STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Thousands of Swedish citizens gathered in the streets of Stockholm on Sunday in an effort to protest widespread racism, in response to a neo-Nazi attack on a similar rally held last weekend.
Neo-Nazi’s attacking demonstrators back on December 15th. (Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera)
Last weekend, approximately thirty neo-Nazis attacked an anti-racism demonstration in the Stockholm suburb of Karrtorp by throwing bottles and firecrackers at the protestors. Scuffles quickly ensued, and two people were stabbed, while twenty-six of the neo-Nazis were detained by police officers.
Organizers of Sunday’s protest suggest that over 16,000 protestors participated in the rally. The protestors could be heard chanting requests for fellow citizens such as, “End racism now”, and “No racists on our streets.” Several Swedish musicians and politicians were on hand. The musicians performed on a stage assembled on a football field. The politicians represented both the current-ruling center-right coalition and the center-left opposition.
“I want to contribute to a broad revulsion against Nazism and racism. Last week’s attack was sad. The lesson learned is that the fight for the equal value of all humans must carry on, or we won’t manage the fight against xenophobia,” Swedish Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag stated.
Sweden has seen a rise in support for the far right Anti-Immigration party as immigration has grown. These Swedish Democrats have reached roughly ten percent in the polls ahead of a parliamentary election next year. Stockholm experienced the worst riots in years this past May in mostly-impoverished immigrant Stockholm suburbs, as youths threw rocks at police officers and set cars on fire for over a week.
Sections of Karrtorp, which does not have a particularly large immigrant population compared to other areas of the city, were sprayed-painted with swastikas and Nazi slogans in response to last week’s protest.
Similar lower-key anti-racism rallies were held in support at several other Swedish cities on Saturday and Sunday.
20 December 2013 – Mikhail Khodorkovsky was freed today by his hostage
takers after being kept 10 years in captivity at the personal direction of
Vladimir Putin.
I can’t imagine the duress he must have suffered by his false imprisonment
and I’m delighted and relieved for him and his family that he is finally
free.
But we shouldn’t forget that Putin stole ten years of a man’s life for a
political vendetta.
We shouldn’t forget that Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Vasily Aleksenian
died at the age of 39 after being falsely arrested in the same vindictive
case and was deliberately refused medical care while he was dying, to try
to get him to testify against Khodorkovsky.
We also shouldn’t forget about the thousands of other people who have been
taken hostage and abused by corrupt Russian law enforcement officials, like
Sergei Magnitsky who was tortured to death in police custody after exposing
a corruption scheme run by senior Russian officials.
Cheap public relations tactics to promote Putin’s Sochi Olympics don’t
substitute for real justice and the victims whose lives were ruined and
continue to be ruined by the Putin regime.
MOSCOW, Russia – A Russian amnesty law will allow several, including the Pussy Riot band members and 30 Greenpeace protesters, to go free. The decision comes three months before the Sochi Winter Olympics.
Among those to be released under the amnesty law are two members of Pussy Riot, who have been serving a two-year sentence. (Photo courtesy of the Guardian)
On 19 December 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to free two Pussy Riot band members under an amnesty. The two band members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, have been serving a two-year prison sentence, which ends three months before their scheduled release. Their third band member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, has already been freed, following a successful appeal.
On 21 February 2012, all three members of Pussy Riot were arrested for the crime of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or hostility” after performing Punk Prayer: Mother of God Drive Putin Away from Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. While releasing the imprisoned band members, Putin continued to describe their protest as disgraceful.
At a news conference, Putin said, “I was not sorry that they ended up behind bars. I was sorry that they were engaged in such disgraceful behaviour, which in my view was degrading to the dignity of women.”
The “punk prayer” took place at Moscow’s main cathedral, and antagonized both Putin and his ties to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Since their arrest, both women have gone on hunger strikes, and Tolokonnikova disappeared for 21 days when she wrote an open letter in protest of prison conditions. Tolokonnikova re-appeared in a Siberian prison hospital.
President Putin’s promise to release the prisoners became possible through a new Russian amnesty law passed earlier in the week of 19 December 2013. Under that law, amnesty from imprisonment is granted to prisoners “who haven’t committed violent crimes, first-time offenders, minors and women with small children.”
