• Four Greenpeace activists breached a 1,650-feet security perimeter around an oil rig off western Greenland  yesterday. They then climbed up the rig and fastened themselves to it, effectively forcing it to stop drilling. As of this morning, they were still suspended 15 meters above the frigid Arctic waters of Baffin Bay.

• Russian police have detained more than 60 people demonstrating at a freedom of assembly rally in Moscow yesterday. The demonstrators chanted “Russia without Putin!” as the police led them away.

• Nearly 100 Afghan asylum seekers broke out of a detention centre in northern Australia on Wednesday to protest the long delay in processing their refugee applications.

• Four tree sitters have created a platform 100 feet up in the redwoods of Jacoby Creek California to prevent loggers from clearcutting the beautiful second growth forest.

• The Mobilization for Climate Justice West turned out 150 people on Monday afternoon in San Francisco’s financial district for a march on the offices of Chevron, the Environmental Protection Agency and BP. Their message was for Big Oil to stop harming our environment and communities and to pay for the damage they’ve caused.

• A small contingent of super heroes and one Sith Lord assembled outside the steps of City Hall Tuesday to protest the arrests made by LAPD of costumed characters along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

• Honduran police arrested some 150 people while using tear gas and water cannons to disperse a demonstration by teachers, students and others in Tegucigalpa on Aug. 27, the 23rd day of a strike by teachers over their pension fund and other issues.

Since the recent passage of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, scheduled to go into effect on July 29, those of us working for social justice in the United States have a rare opportunity to register a particularly effective form of protest.  The inherently unjust nature of this legislation presents conscientious individuals with a real chance to go back to what many might say civil disobedience was originally intended to do: promote the repeal of an unjust law by openly and nonviolently breaking the law itself.

This is what has come to be known today as direct civil disobedience.  It is distinguished from indirect civil disobedience, where the law being broken is not itself the target of the protest.  Not many would argue, for instance, that a law prohibiting people from sitting in the middle of the street is unjust.  When used to draw attention to an issue of social importance, however, violating this law with a willingness to accept the consequences may be an effective tool.  Although the merit of such tactics can vary depending on any number of factors, to score a direct protest by violating an unjust law is very likely to be viewed as more legitimate.

The distinction is useful because in recent years we in the United States haven’t had to worry much about severely repressive, overtly dictatorial laws.  Not so very long ago, in certain parts of the country, violating an unjust law was as simple as ordering food at a lunch counter, sitting near the front on a city bus, or going swimming at a public beach.  More common in the US today we find people courting arrest by blocking entrances to buildings, occupying government offices, or chaining themselves to fences, seeking to address an injustice more or less unrelated to the law actually being transgressed.  Since these injustices don’t always allow for direct, public defiance, we try to create that tenuous link between issue and protest method as best we can.  But while indirect civil disobedience always beats inaction, from a strategic standpoint, if the opportunity is there, direct beats indirect every time.  And with this new Arizona law, the opportunity is definitely there.

Indeed, not since the end of the draft in 1973 has there been a law in the United States that seems to render itself so well to direct civil disobedience.  Arizona SB 1070 requires non-citizens to keep registration documents on them at all times, and forces police officers to inquire about immigration status during any kind of arrest or routine stop if they encounter “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be in the country illegally.  In addition, the new law gives police leeway to arrest someone solely on the basis of there being probable cause that they may be undocumented, at which point they’re to be turned over directly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This basically boils down to the police in Arizona having new license to stop anyone looking remotely Hispanic – for no other reason than that they look remotely Hispanic – demand papers from them, and take them into custody if satisfactory documents are not immediately produced.  Predictably this has led some people, such as Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger Mahony, to draw parallels to the lives of those in Europe forced to live under the Nazi régime.  Additionally – and this concerns all of us – the new Arizona law makes it a crime to “transport or move”, or “conceal, harbor or shield” undocumented immigrants, reminding me more of something out of the Fugitive Slave Acts from this country’s dark past.  Against such blatantly unjust, potentially far-reaching legislation, at least we’re armed with a chance for everyone to participate in its direct disobedience, instead of just abandoning our undocumented brothers and sisters to their fate.

