 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. We're slowly trotting our way to the 200th episode of Give the People What They Want. Very special to have Zoe in Peru. I'm sure that you've been following her coverage on social media at the People's Dispatch handle on Twitter and at peoplesdispatch.org exemplary coverage of the aftermath or in fact the coop process in Peru. Zoe, let's give you as much time as we can on this show to talk about what you're seeing, what you're finding. Share a little bit about your superb reporting. Well, thank you for that introduction Vijay. It's been definitely a very intense week here in Peru. I just got back this morning from Ayacucho where 10 people were shot down by the military. And I'll start with this story because I think it's quite emblematic of what's been happening over the past two weeks. So as we've been covering on this show and on People's Dispatch on December 7th there was a legislative coup against Pedro Casillo. He was arrested shortly after. He's remained in prison until today. And following this, Dina Boluarte who was his vice president was sworn in as president and they removed Pedro Casillo's presidential immunity and proceeded. So that happened on December 7th and maybe they were unprepared or maybe they didn't have a notion of just what Pedro Casillo means to the people of Peru. But in response to this, there's been mass protests across the country above all in the southern region of Peru, in Arequipa, in Ayacucho where I was mass protests because people are angry that the Congress which is dominated by the right wing which has an extremely low approval rate about 10%. There's 90% of people who don't approve of the Congress basically decided that they could take Pedro Casillo out of power and they see this as a culmination of 16 months of harassment of putting pressure on his government of not allowing him to do what he really was voted in to do, which the people of Peru voted him to do which was change the political system, make Peru a country that's a rich country where there can be no more poor people. And so in, for example, in Ayacucho, they had been mobilizing there had been some small demonstrations happening following this announcement and they had seen there were people had told me that they saw the brutal, brutal repression that was faced by people more to the south in Arequipa in other regions and they got very angry with this that the people were being shot down by police that the people were being shot down by the army and in that moment their regional governor actually goes to Lima and says that in my province the people are content they're not against Dina Boluarte we fully support her and that's that and so in response to this on December 15th there was a national strike in Ayacucho and university students marching around the center of the town more people joined in and people decided to as had happened in other cities try to close the airport and this is an extremely symbolic act to close an airport and say this is not normal what's happening is not normal you can't actually carry out a coup d'etat and expect that the people are just going to stand by and so they attempt to close the airport but little did they know there was armies stationed kind of all around the area of the airport all around the area of the town in that region and they started to shoot people down and this day at least seven people were confirmed dead on site and several more were brought to the hospital and since then the death toll from this day, this massacre is 10 people you know they're 16 year old kids 18 year old people who are coming back from work I spoke to many of the family members yesterday and it was really heartbreaking and you know as Ayacucho is an area which has already suffered a lot of the internal armed conflict that took place in Peru it's an area where people are used to being called terrorists and used to being accused of committing violence and that's exactly what happened is that in this massacre there was a repetition of ok we can kill them because they're just terrorists we can kill them because they're trying to commit illegal acts and it was really heartbreaking really to speak to people to hear this I spoke to one woman whose son has actually been disappeared since the 90s and now her grandson was killed in the protests on December 15th so I think it's important for people to hear this story because it's happening it continues to happen there's still being very violent oppression of the protests against the coup and meanwhile the government of Dino Aguarte has continued to signatize continued to criminalize protesters calling them terrorists calling them criminals and at the same time of course the organization of the American states has recognized the government of Dino Aguarte almost immediately on December 7th the US Embassy has released statements saying that they're concerned for the well-being of the Peruvian people but at the end of the day they've supported this government and it seems like there's kind of no turning back in their eyes Pedro Castillo continues to be in prison he has denounced on social media that his rights are being violated this of course through different lawyers and people who's been able to send letters to so it's a very concerning state of affairs and of course we're just one day away from Christmas and a lot of people you know take a mental vacation take some time off and even here at the road blockades a lot of them will be suspended for the holidays but we have to make sure that this story doesn't get lost because it's truly