Activism

A social media campaign calling for the release of 12 Hong Kong youths detained in China is gaining ground, with support from international activists including Greta Thunberg. The teenage environmentalist is among a growing list of international activists, campaigners and politicians sharing the hashtag #save12HKyouths, hoping to draw international attention to the plight of 12 young people held under tight security in mainland China after they were caught allegedly trying to flee Hong Kong by boat.Mainland ChinaSocial MediaDetaineesActivismChinese GovernmentTaiwanEnvironmentalistHong Kong GovernmentHuman Rights ActivistsAndy LiBoatChinese AuthoritiesInternational ActivistsProtestersMainland LawyersGreta ThunbergJoshua WongRead Full Story

Dozens of demonstrators marched in Novato on Saturday to call for school resource officer programs to be disbanded in Marin County. School resource officers, commonly referred to as SROs, are police officers or deputy sh

Thailand's embattled premier called Monday for a special session of parliament as protesters planned more rallies to demand his resignation, the release of jailed activists, and reforms to the monarchy. Tens of thousands of mostly young protesters have taken to the streets in the past week in defiance of an...ThailandPrayut Chan-o-chaSpecial SessionActivismRiot PoliceParliamentSocial MediaRoyal Thai PolicePrayut Chan-O-ChaMaha VajiralongkornHong Kong ProtestersThai TwitterTech-savvy ProtestersActivistsRallySuthidaRead Full Story

AMARA, Iraq (Reuters) - Hasanain Alminshid had received death threats for his human rights activism for years, but ignored most of them. After his mentor was gunned down outside a police station, he finally made the difficult choice to flee Iraq.“It’s too dangerous now. There have been killings in the open in front of security forces,” he said, speaking by ‘phone from Istanbul, where he has based himself since that incident in November last year.Alminshid, 29, his mentor Amjad Aldhamat and several other activists had attended a meeting with police to discuss a planned protest in their hometown of Amara in southern Iraq during some of the most deadly anti-government unrest that swept Iraq last year.As Aldhamat walked out, gunmen sped past in a car with tinted windows and no licence plates and shot him dead. Alminshid left the country five days later.It was one of dozens of targeted killings that have pushed more and more young Iraqi civil society activists, rights workers and journalists to flee what they say is a continuing onslaught by militia groups.Rights groups say the departure of people whose activities range from educating Iraqis about their right to vote to leading protests against perceived abuses has further weakened civil society movements that have been active for decades.The independent rights organization Al-Amal says at least 44 kidnappings and 74 attempted killings of activists have taken place, mostly in Baghdad and southern Iraq, in the last year.It has documented at least 39 killings since October 2019, when thousands of Iraqis took to the streets in mass anti-government protests demanding jobs and the departure of the ruling elite which they said was corrupt.The protests toppled former prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi in December but lost steam after more than 500 people were killed in a crackdown by security forces and unidentified gunmen, and during the COVID-19 pandemic.“Assassinations escalated with the beginning of the protests last year,” said Hassan Wahab of Al-Amal. “We have started losing our sources on the ground.”Reuters spoke to seven activists who fled Iraq in recent months, five of whom said that they were advised by local police to leave because they could not guarantee protection from armed groups.A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that security forces were often powerless to protect activists from rogue militias, because those groups had powerful political backers whom he did not name.Militias linked to political parties, some backed by Iran, have tightened their grip over state institutions since the U.S. invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein in 2003.LOST HOPEPrime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who took office in May, has pledged justice for activists killed or abused by armed groups, and has faced off against some Iran-backed parties.But the formation of nearly 35 committees by the new government to tackle the challenges, including pursuing those responsible for protesters’ deaths, has resulted in no prosecutions so far.“I’ve lost all the hope I had in Kadhimi,” Aldhamat’s brother, Mohammed Aldhamat, told Reuters in Amara.Speaking in Amjad’s home, where their mother also lives, he added that his family had been told they would see the results of the investigation into his brother’s death within three months. Four months have passed with no word.An Iraqi government spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said state institutions were “infiltrated” by parties and militia groups that had no interest in punishing the killers of protesters.The government has vowed to crack down on what it says are criminal armed groups trying to destabilise the country, and to impose state control over weapons as part of efforts to reduce the influence of militias.Alminshid said a police officer at the hospital where Aldhamat was pronounced dead asked him a few questions, but no one has contacted him since.The day after Aldhamat’s killing, military authorities in Amara sent a memo to the interior ministry recommending that security forces protect nine other activists it said were on a hit list, according to a document seen by Reuters.A military official confirmed the document’s authenticity.One of the activists on that list, 28-year-old Hamza Qassem, got wind of the memo through a friend in the Amara police force and left for Istanbul, where he, Alminshid and other exiled Iraqis who used to run a rights NGO in Amara now reside.That NGO no longer exists. Seven of its founders are in Turkey and three have been killed.“Amara has become a terrifying city,” Qassem said.The main protest site in Amara, which was occupied a year ago by throngs of anti-government protesters, is now sealed off by security forces and metal gates.“We took to the streets and asked for a nation, but the authorities gave us a cemetery,” said one of the protesters, Haider Halim. “The only solution is to leave.”Reporting by Amina Ismail, Editing by John Davison and Mike Collett-WhiteSecurity ForcesActivismIraqisIstanbulHuman RightsBaghdadTurkeyIraqi ForcesIraqi Ground ForcesArmed ForcesUS MilitaryInterior MinistryNGOReutersAmaraSaddam Hussein

