 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to Around the World in 8 Minutes, a show by People's Dispatch. In this show, we bring you struggles by people's movements across the world, which are battling capitalist and imperialist aggression and striving to create a better world. We begin with a trial in the assassination of Honduran indigenous leader, Bertha Casares. A hearing concerning a key conspirator, David Castillo, which was supposed to take place on September 25th, was postponed following the request of his lawyer, Copin. The organization Casares founded condemned the postponement and said that this was aimed at delaying the process against Castillo and was yet another attempt to prevent truth and justice for her from being achieved. Bertha Casares, an iconic leader of popular movements in Honduras, was one of the most vocal voices against the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project on the Gualcar Kirib, which is considered to be holy by the indigenous Lenca people. The project was to be constructed by the company DESA with funding from multinational agencies. The resistance of the people of the region was met with severe repression and intimidation by state and private actors who were paid by the company. The culmination of this violence was the assassination of Bertha Casares on March 2nd, 2016. David Castillo was a high-level executive in DESA and was arrested in 2018 as one of the intellectual authors of the case. This means he is believed to have participated in the planning, coordination and financing of the assassination of Bertha Casares. Last year, seven people were convicted of assassinating her. But Copin and others have pointed out that justice will truly be delivered only when those in the highest echelons of power who plan the assassination are also punished. In a trial marked by various irregularities, the judges have rejected almost every bit of evidence that links the intellectual authors, such as the members of the Atala-Zablah family to the assassination, and those links which contextualize her assassination as part of a strategy of repression by DESA. It is thus that the trial of Castillo has acquired significance. Castillo, a West Point graduate and a military intelligence officer, is also accused in a number of cases of corruption and fraud as well as human rights violations. He is also a key link in a chain of financial networks associated with DESA and many of his crimes are alleged to have benefited DESA and its associates. With regard to the assassination of Bertha Casares, Castillo is supposed to have coordinated and distributed funds to the hitmen in order to carry out the assassination. As no other intellectual author has been held so far, Castillo is a fundamental piece that links those who shot Bertha and those who paid them to shoot her. Incidentally, eight months after the assassination of Bertha, Castillo bought a luxury house worth 1.4 million dollars in Houston, Texas. Castillo's defense, along with the media, have sought to portray him as a victim. People's organizations in Honduras point out that this is part of a strategy to dealing the murder from the vast network of state and corporate actors who are involved in the crime. Kopin sees the trial and the fight for justice as a struggle for the soul of Honduras itself. To quote Suli Madriaga of Kopin, justice for Bertha means justice for Honduras. In a country so impacted by impurity, corruption and violence, we hope that from here a change in the system can begin. For our next story, we go to India where at least 270,000 permanent employees and 200,000 contractual employees of the mining major coal India limited took part in a one day strike on September 23rd. The strike was organized by a number of unions including the All India Coal Workers Federation, which is affiliated to the center of Indian trade unions. Other unions involved the All India Trade Union Congress, the Hindu Masdoor Sabha and the Indian National Mine Workers Federation. The strike was against a proposal to the far right Bharati Janta Party government to allow 100% foreign direct investment in coal mining. All India Coal Workers Federation General Secretary Didi Ramanandan told Newsclick that the strike was a massive success and had halted CIL's daily production of 2.5 million tons of coal from nearly 600 mining establishments spread over 82 mining areas in the country. He said that ahead of the strike representatives of different federations had spoken to thousands of workers and received unprecedented support. In addition to a bar on foreign capital, the union's other demands were stopping privatization and ensuring job security. Meanwhile, even after the union served a strike notice, the government went ahead and issued a notification allowing 100% foreign direct investment for mining and the sale of coal. The notification also permitted FDI in associated processing infrastructure operations such as coal washery, crushing, coal handling and separation. Coal India Limited CIL and a singer and ecolaries company SCCL, another public sector you undertaking, paid taxes and royalties worth over $6 billion to the government last year alone. They employ over 550,000 workers. Of the current strength, nearly 280,000 employees do not have any job security as they are either contractual or casual employees. Workers are worried that once foreign companies take over the sector, there will be massive job losses as part of cost cutting. Regular workers are also apprehensive that they may be turned into contractual and casual workers with much less pay and lower social security benefits. The Indian government's announcement is part of its heightened campaign to sell off the country's wealth to big business and foreign players. In recent times, India's national carrier Air India and public sector telecom major BSNL are among the organizations that have faced this threat. In each case, there has been a calculated process of weakening public sector players by giving incentives to private firms and then trying to sell off the public sector under firms, claiming that they are no longer profitable. While these policies were initiated by earlier governments, they are being pursued with much more haste ever since the government of Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. In response to this, the center of Indian trade unions announced an open mass convention on September 30th to call for a struggle against the sale of natural resources and the country's public sector. The issue of the sale of public sector resources also featured in the left convention, which gave a call for an all India struggle against the government's economic policies on October 16th. Our last story for the day is about yet another attack on the land occupations of Abhalali Basi Majandolu or the Shaq Dwellers Movement in South Africa. On Tuesday, September 23rd, police and the anti-land invasion unit attacked the Azania land occupation in Keto Mainu, which housed 98 families. This came two days after another attack on the Burlington land occupation, where authorities demolished 60 to 70 Shaqs, rendering another 400 homeless. Both these demolitions were carried out without a court order, which is illegal, but is increasingly a common practice in South Africa. These tiny Shaqs, walled in roof with metal sheets, were built by members of Abhalali Basi Majandolu with the material they gathered and without any assistance from the government. The ABM, since its inception in 2005, is involved in occupying unused land to build Shaqs, often with self-connected electricity and water supply, to house the urban poor close to the city. It is only in these places that they stand some chance of finding a livelihood. The attack on the Azania settlement on September 23rd was the latest since February, when it was built. In at least one of these attacks, rubber bullets were fired, injuring several Shaq dwellers. After each such demolition, ABM members have been rebuilding the Shaqs. The frequency of attacks on their occupations has been on the rise since June, with at least three to four attacks taking place each week. After the attack, many people, including women and children, were left homeless outside the settlement, but the residents and the Abhalali members have commenced rebuilding the Shaqs again, using scrap metal sheets and other building material they managed to gather. That's all we have for this episode of Around the World in 8 Minutes. To read more about these stories, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thanks for watching.