News from around the world

On March 14th, one of Brazil’s most courageous social leaders was brutally assassinated on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Marielle Franco, a city councilwoman and human rights defender, was shot four times in the head by unknown assailants in a passing vehicle shortly after leaving a gathering of young Black activists. Her driver, Anderson Pedro Gomes, was also killed.

Marielle Franco, member of PSol, elected councillor in Rio de Janeiro with the fifth highest votes in 2016 was an outspoken fighter for justice and against police violence. Franco and her driver were shot dead on 14 March in a drive-by killing.

The PSol issued this statement.

We protest placing the FIFA 2018 fan zone in a University district.

The only official fan zone for the FIFA World Cup in Moscow is to be placed next to the Moscow State University. This placement will damage the University. We demand to move it away from the University district.

The Myanmar military junta has been operating ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people living in its Arakan province for a long time. [1] However, since August 2017 it has waged genocide against the Rohingya which has provoked massive migration to Bangladesh and to other countries as well.

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After weeks of moral preparation, diplomatic pressure and massive disinformation, the Turkish state has finally attacked the predominantly Kurdish enclave of Afrin, located in north-western Syria. Skilfully playing on the cleavages between Washington and Moscow, the Turkish President has launched a major military operation involving air strikes, the deployment of Islamist militias and the incursion of Turkish troops on Syrian soil ready for the offensive.

Sixty-two percent of Filipinos have agreed that there is no need for the government to extend martial law in Mindanao, a latest survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed.

Mass demonstrations took place in the cities of Shiraz, Khorramabad and Kerman Shah, a predominantly Kurdish city, to protest the high cost of living, poverty, unemployment and participation in the war in Syria, which caused damage to the Iranian economy according to the demonstrators.

Some 150 academics who signed a petition calling for peace in Turkey’s Kurdish regions are now facing trial. Uraz Aydin, the editor of the leftwing journal Yeniyol faces additional charges of terrorist propaganda.

Given the recent events in Honduras, Anticapitalistas joins the international call of the Honduran people to denounce the electoral fraud by the current President and candidate for re-election Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party, who did not accept the first published results of the elections of November 26, which gave as potential winner of the presidency the opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla of the Alliance Against Dictatorship. We also denounce the repression and murders committed by the police and military forces against the mobilizations that are taking place in the country, leading to the declaration of a state of emergency.