to these dramatic incidents. It appears in the routine, everyday functions of policing. UCLA police logs reveal, for example, that campus police stop and arrest Black and Latino people at higher rates than their white counterparts.

Popular Resistance In The Age Of Neoliberal War

September 4, 2021 Evan King And Pambana Gutto Bassett, Counter Punch. Resist! Colombia, National Strike, Neoliberalism, State Violence

Since April 28 hundreds of thousands of Colombians have taken to the streets to demand the end to neoliberal reforms, chanting “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido”. Now, a month later their joint call has grown into a generalized rejection of the neoliberal and far-right government of Ivan Duque. His government is polled as the least popular in recent Colombian history, already a low bar for a State that has waged an ongoing war against its people.

On Contact: A Different Kind Of War

August 22, 2021 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Mexico, Migration, Neoliberalism, State Violence

On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses the plight of everyday people victimized by the hardships of life in Mexico and Central America with author and journalist J. Malcolm Garcia. His new book is ‘A Different Kind of War: Uneasy Encounters in Mexico and Central America’. A collection of essays informed by grief and anger, the book reveals the varied and distinctive voices of those families fleeing the violence of Honduras, Mexican reporters covering gang conflict in Juarez, and children living off the refuse of a landfill.

Strikers Across Colombia Are Demanding Transformational Change

June 28, 2021 Tom Power and Cruz Bonlarron Martínez, Labor Notes. Resist! Colombia, National Strike, Police, State Violence

What started as a Colombian protest against a regressive tax bill has become a national strike against police brutality and poverty. The administration of President Ivan Duque has already pulled back the tax reform and the finance minister has resigned, but people are angry and marches and road blocks continue. Unions, student groups, and other organizations have formed a National Strike Committee which is negotiating with the government, demanding transformational change. Among the strike committee’s demands are guaranteed health care during the pandemic, a universal basic income, and a commitment to protecting domestic industries. Protesters are blocking roads and commerce to create leverage, which the government claims is causing shortages of basic goods.

Police Brutality: How Protesters Resist State Violence Around The World

June 8, 2021 Progressive International. Strategize! Police, Self Defense, State Violence, Wars and Militarism

Greece has been in national lockdown on and off for the last year, with the current lockdown reaching five months. Civil liberties and freedom of movement have been considerably restricted through a number of emergency measures such as a night curfew. People are only allowed to leave their houses for a limited time and with a specific reason, after sending an SMS to the relevant monitoring authority. The police have been charged with enforcing these measures, leading to many incidents of abuse of power. At the same time, the government has passed unpopular legislation to police academic institutions and has unconstitutionally criminalised the freedom to protest. The reaction of the police to any form of protest – from healthcare workers asking for more PPE to anti-fascist/pro-democracy actions to recent student protests – has been zero-tolerance and often the excessive use of violence.

Torture sites and mass graves reported in Colombia

June 1, 2021 Dominic Gustavo, WSWS. Educate! Colombia, Latin America, State Violence, Torture

A May 23 report prepared by the human rights organization Justicia y Paz stated that fascistic paramilitary groups, which operate in concert with the far-right and US-backed regime of Colombian President Ivan Duque, have created torture sites and mass graves in an attempt to suppress protests in the city of Cali, which has been the epicenter of continuing countrywide demonstrations.

Update On Cali And African Liberation Day

May 31, 2021 Black Alliance for Peace. Educate! Africa, Black Liberation, Colombia, State Violence

Saturday morning, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) got word the neoliberal, right-wing Colombian state was deploying its military into the predominantly Afro-Colombian city of Calí. To top it off, the internet was not working. That prompted us to put out an alert on Twitter. Later in the day, we heard from our folks that the internet appeared to be up and running again. But we remain vigilant because the national government had deployed the military to Calí and other cities after issuing a decree on Friday forcing governors and mayors to cooperate with the militarized response to the national strike. This move came after a month of unrest and severe state repression sparked by opposition to the government’s attempt to impose an austerity plan that would have transferred the economic crisis created by neoliberalism onto the backs of the working class.

Colombia: An Observer’s Account

May 30, 2021 Teri Mattson, Peoples Dispatch. Resistance Report Colombia, Human Rights, Miitarization, State Violence

The International Mission of Solidarity and Human Rights Observation arrived to Colombia on May 25 to verify denouncements of human rights violations committed by the Colombian forces during the National Strike. Teri Mattson of CODEPINK who is part of the delegation sends a report from Pereira where she and other members of the mission have been meeting with human rights organizations and movements.

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