 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. It's Friday the 13th, that is the 13th of May. In auspicious day, many parts of the world, we're coming to you as give the people what they want, brought to you every week from People's Dispatch with Prashant, and I'm Zoe, and I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. It's been a tough week. On the 11th of May, an Israeli sniper fired a series of bullets at a number of reporters from Al-Quds News, from Al-Jazeera, other publications. These reporters had gone to Janine in the northern part of the occupied Palestinian territory to cover an Israeli military raid on a camp in Janine. During this raid, the snipers took fire at the journalists who were wearing blue flat jackets with the word press emblazoned on the front of them. One of the journalists, Shireen Abu Akhle, was struck in the head and almost immediately was killed. She was taken immediately by her colleagues who as quickly as they could because the snipers didn't stop firing. They had a hard time reaching her. All of this was caught on tape and can be watched online. There is no controversy about this. At the hospital, there was an autopsy. In the autopsy, it became very clear that she had been shot by a sniper's bullet. The Palestinian Authority are claiming this unequivocally. The reason they don't want to do a joint investigation with the Israelis, they have said, is because they fear the Israeli government would whitewash an investigation. Then the Israeli military forces raided the home of Shireen Abu Akhle who had just been killed by an Israeli sniper. They raided her home, removed insignia of Palestine, including ordinary Palestinian flags, harassed her family. And then on the 13th of May, two days later, when she came to be buried in Jerusalem, the Israeli military forces attacked the funeral party. It is said to be one of the largest funerals seen in Jerusalem in years. The images which we want to bring you show directly the brutal assault by the Israeli forces against a peaceful funeral procession. Who was Shireen Abu Akhle that she was then targeted and murdered while reporting a story in Janine? Who was she that her house had to be raided? And then who was she that her funeral had to be attacked in this form? Shireen Abu Akhle, born in 1971, worked most of her life as a journalist. She is a US citizen. This is a very important point. She is a US citizen. United States government hasn't really made much of a noise about the assassination of a journalist who carries a US passport. Shireen Abu Akhle started work with Al-Jazeera in 1997, became the face of Al-Jazeera's coverage of the occupation of the Palestinian people, the resistance of the Palestinian people, and so on. She was, as many people have said, a household name. She was the person that you came to watch. I met her once in Jerusalem, extraordinarily kind and nice person, a very careful listener, somebody that we admire as journalists for their experience, their wisdom, their capacity to report the story as courageously as possible. 20 plus media organizations, including People's Dispatch, came together and you can read the statement at the People's Dispatch site to pay homage to Shireen Abu Akhle and to condemn her killing. Beerset University has just announced that they will have a annual lecture in her name on May 11th and afford fellowships to commemorate this great Palestinian journalist. Before we move ahead with our other stories, I want to say that on the 1st of May in Santiago, in Chile, another journalist, Francesca Sandoval was shot. She was shot by a thug who was very, apparently, but very much in evidence working closely with the Chilean police. Yesterday, on the 12th of May, Francesca Sandoval, this young progressive reporter succumbed to that bullet wound. From Give the People What They Want, we'd like you to know, friends, that we can't bring you the news if the powers that be kill journalists. We just can't bring you the news if they continue to kill journalists. We remember from the platform of our show, Shireen Abu Akhle, Francesca Sandoval and all the other journalists who have been killed in the line of fire. Killed in the line of fire. That's what it feels like in Colombia, where there's an election ongoing, killed in the line of fire. People being silenced for supporting one candidate in particular. Zoe, what's happening in Colombia? Well, there's been a worrying development as often happens in Colombia. Unfortunately, the mayor of Medellín Daniel Quintero was suspended by the Inspector General of the nation, which is an entity that essentially is sort of the watchdog for the institutions in Colombia. He was suspended for posting a short video which shows him shifting into first gear and saying, change is in first. And this is a slogan of the movement supporting the progressive ticket of Gustavo Petron-Francia Marquez. Hours after he posted this video, the Inspector General pronounced on social media and to the public saying that he would be suspended from his position as mayor of Medellín. He was elected by popular vote, of course, Democratic election and he was suspended within hours because of posting this video. It's extremely worrying that this happened. There have been multiple irregularities happening. For example, on supporters of Federico Gutierrez Fico, who's the leading conservative candidate. In fact, the historic pact has raised many of these complaints with the Procuratoria, which is the