Experiments with truth: 7/27/09
- More than 3,000 villagers in eastern China blocked a highway and clashed with police while protesting alleged official corruption in a land compensation deal. One resident said thousands of people had been staging a sit-in on the land for nearly a week.
- A group of about 200 protesters from labor unions went to Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s office on Friday, demanding higher pay for city construction projects.
- Police used percussion grenades and fired into the air to disperse a protest that drew an estimated 1,000 people to the local mayor’s office in Kyrgyzstan after elections last week that opposition candidates say was rigged.
- Union leaders for Hyundai Motors in India said that over 90 percent of the company’s 1,600 workers at a factory near Chennai resorted to a sit-in strike last week in their ongoing labor dispute.
- The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe has declared itself unsatisfied with the pay raise proposed by the government to teachers and other public employees, saying its members will continue to boycott classes on Fridayspending a better offer from the state.
- In India, prisoners at Kalyan jail, tired of alleged harassment and corruption by the jail staff, have decided to go on an indefinite hunger strike to mark their protest against the unpalatable and unhygienic food.
- A strike called by separatists to protest the arrest of their leaders shut down parts of revolt-hit Indian Kashmir on Saturday.
- The New York City Anti-Violence Project, an LGBT advocacy organization devoted to the prevention of violence held a rally in Queens, New York yesterday to protest the rising numbers of queer bashings in the area.
- At a protest in Haiti, about 1,500 supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide carried pictures of the bespectacled leader and sang ”Happy Birthday” at his Port-au-Prince house last week, while denouncing President Rene Preval, a former ally they now consider a traitor for not bringing Aristide home.
