Region

The call for Real Democracy Now led to campsites being formed in the largest squares of the largest cities of Spain with the name the “M-15 Movement” calling for a new democracy, political transparency and reform of the electoral law. Now the movement takes to the roads building a momentum of activism that will converge on Madrid on the 23rd of June.

There have been many expressions of non-violent protest by students which have spread via social networks. The educational crisis has manifested in several institutions which are on strike. Activities are expanding the debate on an issue which is one more symptom of a violent and inhuman system heading for total breakdown, with a crisis that is growing stronger every day.

In an historic vote, the state of New York, the third largest in the United States, legalised Gay Marriage last night joining Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C. The legislation comes into effect on the 24th of July with thousands of couples expected to take the opportunity to legalise their partnerships.

The second day at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn and a continuously rising temperature. After the first panels on the opening day and exchanging cards with journalists from all over the world, the second day gave us vibrant meetings and high emotional intensity. Women were the protagonists.

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the withdrawal of charges against photographer Marcela Rodríguez, a contributor to the Mapuexpress website (http://www.mapuexpress.net/), when she appeared before a court in the southern city of Temuco on 22 June. The public prosecutor decided it was not in the public interest to prosecute her.

Ednaldo Figueira, a blogger, politician and owner of the local newspaper O Serrano, was gunned down on 15 June in Serra do Mel, a town in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. He headed the Serra do Mel branch of the Workers Party (PT), the party of President Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor, Lula da Silva, and posted regularly on the Serra do Mel blog.

On Monday night Ireland suffered the most violent incidents in a decade between Protestants and Catholics, who clashed in the city of Belfast some even firing guns, according to Irish police. In the images broadcast by television there were hundreds of youths throwing stones and Molotov cocktails in the Short Strand area.

After six years of non-violent struggle against the Israeli separating wall by the people of Bil’in, the army has begun to dismantle a section of the West Bank Wall. In turn, the demonstrations continue to pressure for a new route which will not separate farmers from their land.

It is generally thought that separation of the powers of Church and State and an independent judiciary are new considerations and the universal humanists too may think that the Law of Political Accountability is quite new – think again – and look to Africa. Bereket Alemayehu, an organiser with Convergence of Cultures on the African Continent, introduces us to the Gada system.

In a moment in which new forms of media and diffusion of news are challenging the old established forms and the news agenda of the day can be suddenly altered by a fragment of video taken on a mobile phone, the Global Media Forum convened today to consider the challenge for the Media in the field of Human Rights in a Globalized World.