 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news roundup. You're with Give the People What They Want. Coming to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. It's an important week. It's a 135th show of Give the People What They Want. That's not a big deal. But it's a big deal that People's Dispatch is five years old. Now in the life history of media, five years may not be a very long time. But in the life history of a media outfit that has been able to lift up the voices of people who are often not covered by legacy media outlets and that have been able to cover people's movements from across the planet. There's every single continent. If the penguins had a people's movement, people's dispatch would have a correspondent out there with them. Five years, people's dispatch. Happy birthday. It's an important birthday. It's important for us to celebrate projects that do such extraordinary things as go out there and cover popular movements. Now getting to the line of business. Prashant, it's very interesting. In Egypt, of course, in 2011, major uprising in Tahrir Square, people had the anticipation that the world was going to change. It was called the Arab Spring. And now when we talk about Egypt Prashant, we're not talking about people's movements. We simply seem to be talking about people in prison, one person after the other, whether it's Al-Abdul Fateh or now Patrick Zaki. Tell us now the great news from Egypt's prisons. Right. Of course, the immediate news is a rare bit of positive news in this sense, because just on Thursday, that is Patrick George Zaki and Muhammad Al-Waqir, who was the lawyer of Al-Abdul Fateh, both of them were released. Now Patrick George Zaki, as some of our viewers would know, was an Egyptian researcher, an activist, worked at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, and was arrested for the grave crime of writing an article, which was an article about his life as an Egyptian Christian. And the various issues that the Christians in Egypt experience on a day-to-day basis. So it was an article about one week of his life. And for that crime, he was arrested, and he was sentenced on a charge of, and he was tried on the charge of disseminating false news about the country's internal conditions to disturb security and social peace. So that's pretty much exactly the same charge which a host of political activists and bloggers, writers, all of them have faces very similar charges. And there is this very torturous process whereby they're arrested, they suffer in pretrial detention for a long time. Then finally, the case goes to court, and then they're convicted for three or four or five years. And like you said, Al-Abdul Fateh is a very classic example. Many of these activists accused of membership of terrorist groups, spreading false news, very nebulous and big charges, which have no real way of being proved, but nonetheless are enough to suppose somehow convict them in the Egyptian court. So as we talked about before, Egypt having a huge number of political prisoners in the tens of thousands. And these are some of the few cases which often get a lot of attention worldwide, but there are many more cases where there is often not so much attention. In Patrick George Zaki's case, there was this again once again, on Wednesday, he was sentenced to three years in prison, and there was a widespread condemnation of their verdict, also global because of the fact that he's also an Italian citizen. So that also probably contributed to it. But there's been very similar condemnation in a number of cases. We've seen that the regime of General Abdul Fateh LCC has generally not responded at all or chosen to completely ignore these kind of cases. And this time perhaps as part of certain negotiations or dealings, you're not very clear what it is. He announced a pardon for Zaki in the release of Mohammed al-Bakir and some political prisoners as well. Now, important to note that one of the aspects is that Egypt is going through what is called a national dialogue process where the LCC government is trying to engage with civil society. And after Zaki was sentenced, there was a huge amount of anger in the civil society. Many of them announced that they would withdraw from this process, and that might have been one reason as well. Of course, this, while it's a definitely the news that these activists have been released, the fact remains that many, many more continue to be under prison, which is really a big problem. And I think fundamentally the question lies in the fact, the key problem lies in the fact that Egypt under Abdul Fateh LCC is essential for all its neighbors for their political agenda. It is essential, say, for a country like Saudi Arabia, which has been its major funder, because Egypt ensures Saudi agenda prevails in countries like Sudan, for instance, or even in other parts of North Africa. It is essential for the Europeans because Egypt is a key partner in controlling migration. So, Georgia Maloney has welcomed Zaki's release. She's trying to capitalize on this in her own way. And this is part of also their agenda to sort of ensure that countries like Egypt or Tunisia are controlling migration, which basically means treating migrants in a very dreadful manner. So, the reason for LCC's impurity is the fact that he is essential for the geopolitical agenda of a lot of these international players. And that is the