Protests Spread Throughout Arabian Peninsula

Renewed popular protests hit Yemen, Oman and Bahrain yesterday. In addition to the increasing instability of regimes already facing mass opposition, there are signs that the protests that spread from Tunisia and Egypt to the Arabian Peninsula may also overtake Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

In Yemen, mass protests took place throughout the country against US-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh, while opposition parties—in an about-face from their position on Sunday—refused to participate in a unity government with Saleh. Protests have shaken the Saleh regime since February 11.

Tens of thousands marched in a “day of rage” protest in the capital, Sanaa, demanding an end to bloodshed against demonstrators and Saleh’s departure from power. According to Xinhua, roughly 5,000 people traveled 60 kilometers from Dhamar province to join the protests in Sanaa.

Government supporters reportedly organized another rally in Sanaa, attended by a few thousand people. It called for the resumption of dialog between the ruling party and the opposition to avoid further violence.

Demonstrations took place throughout the country, including in Dhamar, Ibb, Taiz, Aden, Abyan, Shabwa, Al-Bayda and Hadramout provinces. The Ibb protest reportedly gathered 10,000 people. Protests in Aden, the port city that has seen 24 of the 27 confirmed deaths at the hands of state forces, reportedly focused on commemorating those who had been killed.

Saleh simultaneously denounced the protests as orchestrated by Israel and the US and attempted to placate protesters’ anger. He ordered an investigation into the killing of demonstrators in Aden. He also sacked five provincial governors amid reports of violence against protesters in their areas. These included Aden Governor Adnan al-Jefri, Hadramout Governor Salim al-Khanbashi, Al-Hodayda Governor Ahmed al-Jabali, Abyan Governor Ahmed al-Maisary, and Lahj Governor Muhsin al-Naqib. They all received other government posts, however.

Saleh was forced to postpone talks on a unity government with the Joint Meeting Parties. The bourgeois opposition coalition formed in 2006 includes the Islamist Islah Party, the nationalist Popular Nasserist Organization, and the Yemen Socialist Party (YSP), which ruled South Yemen prior to the reunification of Yemen in 1990.

On February 28, its spokesman, Mohammed al-Mutawakil, said the party would “be ready to take part in the joint unity government with the ruling party.” It demanded only that Saleh resign from posts in the army and finance ministry. Yesterday, the Joint Meeting Parties indicated that they would participate in government only if Saleh stepped down.

Tribal leaders and southern separatists are turning against Saleh. Sheikh Hamid ben Abdallah Al-Ahmar, a leader of both the Hached tribe and the Islah party, reportedly endorsed the call for the removal of Saleh last week, together with leaders of the Baqil tribe.

Yassin Ahmad Saleh Qadih, a leader of the separatist Southern Movement, announced that he would push for a referendum on separation after Saleh falls. Though it has only 5.5 million people, compared to 18 million in the north, the south is wealthier and produces most of the country’s daily oil output of 300,000 barrels. Saleh reportedly has warned that the partition of Yemen would break the country into many pieces.

Yemen specialist Gregory Johnsen told the New York Times: “A lot of people are really worried about what happens the day after Saleh is gone. No one knows where the different tribal groupings would land.” Saleh’s Sanhan tribe controls Yemen’s military and intelligence agencies.

In the industrial and port city of Sohar, in northern Oman, the army yesterday again fired on protesters demanding jobs and reform of the absolute monarchy of Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Only one person was reported wounded. The reported death toll for Sunday’s protests was increased to six, however.

Troops and armored vehicles occupied the Globe Roundabout in Sohar, which had attracted up to 2,000 people in previous protests. Protesters blockaded the Sohar port, however, and Westerners in the port management briefly left Sohar for the capital of Oman, Muscat. According to the Tehran Times, protesters demanded that “the benefits of our oil wealth” be “distributed evenly.”

Protesters in Muscat gathered around the buildings of the Shura Council, an advisory body that counsels Sultan Qaboos, demanding jobs, higher salaries and freedom of the press.

