During the wars in former Yugoslavia, some 130,000 members of the minority of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians (RAE) from Kosovo, fled. After arson attacks and expulsions during the war in Kosovo in 1999, and after the renewed flare-up of ethnic violence in 2004, no more than 35,000 of them still live in Kosovo today. For years, the German Federal Government has tried to deport a large number of the RAE refugees living in Germany to Kosovo – a total of more than 10,000 people.
Archive for the ‘Human Rights’ Category
10,000 Roma in Germany to be Deported to Kosovo: A cold welcome
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Social and Climate Justice Caravan
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Social and Climate Justice Caravan (Bulletin), 2009
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From the text: India Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Watch, has created Joint Action Committees across India, led by those who will be most affected by corporate rise in the retail sector. In 2007, during two major mobilizations hundreds of thousands of peopled were joining protest marches against backdoor entry of retail demanding “Corporations to quit retail”. A year later FDI Watch coordinated a halla bol (speak up!) mobilization with major actions happening simultaneously in various parts of the country.
Delhi: Responding to the national call of India FDI Watch Campaign to take the fight to the doorsteps of supermarkets, hundreds of small shopkeepers and street vendors staged militant protest at the doorsteps of Reliance Fresh, Subhiksha and More in the Shakarpur area of Delhi. The protesters forced corporations to down their shutters and locked them. A ten-headed tall effigy was also burnt. Each head of the effigy was symbolizing corporations namely Wal-Mart, Tesco, Reliance Fresh, Big Bazaar, Subhiksha, More, Spencers, Big Apple, Metro and Carrefour.
From Lima to Madrid: Hearing in the European Parliament
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Witnesses of human rights abuses by European Transnational Corporations in Latin America presented their cases in the European Parliament at the 18th of November 2009. In preparation of the People’s Permanent Tribunal (TPP) at the alternative EU-LAC summit, 14-18 May 2010 in Madrid, e.g. Brazilian Fisher of a bay near Rio de Janeiro showed how a Thyssen-Krupp steel plant infringes environmental law with the result of displacing local fisher. The situation is tense: on the one side, the fisher are organising themselves; on the other side, the companies’ security service is enunciating death threats against the fisher.
Anti-Poverty Conference: Building the Unsettling Force
Sunday, June 21st, 2009
“Building the Unsettling Force” was the slogan of the National Anti-Poverty Conference held from July 16 through 19, 2009, on the campus of Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky by a coalition including the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC), the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA), Women in Transition, and Disappeared in America – Hiding the Poor, as well as local action groups.
Some 200 people from all over the USA participated, from Florida to California, from Maine to Oregon and also from Canada. It was not a conference about poverty, but rather one of the anti-poverty movements of the people affected by poverty, who are present in most towns in America today. Represented were grassroots movements to which, due to the economic crisis, ever more people from classically middle-class backgrounds are gravitating, and also social workers from government agencies and care personnel from the hospitals, who have either been affected by unemployment, or else can no longer bear the deterioration of working conditions. Some trade unionists and university professors also took part in the conference.
People are Central – Universal Human Rights and the European Left
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
By Friedrich Schorlemmer
I am very happy to be here on this memorable day, and to be able to speak here sixty years after the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I would like to speak about universal human rights and the European left. In so doing, it is necessary that we remember the past, and define the point of understanding that we as left democrats have now reached. I would like to dedicate my remarks to Anna Politkovskaya and all those people who have taken risks, including that of their own lives, for the freedom of expression.
English