In a relatively short amount of time, Martin Luther King, Jr. became somewhat of an expert on unjust laws.  In a speech he delivered before the Fellowship of the Concerned in 1961, King defined an unjust law as “a code that the majority inflicts upon the minority, which that minority had no part in enacting or creating, because that minority had no right to vote in many instances.”  Although close to 50 years old, this definition holds up in modern-day Arizona quite well.  The undocumented minority, having virtually no recourse to its voice being heard, is at the mercy of the majority – in this case that of the Arizona Senate – 60 percent Republican, and 100 percent white.

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• In North Carolina, a thousand marchers from the state NAACP, local churches, student groups and civil rights organizations took to downtown Raleigh streets on Tuesday morning, rallying at the State Capitol to protest the dismantling of a Wake school diversity policy they believe will lead to de facto resegregation. Afterwards, nineteen protesters, including the leader of the North Carolina NAACP, were arrested at Wake County school headquarters in an act of civil disobedience.

• On Saturday, an estimated 2,000 farmers in Taiwan began their protest against government expropriation of their land and spent the night on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building. They turned part of the wide road into a field by rolling out patches covered with plants while also paying their respects to farming deities.

• About 150 Jordanian activists demonstrated before the Egyptian embassy in Amman on Tuesday to protest Cairo’s refusal to allow a humanitarian convoy to reach the besieged Gaza Strip.

• On Monday, hundreds of teachers, councilors and pupils have protested over the axing of England’s school rebuilding programme. Led by trade unions, the Save Our Schools lobby urged ministers to reconsider the move which led to the halting of 735 school projects.

• Former employees of the closed Amonsito factory in Cairo have ended their sit-in, following Wednesday’s tentative agreement for overdue early retirement payment to the workers from Banque Misr, the factory’s creditor.

• In Greece, 170 migrants detained in the Samos detention camp started a collective hunger strike in an effort to stop their deportation.

• Starting last Wednesday, thousands of people in eastern China protested for at least five days against local authorities which they accuse of withholding land compensation.

• In Chile, more than 20 Mapuche political prisoners began a hunger strike Monday. The prisoners, jailed in Concepción and Temuco, took note of the recent prisoner releases in Cuba and began the strike in hope that President Sebastián Piñera would take notice.

Over at Alternet, Devona Walker has an interesting piece about how the rally that Glenn Beck is staging at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in August to unveil his “100 year plan” for America is only the latest attempt by conservatives to claim King as one of their own. For example:

In 2006, the ultraconservative think-tank Heritage Foundation also took to spinning King’s legacy. In an essay titled “Martin Luther King’s Conservative Legacy,” it directed conservatives to lay claim to King.

“King was no stalwart conservative, yet his core beliefs, such as the power and necessity of faith-based association and self-government based on absolute truth and moral law, are profoundly conservative,” wrote Carolyn Garris. “Modern liberalism rejects these ideas, while conservatives place them at the center of their philosophy. Despite decades of its appropriation by liberals, King’s message was fundamentally conservative.”

[...]

Conservatives cherry-pick and exploit particular phrases, or quotes, while entirely ignoring the totality of what King stood for, what he fought against and why he died.

One snippet, in particular, seems to routinely find its way into conservative talking points. It’s taken from a 1963 address in which King said we should be judged by “the content of our character.” That simple phrase was re-branded and re-packaged into a rallying cry against affirmative action.

In 1994, right-wing media critic David Horowitz said on “Crossfire”: “Martin Luther King, in my view, was a conservative because he stood up for, you know, belief in the content of your character–the value that conservatives defend today.”

In 1991, Charles Krauthammer pitted King against diversity. Progressives, he wrote, “have traded King’s dream for something called diversity….It is the opponents of race-conscious public policy who today speak in the name of values that King championed.”

Then, in 1996, when Gov. Mike Foster abolished affirmative action, he presented the act as somehow being a fulfillment of King’s dream. In fact, one of the original astroturf groups waging an ongoing battle to repeal affirmative action cynically goes by the name American Civil Rights Institute.

Another effort to distort Martin Luther King is being undertaken with the construction of a corporate-funded memorial to the Civil Rights leader on the National Mall in Washington, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2011. While these efforts to co-opt King are infuriating, I still doubt that in the end they will be successful. One doesn’t need to read very deeply into his biography or writings to discover how radical he truly was. And unless there is some Orwellian rewriting of history, that is something that will never change.

Last week, I had the good fortune of attending the Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict at Tufts University in Boston, hence my absence from this site. The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), which organized the week-long institute, did a phenomenal job in bringing together some of the most inspiring theorists and practitioners of nonviolent action to share their knowledge and experiences in the field.