truly devastating I think for a lot of people it brings back memories of what happened in Bolivia in 2019 with the horrible massacres against the people protesting the coup and so yeah it's very important to keep in mind you know in the story that you you wrote for people's dispatch the story called we are here to support our president you mentioned in front of Barbadia prison where Pedro Castillo is being held people were suspicious of the media what has been the media coverage within Peru outside Peru it's basically the western narrative but within Peru what has been the state of the media coverage well it's it's interesting not only in front of Barbadia where people suspicious when I said that was a journalist kind of every single place that I went they said are you from this outlet are you from Channel 4 are you from Channel 5 if so we do not want to talk to we have no interest in the fact that you're going to manipulate our words you're going to do this do that there's a lot of distress of mainstream media and they are perfectly correct because if you look at the covers of all of the major newspapers if you turn on the TV I mean it should people should have to face charges for the things that they're saying it's outright lies it's slander I mean if you look at the the action and the behavior of these media outlets during the term of Pedro Castillo it was really they were all used to attack him say that he was corrupt say that he's a thief so it just becomes common discourse to say that he's a thief and that he's corrupted of course seen this in many different countries but here it's it's quite extreme and since the protests have started the mainstream media has essentially operated to confirm this discourse of the far right that anyone who's going to the protest anyone who's participating is a terrorist is a criminal is committing acts to harm the citizens I was in the taxi this morning listening to the radio and you know not one mention of the 28 people who have been killed by police and by the army but they go on and on about the damages the economy the disruption and transportation the fact that Christmas is coming and that should be really the main concern is that the disruption to economic life of these protests I don't talk about what's been happening with this disruption to democratic law and order or it's the loss of people's life so it's it's really really serious and severe but also key demand seems to be on the question of the constitutional convention and your constitution also which is something even Castillo had been talking about and it's interesting because I think this has been a demand that has come up in so many of these countries so in Peru what does what shape does this demand take well for many people the and I apologize for the noise for many people the constitution of 1993 which was imposed by Alberto Fujimori who was the last civic dictatorship in Peru really represents kind of the enshrining of neoliberalism really giving a lot of power to fire forces in the country for example in Peru there's only one body of legislature one congress instead of maybe having a house of representatives and a congress this of course gives the congress enormous amounts of power so even when you have a left president like Pedro Castillo he's essentially able to be blocked at every turn because they have only one legislative body that can block things of course the question of natural resources is huge and so many people I spoke to said the reason that they did a coup against Pedro Castillo is because all of these different concessions and license expire next year and they want to continue taking the riches away from our country and Pedro Castillo said that he wouldn't let this happen and he wanted to protect our resources and give them to the people and the constitution is also plays a part in this that gives multinational companies a free hand to come into the country to pay very very low royalties and essentially take this wealth outside of the country for their own benefit and there's many other things of course the access to health to education to many basic rights that the people in Peru do not have they really want to have a say over how the political system works and that is definitely the most uniting demand across the board whether it happens in new elections where they vote on a referendum if they want to have a constituent assembly or whether it's in Saul immediately people are very very firm in this demand and believe that there can't be true democracy and true justice in the country if they continue with the same constitution and of course we can look to the example of Venezuela we can look to other examples across the continent of what these constitutions have actually been able to create to create bodies of people's power of changing the way people see political institutions in society giving more possibility to people's participation in politics so this is of course a very key demand. It's an important story Zoe on the ground please follow people's dispatch on Twitter go to the website to look for the stories now while this coup is unfolding in Peru of Vladimir Zelinsky of Ukraine paid a visit to the US Congress now it's the first visit he's made out of Ukraine ever since the Russians entered on the 24th of February the calendar is interesting most likely Mr Zelinsky came to Washington DC because in January the Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and there's less appetite I must say please emphasize the word less not no appetite less appetite among the Republicans to open the spigot and send another 50 