No name

Covers Lebanon since the mass movement in response to Hariri’s assassination, covering the role of Hizbollah and other political groupings.

Drawing on interviews with transgender people charts impact of changing legislation in UK. Primarily about individual experience and social context, but there is a chapter on: ‘Transgender Care Networks, Social Movements and Citizenship’.

Ockey notes that the Covid pandemic interrupted student-led protests for constitutional reform.  When they resumed students demanded not only constitutional amendments already being considered by parliament, but the resignation of the prime minister, dissolution of parliament and reform of the monarchy.  He notes fears of violence between students and royalists or security forces. 

Examines scale of crisis created in Greece by austerity programme and the growing movement Solidarity for All (promoted by the left coalition Syriza) creating support networks supplying food, health, education, cultural activity and legal advice, and setting up informal exchanges of goods and services.

Explores life of young woman who secretly ran schools for girls in Herat during Taliban rule, was elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005 at the age of 23, but was thrown out of it for raising women’s issues, and who had by 2009 already survived five assassination attempts. When she visited Britain in 2009, where she opposed NATO involvement in Afghanistan, the Independent ran a long interview with her:  Johann Hari, Malalai Joya: The woman who will not be silenced, , 08/07/2009 , pp. 1-5 .

Sruti Bala comes from the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India.  In her dissertation on nonviolent protest she discusses some significant elements of nonviolent resistance such  as 'action', 'play' and display'.  She also tries to define certain consequences of nonviolent protest for political identity.  Finally, these conclusions are related to the ideas of Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (the 'Frontier Gandhi').

Interview with indigenous human rights defender, Virginia Pinares, from Peru, who came to London to represent communities in the Andes actively resisting - for example by blockades - mining for copper concentrates and molybdenum, which is controlled by the Chinese company MMG. Pinares argues that her community is not against all mining, but against the environmentally reckless way operations are conducted and the minerals transported, and they also demand a stop to the violence used against environmental and human rights activists.  She stressed the need for environmentally protected zones, which could be used f or sustainable tourism. 

These are largely contemporaneous accounts, lightly revised from Pambazuka News, Pan-African Voices for Freedom and Justice, http://www.pambazuka.org. As well as interesting contributions on Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Algeria (noted again under E.V), this book covers unrest in a number of Sub-Saharan countries:

‘People’s revolts in Burkina Faso’, February-April 2011, involving students, the broad population and army mutinies (unfortunately the mutineers did not make common cause with the civilian protesters), pp. 131-46.

A ‘Protest Diary’ from Cameroon in February 2011, by presidential candidate Kah Walla, blogs about strictly nonviolent protests brutally suppressed (pp.107-10).

In Swaziland (pp. 155-169) the 12-15 April 2011 popular demonstrations went ahead in the face of roadblocks and despite the arrests of virtually the entire leadership of the democratic association, perhaps signalling ‘the beginning of the end’ for the absolute monarchy.