One of the highlights for me, was getting a chance to hear Rev. James Lawson speak on the opening night and the conversation that we had later in the week. Rev. Lawson was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States who taught Martin Luther King Jr. and many other leaders of the struggle about nonviolence, and organized the student-led sit-ins in Nashville in 1959 that led to the desegregation of the city.

Fortunately, ICNC has made Rev. Lawson’s talk (video above) and several others available online. I’ll share at least a couple other presentations as the week goes on, along with my reflections on the experience as a whole.

• Eight Roman Catholic women staged a one-minute demonstration for women’s ordination yesterday in St Peter’s Square before police intervened.

• Workers gathered outside the annual general meeting of Taiwanese IT giant Foxconn in Taipei yesterday to protest a rash of employee suicides.

• Hundreds of civil servants rallied outside the finance ministry building in Madrid yesterday to protest government austerity measures. Tens of thousands more stayed home from work.

• Concerned citizens of Lexington, Kentucky rallied at a local branch on Sunday to protest PNC Bank’s financing of mountaintop removal coal mining. They released a banner inside attached to some helium balloons, which said “PNC + Your Money = Toxic Tap Water.”

• Greenpeace activists cut fishing nets to release endangered bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Malta on Monday.

• Approximately 650 workers from the Arco Steel company in Sadat City, Egypt continued their strike for the eighth consecutive day yesterday to protest the breach of a contract.

• Several Yemenis staged a sit-in in front of the Prime Minister office in Sanaa yesterday to protest the “indiscriminate” shelling of the southern town of Daleh.

The recent attack on the Mavi Marmara has inspired discussions of the techniques of nonviolence in the mainstream media. Here at Waging Nonviolence, we have already lamented what appears to have been a lack of discipline on the part of the protesters. However, an interesting commentary by Lane Wallace in The Atlantic shows how misunderstandings about the basic principles of nonviolence play a role in skewing coverage of and opinion about the events.

Information is still murky, but what Wallace gets right in her piece is that Gandhi was insistent that one should always defend oneself with nonviolence, not physical force, if one is able. When the Israeli military raided the ship, they hoped to send the message that the blockade of Gaza would remain firm. In the aftermath, Israel has claimed the activists had terrorist connections.

By breaking from strict nonviolent discipline, the activists played into this narrative, giving it a measure of plausibility and shifting the field of interpretation. Wallace says, expressing the sentiments of many:

[T]here is at best a naivete, and at worst a disingenuousness, in provoking a fight and then complaining noisily that a fight broke out. The activists decided to take on the Israeli military. It doesn’t matter whether the military should have resisted their passage to Gaza, in a moral sense; the fact remains that Israelis had been very clear that they were going to take whatever measures were necessary to stop the boats. So the activists knew they were going to meet resistance. […] There are no lack of individuals, groups, or nations who use violence as a means to an end. But if you decide to step in that world, you can’t complain when your opponent uses violence in return.

Wallace is sympathetic to nonviolent activism and her piece is an indication of the extent to which the Free Gaza movement has lost control over the interpretation of the events. Even while inspiring worldwide condemnation of the unjust Gaza blockade, what has most disturbed me is the character of much of the outrage it has inspired. The Turkish president’s assertion that Turkey will “never forgive” the killing of the ten protesters, protests in Ankara featuring hardliners burning Israeli flags and offering chants of “death to Israel.” This in turn has predictably inspired protests by Israeli hardliners equating Turkey and Hamas and claiming, “We came with paint guns and got lynched.” Israel’s bellicose actions and statements are of course responsible for this, but the activists on the Mavi Marmara bear some responsibility as well.

However, Wallace makes a critical, faulty assumption in her analysis of nonviolence and one that is frequent among those who are casual observers of it. She writes that the problem with the flotilla was that it “went into the confrontation looking for conflict, to draw attention to their cause.” Citing Gandhi and King she says that “[q]uiet, uncomplaining courage is harder and less satisfying than provoking an opponent.” Unlike the Gaza protesters, when “Martin Luther King, John Lewis, the Freedom Riders and the rest of the non-violent protesters for civil rights set out, they knew what they were walking into. And if we admire their courage, it’s because they walked into a hailstorm without so much as a word of complaint.”

