Iran Feature: Assessing the Threat To Arrest Mousavi and Karroubi (Yeranian)

"On the one hand the regime has consistently said since the last presidential election that the protesters, that the Green movement, are a bunch of street hooligans, they're small in number, they're insignificant, we've crushed them, it's over," said Hashemi. "But, on the other hand, seemingly, every single week, a high member of the Iranian regime is speaking out and condemning and raising new charges against the Green Movement. So, if the Green movement is insignificant, is dead, is crushed, why do you constantly speak about them?"

Click to read more ...

Bolivia: Amidst Protests, Government Withdraws Subsidy Cuts on Fuel

Photo: David Mercado (Reuters)Faced with spreading civil unrest, the Bolivian president has scrapped a government decree that significantly raised fuel prices and provoked violent protests.

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, presided over back-to-back government meetings on Friday aimed at crafting a strategy for quelling civil unrest in La Paz, Cochabamba and other major cities sparked by the decision to remove price controls.

Alvaro Garcia, the Bolivian vice president, filling in for Morales, had issued the decree on Sunday removing subsidies that keep fuel prices artificially low but cost the Bolivian government an estimated $380m per year.

As a result fuel prices went up by as much as 83 per cent in the sharpest increases since 1991.

Click to read more ...

Tunisia Opinion: "An Inspiring Revolt" (Malik)

There are few moments in the political atmosphere of the Middle East that fill me with genuine pride. While eyes have long been fixed on opposition movements in Iran and Egypt, suddenly Tunisia has provided one of the most inspiring episodes of indigenous revolt against a repressive regime.

Despite distressing reports of security forces shooting demonstrators dead, the events are heartening, not necessarily as a harbinger of transformation in the region, but as an indication that it is possible. Change is sometimes more likely to happen when people know what it looks like, when the first person dares to points to the emperor and say that he is naked.

Click to read more ...

Egypt Breaking: 21 Killed in Car Bomb Attack on Christian Church

LATER UPDATES: "Up to 50" Killed in Bombing of Alexandria Church

UPDATE 1530 GMT: A picture from the post-bombing protests in Alexandria today:

UPDATE 1510 GMT: Protesters and police are clashing near the site of today's bombing. There are reports of injuries and suffocation from tear gas used by anti-riot forces.

Click to read more ...

The Latest from Iran (1 January): And Today's Threat Is....

>1900 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Labour activist Mansour Osanloo has suddenly been transferred to solitary confinement. Osanloo has reportedly been punished for participating in a commemoration of Ali Saremi, the Kurdish detainee executed on Tuesday.

Osanloo has been in prison since 2007 and is serving a five-year sentence in Evin Prison.

1730 GMT: Execution Watch. The son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman condemned to death for adultery and complicity in murder, has been released on $40,000 bail and has given a press conference in Tabriz.

Sajad Ghaderzadeh told reporters, "In my opinion my mother is also guilty but since we have lost our father we do not want to lose our mother too. Consequently, we ask for a commutation of the penalty. The stoning sentence is on the file but it may not be carried out. At least this is what we are hoping."

Ghaderzadeh was detained in early October, along with Ashtiani's lawyer, as they gave an interview to two German reporters. The German journalists and attorney Houton Kian are still in prison.

Click to read more ...

WikiLeaks Afghanistan Special: How David Petraeus Pre-Empted Barack Obama in January 2009

It is only one sentence from a lengthy conversation, but it says volumes about how the Obama Administration escalated US intervention in Afghanistan. And it says just as much about the man behind that escalation: not President Barack Obama but General David Petraeus.

On 20 January 2009, in the midst of a wide-ranging conversation, Petraeus tells Afghan President Hamid Karzai, "The increase of 30,000 U.S. troops next year would also increase combat, leading to the possibility of increased civilian casualties in the short term."

The significance? Barack Obama, who on the same day was being inaugurated as the 44th President, had not agreed to "the increase of 30,000 U.S. troops next year". He had not agreed to any increase at all.

Click to read more ...

Iran Feature: Activism and Human Rights --- The Story of Fati Masjedi (Bijnen)

Much has been said and written about Iran's hundreds of political prisoners. Some are well-known, others not at all. There are also hundreds if not thousands of ordinary Iranians who live in permanent fear for their future, who have been summoned to court, who have been briefly arrested and then released on bail. Their computers, documents with their life'swork and family stories have been taken away. They are waiting anxiously for another call to present themselves to a court and a judge that can ruin their lives forever. In the meantime they live in limbo and are slowly getting desperate.

Thinking of Qom, I see seminaries, women clad in black chadors, Grand Ayatollahs, pilgrims, shrines, and mosques. The city breathes holiness and piety.

In this holy city lives a brave human rights defender, an ordinary young woman called Fatemeh ("call me Fati") Masjedi with whom I happened to get in touch recently. And she told me her own story.

Click to read more ...

Happy New Year from EA WorldView

We're taking a break soon to bring in the New Year with family and friends. We've tucked away a couple of treats for you to read in the morning, and we'll be back tomorrow afternoon.

We wanted to say how each day of this year has been a bright one, thanks to you in the EA community, and we look forward to even more in 2011.

Take it away, Louis....

Belarus Updates: The Latest Charges of "Organising Riots"

Charges have been filed against Iryna Khalip, journalist and wife of detained Presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov. 

Khalip's father said Khalip was visited by her lawyer on Wednesday and Thursday. The lawyer reported that Khalip had been interrogated again and had been charged with organisation of and participation in mass riots.

Natallia Radzina, the editor of the Charter97 website, has also been charged with organisation of the protests on Election Day, 19 December, and will be detained for two months while investigations are conducted.

Radzina was arrested in Charter97's offices at 4 a.m. on 20 December.

The maximum punishment for organisation of riots is 15 years in prison.

The state security service KGB, apparently looking for photojournalist Julia Doroshkevich, have raided her apartment and detained her husband Paul Yuhnevich, an activist of "European Belarus".

Afghanistan Feature: An Election (and More) Gone Wrong (Gall/Khapalwak)

The inauguration of a new Parliament in just weeks threatens to worsen ethnic tensions and instability and to drive an important part of President Hamid Karzai’s political base into the arms of the insurgency, Afghans and foreign officials warn.

Despite numerous obstacles, NATO and American officials had pushed strongly for parliamentary elections in September, gambling that a successful vote would show progress in the war and new growth in Afghanistan’s democracy.

Instead insecurity, disaffection and fraud, particularly in the south, left the country’s largest and most important ethnic group, the Pashtuns, with sharply reduced representation. The results have been vigorously disputed for three months and have pushed the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.

Click to read more ...