Sultan Qaboos issued a statement promising to create 50,000 jobs, implement a $390 per month unemployment benefit, and study the possibility of widening the powers of the advisory council. On Saturday he sacked six cabinet ministers and increased the minimum wage by 40 percent.

Oman is a strategic country located across the Arabian Sea from Iran and astride the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which Persian Gulf oil exports must travel. The US has backed Qaboos. US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, “We have been in touch with the government and encouraged restraint and to resolve differences through dialog.” There are no opposition parties in Oman because political parties are illegal there.

Thousands of protesters again demonstrated in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, against the Al-Khalifa dynasty that has ruled Bahrain for 200 years. The protesters marched from Salmaniah district to Pearl Square, the central square around which anti-government protests have rallied in recent weeks. Demonstrators opposed attempts to divide them along sectarian lines, chanting: “We are brothers, Sunnis and Shiites. The people want the fall of the regime.”

Bahrain hosts a major naval base for the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and has close security ties with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi armed forces intervened in Bahrain after popular protests developed there in 1996.

Crude oil prices rose yesterday on reports that 30 Saudi tanks had been transported to Bahrain. Bahraini officials denied the report, though they confirmed the movement of tanks across the border.

“There are no Saudi Arabian tanks in Bahrain,” the officials said. “Tanks identified on Monday evening were Bahraini tanks returning from Kuwait National Day celebrations, where military from several Allied countries participated.”

There are indications that protests may also spread to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, two oppressive pro-US monarchies that are critical to the world oil trade.

In Kuwait, a youth group called the Fifth Fence has announced plans for a March 8 protest outside the country’s parliament. Opposition parties in Kuwait have called for the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, the nephew of Kuwait Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

In Saudi Arabia, Internet activists have set up Facebook pages calling for protests on March 11 and March 20, largely based on demands for elections to the Shura Assembly. These pages have attracted 17,000 supporters. However, press reports point out that in 2004 Saudi security forces were able to disperse protests in Riyadh and Jeddah by force, and Saudi officials are monitoring the Facebook pages.

Protests could intensify divisions inside the ruling Saudi monarchy. The UPI press agency noted: “The kingdom faces a potentially touchy royal succession, complicated by the advanced age of the country’s top leaders. King Abdallah, Crown Price Sultan, Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Prince Nayef, and Riyadh Governor Prince Salman are all in their 80s.”

From WSWS

Racism In Australia: Indian Students Boycott 'Walk for Harmony'

Indian students boycotted Sunday's 'Walk for Harmony' in central Melbourne after the Victorian Labor government of Premier John Brumby refused to allow them to address the rally.

This outrageous act of censorship laid bare the real agenda of what had been billed as an official show of support for diversity and equality: to help secure the lucrative inflow of international students’ tuition fees by organising a public relations exercise advertising Victoria as a safe and attractive place to study.

Indian students held protests in Melbourne and Sydney in late May and early June following a series of racist and violent attacks. Amid ongoing coverage of the issue in the Indian media, the federal and state Labor governments became increasingly concerned over the potential impact on the $15 billion education market.

Brumby responded by announcing the Walk for Harmony. The event was timed to coincide with a tour of several Indian cities by a high-level delegation—including federal and state government officials, university representatives, and police—aimed at countering negative reports about the situation confronting international students in Australia.

The exclusion of representatives of the Indian students from the Walk for Harmony platform reflected the fact that every aspect of the stage-managed affair was designed to prevent discussion of the issues raised by the racist assaults. Such a discussion would immediately pose the question as to how the Labor Party could posture as a champion of equality, inclusion, and fairness, while at the same presiding over the most ruthless exploitation of international students.

Facing systematic and institutionalised discrimination, students from overseas pay exorbitant tuition fees—several times higher than those paid by most Australian students—are unable to access Medicare and other social welfare programs, and are even refused permission to access public transport at student concession rates.

The Brumby government’s cynical calculations suffered a serious blow when the media reported early Sunday that the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA) was staging a boycott.

FISA spokesman Gautam Gupta told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “We think the government is now basically using it as a political media stunt,” he declared. “Nothing more than that. Unfortunately they are trying to dilute the main issue, and we don’t want to be part of any dilution. We want the debate to be basically focused on the victims, the unsafe streets, and the rising crime rate and the failure of the justice system.”