Both Dr. King and Gandhi were very keen to use nonviolence to inspire confrontation and they did so in conjunction with some of the most profound words of complaint the world has ever known. Even in particular instances of direct action, “complaining” was important (think of C.T. Vivian confronting Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma). They were also persistently held responsible for being agitators who caused violence. The purpose of nonviolence is to put the violence that is the lifeblood of segregation and colonialism on display and excavate the hatred and fear that drives it. The problem with the flotilla was not in provoking and revealing the character of Israel’s death grip on Gaza. The provocation worked perfectly in demonstrating that only deadly force can support Israel’s current policies. The problem is that by failing to stick to the principles of nonviolence the Free Gaza movement failed to take the opportunity that was given to them.

Nonviolent means usually have a more direct relationship to political outcomes than violent means. When militants fire rockets into Israel for the purpose of protesting the Gaza blockade, the substance of what they are doing is completely divorced from the political outcome. When a flotilla of aid tries to break the embargo, there is consistency between the means and the ends. But attacking commandos—even those trying to stop a flotilla—is not. Maintaining consistency in means and ends can be extremely difficult, but it is why Gandhi thought the methods were more truthful.

Wallace both underestimates how difficult it is to maintain nonviolent discipline in the face of highly trained uses of violence and misunderstands the purpose of nonviolent protests. But her impressions of nonviolence are not uncommon and something those of us who use nonviolent means should keep in mind going forward.

The Free Gaza Movement’s Freedom Flotilla was attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters late last night. There are varying reports on the tragic aftermath. The New York Times is reporting (by way of the Israeli Trade Minister) between 14 and 16 killed, as well as 30 more injured. Free Gaza, however, just released a statement saying two were killed and 31 injured. Here is how they described the horrifying action:

Under darkness of night, Israeli commandoes dropped from a helicopter onto the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began to shoot the moment their feet hit the deck. They fired directly into the crowd of civilians asleep… Streaming video shows the Israeli soldiers shooting at civilians, and our last SPOT beacon said, “HELP, we are being contacted by the Israelis.”

We know nothing about the other five boats. Israel says they are taking over the boats.

It’s clearly too soon to predict anything, but a moment has most certainly been created. Israel has exposed its willingness to break international law and fire upon unarmed civilians in a much more dramatic and potentially costly fashion than perhaps ever before. It’s not just Palestinians this time, but a group far more difficult to sweep under the carpet:  international activists, the likes of which include a Nobel Laureate and an 85 year old Holocaust survivor. Already, the story is the lead on most mainstream media websites.

Meanwhile, Israel is trying to justify its use of deadly force, saying its soldiers saw weapons on board the ship. But according to Free Gaza, there is video evidence that shows otherwise. Israel knows that if the truth sticks, the Palestinian rights movement will receive a strong shot in the arm. Already, protests have begun in Turkey, where, according to Al Jazeera:

Thousands of Turkish protesters tried to storm the Israeli consulate in Istanbul soon after the news of the operation broke. The protesters shouted “Damn Israel” as police blocked them.

Turkey is also reported to have summoned the Israeli ambassador to lodge a protest.

“(The interception on the convoy) is unacceptable … Israel will have to endure the consequences of this behaviour,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.

As this moment unfolds, it is important that the memory of the nonviolent activists killed yesterday be honored with a commitment to nonviolence by all Palestinian rights activists. It is the only way any good will come from this tragedy.

The Free Gaza Movement has set sail on its ninth mission to Gaza in an effort less about the delivery of aid and more about posing a challenge to the ongoing Israeli siege and the “discourse of power” that gives the slow-acting international community control over Palestinians’ future.

The past three attempts have been blocked violently by the Israeli Navy, but according to Ewa Jasiewicz, a coordinator with the Free Gaza Movement, the activists are upping the ante by traveling with four vessels (instead of their customary one or two). There are 700 passengers and some 5,000 tons of reconstruction materials and medical equipment on board. They are also sailing a path that never enters Israeli territorial waters. But even so, as Jasiewicz pointed out, they are still a military target.

The Israeli government has responded to the “sea intifada” coming its way with saber rattling and accusations of serving Hamas. Israel has proscribed the Turkish human rights and relief group Insani Vardim Vakafi (IHH). IHH is responsible for sending a cargo ship and passenger ship in the Freedom Flotilla. Israel has accused it and Free Gaza of “supporting terrorism.” Half the Israeli navy is set to challenge the mission, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the helm commanding the operation in person. The air force is on standby and “diplomatic pressure” is being applied behind the scenes. The message is clear from Israel: “We will stop you and we will use force to stop you.”