Federal authorities arrested an Atlanta-based actor and activist on wire fraud and money laundering charges Friday, after an investigation suggested he purchased $200,000 worth of personal items with money donated to a B

CHENNAI, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Indian activists and politicians in the southwestern state of Goa, known globally for its pristine coastline and dense forests, are opposing a plan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to turn Goa into a coal transportation hub. Locals and activists have been protesting against three...BJPRail TransportPower TransmissionActivismChennaiGoaBharatiya Janata PartyTransport HubIndian RailwaysEnvironmental ActivistsLand DevelopmentEnvironmental GroupsInfrastructure DevelopmentReutersGoencho EkvottNarendra ModiNilesh CabralAlina SaldanhaPramod SawantRead Full Story

ATLANTA (AP) — In 2008, when Barack Obama was under fire for a sermon his former pastor delivered years earlier, the aspiring president distanced himself from the preacher’s fiery words that channeled Black Americans’ anger over racism.The Rev. Raphael Warnock defended Jeremiah Wright. “When preachers tell the truth, very often it makes people uncomfortable,” he said on Fox News.Now Warnock is the politician running for office and the one under attack for his sometimes impassioned words from the pulpit. And once again, he is not backing down. Warnock, 51, says his run for U.S. Senate in Georgia — one of two races on Jan. 5 that will determine control of the Senate — is an extension of his years of progressive activism as head of the church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.Warnock is calling for bail reform and an end to mass incarceration; a living wage and job training for a green economy; expanded access to voting and health care, and student loan forgiveness. It’s an unabashedly liberal platform that may galvanize the Democrats he needs to turn out to vote in the runoff election.But it also carries risks. His opponent, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, has blasted his rhetoric and proposals as “radical,” socialist and out of step with Georgia residents. It’s a line of attack that could sway moderate suburban voters in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 20 years.“I’m a pastor who is running for political office, but I don’t think of myself as a politician,” he told The Associated Press. “I honestly don’t know anything to be other than authentic.”Warnock would join a small group of other ministers in Congress, including at least one other Black pastor, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. He said his model was King, “who used his faith to activate change in the public square.” In high school, he listened to the civil rights icon’s sermons and was particularly drawn to “A Knock At Midnight,” in which King exhorts churches to serve as the “critic of the state” and fight for peace and economic and racial justice. Warnock has embraced that mission. In 2007, he warned that the U.S. could “lose its soul” in a speech that condemned President George W. Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq. At the Georgia Capitol in 2014, he was arrested while protesting the refusal of state Republicans to expand Medicaid. After the killing of George Floyd by police in May, he expounded on the country’s struggle with a “virus” he dubbed “COVID-1619” for the year when some of the first slaves arrived in English North America.His campaign draws heavily from his early life. Warnock grew up poor in public housing in Savannah, Georgia. He cites his father’s small business hauling old cars to a local steel yard to push back on attacks he is against free enterprise. He attended Morehouse College and earned a Ph.D. in theology from Union Theological Seminary, funding his education with help from student loans and federal grants. His older brother Keith, one of 11 siblings, served more than 20 years in prison for a first-time, drug-related offense, and Warnock has used his case to argue for criminal justice reform.