Number of journalists imprisoned per country on 1 December 2019. Data: Committee to Protect Journalists. China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt the world’s worst jailers of journalists. Graphic: A. Bhandari / Reuters

China imprisoned more journalists than any other country in 2019

By Gerry Doyle 10 December 2019 (Reuters) – China imprisoned at least 48 journalists in 2019, more than any other country, displacing Turkey as the most oppressive place for the profession, a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists report said on Wednesday. At least 250 journalists were imprisoned worldwide this year, according to the […]

People gather for an anti-government protest in Santiago, Chile, Friday, 1 November 2019. Groups of Chileans continued to demonstrate as government and opposition leaders debated the response to weeks of protests that paralyzed much of the capital and forced the cancellation of two major international summits. Photo: AP Photo

From Algeria to Hong Kong, 2019 was a year of anti-establishment rage – “What unites the protests is that all are responding to a sense of exclusion, pessimism about the future, and a feeling of having lost control to unaccountable elites”

5 December 2019 (AFP) – Angry citizens have swelled the streets of cities across the globe this year, pushing back against a disparate range of policies but often expressing a common grievance — the establishment’s failure to heed their demands for a more equitable future. While street protests are nothing new, experts say the intense […]

Fires burn in Pará state, Brazil, in September 2019. Jair Bolsonaro accused Leonardo DiCaprio of ‘giving money for the Amazon to be torched’. Photo: Nelson Almeida/ AFP / Getty Images

Brazil’s president Bolsonaro claims Leonardo DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires – “Our negligent and incompetent president, responsible for an environmental dismantling unprecedented in our country, wants to blame DiCaprio”

By Tom Phillips 29 November 2019 (The Guardian) – Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest. Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s […]

Undated photos of Susan and Carl Chase show them in their teenage years. They chose to end their lives on 27 October 2019, writing, “Dying is natural, and inescapable. We see nothing good about stretching the process out over as many years as possible.” Photo: Carl and Susan Chase / The Ellsworth American

Together, a Maine couple left the world, provoking a debate about death and choice – “The pressure of over-population is bringing about the destruction of civilization and will eventually cause the extinction of our species as we make the planet unfit for ourselves”

By Eric Russell 24 November 2019 (Portland Press Herald) – They wanted to leave this world together, on their own terms, and so on 27 October 2019, Carl and Susan Chase held hands in their favorite spot at home overlooking Horseshoe Cove in Brooksville until death came. Carl, an accomplished sailor and musician, was 77. […]

Indigenous leader Paulo Paulino Guajajara photographed in September 2019. He was hunting on 1 November 2019 inside the Arariboia reservation in Maranhao state when he was attacked and killed by illegal loggers. Photo: Ueslei Marcelino / REUTERS

Illegal loggers assassinate Amazon indigenous warrior who guarded forest, wound another – “The Bolsonaro government has indigenous blood on its hands”

By Anthony Boadle and Leo Benassatto 2 November 2019 BRASILIA (Reuters) – Illegal loggers in the Amazon ambushed an indigenous group that was formed to protect the forest and shot dead a young warrior and wounded another, leaders of the Guajajara tribe in northern Brazil said on Saturday. Paulo Paulino Guajajara, or Lobo (which means […]

Members of security forces detain a demonstrator during an anti-government protest in Santiago, Chile. Photo: Edgard Garrido / REUTERS

Chile president cancels Apec and climate summits amid wave of unrest

SANTIAGO (30 October 2019) – Chile’s embattled president has cancelled the Apec trade summit in November and the Cop 25 climate summit in December, as his government struggles with the largest wave of political unrest since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship. Sebastián Piñera made the announcement on Wednesday after 12 days of massive demonstrations […]

Montage of photos showing Extinction Rebellion protesters in the UK demonstrations in October 2019. Photo: The Guardian

UK police seek tougher powers against Extinction Rebellion – Clampdown on climate protests sets “disturbing precedent”, says UN rights expert

By Vikram Dodd, Matthew Taylor, Damien Gayle, and Jessica Murray 19 October 2019 (The Guardian) – Government and police have held talks to strengthen public order laws to allow a tougher crackdown on future Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate demonstrations in what civil rights lawyers warn would be a “a shocking assault on the right to protest.” The […]

Screenshot from a video depicting a fake President Trump massacring the news media and his critics that was shown at a conference for his supporters at Trump National Doral Miami in October 2019. Photo: The New York Times

Macabre video of fake Trump murdering media and critics is shown at his resort

By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman 13 October 2019 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) — A video depicting a macabre scene of a fake President Trump shooting, stabbing and brutally assaulting members of the news media and his political opponents was shown at a conference for his supporters at his Miami resort last week, […]

Drone video showing hundreds of blindfolded men being led from a train in China, posted anonymously on 17 September 2019. The video raises new concerns over the ongoing crackdown on Muslim Uyghurs in the far western region of Xinjiang. Video: War on Fear (战斗恐惧) / YouTube

Authoritarian advance: How authoritarian regimes upended assumptions about democratic expansion – “These regimes are turning the tools of coercion outward to push back on democracy”

By Laura Rosenberger 13 September 2019 (GMF) – Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, democracies again face a struggle against authoritarianism. This is not the ideological battle of the Cold War, but it is a confrontation between systems of government. As democracies are showing cracks and as authoritarian regimes are gaining strength, […]

People walk home in the dark due to power shortages in Harare, on Monday, 30 September 2019. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa presented a State of the Nation address on 1 October 2019, at a time the southern African nation is reeling from its worst economic crisis in more than a decade. Zimbabweans are enduring shortages of everything from medicines, fuel, cash and water, bringing a weariness and disgust that has often flared into streets protests. Opposition lawmakers walk out of president’s speech. Photo: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi / Associated Press

Surviving the extreme water shortage in Zimbabwe’s capital – Doctors on strike over “appalling and disgraceful” conditions in hospitals – Opposition lawmakers walk out of president’s speech

By Morgan Passi and John McGill 2 October 2019 (CBC Radio) – Think of it as a cash and flow problem. Last month, city councillors in Harare, Zimbabwe shut off their main water plant, blaming a lack of foreign currency needed to import treatment chemicals. The water is back on now — after the national government stepped in. […]

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