 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. You always give the people what they want. Nice to be with you. We're in the midpoint of June. Give the people what they want brought to you by People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Very happy to be with you. Also very happy to see images coming out of Cuba of Kerala's Chief Minister Pinaray Vijayan traveling the country going to the sports ministry where he had a discussion about how Cuba is quite remarkable sports authority might send coaches to help coach young sports people in Kerala and so on. And then of course he met with President Miguel Diaz-Canal to have a discussion about Kerala-Cuba relations. India's relations with Cuba. India has a considerable history of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. Mr. Pinaray Vijayan met a range of government and non-government officials and people in Cuba. Very pleased to see this meeting take place. Of course this meeting taking place at a time when Cuba is struggling with terrific sanctions. Sanctions put in place, extra sanctions put in place because Cuba hosted the historical peace agreement between the Colombian government and the various armed factions. A great irony that the state sponsor of peace which is Cuba is being called a state sponsor of terrorism by the US government which in fact inflicts unilateral pressure against the Cuban government. Well, let's not spend the whole time talking about Cuba, Zoe, although that is very easy to do. Let's move on to Ecuador, a country which has had its own stresses and strains in recent years. Seems like every time we talk about Ecuador there's an election and this time perhaps it's an important one. What's happening in Ecuador? Yes, we are back to the time of elections. You thought we were done with elections but this year, end of the year, it's going to be a lot. We have Ecuador, there's Argentina and the primaries in Mexico which we'll get to later. But specifically Ecuador, I mean you're right that we have been talking a lot about elections there. And these elections happened because Guillermo Lasso as we reported earlier, activated the very dramatic sounding cross-death measure essentially because he was under great political pressure by the parliament which is really controlled by opposition and they were investigating him for several different serious crimes involving links to drug trafficking groups, corruption, money laundering, I mean all sorts of very serious charges and he preferred to not go through with the impeachment trial which probably would have happened removed and decided to activate this cross-death measure which essentially dissolves the parliament so there's currently no parliament in Ecuador. He's ruling by decree and elections will be held in August. The electoral calendar has been announced. There's going to be a very, very tight campaign period. There's already eight different presidential tickets announced amongst those, Andrés Araus who's running vice president with Luisa González who's going is the presidential candidate for the Citizens' Revolution ticket. It's going to be an interesting contest especially given the fact that back in February in local elections, the Citizens' Revolution actually performed quite well. They had an important setback in the 2020 elections. Of course, Andrés Araus was unable to win the second round after winning the first round in the presidential elections but because of the kind of mismanagement that we've seen under Guillermo Lasso, the complete destruction of the country under Lenin Moreno, who by the way actually ejected the ELN peace talks and Cuba being the state sponsor of peace graciously opened their doors to actually host these talks and make sure that it could become a reality but if it had been for Lenin Moreno's Ecuador these peace talks probably would have never happened. And so important point there and the country has really gone from crisis to crisis, to economic crisis. There's been this massive scandal of these prison massacres which Guillermo Lasso has really done nothing to tackle despite many recommendations from human rights organizations in the country. A whole slew of things and now once again they're going back to the polls which is of course again bringing unnecessary instability bringing once again I mean this is going to be a whole political charade there's eight different tickets very interesting personalities you can check out the article prepared by Tanya Wadhwa at People's Dispatch thoroughly going through all of these different candidates and their platforms but we'll definitely be following it Ecuador continues to be a key ground for struggle and it also really indicates kind of the direction and future of what's happening on the continent. It's very important we'll be keeping track of that as we keep track of all elections it seems that takes place in Latin America that is an important front of struggle for the people in that region meanwhile where there are no elections namely no elections that seem to count when there was an election in 2006 the United States forced the annulment of it I'm talking about Palestine of course Prashant the front of struggle seems to be in the prisons it seems to be with hunger strikes tell us again what is happening in Palestine right with your June 18th Palestinian prisoners are set to go on strike across Palestine and this follows a series of developments which have a process which has been going on for many months of protests we saw recently the case of Wali Dhaka being raised who is in his 37th year of imprisonment he was imprisoned in 1986 one of the few people who was not released after the Oslo Accords as well now Wali Dhaka has been diagnosed with cancer recently and there has been a demand across Palestine that he be released for his treatment as well and the fact that he is of course a writer, intellectual and other things but also on the most basic human grounds of being able to access treatment but this has been time and again denied by Israeli authorities on various procedural grounds but Wali Dhaka's case is just one we know that just a couple of months ago another Palestinian administrative detainee, Khadir Adnan died in the beginning of May and this was after a hunger strike and he was an administrative detainee and this also reflects the time when I think there has been increasing ill treatment of Palestinians in prisons it is always