Jasiewicz and the Free Gaza Movement recognize what they’re up against and see the danger as part of their mission.

When Rachel Corrie stood in front of the bulldozer driver that killed her, she acted on radical trust — that the soldier would see her humanity. She lost, because the soldier had lost his humanity. Yet Rachel’s faith abides in each of us. Because if our oppressors are losing their humanity then we must never stop showing them that we have it. We are undertaking this mission in the spirit of those who have fought and sacrificed their lives for our collective humanity, and to remind everyone who can see of the need to act on it.

• Thousands rallied at the Victoria legislature in Canada last week called for greater protection of wild salmon and friendlier aquafarming methods.

• 15 protesters were arrested during a sit-in against the Arizona ban on ethnic studies classes on Wednesday.

• Thousands of Afghans protested in the eastern city of Jalalabad against the alleged executions of a number of Afghan refugees in Iran.

• About two hundred protesters marched through Reno, Nevada against what they say is an epidemic of local jobs going to out-of-state workers. Nevada’s unemployment rate is 13.4%, the second highest in the country.

• Protesters gathered in twenty cities throughout the U.S. on Wednesday against the BP oil spill.  They called for the government to seize BP’s assets in order to pay for the damage of the Gulf Coast spill.

• Hundreds of protesters marched through Sulaimaniyah, Iraq this week to protest the murder of Kurdish journalist Sardasht Othman.

• Dozens of people rallied in front of the Irish parliament on Tuesday, clashing with police as they protested bank bailouts.

• Disabled athletes protested in New Delhi Wednesday, calling for better management and training facilities for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in India.

The Week in Green with Hamid Dabashi, a weekly broadcast supporting the civil rights movement in Iran, recently conducted an interview with Cornel West. Using his characteristic soulful intellectualism, West called the Green Movement, “the most significant and exemplary movement for justice in the world today” and encouraged its leaders to “try to make some connection to those on the inside of the system.” He also addressed the importance of economics and involving the poor and working people of Iran.

• There were more than 100 demonstrations around the United States this weekend to protest the Arizona immigration law.  In DC, thousands of people supported 4 students who marched all the way from Florida, and high-profile activists including Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Il) were arrested.  Other marches took place in Chicago, Maine, San Francisco, and Denver, as well as many other locations.

• Thousands gathered to march in Havana, Cuba on Saturday for International Workers Day, also known as May Day.

• 200,000 people demonstrated in Istanbul for May Day on Saturday to demand more secure employment and better working conditions.  It was the first approved May Day gathering in thirty years.  Other demonstrations took place in Kolkata, Jakarta, and around the world.

• Teachers picketed in the Philippines on Wednesday to demand a better insurance system.

• Separatists staged a sit-in in India on Saturday to demand the creation of a separate state of Vidarbha.

• About two hundred Socialist lawmakers and supporters began a hunger strike in Albania this weekend to demand a recount of an allegedly rigged election.

• Protests continue in Greece in the face of extreme budget cuts as the economy verges on collapse.

• Italian unions shut down opera houses this weekend to protest an emergency decree that would affect arts funding.

• On Wednesday, scrap metal dealers in Jamaica protested a government decision to shut down the trade.

• 200 people gathered in Montana to protest a pro-Nazi film screened by a white supremacist group.

• An Albuquerque woman was on day 16 of a hunger strike on Friday to raise awareness about refugees who flee violence for poverty in the U.S.

More than 25,000 people gathered in Montgomery, Alabama 45 years ago on this date to protest racial discrimination—the culmination of a month of hardships many now refer to as the turning point for the Civil Rights Movement.

Several hundred marchers had just completed the 54 mile trek from Selma as part of the historic Alabama Freedom March. The New York Times captured the moment with a front page story, mostly centered on Dr. King’s address to the crowd:

He referred to the tumultuous events at Selma in the last two months, during which time the voting-rights campaign that he began there turned into a general protest against racial injustice, with two men dead and scores injured.

“Yet Selma, Alabama, has become a shining moment in the conscience of man,” he said. “If the worst in American life lurked in the dark streets, the best of American instincts arose passionately from across the nation to overcome it.”

“The confrontation of good and evil compressed in the tiny community of Selma, generated the massive power that turned the whole nation to a new course,” he said.

