 Hello, and welcome to another episode of Around the World in 8 Minutes by People's Just Patch. In this show, we bring you news from working-class and popular struggles across the globe. In our first story, we take you to India, where in a case of state crackdown on activists, Delhi Police has charged three communist students leaders with sedition. In the three-year-old case, Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khaled and Anirbhan Bhattacharya of Jawaharlal Nehru University. Along with seven Kashmiri students were accused of criminal conspiracy and rioting. In February 2016, an event was organized in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University to mark the third anniversary of the hanging of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri who was convicted in the case of the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001. Afzal Guru's capital sentence was opposed by many groups who pointed out the loopholes in the legal proceedings against him. The university event was disrupted by the right-wing student group, Akhil Bhartia Vidyarthi Parishad, who termed the event anti-national. Soon after, on February 12, police and paramilitary personnel launched a crackdown on the university, arresting Kanhaiya Kumar, who was the JNU student union president at that time. This led to a massive resistance campaign by students and teachers of JNU against the attempts of the far-right government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to shut down the university. Across the country, working class, students and teachers, students solidarity with JNU and called for an end to the government-led attacks on dissenting voices. The filing of charges now is being seen as yet another political move by the ruling Hindu conservative Bhartia Janata Party before the national elections to be held in the mid of this year. The sedition law in India is a remnant of its colonial past, when it was used by the British to clamp down on dissenters and activists challenging their rule. The current far-right regime has also frequently resorted to using this law to silence critics and to suppress debates and protests. In 2017, sedition cases were filed against 66 students protesting against a free hike in Punjab University. The sedition charges were dropped an year later after massive protests. A few days back in the northeastern state of Assam, three prominent activists were charged with sedition for opposing the Controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was recently passed by the BJP government. The bill is considered to be an attempt to religiously polarise the country by the ruling government by providing special citizenship rights for immigrants only belonging to certain religious communities. The bill, excluding Muslim immigrants, makes Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh eligible for citizenship. Our next story is from Los Angeles, where the United Teachers Los Angeles or the UTLA for short went on strike on January 14, demanding the redressal of their long pending grievances. On Monday morning, despite the rain, thousands of teachers clad in red t-shirts and carrying placard saying on strike for our students gathered near the city hall and marched to the Los Angeles Unified School Teacher's headquarters. According to reports, there were picket lines at almost 900 schools across the city. The UTLA said that more than 27,000 members took part in pickets on the first morning of the strike. Tens of thousands of people are believed to have participated in the rally. The teachers are demanding that the LA School District spend the $1.9 million it has in its unrestricted reserves to implement smaller class sizes and higher more nurses, counselors and librarians. The teachers have also sought more support for special education, early education, bilingual education and adult education. Other demands include an end to the over-testing of students and ensuring the empowerment of parents and teachers in the education process through the strengthening of the local school leadership councils. The teachers accused the LA Unified School District authorities of bad faith after the nearly 20 months of negotiations on these demands turned out to be unfruitful. The LA School District serves 640,000 students and is the second biggest school district in the United States. UTLA President Alex Caputo Pearl told the media that they are in a fight for the soul of public education. The UTLA declared that the strike will continue until the LA Unified School District engages with their proposals and is prepared to spend the money it has in its reserves on the public schools in the district. In our last story for this episode we take you to Swaziland where the civil servants are going on a nationwide strike on January 28th. The main demand of the strike is an increase in the workers salary by 6.5% according to the increased cost of living. Workers had gone on strike for the same demand in August and September last year but the Maswati regime had not exceeded to their demand. According to Jabulo Lamini who is the International Coordinator of the Communist Party of Swaziland the cost of living adjustment now needs to be double in that of last year. Lamini is out on bail following his arrest on the 11th of January along with the Deputy Chairperson of the Communist Party of Swaziland. The two were arrested on various falls and trumped up charges including jaywalking, obstruction of police on duty and resisting arrest. They were arrested in Manzini while they were on their way to attend a teachers meeting of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers. The policemen half of whom were in plain clothes went on to threaten physical violence against the two leaders when they protested their wrongful arrest. The matter was scheduled to be heard in court on 14th January. Workers came out in huge numbers in a show of support for the two leaders. The hearing was later postponed to the 5th of February. Swaziland has been witness to many such oppressive actions by the authoritarian regime of King Maswati. In August of last year Musa Maxwell was arrested after he tried to stop a police officer from firing into a crowd of teachers who are attending a public meeting to discuss demanding a pay rise. In September of last year a historic three-day strike was organized by thousands of public and private sector workers belonging to 19 different trade unions. Uniting under the banner of the trade union congress of Swaziland the workers undertook strike action in multiple cities demanding a hike in minimum wage according to the rise in cost of living. They also demanded legalization of strikes and increase in health and education funding and they were also against the increase in the value added tax from 14% to 15%. Responding to the recent arrest the CPS in its statement accused the autocratic Maswati regime of trying to disrupt the teacher's preparatory meeting for the country-wide civil servant strike. That's all for this episode of around the world in eight minutes. For more stories and videos about people's movements please check out our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.