reason he's been able to get away with such amounts of repression, despite the economy completely collapsing, despite there being massive violations of fundamental rights. So, that the Egypt is, as always has been, Egypt is a very key country right now in the global matrix, especially for activists, as well as for the pursuit of these kind of agendas. So, very important to keep a watch on these kind of cases. Tough country Egypt right now for popular movements as difficult as Peru, where the third takeover of Lima has just taken place. Zoe, you have a piece up at People's Dispatch interviewing a key feminist activist. What's been going on in Peru? Well, it's now been just over seven months of this struggle against the coup regime in Peru. A long struggle, a struggle filled with a lot of challenges. Over 60 people have been killed in the protest against the coup regime. This was largely in the months and the month following the coup against Pedro Castillo. And the demands still continue. Following his destitution, following the coup against his government, immediately people took to the streets demanding, he was also arrested following this coup. He remains in prison until today. And so the demands remain very similar, that he be released, that he be put back in power, that there be a constituent assembly process, that the Congress be dissolved, that there be new elections held. And seven months, these demands continue to be there in addition to the demand, of course, of justice for all of the victims of this extremely violent repression that the Army and the police have been kind of doling out on protesters. However, it remains to be an uphill battle because Dino Alhuarte, again, despite having been part of the Peru Libre Party and having been the vice president of Pedro Castillo, allegedly in this plan for change and this government of change, we know that people can be bought off. They can be swayed. They can do a about phase quite quickly. And since she has been in office, Dino Alhuarte immediately allied with the right wing in Peru to solidify her stance, to stay in power. And these demands of immediate political chains have all been undermined by her and her government. She has announced ahead of the third takeover of Libre and she announced that her stepping down anytime soon was not going to happen, that elections would only be held in 2026. This is, of course, a change from some of the victories that have actually been won in the Congress that actually looked like there might be elections in 2024. So it is an uphill battle. And the intense amount of oppression and sort of just delay in all of these elements of not really actually responding to protesters but killing them, repressing them, stigmatizing them has had a significant effect and that's that there has been a long lull. There's been disintegration of the protest movement on the 19th of July. There was a very, very strong showing in the streets over 30,000 people according to some estimates in Lima demanding, once again, raising these demands, will it be enough, will there be a strong enough and united enough protest movement to actually drive these political demands and continue to put on pressure that remains to be seen. However, the people are determined and it's the most humble people in the country that are continuing to demand this are saying that we cannot allow our rights to be trampled on anymore. So there have been protests. There was a protest on the 19th. Yesterday there were also protests. There are likely to be protests today as people traveled all the way to Lima to participate. So people are reorganizing. They're regaining their forces together to start, to kickstart this struggle against Ina Wadawar and we'll see how her government responds. Well, you know, there's the struggles in Peru, the struggles in Egypt. Prashant reported last week about how the UN said one in 10 people are now in a condition of hunger. Right after we did our last show, the Russian government announced that the Black Sea grain initiative was going to be suspended. There was a lot of consternation about this because a great deal of the food stuffs that goes to the developing world leaves the Odessa port. Not only food of course, but it's absolutely important food. It's things like grain, which are essential. Well, the Russian government argued that it has good reason to suspend this Black Sea grain initiative and they put out three requirements on the table. I have a piece which you can read at People's Dispatch about this, which goes over some of these arguments. The first argument that they put out there was that they want sanctions against the Russian Agricultural Bank to be lifted because they argue that the Russian Agricultural Bank which was sanctioned by the European Union's six package of sanctions in June 2022, that bank is key for the reconciling payments for exports and since the Russian Agricultural Bank cannot access the SWIFT system, it simply cannot get payments from counterparties for export of grain. The second thing that the Russians have said is that look, they're not just interested in food exports, they're interested in fertilizer exports. Russia is one of the world's largest exporters of ammonia based fertilizer, but also phosphate and potassium. They argued was that they wanted the Togliati Odessa pipeline opened up again. This would mean that fertilizers would leave