billion dollars of arms and weapons toward the Ukrainians in order to in a sense lobby the Republicans in the Congress Mr. Vladimir Zelinsky made this move to Washington DC his speech was interesting I'm going to get to it in a minute there was some surprising moments in this speech in the theatrics of the speech number one of course he came to Congress wearing military fatigues not something that one has seen ever actually and secondly the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Vice President Kamala Harris unfold a Ukrainian flag inside the US House of Representatives very curious sort of national sovereignty by the US government there lots of promises made to continue to arm Mr Zelinsky unclear again if the US Congress will continue to arm him in the speech he made a couple of points that I'd like to reflect on number one he said that the Ukrainians have won the battle for the minds of the world over the Russian invasion now what he means is that the Ukrainians have been able to convince people around the world that their view of this war is correct and the Russian views false just a few sentences later then he said that well we still have to convince the global south I found that interesting when he said that Ukraine has won the entire world of course he meant the western states not the entire world and then just a second later he said that there's still a battleground to be fought and that's in the global south that was part of the reason why the United States brought African leaders to Washington DC the previous week for the US Africa summit where they pushed them to adopt the US narrative regarding Ukraine it wasn't entirely successful it's a tough road I should give them that it's not an easy job but Mr Zelinsky you know acknowledged that in his speech he also once more reiterated this question of a peace deal in fact while he was in Washington DC the Ukrainians put on the table that there's a chance that in February they'll put a deal on the table now he also made the same comments to the G20 in Bali via video conference he's made this comment many times before the credibility of it can only be judged by putting a peace deal on the table we haven't seen one yet unlikely of course that there'll be one quickly in fact they've already put a calendar which is to say let's look at February that means after the winter that means that Europe is going to struggle through this winter with a lot of difficulty because of course energy prices continuing to be high therefore the strike wave Britain still convulsed in a strike wave protests in other countries Mr Zelinsky's travel to Washington might actually bear fruit in terms of billions of dollars of weapons it's unlikely that it's going to result in a peace deal I had initially thought that there was interesting coincidence because dimrity Medvedev of Russia traveled to meet Xi Jinping in China on the same day and just the day before Vladimir Putin went to Belarus I thought this was a great winter ceasefire that was being organized that might not be the agenda it might in fact be to convince the Congress once Republicans gain power not to close the spigot for tens of billions by the end of the next year it'll be over a hundred billion dollars given to the Ukrainians if not much more than that you'll listen to give the people what they want brought to you from People's Dispatch that Zoe and Prashant Zoe sitting in Lima follow People's Dispatch on Twitter to get the latest I'm Vijay from Globetrotter well at a press conference Biden was asked about the US Mexico border Prashant and he didn't answer he just turned around and walked away what is this stuff about article 42 right that's a not a surprising position at all by Biden because it's one of those issues which I think exposes the hypocrisy of the Biden administration to the maximum the kind of rosy words they use whereas what actually happens on the ground but for the story we go from you know Washington DC and the halls of power to the southern borders where title 42 which is a provision whereby the US government can use a health emergency to sort of expel migrants and refugees for instance directly without much process is still in place now title 42 was introduced I mean title 42 was invoked by the Trump administration as hiding the COVID-19 pandemic of course that time even at that time experts were very wary of this argument that somehow it was the migrant you know the issue around refugees and migrants was in some way connected to COVID-19 but it was very convenient for the Republicans and sections of Democrats to argue that point that you know we somehow had to prevent this is supposed surge of refugees from all these poor southern countries who would disrupt the situation but this is exactly what the Republicans argued and title 42 stay at the invocation of title 42 continued now it's 2022 most countries have gone back to business as normal in various ways of course we are going through another way of COVID again it's a different matter that due to the horrible you know health situation in the United States people continue to die due to COVID associated issues but keeping that aside there's been a large amount of opening up now the question really is why is title 42 still being invoked because what it does is severely affect the rights of those who want to seek asylum those who are sort of trying to escape from a variety of circumstances from countries south the United States and let's be clear about it a lot of these circumstances are due to US policies are due to US policies of intervention are due to US backed policies