 Colombian President Gustavo Petro has warned of a concerted attempt to target his government after a controversy to elect a new Attorney General. We are seeing the usual strategies as a right wing, including a media assault, mobilizations by retired army for officials, and all sorts of allegations being levelled against the president. The government is also being targeted for its peace negotiations with the group ELN. To get a sense of what's happening in Colombia and why there is talk of a coup attempt, we go to Zoe. Zoe, thank you so much for joining us. Maybe first could you take us through what really is happening in Colombia, why is the president saying that there is a possible coup attempt, and what has been the developments over the past few days? Well, the pressure is definitely increasing on Gustavo Petro, who this week, this past week, has found himself in the midst of a very tense struggle facing attacks from the right wing, from mainstream media. This is all around an essential issue, which is the election of a new Attorney General in the country. The Attorney General, Barabosa, whose term finishes on February 12, was set to be replaced on January 25. Essentially the way that Attorney Generals are elected in Colombia is that the 23 judges in the Supreme Court have to vote, and the person who gets the most votes from the Supreme Court is then the next Attorney General. However, on January 25, 13 of the judges actually abstained from this vote, saying they didn't have enough time to study the CVs of these candidates, despite the fact that it's been months since the president, who's the person who's supposed to present the list of candidates for this position, had submitted this list months ago, they did not elect an Attorney General on this date, meaning that if on February 8, which was on Thursday, they also did not elect an Attorney General, this position would go to the next in line to the current Attorney General, who actually is quite politically close to the one that is right now. Gustavo Petro, following the inability or perhaps not wanting to elect this new Attorney General by the Supreme Court, he called the attention of the public to what was happening, and he demanded that actually this democratic process go through as is foreseen. On February 8, following and accompanying this moment of the president raising the alarms about this process, citizens, civil society organizations mobilized in many cities across Columbia to express their support to the president, and also reinforcing the call that a new Attorney General should be elected through this process that's outlined in the Constitution. On this day, in the city of Bogota, there was a very large mobilization of different trade unions and social movements outside of the Supreme Court where the election was set to be taking place, and in Bogota, outside of the Supreme Court where the voting was supposed to take place, a small group of protesters, about three or four people, went up to the gates of the Supreme Court, and for brief moments sort of shook the gates, but this was a moment that was filmed and then that was broadcast really across all mainstream media, and it has been spun by the media in Columbia as an attempt by Gustavo Petro to undermine democracy, to try to overthrow the Supreme Court, and it's something that's getting a lot of airtime, again, on mainstream media and by right-wing pundits, by different right-wing politicians saying that Gustavo Petro is trying to overthrow the country, and so once again, really the pressure is on him, but pulling out a bit from or zooming out a bit from that specific thing, kind of why all these tensions around the Attorney General, so preceding the January 25th when the Supreme Court did not elect a new Attorney General, already the Attorney General Barbosa had carried out two operations, two investigations that seemed to directly target Gustavo Petro and his allies, so first, they raided the office of the teacher's union, fecule, in an allege that they illicitly donated funds to Gustavo Petro's presidential campaign, so this was a raid of the office that took place and they're essentially investigating this charge. On the other hand, also legal action was taken against Gustavo Petro's foreign minister, Álvaro Leyva, who has been one of the instrumental people in his cabinet who has taken forward the rapprochement with Venezuela, who's been instrumental in the peace talks that have been held in Cuba with the ELN, really a key person in Gustavo Petro's administration and he was investigated by different branches of the judiciary and has now been kind of forced to step out of power, so this kind of side by side attacks on Gustavo Petro has to be seen, of course, at the same time that this struggle over electing a new attorney general is taking place. Right, Zoe, from what you say, it does look like it's not just some kind of bureaucratic maneuver regarding the election of an attorney general but a much larger political issue, so why exactly are the people also so angry about this, the extent of protest, it is way more than just an appointment clearly, so what are the aspects that are driving the people's anger here? So a really key element is that while all of these attacks are happening against the government of Gustavo Petro, while this sort of dispute between who's going to be the next attorney general is taking place, the people of Colombia have also mobilized and been really alert about what's been happening, so not only were they mobilizing on February 8th again in major cities across the country in support of Gustavo Petro but also understanding the need to actually democratically have a new attorney general go through this process. For Colombians, the attorney general represents this kind of symbol of impunity because on the one hand you have them raiding the offices of trade unions, investigating, for example, members of Gustavo Petro's government and they also, for the past several years, especially during the right-wing governments, the attorney general has been the body that has been investigating, for example, trade union leaders, social movements, accusing them of all sorts of things, engaging in this campaign of criminalization of students, of activists, people who participated in the uprising in 2021. And on the other hand, again, Colombia is a country where massive human rights violations have taken place, where the state and where the army has participated in so many different crimes against humanity, massacres, disappearances and the attorney general's office is actually the institution which should really be taking charge of this, trying to get to the bottom of these different cases, but instead, again, for many, many Colombians, it just represents this tool that's used by the ruling class to suppress movements, to criminalize poverty, to