the port of Odessa. Well, just a few weeks ago, there was a sabotage of the pipeline in the Kharkiv region and this is of course, once again raised the issue of the security of some of these pipelines of food and fertilizer. So the Russians made the argument that look, if our ammonia pipeline is not going to be, you know, respected, we're not going to respect the grain initiative. But finally, Russia is having a hard time importing machinery and spare parts. Russian ships can't buy insurance on the open market. You know, in some cases, they can't even enter foreign ports. So they want some sort of blanket guarantee that they can actually circumvent some of these sanctions. Now, to be fair to those who are complaining that Russia took a unilateral action, it's also important to look at the fact that Russia has placed restrictions on the export of fertilizer and agricultural products, including occasionally against the other countries in the Eurasian Economic Union. There's been an issue about the purchase of grain from Russia and then the re-export to other countries. This is a question that is on the table. India, for instance, was buying Russian grain and re-exporting it to Bangladesh. These kinds of little things are also on the table. Now, interestingly, and we're going to watch this carefully, just in a few days, there'll be the second Africa, Russia Economic and Humanitarian Forum where this issue is going to be front and center. It's important, you know, Mr. Siddle Ramaphosa of South Africa, the president of South Africa, had given an undertaking that if the BRICS conference was going to be held in South Africa, as it will in August, that Mr. Putin is welcomed into the country despite a warrant from the International Criminal Court. Well, this debate continued and now it appears that Mr. Putin will not be coming to South Africa in an arrangement with the South African government. I'm interested and I think we need to watch carefully what happens at St. Petersburg at this Russia, Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum. Indeed, the Russians provide some sort of side deal with the African countries for the export of grain. This is a serious issue for many countries. Equally, of course, it's serious for Russian agriculture. The ammonia situation is very serious because Russia has had to actually stop a production of ammonia-based fertilizers, which can have a long-term impact for the years to come. We're going to keep watching this. This is the Black Sea grain initiative currently suspended. Who knows what's going to happen? You're with Give the People What They Want, brought to you by People's Dispatch, five years old this week. Remarkable and globetrotter coming to you every week, bringing you news from the world, from the perspective of people's movements. I'm going to move on now. I'm going to talk a little bit about a very interesting story. This is fascinating. I was surprised to see the United Nations release a text called The New Agenda for Peace. Now, what was most surprising about this particular development is UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made a statement at the release of this text called The New Agenda for Peace. Mr. Guterres said, the post-Cold War period is over and we are moving towards a new global order and a multipolar world. Well, The New Agenda for Peace, that's interesting by itself, said that the post-Cold War world is over. That means the world inaugurated after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and that we're in a new period that the UN has basically declared called a multipolar world. Well, The New Agenda for Peace has five basic points and I just want to lay them out for you. First, the importance of preventing conflicts at the global level. Interesting issue, revitalizing diplomacy and so on. Interesting issue, but it comes at a time when of course the world or the particularly western countries are unable to allow perhaps a peace path in Ukraine. Diplomacy has been sidelined as far as peace is concerned. What diplomacy has been utilized for is to galvanize forces to isolate Russia. So the first point that the UN is looking back on the table is a revitalization of diplomacy and also building regional security architecture. It's an interesting concept. Come back to that later perhaps, you know, have a little more reporting on it. Second, they want to prevent violence of all kinds including human rights violations, violence against women and so on. This is already there in the agenda of the United Nations. It's hardly a new issue. The third issue is interesting because they talk about updating peacekeeping operations. You will remember of course that the United Nations was greatly embarrassed by the blue helmet activity in Haiti where there was a lot of evidence of mistreatment of the Haitian people by UN forces including violence against women, including allegations of disease being brought in by UN troops and so on. This is not isolated to Haiti. It's actually a global phenomenon. UN has been very, very much sensitive about the fact it's been accused of using the blue helmets for a Western political agenda. So now there's talk of revitalizing or updating peacekeeping operations and so on. Let's see what this is going to lead to. The fifth area of interest is their call for and this is going to be very interesting at the BRICS summit. I wonder very much if the