Inspector General of the nation, asking them to investigate fraudulent pronouncements, many different elected officials, members of the institution supporting his candidacy, a lot of different irregularities occurring and those have not received any response. However, this very short video by the mayor of Medellín within hours he's suspended. In response to this, Gustavo Petro has called it a coup, the beginning of a coup process against the movement for change, the push towards progressive politics in Colombia. There have been persistent mobilization since this decision was announced. People are in the streets in Medellín. They are accompanying Daniel Quintero demanding a return to institutionality, denouncing the violation and the subordination of democracy. His suspension also breaks the IACHR convention on democracy. So there's many things at play here and it also suggests the lengths that the Colombian state is willing to go to and the tools that it really has at its disposition to impose its political preference. I say that because as I mentioned, they have not taken any actions against the very blatant irregularities in support of, for example, Ferri Cogutieres. The president of the country, Van Duque, has also already expressed his support of this ticket and we're not seeing any action taken on that front. Gustavo Petro is calling it a coup. There's calls for people to mobilize in support of democracy, but it's very important that leading up to this presidential election that will happen in just over two weeks, that we very much keep a close eye on Colombia, a lot of these moves. We know that electoral fraud does not only happen on the day of voting, which of course it also happened in a large scale in March during the legislative elections. There were hundreds of and thousands of votes actually that were discounted from the historic pact that their team of lawyers has been going to every single polling station to recount the votes and make sure that those votes are counted. But what I mean to say is that electoral fraud is not only this, but it is the whole entire process that happens leading up to these elections, killing people who are supporting this progressive ticket, which has already happened. Members of the campaign have already been assassinated. Intimidation, threats to the candidates, Gustavo Petro now goes on stage with bodyguards and huge shields to protect him from death threats that he's received, that Francia Marquez has received. And so democracy is really at stake. Democracy in Colombia has always been marked by blood and by violence and by intimidation. And so we must keep a close eye on what's going to happen in the coming weeks. Gustavo Petro, the candidate of the left using the word coup, that's a very significant word. We'll be paying close attention to that election as it unfolds, stalking of elections, going out there across to the Pacific Rim, the other side of the Pacific. There have been a number of elections. People don't seem to pay much attention. Prashant, there was an election in South Korea. Now there's an election in the Philippines. Philippines is the one that I find difficult to understand. Two children of two previous presidents, what's going on in the Philippines? There's a kind of rightward turn it seems in the Pacific Rim. Right, which I like it's pretty accurate actually because Ferdinand Moghbog Marcos Jr, the son of the erstwhile dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Sara Duterte, the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, the incumbent president together, winning quite substantially actually in the elections that took place last weekend. And we talked about this in previous episode of the show as well. Ever since these two characters came together, there has been a groundswell of anger, a groundswell of protest from people's movements about the fact that this was a culmination of a very dangerous trend where two people, two candidates whose legacies have been extremely problematic to say the least, coming together and then running a campaign which refuses to acknowledge any of these legacies, any of these problems that were inherited in any of these legacies. So for instance, if you look at Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the new president of the Philippines, he's of course, like I said, the son of Marcos Sr, the dictator, was involved in the Marcos administration as well. That's important to note. He was a vice governor. It's not that, you know, it's just talking about his father's crime. So he was involved very much part of that dictatorship which was overthrown in 1986 as a result of a mass uprising, very massive corruption of course, equally importantly, the deaths of a large number of human rights defenders, the fact that, you know, a lot of people, huge thousands of disappearances that took place during this time. There's not really been a justice for a lot of that. At that point of time, the Marcos regime seemed completely discredited and that continued for a long time. But over time, the son Ferdinand Marcos Jr. sort of re-established himself and it's important to note that, like I said, the campaign that was conducted by both Marcos and we also know Duterte's regime has exactly done many of the same things, the disappearances, the thousands of executions that took place, the so-called war on drugs, you know, where people have been attacked with murder, with will, with dividends, again, something that was being