Stray Bullets - Beatings At M&S-Linked Factory And Times Photo Sparks Lashings In Iran

Campaigning Workers In India Attacked:
More than 60 garments workers have been attacked and beaten [1] outsider their factory, Viva Global, a Marks & Spencer supplier factory. Sixteen women were severely beaten with hockey sticks and Anwar Ansari, a trade union leader, was kidnapped [2]. Ansari has now been released, and three men from labour agent PND contractors, who supply workers for Viva Global, have been arrested in connection with the kidnapping. The attacks come after several months of campaigning [3] by Garment and Allied Workers Union to improve the working conditions at Viva Global [4], with workers complaining of low wages, forced overtime, a lack of drinking water and toilets. An investigation [5] by the Observer last month found that workers were being paid less than £70 a month to work 9 am to 10 pm shifts. One worker told the Observer: “If we complain to management, they are ignoring us, nobody is paying attention. If the workers say they don’t want to work, then the management says you have another option, you can leave the company.” Sudhir Kumar Makhija, chief operating officer for Viva Global, said in a statement: “We love our employees. They are the source of our existence and their concerns of any nature are our priorities.”
 

Iranian Women To Be Lashed:
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman whose sentence of death by stoning for adultery [6] was temporarily suspended after international outcry, is now to face 99 lashes [7], according to her son. In 2006, Ashtiani pleaded guilty to being involved in an “illicit relationship” with two men, after the death of her husband; later she pleaded guilty to having an affair while married, but later retracted the confession, which was made under duress. She is now facing 99 lashes for ‘indecency’ [8], after the Times published a picture purportedly of her not wearing a headscarf; although the newspaper later published a correction saying the photograph was of a different woman. In an open letter, Ashtiani’s son said his mother had been sentenced to receive the lashes “on false charges of corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her without hijab.”

Protests In Mozambique Over Price Of Bread:
At least 10 people, including two children, have been killed and more than 400 wounded in protests and riots over sky rocketing food prices [9]. Bread prices have risen more than 30% in Mozambique, which is already one of the world’s poorest countries [10]. The Guardian has reported that police officials have confirmed live ammunition was used on crowds [11] after police ran out of rubber bullets. Rioters have looted shops and barricaded numerous streets in the capital of Maputo. Fernando Lima, the publisher of the country’s weekly newspaper Savana, told Al Jazeera: “We are seeing all the minister all of a sudden… going to the neighbourhoods explaining what the international crisis means to Mozambique… the government has made a huge shift in their (public relations) effort. The government woke up.”
 

Tony Blair Book Signing Greeted By Protest:
Tony Blair’s book signing in Dublin was greeted by more than 100 protesters [12], and his book is facing an embarrassing Facebook campaign [13]. Protesters outside Easons bookshop hurled eggs and shoes [14] at the former prime minister and chanted “Butcher Blair” as he arrived to sign copies of his autobiography ‘A Journey’. Four protesters were arrested. Meanwhile, Euan Booth, a trainee nurse from Oxford, has set up a Facebook group called ‘Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in book shops’. Booth told the Telegraph [15]: “I’m not an activist, just a voter who is still furious that he is able to lie to the British people, day after day, but this time earn money from it. This is a peaceful and mischievous way of making your point if you feel the same way. It’s a non violent display of anger using the materials given to me - his book and the crime section - they’re both there, I just put them together.”
 

Words: Richard Lemmer
Photo: Flickr user Pan-African News Wire File Photos [16]