BRICS summit is going to pick up this issue. But the UN in this new agenda for peace just released in New York by Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, the fifth priority area is the reform of the Security Council. Now what does that mean? There are two directions that this conversation could go in. One which has been pushed by the West is somehow to minimize the Russian and Chinese veto, to find a way to maintain the Western veto but to minimize the Russian and Chinese veto. In other words, there could be a principled argument saying that let's get rid of the veto. That's a principled argument. This is not what I think we're going to hear. We're going to find that the West is making the argument how to essentially partition out the vetoes of Russia and China. This could also mean from the perspective of the BRICS that once again the issue of India or South Africa getting a permanent seat at the UN, this comes back on the table. Hard to say. Well, it's important for us at least to announce that the post-Cold War era is over. We now do live, as Antonio Guterres in the UN have said, we do live in a multipolar world, a multipolar world. Zoe has just returned and therefore, as usual, run right out of bed into this show to tell us about one of these multipolar developments, the summit in Brussels, of the community of Latin American and Caribbean states and the European Union. What happened there, Zoe? Well, Brussels was definitely an interesting place this past week. Lots of happenings in the city, both in the official summit and in the people's summit, which was organized parallelly to this official summit. And then the third element was the organized protest that took place, which I'll get into a bit later. But this official summit was a very, very important step and a very significant moment in what exactly what you say in this construction of a multipolar world. It was a moment where the European Union was forced to reconcile with a region that it once dominated as an equal partner, or at least it should have. And so they came together in this EU, say, like summit. This took place the last time in 2015. Then there was an eight-year break where these two regional platforms did not meet. And one of the big controversies, which we discussed last week, was precisely over the stance of Latin America and the Caribbean regarding the war in Ukraine. And this actually throughout the summit, as we've heard from reports for people who were participating in the official summit, this remained a huge topic, an essential point of debate, despite actually not affecting the economic agreements and the other issues that the regions were debating. But as often happens, it became a political issue. And a major roadblock, actually, for any of the agreements to be signed. But that being said, despite the pressure from the European Union, both before the summit, we also know about some extremely concerning measures and sort of techniques that were used to try to force this agenda dangling in front of Cuba and Venezuela, the possibility of lifting sanctions in exchange for this position. Other sort of maneuvers which have been widely condemned by the authorities of these two countries. And in the end, after two days of work on the 17th and 18th, the two blocks signed an agreement, which amongst other things actually mentioned not only the historic claims of Argentina regarding the Malvinas Islands, also mentioned Caracom, which is the Caribbean block of states, that's also part of CELAC, mentioned Caracom's historical demand for reparations for slavery. It also mentioned the concern felt by the CELAC block about the blockade against Cuba. And the section which was the most sticky, which probably took, which was the biggest debate, as I mentioned before, was regarding the war. And despite the European countries wanting it to say that they unanimously support Ukraine and condemn Russia, it says that each country actually has its own sovereign position and it's allowed to have its own position regarding the war. So an interesting development for sure showing that actually Latin America and the Caribbean is a block not to be just pushed over. It's not one that can be just told this is how we're going to position ourselves and that's what they do. They actually stood quite firm and Gustavo Petro, who addressed the People Summit on two occasions, said that it's actually Europe that needs Latin America. And Latin America is actually paving the way for the future, not only because it has the resources for, for example, clean energy, but that right now Europe is actually sliding into the far right, sliding into this fascist wave, whereas Latin America is experimenting with new forms of progressive government, of governing with the people. So very interesting in that respect. And the People Summit, which also took place from the 17th and 18th, brought together over 200 organizations. Over a thousand people came together in the Free University of Brussels to debate many of these similar issues, sovereignty, campaigns against debt, against sanctions, against the blockade, how actually to have a sovereign relationship between Europe and Latin America. And there there were very interesting presentations from many different movements and organizations, large delegations from Cuba, from Venezuela, and the heads of state, Miguel Díaz Canel, Gustavo Petro, Luis Arce, as well