Both women are expected to be released as mothers of small children.
While the new law also frees 30 members of a Greenpeace protest from trial, President Putin urged that the amnesty was not granted with either Greenpeace or Pussy Riot in mind. Rather, he stated that it was passed to mark the 20th anniversary of Russia’s post-Soviet constitution.
News reports have noted that releasing both groups removes “two irritants in ties with the West before Russia hosts” the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Another prisoner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is another prisoner whose detainment was said to exemplify Russia’s abuse of its prison system. Khodorkovsky was once Russia’s richest man and oil tycoon. He was arrested in 2003 on tax evasion and fraud charges, and is expected to be released under the new amnesty law.
Regardless of motive, the world can be pleased to see some justice done in Russia.
DHAKA, Bangladesh–Bangladesh has hanged notorious opposition leader Abdul Quader Mollah over war crimes allegedly committed during the country’s 1971 war of independence. Mollah is the first person to be put to death for massacres committed during the bloody struggle.
Bangladeshi opposition leader, Abdul Quader Mollah, was sentenced to death early last week. He was hanged on December 12, 2013, and deadly riots have ensued in the wake of the execution. (Photo Courtesy Reuters)
Abdul Quader Mollah, 65, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party, was hanged on December 12, 2013 around 10 am in a jail in the capital, Dhaka, government officials reported.
The case against Mollah has contributed to escalating political tension in Bangladesh less than a month before elections are expected to take place. Jamaat-e-Islami is barred from contesting elections but plays a key role in the opposition movement led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Security was tight around the jail where Mollah was hanged. Extra police and paramilitary guards were deployed on the streets of Dhaka. Meanwhile, hundreds of people gathered at a major intersection in the city to celebrate the execution.
Moqbul Ahmed, JI’s acting leader, said in a statement on the party’s website that people would revenge Mollah’s execution by deepening the role of Islam in Bangladesh. The party called a nationwide general strike for Sunday.
While a strong reaction to the decision from JI was expected on the streets of Dhaka, the city remained relatively calm.
However, tensions escalated, and protests broke out across the country. At least five people were killed earlier near the port city of Chittagong as clashes broke out between opposition activists and police over the weekend.
On Monday, clashes in the southeastern district, Satkhira, resulted in the deaths of five people, killed as police attempted to quell the violent protests. Since the execution, JI members have taken to the streets, some wielding homemade bombs, and lodged attacks against security personnel. So far, 25 people have died in the wake of the hanging.
Party activists also clashed with police, torched or smashed vehicles, and set off homemade bombs in the cities of Sylhet and Rajshahi, TV stations have reported.
Scores of people were injured in the latest violence to hit the South Asian country, which has seen weeks of escalating tension as it struggles to overcome extreme poverty and rancorous politics.
In eastern Bangladesh, security officials opened fire to disperse opposition activists, leaving at least three people dead and 15 others wounded, Dhaka’s leading newspaper reported.
Violence spread to Laxmipur district, a few miles east of Dhaka, during a nationwide opposition blockade after elite security forces raided and searched the home of an opposition leader following the execution.
The Supreme Court passed the order of a review petition filed by Mollah against its verdict, awarding him the death penalty for his wartime offences. He had originally been due to be hanged on Tuesday, his lawyer said, but the court delayed the execution to re-consider his latest petition.
His original life sentence had been overturned by the Supreme Court in September, after mass protests called for him to be hanged.
A panel of five judges led by Chief Justice Mohammad Mojammel Hossain rejected the petition after hearing arguments on the appeal against the death penalty, a state prosecutor said.
Mollah is one of five opposition leaders sentenced to death by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), set up in 2010 to investigate atrocities during the 1971 conflict. The conflict is marked by over three million deaths.
Critics of the tribunal say it has been used as a political tool by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is locked in a political feud with BNP leader Begum Khaleda Zia, as a way of weakening the opposition ahead of January elections.
“The execution of… Mollah should never have happened,” said Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International’s Bangladesh researcher. “The country is on a razor’s edge… with pre-election tensions running high and almost non-stop street protests.”
But many Bangladeshis support the Court, believing that those convicted of war crimes should be punished, underlining how the events of 42 years ago still resonate in the deeply divided nation of 160 million people.