The government’s absurd pretext for silencing the Indian students was that “harmony walk” speakers were to be restricted to “umbrella groups that aren’t ethnic or religion-based”.

Brumby declared that a selected member of the Federation of International Students would be allowed to participate—but in the end even this was restricted to allowing a young woman to speak before the walk, when most people were still assembling and unaware that they were being addressed. The official platform erected in central Melbourne’s Federation Square was restricted to Labor and Liberal politicians and the police.

A small number of leading FISA members attended the rally, but stressed that they did not do so as participants. Gautam Gupta said: “I attended as an observer, and I covered my mouth in protest at not being able to speak. FISA had four or five people there—we were hoping till the end that we would be invited to speak. The march was a political stunt.”

Later, at the end of the “harmony walk, FISA president Amit Menghani explained, “Instead of addressing the facts, instead of having debates, instead of coming up with solutions to these particular problems, what the government has tried to do is divert the whole situation. They have tried to eliminate the debates that were going on in terms of students’ safety concerns.

“We support multiculturalism but we will not support any politician’s PR exercise towards this particular rally.... They have clearly said they are not letting any of the student bodies speak. They are eliminating the student factor in this thing. Now if you look at the rally how many students are here?

“Nobody is here to listen to us. They don’t want to discuss anything on the real issues. They are just diverting themselves, contradicting themselves after each new statement. At the end of the day, we all know that the education system is one of the biggest sources of revenue for Australia after iron and coal—it’s the third biggest industry.

“Now they’re just having some task force ready, holding some committee meetings—it’s basically going round the table, passing the ball from one person to another, until at some point they say, ‘OK, let’s have a harmony walk’. So what’s the point of it? There was no use in having this sort of harmony walk.”

As Menghani indicated, very few university students attended the event. About 5,000 to 10,000 people participated, many as part of officially invited national, ethnic, and religious groups. Among the largest delegations were the Chinese religious sect Falun Gong, exiled Vietnamese flying old South Vietnam flags, and members of the Ethiopian Oromo group.

The entire event had a contrived and artificial atmosphere. Large numbers of Walk for Harmony marshals distributed official balloons, T-shirts, stickers, and small Australian flags. No handmade banners or placards were visible. No doubt in response to the Indian students’ boycott, there was a definite attempt to shift the emphasis of the event away from the issues surrounding the international students and towards a more general support for “multiculturalism”.

Labor Party state parliamentarians and their staffers, together with local mayors and councillors, made themselves prominent. Also attending were many uniformed police officers with their partners and children.

Melbourne Police Assault Indian Students (Video)

This attempt to present cops as being “part of the community” was all the more grotesque given the actions of dozens of police on June 1, when they viciously broke up a sit-down protest staged by Indian students and their supporters at a busy intersection outside Flinders Street train station, just metres from where the official Walk for Harmony speeches were made. Unsurprisingly, the event’s organisers made no mention of the police assault.

Police Commissioner Simon Overland addressed the crowd. He appeared alongside two young immigrant children who had been dressed up in police uniform as part of the shameless photo opportunity.

Without directly raising the assaults on Indian students and the widespread reporting of police indifference to these crimes, Overland mentioned “recent challenges”, and declared that the police “understand our responsibility to deal with those issues and we take those responsibilities seriously”.

The other speakers were Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, state opposition leader Ted Baillieu, and Premier Brumby.

Brumby declared the walk “a great event for our state” that sent “a very loud, clear message out to the rest of Australia, and around the rest of the world” about Victoria’s support for diversity. The premier made no direct reference to the Indian students, but declared that “we condemn racism in whatever form that it takes” and said that, “in relation to our international students”, the government would create a new “one-stop shop” to assist with “counselling, accommodation, and welfare support”.

This measure will do nothing to address the real problems confronting international students and, like the harmony walk itself, is only intended to bolster the state’s international image.