extremely bad but it has only gone worse since the Benjamin Netanyahu government came to power we remember for instance Itamar Ben-Guid making very objectionable statements about how the bread was fresh bread the Israeli Palestinian prisoners should not get fresh bread for instance and this is reflected in a lot of say what are the basic necessities of prisoners being denied by the occupation forces so for instance the numbers are pretty staggering I think there are about 700 Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centres suffering from chronic health issues and various life threatening ailments and we have a couple of articles which have actually talked about the condition in various prisons, various Israeli prisons and this of course like I said is part of a larger policy of oppression and Israel follows the total number of Palestinian prisoners is around 5000 and of whom around 1200 administrative detainees now we have talked about administrative detention before it is this policy whereby you know say Palestinians who are picked up on any charges can be just almost indefinitely detained without any charge or trial on the basis of the fact that the Israeli prosecution provides what is secret evidence and the judges convinced over this and this has been relentlessly used against Palestinians who engage in resistance especially political leaders, intellectuals a cross section of Palestinian society has been targeted with it women have been targeted, children have been targeted so all of them I think 14 minus 14 minus is the total number of prisoners but Faita 1200 prisoners are facing administrative detention and this year and the past few months you have seen a spike in the number of these orders that are going through and it is important to remember that once someone is detained under administrative detention there is no clarity on how long they can be held because it depends on every six months the case comes up and then order has passed and the detention again continues so this has been a very important focus of the protests of prisoners along with the provision of basic necessities in prisons which all prisoners not to mention prisoners held by occupation forces should be getting so all this together I think a very key moment in the continuing Palestinian protests that are going on and a lot of the resistance has focused on the cause of prisoners and like you said the case of prisoners has been one of the front lines of struggle by Palestinians as well so we will be covering these issues of course in the coming days but an important moment I think in the overall struggle that has been taking place. Let's shift focus away to Europe and NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO is going to hold its annual summit as it does every summer in Vilnius Lithuania on the 11th and 12th of July in anticipation of this Secretary General of NATO Jan Stortenberg went to the place where he goes to get instructions went to Washington DC met with high officials of the US government meanwhile interesting development of course because NATO expansion has been very much on the surface in recent years particularly around the conflict with Russia in Ukraine and you know we saw that in May 2022 after the Russian entry into Ukraine at that point both Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO as part of this great expansion of NATO well Finland's application to join NATO was accepted and Finland joined NATO in April of this year and Finland's entry into NATO was signed off by the Turkish government because it has to be unanimous consent of all NATO members to accept a new member so Finland joined NATO in April of 2023 now the joining of Finland is key because Finland shares a 1400 km land border with Russia and the day Finland joined NATO NATO's direct border with Russia double to close to 2800 km it's quite considerable Finland's entry into NATO certainly of course sparked concern in Moscow but that was a done deal now why wasn't Sweden accepted into NATO in April of this year after all both Sweden and Finland had applied to join NATO in May 2022 and both Sweden and Finland gave as the reason for applying to join NATO their anxiety over the Russian entry into Ukraine but only Finland was accepted in not Sweden, curious situation well those who look at this carefully know exactly why Sweden was not allowed Sweden wasn't allowed because there was no unanimous consent from all NATO members to take Sweden in now that unanimous consent might have been denied by other countries we don't know but the country that went out in front and said we will not allow Sweden to join NATO was Turkey, now others as I say might also have subsequently come out and said we don't want Sweden to join but that was not the case, Turkey is the country that has been quite vocal about this a newly re-elected president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in a visit in Central Asia and while he was asked about this he said look we are not going to allow Sweden to join NATO at the Vilnius summit and he was quite clear that his Prime Minister and he have no difference of opinion on this very interesting, why is Turkey so bothered about Sweden joining NATO after all Turkey didn't object to Finland which has a direct border 1400 km border with Russia they had no problem with that so obviously this has nothing to do with Russia itself in other words Turkey isn't carrying a bucket for Russia there must be something else involved well it has to do with a couple of things firstly Sweden as some of you might know has for the last 50 odd years positioned itself as a great defender of human rights and despite the fact that Sweden is of course at the same time one of the major arms producers in the world listeners in India will well know about the Bofors gun a great scandal in the Ajiv Gandhi administration in the 1980s Bofors is a Swedish company it makes heavy artillery for battlefields and so on a country that is home to I guess it's not directly home to the Nobel prize for peace because you'd have to look also at Norway for that but nonetheless Sweden up there as a champion of human rights actually used its asylum policy pretty liberally allowing for instance Sri Lankan Tamils to enter in large numbers in the 1980s as well as well here we have it Turkish Kurds a large number of Turkish Kurdish Kurdish refugees political refugees took refuge in Sweden and in Sweden