Middle East

Qatargate and the union movement

See also Eric's article from June 2021, 'Qatar, the ITUC and the strange case of Malcolm Bidali' In early December, the newly-elected leader of the International Trade Union Confederation, Luca Visentini, was arrested in Brussels as part of a major police operation targeting members of the European Parliament. Visentini was released conditionally after a couple of days and temporarily stepped aside from his new job. The scandal — quickly branded as “Qatargate” — involved large payments in cash from the Qatari government to leading figures in the European Parliament, mainly from the centre-left...

Personal reflections on the World Cup

Stocksbridge Works football team in days of yore – definitely not heading for Qatar, more likely The Miners’ Arms. It’s hard to think of a World Cup which hasn’t, at some point, aroused controversy, both on and off the pitch. "Politics and sport shouldn’t mix" is a standard response to this situation but one which is feeble, ignores reality and misses the point: it is inevitable that the world’s most popular sport should attract political controversy, particularly now that every word, every move, every gesture is conveyed around the world in a matter of seconds. Even so, the astonishing...

Iranian protests spark wider fightbacks

While raising pictures of Mahsa Amini and calls against oppression, a number of women have held a rally ( 2 October ) in front of Beirut’s National Museum in solidarity with the protesting women of Iran. Lebanese women held banners that said: “Our anger is one, our struggle is one”, “Women’s hair is not sinful, your oppression is sinful”, “The veil is a personal freedom, not a governmental matter”, and “My body and my hair belong to no-one but me.” The demonstrators refused the attendance of Abbas Yazbek, a Shia cleric opposed to the Iranian regime, at the vigil because of their stance against...

Putin’s new recruits start dying in Ukraine

The first reports of deaths of Russian conscripts who had been drafted in the new mobilisation announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 21 September began appearing during the first week of October. At least 20 men from the September tranche of recruits have died in Ukraine so far. 220,000 people have been mobilised under Putin’s September order, of which 35,000 are already in military units and 16,000 are involved in conflict following minimal training. Reports of low morale, and lack of equipment have been common with many new troops apparently having to buy their own body armour...

Understanding the war in Yemen

Since 2014 Yemen's civil war, in which a brutal imperialist intervention by Saudi Arabia is increasingly central, has produced an appalling humanitarian catastrophe. As a contribution to rousing the British labour movement to protest against the war, including the UK government's support for the Saudi intervention, we republish this interview from American socialist magazine New Politics . For more about Yemen and Saudi Arabia on our website, see here . The conflict in Yemen has been going on for a long time with horrendous human consequences. Non specialists find the situation extremely...

Public funds boost emissions and exploitation

We know the role of UK corporations driving exploitation, human rights abuses and environmental and climate damage worldwide. We know about UK support for governments even more repressive and oligarchic than our own. New reporting from the Guardian has underlined just how directly British taxpayers’ money is used to fund social and environmental abuse. Since 2019, over £5.2billion from the “UK Export Finance” scheme has been used to fund deeply damaging overseas energy and infrastructure projects. Many of these projects are in the Gulf state autocracies and run on their murderous super...

Qatar, the ITUC and the strange case of Malcolm Bidali

Last summer, the international trade union movement was celebrating the news from Qatar. The country which is slated to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup had come under enormous pressure to respect the rights of workers, especially migrant workers, who were getting the country ready for such a high profile event. The headline on the website of the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) could not have been more gushing: “A new dawn for migrant workers in Qatar”. The article went on to say that “new laws adopted today by the State of Qatar are a game changer in the protection...

Against the Saudi war in Yemen

Joe Biden has announced the end of US support for Saudi-led offensive military operations in Yemen, arguing in a foreign policy speech that they have “created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe”. The details remain to be seen, but we should use this shift to exert pressure on the British government too. Intervention by the predominantly Arab military coalition headed by Saudi Arabia, directed against Iranian-backed Shia Islamist/nationalist Houthi militias, has resulted in many tens of thousand of fatalities, including over ten thousand civilians killed directly by coalition military...

Lebanon in revolt

Joey Ayoub is a Lebanese writer and activist. He spoke to Daniel Randall from Solidarity about the protest movement in Lebanon in the aftermath of the Beirut explosion. For a previous interview with Joey about the Lebanese protests, from November 2019, click here . DR: What are the implications of the recent resignation of the government? How has this been received by the protest movement? JA: This is the second resignation since the 17 October revolution. Then-prime minister Saad Hariri had resigned soon after the revolution and was replaced by Hassan Diab, who is himself now-interim prime...

International news: Iran, Kuwait, Singapore, Qatar, Ecuador, New York

Iran’s official figures show new Covid-19 cases peaking there about 30 March and deaths peaking about 4 April, and 5,118 deaths so far. An Iranian activist told Solidarity : “The official figures are rubbish! What the true number is nobody can tell. Some people are saying there is going to be a second wave. Lots of workers have died.” Mohammad-Hossein Sepehri, a teacher jailed in Mashhad’s Vakilabad prison, has contracted coronavirus. He has been denied medical care. There are many teachers and hundreds of other labour and social rights activists languishing in the Iranian regime’s prisons and...

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