IV461 - June 2013

Zubaidah Tambunan is one feisty grandmother. She has gone to outrageous measures to protect Aek Nagaga, her Sumatran agricultural village that is consistently threatened by foreign land-grabbing palm oil investors. She has lain in roads leading to local plantations to physically halt foreign corporations and collaborating local police, implemented a village-wide system to warn of their approach, and advocated for agrarian reform in Indonesia.

This report was presented to the 2013 International Committee meeting of the Fourth International by Laurent Carasso for the Bureau to introduce a general discussion after the presentation and discussion of reports on the balance sheet of party-building experiences in Pakistan, the Spanish state and France. Contributions on these experiences and on the general discussion are published in our Debate section “Building new parties of the left”.

This interview with Özlem Onaran by Anastasia Giamali of Avgi (The Dawn), Syriza’s daily paper, was made on 5 June and published on 9 June 2013.

In Tunisia, Amina remains in prison. The young Femen, who had posed bare-breasted on social networks, was arrested in possession of a teargas bomb, leading to her trial. On Thursday May 30, 2013, new and more serious charges were notified to her, notably that of association with malefactors. Passions run high around her case, with notably the demonstration of three European Femen arrested on Wednesday May 29 before the Tunis court after stripping off their clothes. They also risk a prison sentence. Tunisian feminist organisations have not denounced Femen, even if they do not share its methods, as Ahlem Belhadj, president of the Association tunisienne des femmes démocrates (ATFD – Tunisian Association of Democratic Women) explains [Olivier Rogez].

The spontaneous movement that started in Istanbul has taken on an unprecedented dimension in the history of the country and now touches sixty-seven of the eighty-five major cities in Turkey.

Mass demonstrations and harsh governmental crackdowns are not new in Turkish political history, however, although the current demonstrations in Istanbul and throughout Turkey were initiated by socialists, there is no doubt that we are experiencing something strikingly different this time, displayed by not only the visible lack of political experience of a significant number of the demonstrators but also the sheer number and incredible resiliency of the demonstrators in the face of massive and injurious tear gas assaults of the police. What is the cause of this massive social explosion in a country where there is no sign of economic crisis, and where the government was elected in 2011 with 50% of the votes?

Tom Gagné explains how small protests to stop the demolition of a park in Istanbul snowballed into a challenge to the government and its machinery of repression.

On the 1st of June demonstrations against the Troika are taking place around Europe on the call originally of the movement in Portugal “Lixe a Troika” (usually translated as “Screw the Troika”) under the slogan "People United against the Troika" and movements in the Spanish state against the imposition of the harsh austerity programmes by which the Troika pretends to solve the problem of the Eurozone crisis.

The Royal Decree on "Urgent Measures for the Protection of the National Health System (SNS) and the Improvement of Quality and Performance" follows the guidelines imposed by the Troika.

The scientists at the medical University of Gdansk (GUMed) have published a research report. They show that the private companies carrying out medical services select patients according to the profitability of the cases or age. When the patient suffers from an “unprofitable disease” they are sent back to public care is returned towards the public utility. Because for the private sector, only cash counts…