“He knew what it is to struggle. He knew what it is to go without,” Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, a leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Georgia, said of Raphael Warnock, whom he supports. “He’s able to speak to where a lot of people are.”Warnock knew early on that he wanted to enter the ministry. His father was also a preacher, and enlisted his son at a young age to help him read the small print in a biblical reference book because he refused to get prescription glasses. Warnock recalled giving his first sermon, “It’s Time I be about My Father’s Business,” at 11. His social activism is part of a tradition of resistance in many Black churches that developed from the fight against racial inequality. Black pastors have called out the country’s troubled racial history using terms that can be discomforting to outsiders. In his much-scrutinized sermon, Wright decried the country’s mistreatment of Blacks with the exclamation, “God damn America.” Loeffler has used the clip in an ad that accuses Warnock of defending Wright’s “hatred.”Loeffler has also used snippets of Warnock’s own sermons to argue that he is against police and the military. In one clip, Warnock says that nobody can serve “God and the military.” Warnock, who has two brothers who are veterans and whose father served in World War II, has said he was preaching from a biblical text and trying to impart a lesson about prioritizing God and laying a moral foundation for life. Loeffler has used another clip to accuse Warnock of denigrating police. But his remark about “police power showing up in a kind of gangster and thug mentality” in that sermon was a specific reference to police practices in Ferguson, Missouri, that the U.S. Justice Department investigated after a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, a Black teenager, in 2014.“He has actually made sure that we know who he is in his own words,” Loeffler said at a debate in December. “Those aren’t my words.” Warnock accused her of lying “on Jesus.”Cleaver said the attacks on Warnock’s sermons using lines with no context are “woefully unfair” and show no understanding of the role of a Black preacher. “I’m just made sick over what they’re trying to do,” he said. At the debate in December, Loeffler also questioned Warnock about his arrest in 2002 on suspicion of obstructing a child abuse investigation at a camp in Maryland run by the Baltimore church he headed at the time. Warnock said he was trying to make sure young people had lawyers or family present when questioned by authorities. The charges were dropped.Warnock’s estranged wife accused him earlier this year of running over her foot during an argument, but police said they found no visible signs of injury, and they did not charge Warnock with a crime. The effort to paint Warnock as a radical is similar to the strategy Republicans used with some success against other Democrats in down-ballot races this year. But it also echoes the attacks that segregationists leveled against King and supporters of the civil rights movement. That could help turn out the state’s large African American population to vote in next month’s runoff. Warnock is right to keep focusing on his platform of a living wage, expanded health care options and voting rights, said the Rev. William Barber II, president of the Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit group that fights poverty and discrimination. “You don’t win by being Republican lite,” Barber said. “You win by lifting up people from the bottom.”Black ChurchesMichael BrownRacismGodRacial JusticeKing JusticeAPBlack Americans 'Fox NewsU.S. SenateDemocratsThe Associated PressCongressRepublicansMedicaidBarack ObamaRaphael WarnockJeremiah WrightMartin Luther King Jr.Kelly LoefflerEmanuel CleaverGeorge W. BushGeorge FloydWilliam Barber IiMartin Luther KingThe Rev

MINNEAPOLIS — Over three months ago, a majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to defund the city’s police department, making a powerful statement that reverberated across the country. It shook up Capitol Hi

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — An activist is accused of spending for personal use some $200,000 in donations to what was represented as a Black Lives Matter charity.The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Sir Maejor Page, previ

Police in Minneapolis are investigating a report by a right-wing activist group of alleged illegal ballot harvesting by supporters of Rep. Ilhan Omar in Minnesota. “We are in the process of looking into the validity of