Not on the Ballot: Imperialism, Corporate-Capitalist State Power, Racism, Police State, Patriarchy, Justice …..

[When people rise, and believe that the State offers no relief or solution, they turn away from elections, reject the credibility and false promises of the political system, and consider what it will take to take matters into their own hands.  It happens all over the world. — Frontlines ed.]

The 2014 campaign to boycott the election in Brazil

Election materials are set ablaze in front of a polling booth after an attack by protesters in Bogra January 5, 2014. Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League was poised on Sunday to win a violence-plagued parliamentary election whose outcome was never in doubt after a boycott by the main opposition party. — Photo by Reuters

Political Repression in Bolivia sparks international protests

STATEMENT ON THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF ACTIVISTS ARRESTED IN BOLIVIA

In August 1st, the repression forces of Bolivian State raided the office of the Center for Popular Studies (CEP) and arrested the Peruvian activists Hugo Wálter Minaya Romero, Williams Antonio Minaya Romero, Blanca Riveros Alarcón and José Antonio Cantoral Benavides.

The action was directly commanded by the dome of Evo Morales government and executed by the Special Cases Investigation Group (GICE) and the Special Force of Fight Against the Crime (FELCC) of El Alto city. The director of FELCC, Roberto Campos, said the activists “were apprehended in circumstances in which they were making pamphleteering” with lines against the gasolinazo (the policy to higher the price of gas) and the transnationals in Bolivia, and these pamphlets were addressed to the academic community of Popular University of El Alto – UPEA (El Mundo, 02/08/2011). The Morales’ Government Minister itself, Sacha Llorenti, said they “worked preparing pamphlets against Bolivian government and recruiting persons to give classes”, and that they would have linkages with the Shining Path, as it’s called the Communist Party of Peru (Maoist)

Representatives of the government said still that 3 between the activists would be sumarily expelled from Bolivia to Peru, and the National Comission on Refugees (Conare) would make an emergence meeting to face the case of José Antonio Cantoral Benavides, which has officialy recognized refugee status.

Peru: more killed in Puno, Huancavelica protests; demand investigation of García for repression

Submitted by WW4 Report on Mon, 06/27/2011

Naitonal Police troops and soliders fired on a crowd of protesters staging an occupation of the airport at Juliaca, in Peru’s conflicted southern region of Puno, leaving six dead and at least 37 injured. Protesters had succeeded in setting one of the terminals on fire when security forces started shooting. The protesters were Quechua campesinos from the neighboring province of Azángaro, who are demanding remediation of the local Río Ramis following its pollution by small-scale mining operations in the area of Ananea district, San Antonio de Putina province. The National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI) condemned the killings as “ethnocide and genocide…against the protests of the original Quechua people, defenders of life.” (La Republica, June 25; CONACAMI, Mariátegui blog, June 24)

In the south-central region of Huancavelica, protests are continuing in the fifth day of an indefinite civil strike called by the Defense Front for the Interests of Huancavelica. The strike was called to demand justice for three student protesters—including one minor—killed by the National Police June 21 during protests over budget cuts at the University of Huancavelica. Up to 100 were injured in the incident. (Mariátegui, June 24; AFP, June 22)

Oil Spill Devastates Amazon Region in Peru

A boy holds up oil sludge from the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon. Credit:Federación de Comunidades Nativas del Río Corrientes Wednesday, 07

July 2010 12:24

Written by David Hill

On June 19 hundreds of barrels of oil were spilled in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon, leading to calls for a ‘state of emergency’ to be declared and an appeal to the United Nations to intervene.

The oil was spilled by Argentine company Pluspetrol on the River Maranon in Loreto, northern Peru. This is far from the first time. According to a June 25 article in the Peruvian weekly Hildebrandt en sus trece, the same company has spilled oil 78 times in the last four years in this region: four spills in 2006, 23 in 2007, 18 in 2008, 23 in 2009, and 10 this year already.

‘We went down to the river to do our washing and realised there were traces of oil in the water. That was a shock. We went a little further along the bank and soon realised that there were patches of oil everywhere in the river,’ said one local resident in an interview with radio station La Voz de la Selva, which has followed events closely.

Local reaction has centred on two main concerns. First, the fact that so many people rely on the river for their survival. According to leading indigenous organization Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP), at least 28 indigenous communities – in other words, thousands of people – use the river for their drinking water, cooking and fishing.