investigated by the International Criminal Court. The idea of red tagging where anybody who was a critic was basically accused of being associated with the Ban Communist Party and was then persecuted. The vigilante attacks that took place in the state basically gave a cover. It gave them a free hand by declaring such people as in by red tagging them and making it seem like they were anti-social elements. So this entire ecosystem of vigilante justice of right-wing politics, and during this entire election campaign, these people did not address them at all. In fact, they ran a very virulent campaign marked by a huge amount of disinformation. I think Marcos made reports and said that Marcos didn't give any interviews. Like many of the strong men, he preferred to sort of talk directly or talk directly to the people through social media and build this entire campaign based on disinformation. So all of this has been flagged by organizations. It's heartening to see that protests are already begun. People from students, from human rights organizations, you know, they're already, they're keeping vigil, they're keeping watch to ensure that from day one to ensure that this is not, you know, these egregious violations are not repeated. But I would say very difficult times for the Philippines because they're coming together of these two legacies. What has happened is that the opposition has been left in a very, you know, has been left far behind. The same thing is happening in the Senate, in the Parliament. So what we're going to see probably is many more years of a very strong, solid right-wing administration in the Philippines. And while Marcos has said that, do not judge me by my ancestors' actions. His own actions and his own campaign itself do not give any reason to think that there is going to be a difference from what that they have been doing over the past many years. So very difficult times indeed for the Philippines because, you know, people were hoping that there would be a vibrant opposition candidate and a good opposition performance might help reverse some of these policy lines, but it does not look like that's going to happen for now. Wow, it's really interesting. And I mean, I know that People's Dispatch has done a story on it, but I think we need to really understand more about what's happening, as I said, in South Korea, in the Philippines, in Japan. You know, these are all right-wing governments. Very interesting development. You're listening to give the people what they want, coming to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globe Trotter. We come to you every week. We love coming to you and bringing you stories about the world. I must say that this week, the stories are not all very bad, although we started at a tough note with the murder of our colleague, Shiree Naboo Akle. Now we're coming to another interesting story. The United States government going to host, I don't know what it's called, Summit of the Americas or something or the other in Los Angeles. A great place to hold it. Hollywood films and the fantasy of the forever United States and so on. Zoe, bring us up to date again on that Summit of the Americas. Well, the sunny summit of the Americas to be held in Los Angeles isn't getting perhaps the love that it wants to, that Biden would like it to have. In the past two weeks, we've seen a score of Latin American leaders essentially make statements, public statements, saying that they will not participate. They will not travel to Los Angeles. If Cuba is excluded from the summit, the Summit of the Americas is organized by the Organization of the American States, which as we know is funded by the State Department, is essentially a foreign policy arm of the United States. And Cuba has always been excluded from the Organization of the American States, has been excluded of most of the Summit of the Americas and an official from the State Department already told press I think a month ago that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua would be excluded from the Summit. And they expected that as it has been happening for the past several years that there were conservative governments, governments that were currying the favor of the United States, that they would fall in line and say, that's fine. We don't care that our brother countries, our countries that we have relations with that are part of our region are going to be excluded. And essentially these leaders have said, we will not go because they're excluded. This is not, you can't build Latin American unity. You can't build proposals of integration, of cooperation across the region if you're excluding key partners. And it's quite interesting. Luis Arce of Bolivia, Gio Maracasso of Honduras, Alberto Fernandez, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, all of them have said that they are not supporting something that will be exclusionary. And this is very important. And also the Caribbean community of states, CARACOM, which represents over a dozen nations, has also said that they won't participate. So this is a very strong showing of support. And we've seen in the last year with the community of Latin American Caribbean states, CELAC gaining more importance, gaining more legitimacy and recognition after suffering several years of right-wing governments in the region. These are the spaces of integration that the countries in Latin America, the peoples in Latin America really want. And it's important also to highlight that at