Sankara case and companions. The trial quickly! . Blaise Compaoré must be extradited and France must cooperate! 16 April by
Press Release
The decisions of the pre-trial hearing, published on April 13, 2021, confirm the indictment of the main defendants. The case has now been referred to the Military Tribunal for due process. We demand that Blaise Compaoré be extradited to Burkina Faso and that France make the archives relating to the assassination of Thomas Sankara available to the Burkinabe justice system.
The way is thus open to organize the trial. However, no date has been set. According to our latest information, Burkina Faso’s military justice system is still considering whether first to hear the trial of the Sankara case or the appeal in the 2015 putsch trial.
A grim new year for debt-trapped rural women in Sri Lanka 16 April by
M. Champa Irangani is in no mood to celebrate
‘Avurudu’, or New Year, the biggest annual festival that Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese community observes mid-April, while Tamils celebrate the Tamil New Year around the same time.
“
The New Year will dawn only the day our debts are cancelled. Until then we cannot celebrate. Surely not, when so many women have died by suicide under the pressure of microfinance loans,” she says, seated with dozens of affected women who have been observing a
‘satyagraha’ off the main road in Hingurakgoda town, in Sri Lanka’s Polonnaruwa district, for a month now.
Neoliberalism: An increasing gap among incomes and tax gifts to Capital
Evolution of low and high salaries since the 1960s
The May 1968 general strike in France led to a considerable increase in the minimum wage over 15 years
We do not have room to sum up the evolution of income inequalities over the last two centuries. We shall limit ourselves to highlighting the evolution in France since 1968. The May 1968 general strike in France, and the Grenelle accords that followed it, led to a considerable increase in the minimum wage over 15 years: “The purchasing power of the minimum wage accordingly increased by more than 130 percent between 1968 and 1983, while the mean wage increased only by about 50 percent, resulting on a very significant compression of wage inequalities. The break with the previous period was sharp and substantial: the purchasing power of the minimum wage had increased barely 25 percent between 1950 and 1968.” [1]
On 11 April 2021, Guillermo Lasso (52,4%), the right-wing candidate, defeated Andres Arauz, the candidate supported by Rafael Correa and part of the Left, by 52.4% vs 47.6% in the second round of ballots for the presidential election. Lasso was elected thanks to the division of the Left, since a significant part of it, which has become deeply diffident of Rafael Correa, called for a null vote. Votes on the popular side, that represented a clear majority in the first round of February 2021, were divided, which made it possible for a former banker to be elected president. The situation is serious for an opportunity to break away from Lenin Moreno’s brutal neoliberal policies has been lost. Former banker Lasso, though critical of Lenin Moreno’s positions out of sheer electoral calculation, will continue in the same harmful direction: a deepening of neoliberal policies, submission to the private interests of Big Capital, particularly of Ecuador’s powerful banking sector and of the
Latin America has once again entered a period of strong social and political turbulence
Interview with Franck Gaudichaud
Franck Gaudichaud recently wrote and coordinated two collective works drawing a critical assessment of “progressive” political attempts to challenge neoliberal hegemony in Latin America. In this interview, he considers the social and political dynamics of the recent period, and also current issues in the region. The interview was conducted by Rosa Moussaoui, journalist and senior reporter for the newspaper L’Humanité.
What is the common political thread to what you call the “progressive experiences” of the early twenty-first century in Latin America?