financial policies which have caused economic crises but the fact is that title 42 continues to be on the books the Supreme Court intervened to keep it you know in place for a couple of days there's a lot of uncertainty as to what will happen now to come back to Biden's position the Republican position on this is quite clear because there's always been you know they've been they resort to the usual racism the usual scam arguing about refugees this argument that there are there are all these people coming from other countries for how to take your jobs or how to you know destroy society etc etc in principle in terms of statements the Democrats say that they're not like that you know they want to welcome refugees etc they don't believe in all these lies circulated by the Republicans but in practice the Biden administration itself does not really want to lift title 42 either so there's a strange position where we see that the both Republicans and the Democrats who seem to have on paper who in statements seem to have such different positions are actually more or less on the same page when it comes to this and we do also know that even if title 42 is lifted it's not going to be too much of a difference for a lot of migrants and refugees because they still face the threat of these kind of evictions they still face the threat of these kind of process but at least there is a possibility of a process and you know we don't really don't know what's going to take place in the meanwhile we have thousands of migrants who are kind of stranded in the border who sort of you know hoping to you know whose fate remains really uncertain and I think all this you know kind of in some senses demonstrates of course the fact that migrants have now become migrants and refugees and now become a comfortable political tool for both for both sections both political parties who keep using them we saw some weeks months ago Greg Abbott the governor of Texas bust immigrants you know migrants to cities on the coast saying to make a political point to sort of show that you deal with them and the response of the Democrats was absolutely not inspiring at all at that point of time so it does look like when it comes to practice the two parties really do not have any differences on this we will be having a video between period of breakthrough news explaining how this is a larger crisis of capitalism and US capitalism itself and so for supposedly the United States which is this country of migrants that's how they like to pride themselves as you know that's part of our heritage but we do what we do sees that when it comes to today's realities due to the policies they set up when migrants come they have no hesitation in sharing the doors it's very interesting putting Zoe's story back in with yours Prashant because you know when the United States destabilizes countries in South America and Central America migrants start to move up and I'd like to say that this year 2022 has seen a record number of Peruvian migrants 10,000 of them sitting at the border unprecedented numbers of Peruvians those numbers are going to just increase I mean the more destabilization the greater the problem and you know it's a question of it's not a question of politics at one level of the people that migrate they are fleeing situations of great desperation you're going to come back to you Prashant if that's okay because you know one of the only news sites in the English language that reports on the country of Sudan takes seriously the ongoing process of political you know of political the political process of Sudan is despatch and you know you're looking carefully at the uprising there tell us a little given that this is a kind of anniversary of the uprising. Alright Abhije in fact the uprising broke out I think just four or five months after people's dispatch was founded from the beginning I think especially our reporter Paavan was very much in the think of it and this December just a few days ago marked the fourth anniversary of what is the revolution the uprising it's kind of hard to think back you know that is before Covid before so much happened at that point you know in 2018 say this first week of December 2018 Omar al-Bashir the dictator had been in power for decades nobody knew how long he would continue people thought you know he might continue until the end of his life and then there were these protests that broke out what is now euphemistically called the cost of living crisis but these were basic issues of bread and butter of prices they escalated they became the entire left large sections of the population rallied together it became a much larger political issue around the same time we also saw protests for instance breaking out in Algeria in some other countries as well but what distinguished Sudan's process I think was that despite so much that has happened over the past four years there has been this continuation of organized protests on the ground on the streets which has been really interesting we do know for instance that you know there have been multiple stages in multiple phases of this in April 2019 Omar al-Bashir was overthrown the military uses opportunity to consolidate the protesters didn't let them do that there was a massacre in June again the protesters pushed back against the military finally forcing the military and the centrist forces to strike an agreement in October 2021 the military you know offended disagreement staged under the coup and since then we've had about 120 people dying thousands injured on the anniversary of the on the day of the anniversary itself I believe about 