the same time at the exclusionary summit of the Americas of Biden, of the State Department will be held just down the street. There's going to be a summit, a People's Summit for Democracy organized in Los Angeles by peoples movements within Los Angeles, across the United States, of over 100 organizations that are part of this. Speakers include Oscar López Rivera, former Puerto Rican political prisoner, Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Vijay Prashad, amongst others. And it's going to be a very important event to really highlight not only the exclusionary nature of the summit of the Americas, but really questioning what is the democracy that the United States seeks to bring to Latin America that has been trying to impose in its so-called backyard for the last century. This is not a democracy that really it should be exporting. We see Los Angeles as one of the cities with the highest rates of inequality. One of the largest homeless populations in the United States is in Los Angeles. So it's really going to be about highlighting those issues, highlighting the struggles of the people that we stand against, that these people stand against imperialism, stand against exporting this neoliberal democracy of exclusion and bringing together diverse voices, diverse struggles and creating a more integrated and diverse vision of what the people want for the future and for democracy. That is an amazing story of these countries just saying we're not coming. I mean, it's pretty amazing. About democracy and forms of democracy, we just had stories from Philippines with South Korea nearby and we talked about the turn to the right. Well, the middle of the Indian Ocean is the beautiful country of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has had a journey to presidential rule increasing presidential or executive powers being centralized in the presidency. Looks like the presidency the family of Mr. Rajapaksha is facing a serious, serious political challenge in a country where looks like there will be no exit from that challenge, Prashant. Absolutely. It's been a remarkable week for Sri Lanka, a remarkable couple of months but especially the past week because what we know of course is, I mean, we've been covering this for a while. The economic crisis in Sri Lanka, disastrous impact following decades of policies. I mean, there are quite a few policies we had an interview a couple of weeks ago with Ahil and Kadir Ghamar who talked about some of them from the 70s onwards, IMF sponsored policies. We had the pandemic the disasters to stop fertilizer stop the use of chemical fertilizers. All of this contributing of course to this crisis. But what we saw in the past two months was a renewed citizen a renewed sense of protest participation in the country system with one simple slogan which was Gota Go Home. Gota is by Rajapaksha the current president this is the Rajapaksha family which has dominated Sri Lankan politics for decades. And now what we saw was just in about two months of protests, the legitimacy of the Rajapaksha scrambling almost by the week, the amount of which the legitimacy was scrambling was incredible and now his brother Mahinda was the prime minister and what happened in the past few days was that the increasingly under threat Mahindra Rajapaksha offered to resign and then his supporters attacked the main protest site in Colombo in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo where protesters had built a makeshift protest site, a kind of village which is called the Gota Go Home Village so you know very brutal attacks on horrifying visuals of people beating the supporters beating protesters with sticks etc tearing down tents and after there was like the people just rose up and the situation completely went out of control we had the fact the ancestral home of the Rajapaksha was burnt and the memorial to their father for instance was destroyed and you know it's important to note that this took place in the core of their support base and the Rajapaksha had for long dominated the Sri Lankan political situation by ethnically and politically and religiously dividing people and that was a large part of their support base as well the fact that they claim to have been the victors of the war in which the LTT was defeated in the civil war and you know that was so they claimed to fame the way by which they got support from a large part of the Sinhala community and now their very support base itself has turned against them so drastically it's been quite a remarkable thing to see and Mahindra Rajapaksha forced to resign of course interestingly the president Gautabhaya responding by appointing a new prime minister that is Ranil Vikram Singh another old veteran of the Sri Lankan political situation for a long time Vikram Singh and the Rajapaksha have sort of been fighting again you know they have been the two poles of the Sri Lankan political system and there was fury across Sri Lanka because Ranil Vikram Singh is the only member of his party in parliament and so the idea was that by the entire political system the entire political structure and more importantly the people on the streets were united on one demand that the president must resign he has sort of cobbled together this compromise with this old rival and you know put him up as prime minister but the fact remains that both the president and the prime minister do not have any solutions to this crisis which is what is driving it so if the president thinks