“Alabama has tried to nurture and defend evil, but the evil is choking to death in the dusty roads and streets of this state.”

Dr. King spoke with passion, and the thousands sitting in the street beneath him responded with repeated outbursts of approval.

Several times he urged his followers to continue their support of nonviolent demonstrations, with the aim of achieving understanding with the white community.

“Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man,” he said, “but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society that can live with its conscience.”

He ended his address with a peroration on the theme, “How long must justice by crucified and truth buried?” a spirited quotation of a verse of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and finally a burst of “Glory, hallelujah,” repeated four times.

The crowd rose to its feet in one great surge, and the applause and cheering reverberated through the Capitol grounds.

• Four Czech activists climbed the Krusnohorske theatre in Teplice on Saturday to protest the planned cancellation of coal mining limits by the Social Democrats, who were hosting a conference inside.

• Hundreds of demonstrators gathered near the Erez (Beit Hanoun) border crossing on Sunday to mark the 1,000-day Israeli blockade imposed on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

• Around 1,000 men and women gathered outside the Jerusalem home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday to protest gender discrimination on some bus routes in ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, where women are made to sit at the back.

• About 1,000 people took part in an anti-nuclear protest in Edinburgh calling for the scrapping of Trident, saying money would be better spent public sector jobs and services.

• More than 300 Bahraini fishermen and their relatives demonstrated outside the Fishermen’s Protection Society in Muharraq on Saturday to protest the rapid decline in marine stocks due to a lack of regulation for fishing licenses and sand dredging of the seabed.

• A few hundred people gathered in the streets of Valletta, Malta on Saturday to protest the lack of enforcement of environment protection laws, such as encroachment on outside development zones, illegal hunting, air pollution, unauthorized groundwater extraction and other local issues.

• In Evansville, Indiana, a crowd estimated at 5,000 strong poured onto the shoulder and parking lot of the Evansville plant, protesting Whirlpool’s decision to shut down and ship jobs to Mexico.

• Carrefour SA’s 116 stores in Belgium were closed Saturday because of a strike over planned job cuts, said a company spokesman who put the resulting sales loss at the company-owned outlets at 14 million euros ($19 million).

• Scores of Jordanian politicians and trade union members staged a sit-in at the Trade Unions Complex in Amman on Saturday to denounce Israel’s addition of two West Bank holy sites to a list of Jewish heritage centers.

• Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa of Mosul led over 1,000 Iraqi Catholics in a silent protest on February 28 to demand that the government act to put a stop to violence against Christians there.

• In Nepal, the 48-hour sit-in protest of the Civil Movement for Democracy and Peace (CMDP), which began from Thursday in front of the Constituent Assembly building, to urge political parties to draft the constitution within the given time frame, concluded on Saturday at 8 am.

• Several Cuban dissidents say they will refuse food in protest at the death earlier this week of a jailed government opponent. Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on Tuesday in a hospital in the capital Havana after a hunger strike of 85 days. His death triggered international protests and Cuban President Raul Castro issued an expression of regret.

• Three Chinese death-row inmates who say they were tortured into confessing to crimes they didn’t commit have staged a hunger strike to draw attention to their case.

• Thousands of adherents of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) marched in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa Feb. 25 to protest the slaying of civil resistance leaders under what they still consider to be the “de facto regime” of President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo despite the change in government last month. The rally concluded in front of the National Congress building, where the march was blocked by a military cordon.

• Hundreds of Dutch activists have walked out of a Mass in protest at a Roman Catholic policy of denying communion to practising homosexuals.

• On Thursday, protesting Guatemalan teachers in Melchor de Mencos blocked the Melchor Bridge with their bodies to stop vehicular passage through the border between Guatemala and Belize. According to union president Zetina, who spoke on behalf of the teachers, they are demanding a 16% salary increase from their Government, in addition to proper renovation of school buildings.

• Thirty-eight Jamaican women — all of them asylum seekers, some of whom have lived in the UK for as long as 10 years — are on hunger strike in holding facilities in the United Kingdom, in protest of their imminent deportation to Jamaica.

• Tens of thousands of protesters calling themselves the Purple People took to the streets of Rome on the weekend in a sign of mounting opposition to the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The group, Il Popolo Viola, wore purple sweaters and scarves, Berlusconi masks or striped prison dress to protest against what they say is the undermining of Italian democracy by Mr Berlusconi in his battle with the country’s legal system.