500 people were injured according to some estimates especially by by actions by the security forces which seemed very predetermined and were done to cause as much harm as possible so the point is that despite you know a variety of struggles in this struggle despite governments coming and going despite the fact that international players have by and large been taking the side of the Sudanese military the protests on the ground have continued neighborhood resistance committees trade unions the left all of them sort of continuously maintaining the pressure keeping the slogan of no compromise no negotiation no partnership with the military which has been the fundamental slogan that they have raised because all the other maneuvers by the centrist political parties supported the international players even the UN for that matter have focused on getting some kind of a compromise between the military and the centrist parties so that the military does not formally remain in power maybe but it continues to be the real power in the background and now there's a new agreement which has been signed whereby supposedly another round of democracy is going to come back a transitional authority civilian ministers but the protesters extremely skeptical of the fact that whether the military will actually be forced to divest itself of any control whether the military for instance whether the military itself can be brought under civilian control the agreement says that it's going to be possible but everyone is extremely skeptical there has been you know the kind of reform of security forces that the protesters have been asking for no real roadmap towards that justice for the victims of various massacres and human rights violations no real roadmap for that in fact it looks like the burden of all this justice is being placed on the families of victims who apparently seem to have the responsibility of actually you know working on this so a lot of these issues which have been raised time and again by these protesters no real answers there's one more round of agreements which will probably come up next month similarly there's a question of the juba icons which are meant to integrate armed groups into the governing process the protesters very unhappy with that because all it has done is given them a share of the power and they have continued to support the junta and the regime so to speak so you know very volatile and you know fluctuating situation in Sudan but I think one must say that from all our experiences over the years we've seen what happened in Egypt we've seen what happened in 2011 we've seen what happened in Algeria but the fact that these protesters have continued intensely for four years is quite a remarkable thing and I think definitely needs to be highlighted it's a very important story and you know the government has been firing stun grenades and you know all kinds of terrible things it's a real counterpoint to the experience in Egypt and one of course that people's dispatch will keep reporting from turn quickly last story of our show today Penny Wong the foreign minister of Australia visited Beijing talked to Wang Yi the foreign minister of China now the very fact that Penny Wong went to China and met with Wang Yi is being reported in Australia as a great feat because there has been a freeze of ties between Australia and China largely because of Scott Morrison's rather ridiculous statements about China being responsible for the Covid pandemic in fact it goes back to 2012 when Australia decided to ban Huawei Huawei 5G technology Australia has a member of the 5G 5I's intelligence network with the United States, New Zealand the United Kingdom and it therefore felt under pressure from the US to cut ties with Huawei in terms of 5G technology well that actually began to freeze relations between Australia and its largest trading partner which is China. Penny Wong went to Beijing there were really no agreements there was no agreement by the Chinese to roll back on some of these trade restrictions that China has on Australia in retaliation for Scott Morrison's comments in retaliation for the cutting of Huawei and so on so interesting that she went there there was a lot of conversation but in fact nothing I was pretty surprised to read in the Australian newspaper the foreign editor Greg Sheridan who has very close ties with the intelligence services in Australia had a line in his article in the Australian he said this is the time to start preparing for war with China now a pretty stunning line in my opinion you know given that it has just been basically accepted that the United States is going to be positioning B-52 and B-1 bombers in the Tindall air base in northern Australia and the Darwin province I just want to also say that they also expanding PineGap which is the large five eyes satellite intelligence place in northern Australia which the US uses for its spying operations on China just leaked on from the Australian archives more evidence that PineGap was land stolen from aboriginal people and aboriginal elders still today are not given access to sacred sites that are in PineGap when Mr Zelensky was in Washington he said we are fighting a war for democracy certainly not democracy for the aboriginal elders who would like to go and worship at their sacred sites give the people what they want coming to you from People's Dispatch that Zoe and Prashant I am Vijay from Globetrotter really happy to be with you we have one more show of 2022 next year and then we are going to take you into 2023 but we are not coming back if we don't see any more selfies see you later