Experiments with truth: 7/2/10

The Editors July 2, 2010

At least 15,000 protesting garment factory workers blocked key roads in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka Wednesday, the latest in a string of protests over poor conditions and low wages, which now average $25 a month to sewing clothes for major Western brands such as Wal-Mart and H & M.

Clashes erupted at the Puerto Rico Capitol in San Juan on Wednesday after police forcibly prevented protesters from attending a legislative session on the State budget. Officers used batons, physical force and pepper spray to block a large group that included many students seeking a voice in the Puerto Rican budget. Student organizers say over two dozen protesters were treated for injuries.

Transport chaos again hit Madrid Wednesday as a strike by 7,500 metro workers protesting a wage cut of around 5 percent decided by the right-wing regional government entered a third day with the system totally shut down.

A Salvadoran-born clergyman has set up a camping tent in a Chicago public park where he intends to continue the hunger strike he began 16 days ago to demand immigration reform. The protest is part of a series of fasts, hunger strikes and acts of civil disobedience organized in Illinois by groups defending undocumented immigrants to pressure Congress to enact immigration reform.

A protest shutdown has paralysed normal life for a fourth successive day in Indian-administered Kashmir. The strike has been called in protest at the recent killing of unarmed civilians by police and paramilitary troops.

A strike at Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co., a Japanese-owned electronics factory in north China, crippled production on Thursday, extending the industrial unrest that has put manufacturers at odds with increasingly assertive workers.

On Monday, four parents occupied the Dunster Fine Arts Elementary School in British Columbia to protest its impending closure.

A large number of people in Karachi held a sit-in on the main Abdullah Haroon Road on Sunday in protest against the murder of a brother of a gang-rape victim.

Three former detainees from Guantanamo Bay who were transferred to Slovakia in January will continue their hunger-strike in protest against the allegedly bad treatment they are receiving from Slovak authorities at a detention facility in Medvedov.

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