they've been very vocal about the opposition to Mr Erdogan but that's not the only issue Mr Erdogan directly told Jens Totenberg that Sweden has to deal with what he called its terrorism problem and that is that the workers party of Kurdistan the PKK has an office there that's not the only issue the other issue is that Sweden has seen the rise of neo-fascist organizations including deeply Islamophobic organizations and there's been a spate of things like the burning of Korans in public here come contradictions within Europe on the one side rising Islamophobia in the Nordic countries particularly Sweden and Denmark has the hackles up in Istanbul where Mr Erdogan has positioned himself as a kind of defender of Islam no chance of Sweden joining NATO at Vilnius this summer but this is something to keep an eye on the world is made not of straight lines but of zigzags you're listening to give the people what they want brought to you from people's dispatch and globetrotter happy to have you with us either live on Friday or via podcast we're going to go back to the Turkish area because Prashant is going to tell us about yet another Greek migrant tragedy right it's interesting that you mentioned refugees which are because the Mediterranean region is actually now one of it's an actual death trap for refugees from across the world but mainly especially Africa and conflicted parts of Asia and as we record I think the latest numbers from the tragedy of the Greek coast is around 79 migrants refugees who have been died due to drowning and I think it's a specifically horrific incident because the board they were traveling in apparently 600 to 700 migrants were aboard that boat so including many many children so it was just jam packed now Greek authorities are saying of course that you know they tried their best to provide rescue but refugees refused to do it now there are two aspects to this alarm phonem organization which works on migrant rights and refugees for instance says that indication so provided to authorities early on that this boat was in trouble but not in a faction was taken but I think some observers have also pointed out that it's an interesting point that the reason the if for instance the migrants had no to being rescued by Greek authorities but also have been the fact that the brutality of Greek authorities towards refugees is extremely notorious so even though they were in extremely difficult condition what did they say no because of the fact that they've rather preferred the risk of floating at sea rather than being captured by handled by Greek authorities so I think this really is kind of a very illustrative unfortunately very illustrative tragedy we come every two or three months we talk about one of these incidents and nothing really seems to change and if you look for instance at what is called a central Mediterranean region I think the numbers are pretty disastrous since 2014 21,000 migrants have died or gone missing in that region and in the whole of the Mediterranean the number is 27,000 and in this central Mediterranean region alone that's 21,000 people who have gone missing or died in many of these accidents and 2023 especially has seen a huge increase in these numbers as well it's been the deadliest year on record and I think it's important to sort of connect it to another report which has come out recently that's the UN high commission for refugees report on the refugee crisis in the globe overall and that also presents some very depressing numbers I think 110 million people are forcibly displaced now of course Ukraine and Sudan are major reasons for last year's displacement but one interesting line in that report which I think does not probably get enough attention is that the report says that from 2011 onwards there has been a rapid spike in the number of refugees until 2011 it was relatively stable but from 2011 we see this drastic spike that takes place and since every year it's sort of their numbers have been very high and then the question arises what happened in 2011 and in 2011 that time period is when Libya and Syria happened and even Iraq violence also but most importantly Libya and Syria the interventions by the US and its allies in Libya and Syria begin around that time and you know today if you look at some of the countries which are worst hit by what is called the refugee crisis Syria is definitely one of them Libya is one of the centers of many migrants for many migrants to live and Libya also is where the authorities have been paid by the EU and the UK is very horrible horrendous camps where migrants are again so called process so it's no surprise that you know from 2011 was the year when things really began to escalate so due to wars due to climate change there's this many of these conflicted zones have become you know people leaving in large numbers and again also worsened by the fact that countries like the UK or Hungary have some very strict laws to curtail the flow of refugees many of them adopting racist attitudes we saw them last year when you know people were openly saying that refugees from Ukraine okay we can take care of them but from anywhere else they're not our people so I think all of this reflecting on what is really a sort of larger perennial question how do European countries address this issue do they just go with these you know violent theories great replacement or something of that sort or is there any reckoning that takes place for all these policies and all these wars they have continue to unleash Prashant one of the ships that helped rescued 106 of these migrants is called Mayan Queen 4 it's owned by one of the wealthiest Mexican families they're a silver family family that owns silver Mayans the Bayeris family I'm sure they you know the boat was used for the rescue because it was there I'm not sure they are looking carefully at what's happening in the next Mexican election Zoe because people like the Bayeris family seem to do well regardless of who's in power but I gather back to an election in Mexico this time that's exactly right 2024 will be the next general elections in Mexico and it's definitely elections that are looked at with a lot of interest on the prospect specifically because of the historic victory of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018 winning with the Morena party with an in alliance with the Green Party and the Workers Party truly historic breaking decades of rule by pre and