Ambani Land Grab Ploy Fails

By Roger Alexander

The Supreme Court's refusal on June 5 to extend the deadline for land acquisition for Mukesh Ambani's MahaMumbai Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has come not a day too soon. It unambiguously provides major relief to thousands of farmers in Maharashtra's Raigad district who stand to lose their farms to land sharks disguised as a corporate entity.

The bench said it was not inclined to interfere with the Bombay High Court order, which had refused to stay the land acquisition process initiated by the Maharashtra government in June 2005 for the SEZ.

As per the law, the requisite land had to be acquired within two years of the notification. But the Raigad district administration and Reliance have failed to acquire the land despite two extensions to the deadline.

The latest deadline expires on Monday, June 8. After that date if the Ambani group still wants to go ahead, the land acquisition process will have to start all over again. However, it is being speculated that the promoters along with the State Government may work out a strategy to retrieve the situation.

The Mumbai SEZ, which envisages an investment of Rs 40,000 crores, is slated to come up in a 10,000 hectares area in Raigad. The project, which has already been given two extensions, was given clearance in 2005. It was in this context that the company wanted to speed up the acquisition procedure so that it would not lapse.

However, it has not got relief either from the High Court or the apex court.

The Maharashtra government had conducted public referendum on the project in September 2008. In the referendum conducted in 22 villages nearly 24,000 farmers took part and 91 per cent voted against the SEZ.

Why are the farmers protesting, ask supporters of SEZs, especially since they are being offered “hefty compensation.” Besides, SEZs will create spaces with good infrastructure and simplified procedures that will assist industrialization, they argue.

What is not said is that owning a SEZ means tax breaks, highly subsidized land and little or no compulsory worker protection. Proponents argue that these concessions are essential to attract investment, in a world of increasingly mobile capital but the farmers know better - once they give up their land, they will lose their livelihood.

That's why farmers of 22 villages of Raigad district opposed the land acquisition process in a referendum initiated by the state government last year. Though the government did not act, the farmers sent a clear message – they defeated sitting Congress MP and Cabinet minister AR Antulay and handed a victory Shiv Sena's Anand Gite. The Shiv Sena had spearheaded a protest against the Ambani SEZ last year.

It is well known that as it is the land acquisition law and process is extremely unjust (ask the farmers displaced by the Narmada project). But at least there is a need to prove the existence of a strong public interest. In the case of the SEZs, the rules have been dispensed with.

The Special Economic Zones Act, 2005 (Act No. 28 of 2005, dated June 23, 2005), is, in its own words, “an Act to provide for the establishment, development and management of the Special Economic Zones for the promotion of exports and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.” Indeed, the SEZ Act is nothing but a legislation for legal plunder.

In addition to the massive fiscal concessions, there is plenty of room for huge profits to be made from real estate deals within these gated and walled enclaves of privileges where the elite can lead Western life-style without even a shadow of the poverty and squalor of other parts of the country.

And the land acquisition means everyone - not just those with property titles – will be affected, especially tenants and agricultural labourers, who do not have to be compensated.
Besides, exemptions, direct or indirect, from various protective laws (for example, laws to protect environment and labour) mean that the industrial units here will be able to function in a very arbitrary way, unencumbered by responsibilities normally expected from them.

This means that even farmers who agree to sell their land have no protection of labour laws applicable in the country if they find employment in the SEZ. Ambani will also have privileged reach to farmers outside the SEZ areas, so one can expect faster spread of “modern” agriculture (read Reliance Fresh).

The worst feature, however, is the huge revenue losses - 100 per cent exemption from income tax on profits for the first five years and 50 per cent for the next five years. Even land developers get tax breaks!

Indeed, according to a government press release, the SEZ is a specifically delineated duty free enclave and shall be deemed to be foreign territory for the purpose of trade operations, duties and tariffs. To give up such huge resources is a major crime, given the needs of Indian society and the utter lack of social provision.

With state Assembly elections due in a few months, it is unlikely that the Maharashtra government will come to Ambani's rescue. The experience of West Bengal where even die-hard supporters of the Left Front voted against it over the question of land acquisition is fresh in every politician's memory.

Roger And Out