 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 from People's Dispatch. This is a show where we bring you stories of resistance, yes, but also push back against narratives which seek to malign people's movements. Narratives which seek to constantly sabotage those who fight for a better world. Our first story is about a country which has long had to deal with such biased and farcical narratives which attack its bid to achieve Yes, we are talking about Venezuela, which was again in the news last week after a report released on the human rights situation there by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR. Now this report is prepared after the OHCHR team visited Venezuela, heard testimonies from various sections and with the full cooperation of the government. However, when the report came out, guess who was responsible for everything wrong in the country? That's right, it was the Venezuelan government. To the shock of many people's organizations in the country, the report seemed to have entirely brought the opposition's version of what is happening in Venezuela. This report has been condemned by people's movements in the country and the government, which has released a 70-point counter to the report. Maria Eugenia Roussian, the president of Funda Latina, the Latin American Foundation for Human Rights and Social Development, which is one of the organizations that met UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, expressed a dismay at the fact that the reports of 12 NGOs were ignored in the OHCHR report. She specifically noted the fact that the report ignored the victims of right-wing violence in the country, many of whom had actually testified before Bachelet. In 2014, 43 citizens were killed by right-wing opposition mobs and in 2017, 120 were killed. These included several high-profile cases of grotesque public lynchings of shavistas, working class and darker-skinned people. Similarly, the report section on social and economic rights noted with concern how the Venezuelan population currently is unable to access adequate food and health care. Now, normally one would assume that the immediate next step for the report would be to call for the immediate withdrawal of crippling sanctions that the US and several other countries have imposed on Venezuela. But once again, the blame is laid at the government's door. This is despite the fact that several rounds of sanctions stretching from the Obama era have severely restricted the Venezuelan government's access to funds as well as its ability to import food and medicines. A report released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research in April 2019 said that 40,000 people had died from 2017 to 2018 due to these sanctions. Similarly, the report had adverse comments to make about the role of the government in the political stability of the country. Now, it may be a matter of common sense that political stability is to say the least difficult to achieve in a country where the US has been attempting a regime change operations for years. But clearly, the OHCHR report chose not to see it that way and did not factor in the disruptive role played by the US and its allies in spreading chaos in Venezuela. For instance, from January, self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido has called for violating the sovereignty of Venezuela's borders, called on the army to revolt, and called for an armed intervention for abroad. All this has happened with the complete support of the US and Venezuela's neighbors. But somehow all of this is ignored and everything is the government's fault. If there is any consolation, it is that the people and the legitimate government of Nicolás Maduro have long resisted these attacks on the sovereignty of the country and the struggles of people's movements. The streets of Caracas and the rest of the country have time and again given the most fitting response to such one-sided and malicious assaults with a simple slogan, Yankee go home. We next go to the Philippines, where the climate of fear and terror created by the administration of Rodrigo Duterte has claimed its latest victim. Human rights activist Romano Baldoza was fatally shot on the night of July 7th by unidentified attackers in the Negros Occidental Province in the island of Negros. The 43-year-old is a former provincial coordinator of a major rights group called Carapadan and was said to be the advisor to the young volunteers group of the Philippine Independent Church. According to Carapadan, Baldoza is a 69th activist to be murdered on the island of Negros, ever since Duterte assumed a presidency in 2016. In a similar incident on June 27th, a union leader, Lito Itao was murdered by unknown assailants. Lito was the auditor of the Guihulgan city chapter of the Habal Habal driver section of the Militant Transport Workers Union Piston. Activists say most of these attacks are orchestrated by security forces on opponents and critics of Duterte. These murders are not the only instances of repression. On June 25th and 28th, security forces arrested around 13 people on various charges of murder and alleged collaboration with the banned Communist Party of Philippines and the New People's Army. 10 of those arrested continue to be under police custody and one man reported to have been detained by the military intelligence is yet to return. There has been widespread criticism and condemnation of these incidents. The arrests especially conform to a pattern called red tagging, which involves arresting civil society leaders and activists on vague charges of association with the Communist Party of Philippines. The island of Negros has seen gruesome attacks on critics of the government in the recent past two. In March, 14 farmers were killed in weapons raid by the Filipino security forces and in April, human rights activists and peace negotiator Toto Padigas was murdered by unknown attackers. The body count is increasing in the Philippines with the Duterte administration having a free hand in the repression of its people, especially those who dare to raise their voices against the authoritarian state. For the movements of the country, there is a long way to go and countless struggles before these oppressive structures are overthrown. We end with the inspiring story of a 500-day protest by workers in India. The workers of the brewery plant of Anhoysar Bush in Sonipat in the Indian state of Haryana have been protesting the illegal firing of union leaders, withdrawal of union recognition and the management's refusal to negotiate on the demands of the union. Their protest was launched last year under the banner of the Haryana Breweries Limited Mazdoor Union HPMU. On July 8, the independent union reasserted that the workers would continue the demonstration to put pressure on the management to stop the victimization of union members. Anhoysar Bush is the world's largest beer company and the Sonipat brewery is one of the 17 units it runs in India. Many of the workers here get paid half the amount received by their counterparts in other plants. In 2016, in order to address this, the workers began the process of reviving the HPMU, which had fallen dormant. However, the management refused to recognize the union and fired four employees, including the president and general secretary of the revived union. 2016 was also the year when the far-right wing Bhartiya Janata Party came to power in the state of Haryana. Soon, the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh, a trade union affiliated to the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh, the parent organization of the BJP intervened in the issue with the agenda of breaking workers' unity. Last year, there was an attack on a peaceful protest by the union outside the Sonipat Government Office, in which a committee member was gravely injured. However, in this case, it was the union members who were targeted for legal action and a total of 12 cases were filed against the union and its members. This issue and the persecution of the union has been taken up by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers Association, IUF, which is fighting a case on the behalf of the workers in Belgium. Meanwhile, the relentless protests where workers continues. For the past 500 days, the permanent workers have been joining the protest camp after their shifts. Their family members are also part of the protest. And thus for every day, for 12 hours, a struggle camp is set up outside the factory. The strike has also won the backing of local farmers and student groups, creating an admirable example of a community coming together to support the struggles of its members. The workers are determined that they will not retreat or give up till their rightful demands are met. 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.