fun really parties that represent the ruling class that have been embroiled in corruption responsible for so many so many other crimes links to drug trafficking groups etc and the victory of Lopez Obrador in 2018 really changed the course of Mexican politics I in back in April myself and running caliq we're lucky enough to actually speak to Claudia Sheinbaum who's the current or was the head of government in Mexico City and also spoke in Andrés Manuel's press conference very very interesting scene there and now the party of both Sheinbaum and Lopez Obrador Morena has announced that they are going to hold inner party primaries to elect who will be the person that succeeds Andrés Manuel in these upcoming elections as I said these are highly historic elections not only did Amlo break through this ruling ruling class party dominance over the Mexican political system but he's a president who's had 70% approval rating and so most of the pollsters predict that Morena will definitely win the next elections just due to their performance in the country the peso has actually made historic comeback it's actually gaining strength compared to the dollars that's at about the dollar which is really historic for that currency and many other indexes their ability to achieve energy sovereignty it has become an extremely popular rule in the country and now the main kind of debate the main contention is really who's going to succeed and so this week Morena announced that it will be holding these primaries and that amongst between Claudia who just had to resign from her post as Mexico's governor and Ricardo these are going to be the four contenders and according to the rules of these primaries they all had to resign from their current post so that's why we saw Marcelo step down as foreign minister of Mexico we saw a new foreign minister take over and so right now they're going to be in the full primary campaign process there's many different regulations for how these are going to take place there's going to be an internal Morena count of these primaries there's also going to be an external pollster very very interesting for many people this is the real this is really where the debates going to happen we'll be following it very closely this could really mark I mean Mexico is one of the largest countries in the region one of the largest borders with the United States and the future of Mexico as we've seen during the government of Amlo really has also marked the destiny of the region we've seen so many of the policies that Amlo has taken forward have a tremendous impact on the region as a whole him not going to some of the Americas his strong stance to nationalize key industries in Mexico his friendship with the Cuban people these are all key moves that actually if this continues if this trajectory of the fourth generation the fourth transformation of change continues could really continue to have such big impacts on the region as a whole and on the world it's going to be important we'll be looking at it carefully part of this new mood that seems to be there in countries like Mexico in Turkey and of course in South Africa India you know what can one say the foreign minister out there saying that you know India doesn't want to follow the NATO template very interesting use of that phrase NATO template by the Indian foreign minister well the South African foreign minister in the news because of the very strong position that her government has taken to say that when the BRICS meeting is held in South Africa in August South Africa will not collaborate with the international criminal court in executing an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin Nalini Panor has received a lot of pushback from the opposition democratic alliance very strangely named political party the heirs of the apartheid system in fact very strong words against foreign minister Panor from them using kind of Russian public language to indicate what is in fact South Africa's you know sense of the world and how they are seeing things meanwhile of course you remember that in December 2022 the administration of US President Joe Biden held the Africa US Summit in Washington DC there being follow up summits there was just a summit recently on for business leaders and so on well there is a summit to be held on the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act forum it is the this act passed by the US government it is to expire in 2025 and there is an annual forum for US and African leaders to basically have a conversation about a US law that meeting was to be held in South Africa the 2023 AGOA forum now angered by this several important members of the US Congress the head of the subcommittee on state foreign operations Christopher Coons ranking member James Reich of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and so on and so forth sent a very strong letter to Anthony Blinken in which they basically argue and you know the letter itself is worth reading because it shows you the level of thought that is there in the US high offices well they argued there that South Africa's insistence upon holding the BRICS meeting not willing to arrest Mr. Putin continuing to support Russia possible violating US sanctions law and so they said because of all that these actions by South Africa and I'm reading their letter now call into question its illegibility portrayed benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act in other words now they are thinking of sanctioning South Africa for not honoring sanctions on Russia this would be in a sense an indirect sanction of South Africa we question they write whether a country in danger of losing AGOA benefits should have the privilege of hosting the 2023 AGOA forum and then finally they say that the US government must send a clear and important message that the United States continues to stand with Ukraine etc etc this is putting a lot of pressure on the South African government looks like they are still going to host the BRICS the foreign minister of China recently had a conversation with Nellie Pandore looks like they are still going to host the BRICS looks like the AGOA summit is still going to be held in South Africa looks like the pressure is not going to amount to much you are listening to give the people what they want brought to you from peoples dispatch that's peoplesdispatch.org that's Zoe and Prashant I'm Vijay from Globetrotter we'll see you next week