that either by using force or by using provocation or by using political trickery the government is going to solve this current crisis that does not look likely to happen because the economic crisis is beyond you know one president or one government or you know president of the prime minister it's much more structural it is much more long term and there is no idea in terms of how do you restructure your economy how do you sort of get out of the trap of say international institutions and the kind of funding that has taken place and austerity and neoliberal policies so there's really not been too much thought put into that their only solution seems to be to go back to the IMF for another fresh loan so it really doesn't look like all this political these political machinations by the Rajapaksha along with Vikram Singh is really going to change anything at all the people continue to be on the streets there's been a flowering of democracy you know there's been voices which are either to suppress coming together there's been a considerable amount of ethnic and religious unity as well overcoming some of the fault lines which hadn't created deliberately in the past two or three decades so very very interesting times for Sri Lanka very difficult times as well let's be very clear because many of these problems are not going to have an easy solution and like I said there has to be the kind of political direction is still very nebulous but it is very interesting to see the kind of mobilization that has been taking place across society I mean we should say Prashant that Sri Lanka quite a rich country it has mineral resources, ilamite, graphite and so on in the Manar basin apparently even by the government's own analysis there are sufficient oil reserves Sri Lanka could become an exporter of oil yet caught in this trap 55% of its debt is held by bond holders like BlackRock sitting in New York and so on and on the table in Colombo is a document called the Millennium Challenge Cooperation Grant from the United States United States seeks status of force agreement with Sri Lanka so it can build a military base there there is a lot of pressure people are saying that this IMF deal is a leverage so the US can then get the status of forces agreement signed and can build a military base somewhere maybe on the gall face road not far from where the Rajapakshyas had to be rescued by helicopter to take them to a naval base what a story people are not happy any longer by just signing these things and allowing foreign powers to dominate them we see that in Mali I just did a story for Globetrotter you can read it at People's Dispatch about how the Malian military by the way two Kudetas in Mali and Malian military frustration in the streets and villages of Mali against the kind of way in which their austerity situation is destroying the capacity to survive old conflicts with the Tuaregs not being solved in the middle region of Mali between pastoralists and between agriculturalists the Fulani the Dogon all these old animosities returning on the table because there's just no money to put directly from the government and that has to do with the IMF again the International Monetary Fund same kind of situation as in Sri Lanka Prashant it's pretty extraordinary well of course you know when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail that's a famous adage from Central Intelligence Agency after the NATO countries destroyed Libya suddenly terrorism became the principal problem in Mali, Niger and so on and the French intervened in 2013 operation Barkhane intervened into Mali lots of civilian casualties the French have categorically denied every single accusation of a war crime categorically denied so the Malian military on the 2nd of May eventually said it is illegal for French troops to be on the Malian soil and to fly above Mali it's a pretty extraordinary event the French have had to move to Niger that's what they've been doing but I must say they haven't stopped intervening inside Mali my sources tell me that across the border attacks have been taking place this is going to frustrate the government in Bamako but let's see if they are capable of doing anything particularly given that they are sitting on an unpayable debt raises the question just as with Sri Lanka will there be debt relief for countries like Sri Lanka will there be debt relief for countries like Mali Antonio Guterres UN Secretary General flew into Niger right after the Bamako government got rid of the French from Mali flew into Niger and announced there that terrorism is a global problem didn't say anything about the hunger crisis in the Sahel didn't say anything about the desiccation of the Sahara and the Sahel the Sahara coming southwards drought creating a lot of problems lots of problems in the world but our hearts today are with our colleagues Shireen Abu Akhle killed by the Israelis on the 11th of May buried today on the 13th of May although her funeral attacked by the Israeli forces our hearts are with her with her family with colleagues at Al Jazeera who seem to lose people all the time they are with the family of Francisco Sandoval shot dead killed yesterday or she died yesterday 12th of May in Santiago, Chile this is give the people what they want we come to you every week we bring you the stories from around the world tell your friends about us we exist for you we exist only because journalism exists so please stand 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