as Vice President Tessie Rodriguez, addressed the summit in a very historic festival of solidarity. So it was a quite interesting couple of days. There were also protests held by right-wing opposition figures. I went to that. It was, they were calling on the EU to actually put more sanctions on these countries and cut all dialogue with Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Not very big protests worth mentioning, but there are some sectors of politics that think that dialogue is actually not the way forward, that sanctions are the way that you can advance and that this is kind of the model that they're pushing. So an interesting couple of days in Brussels, Latin America on the world stage with its own agenda, which is able to push and not back down from. Yeah. So Prashant, we're going to end this broadcast with a pretty sad story from Manipur in India, a state, very small state, only three million people up there in the northeast of India, big protests, terrible incident that provoked the protests. What's been happening in Manipur in India? Right, which of course, Manipur becoming again a global news now because of a video which came out a couple of days ago, very brutal, a horrific video, which shows two women being penetrated naked. But this isn't the context of what has been happening for over two months now at the stage, which is violence, ethnic and religious violence that has been taking place. And so it's a very complicated issue to communities, the metis and the cookies. There's a long history of relations between them, questions of law as well. I'm not going to go into all that, but the fact is that what has happened in this case is for the past two months, we have seen a huge intensification of violence, about 150 people have been killed. Hundreds of people have been displaced, houses and churches burned down. All this has been taking place despite the fact and all this has been taking place pretty openly. And unfortunately, neither the state government nor the central government, both of which are under the Bharati Janata Party, the ruling party have really been able to do much. And I think for many, many weeks now, for two months now, members especially of the cookie community, the women who were assaulted in this video were from this community. They're a tribal community that lives largely in the hills of Manipur. Now, members of this community have been highlighting this issue for the longest time, that there are these kind of instance taking place, large scale violence taking place against the community. There needs to be action, but nothing really seems to be done, especially when it comes to providing justice. For instance, this incident, like I said, took place on May 4th, complaints were filed soon after, but there were no arrests until this shocking and horrifying video came out. And even there was a lot of criticism of the prime minister as well for the fact that for over two months, as the violence took place, this incredible amount of violence took place here, and it completely been silent on this issue as well, that the prime minister was generally very prompt to speak about a variety of issues, but somehow silent on this. And there's also the internal politics of the state, the fact that there is definitely a religious polarization, which has taken place alongside the ethnic violence as well, and a lot of people are pointing out that there is a clear political agenda behind this religious polarization. So all these factors, I think bringing the Manipur issue to the fore once again, and if you go to NewsClick, for instance, you will see a lot of reportage about these people who have suffered. One of the very unfortunate results of this violence is the fact that communities from both sides have begun living almost separately, even earlier there was a bit of intermingling in the sense that people from both communities lived in areas where the other community was in a majority, but after this violence has been almost complete separation of these communities. You can hear people from both sides saying that we don't want to live with the other community anymore. So this is not just one incident of violence, it's an entire chain of incidents over many, many weeks and months that has taken place, which has massively affected the social fabric of that state and also the neighbouring states because the fact that there's a lot of the borders that are drawn are not hardcore. They're very porous borders. There's a lot of migration, et cetera. So India's northeastern region, which itself has long been a site of, and there's been a lot of conflict, there have been a lot of unaddressed aspirations of the people, further people, further getting angry because of this. So, and I think this poses a very fundamental political challenge to the government of how it wants to address an issue like this. Can it bring forward an agenda which seeks to address the concerns and aspirations of the people or, you know, unfortunately until now there doesn't seem to be too much on those lines. So we'll be publishing a copy very soon which details a lot of these issues as well as a larger picture, but you have very tough questions ahead for the Indian government. You've been listening to Give the People What They Want brought to you by People's Dispatch, now five years old, and Globetrotter. We're here with you every week. See you next week.