criminalize people while at the same time essentially guaranteeing impunity for the ruling class that carries out the real crimes that take place in the country. So when it can sound sort of dry, oh, people are wanting there to be a new attorney general, but really this is really at the heart of what it means to have a government of change and why so many people actually supported Gustavo Petro's project for the country, because a lot of people know and it's become clear in these several years that Gustavo Petro has been in power, that it's not just about winning the presidency, but there are all these different institutions in the Colombian state that have for decades been controlled by the oligarchy, that have been wielded by the ruling class to serve their needs, and that for actual change to happen, and that for a Colombia to actually work for the interests of the people, that all of these institutions needed to change, and they need to be reformed, people who actually are invested in protecting the lives of the majorities and not of the ruling elites have to be in those positions. So this is an issue that has actually galvanized many, many people. There's going to be continued mobilizations for sure. One thing that Gustavo Petro has done is really learn lessons of what's been happening across the continent for decades, but of course in recent years, and that is when the ruling class is trying to use all of its different tools that it has, its disposal, the media, the institutions of the state, which it still has control over, to attack, for example, progressive government, which we saw in Peru, which we saw in Guatemala before even Bernardo Arrivallo was sworn in, that it's important to actually call on the people to defend the government because it was the people that put Gustavo Petro in office, and so it's the people that will keep him there. So this is another, again, this is another attempt by Colombia's ruling class and right wing to kind of destabilize this government. We know that this week as well, the government signed peace agreements, signed another extension of the ceasefire with the ELN. Of course, this is something that the right wing does not like, so it's not, of course, an accident that this is happening, but it's definitely important to keep following what's happening there as Gustavo Petro says that there's a coup underway in this very concerted effort to kind of shake up his government, destabilize it, and who knows, maybe they'll even try to overthrow it. Thank you so much, Zoe, for that update. The conservative government in the UK is set to expand police powers and criminalize protests further. Earlier this week, the UK Home Office announced new police powers, including that to arrest protesters wearing face coverings in public gatherings. The announcement also consists of the government's intention to criminalize fireworks and flares, climbing on statues and war memorials and stripping protesters of the right to protest protections in supposedly serious public order offenses. These powers will be added to the already controversial criminal justice bill proposed last year with the Rishisuna government intending to turn it into a law by March this year. We talk to Anish. Anish, under successive conservative governments, we've seen a number of laws that infringe on the right of people to protest. You've seen a law against strikes, which has seen a lot of opposition, and now there also seems to be an explicit law against certain kinds of protests, which again, like I said, this is not a new proposal per se. It's in the tradition of a long series of proposals. So could you take us through what exactly is on the agenda here? Well, the announcement made on Thursday pretty much includes an attempt or at least a proposal to penalize wearing face coverings during protests, climbing on statues, climbing on war memorials, all for that matter, even blocking public roads during protests. However peaceful they may be, the kind of punishments that are being proposed range from $1,000 to immediate arrest by the police, like face covering, for instance, would actually get you arrested from the protest side. The police has the power to do that if the law gets passed or is brought into effect. So basically, these are attempts to penalize or attack certain kinds of protesters because obviously, they're coming within certain contexts. The whole thing about climbing on war memorials is pretty much a response to the Black Lives Matter protests that are anti-racist protests that happened in Britain pretty much around the same time that Black Lives Matter happened in the United States as well during the pandemic, when statues of known racist and colonial military leaders were being pulled out and they were not being held liable and criminal damages for various reasons, obviously because the law does not exist for that. At best, they can only be held for vandalism. So this is specifically in response to those kind of protests. The whole face covering thing is also something that is targeted against pro-Palestinian protesters. Another section of, another proposal that they're making is to take out pyrotechnics, fireworks and flares, which pretty much does nothing. It makes no damages whatsoever, is very harmless as it can get. But the whole thing about penalizing that is pretty much again targeted against pro-Palestinian protesters who have been using certain colors of flares to match the Palestinian flag to show their solidarity. So the attack again here is pretty much to attack those who are protesting for climate change because blocking roads has been quite a common thing, especially anti-fossil fuel protesters very recently who have blocked roads to refineries and constructing new pipelines. Similarly, anti-Palestinian, sorry pro-Palestinian protesters, those who have been opposing the Israeli genocide, those who are calling out the colonial and racist heretics that Britain pretty much continues and is pretty much very proud of and not really against any kind of right-wing protesters because pretty much their tactics have been different. So these are very specific kind of penalization and criminalization of protests. They are not really outsidely banning protests, but at this point they're limiting the site of protests to a point where it is very difficult for anybody, even for other causes like rape victims, for instance, this is something that has been brought up by several feminist groups and women's rights groups that break their influence, who will not be able to stand in rallies. Most of them usually choose to hide their identity during the protests. So that is something like it is kind of like it can actually have a significant repercussion on civil liberties in the United Kingdom. And this is being very roundly called up by rights activists across the UK right now.