Headlines for Monday, October 8, 2012

Local fisherman and anti-nuke activists protest India's Kudankulam nuclear power plant

Thousands of fishermen, along with anti-nuclear activists, used their boats and bodies to stage an offshore protest of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant on India’s southern coastline. Shuriah Niazi reports.

The protesters came in boats and stayed in the sea 500 meters away from the nuclear plant. Citing safety concerns, they want the power station shut down. But the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. shows no signs of closing the plant, saying that the first unit has been fully loaded with the requisite enriched uranium fuel and it is safe.

More than 5,000 security personnel were deployed to control the protest. Demonstrators, led by the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy say that villagers who oppose the plant have recently been arrested on false charges. They want the charges dropped and those detained freed. Anti-nuclear activists and local villagers have protested the seaside plant since last year's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. They say they will take their protest to the Tamil Nadu assembly in Chennai on October 29th. Shuriah Niazi, FSRN.

US monument to Cesar Chavez dedicated at La Paz

Farmworkers and their advocates are hailing today's dedicaton of a national monument  to labor leader and civil rights champion Cesar Chavez. In 1962, Chavez co-founded the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. The monument is near Keene, California at Nuestra Senora Reina de la Paz or Our Lady, Queen of Peace. Known simply as La Paz, the site was  not only Chavez's home and UFW headquarters, it also served an educational and organizational retreat for many. President Barack Obama's dedication of the monument today was criticized as an overly simplistic political ploy to garner the Latino vote.

Violence escalates along Gaza-Israel border; airstrikes and rocket fire continue

A  Palestinian man injured yesterday in an Israeli airstrike is dead.  Rami Almeghari reports on the escalating violence along the border.

The 24-year-old man was one of two on a motorcycle targeted by Israeli authorities who confirmed the strike. They say the men were believed to be involved in an attack that killed an Israeli soldier at the Sinai border in June. Six Palestinian kids were among the bystanders hurt in Sunday's airstrike. Israel also says their forces targeted the Global Jihad group in Rafah on Saturday, in an attempt to thwart a cross-border attack.  In response, Hamas's military wing, Ezzeldin Elqassam, and the Islamic Jihad group jointly declared responsibility for a barrage of homemade rocket fire into nearby Israeli areas. No injuries were reported. The Israeli army retaliated with heavy fire on residential homes near the border fence in Khan Younis city, south of Gaza. Gaza had seen a relative calm recently, as the ruling Hamas party has tried to broker a ceasefire in the region.  Rami Almeghari, FSRN, Gaza.

International War Tribunal meets to discuss Israeli occupation on Palestinian territories

The fourth session of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine ended today in New York. The global peoples' court seeks to highlight the role that international forces play on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.  The first three sessions were held in Barcelona, London and Cape Town. The New York session focused on the US and the UN.

“The United States has aimed to make legal what is otherwise illegal.”

Diana Butto, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former spokesperson for the PLO, addressed the so-called court.

“What the United States has since done, through the provision of the Oslo Accords, was that it has flipped it on its head. Rather than the occupier being required to provide security to the occupied,  rather than the occupier being required to protect the occupied, we are now in a very perverse situation in which the occupied, the Palestinians, are required to give protection to their oppressor, Israel.”

The Tribunal's final findings will be presented at a closing session early next year.